The Early Works Of Orestes A Brownson: Life By Communion, 1842

THE EARLY WORKS OF ORESTES A. BROWNSON VOLUME VI: LIFE BY COMMUNION, 1842

Edited by

Patrick W. Carey

2005

MARQUETTE STUDIES IN THEOLOGY NO. 46 Andrew Tallon, Series Editor

Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data Brownson, Orestes Augustus, 1803-1876. [Selections. 2004] The early works of Orestes A. Brownson: Volume VI: Life in Communion, 1842 / edited by Patrick W. Carey. p. cm. — (Marquette studies in theology ; no. 46 ) Includes indexes. ISBN 0-87462-698-6 (v. 4: pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Philosophy. 2. Theology. I. Carey, Patrick W., 1940- II. Title. III. Marquette studies in theology ; # 46. B908 .B612 2000 191—dc21 99-050779

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher, except for quotation of brief passages in scholarly books, articles, and reviews. Member, THE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICAN UNIVERSITY PRESSES

MARQUETTE UNIVERSITY PRESS MILWAUKEE WISCONSIN USA 2005

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TABLE OF CONTENTS I.

Acknowledgments.........................................................iv .

II. Introduction...................................................................1 III. Works 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Church of the Future, January 1842...............................56 Reform and Conservatism, January 1842.......................77 Constitutional Government, January 1842....................98 Charles Elwood Reviewed, April 1842............................123 Modern French Literature, April 1842...........................167 The Mediatorial Life, June 1842..................................186 Leroux on Humanity, July 1842....................................217 Introductory Address, July 1842...................................277 Theodore Parker’s Discourse, October 1842.................280 Schmucker’s Psychology, October 1842.........................387 Brook Farm, November 1842........................................424 Synthetic Philosophy, December 1842, January and March 1843..............440

IV. Index of Biblical References..........................................509 V. Index of Names and Subjects......................................511

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acknowledgments I have the pleasant duty of acknowledging a few of those who have aided me in this volume, but I leave unmentioned the many authors and scholars whose works have shaped my own understanding of Brownson and American religious and political life. First, I thank Constance Nielsen, a graduate research assistant, for whose aid I am deeply grateful. She contributed to the project by identifying all the biblical texts and a good number of the classical, philosophical and theological citations, proofread the text, and gave sagacious advice on the introduction. I also received help from Nathanael Schmiedicke, another graduate assistant, who proofread the final draft and provided helpful suggestions for improvements. The chairs of my department, Philip Rossi, S.J. and John Laurance, S.J., graciously promoted the volume by assigning these graduate assistants to the project. For more than twenty years I have been collecting sources for these volumes and therefore owe thanks to a number of libraries and their staffs for multiple kindnesses and general helpfulness. I am particularly grateful to the staffs of the Archives of the University of Notre Dame, where the Brownson papers are located; Harvard University; the American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, Mass.), the Boston Public Library, and the New York Historical Society. As ever, I appreciate the good service I have always received from Joan Sommers and the Reference and Interlibrary Loan staffs of Memorial Library at Marquette University. Numerous and frequent requests for hard to locate sources over the past number of years have been met with competent and generous responses. Dr. Andrew Tallon, director of Marquette University Press, has continued to support this project. His associate Joan Skocir once again has provided competent technical assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication. The editorial principles and procedures followed in this volume are the same as those in previous volumes and are outlined in volume one of The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson,1 which is referred to in the footnotes in this and subsequent volumes as EW.

1 The Universalist Years, 1826-29 (Milwaukee, Wis.: Marquette University Press, 2000), 30-34.

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INTRODUCTION Volume six includes essays and reviews that reflect a gradual unfolding of Orestes A. Brownson’s understanding of life as communion. The year 1842 was an annus mirabilis of significant religious and intellectual changes in his life. He departed ideologically from Unitarianism, although he remained within the Unitarian communion. He separated himself more radically than in the past from Transcendentalism, particularly from Theodore Parker’s “absolute religion,” although he retained much of his former religious or theological idealism. He returned to preaching, a ministerial role he had abandoned in 1839, but with a new sense of the preacher’s mission and authority. He criticized Victor Cousin’s Eclecticism, although he continued his past allegiance to Cousin’s transcendental philosophical framework. Behind these intellectual changes was a fundamental religious transformation that can only be described as a radical religious conversion. That conversion was occasioned, but not caused, by his reading of Pierre Leroux, the ex-Saint-Simonian and religious humanist and socialist, whose philosophical method and doctrine of life by communion Brownson appropriated for his own religious purposes. Gradually throughout the year Brownson thoroughly transformed Leroux’s philosophy by applying it to an understanding of Christianity that departed significantly from his earlier Unitarian and Transcendentalist perspectives. Reading Leroux became for Brownson the occasion for what he designated as a “complete revolution, not in religious belief, but in theological science.”1 Most of his biographers have noted the change that overcame Brownson in 1842, and some have acknowledged the role that his reading of Leroux had upon his intellectual transformation. None of them, however, recognized the significance of his religious conversion experience, one that Brownson himself avowed in 1842 and recalled with gratitude many times in his later life.2 One cannot ad1 “Leroux on Humanity,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July 1842): 321; see also p. 276 in this volume. 2 Although later in life Brownson himself noted the influence of Leroux (see The Convert [1857], in Henry F. Brownson, ed., The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 20 vols. [Detroit: Thorndike Nourse, 1882-87], 5:123-50) and even mentioned the significance of his new religious awakening (ibid., 139-40), he failed to interpret this 1842 awakening as a real religious conversion because his conversion to Catholicism he considered the decisive religious event of his life. His biographers have followed him in this interpretation. Henry Brownson indicated only briefly

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The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson: Volume VI

equately understand how he read, interpreted, and appropriated Leroux without understanding his basic religious reorientation. Brownson’s religious conversion was prompted by a profound abhorrence with what he saw as the logical trajectory of his own theology. During the winter of 1841 and 1842, he attended a series of lectures Theodore Parker delivered on his concept of absolute religion, lectures that defended his “Transient and Permanent in Christianity.”3 Applying his theological idealism and historical criticism to Christianity, Parker so relativized historical Christianity as to make it a disincarnate spirituality. It manifested absolute religion but in such a relative way as to make the Bible and the Christ faulty or conditional representatives of absolute religion. For Parker human nature Leroux’s influence on his father but failed to understand its significance and completely missed the meaning of Brownson’s religious conversion. See Henry Brownson’s Orestes A. Brownson’s Early Life (Detroit: H. F. Brownson, 1898), 34244. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., saw clearly the significance of Brownson’s intellectual turn-about in 1842 (he was “traveling on a different road from that of the pilgrims of the Oversoul”), but he sees Leroux’s appeal only as corresponding to Brownson’s “new anti-democratic mood.” Schlesinger overlooks the intellectual significance of Leroux’s influence and Brownson’s personal religious experience. See Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Orestes A. Brownson: A Pilgrim’s Progress (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1939), 143-45. Doran Whalen [Rose Gertrude Whalen], Granite for God’s House: The Life of Orestes Augustus Brownson (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1941) also failed to account for the significance of Leroux and Brownson’s religious transformation in 1842. Theodore Maynard, Orestes Brownson: Yankee, Radical, Catholic (New York: Macmillan, 1943), 126-34, 256-57, 342, understood Brownson’s transformation of Leroux’s views, but neglected the philosophical significance of Leroux’s influence and the nature of Brownson’s 1842 religious experience. Thomas R. Ryan gave the most complete account among the biographers of Leroux’s influence on Brownson’s intellectual transformation, saw the originality of Brownson’s application of Leroux’s philosophy, and even mentioned the significance of Brownson’s new religious insight, but failed to interpret the new insights as a fundamental religious reorientation. See Thomas R. Ryan’s Orestes A. Brownson: A Definitive Biography (Huntington, Indiana: Our Sunday Visitor, 1976), 248-54. 3 Parker delivered his famous sermon on 19 May 1841 at the ordination of Charles C. Shackford, in the Hawes-Place Church in South Boston. For Brownson’s generally favorable review see “Transient and Permanent in Christianity,” Boston Quarterly Review 4 (October 1841): 436-74; also reprinted in EW 5, Chapter 17. Parker’s winter lectures were published in 1842 as A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion. As will be seen, Brownson reviewed these lectures in the entire October 1842 issue of his Review. For an excellent examination of Parker’s two publications and the issues surrounding them, see Dean Grodzins, American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 248-94. Would that Grodzins’ text had been available when I began to publish Brownson’s early writings. His research would have saved me from making some erroneous attributions of authorship.

Introduction

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itself constituted the sole ground of absolute religion and of Christianity. What Brownson saw in Parker’s lectures was the logical consequence or trajectory of the idealist theology he himself had shared with Parker. He interpreted Parker’s lectures as a form of religious naturalism that had no room for any supernatural intervention in history. And he was horrified by this realization, as he recounts in The Convert (1857). Parker’s Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion contained nothing except a learned and eloquent statement of the doctrine which I had long defended, and which I have called the religion of humanity. But, strange as it may seem, the moment I heard that doctrine from his lips, I felt an invincible repugnance to it, and saw, or thought I saw, at a glance, that it was unphilosophical and anti-religious.4

Later, toward the end of his life, Brownson recounted again his reactions to Parker’s Discourse, indicating that “we set about refuting him [in October 1842], and we saw at once we could not do it on Protestant grounds, and we planted ourselves on Catholic ground, as far as we then knew it, and our refutation was a total failure except so far as we opposed to the Discourse the principles of the Catholic Church.”5 As will become evident when we discuss Brownson’s review of Parker’s book, Brownson was indeed moving toward some significant Catholic theological principles in 1842 because of his interpretation of Pierre Leroux. At some point in late 1841 or early 1842, perhaps while he was reading two of Leroux’s most significant works, Réfutation de L’Éclectisme (1839) and De L’Humanité (1840),6 Brownson had a religious experience of the “freedom of God” that opened him to new insights into Christianity and the church. He referred to this conversion experience again and again throughout his life. One cannot understand how he appropriated and transformed Leroux’s philosophy without understanding what this experience meant to him. From the beginning of 1842 and well into the last years of his life, Brownson looked upon his reading of Leroux as a transforming, life-changing event. But his accounts of what happened to him, in the midst of reading Leroux, were independent of Leroux’s philosophy. What he records is a conversion experience that gradually led 4

The Convert, in Works, 5:151. “Christianity and Positivism” (October 1871) in Works 2:444. 6 Réfutation de L’Éclectisme (1839; Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1841). I am using the 1841 edition in this introduction. De L’Humanité de Son Principle, et de Son Avenir ou se Trouve Exposée La Vraie Définition de la Religion et ou l’on Explique le Sens, la Suite, et l’Enchaînement du Mosaisme et du Christianisme (Paris: Perrotin, 1840). 5

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him away from his former religious naturalism to an incarnational supernaturalism—that is, to an understanding that divine freedom made the Incarnation possible and the traditional theology of the Incarnation credible. In January of 1842, he gave his first hint of his new experience of Divine Providence and what he later called the “freedom of God.” A concept of Divine Providence had been behind his former religion of humanity, but now he saw Divine Providence itself in a new light. Undoubtedly all men stand in intimate relation with their Maker; undoubtedly all men are inspired, for all men love; undoubtedly many of the great essential elements of religious faith have been so far assimilated to the life of humanity, as to be now natural religion; and, therefore no longer needing, with the more advanced nations of the earth a positive supernatural revelation either to assert them, or to confirm their authority; but, after all, it is mainly through the agency of specially inspired, and extraordinarily endowed individuals that the race is itself improved; and through Bibles, prophets, messiahs, revelators that it has attained its present growth. God is nearer to us than transcendental theology teaches. He is near us, not merely in the fixed and uniform laws of nature, but with us in his providence, taking free and voluntary care of us, and tempering all events to our strength and condition. God is not a resistless fate, an iron necessity, inaccessible to human prayer, which no tears, no entreaties, no contrition can move; but a kind and merciful Father who hears when his children cry, and is ready, able, and willing to supply all their wants.7

Brownson’s emerging understanding of God as free, not an “iron necessity,” moved him away from what “transcendental theology teaches.” God was not just a transcendental ideal, a teaching he had recently espoused. In June of 1842, Brownson published his Mediatorial Life of Jesus, an open letter to William Ellery Channing. It was his first major attempt to explain his newly discovered doctrine of life by communion. But the first part of that book, “Whence comes the Mediator,” was not part of the doctrine of communion; it was the result of an independent religious insight and the very presupposition of his theological interpretation and application of Leroux’s doctrine. That first section of the book focused on Brownson’s understanding of the doctrine of Providence and his notion of the freedom of God. God was not to be resolved into the laws of nature; God was not a universal necessity. Such a view, which Brownson saw as prevalent in Boston Unitarianism, made nature “a mere fate, an inexorable destiny, a dark, 7 “Reform and Conservatism,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (January, 1842):7576; see also p. 90 in this volume.

Introduction

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inscrutable, resistless necessity.” God was free, Brownson proclaimed, and, therefore, everything was not fixed and irrevocable. Human beings were annihilated just in proportion as their freedom was curtailed. The same was true for God. In God “freedom and sovereignty are one and the same.”8 The assertion of divine freedom was the foundation of all belief in Providence, in a providential intervention in history, and the fundamental ground for all religious emotions and all belief that God could listen to prayers and entreaties, and that the course of human nature and history could indeed be subject to change through divine intervention. God’s absolute freedom was the foundation of all religion, the presupposition of the entire Bible, the ground of human freedom in history, and the basis of nature’s creativity and openness to change. The doctrine of divine freedom, moreover, made it possible to conceive of Jesus as a specially or providentially sent mediator. God’s freedom, too, although Brownson did not say so in the Mediatorial Life, was the ultimate foundation of his doctrine of communion and the theological applications he would draw from that philosophical doctrine. Brownson told Channing that though he was indebted to him for his emancipation from unbelief, his new experience of the supernatural had had a transforming effect upon his thought and would separate him from his former “spiritual father.” Brownson’s new experience of divine freedom and the doctrine of communion that was based upon it had touched my heart, and made me feel an interest in the gospel, in my fellow men, and in the upbuilding of God’s kingdom on the earth, deep as my interest has long been in these subjects, which I have never known before. What before was mere thought has now become love; what was abstraction has become life; what was merely speculation has become downright, living earnestness. God is to me my Father; Jesus my life; mankind my brethren.9 8

The Mediatorial Life of Jesus: A Letter to William Ellery Channing, D.D. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1842), 14; see also p. 194 in this volume. 9 The Mediatorial Life of Jesus, 44; see also p. 216 in this volume. By July, Brownson acknowledged that in his “middle age” he was no longer delighted by the same things that delighted him when he was twenty. He had become much more interested in things religious. In this, he contended, he was not alone because the world around him was also experiencing a revival of the religious spirit. He admitted, too, that the change in his own life was sudden and had come from unexpected sources: “but suddenly light streams in from an unexpected quarter, or through an unaccustomed medium, and lo, we stand in a world both new and strange. The hues of this world have changed, and we confess that our tastes have been revolutionized.” See “Zanoni,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July 1842): 358, see also p. 360.

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Brownson’s experience of divine freedom and his reading of Leroux was a liberation from his Transcendentalist past; it had a freeing effect that he remembered for the rest of his life. As a Catholic, for example, he recalled in 1853: We had wandered in darkness, stumbling from error to error, with downcast look and saddened hearts, craving freedom and finding only bondage, till one day broke in upon us a solitary ray, the first that had ever penetrated our darkened understanding, and our heart bounded with joy to behold that God is free. Then began the revolution in our whole order of thought; then rolled back the clouds that had gathered over us; then fell the chains that had bound us, and entered into our very soul; and we found ourselves at once rejoicing in the glorious freedom and light of the Church of God.10

Again, toward the end of his life in 1871, he reiterated this same basic experience: I shall never forget the singular emotion, I may say rapture, I felt one day, while wandering in the mazes of error, when suddenly burst upon my mind, for the first time, this great truth that God is free, and that what most needs asserting of all liberties is the liberty of God. It struck me as a flash of light in the midst of my darkness, opened to me a new world, and changed almost instantaneously not only the tone and temper of my mind, but the direction of my whole order of thought. Though years elapsed before I found myself knocking at the door of the church for admission, my conversion began from that moment. I had seized the principle which authorizes faith in the supernatural. God is free, I said, then I can love him, trust him, hope in him, and commune with him, and he can hear me, love me, and raise me to communion with himself, and blessed be his name.11

The religious realization that God was free was not necessarily nor logically connected with his reading of Leroux. In fact, Brownson’s reaction to Parker, his experience of divine freedom, and his interpretation and appropriation of Leroux happened almost simultaneously and were interrelated and to some extent interdependent events, but Brownson did not at the time reflect upon the connec10 “J. V. H. On Brownson’s Review,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 15 (October 1853):524. See also Works 14:343; The Convert in Works 5:139-40; and “Orthodoxy and Unitarianism,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 25 (July 1863): 288-89, where Brownson acknowledged: “I shall never forget the ecstasy of that moment, when I first realized to myself that God is free.” 11 “Religious Orders,” Ave Maria 7 (September 9, 1871): 586. See also Works 8:262.

Acknowledgments

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tions. They were more or less juxtaposed, rather than organically or logically linked together in his mind. Brownson’s writings give no indication that he realized he was developing two separated and logically unconnected lines of thought: one based upon the acceptance of a supernatural divine revelation, and the other based upon his discovery of Leroux’s doctrine of “life by communion.” His religious conversion in the midst of reading Leroux, however, had profoundly influenced the way he interpreted Leroux, what he appropriated from Leroux’s philosophy, and how he applied Leroux’s philosophy for his own religious and theological purposes. The acceptance of divine freedom and a supernatural revelation, in other words, was not the result of his doctrine of communion; it was the result of an independent religious experience that became the foundation for his transformation of Leroux’s doctrine of life by communion. On the other hand, Leroux’s doctrine gave him the language, philosophical concepts, and philosophical methodology that enabled him to make intelligible the possibility, the necessity, and indeed the reality of a supernatural revelation. Gradually throughout 1842 and 1843 he began to develop an incarnational theology that was heavily dependent upon Leroux. Before examining Brownson’s transformation of Leroux it is necessary to understand Leroux’s religious philosophy as it was articulated in the two books Brownson was reading in 1841 and 1842. Leroux was an ex-Saint-Simonian who developed in the late 1830s and early 1840s a humanitarian socialism, or rather, to distinguish it from the materialistic or scientific socialism of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, a religious socialism. Although Leroux had not exactly coined the term “socialism,” he brought it into prominence in 1833, distinguishing it from individualism. For him the nous (the we), not the moi (the me), was the starting point of all philosophy (as will be explained below)—that is, human beings existed not as isolated individuals, but always as social beings, inherently related to nature, the human race, and to God. They existed as related beings, and philosophy originated in an examination of this interrelatedness. For a number of reasons Brownson was attracted to Leroux in the early 1840s. Both were familiar with and drawn to Victor Cousin’s philosophy and although Leroux was excessively critical of Cousin’s Eclecticism, he, like Brownson, retained much of Cousin’s trinitarian (the Me-subject, the non-Me-object, and the relation between the two) framework for doing philosophy. Leroux like Brownson valued the role of religion in society and in philosophy. Both, moreover, were anti-capitalist, and in 1841, only a year removed from Brownson’s

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essay on “the Laboring Classes,” Leroux’s anti-capitalism appealed to Brownson.12 Both men, furthermore, had accepted the idea of progress and both rejected eighteenth and early nineteenth-century notions of individualism that were frequently associated with the idea of progress. Both, finally, saw religion as an antidote to philosophical dualism, capitalism, and individualism, and as a necessary source for the stability and progress of the human race. Leroux, however, had his own philosophical agenda in 1839 and 1840, which Brownson did not fully accept.13 Leroux’s Réfutation was a harsh and in some respects exaggerated critique of Cousin’s Eclecticism, but it revealed some major weaknesses of Cousin’s philosophy, which Brownson had previously appropriated.14 According to Leroux, Cousin’s philosophy, like that of Étienne Condillac and the fourth and fifth century Alexandrians, was immoderately abstract, focusing as it did upon knowledge or a theory of thought. Cousin had reduced philosophy to a science, separating it from a more comprehensive understanding of life itself. In addition, he had disproportionately utilized the analytical method in his philosophy, leaving little room for synthesis. From the time of Descartes, Leroux argued, philosophy had tended to confine itself to an exclusive study of the human soul, isolating psychology from the 12

See EW, 5:19-43, for a description of the significance of Brownson’s essay, and Chapter 8 for the essay itself. 13 For a good analysis of Leroux’s philosophy, see Armelle Le Bras-Chopard, De L’Égalité dans la Différence: Le Socialisme de Pierre Leroux (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politques, 1986), and for a particular analysis of Réfutation de L’Éclectisme and De L’Humanité see Paul Janet, “La Philosophie de Pierre Leroux,” Revue des Deux Mondes 152 (April 15, 1899): 767-88 and 153 (May 15, 1899): 379-406. See also Paul Stapfer, Questions esthétique et religieuses (Paris: Alcan, 1906), 91-143; David O. Evans, Le socialisme romantique. Pierre Leroux et ses contemporains (Paris: Rivière, 1948), idem, Social Romanticism in France, 1830-1848 (New York: Octagon Books, 1969); Jack Bakunin, Pierre Leroux and the Birth of Democratic Socialism, 1797-1848 (New York: Revisionist Press,1976); idem., “Pierre Leroux: A Democratic Religion for a New World,” Church History 44 (March 1975): 57-72; Jérôme Peignot, Pierre Leroux: Inventeur du Socialisme (Paris: Klincksieck, 1988); Fernando Fiorentino, Filosofia religiosa di Leroux ed eclettismo di Cousin (Lecce: Milella, 1992); Georges Navet, Pierre Leroux, politique, socialisme et philosophie (Paris: Societé P.–J. Proudhon, 1994); Warwick Gould, “Pierre Leroux, George Sand, and Their Circle,” in Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 100-32. For a biography, see Felix Thomas, Pierre Leroux. Sa vie, son oeuvre, sa doctrine. Contribution à l’histoire des idées au XIX e siècle (Paris: Alcan, 1904). 14 On Brownson’s acceptance of Cousin’s philosophy, see EW, 2:17-18, 22, 3033; 3:9-10; 3: Chapter 6; and 4: Chapter 8.

Introduction

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rest of human experience.15 Cousin continued that tradition and, like the Scottish Common Sense Philosophers, applied the Baconian inductive method to an examination of the human soul. Such a fundamental turn to the subject produced what Leroux called a philosophical psychologism, that is, an excessive preoccupation with the human soul that in fact avoided the totality of human life in which the individual person matured and progressed. 16 Cousin’s psychologism placed all activity in the subject, leaving no room for the activity of the object in knowledge or in human life itself.17 Leroux’s Réfutation also rejected Cousin’s separation of philosophy and religion. Cousin made philosophy an affair of the head and religion an affair of the heart, with no apparent connection between the two. For Cousin, both religion and philosophy were useful to the human race, but religion, which preceded philosophy historically and systematically, was a matter of inspiration manifested in myth and symbol for the uneducated masses, while philosophy was a science for the elite intellectuals whose goal was to understand what religion presented only in myth and symbol. Thus, again, philosophy was a matter of thought, separated from the life of inspiration, religion, and the human race. Philosophy was more a matter of psychology or “man thinking” than it was a matter of life, or man living in the multiple relations of existence itself. One could not legitimately separate philosophy and religion, Leroux argued, because philosophy, like religion, encompassed the whole person and the whole life of humanity itself. Leroux believed that a fundamental unity existed between philosophy and religion. The two were not separate spheres of human understanding. They coexisted. In their essence, he asserted, they are identical.18 Modern philosophy, therefore, ought to become religion—not the religion of the past forms but the religion of humanity. Religion was the manifestation of the ideal word of God in the life of humanity, and philosophy was the science of that life.19 If philosophy were truly the science of life and not merely of thought (as Cousin understood it), it would be inherently religious because the life of humanity was religion; a humanity without religion was death, not life. At the foundation of Leroux’s philosophy was his view of the trinitarian nature of the human person. For him the human being 15

Réfutation, 119. Ibid., 106-07. 17 Ibid., 212. 18 Ibid., xiii. 19 Ibid., 28-29. 16

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was a trinity of sensation, sentiment, and connaissance, all three equal to one another and indivisibly united, but yet distinct and having their own specificity. Sensation represented the material element of human nature, the body. Connaissance represented the spiritual element, the soul or spirit. Sentiment was the bridge or bond between sensation and connaissance, between the pure idea or the me who thinks (connaissance) and the body or non-me (sensation). In this trinitarian formula, as Armelle Le Bras-Chopard has noted, sentiment had a privileged role.20 Sentiment was both sensation and connaissance at the same time; sentiment was the link between the two and participated in both, but it was not identical to either. Both sensation and connaissance were forms or manifestations that were finite, while sentiment participated in infinity and provided the life principle for both sensation and connaissance. Sentiment, moreover, was something invisible that was manifested in something visible—that is, it was the life of the mind and the body. The mind and the body did not exist except as they were united to the sentiment, and likewise sentiment did not exist without the other two. Sentiment was the synthesis between the two contraries, but unlike the Hegelian notion of synthesis, which united contraries by reason, Leroux’s synthesis united them by love. For Leroux, therefore, the sentiment or the heart was the privileged organ of synthesis, transcending and simultaneously uniting the material and spiritual elements of human nature. Leroux’s trinitarian formula, at the center of his entire philosophy, intended to overcome various forms of dualism (philosophical, anthropological, and religious): that is, an exclusive emphasis on sensation or reason, as was evident in French philosophies in the eighteenth century; a traditional body-soul dualism in western thought; a material-spiritual dualism evident in both traditional Christianity and in the eighteenthcentury critics of religion. Leroux’s psychological trinity applied only to individual human persons, but it did not in itself define “living persons” nor was the individual’s psychology the sole object or starting point of philosophy. Philosophy, in other words, could not be reduced to psychology or to an analysis of the individual soul. The human person never existed as an isolated automaton in Leroux’s philosophy; in fact, the human person was inherently and essentially a connected human being, having life or existence only in relation to nature (corresponding to sensation), God (corresponding to sentiment), and other human beings (corresponding to connaissance). Human persons, as in20

De L’Égalité, 29. See also Réfutation, 6.

Introduction

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herently related beings, had life only in their interaction with objects outside of themselves—with nature, with God, and with other humans. Leroux’s own philosophy was a philosophy of life, not exclusively a science of thought. His philosophy was neither an exclusive psychology nor an exclusive ontology; it was a synthesis of the two. The philosopher did not start with either the psychological subject or the ontological object, but with life, or the interaction between the two. In this way Leroux hoped to overcome the philosophical dualism of contemporary philosophy. Life, for him, was ultimately the continual action of God on creatures; “God is life”21 and human beings participated in that life only as they interacted with God through humanity and nature. Divine life was manifested or incarnated in humanity (la manifestation corporelle) and in all individual creations, but it also transcended all its concrete manifestations. Leroux’s God was not, like the eighteenth century clock-maker God, uninvolved in creation and nature and humanity; God was continually involved in the life of creation, as the source of its unity and development. In fact, the incarnation of divine life in all human beings was the basis not only of the unity of the human race but also of its growth in the world of time and space. The philosopher, then, was not an objective observer of phenomenon (either of the soul or of the world outside the soul) but an involved participant in that life. Philosophy, in his view, dealt with the whole of life, not just the individual, with the life of humanity in its individuality, collectivity, and perfectibility.22 Philosophy proper began with what Leroux called his “ontological axiom,” the communion of the human race, or the “mutual solidarity of men,” in a common life of progress.23 This idea of communion and solidarity Leroux found at the base of the Jewish and Christian “myths.” This communal life of humanity itself was the object of philosophy, and the human person could not be properly understood except in all its relations and movements. The individual human person lived always and only in relation to other human beings, to nature, and to God. Human nature was social in the sense that “man lives in society and he only lives in society.”24 His life was defined by his attachment to the world and to his kind (semblances). He participated in the life of humanity and that life resided in him. An individual’s life, thus, was at once subjective and objective in the 21

Réfutation, 233. Ibid., viii. 23 De L’Humanité, xx-xxi. 24 Ibid., 115. 22

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sense that it existed simultaneously within the individual subject and in a direct object outside of the subject. One life, in other words, ran through the individual, humanity, nature, and God, giving rise to the social, the moral, and the religious dimensions of human existence. “Life” for Leroux was not a static concept like “nature” or “being.” Life was in fact the manifestation of being, and only God had life in and of himself. Human beings required an object outside of themselves to manifest their being, that is, to live. For Leroux life was constant and continuous movement and progress, and like some eighteenth century French philosophers (e.g., Antoine de Condorcet) he accepted the idea of human perfectibility and progress, but unlike them and more like Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, he applied the idea of perfectibility not only to the individual but to society and the human race itself. And, for him, the “fixed point” of all perfectibility was the communion or solidarity of the human race.25 Human beings were perfectible only in communion because their life depended upon their interaction with an object outside of themselves. Leroux’s political philosophy paralleled his trinitarian psychology and philosophy of life. He supported the liberal democratic values of the eighteenth century and saw the French Revolution as a positive new development of freedom and progress that needed to be preserved in society. The watchwords of the revolution—liberté, equalité, fraternité—corresponded to sensation, connaissance, and sentiment. Within this political trinity, Leroux saw fraternity as the link or bond between liberty and equality, but, because of the abuses of political liberty and the individualism that followed in its wake, as Le-Bras Chopard has pointed out,26 Leroux emphasized equality over the other two elements within the political trinity—an emphasis consistent with his doctrine of communion and solidarity. Unlike some radicals of the French Revolution, however, and like Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, and the Saint-Simonians, Leroux saw religion as a necessary basis for the stability, order, and progress of society. Leroux’s philosophy of history reflected his philosophy of life by communion and his synthetic philosophical method. In his philosophy of history he separated himself from the Saint-Simonians who interpreted history as a dialectic of critical epochs that were followed by organic ones. The Saint-Simonians, for example, saw the eighteenth century as a critical age that was necessary to destroy those elements of individual and social life that were detrimental to progress, 25

Ibid., xxi. De L’Égalité. 426, 428.

26

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but the critical, destructive epochs needed to be followed by organic eras that built new structures for the development of the human race. For Leroux, however, even the critical periods made positive contributions to human perfectibility; only the positive, not the negative, in history made progress possible. Leroux also distinguished his philosophy of history from that of Auguste Comte and Cousin and the Eclectics. Comte, associated in his early life with the Saint-Simonians, saw successive stages of human development, from the theological to the philosophical to the positivist. For Cousin and the Eclectics, an age of empiricism was followed by an age of idealism, skepticism, and mysticism, and this pattern repeated itself throughout history. For Leroux these depictions of successive stages of the development of the human mind were mental constructions without a foundation in reality. These separate stages violated his sense of the synthetic nature of the human mind. For him, every age contained, for example, elements of the theological, philosophical and positivist interacting with one another simultaneously. He viewed history as an ever developing communion of the human race, raised to higher levels of synthesis by the interaction of contrary and competing elements within humanity and the human race. His view of history was analogous to Hegel’s. Both had a dialectical and synthetic understanding of progress. But Leroux’s understanding of the dialectical synthesis differed considerably from Hegel’s. Hegel’s dialectical approach made synthesis the result of conflict, negation and crisis. For Leroux only the positive, even the positive in the negative, could produce progress. Unlike Hegel, Leroux refused to admit a creative role for negation.27 A positive result demanded a positive cause because the effect participated in the cause. Development in history, therefore, was by way of affirmation and assimilation of the good and the better, and not by way of negation. Hegel, moreover, placed the synthesis of contraries in reason or in the idea; for Leroux synthesis was placed in sentiment or love, not logic. At the center of Leroux’s philosophy of history, and in fact of his entire philosophical system, was his philosophy of religion. His major published work, De L’Humanité, had as its subtitle “the true definition of religion.” Leroux defined his approach to religion vis-a-vis that of the eighteenth century French critics of religion, the Saint-Simonians, and the early nineteenth century French Catholic traditionalists and others who were trying to restore the Catholicism of the ancien regime. 27

Ibid., 429.

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The eighteenth-century French philosophes, in Leroux’s opinion, legitimately pointed out the faults of religion and practical Christianity, but their project was completely negative. They sought an emancipation from religion as a foundation for their doctrine of progress and as a result they tended to separate the spiritual and material elements of human existence. In this they failed to see the absolutely essential role of religion in society as a bond of communion and as an agent for individual and social progress. On the other hand, the early nineteenth century French Catholic restorationists (e.g., René Chateaubriand, Louis de Bonald, and the early Félicité de Lamennais) rejected the Enlightenment criticisms of religion and tried to revive Catholicism in a post-revolutionary world. They were hopelessly mired in the past. Their great sin and that of Christianity in general was to escape into an other worldliness that made religion irrelevant to the contemporary needs of humanity. The times demanded a new constructive approach to religion and its valuable role in the political realm and in the rising new economic order. Leroux’s own view of religion was significantly influence by his alliance and sympathy with the views of the Saint-Simonians,28 many of whose values he appropriated and never rejected. Like them, he cherished the essential and positive role of religion in society and believed that the eighteenth-century philosophes had wrongly condemned religion and Christianity in particular as impediments to individual and social progress. It was the task of the nineteenth century, Leroux believed, to demonstrate the necessity of religion for progress and, in particular, to show the positive role Judaism and Christianity had played in the development of the human race and in the purification of the religious element inherent in human nature. Leroux saw his own religion of humanity as a preservation and continuation of all that was valuable in Judaism and Christianity, the two most perfect forms of religion in the past. Although Christianity had some universal and transcendent religious values that needed to be preserved and developed in the modern world, historical Christianity no longer served a good purpose in society according to Leroux and the Saint-Simonians. Leroux, however, was not entirely comfortable with the SaintSimonian view of religion. He participated in the Saint-Simonian movement in the late 1820s, but left it in 1831 when it developed into a highly organized religious sect with a hierarchical structure 28 On Brownson’s relation to the Saint-Simonians, see EW, 2:10-11, 18, and Chapter 32; 3:3, 18, 23, 28, 35; and 4:21.

Introduction

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that he found objectionable. Unlike the Saint-Simonians, Leroux envisioned a religion of humanity, not a newly organized religious sect. What was most needed in the mid-nineteenth century was a recognition of the divine life that was incarnated in the life of humanity. Such an acknowledgment had the power to renew society, politics, and economics, and thereby advance the human race. This religion of humanity had its roots in and was in continuity with Judaism and Christianity, both of which had developed doctrines of communion and regeneration (palingenesis) that had universal validity. Leroux wanted to preserve and develop those doctrines in his religion of humanity. The Jewish “myth” contained the idea that all humans were created one in Adam; the Christian “myth” advanced the idea that the human race was recreated one in Christ. The truth behind those myths he believed he could demonstrate with philosophical reasons.29 He saw his own religion of humanity as an evolution, not a destruction, of this ancient faith. Judaism and Christianity, however, had institutionalized those doctrines in forms that no longer met the needs of humanity. In Christianity, for example, the doctrine of regeneration had become so identified with Jesus’ mediatorship and with a particular people that it lost its universal applicability to the entire human race. Christianity in its most comprehensive sense, Leroux argued, was the doctrine of communion.30 The doctrine was clearly based upon the Christian understanding of the Incarnation and was evident in Christian teaching on the Eucharist.31 On the title page of his De L’Humanité Leroux paraphrased a passage from Romans 12:4-5 (“Although we are many members, we are nevertheless only one body . . . and we are all reciprocally members one of another.”) that became for him a locus classicus for his doctrine of life by communion. Communion for Leroux was not only the “fixed point” of progress it was the means of progress. Individuals progressed only by communion with other human beings, but they could not advance unless those other human beings with whom they communed had a life higher than their own. That higher life, as Judaism and Christianity had proclaimed, was not obtained without the intervention of God.32 The betterment of individuals and indeed of the human race through individuals was gradual. It was the result, as Lessing had taught in the eighteenth century, of the progressive divine education of the 29

De L’Humanité, xxi. Réfutation, 302. 31 Ibid., 346, 347. 30

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human race.33 God constantly and progressively educated the human race by endowing certain individuals with gifts of divine life that were higher than that of the human race at a particular epoch, and by communing with those inspired individuals the entire race was eventually advanced in the divine life. Human progress, for individuals and for humanity in general, was not the result, therefore, of negation by way of antithesis as Hegel taught; it was always the positive and successive assimilation and accretion of the higher divine life through communion. Christianity taught as much, but the problem with a vulgar Christianity was that it had made the historical revealer or specially inspired agents of progress into gods. “Idolatry has marched alongside of religion, as the shadow accompanies the light.”34 Progress, in other words, could not be explained without the intervention of a progressive divine revelation through the instrumentality of inspired individuals in the course of history. Communion with those gifted individuals made advancement possible for individuals and for the human race. Leroux’s religious socialism or religion of humanity with its doctrine of communion and the solidarity of the human race appealed not only to Brownson but also to a number of other Americans who struggled against individualism in religious, political, and economic life. According to Emerson, “the young people, like Brownson, [William Henry] Channing, [William B.] Greene, E[lizabeth]. P[almer]. Peabody, & possibly [George] Bancroft think that the vice of the age is to exaggerate individualism, & they adopt the word l’humanité from Le Roux, and go for ‘the race.’ Hence the Phalanx, owenism, Simonism, the Communities. The same spirit in theology has produced the Puseyism which endeavours to rear ‘the Church’ as a balance and overpoise to the Conscience.”35 Emerson, of course, did not share such a perspective but he testified to the influence that Leroux, among others, was having on those young and middle aged Transcendentalists who emphasized the social nature of all reality. Among Unitarians and Transcendentalists, William Henry Channing (1810-84) promoted Leroux’s philosophy and prepared translations of excerpts from Leroux’s De L’Humanité for his short-lived journal, 32

De L’Humanité, 271. Ibid., 486-90. 34 Ibid., 1004. 35 Journal N, 1842, in The Journals and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 8, 1841-1843, ed. William H. Gilman and J. E. Parsons (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1970), 249. 33

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The Present (1843-44).36 Leroux’s philosophy reinforced Channing’s notions of the unity of the human race and provided further motivation for his religious-social activism. Theodore Parker, too, had read Leroux, calling him “a brilliant but fanciful writer.”37 John Sullivan Dwight (1813-93) was another Unitarian to be taken for a time with Leroux.38 The New York journalist and editor Parke Godwin (18161904) attributed all he understood about solidarity to the works of Leroux.39 William Batchelder Greene (1819-78) published The Doctrine of Life in 1843, explicating Leroux’s philosophy. At the time he was a student in the Newton Theological Institution, a Baptist Seminary. In 1844 he entered Harvard Divinity School and became a Unitarian.40 Leroux also had an influence on George Ripley and the Brook Farmers, as Carl J. Guarneri had demonstrated.41 The fore36 See, for example, “A Confession of Faith,” The Present 1 (September 1843): 6-10, especially p. 10; “The Nature and Destiny of Man, Extracted from Pierre Leroux’s L’Humanité,” Ibid. 1 (October 1843): 65-68; “The Education of the Human Race, From Pierre Leroux’s L’Humanité,” Ibid. 1 (November 1843): 105-10; “Charity as the Remedy of Evil, Extracted from Pierre Leroux’s L’Humanité,” Ibid. 1 (December 1843): 203-05; “Universal Regeneration, From Pierre Leroux’s L’Humanité,”Ibid. 1 (January 15, 1844): 237-42. For another Unitarian review of Leroux’s L’Humanité, see J. H. A., “Tendencies of Modern Philosophy,” Christian Examiner 36 (September 1844): 145-70. 37 A Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1842), 155; see also pp. 103, 116. 38 See J. S. Dwight, “The Idea of a Divine Social Order,” Harbinger 6 (April 1848): 170. 39 See the Pathfinder (20 May 1843):194. 40 The Doctrine of Life, With Some of Its Theological Applications (Boston: B. H. Greene, 1843). See also the reviews of the book by a “Baptist” in “St. Augustine and the Doctrine of Life,” The Present 1 (November 15, 1843): 88-93; 175-80; 242-48, and by the Unitarian James Freeman Clarke in the Christian World 1 (13 May 1843): 3; (10 June 1843): 2; and (16 December 1843): 3. On 24 August 1842 Greene wrote to Brownson telling him that the Doctrine of Life “takes well.” See the letter in Brownson Papers in the Archives of the University of Notre Dame and on roll # 1 of the microfilm edition of the Brownson Papers. Greene and Brownson had apparently been discussing Leroux’s works, as the letter seems to indicate. On Greene, see Philip F. Gura’s “Beyond Transcendentalism: The Radical Individualism of William B. Greene” in Transient and Permanent: The Transcendentalist Movement and Its Contexts, ed. Charles Capper and Conrad Edick Wright (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1999), 471-96. Later in his life, Greene published anonymously Remarks on the Science of History; followed by an A Priori Autobiography (Boston: William Crosby and H. P. Nichols, 1849), a book dedicated to Leroux and one which Brownson reviewed in “An A Priori Autobiography,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 12 (January 1850):1-38. Brownson’s review of 1850 represented a return to his interests in Leroux after a hiatus of five years caused by his conversion to Catholicism in 1844. 41 The Utopian Alternative: Fourierism in Nineteenth-Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 55-56.

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most Congregationalist theologian, Horace Bushnell (1802-76), moreover, had evidently read Leroux’s L’Humanité and was taken with his concept of human solidarity.42 Leroux, however, had a more intensive impact upon Brownson than upon almost any other American at the time. For Brownson, Leroux’s writings were a catalyst for rethinking his theology as well as his philosophy. Revisions in those areas of his thought had a decided impact on his political and social thought. From early 1842 until October of 1844 he gradually worked out the theological implications of his instantaneous insight into divine freedom, described at the beginning of this introduction, and Leroux’s doctrine of life. In July of 1842, when reviewing his own Mediatorial Life of Jesus, Brownson indicated that anyone interested in knowing his mind had to interpret his several writings for 1842 “in the light of one another.”43 That may indeed be true, but there is a progression in the essays he wrote in 1842 that reveal a gradual transformation of his theology, culminating in his October review of Parker’s Discourse, “the most complete of our theological publications.”44 The first signs of Leroux’s influence were in “The Church of the Future” and “Reform and Conservatism” (January 1842). The “Church of the Future” was ostensibly a review of his own previous

42 See, for example, Bushnell’s “Of the Condition of Solidarity,” in Moral Uses of Dark Things (New York: C. Scribner, 1867), 142-64, especially p. 143. 43 Brownson listed the following as keys to his changing thought: “The Church of the Future ” and “Reform and Conservatism” for January 1842, “Charles Elwood Reviewed” for April 1842, The Mediatorial Life of Jesus for June of 1842, and “Leroux on Humanity” for July 1842. See “The Mediatorial Life of Jesus,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July 1842): 384. 44 “Parker’s Discourse,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (October 1842): 512; see also p. 385 in this volume. When Henry Brownson published the twenty volumes of his father’s collected Works, a publication intended almost exclusively for a Catholic audience, he noted in the introduction to volume 4, entitled “Heterodox Writings,” that he had hesitated to publish any of his father’s pre-Catholic writings because they were so full of religious errors. Henry overcame his hesitation, however, because the first three previous volumes had presented the Catholic side of things and therefore Catholic readers would not be unduly influenced by reading his father’s heresies. Reading those heterodox essays in volume four, moreover, could help the Catholic reader to understand Brownson’s development and his path to Rome. See, Works 4:iii. Although Henry Brownson published a number of essays from 1842 in volume 4, he failed to include his father’s review of Theodore Parker’s Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, the fullest and most systematic presentation of his father’s theology up to the end of 1842. It is not clear why he failed to do so; perhaps the theology in that review was too heterodox for his Catholic audience.

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New Views (1836),45 a text in which Brownson had called for a new church of the future that would reconcile the spiritual and material elements of human existence. The reconciliation he called for was based upon his understanding of the doctrine of Jesus’ Atonement. The “Church of the Future” continued to envision a new church, based no longer upon the Atonement but upon the Incarnation, following Leroux’s understanding of the Incarnation as the ground for communion. The shift was significant because it demonstrated Brownson’s new appreciation for a sacramental idealism—a realization that the ideal and the universal appeared to humanity only in and through the concrete and the particular. “God is no abstraction, but an infinite concrete.”46 God manifests his being “in the flesh.” The Incarnation, in other words, was the concrete realization of the word of God. Following Leroux, moreover, Brownson maintained that the Incarnation of the word of God in Jesus revealed a universal, not a particular, truth. When the church “asserted the incarnation of the ideal in Jesus, she asserted the truth; when she asserted that it was and could be incarnated in him only, she erred.”47 That God became incarnate in humanity was a universal truth that Christians had confined to Jesus; what Jesus revealed was the fact that every human person was “an incarnation, a visible manifestation of the Divinity.” The new church of the future needed to be based on this “generalization of the particular truth.”48 The doctrine of the Incarnation, when generalized, made all human beings sons and daughters of God and therefore equal to one another. Leroux’s doctrine of equality was complemented by his understanding of the indefinite perfectibility of the human race. For Brownson this doctrine gave the new church an ideal and a mission: to work for the realization of “this perfectibility for all men, and in all aspects of their being.”49 Like Leroux, moreover, Brownson did not place the doctrine of progress in human nature or in the indi45 For an introduction to New View, see EW 3: 17-19, 23, 31; for the text itself, see Chapter 7. 46 “Church of the Future,” Works 4:62; see also p. 60 in this volume. 47 Ibid, 4:63; see also p. 62 in this volume. 48 Ibid, 4:64; see also p. 63 in this volume. In July of 1842 Brownson modified this January statement on the universality of the Incarnation by emphasizing the uniqueness of Jesus’ role as mediator. “We say now, that the new church must be built on the fact, that ALL MEN ARE THE SONS OF GOD, but mediately, through Christ, who has entered into the world, and become a newer and higher life of humanity, by which we are adopted as sons, and permitted to cry, Abba, Father.” See “Mediatorial Life of Jesus,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July 1842): 384. 49 “Church of the Future,” Works 4:77; see also p. 74 in this volume.

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vidual, as many philosophes in the eighteenth century did. For Brownson the perfectibility and progress of the human race, and individuals within the race, took place in the context of Providence, and through the agency of what he called “providential men.” Like Lessing, Leroux and Brownson saw successive divine revelations as the source of human progress. For Brownson, God by his providence raises up, at distant intervals, providential men, a Moses, a David, an Isaiah, a Jesus, a Paul, who, admitted by their love into a closer communion with himself, speak to men in those living tones which make their hearts beat, . . . and waken them to a higher life, inspire them to new and better sustained efforts to realize the ideal and make earth reflect the beauty of heaven.50

Brownson appropriated some of Leroux’s philosophy in this essay, but unlike Leroux he continued to hold on to his belief in Christianity and a new church, as he did previously in New Views. He was beginning to develop a new philosophy of Christianity in this essay, but it was not as radical a departure from his Transcendentalist views as it would become in the following months. “Reform and Conservatism” was a much clearer declaration of independence from “transcendental theology.”51 In this essay, a review of James Freeman Clarke’s Well Instructed Scribe (1841), Brownson rejected Clarke’s explanation of progress as an eclectic combination of the old and the new, an explanation Brownson had himself given many times in the past. Instead Brownson applied Leroux’s doctrine of life to the idea of progress, insisting that all progress, all growth of the human race was by assimilation and accretion. The human race and human nature itself was transformed for the better and enlarged by its progressive assimilation of successive revelations of the ideal from God over the course of history. The human race and human nature did not advance by its own inherent power, as the Transcendentalists thought. Human nature needed a power independent of and higher than itself to help it grow. “God is nearer to us,” Brownson contended, “than transcendental theology teaches. He is near us, not merely in the fixed and uniform laws of nature, but with us in his providence, taking free and voluntary care of us, and tempering all events to our strength and condition.” The human race was improved by means of a Providence that operated in history 50

Ibid., 4:73; see also p. 71 in this volume. “Reform and Conservativism,” Works 4:80, 92, 95; see also p. 90 in this volume. 51

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through Bibles, messiahs, and the “agency of specially inspired and extraordinarily endowed individuals.”52 Through these providential agencies, moreover, human nature itself was perfected so much so that one could claim that human nature in the present had more abilities and capacities than it had in the past. What some called “natural religion,” furthermore, was “always that amount of revealed religion, which the race has assimilated, and for which no positive divine authority is any longer needed.”53 One could not explain Christianity or the past history of the human race, Brownson insisted, against his own previous arguments since at least the early 1830s, on the basis of some theory of natural development or even on that of a supernatural inspiration that was common to all human beings. Providence and the Incarnation as a manifestation of divine Providence was playing an increasingly significant role in Brownson explanation of progress; and the turn to Providence and the Incarnation was a significant departure from his own earlier identification of Providence with nature. Brownson ended this piece with an emphatic emancipation statement: “We take our stand with those who do not accept the transcendental theology.”54 Transcendentalist theology focused almost exclusively upon the interior powers, not on the objects which necessarily activated them and in the process developed them. By focusing upon inherent natural powers, moreover, the Transcendentalists had become “antinomian.”55 For them religion was almost entirely an inward and spiritual affair that placed little value on good works as did the Unitarian theology and some forms of Orthodox theology. Brownson criticized the idealism of Transcendentalism, but he himself had not entirely separated himself from a modified philosophical idealism that was clearly evident in his emerging theory of progress. Brownson’s career took a decisive turn in April 1842. That month he returned to preaching, which he had abandoned in 1839 because of other pressing involvements and because his Boston religious congregation, the Society of Christian Union and Progress, had not been very successful. When he resumed his preaching ministry, he gathered a congregation at Ritchie Hall in Boston, but he took no salary for his preaching, accepting only voluntary offerings, because, as he

52

Ibid., 4:92; see also p. 90 in this volume. Ibid., 4:83; see also p. 81 in this volume. 54 Ibid., 4:99; see also p. 96 in this volume. 55 Ibid., 4:97; see also p. 94 in this volume. 53

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admitted, he did not want to be a hireling minister.56 By April he had developed a new confidence in preaching, and preached with authority, as one being sent to convey a message that was not his, but the authoritative word of God. He still considered himself a Unitarian, but a Unitarian reformer whose new theology was not only a departure from his recent Transcendentalism but also from the Unitarianism of William Ellery Channing and other advocates of the divinity within humanity. The divinity within humanity that Brownson now preached was not inherent within human nature but a result of successive divine revelations to the human race through providential human beings. In April, too, he reviewed his own novel Charles Elwood (1840),57 defending it against critical reviews it had received but also censuring it because it interpreted religion in the light of Benjamin Constant’s and Cousin’s philosophy. Following Cousin and especially Constant, Brownson’s novel had asserted that religion had its origin in the nature of man; human beings were by their very nature religious, possessing as they did a fundamental religious sentiment that transcended all the historically-conditioned forms into which it was poured. Brownson now rejected this interpretation of the origin and development of religion because, following Leroux, he now saw religion in terms of the doctrine of life, where all advancement and progress was never the result of indigenous and spontaneous effort, but of some foreign influence. During a sermon in April or early May, while Brownson was preaching on the social application of Leroux’s life by communion and linking it to the doctrine of the Eucharist (giving that doctrine a new significance), he “suddenly” perceived “the theological application of the principle in question, and the flood of light it throws on long-controverted dogmas.”58 The doctrine of life, applied theologically, he argued, could provide an intelligible interpretation of basic Christian doctrines. The Mediatorial Life applied Leroux’s doctrine to Jesus as the unique and providentially sent mediator of divine life and grace, and declared Brownson’s independence from Channing, his former “spiritual father,” and from Unitarian and Transcendentalist interpreta56 For his inaugural return sermon, see “Introductory Address,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July 1842): 366-71. For a description of Brownson’s new “literally free” congregation at Ritchie Hall, see “Rev. O. A. Brownson’s Congregation at Ritchie Hall,” The Christian World 1 (January 14, 1843): 2. 57 On Charles Elwood, see EW 5:5-8, and Chapter 1. 58 The Mediatorial Life, Works 4:144; see also p. 190 in this volume.

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tions of Jesus. Brownson admitted, “I can only say, that this law of life appears to me to be a key to most of the mysteries connected with our faith. It throws a flood of light on many, very many points, which have hitherto been dark and perplexing. It gives to the whole Gospel an air of reality; nay, makes it a living reality.” Leroux’s law got rid of “all types and shadows, symbols and myths, representative, symbolical, or mythical interpretations.”59 Brownson presented his understanding of Christ as mediator within the context of his doctrine of Providence, and then proceeded to apply the doctrine of life to his new appreciation of Christian anthropology and soteriology, demonstrating why a mediator was needed, what work he accomplished, and the method by which he accomplished it. He separated himself clearly from Channing’s view of the divinity of humanity, and argued that the entire Bible presumed that the condition of the human race without Christ was sinful and that the work of a mediator was to liberate the race from this condition. Channing’s view (and that of the American Transcendentalists who followed him) that humanity and divinity were united or that the divinity was an original complement of humanity, Brownson now argued, could not be squared with his own experience of sinfulness, the testimony of the human race on the wickedness of the human condition, and the evidence of the Bible. It was not just that human beings were individually and collectively sinners but that human beings “by nature are prone to do evil.”60 Sin was a condition of the human race. This admittance was a radical change for Brownson, who had previously argued against the Calvinist view of human nature. But, Brownson did not accept the Calvinist view either. Like Leroux, Brownson did not believe that human beings were created in a state of perfection and then through some original sin fell from that state. Human beings were created imperfect; they were flawed realizations of the ideal from which they originated. Adam’s sinfulness, a manifestation of his original imperfection, was then, by the law of communion, transmitted to the human race who lived in solidarity with Adam. The church, Brownson asserted, was correct in its doctrine of an hereditary human depravity but wrong in explaining it as a result of a “fall from a perfect state.”61 The old covenant doctrine tried to explain the transmission of an original sin to the entire human race by designating Adam the federal head of human59

Ibid., 4:168; see also p. 213 in this volume. Ibid., 4:152; see also p. 197 in this volume. 61 Ibid., 4:153; see also p. 199 in this volume. 60

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ity. Brownson did not like the covenant theology, but he failed to give his reasons. He believed, though, that the transmission and universality of sin could be explained by the philosophical doctrine of life that he had appropriated from Leroux. Because sinful human beings could not commune directly with God, a God-man mediator was necessary, as the Bible truly revealed. Jesus, as the God-man, communicated a new and higher divine life to humanity, overcoming the condition of depravity and making of those who communed with him sons of God by adoption.62 There was a sense, then, in which one could accept the divinity of humanity, but as a result of a mediator’s work in history, not as a result of the original constitution of human nature. The Mediatorial focused on Brownson’s new understanding of Jesus’s mediatorial role, a new interpretation of Jesus that separated him from his immediate Unitarian and Transcendentalist past.63 He admitted that during the previous ten years of his life, he had perceived Jesus—like other extraordinary men, prophets and messiahs— as manifesting divine providence in the ordinary operations of nature. Throughout his Transcendentalist years, he had held that there could have been a Christianity without the historical Christ and that Jesus had a highly representative value. Like other Transcendentalists his view of Jesus was highly idealistic, focusing on the abstract truth Jesus represented, not on the real life he brought to the human race. 62

Ibid., 4:156; see also p. 202 in this volume. It would not be entirely accurate to claim that Brownson’s view of Christ was exclusively Unitarian even in his immediate past. When he reviewed Charles Spear’s Names and Titles of the Lord Jesus Christ (1841) in the Boston Quarterly Review 4 (July 1841): 392, he criticized Spear’s Christology because it failed “to admit the mystery of the two natures.” “The Christ,” Brownson argued, “is one with God, was God, and the Christ, the true God, was incarnated in the man Jesus, a true man, and type of the perfect man.” Although the language was orthodox, Brownson’s understanding of this language was not entirely orthodox because of the idealist interpretation he made of the Christ. Nonetheless Anne Charlotte Lynch (1815-91), one of Brownson’s supporters and frequent correspondents found that what Brownson was saying about Jesus in July of 1841 “seems to me very different from what you have said elsewhere.” Someone reading this review, she claimed, would consider you “strictly orthodox.” See Lynch’s letter to Brownson, 27 June 1841, in the Archives of the University of Notre Dame. After reading Brownson’s Mediatorial Life in 1842, Lynch became even more upset, writing to him (4 August 1842): “Of late your views have changed, or your late writings do not convey to me the same ideas that the earlier ones did. They contain many doctrines that I do not respond to. . . . and of course my intellectual sympathy cannot be as entire as it was.” She could “not agree with the sentiments” Brownson had expressed in his letter to Channing. 63

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Unlike the Transcendentalists, the “old school Unitarians” had retained a personal, rather than an abstract, Jesus, but they saw him only as a very exemplary man and a zealous religious reformer. Channing, too, gave much more importance to the historic Christ than his Transcendentalist followers, but he too treated him as an example of moral living and thereby as an efficacious and forceful teacher of transcendental truths. What was missing in the Unitarian and Transcendentalist conceptions of Jesus was any understanding of mediation and life. It was as mediator that Jesus brought new life to the world, and it was that life that brought salvation into the human race. Jesus was literally, as the Bible held, “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Leroux’s doctrine of communion, Brownson asserted, helped to explain precisely what that biblical designation of Jesus as “the life” meant. Because Jesus mediated this higher divine life to the human race through means of his humanity, it was impossible “to press Jesus into the category of ordinary men.”64 Brownson now no longer shrunk from “admitting the doctrine of Providence” in a supernatural sense. Jesus mediated the divine life in ways that others did not. He was specially sent by God, and supernaturally endowed to carry out the designs of divine Providence. As God-Man, Jesus manifested God’s freedom to intervene in human history. This was what was fundamentally new in Brownson’s theology, and it came to him as he juxtaposed his doctrine of divine Providence and his reading of Leroux’s doctrine of life. The doctrine of life, however, gave him the philosophical concepts and language for making the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation and Christ’s mediatorship intelligible. The Mediatorial accentuated what Brownson later called the phenomenal Christ, not the ontological Christ—on the Christ who manifested himself, his being, in the acts of his life. Christ was no longer the abstract, representative man; he was the unique historical mediator who was providentially sent to redeem the human race. Jesus’ life differed from that of all other human beings in that his communion with God was direct, immediate, and eternal, not indirect, mediated, and temporal. God took humanity “in the being we term Jesus” into immediate communion and thus became the object by means of which Jesus manifested himself—the result of this interaction was the divine-human life.65 God became the objective portion of his life. His life mediated and by mediating it saved, making 64

The Mediatorial Life, Works 4:149; see also p. 195 in this volume. Ibid., 4:160; see also p. 205 in this volume.

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possible progress in the divinization of humanity. By interacting with Jesus’ humanity, then, his disciples communed, indirectly and mediately, with the Father. Thus, by communion, Jesus’ divine-human life became the objective portion of the disciples’ lives. One could say literally therefore that Jesus lived in the life of his disciples. The disciples who lived in the divine life became then the source of the divine life for subsequent generations by their interaction with them. In this way Brownson was able to explain how the divine life, not just the teachings or example of Jesus, was passed on from generation to generation—through communion. For Brownson, the very moment that Jesus’ life communicated itself to one individual, it was virtually communicated to the entire human race by virtue of the fact that the life of humanity existed within the life of every individual. Because of the Incarnation, the whole history of the human race was changed, virtually if not actually. In fact, human nature, not just human history, “is not today what it was before the coming of Christ.”66 Christ made it possible for human nature to realize powers and capacities it could not actualize or manifest before Christ became the objective portion of human life. Brownson’s theological idealism came through in his explanation of Christ’s mediation and soteriology. But it was no longer the abstract idealism of his Transcendentalist days; it was a realistic idealism that refused to separate the ideal and the actual; in fact, the ideal came to human beings only in and through the actual. Brownson put more and more emphasis on the concrete, the historical, and the particular as the manifestation of the ideal, the transcendent, and the universal. Christ was, as he noted, the “infinite concrete.” Brownson transformed Leroux’s doctrine of communion by applying it to Christ and the mediation of salvation. In the Mediatorial he also suggested, but did not draw out fully, other theological implications of the doctrine: infant baptism, apostolic succession, the Eucharist, the divine origin of the Bible, the church as the body of Christ, and the authoritative nature of ministry and preaching. William Ellery Channing, to whom the Mediatorial was addressed, read the published letter and wrote to Brownson that he did not understand his philosophical underpinnings. He appreciated what Brownson had to say of the Christ and of salvation but he thought an incautious reader could legitimately conclude that Brownson had reverted to Universalism because of his “asserting the actual appro66

Ibid., 4:165; see also p. 211 in this volume.

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priation of the life of Christ to the whole human race, past and present, will they or nil they.”67 In other words, Brownson had so emphasized the objectivity of the salvific life that he seemed to neglect the subjective reception of that life. Although Brownson claimed that the salvific life of Christ was only virtually, not actually, present to all individuals, he did not indicate, as Channing rightfully noted, what was required on the part of individuals to participate in that life. In fact, he was so preoccupied during 1842 with emphasizing the objective side of the doctrine of communion that he did not take up the issue of the subjective side until 1843. Channing, whose health had been failing in recent years and whose death was imminent, apparently did not see the radical implications of Brownson’s doctrine. Other Unitarian critics perceived his retreat from Unitarianism and his leaning toward Orthodoxy, even though they too appreciated Brownson’s new affirmative approach to Christianity.68 But in June of 1842 they did not realize how far Brownson was moving away from Unitarian theology. “Leroux on Humanity” (July), although chronologically later than the Mediatorial Life, was, as Brownson admitted in the July issue of his Review,69 logically prior. The article outlined Leroux’s fundamental doctrines and demonstrated why Brownson made certain theological applications of Leroux’s doctrine of life in the Mediatorial— applications Leroux would have rejected because they presupposed the continuing validity and dynamic force of Christianity in the contemporary world. Brownson wanted to make it clear to his readers that although he admired Leroux as a philosopher and was enamored with the “depth and originality” of his thought, his respect for Leroux was not unreserved. In fact Brownson offered a number of criticisms that distanced him from Leroux’s style as well as philosophy. “His mind is a wild, weltering chaos, into which are thrown in the greatest confusion imaginable, materials various and rich, difficult to obtain, . . . but they will not coalesce, combine, assume unity, and clothe themselves with form and beauty.”70 Brownson’s criticism echoed that of Jean-Louis-Eugène Lerminier, one of the first French writers to 67 William Ellery Channing to Brownson, 19 July 1842, on roll #1, Microfilm Edition of the Orestes Augustus Brownson Papers, in the Archives of the University of Notre Dame, and in Henry F. Brownson, Orestes A. Brownson’s Early Life (1803-1844) (Detroit: H. F. Brownson, 1898), 444. 68 For two Unitarian reviews, see “The Mediatorial Life of Jesus,” Christian Register 25 (June 25, 1842): 103; Monthly Miscellany 7 (July 1842): 42-46. 69 “Mediatorial Life,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July 1842): 383. 70 “Leroux on Humanity,” Works 4:107-08; see also p. 232 in this volume.

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review De L’Humanité, a review that Brownson had himself read.71 Although critical of the style and confusion, Brownson thought the book contained numerous remarkable insights that he feared many orthodox readers would miss because they would find “nothing in it but absurdities and blasphemies.”72 Brownson appreciated Leroux’s work, but he pointed out periodically where he separated himself from Leroux. He did not accept Leroux’s interpretation of historical Christianity as having already served its purpose in the history of humanity and was no longer necessary for the modern world, nor did he accept many of Leroux’s specific interpretations of Christian doctrines. In many instances Leroux had presented a kind of phantom Christianity. He interpreted the idea of Christian charity, for example, as the exclusive love of God and an abandonment of love of neighbor, or identified it with a doctrine of pure or disinterested love. Such an interpretation, Brownson charged, was true of persons like François Fénelon, Madame Jeanne Guyon and a few other Christians, but it was not the doctrine of Christianity. Leroux’s opinion that the doctrines of heaven and hell were illusions, and his understanding of an indefinite future life of the human race, moreover, demonstrated to Brownson an excessive preoccupation with the earthly condition of humanity.73 For Leroux, there was, Brownson thought, no immortality but that of the human race. His doctrines of God and creation, furthermore, were erroneous. Because he understood the created world as an emanation of the divine life and had no Christian doctrine of creation that distinguished clearly between the divine life and its earthly manifestations, he could legitimately be charged with a “mitigated form of pantheism.” Take away the created world, in Leroux’s system, and there would be, no real, no actual God, only God as mere “possibility.”74 “Leroux on Humanity” was a synopsis and review of the six major sections of Leroux’s De L’Humanité. Throughout the essay Brownson emphasized Leroux’s doctrine of communion and progress, two watchwords of the age, and focused on the implications of these doctrines for his emerging theology. Leroux had identified the life of humanity as the manifestation and means of communion with the divine life. As Brownson explained it, Leroux’s doctrine was 71 Jean-Louis-Eugène Lerminier, “De L’Humanité,” Revue des Deux Mondes 14 (December 1, 1840): 665. For Brownson’s citation of Lerminier, see pp. 231-32 in this volume. 72 “Leroux on Humanity,” Works 4:138; see also p. 275 in this volume. 73 For a more nuanced interpretation of Leroux’s views of immortality, see LeBras-Chopard, De l’Égalité, 131-51. 74 “Leroux on Humanity,” Works 4:129; see also pp. 266-67 in this volume.

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that life resides jointly and inseparably in the subject and the object, and therefore that in life the subject and object are not only placed in juxtaposition, mutually acting and reacting one upon the other, but are in fact united, if one may so speak, soldered together, or amalgamated as the acid and the alkali in the formation of the neutral salt, so that a separation in time or space is impossible, without destroying life itself.75

Human beings were members of one another because they shared the same life, and thus it was literally true that my neighbors’ life is my own life, and my life is in my neighbors. This unity and communion of all human beings in the same life was the foundation of the philosophical definition of man. Leroux’s view of humanity expanded upon the ancient philosophical doctrine of the social nature of man. But Leroux, like some other modern philosophers since the eighteenth century, added to this social definition of man the idea of progress. The eighteenth century, though, focused on the progress of the individual. For Leroux not only was the individual progressive but “society is progressive, the human race itself is progressive.”76 The eighteenth century, moreover, saw progress as a manifestation of the inherent powers and capacities of human nature itself. Leroux believed too that human beings had powers and capacities for progress, but progress itself was not an inherent part of human nature. The progress of the individual could not be effected by the self alone, but only by the progress of the human race, of social institutions, and surrounding nature.77 To develop one’s natural powers one needed an object outside of the self. One could not know without knowing some object; one could not love without loving some object. Human beings and the human race grew or developed, in other words, by assimilating some power outside the self. Progress took place only in communion. One could truly say, then, that even human nature was progressive because its powers and capacities were subject to enlargement within communion. Leroux’s religion of humanity, emphasizing communion and progress as it did, was, according to Brownson, primarily a “social doctrine.” Brownson accepted Leroux’s doctrine of communion and progress but not in Leroux’s sense that the life of humanity was the incarnation of a divine life that could only be progressively realized 75

Ibid., 4:121-22; see also p. 254 in this volume. Ibid., 4:111; see also p. 236 in this volume. 77 Ibid., 4:119; see also pp. 251-52 in this volume. 76

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in the course of history. Brownson transformed Leroux’s doctrine significantly by applying it to “communion with Jesus, and through him with God.”78 Humanity itself, was not the medium of communion with God. Jesus as God-Man was. We see now the literal truth of what has been asserted of Christ as the mediator between God and men; we see how he can be both literally and truly, and indissolubly God-Man, and his mediation does and can hold, in God’s providential plan for the salvation of men, the place commonly assigned to it, and how he can communicate his life to the world, and by so doing become literally, really, not by way of example, representation, or imputation, the life and salvation of the world.79

Here was the key difference between Leroux and Brownson. Brownson put Jesus within the context of Providence, and saw Jesus’ role in the progress of the human race as absolutely essential. Brownson also intimated in “Leroux on Humanity” that the doctrine of life by communion had implications for a new understanding of the relationship of tradition and Scripture, the Eucharist, the Communion of the Saints, Purgatory, and the practice of praying for the dead. But it would be some time before he would address these issues explicitly. Leroux’s doctrine of life by communion, when applied to the interpretation of the Christian Scriptures and traditional Christian doctrines, had “restored” Brownson “to the household of believers”80 and brought about “a complete revolution, not in religious belief, but in theological science.”81 And the doctrine had implications not only for theology, but also for politics and ethics. But theology, particularly the mediatorship of Jesus, was Brownson’s primary consideration in 1842. Brownson’s radical conservative theology would become much more evident in October when he reviewed Theodore Parker’s Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, an essay that has received little or no attention from historians of Unitarianism.82 The review is important not only for revealing the development in Brownson’s theology but also for highlighting the twofold internal schism that was 78

Ibid., 4:138; see also p. 275 in this volume. Ibid., 4:139; see also p. 276 in this volume. 80 Ibid., 4:139; see also p. 275 in this volume. 81 Ibid., 4:138; see also p. 276 in this volume. 82 “Parker’s Discourse,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (October 1842): 385-511; see also Chapter 9 in this volume. 79

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taking place within Unitarianism. Parker represented the far left liberal wing and Brownson the most conservative wing of Unitarianism at the time. To speak of two wings is rather inappropriate because each wing had only one member, but the 1842 rupture within Unitarianism demonstrated the radically different directions that Unitarianism could take in the antebellum period. Both men had been reared since at least 1836 in the liberal (Transcendentalist) wing of Unitarianism but they were coming to very different theological conclusions in 1842, for reasons that both men tried to spell out. The split within Unitarianism had been materializing since the organization of the Transcendentalist Club in 1836, between the conservative or Lockean Unitarians and the liberal or Transcendentalist Unitarians. In 1841 Parker, a thirty-one year old Unitarian minister from Roxbury, Massachusetts, preached and then published his South Boston sermon on the “Transient and the Permanent in Christianity.” In that sermon he had relativized Christ and Christianity by speaking of the possibility of Christianity without Christ. These assertions drew strong reactions from conservative Unitarian ministers.83 Some distinguished Unitarian laymen, however, invited Parker to return to Boston to give a series of five lectures on his views of religion and Christianity, which he did in the winter of 1841-42. The lectures were well attended by prominent members of the Boston community, including Brownson. In the early months of 1842 Parker revised the five lectures, providing a considerable amount of scholarly resources to defend his views, and published them. He hoped, as he confided to his journal in May of 1842, that the book would do good, but “there may be a noise about it; it will not surprise me.”84 Parker had no illusions that his views would be generously received by the majority in the Unitarian community, and he was right. Some conservative Unitarians wanted to ban him from the Unitarian Association, but they were unsuccessful.85 Parker’s Discourse intended to defend his South Boston sermon but went well beyond it in arguing for what he called “absolute religion.” “Absolute religion” transcended all the positive historical reli83 On the debate surrounding the sermon, see EW 5:13-17, and Chapter 17 for Brownson’s review. 84 Quoted in John White Chadwick, Theodore Parker: Preacher and Reformer (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1900), 107. 85 On the reactions to the lectures and the published text, see William R. Hutchison, The Transcendentalist Ministers: Church Reform in the New England Renaissance (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1959), 114-22; John White Chadwick, 106-18.

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gions and was in fact the ultimate ground and foundation of all positive religions and the standard or criterion by which all religious traditions were to be judged and evaluated. “Absolute religion” was the Word of God incarnate in human consciousness and reflected in a natural religious sentiment that transcended all forms which human beings constructed to demonstrate their religious feelings of dependence. Parker saw his own view of religion as a middle ground between the eighteenth century rationalists-naturalists who denied the transcendent value of religion or identified it completely with nature, and the supernaturalists who resorted to a Deus ex machina view of a special divine revelation to a particular people as the ground and source of all true religion. His own approach he designated “spiritualist.” The spiritualist emphasized the divine origin of revelations to the human soul. This approach “relies on no church, tradition, or Scripture, as the last ground and infallible rule; it counts these things teachers, if they teach, not masters. . . . It relies on the divine presence in the soul of man, the eternal Word of God, which is truth.”86 Christianity was significant as the most perfect manifestation of absolute religion to date, but it was subject to the vicissitudes of time and thus limited by its historically-conditioned forms.87 Because it was dependent on history for its forms, Christianity, like other positive religions, was subject to the judgements of sound critical and historical methods. Those methods, he believed, would separate the wheat from the chaff in the positive religions, distinguishing clearly between what was absolute and what was relative. Parker criticized in particular the supernaturalist approach to Christianity because, with reference to their view of the Bible, “to assume a miraculous agency is contrary to the inductive method.”88Absolute religion, on the other hand, was impervious to historical criticism because it was the “everlasting Rock of Faith” that was grounded in that which was beyond the limits of the inductive methods.89 Parker’s view was a strange mixture of the empirical and the transcendental. On the one hand he 86

A Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, 477. Toward the end of his life, in an autobiographical sketch, Parker wrote of his emerging attitude to Christianity in the early 1840s: “I had thoroughly broken with the ecclesiastical authority of Christendom; its God was not my God, nor its Scriptures my Word of God, nor its Christ my Saviour; for I preferred the Jesus of historic fact to the Christ of theologic fancy.” See “Theodore Parker’s Experience as a Minister,” in The Works of Theodore Parker, Centenary Edition, 15 vols. (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1907-1913), 13: 329. 88 A Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion, 353-54. 89 Ibid., 362. 87

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used the empirical to discern the absolute; on the other hand he appealed to the Transcendental as the ground or standard for determining the relative. As indicated earlier, Brownson saw the logical trajectory of his own previous theological idealism in Parker’s lectures and book, and he did not like what he saw. His review of Parker’s book took up the entire October issue of his Quarterly, indicating the importance he assigned to it. Brownson had reached a point in his life when he could “no longer be satisfied with pulling down old temples and clearing away rubbish,” which he implied Parker was doing. Instead, Brownson wanted to “erect us a dwelling, settle down, and feel that we have a home, and are at home. . . . We must have clothing and a shelter. We must have something positive, something that will help us, by the gaining of which we may be saved from our sins, have our hearts purified, and be enabled to commune with our God. We must have something we can grasp, hold on to, and that will not break the moment we need its support, and leave us to fall helpless, hopeless, headlong over the precipice.”90 His review of Parker was his first major systematic attempt to create a theological home for himself, and he did it by reacting to the five major divisions of Parker’s work: the ground of all religion, the nature of religious inspiration, the meaning of Christianity, the understanding of the Bible, and the church. In each section he applied Leroux’s doctrine of communion and his own new-found supernaturalism. As Brownson interpreted it, the great aim of Parker’s project was to “get rid of supernaturalism,” to exorcize the “demon of supernaturalism.”91 By making human beings naturally religious and by asserting only one mode of revelation, namely through human nature or the human soul, Parker had, in spite of his claim of spiritualism, run into “sheer naturalism,” individualism, and subjectivism.92 His own religious system had made it impossible to verify the object of reli90

“Parker’s Discourse,” 494-95; see also p. 368 in this volume. Ibid., 437-38; see also p. 322 in this volume. 92 Ibid., 459; see also p. 313 in this volume. After his conversion to Catholicism Brownson again reviewed Parker’s Discourse in “Transcendentalism, or the Latest Form of Infidelity,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 7 (July 1845): 273-332; (October 1845): 409-42; and 8 (October 1846):409-39. This second review was much harsher and vituperative, but it reiterated some of the same major themes of the 1842 review. Brownson summarized the main tendencies of the book in three propositions: namely, that “man is the measure of truth and goodness,” “religion is a fact or principle of human nature,” and “all religious institutions, which have been or are, have their principle and cause in human nature.” He characterized these three propositions as “sheer naturalism.” See 7 (July 1845): 274. 91

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gious sentiment, account for the source of human evil and depravity, or even explain the progress of individuals and society except as a process of self-induced development. Brownson agreed with Parker on the existence of a religious sentiment, but it was not, as Parker understood it, a category of reason in the Kantian sense. Religious sentiment for Brownson was a fact of human experience, not a constitutive element of human nature. It was a phenomenon of life and therefore the result of the communion of the self with an object outside of itself. Religious sentiment was simultaneously subjective and objective. Human beings had the capacity and power to aspire to God but that power could only manifest itself or be activated by an object outside of itself, according to the doctrine of communion.93 Parker repeatedly maintained in all the major sections of his book that human beings had no need for a supernatural aid other than that which was supplied by God’s revelation through human nature and the human soul. He tried to avoid naturalism and rationalism by assuming throughout that everywhere human beings were dependent upon God, but upon a God, Brownson charged, immanent in nature. Parker’s view of the immanence of God in human nature made it impossible to explain the origin of sin and the progress of the human race. Only if one asserted that creation itself was a finite realization of the infinite and that the infinite was present in the finite as an ideal that needed to be actualized in time could one have a basis for the doctrine of progress.94 But this infinite ideal within the created order could not actualize itself; it needed some external power outside of itself to realize itself. It was impossible, Brownson maintained, “to explain the life and growth of man without assuming the supernatural, the miraculous intervention of Divine Providence.”95 The growth and progress, not development (because human beings possessed no self-germinating principle), of the human race could be explained, therefore, only by insisting on both the continuous immanent creative power of the infinite within the created order and the providential and supernatural intervention of God from outside the created order through “Providential men.”96 Human beings and the life of humanity itself was improved, Brownson argued, only by communion with these providentially and supernaturally endowed individuals. One could not explain progress without assuming Provi93

“Parker’s Discourse,” 394-97; see also pp. 368-71 in this volume. Ibid., 440; see also p. 324 in this volume. 95 Ibid., 445; see also p. 328 in this volume. 96 Ibid., 449; see also pp. 331-32 in this volume. 94

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dence. That assumption became the foundation of his understanding of Christ, Christianity, the Bible, and the Church; Providence also became the means by which he transformed Leroux’s doctrine of life. Brownson was providing a justification for the Orthodox Protestant supernaturalist positions on salvation and regeneration, but not upon the grounds they had used: namely, covenant theology, imputation, satisfaction, or representation. His doctrine of communion, then, would eventually separate him not only from Unitarianism, Transcendentalism, and Parker’s subjective idealism but also from the reigning American Protestant Orthodox understandings of Christianity, the Bible, and the church.97 Parker interpreted Christianity as the way or method of absolute religion, making Christianity a mere form or manifestation of the ideal Word of God. For Brownson Christianity itself was life, a position that he had articulated since at least 1838. But in his review of Parker, Brownson’s understanding of Christianity as life had taken on an entirely new meaning. Jesus was the life, not merely the way or the teacher of a new way of life, as Parker and others held. Christianity was the continuation of the divine life made manifest in Jesus. Traditional Christians were not wrong to affirm the divinity of Christ, but “in affirming the divinity of the ontological Christ, of whom we know nothing directly, instead of the phenomenal Christ, the only Christ to us.”98 That Christ’s life was the higher, divine life, a life above not only that of his times but even of the present, was selfevident to Brownson “historically.”99 Human beings could commune with God only through humanity, know God only in the divine manifestations, only in the human-divine phenomenal Christ. Human beings could know nothing directly of God’s being or the being of the Christ. By communion with Christ, moreover, human beings were not only taught what God’s law required, but they were given the strength to fulfill its commands. Brownson assumed that Christianity was the ideal standard and criterion for all conceptions of truth, beauty, and goodness; it was the fullest expression of the divine ideal in history, and its authority was not an open question, as Parker assumed. For Brownson Christianity needed no authorization because it revealed its own foundation, as Jonathan Edwards and other Christian scholars taught. It was self-authenticating and not confirmed, endorsed, or authorized 97 For a fuller exposition of Brownson’s doctrine of communion, see ibid., 44653; see also pp. 328-35 in this volume. 98 Ibid., 475; see also p. 353 in this volume. 99 Ibid., 476; see also p. 353 in this volume.

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by miracles, as some supernaturalists held. Parker failed to acknowledge the providential role and self-authenticating nature of Christianity, but he had legitimately criticized the supernaturalist approach. The miracles did not verify the truth of Christianity. For Brownson, though, the Christian Bible, like Christianity itself, was a marvel that could only be adequately explained by an appeal to Providence. The Bible, therefore, was not, as Parker held, simply the manifestation of the biblical authors’ fidelity to their own moral and religious natures and sentiments. The Bible and its influence on the human race could not be explained without the “hypothesis of its supernatural origin.”100 In this view Brownson agreed with traditional Protestant notions of the Bible and disagreed with Parker’s treatment of the Bible as a text produced by the natural religious sentiment. But, like Parker, Brownson did not accept the “all sufficiency” of the Scriptures, as did many Protestants. The Bible was not an isolated phenomenon; it was the result of the communion of the divine and the human. It was the product of providential men who were limited by the times in which they lived. It reflected the divine-human life but could not, as Parker and Protestant supernaturalists supposed, be authentically interpreted by private individuals who used either critical methods or a subjective faith. The Bible’s “real significance we obtain only from the commentaries of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, the comforter, which is the living Jesus, who was to be with us unto the end of the world, and of which the true church, the one catholic church, is the real, literal, and living God.”101 The biblical text and the universal church existed as part of a synthetic whole; the life the Bible communicated corresponded to the life of Christ that existed in the universal church. The Bible, therefore, could only be authentically interpreted by the faith of the universal church, not by private individuals, whether biblical critics or the pope. Because he viewed the church itself as the extension of the life of Christ into time and space, Brownson rejected the voluntary notion of the church that he believed prevailed in American Christianity. The universal church, as the continuation of living body of Christ, was the means of salvation in the world—so much so that Brownson declared that “out of the church no salvation,”102 a position he held for the remainder of his life. Because it was the living body of Christ, moreover, it possessed the marks of unity, universality, continuous 100

Ibid., 482; see also p. 358 in this volume. Ibid., 489; see also p. 364 in this volume. 102 Ibid., 501; see also p. 366 in this volume. 101

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inspiration, and supreme authority to interpret its own life and meaning. The universal church of which he spoke, however, existed in no particular organized church. In 1842, Brownson asserted, this universal church was “in the wilderness”; what was needed was the “Church of the Second Advent.”103 The problem of the age was “Catholicism without the papacy” and “liberty without individualism.”104 He believed in 1842 that his doctrine of communion was a step in the direction of solving that problem. Brownson’s review of Parker’s Discourse was the last issue of his Boston Quarterly Review.105 He decided in the fall of 1842 to cease publishing the Review and sold his subscription list to John L. O’Sullivan, editor of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. In May O’Sullivan had invited Brownson to merge his Quarterly with the Democratic Review because of “our common principles” and because the two combined subscription lists would give Brownson and O’Sullivan a larger audience than either could have separately.106 In October the two men agreed to combine the papers, giving Brownson regular space in the Democratic Review for articles he was to write with complete authorial freedom from O’Sullivan’s editorial supervision or correction,107 an arrangement that O’Sullivan was soon to regret. Some of Brownson’s first articles for the Democratic Review, “Schmucker’s Psychology” and “Synthetic Philosophy,” were devoted expressly to philosophy, a discipline that he had touched upon repeatedly in his previous theological articles of 1842. His philosophy was an integral part of his theological vision and provided him with the language and concepts for a theological reinterpretation of traditional Christian doctrines. But he was also expressly interested in philosophy itself, not just as a tool for theology. Brownson had already indicated that he had accepted Leroux’s modified idealism, emphasizing that the ideal word or life of God 103

Ibid., 510-11; see also pp. 383-85 in this volume. Ibid., 488; see also p. 363 in this volume. 105 For historical assessments of the significance of the Review by William Ellery Channing, Harold Laski, and Perry Miller, see Thomas R. Ryan’s Orestes A. Brownson, 228. See also, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Orestes A. Brownson, 155-56. 106 O’Sullivan to Brownson, 4 May 1842. Letter in Archives of the University of Notre Dame, and on roll # 1 of the microfilm edition of the Brownson papers. See also Henry F. Brownson, Early Life, 344-45. 107 O’Sullivan to Brownson, 9 October 1842, in Archives of the University of Notre Dame, and on roll # 1 of the microfilm edition of the Brownson papers. See also “Schmucker’s Psychology,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (October 1842): 373; see also p. 422 in this volume. 104

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was realized in the actual. Like Leroux, he also criticized Cousin’s “imbecile Eclecticism,”108 even though it was clear that he retained much of Cousin’s subject-object philosophical framework and his trinitarian view of psychology. In his April review of Charles Elwood Brownson explained that his ideological change was a development of his thought, not a matter of fickleness or capriciousness, an old charge he anticipated many would make. “We resolve never to be the slave of our own past—the slave of our own shadow.”109 Relying on Leroux’s Réfutation de L’Éclectisme, without explicitly acknowledging the dependency, Brownson criticized Cousin’s philosophy as a form of what he later called “psychologism,” that is, a philosophical method that began by analyzing the human soul, a fundamental turn to the subject that ultimately produced individualism, neglected the social nature of humanity, and became ultimately incapable of escaping Immanuel Kant’s subjectivism—one of the aims of Cousin’s philosophy.110 In order to provide a foundation for the objectivity of the world of transcendental ideas, Cousin held that reason was impersonal—a position that Brownson had himself accepted and promoted for the past ten years. Cousin definitely asserted the objectivity of the world of transcendental ideas, but he neglected to demonstrate how this was so. Because he placed impersonal reason in the subject, a part of the me, he in fact made reason personal and thereby failed to show how impersonal reason could demonstrate the objectivity of the transcendentals. Brownson also added in refutation of some Transcendentalist followers of Coleridge that no real distinction existed between reason and understanding, as if one faculty of the mind grasped the transcendental and spiritual world, and another apprehended the material and physical world, the world of the senses. He maintained that it was the integrated person who grasped reality; the human power by which one apprehended each world was the same human power—because it was the subject, the me, that grasped the world of ideas and the world of senses, not particular faculties, or a faculty.111 Cousin had also distinguished between spontaneous and reflective reason, a distinction Brownson had accepted for years and one that was clearly evident in Charles Elwood. For Cousin the distinction was necessary to show the way in which knowledge is obtained, 108

“Reform and Conservativism,” Works 4:80, 92, 95; see also p. 78 in this volume. 109 “Charles Elwood Reviewed,” Works 4: 357; see also p. 163 in this volume. 110 Ibid., 4: 345-46; see also pp. 152-53 in this volume. 111 Ibid., 4: 343; see also p. 150 in this volume.

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not just to show the validity of our knowledge (as was the case with impersonal reason). Cousin developed the concept of spontaneous reason to account for human inspiration and revelation of the transcendentals. Cousin’s spontaneous reason, Brownson charged, made God the acting subject, led logically if not intentionally toward pantheism, absorbing God in man, and ultimately destroyed human freedom and accountability.112 The distinction was faulty and unnecessary. Brownson asserted, in reaction to Cousin and in conjunction with Leroux, that there was no purely subjective or purely objective knowledge. Knowledge, like life itself, was simultaneously subjective and objective. Human beings could not think without thinking themselves as subjects, and that which was not themselves as objects. All thought, therefore, was at the same time subjective and objective; the subject and the object, moreover, participated in the mutual production of thought, as human life itself was the mutual interaction of subject and object.113 Through interaction the object lived, so to speak, in the subject. The life of God, other human beings, and nature lived in the life of the subject through communion. Thought, as the communion of the object and the subject, Brownson concluded, in no way destroyed the “necessity of divine revelation, or a childlike trust in the wisdom and goodness of Providence, whose ways are often dark and mysterious, and whose purposes are not seldom past finding out.”114 The philosophy of the human soul could not in and of itself explain the progress of the human race. One had to assume the necessity of revelation to explain it. In October, while Brownson was publishing his theological article on Parker he was simultaneously authoring a philosophical review of Samuel S. Schmucker’s (1799-1873) Psychology; or Elements of a New System of Mental Philosophy (1842), a text that the Lutheran theologian and professor at Gettysburg Theological Seminary intended for use in colleges. Brownson used the review as an occasion to introduce himself to readers of the Democratic Review, to criticize Schmucker’s philosophy, and to outline his own philosophy in the context of analyzing modern philosophy from the time of Descartes. To some extent the review articulated the philosophical side of his theology. I say “philosophical side” here intentionally because for Brownson, as for Leroux, philosophy could be distinguished but not separated from religion. For both men philosophy was not merely a speculative 112

Ibid., 4: 349; see also p. 155 in this volume. Ibid., 4: 356; see also p. 162 in this volume. 114 Ibid., 4: 361; see also p. 166 in this volume. 113

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science, or an inductive analysis of human psychology, but the “science [that is, knowledge] of life.” As such, philosophy’s “province is precisely that of religion, of which it is merely a special phase; it embraces the same objects, contemplates the same ends, uses the same means, and relies on the same authority.”115 Revelation was as necessary for philosophy as it was for religion because “we have no original means of arriving at the knowledge of truth but the supernatural revelation of God.” Philosophy, therefore, was the “form which religion necessarily assumes when subjected to the action of the human mind.” There was in fact a real synthesis between religion and philosophy,116 a position that Brownson retained for most of the rest of his life. In Brownson’s opinion Schmucker’s book did not fit into this broad definition of philosophy, and Schmucker, even though intentionally limiting his topic to psychology, did not demonstrate, as he should have, how the study of psychology fit into the whole of life. Brownson named Cousin’s, Leroux’s and his own philosophy “synthetic” in “Schmucker’s Psychology.” What the age most needed was communion, Brownson had asserted in the Mediatorial Life.117 Cousin had misnamed his philosophy “eclecticism,” but at bottom it was as synthetic as that of Leroux’s. A synthetic philosophy emphasized the primitive, living, and indestructible unity of the human person in all its acting, knowing, and feeling. The human powers of willing, reasoning, and sensing were not separate or divided faculties, unrelated to one another. A synthetic philosophy understood that the human person’s powers were interdependent and interrelated. One did not act without knowing and feeling; did not know without acting and feeling; and did not feel without knowing and acting. Brownson believed that Schmucker’s own psychology suffered from the fact that he seemed to divide, and not merely to distinguish, the different powers of the human person.118 It was not until “Synthetic Philosophy,” published from December of 1842 to March of 1843, that Brownson defined his philosophy more fully and systematically than he had in the past. In this work he articulated what would be the fundamental elements of his philosophical system for the remainder of his life, except for a brief period from about 1845 to 1849. Although he would periodically 115

“Schmucker’s Psychology,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (October 1842): 352. See also p. 388 in this volume. 116 Ibid., 354; see also p. 390 in this volume. 117 The Mediatorial Life, in Works, 4:170; see also p. 214 in this volume. 118 “Schmucker’s Psychology,” 370-71; see also pp. 421-22 in this volume.

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refine those elements and put them into new combinations in the future, he remained substantially committed to this synthetic project. Again, as in the article on Schmucker, Brownson defined philosophy as the science of life. Knowledge of life, like life itself, was the joint product or synthesis of subject and object, making all thought, therefore, simultaneously subjective and objective. Life was “being putting itself forth in the phenomenon. . . . Here, in the phenomenal, in the fact of life, where only we are able to seize either the subjective world or the objective world,” Brownson argued, “the subject and the object are given, not as separate, not one to be obtained from the other, but in an INDISSOLUBLE SYNTHESIS. This is wherefore I call philosophy not the science of BEING, but the science of LIFE; and also wherefore I add to it the epithet, SYNTHETIC.”119 Brownson’s synthetic philosophy was his answer to the modern problem of philosophy. The modern problem since Descartes, as he saw it, was the philosophical turn to the subject. Descartes raised the issue of the subject-object dichotomy and all subsequent modern philosophy attempted to resolve the dichotomy by emphasizing either the subject or the object as the proper point of departure for philosophy. It was as impossible, Brownson maintained, to proceed from the subject to the object as from the object to the subject. Logically, if one started with the subject, one could only conclude to the subject, and likewise if one began with the object, one could only conclude to the object. Although he saw the subject-object dichotomy as the fundamental problem in modern philosophy, he clearly emphasized the problem of subjectivism in modern philosophy. Since his first reading of Cousin in the early 1830s he had been preoccupied with overcoming what he, following Cousin, saw as the subjectivism of Kant’s philosophy. Until he read Leroux he believed that Cousin had solved the problem of subjectivism by his definition of impersonal or spontaneous reason. Leroux convinced him that Cousin’s solution was no solution at all, but only another manifestation of subjectivism and individualism. Cousin had asserted the reality of the world of transcendental ideas, as had most American Transcendentalists, but he and they were not able to demonstrate how this could be so. In “Synthetic Philosophy” Brownson separated himself from both Cousin’s and the American Transcendentalists’ philosophies. He ar119 “Synthetic Philosophy,” The United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (December 1842): 571; see also p. 447 in this volume.

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gued that Cousin had correctly identified the primary philosophical question but he had not solved it. Cousin tried to assert the objective reality of the transcendental ideas by his definition of impersonal or spontaneous reason, but in fact his transcendental reason was a faculty of the subject, making his philosophy incapable of escaping the subjectivism that he had identified in Kant’s philosophy. The American Transcendentalists (and here Brownson was thinking of Parker, Emerson and Alcott) had an insight into the reality of the transcendental ideas but they too ended up in subjectivism and individualism. The Transcendentalists accepted the notion that ideas were transcendental in a Platonic sense, but then they made these transcendental ideas the medium of knowledge (as Locke had done) and thereby asserted that the transcendentals existed in the subject. The Transcendentalists, in other words, identified idea in a Lockean sense as a medium of knowledge with the Platonic understanding of idea as transcendental. This identification of the two different understandings of idea led the American Transcendentalists in particular to philosophical and religious positions that magnified subjectivism and pantheism. They founded their philosophy and their religious views on “the alleged infinity of the soul, on the alleged fact that it is absolute, and therefore sufficient for itself, and for all things, being in itself, as the old Sophist contended, the ‘measure of all things.’” From this understanding of the “divinity of man” the Transcendentalists (here Brownson clearly had Parker in mind) set up “natural religion as the measure of revealed religion.” In popular lectures, then, they tried to show “what is, and what is not, fit and proper for God to do or not to do.”120 By their own philosophy, in Brownson’s characterization of it, the Transcendentalists had trapped God in nature, confining God to what the mind could conceive. This was the ultimate consequence of philosophical subjectivism. In Brownson’s synthetic philosophy human beings perceived the transcendental ideas of which Transcendentalists and Cousin spoke, but they did so only as those transcendentals were present in the actual. The ideal existed for human beings only in the actual, the universal only in the concrete particular, the necessary only in the relative. Thus, human beings always conceived of the infinite in a finite way and through the medium of objects outside of themselves. God, in other words, was known only in the works of nature, Providence or grace.121 Transcendental ideas, moreover, were not depen120 121

Ibid., 249; see also p. 499 in this volume. Ibid., 251-52; see also pp. 503 in this volume.

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dent on the subject for their existence; they existed independent of the subject. They were real, though, even when they were not actualized. Ultimately they existed, as Plato insisted, in the mind of God.122 Because of his understanding of the unity of the soul and the synthetic nature of all human activity, Brownson criticized the distinction, current among some American Transcendentalists like Parker, between a moral and a religious nature in human beings. “Man is not moral by virtue of one set of faculties, and religious by virtue of another set of faculties.” The whole self acted and was involved in whatever it did, and all the powers operated synthetically in the self.123 Similarly he warred against the popular notion, articulated by Thomas Jefferson among others, that opinions were harmless. This popular view treated thought itself as an isolated phenomenon. Thought was not, in Brownson’s view, simply an abstraction, a mental exercise independent of life itself. Thought was, because of the unity of the self, a human activity that involved human sensibility, and like all human deeds thought itself had effects and a moral character. One was as morally accountable for one’s thought and feelings as for one’s other activities. The issue of false doctrine, therefore, was a moral as well as a intellectual issue. For the moment Brownson bracketed the political or social issue relative to human thought and opinion; his concern in this essay was with the moral character of all human activity, thought included.124 O’Sullivan was not happy with Brownson’s articles on philosophy, considering them too abstract for the general reader who was interested more in practical politics. He told Brownson that readers of the Democratic Review who had looked forward to Brownson’s articles were becoming increasingly disappointed with his philosophical musings.125 Writers in popular journals, he added, had to appeal to the greatest number of readers in order to sell papers. O’Sullivan was irritated with Brownson. But Brownson was, as ever, unconcerned with the practical economics of the press. Nonetheless he was interested in the practical and theoretical politics of American government, as he demonstrated in his own Quarterly. Brownson had been prominently involved in Democratic party politics since at least 1838 and had used his Quarterly as an organ for 122

Ibid., 253; see also p. 504 in this volume. Ibid., 577-78; see also pp. 457 in this volume. 124 Ibid., 243; see also p. 490 in this volume. 125 O’Sullivan to Brownson, 12 February 1843, in Archives of the University of Notre Dame, and on roll # 1 of the microfilm edition of the Brownson papers. 123

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the party. After the defeat of the Democrats in the 1840 presidential election, a defeat to which he contributed with his radical essay on the “Laboring Classes,”126 Brownson continued to write and lecture on behalf of the party, but he was becoming more and more critical of some popular notions of democracy in American society. His reading of Leroux, moreover, helped him to rethink his approach to society, politics, and government. In 1842, however, his primary focus was, as previously indicated, on theology, not on politics and political theory. Nonetheless, he wrote two major essays on politics for his January Quarterly, defended his lectures on property and inheritance, and became involved with the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island on the side of the Free Suffrage party. The January essays on politics, “Constitutional Government” and “The Distribution Bill,”127 were explicitly anti-Whig tracts on political theory and criticisms of Whig-dominated governmental politics since the election in 1840. Brownson was still a partisan Democrat, but his pen became a sword in his decade-long battle with the popular notion of democracy that prevailed in the Democratic as well as the Whig party. He now claimed that he was not a Democrat, as that term was generally understood; he was a constitutional republican and he believed that the right designation for the American government was a constitutional republic, not a democracy, and that the Democratic party should in fact be called the Republican party. “Constitutional Government” revealed something of Leroux’s influence on Brownson’s understanding of politics. He began the essay by situating politics in the context of Leroux’s doctrine of life. Man lives, and only lives, in society, Brownson argued. The state represented the organization of society. The state, however, was not the result of a compact and, as Russell Kirk once wrote in reference to John C. Calhoun, was “no more a matter of choice than is our breathing.”128 Government flowed organically from society. It was government’s fundamental duty to protect universal freedom, to promote the common good of all society’s members (especially the “poorer and more numerous classes,” a St. Simonian phrase that recurs repeatedly in Brownson’s works), and thereby to advance individual 126

Boston Quarterly Review 3 (July 1840): 358-95; see also EW, 5, Chapter 8. See Chapter 3 in this volume and Boston Quarterly Review 5 (January 1842): 27-59; 84-119. 128 The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot, sixth revised edition (1953; South Bend, Indiana: Gateway Editions, 1978), 151. 127

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and social progress. The state, in other words, had a positive role to perform in society; government was not, as Thomas Paine and others held, “at best a necessary evil.”129 Brownson argued that the American government was a constitutional republic, a government of limited and restricted powers, and not a democracy in the sense in which many in American society understood that term. He believed that there was a growing tendency in the United States to look upon the will of the majority as the defining principle of democracy and popular government. The will of the people was not, Brownson asserted, the will of God. Like Calhoun, moreover, he believed that the majoritarian principle provided ideological grounds for tyranny. All unlimited government— whether aristocratic, monarchical or democratic—was a fundamental threat to the freedom of all, especially to minorities and the poorer and more numerous classes, in society. Emphasis on the will of the majority, moreover, led to “centralism,” or the absolutism of the federal government. Political theory, according to Brownson, was not a purely speculative science. It had to fit the customs and practices of a particular people. “Political theories must be tested not by their abstract beauty and excellence, but by their practical operations, the people being taken just as they are.”130 In American society the practical political appeal to the people or the numerical majority was particularly pernicious because it gave the appearance of popular government when in fact, as was evident since the election campaign of 1840, it only increased the power of the politicians who represented the wealthy, powerful, and educated classes of society who used government to advance their own interests and not the common good. In the United States democracy tended to strengthen the power of the wealthier and more influential minority.131 Brownson opposed some popular notions of democracy and some practical democratic political tendencies, but he did not oppose democracy itself—either as the end or as a form of government. He saw democracy as the end of government, that is, government’s fundamental purpose was to serve the needs of the people (the demos). He also accepted democracy as a form of government, but “a government where the supreme power of the state is lodged in the people, and administered by the people, in accordance with constitutional rules, 129

“Constitutional Government” in Works 15: 231; see also p. 98 in this vol-

130

Ibid., 15: 238; see also p. 104 in this volume. “The Distribution Bill,” in Works 15: 205.

ume. 131

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for the freedom and common good of all.”132 Since the mid 1830s he had repeatedly defined democracy, in the terminology of George Bancroft, as “eternal justice ruling through the people.” The will of the people was legitimate as long as it was founded on and reflected the divine will, but the will of the majority was not in and of itself the will of God. Democracy, as any form of government, was founded upon divine justice, the ultimate criterion of all human justice. Brownson’s two essays on government and politics were occasioned to some extent by Congress’s vote in favor of the Distribution Bill and congressional discussion of renewing protective tariffs. Brownson believed that these two measures manifested Whig designs and threatened constitutional government. He identified the Whigs, as he had for years, with the wealthy portion of the community, the “well-clad mob of brokers, stock-jobbers, bankers, speculators, and ambitious and intriguing politicians.”133 The Whigs pushed through government, with the cooperation of many Democrats, the Distribution Bill, and they were foremost in championing a protective tariff. The Distribution Bill, distributing the proceeds from the sale of public lands to the states, was, in Brownson’s view, unconstitutional and financially irresponsible, an argument he had been making since April of 1841.134 In all his arguments he followed Calhoun, who led the opposition in the Senate to these Whig measures.135 Brownson also opposed the protective tariff because it threatened the freedom of trade, ultimately placing a higher price upon foreign goods for consumers and restricting the American manufacturers ability to sell their goods in foreign markets that would retaliate by raising import duties. He supported free-trade policies but not in any laissezfaire sense of free trade because he believed that government had a responsibility to intervene in the economy for the sake of protecting the common good. Throughout 1842 Brownson continued to lecture in and around Boston on political and social issues, defending again, as he had throughout the later half of 1840 and the whole of 1841,136 the 132

Ibid., 15: 203. Ibid., 15: 208. 134 “Distribution Bill and the Public Lands,” Boston Quarterly Review 4 (April 1841): 230-56. 135 On Calhoun’s opposition, see, for example, “Speech on the Distribution Bill, August 24, 1841” and “Speech on the Veto Power, February 28, 1842” in John C. Calhoun, The Works, ed. Richard K. Crallé, 6 vols. (1851-56; New York: Russell and Russell, 1968), 4:13-44; 74-100. 136 For Brownson’s defense, see EW, 5:35-43, and especially 5: Chapter 8. 133

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“horrible doctrines”137 of his July 1840 essay on “The Laboring Classes.” At the Temple in Boston, for example, he delivered four lectures on civilization during March and April. The Boston Daily Times reported on the third lecture, the “Influence of Property on Civilization.”138 The reporter was surprised by the mixture of conservatism and radicalism in the talk, and criticized Brownson’s arguments against the laws that protected the inheritance of property. Brownson had argued that those who owned an excessive amount of property always possessed an inordinate amount of power in governments, even in democratic ones. He wanted to provide for a more equitable distribution of property for the sake of balancing real power in society and in government, because in the struggle between “wealth and humanity,” wealth was always victorious. Brownson reacted to the Times article, contending that it had in some particulars misrepresented the talk. The Times had inaccurately reported that Brownson believed it was the duty of government to protect property. Government’s fundamental duty was not to protect property but human beings who had rights to property. In the lecture Brownson had also defended his “Laboring Classes” suggestion that government ought to abolish all laws protecting inheritance of property. The Times misconstrued what he had said by asserting that all property of deceased persons should be taken by the state “for the benefit of society at large.” That was not what Brownson held. The state was not the inheritor of property because in his view all property became vacant at death. He wanted the inheritance laws changed so that all children, not just the children of the deceased, should inherit equal amounts of property from the deceased. Such a proposal, he continued to believe, reflected the principles of republicanism. Although he continued to insist that he had no practical hopes that such a suggestion would be implemented in the United States, he still believed that it reflected “wisdom and equity” and had the “best prospect” of implementing the doctrine of equality. For him property was important in the body politic because it gave electors what they needed to act and vote as responsible and free citizens. The government’s job was to diffuse property as much as possible. Property was a necessary means for maintaining the practical liberty of all 137 “Horrible Doctrines” was the title of a review of the “Laboring Classes” in the Roxbury Democrat (July 18, 1840). Some years after his conversion to Catholicism, Brownson himself used this designation in The Convert (1857; see Works 5: 99-108) to describe his essay. 138 (March 24, 1842): 2.

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in society. Unequal amounts of property gave privileged individuals an inordinate amount of power in a democratic and free society.139 In May and June of 1842, Brownson again defended his position on government’s responsibility to property. In a speech before the United States Congress, reported in the Daily National Intelligencer, Thomas D. Arnold, United States Representative from Tennessee, called Brownson “a notorious infidel and agrarian leader, of the worst kind of Locofocos.”140 The speech was Arnold’s response to a charge by New Hampshire Representative Edmund Burke that Tennessee lacked great men of learning. Arnold responded that Tennessee, unlike New Hampshire, had not produced the likes of Brownson, Joseph Smith, Abner Kneeland, and other American radicals. In response to the charge, Brownson wrote Burke, requesting that Burke defend Brownson’s name in Congress and have his letter sent to the Intelligencer. Brownson responded that he was a Vermonter, not a New Hampshire man, and denied that he was an agrarian, an infidel (at least since 1831), and a locofoco. In fact, he retorted, he was not even a Democrat, but a Republican.141 Arnold returned to the fight in June, claiming that his charges were justified because of Brownson’s “Laboring Classes” essay of 1840 and the multiple, even Democratic, charges against its “horrible doctrines.”142 Again Brownson denied the charges, indicating that he had defended himself against the “horrible doctrines” in 1840. Although he declared himself again to be a constitutionalist and not a democrat, he supported popular government against aristocratic or regal forms of government. What he opposed was all unlimited government, whatever form it took.143 Although Brownson denied that he was a Democrat, he indeed belonged to the Democratic party, and with a number of other prominent Democrats he supported the Dorr Rebellion in Rhode Island in 1842.144 For years Thomas W. Dorr, state senator in Rhode Island, 139

“Mr. Brownson on the Property Question,” Boston Daily Times 12 (March 30, 1842): 2. For easy access to the letter, see Daniel Ramon Barnes, “An Edition of the Early Letters of Orestes Brownson,” Ph.D., diss., University of Kentucky, 1970, 246-56. 140 Daily National Intelligencer (May 9, 1842). 141 “To Honorable Edmund Burke,” Daily National Intelligencer (May 30, 1842). For easy access to the letter, see Daniel Ramon Barnes, 257-62. 142 Daily National Intelligencer (June 10, 1842). 143 “To the Editors,” Daily National Intelligencer (June 29, 1842). For easy access to the letter, see Daniel Ramon Barnes, 263-70. 144 For favorable contemporary accounts of the rebellion, see “The Rhode Island Affair” and “The Rhode Island Question,” both in the United States Magazine and Democratic Review 10 (June 1842): 602-07 and (July 1842): 70-83. The National Union Catalogue attributed the second article to Brownson, but I do not believe it is his. The language as well as the concepts do not square with his January

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had been agitating for universal suffrage in the state, trying to abolish the freeholder qualifications that restricted eligibility. He knew Brownson and other Democrats outside of Rhode Island and during the 1840 presidential campaign had invited Brownson to Providence to speak on behalf of the Democratic ticket. In January of 1841, he again invited Brownson to speak in Providence on behalf of the Free Suffrage party. On both occasions Brownson obliged and was well received by supporters of the universal male suffrage movement. In January of 1841, Joseph Pitman, a federal judge in Rhode Island, opposed the Dorr-led campaign as a “revolutionary movement” and charged that it had been fostered by outside agitators like Brownson.145 Despite the opposition the movement continued to the point of creating a new state constitution. In April of 1842 Dorr was elected governor under the new, but illegal, constitution. He assumed office in May of 1842. On 14 May 1842 Brownson wrote “Governor” Dorr an unsolicited letter of support for the rebellion claiming that “there are [indecipherable] hearts and strong arms enough in the Union to sustain you, and with myself [would] shoulder a musket and fight if need be” to resist unjustified federal military involvement in Rhode Island’s affairs.146 This kind of rhetoric had disastrous results. On 18 May 1842, Dorr led a group of the rebels to attack the Providence Arsenal in order to secure the new government against the reigning government. The attack was unsuccessful; Dorr fled, only to return, be tried for treason, and imprisoned. The whole affair was devastating and Brownson would later regret his participation in the affair. But, his participation demonstrated that while he was calling for more respect for constitutional law and order he did not intend to deny the practical necessity of universal male suffrage in the United States. He upheld the democratic form of government. In the early part of 1843, Brownson returned to Providence to lecture. Apparently he repudiated his former doctrines of popular sovereignty and in conversation “was base enough” to deny that he had ever given those doctrines any “countenance” or had had “any articles on politics. For three of the many historical accounts of the rebellion, see Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Age of Jackson (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1945), 412-17; Marvin E. Gettleman, The Dorr Rebellion: A Study in American Radicalism: 1833-1849 (New York: Random House, 1973) and David Grimsted, American Mobbing, 1828-1861 ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 199217. For an apologetical explanation of Brownson’s participation in the affair, see Henry Brownson’s Brownson’s Early Life, 342-44. 145 On this, see Marvin E. Gettleman, 57-58. 146 Brownson to Thomas W. Dorr, Esq, Governor of Rhode Island, May 14, 1842. Letter in the Dorr Papers, Brown University Library Archives.

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communication with Mr. Dorr” —at least that is the way Dorr himself interpreted Brownson’s post-rebellion activities in Providence.147 As a consequence of these denials, Dorr published Brownson’s May letter, much to Brownson’s embarrassment. He had to explain himself, and he tried to do so in October of 1844. Brownson admitted his sympathy with Dorr, his approval of the extension of the franchise, and his encouragement of the suffrage association in Rhode Island. He believed in 1842, moreover, that though the proceedings under the new constitution were illegal and revolutionary, he saw no legal way of addressing the legitimate grievances. He admitted, too, that he had written the letter of encouragement to Dorr and that it could legitimately be interpreted as an “expression of approbation of Mr. Dorr’s principle of proceeding” but that he did not intend it as a support for revolution, only for the extension of suffrage. The letter, he claimed, was “hastily written for a special purpose.”148 Brownson’s torturous explanation revealed his duplicity, but it also demonstrated a personality flaw that plagued him throughout his life—his tendency to publish his ideas in haste, before he had thought out the consequences of his use of language. Nonetheless he did make political distinctions on the issue of popular sovereignty that many who read him misunderstood or were unwilling to accept. He accepted popular sovereignty as a means of democratic government, but not as an unlimited power in government nor as the principle or ground of government. But his language was not always precise in articulating these views. Brownson found something defective not only in the direction of American political life but also in social arrangements themselves. He argued in an 1842 paean to Brook Farm that there was a growing conviction in American society of a great disparity between “the actual and possible condition of mankind.” Everywhere, he continued, people were realizing that they have not yet reached the “social state.” For Brownson the Brook Farm experiment, organized and led by his close Transcendentalist friend, George Ripley, was one of the successful attempts to work out the “moral, intellectual, and physical amelioration of mankind, especially of the poorest and most numerous class.”149 Brownson’s initial support for the Brook Farm experiment in communal living flowed from more than a decade of friendship and 147 This view was expressed in a hand written note on Brownson’s 14 May 1842 letter to Dorr. I presume that the handwriting is Dorr’s. 148 “The Suffrage Party in Rhode Island,” Brownson’s Quarterly Review 6 (October 1844): 532-44; see especially p. 509. 149 “Brook Farm,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (November 1842): 481; see also p. 424 in this volume.

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ideological sympathy with Ripley. Both had been closely associated since the early 1830s and were what I have in a previous volume called communitarian or social Transcendentalists because of their mutual interests in the social problems of the day, their particular perspective on social reform, and especially their concerns for the poor working classes.150 Ripley had invited Brownson to come to Boston to minister to the unchurched working class in Boston. The two men, moreover, were charter members of the Transcendentalist Club. They also had a mutual interest in the philosophies of Constant, Cousin, Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Kant and shared their books with one another. Brownson in fact considered Ripley “a metaphysician second to none in the country.”151 Finally, Brownson’s reading of Leroux and his growing preoccupation with communion and the solidarity of the human race made him receptive to the Brook Farm experiment. Ripley had originally considered establishing a community of scholars and workers in 1840 and discussed the idea with members of the Transcendentalist Club before actually incorporating Brook Farm in April of 1841.152 In a 9 November 1840 letter to Emerson, Ripley outlined some of the fundamental purposes of the anticipated community. Brook Farm was to be created to insure a more natural union between intellectual and manual labor than existed; to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental freedom, by providing all 150

EW, 3: 22-24. “Brook Farm,” United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (November 1842): 488; see also p. 436 in this volume. Ripley returned the compliment by acknowledging his indebtedness to Brownson for the ideas that gave rise to Brook Farm: “If I had never known you, I should never have been engaged in this enterprise. I consider it as the incarnation of those transcendental truths which we have held in common, and which you have done much to make me love.” For Ripley’s view of his relationship with Brownson and for this statement, see Ripley to Brownson, 18 December 1842, in the Archives of the University of Notre Dame and in Roll #1 of the microfilm edition of the Brownson Papers; see also Henry Brownson, Early Life, 311-15. 152 For accounts of Brook Farm, see Lindsay Swift, Brook Farm: Its Members, Scholars, and Visitors (New York, Macmillan, 1900) and Charles Crowe, George Ripley: Transcendentalist and Utopian Socialist (Athens, Ga: University of Georgia Press, 1967), 124-68. For other sources prior to 1978, see Joel Myerson, Brook Farm: An Annotated Bibliography and Resource Guide (New York: Garland, 1978). See also Richard Francis, Transcendental Utopias: Individual and Community at Brook Farm, Fruitlands, and Walden (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 35-139; Carl J. Guarneri, The Utopian Alternative, 51-59 and passim; and Sterling F. Delano, Brook Farm: The Dark Side of Utopia (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004). 151

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with labor, adapted to their tastes and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry; to do away with the necessity of menial services, by opening the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all; and thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent and cultivated persons, whose relations with each other would permit a more simple and wholesome life than can be led amidst the pressure of our competitive institutions.153 Ripley hoped to establish a community that would ultimately actualize in the social order the Christian ideal of community. Like Bancroft and Brownson, Ripley had written of the social as well as political dimensions and implications of Christianity and democracy. Like them, too, he proposed the extension of democracy into all social relations. Brook Farm put these ideas into practice in concrete ways. He founded the community of cooperative living to escape the cut-throat competitive life style that was emerging in American commercial society. Brownson’s essay on “Brook Farm” for the Democratic Review put the experiment within the larger context of five contemporary proposals for social reform: the clerical (seek the Kingdom of God first), ethical (self-culture), political (universal suffrage and eligibility), economical (laissez-faire free trade) and socialist (Owenites, Fourierists). He placed Ripley’s farm in the socialist camp, but without the disadvantages of Owen’s individualism and Fourier’s mechanically organized phalanxes. Brownson interpreted the farm as Ripley’s deepest desire to “create around him the circumstances which would” enable him and others to live “in a truly Christian manner.”154 For Brownson the farm was an experiment in Christian idealism, somewhat analogous to monastic communities in the Christian past. Brownson would like to have said more about Brook Farm’s relation to Christianity and the church but he had no space to do so.155 Ripley’s farm also demonstrated Leroux’s doctrine of communion and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz’s law of continuity because it sought to reform social life by preserving and enhancing the fundamental institutions of society (the family and the state). Unlike some socialists, Ripley did not destroy these institutions or make them mere accidents of history. The farm provided for the development and progress of individuals, moreover, without advancing individualism. Within the context of many other schemes for reform in the early nineteenth century, Brook 153 Letter in Ripley papers, Houghton Library, Harvard University, bMS Am 1280 (2719). For easy access to the letter, see Octavius Brooks Frothingham, George Ripley (1883; New York: AMS Press, 1970), 307-12. 154 “Brook Farm,” 488; see also p. 436 in this volume. 155 “Brook Farm,” 489; see also p. 439 in this volume.

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Farm offered the best possible context for preserving a balance between progress and continuity, individualism and community. Brownson’s best recommendation for Brook Farm came in the summer of 1842 when he sent there his eldest son, Orestes Jr., who was fourteen years old at the time, and suggested that Isaac Hecker (1819-88), a young New York disciple whom he had met on one of his lecture tours, join the community, which he did in January of 1843. Neither Orestes Jr. nor Hecker lasted long at Brook Farm, both leaving in the summer of 1843. By the fall of 1843, too, Brownson himself was no longer as enthusiastic as he had once been about Brook Farm. He told Hecker in September of 1843: “These communities [Fruitlands as well as Brook Farm] after all are humbugs. We must rehabilitate the church, and work under its direction.”156 By 1843 the church had a priority in his mind over all communal experiments. Throughout the duration of the Boston Quarterly Review Brownson had devoted a considerable amount of space to current literary endeavors and his own philosophy of literature. This was not the case in 1842, however, because of his primary focus on theology and philosophy. He gave some attention to the subject in “Modern French Literature” and “Zanoni” but those articles were not explicitly concerned with literary theory. “Modern French Literature” drew attention to the “social democracy” of Victor Hugo, Henri de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas and Georges Sand (Madame Amandine Aurore Lucie Dudevant), focusing in particular on Sand’s “powerful genius” as a writer and her great sensitivities to the social conditions under which people lived. Brownson did not know it at the time, but Sand herself had also come under the influence of Leroux as had Hugo.157 His sympathy for Sand’s work reflected his appreciation of Leroux’s understanding of the social unity and mutual interdependence of human beings. Most of the article, however, focused on his criticisms of the women’s rights movement. In July of 1842 he published a review of Zanoni (1842), a novel by Edward Lytton Bulwer, a writer Brownson had since at least 1830 156 Brownson to Hecker, 2 September 1843, in Joseph F. Gower and Richard M. Leliaert, ed., The Brownson-Hecker Correspondence (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), 66. 157 For Leroux’s influence on Sand and Hugo, see, for example, Felix Thomas, Pierre Leroux, 66ff; Arthur McCalla, A Romantic Historiography: The Philosophy of History of Pierre-Simon Ballanche (Leiden, Brill, 1998), 395; Armelle Le BrasChopard, De L’Égalité, passim; David Owen Evans, Social Romanticism in France, 1830-1848 (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), 37-47, and Warwick Gould and Marjorie Reeves, Joachim of Fiore and the Myth of the Eternal Evangel in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 100-31.

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praised for his social conscience. In fact, as late as April of 1842, he had high praise for Bulwer’s “insurrectionary” and “rebellious” attacks on the shams of the modern social inequalities.158 Although he still valued much here and there in Bulwer’s works, Brownson found much more to criticize in the July review. Bulwer’s literary, moral and philosophical merits were not as “extraordinary as we once thought.”159 From a literary view, his characters were not well developed, and he suffered from a “refined sentimentalism” that was also evident in American Transcendentalism.160 What concerned Brownson most, however, was his moral and philosophical orientation. At heart, Brownson charged, Bulwer was not a true reformer; rather he had an aristocratic taste and a Tory horror of the French Revolution. The people, the poorest and most numerous class, not the leaders behind the French Revolution, Brownson insisted, had legitimate complaints against the power and injustices of the throne. Bulwer’s criticisms of the Revolution had proved, Brownson thought, that he was false to the “sacred cause of popular enfranchisement, or social amelioration.”161 Bulwer’s new novel reflected his changed attitudes toward reform. Brownson also admitted that his own views and taste were changing. By the end of 1842, the effects of Brownson’s religious and philosophical conversions had manifested themselves in a number of ways. He had separated himself from what he designated Transcendental theology, although he had not completely abandoned his former philosophical idealism á la Cousin. He was moving away from Transcendentalism, but not as far as his language would seem to indicate. His language, though, was always more forceful and less nuanced than he intended, as his friend Ripley pointed out.162 His acceptance of Leroux’s criticisms of Eclecticism and his doctrine of life, moreover, showed through in almost every essay he wrote during the year. But more radical conservative religious and political statements were ahead in 1843, and they would draw an audience larger than the Unitarian and Transcendentalist circles he had previously engaged. That part of his development is outlined in volume seven. 158

“Modern French Literature,” in Works, 19:53; see also p. 172 in this volume. “Zanoni,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July 1842): 342. 160 Ibid., 346, 359. 161 Ibid., 357. 162 Ripley to Brownson, 18 December 1842. Commenting on Charles Dana’s unguarded remarks about Brownson’s son Orestes Jr., Ripley notes, “As to Mr. Dana’s remark, you must take it at a reasonable discount; he is a prince among men by his character and feelings; but, like yourself, he is apt to deal in strong expressions, and his bark is worse than his bite.” Those who were well acquainted with Brownson throughout his life, including his son Henry, shared Ripley’s perception. 159

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1. CHURCH OF THE FUTURE1 Boston Quarterly Review 5 (January, 1842): 1-27

It is not very customary for an author to be his own reviewer; and yet there is no good reason why it should not be. The reviewer might then always have the advantage, not slight, of reviewing a work which he has at least read, and a subject in which he most likely takes a warm personal interest. Our purpose, however, is not so much to review this little book which we published a few years since, as to bring its subject, with some additional developments, more distinctly before the public. This little book, one of the earliest of our publications that we would not forget, is not without its faults, and some of them very grave; but we value it more than anything else that we have published. It is, upon the whole, the most genuine statement of our whole thought, of the principles which we believe must form the basis of the future church that we have made. It has been now some five or six years before the public, without having attracted much attention, although it has not failed to secure some warm friends. And yet its success has been all that could have been reasonably anticipated. It is hardly fitted to be a popular work; not indeed because its style and language want clearness and precision, nor because its subject-matter is beyond the reach of ordinary comprehension; but because it is altogether too brief in its developments, and too abstract and general in its statements; and also because it is written from a point of view foreign to the great majority of our countrymen. The general scope and design of the work have in most cases been misapprehended; not altogether through the fault of the author, but through the want of familiarity on the part of its readers with the order of thought, which it seeks on the one hand to develop and on the other to combat. The design of the work was to state simply, briefly, but distinctly, the general principles which must govern the religious and social future of the race; but so to state them as to refute the errors of a school, becoming somewhat powerful in the 1 [Ed. Brownson’s review of his own New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church (Boston: James Munroe & Co., 1836).]

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old world, and which might possibly ere long find its way to our own country. In a word, the work presupposes in almost every page the writings of the Saint-Simonians, and especially Henry Heine’s De l’Allemagne.2 The author writes with these works constantly before his eyes and labors, on the one hand, to show the church that it may accept the truths they contain without involving itself in their errors; and, on the other hand, to show their authors that they can accept Christianity without becoming responsible for the unquestionable errors of the church. But this, as it was done without any formal statement, could be apparent only to such as had read the writings in question; and as these were but few, comparatively speaking, the real purport of the book could not be generally conceived. The Saint-Simonians as a religious body have been dissolved; but their doctrines in a modified form are perhaps the only doctrines that are at the present moment really making any progress in either France or Germany. They are no ordinary doctrines, and their influence on the future of mankind cannot be easily calculated. They contain truths of the highest order, of the most comprehensive reach, and truths, too, which must and will rise to dominion. But these truths, perfectly harmonious with the principles of the gospel, nay, which are but the growth of the fundamental principles of the gospel, are brought out in opposition to Christianity, and supposed by their authors to involve necessarily its destruction. With them Christianity was a very good thing in its day; and in the development of the race, in the institution and growth of a higher order of civilization, it has served a very useful purpose; but the race has now outgrown it, and demands not merely a new church, but a new religion. Against this view of Christianity this book of ours was written. We saw that the ground of attack upon religion was shifted, and that therefore it had become necessary to shift the ground of defense. The old sneers and cavils, the old attempts to impeach the purity of its morals, or the completeness of its chain of historical evidence, were to be abandoned and Christianity was to be accepted, but not as a living religion, having the right and the power to command men’s obedience; but as a religion of the past, divine and authoritative for yesterday, and therefore to be held in grateful recollection; but worth2 [Ed. Henry Heine (1797-1856) published the two volumes of his De l’Allemagne in 1833 to acquaint French readers with the history of religion, philosophy and literature in Germany. The first part was on “Religion and Philosophy in Germany.” On this, see Religion and Philosophy in Germany: A Fragment, trans. by John Snodgrass (1882; rpt. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1986).]

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less for today. We wished to prepare for this new species of warfare, indeed to prevent it, by separating the truths of the church from its errors, and the truths of this new school from its errors, and showing that the truths of both were coincident with the teachings of Jesus. This was our aim in the book, and time is fast showing that our precautionary movement was not uncalled for. For the book itself we have the greater affection from the fact that it did not turn out to be precisely such a book as we contemplated when we sat down to write. We had contemplated accomplishing our purpose, by attempting little more than to establish the general fact that all religions are progressive, and that the elements of Christianity are comprehensive enough for a religion adequate to any conceivable stage of human advancement. We had written some eight or nine chapters with this view, when one day, as we were writing, a sentence passed from the pen to the paper, which, as soon as it was written down and contemplated, seemed to be a key that unlocked the whole mystery of the historical development of the church. Suddenly, man’s whole history, from the indefinite past to the illimitable future, seemed to lie open in broad sunlight to the intense gaze of the writer. The whole book was given him in a glance, and in writing it, henceforth, he did little else than transfer to his pages what that glance revealed to him. The original plan was abandoned, and the chapters already written, condensed into the first four pages which serve as an introduction, and the book sent out as it is. This fact may be worth nothing to the public, but it is worth something to the author, and although he asks no respect to be paid to the book on the account of it, yet this fact gives it additional authority in his own mind, the authority due to veritable inspiration. The book was published, the vision which remained till it was written vanished, and man and his history became as dark an enigma to the writer as ever. He lost sight of the great leading principle of the book, and continued his philosophical and historical investigations as before, and as if nothing had occurred. The result has been that after five years of intense application, he has come to the same conclusions by a different process. He, therefore, finds the book once again in his experience, and reaffirms it. The views here given, perhaps, should not be called new, for taken separately, many of them may be found elsewhere; but the book, taken as a whole, in its leading principle, in its spirit and design, is truly original. It was at least original with the writer; and if others have taken similar views, we have not seen their statement of them. But the question of its newness, or of its originality, is of very

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little consequence. The only important questions concerning it are, What are these views? Are they true? Are they comprehensive, and likely to be fruitful in important results? For an answer to these questions we refer to the book itself. In what follows we shall endeavor to set forth some of them again, and in a form less abstract and general. The book in fact is faulty in respect to the form in which it states the views of the writer. His desire to say all, and his unwillingness to make a large book, induced him to adopt a form of expression which is altogether too abstract. More is meant than appears, and more than most readers can find, till they have learned in part the author’s views from some other source. Man lives only by virtue of some theory of the universe, which solves for him the problem of his existence and destiny, and prescribes a life-plan which he must endeavor to realize. This theory, whatever it be, or however obtained, is what man names RELIGION. It is always his highest conception of God and of the law of his own being. Religion is then the ideal, and man’s effort to realize it. To be religious man must act with his whole nature, and strive with all his strength, intelligence, and love, to realize the ideal in every department of life, in the individual, in the family, in the state, in the world, in industry, science, and art. The CHURCH is the organization of mankind for the peaceable, orderly, and successful realization of the Christian ideal, or the ideal as beheld by the early followers of Jesus. The ideal as thus beheld was below the infinite, below that of Jesus even, and therefore could be only for a time. It could not be the ideal for the race through all the stages of its progress. The church, in its origin, though never embracing the true Christian ideal in its fullness, was nevertheless a genuine church of the ideal. It was far in advance of all preceding organizations of mankind, and must be redeeming and ameliorating in its influence, till it had brought the Christian nations up even with itself. Up even with itself the church has now brought the Christian world. The civilization it has created is even in some respects in advance of it. For a thousand years and more, it was the church of the ideal. It was the depositary of the intelligence, the wisdom, the virtue, the aspirations of the race. It proposed a work for humanity, and directed individual and social activities in the path of progress. But it now looks no more to the future. It has realized its ideal. It proposes no new labors for civilization, makes no new demands on the race in behalf of progress. It therefore loses sight of the end for which it was instituted, and must now turn its face once more to the future, embrace the ideal, or give way for a NEW CHURCH, which shall be an

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organization of mankind, not to retain the past, but to conquer the future. Humanity eternally aspires. It sees ever before it new heights to be scaled, new victories to be won, and is always eager to march. It cannot be stayed. Ever does the ideal hover before its actual position, commanding it to advance, and forbidding it to halt, much less encamp. If the church will not lead, humanity will displace it, choose a new leader, and go on without it in its career of battle and conquest. The church was originally based on the doctrine of the incarnation of the Word, or the divine ideal, in the man Christ Jesus, and on that of the distinction of the two principles, spirit and matter, making spirit the principle of good, and matter the principle of evil. The ancient philosophers, especially Pythagoras3 and Plato, conceived of the Logos or WORD of God. But with them this WORD was a pure idea. It existed, but merely in the abstract. It might be an object of contemplation, and of a sort of metaphysical admiration, to the few choice spirits, able to rise to its conception; but it was hidden from the mass, without life, and without power to mold the character of the individual, or to direct the action of society to the common advancement of the race. Few only can rise to the abstract, and those few derive no life from it. The WORD of God, however prominent a place it may hold in systems of metaphysics, cannot be the wisdom of God, and the power of God unto salvation, until incarnated, clothed with flesh, and seen living and breathing, acting and loving, toiling and suffering, and dying and rising from the dead, for the redemption of man. God is for us only in his WORD, and his WORD is regenerating only as made flesh, and seen to “dwell among us full of grace and truth” [John 1:14]. Men strive in their minds to form a conception of an infinite, all-perfect, abstract being, which they may call God; and in their hearts they strive to love and reverence him. Vain effort. There are no abstractions in absolute life. God is no abstraction, but an infinite concrete. He may be perceived, but only relatively, and the view which is taken of him must be always finite and inadequate. The finite, relative, inadequate conception we form of God is the ideal, the only God there is for us, and to this ideal we never attain by abstraction; to it we attain only so far as it is concreted, or revealed by the finite and relative beings falling under our observation. 3 [Ed. Pythagoras (c. 570-490 B.C.) was a Greek philosopher who saw the universe as one glorious harmony and the human’s goal was to understand and identify with that cosmic harmony. His school was known for its practice of abstinence and asceticism.]

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The doctrine of the Incarnation of the WORD, teaches us that there is for us no God, but “God manifest in the flesh.” There is no God to love and reverence, but the God that lives and moves in, creates and sustains, what we actually see and know of the universe. God is to us distinguishable, but not separable from man and nature; as time is distinguishable from succession, but absolutely inconceivable without it; or space from extension, while without extension it were to us as if it were not. God, if we may so speak, is concreted in his works, a living God, instead of that cold, naked abstraction, which metaphysicians call God, satisfying the demands of a frigid logic it may be, but dead to the heart. Nevertheless, this living God, which we finite beings may know, love, and reverence is not God in the infinite fullness of his being, but the WORD of God, God uttered, and uttered merely to our finite capacities. The absolute God is too vast for our feeble intellects, too luminous for our obscure vision. No man hath seen his face at any time. Yet the living God, uttered in the living realities, we see and know, is in fact one with the Father. In knowing, loving, and reverencing the God thus made visible to us, we are in fact, knowing, loving, and reverencing the absolute God, so far as our feeble faculties do or can attain to him. The doctrine of the Incarnation also proclaims the dignity and worth of human nature, not of the human soul merely, but of man himself. The WORD is made flesh in a genuine Son of Man. Jesus is born of woman. Marriage and maternity are thus declared to be holy, and human nature itself to be kindred with the divine. For what means this Mystery of the “WORD become flesh” [John 1:14], if not that the highest and fullest manifestation of God, the most brilliant and adequate representation of God, of the absolute God, is a genuine Son of Man, a true human being? Man was made in the image of God, is the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person. He is the finite representative of the infinite God. He is then redeemed from the alleged degradation of his being, and declared to be worthy of love and reverence. The Incarnation, since it was in a man, a real man, a man born of woman, proclaims the dignity of man, and the divinity of his nature. God is known, loved, reverenced, only in his visible manifestation. Man is this visible manifestation. To know, love, and reverence man, then, is to know, love, and reverence God, under the only possible form, and in the only acceptable manner. The love of God has no expression but in the love of man. Here is a basis, and a firm basis too, of a broad and genuine philanthropy, in view of which, the angels, all pure and loving spirits, hovering over the cradle of the infant

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Redeemer, might well shout, “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, and good will to men” [Luke 2:14]. The effects of this doctrine of the Incarnation are visible everywhere in modern civilization, in great part are it, and are seen in its more generous and humane character over all the civilizations which preceded it; in its tenderness of human life; in the high rank it assigns to the virtues of meekness, gentleness, mercy, charity, modesty, chastity, and love; in the high value it places on man as an individual; in its emancipation of the slave, and general labors to promote liberty, and social well-being. The church, however, has but imperfectly comprehended this doctrine. It misapprehended it from the beginning; but its misconceptions of it were of a nature to do no harm in the actual state of things for a long series of years; but they now become mischievous and need to be corrected. The church was right in what it asserted, wrong in what it denied. When it asserted the incarnation of the ideal in Jesus, it asserted the truth; when it asserted that it was and could be incarnated in only him, it erred; and this latter error is the source of no small part of the present hostility it encounters. The church, by asserting the incarnation of the ideal in the Son of Mary, has declared him to be a true man, a genuine Son of God, and secured to him the love and reverence man owes to his God; but, in restricting it to him, she has disinherited in some sort all the rest of the sons of men. She has secured to him no more love and reverence than was his due; but had she properly interpreted the mystery of God made flesh, she would have commanded that the same love and reverence be paid to every man, for every man is, in proportion to the quantity of his being, an incarnation, a visible manifestation of the divinity. This truth the church has overlooked in her intense admiration of Jesus; and of all the sons of men she has found but one she could dignify with the name of the Son of God. Jesus was all that the church has alleged. He was verily the Son of God. He lived, toiled, suffered, and died, and rose again for the redemption of man. Of all the Sons of Men, in his epoch, he was eminently God’s dear and well-beloved Son. He has been the father of a new age, the institutor of a new order of civilization, the giver of a new life to the world, the real mediator between God and men, and the literal Savior of our souls. But viewed as the Son of Mary, the sympathizing brother of the poor and afflicted, he is not separated nor separable from the rest of the sons of men. He was a true brother man. He was the Son of God. But we may say today, for today the truth can be apprehended, we are ALL THE SONS OF GOD, and

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therefore heirs of God, and joint heirs with Jesus. Not in Jesus alone does the divine ideal incarnate itself, but in every man, in all men, and therefore all men are brethren, and possessors of a divine nature. This is the great truth which the church must now accept and bring out, a truth which is nothing but the generalization of the particular truth, she has always contended for. The new church, the church of the ideal, will be based on this generalization, and will therefore prescribe to its members the duty of loving and reverencing all men, as we have heretofore loved and reverenced Jesus. We love and reverence God, when we love and reverence man. Religious duty will be made henceforth to consist, not in abortive attempts to love and reverence a metaphysical abstraction, a mere logical entity, nor yet in loving and reverencing one only of the sons of men; but humanity; nor yet humanity in the abstract, man in general, but nobody in particular; but all the individual men and women who compose the race. This will not require us to love and reverence Jesus less, but his brethren more. All men will by this become sacred; each man will be a living shrine of the Godhead, a visible, speaking, loving symbol of the Father. The actual church is an organization for the worship of God, as revealed in one individual; the church of the future will be an organization for the worship of God as revealed in all men. The ideal of the new church will be the redemption and sanctification of the race, as the ideal of the old church was the redemption and sanctification of the individual; or the new will add to the old the redemption and sanctification of the race. The new never lets go the old; but retains it, and enlarges it, by making that general, which was before particular. “Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but TO FULFIL” [Matt 5:17]. The effect of the new church, or the new organization of mankind, for the express purpose of directing all activities, all intelligences, all sympathies, all industry, science, and art, to the realization of genuine love and reverence for all men, must baffle the most sanguine hope to calculate. The new church will realize the vision of the angels, and enable all men from all the earth, with sweet and harmonious voices to echo their glad chorus. It will usher in the age of universal peace; and all man’s energies, which have so often been turned against his brother, and into instruments for making the earth a vast field of blood, will be employed in the useful or ornamental arts, and in promoting universal well-being. The groans of this nether world will cease. Man will stand erect, the image of his Maker, and look forth in joy upon a world made beautiful by his love. This SHALL be. The

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old church will become the church of the ideal, or a new church will be organized for its realization. The heart of universal humanity cries out for it. Let him that hath ears hear. II.4 The Oriental religions, which preceded the church, all recognized the doctrine of two coeternal, coexisting, and mutually hostile principles, one the principle of good, the other the principle of evil. The church has never formally embraced this doctrine; it has condemned it even, in the Gnostic and especially the Manichean heresies, and sought to reconcile the existence of evil with the origin of all things in the principle of good, by means of the dogmas of the revolt of angels and the fall of man. Nevertheless it has not wholly escaped it, but has reproduced it under the modified form of the original and inherent antagonism of spirit and matter, generating two classes of interests, mutually destructive one of the other, termed the one class celestial, or spiritual interests, and the other class terrestrial, material, temporal, or carnal interests. The first class are regarded by the church as supreme, permanent, eternal, holy; the second class as low, variable, transitory, and essentially unholy. Hence, its constant effort has been to withdraw attention from the latter, and to fix it on the former; to rescue men from the slavery of the flesh, and to make them free in the spirit. This distinction of interests and this labor of the church have not been without their good results. They have tended, in no slight degree, to purify the affections, to exalt the sentiments, and to promote the virtues of tenderness, meekness, gentleness, humility, chastity, and love. Men have been led to raise moral courage over physical, to prefer truth to riches, and poverty and obscurity to the pomp and majesty of the world. An army of true soldiers of the cross has been reared and disciplined, eager to brave toil, suffering, danger, and death for the glory of God and the salvation of the soul. The history of missions and missionaries, from Paul to the Moravians,5 is a brilliant chapter in the history of humanity. The voluntary poverty of the mendicant orders, and of the great body of the Catholic clergy, reveals a faith that overcomes the world. This separation of spiritual interests from material interests, involved necessarily a separation of church and state. When Jesus came, 4

[Ed. There is no I. in the original.] [Ed. The Moravians or Moravian Brethern were descendants of the Bohemian Brethren. In 1722 they received at Herrnhut under Count Nicholas Ludwig Graf von Zinzendorf (1700-60) support, guidance, and organization. They wanted to return to the simplicity of early Christianity, fostered the internal life of the spirit, and gave a limited adherence to the Lutheran Augsburg Confession.] 5

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the state was in the hands of the military society, and was organized for no higher ideal than war and conquest; or at best, the maintenance of civil order by military force, against foreign and domestic enemies. He said, therefore, “my kingdom is not of this age” [John 18:36]. I must wait till a more auspicious period, before mankind can be definitively organized for the peaceable and orderly pursuit of the ideal. Therefore “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s” [Matt 22:21]. Civil society could not then be brought into accordance with Christian principles. In order to effect that, a higher order of civilization was needed. The church therefore abandoned civil society to Caesar to rapine and violence, to ignorance and brutal passion; while it labored exclusively in the spiritual sphere for the creation of a new order of civilization, which should ultimately redress the state, and bring it up to its own ideal. In this sphere it labored with untiring zeal and perseverance from the first century to the fifteenth, and successfully laid the foundations of all that society now is. During the greater part of that period, by means of its superior intelligence and virtue, it ruled the state, modified its actions, and compelled its administrators to consult the rights of man, by protecting the poor, the feeble, and the defenseless. It is not easy to estimate the astonishing progress it effected for civilization during that long period, called by narrowminded and bigoted Protestant historians the dark ages. Never before had such labors been performed for humanity. Never before had there been such an immense body, as the Christian clergy, animated by a common spirit, and directed by a common will and intelligence to the cultivation and growth of the moral virtues and the arts of peace. Then was tamed the wild barbarian, and the savage heart made to yield to the humanizing influences of tenderness, gentleness, meekness, humility, and love; then imperial crown, and royal scepter paled before the crosier, and the representative of him, who had lived, and toiled, and preached, and suffered, and died in obscurity, in poverty and disgrace, was exalted, and made himself felt in the palace and in the cottage, in the court and the camp, striking terror into the rich and noble, and pouring the oil and wine of consolation into the bruised heart of the poor and friendless. Wrong, wrong have they been, who have complained that kings and emperors were subjected to the spiritual head of Christendom. It was well for man that there was a power above the brutal tyrants called emperors, kings, and barons, who rode rough shod over the humble peasant and artisan, well that there was a power even on earth that could touch their cold and atheistical hearts, and make them tremble as the veriest slave.

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The heart of humanity leaps with joy, when a murderous Henry is scourged at the tomb of Thomas a Becket, or when another Henry waits barefoot, shivering with cold and hunger for days, at the door of the Vatican, or when a Pope grinds his foot into the neck of a Frederic Barbarossa.6 Aristocratic Protestantism, which has never dared enforce its discipline on royalty or nobility, may weep over the exercise of such power, but it is to the existence and exercise of that power that the PEOPLE owe their existence, and the doctrine of man’s equality to man its progress. All that the church has really done for humanity was done during what are termed the dark ages. It then laid the foundations of modern civilization, breathed into it its humane and gentle spirit, and animated it for an uninterrupted career of peaceful conquest. It was then it established schools and universities, founded scholarships, and prepared for a system of universal education. It emancipated the slave, declared all men equal before God, raised the barefooted friar to the throne of Christendom, and made the rich sinner disgorge his misbegotten wealth to feed the poor he had robbed, and to serve the interests of humanity. Children, as we are, of what is called the Reformation, and which was nothing but a rebellion against the church, and the establishment of an insurrectionary government, we are too prone to forget the benefits of the church; and casting a veil over its struggles and its labors of love, we would fain make it appear that there was no light in the world till Protestantism was born, and nothing done for humanity till a German Monk dared burn the papal bull. But all that has been done since is but the necessary development of what was done before. He is an undutiful son who curses his own mother, and no good can come of him. Up to the fifteenth century the church was the true church, as true to the ideal as was possible in the circumstances in which it was placed. Up to that period it was the church of progress, and continued itself to advance. But in consequence of the broad line it had drawn between spiritual interests and material interests, it placed 6 [Ed. Four Knights of King Henry II of England murdered Thomas á Becket (c. 1118-70), archbishop of Canterbury, on 29 December 1170. A cult soon developed around Thomas’ tomb and Henry II did public penance before the tomb. Henry IV (1050-1106), German king and Holy Roman Emperor, did public penance in Rome after Pope Gregory VII (c. 1021-85) released Henry’s subjects from allegiance to him after Henry refused obedience to the pope. Frederick Barbarossa (c. 1122-90), Holy Roman Emperor, in 1176 submitted to Pope Alexander III (pope, 1159-81) whom he had refused to acknowledge as pope at the time of his election in 1159. Barbarossa submitted, however, only after he was defeated in battle and could not solidify his power without papal support.]

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necessarily a term to its own progress. It could advance, or aid the advancement of the race, only till it had brought the civil organization in a spiritual point of view up even with itself. As soon as the state embodied in its organization, and in its enactments as much wisdom, intelligence, justice, and humanity, as it itself embodied in its own organization and canons, its mission in regard to civilization was ended. It could work on the state only through the individual conscience, and it could not, without abandoning its ground, make it a matter of conscience with individuals to organize the state for the indefinite progress of the race in relation to material interests. It became, then, a mere parallel organization with the state, having no longer in relation to society an ideal to realize. It had nothing to propose. It could no longer take the lead in civilization. From being the suzerain of the state, it was forced to become, as it has been for three hundred years, its vassal. In point of fact, for three hundred years the state has been superior to the church, and it, instead of the church, has proposed and effected whatever social ameliorations have been proposed and effected. But so long as the old theory of a separation of interests remains, the supremacy of the state over the church is a monstrous anomaly. It is in theory nothing less than making the low, the transitory, the unholy, superior to the high, the holy, and the eternal. It is making matter, declared to be the principle of evil, superior to the spirit, declared to be the principle of good; the body triumphant over the soul; and time over eternity. This is intolerable. It creates a disgust with some for the church, which makes pretensions it does not justify, and with others it prompts efforts to restore the church to its former position. But the restoration of the church to power would relieve no embarrassment. The church has realized its ideal. To give it supremacy would not be to make it again a church of the ideal, and therefore favorable to progress; but to arrest the progress of the race, and to place us back where we were in the fifteenth century. There is but one method by which churchmen can recover the dominion of the church, and that is the reverse of the method they pursue. The church was supreme, because it had a right to be. It had a loftier ideal than had the state. Now it is not so. The state, the creature of Christian civilization, is more Christian, in fact, than the church; and whoso would labor for the progress of humanity through any existing organism must take the state instead of the church, and be a politician instead of a clergyman. In order that it should be otherwise, the church must show that she has an ideal, some work for civilization to propose, big enough for men’s hearts, equal to their aspirations. Men are

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now uneasy and confined within her enclosures. They see immense evils obtain in the world, which they would gladly redress. Rich feelings kindle up within them; great thoughts swell in their hearts; a mighty energy is working in their souls; and they would go forth and act, lay hold of the ages, and shape them to the glory of God, and the redemption of man. But they are bound, confined in a narrow dungeon. They rave, they foam, they pull at their chains, beat their heads against the dungeon walls, fall back wearied, exhausted, and die. There is a universal restlessness; men’s great souls are seeking some mode of utterance, but find none. They burn to act and yet are held back. Nothing is proposed equal to what they feel moving and working in themselves. There is no vent for the activity, which has long been accumulating in the soul. It but preys upon its possessor. Hence the deep pathos of our times, the wail of sorrow, heard on either hand, the melancholy, the morbid sentiment, the suicides. In this state of things it is madness, to attempt to revive the church, on its old platform, and to carry us back three hundred years, to do over again what has already been done. The remedy will not be found in going back, but in going forward. The church can rise to power only by accepting the ideal. It must abandon the distinction it has made between spiritual interests and material interests, a distinction which has no existence in the nature of things, and recognizes the fact that in actual life spirit and matter are one. The flesh is no more sin than is the spirit, and the soul is no more holy than the body. Man is not tempted and drawn away into sin by his body, for without the soul, the body were dead, and incapable of performing a single function. The soul acts never without the body, nor the body without the soul. One is not the other, but one is never without the other. The action of the one is, so long as there is life, absolutely indistinguishable from that of the other. The action and reaction of each are so harmonious, and one becomes so blended with the other, that in real life, there is for the two but one agent. Man should never, then, be treated as a twofold being, made up of soul and body, but as one simple being, made to live in a body; and through that in intimate relation with nature. He should then be taken as a whole, as one, and identical in all his phenomena, however multiform, various, or variable they may be. Man and nature are made of the same stuff. Spirit and matter are the same at bottom. The basis of the composite existence, termed matter, is not dead atoms, but living substance, endowed with force and perception. This living substance, or these living substances, into which all material bodies may be resolved, are kindred with that sub-

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stance termed in man soul or spirit. Body is nothing but a continuity of points, each point of which is a living being, acting from its own center, from its own inherent force, and representing the entire universe from its point of view, and is in itself as immaterial and as indestructible as the human soul itself.7 No reason, then, can be assigned, why matter should be more sinful than spirit, or more the cause of sin. One God has created both, and both out of his own infinite fullness of being, and both for the communication of his own unbounded goodness. Spirit and matter reconciled, declared to be one in the unity of actual life, all interests will become alike sacred and proper to be consulted. There will be no more lusting of the spirit against the flesh, nor of the flesh against the spirit. Spiritual interests and material interests will be held to be not only inseparable, but indistinguishable. There is no act that really promotes the welfare of the soul, that is not also for the welfare of the body; there is no act demanded by the well-being of the body, not also demanded for the well-being of the soul. What is for man’s good in time, is for his good in eternity; and the only sure way of gaining a heaven hereafter, is to create a heaven on earth. What is for the good of man is for the glory of God. All interests are the same, then, in their character, and all acts which are proper to be done at all are religious acts. III. The church of the future will be based on two great principles; the first, the generalization of the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the other, the unity in actual life of spirit and matter. This makes the service of God and man one and the same service, and the service of man, under the spiritual relation, identical with the service of man, under the material relation. God must be served by our labors for the good of all men; and the good of all men does not consist in a spiritual culture to the neglect of physical well-being, but in their redemption and sanctification under all the possible aspects of their being. The church of the future will then propose the amelioration of man under his material relations, no less than under his spiritual relations. Material sufferings will touch it not less than moral sufferings, and oppressions in the state will be as much offences against its laws, as the misdeeds of individuals. Its mission will not be merely that of fitting men to die, and to gain a happier world, but fitting them to live, and to make the earth itself an abode of plenty, peace, 7 This is the doctrine of Leibnitz; but we have advanced, and demonstrated it, in substance, in several of our previous essays. [Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716) was a German philosopher who was influential on Cousin, Leroux and Brownson.]

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and love. It will not enjoin poverty, but justice, and so direct the industrial activity of the race, and establish such laws for the distribution of the fruits of industry that all will have a competence, and none any temptation to abuse his possessions, or to rob another. By uniting all the interests of man and subjecting them all to the same law, church and state will ultimately become one, and a new classification of the race obtain. There will not then be a spiritual society, and a civil society, a religious society, and an irreligious society. All society, all association will be holy, for all association will be for the worship of God. The state will become a church, and legislators and civil rulers ministers at the altar. For then God will not be worshiped by idle hymns, and idler ceremonies; but by those substantial acts of piety and love, which do really tend to the melioration of the condition of all men, especially of the poorest and most numerous class. Men will then be religious by visiting the fatherless and the widows in their afflictions, and by keeping themselves pure and blameless. Man is a being who acts, knows, and feels. He is a simple being, but with a threefold power of manifestation. He manifests himself as activity, intelligence, sensibility. Hence there are three ways in which he can serve and be served. Every man has these three faculties; but in some men one of them predominates; in others another. Those in whom activity predominates are what are termed men of action, practical men; those in whom intelligence predominates are men of science, whose tendency is to know, to investigate, to be acquainted with the universe, its principles, and phenomena; in fine, those in whom sensibility predominates are artists, men, who are attached to the beautiful, who delight in the fine arts, and aspire to ornament and embellish life. Ultimately men will fall into three classes according to this threefold division. The men of action have heretofore been too often engaged in war and conquest, or in taking advantage of their more simple brethren. They will hereafter turn, as they are now turning, their activity into an industrial and peaceful direction. These will be the industrial portion of mankind, cultivators of the earth, artisans, manufacturers, merchants, traders, active businessmen. The second will be engaged in scientific investigations, all of which will be turned to the advantage of industry and art. The third will be devoted to the cultivation of the fine arts, to adorning our habitations, purifying our affections, and exalting our sentiments. In these three ways man may serve man, and therefore worship God. They, whose taste and capacity lead them to industrial pur-

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suits, will worship God by tilling the earth, by manufacturing the raw materials, or distributing or exchanging the fruits of labor. They, whose tastes and capacities lead then in a scientific direction, will worship God by penetrating the secrets of the universe, upturning the several strata of the earth, and learning how nature improves upon her own types, or as they track the divine wisdom through forests, see it unfolding in the violet under the hedge, living in the animal frame, soaring with the eagle, and blazing forth in glory in the sun and stars. All nature will be seen to be full of God, and at each step the man of true science will pause in transcendent admiration. The artist will worship him by communing with the visions of beauty that come to his soul, attempting to seize and transfer them to his marble or canvas, to embody them in column or dome, or give them voice in song or story. Forms of worship there will be, and forms that have meaning, that speak to the heart, and waken great thoughts, and generous and holy feeling, forms that inspire men’s souls, and make them aspire with ever increasing energy to worship God in humanity. All that industry can do, science can teach, or art inspire, will be done to bring man into harmony with the will of his Maker, and to redeem and sanctify all men. In this work art will take the lead. Man, by the fact that he is endowed with a sensible nature, can be inspired, and it is by inspiration that his progress is mainly effected. God by his Providence raises up, at distant intervals, providential men, a Moses, a David, an Isaiah, a Jesus, a Paul, who admitted by their love into a closer communion with himself, speak to men in those living tones, which make men’s hearts beat, and would make them beat under the very “ribs of death,”8 and waken them to a higher life, inspire them to new and better sustained efforts to realize the ideal, and make earth reflect the beauty of heaven. Every genuine artist is a being, in whom love predominates; love carries him up to the very principle of things, and makes all things beautiful and lovely to his rapt soul; and speaking from the deep love up-welling from the bottom of his own heart, he can quicken love in the race, and inspire humanity to a more zealous and acceptable worship. The church of the future will place the worship of God solely in the redemption and sanctification of the race, especially the poorest and most numerous class, in loving all men, as we now love Jesus, and doing all that it is possible to do, to raise up every man to his proper estate; in a word, to realize that equality between man and 8

[Ed. John Milton (1608-74), Comus (1634), line 562.]

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man in his material relations, that we now recognize in his spiritual relations. But it will not be merely utilitarian. It will not be cold and naked and barren. In accepting material interests, it will not become less, but even more spiritual. In making the worship of God consist in the service of man, it will recognize both the necessity and the utility of whatever tends to develop the soul, to awaken generous sentiment, to increase the love of man for man. It will still have its temple-service, which will be solemn, imposing, and inspiring; its instructors, who will disclose the laws of industry, science, and art, instruct men in the proper direction of their activities, intelligences, and sympathies; its preachers, who will make the heart thrill, and kindle a deep and burning enthusiasm in the soul, to labor for the amelioration of the race. All the fine arts will be laid under contribution. Poetry, painting, sculpture, music, architecture, whatever speaks to sentiment, will be pressed into the temple-service, and made to administer to the worship of God and the amelioration of man. Protestantism, in its excessive rationalism, in its rejection of sentiment, of inspiration, has deprived the temple-service of nearly all its power. In its churches there are a few dry forms, and much barren logic; very little that speaks to the soul and kindles love. Puritanism knows nothing of the power of love. It has not learned that the road to men’s convictions lies through their hearts, and that we are raised to God effectually, only by the purification and exaltation of our sentiments. It places the affections under ban, and regards all emotion as the fruit of the flesh, and is even enthusiastic against enthusiasm, inspired against inspiration. The church of the future will follow the principle of the church of the past, and adopt a form of service that shall speak to the sensibility, to man as a being capable of inspiration, of love. But it will purify the form heretofore adopted, and the better adapt it to the awakening of a genuine love for universal man. The priests of the new church will be those who approach the nearest to God, those who best understand the works of the Creator, are best qualified to direct the activities of the race, and who have the most enthusiastic love for their brethren. They will be directors of the people, of all consciences, because they will prove themselves the most able, and the most worthy; because they will be those, in whom the power to act, to know, or to love, manifests itself in the most striking degree. They will be listened to and obeyed, because their words will carry conviction and create love. This is the true conception of a Christian priesthood. Men will not enter the priesthood to gain a livelihood, but because they are burning to do a work for humanity, which they cannot do without entering it. They will be

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more powerful than ever were the priests of the old church; but their power will be in their inherent superiority, not in an artificial sanctity ascribed to their persons; not in the laying on of the hands of the presbytery; nor in any formal consecration. They will be God-ordained, God-commissioned, and they will speak as God gives them utterance; and their words will be with power, because they will be words of truth and love. IV. Such will be the church of the future. It will not be a destruction of the old church, but its fulfillment. It will be the church of the past, enlarged, modified, and converted into the church of the future. It will be an organization for the more full and perfect realization of the Christian ideal. Christ is to it all that he has ever been. Jesus is its founder, and its aim is still the realization in actual life of the principles of the Christian revelation; but these principles more generously interpreted and seen in a broader generality. The ideal will still be the Christian ideal, and it will be a true Christian church, as true for the future, as the old church was for the past. This church recognizing the unity of all interests of spirit and matter will place no term to its progress. Covering man’s whole activity, its ideal will ever hover before it. It will gradually absorb the state, and abolish the double organization of mankind; it will supersede the necessity of a religious organization and a civil organization; and as the service of God and the service of man become identical, church and state will become one. There will then be no clashing of rival claims, no war of hostile powers. The government of God and the government of man will be identical. By spreading over all interests, extending to all activities, intelligences, and sympathies, the church will command the direction of them all; and as its ideal is the redemption and sanctification of the race, it will impose upon the consciences of individuals, and of legislators and rulers, the religious duty of directing them all to the production of that love and reverence for all men, which have heretofore been paid to but one man. Always then will it have a work for civilization to propose, and therefore always a work which will enlist the sympathies of the human heart. Therefore it will always be the church of the ideal. It will always aspire, and kindle the aspirations of the race. It will then be forever a kingdom which the saints shall possess, and of which there shall be no end. It shall become a really Catholic church, a church truly universal, and finally gather the vast family of man into one universal association; when wars will cease; all tears be wiped away; hatred be no more; and man labor side by side with his brother, in peace and love, for the glory of God and the progress of humanity.

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The time has come for the new church to be formed. The old church has done its work. It has no work for us; nothing to propose but a certain routine, which has no power to excite our sympathies, or to command our respect. It has ceased to aspire. It has no words of authority. Men laugh at its puerile duties, and its idle threats. It does not direct the action of society; nor does it presume to make it a religious duty for legislators and rulers to shape the laws and the administration of the government, so as to effect, in the most rapid manner possible, the moral, physical, and intellectual amelioration of the race, especially of the poorest and most numerous class. It declares all men equal before God, and yet tolerates, nay, upholds the grossest inequality before society; it declares poverty a virtue, and riches a sin, and yet gives the chief seats to the rich, and baptizes their means of gain. It declares that the poor are blessed because theirs is the kingdom of heaven, and frowns upon all measures likely to be effectual in securing them the possession of that kingdom on earth. It has no ideal. It looks back and sighs merely for its lost dominion. It has no blessing to pronounce on the young prophets of God, who start up to gain a more glorious future for the race. They are, in its estimation, seditious fellows, disturbers of the peace, profane levelers, disorganizers, abhorred of God, and rejected of man. For them no word, no look of encouragement. It excommunicates progress, and pronounces a curse on whatever is advanced, whatever belongs to the ideal. Humanity will not, cannot tolerate this, but will return neglect for cursing, and pass on, leaving the dead to bury their dead. For three hundred years the church has been on the side of the past, and the future has been with statesmen and philosophers. During these three hundred years of insurrection, revolution, experiment, and philosophizing, philosophers and statesmen have brought forth two grand conceptions, which are to serve as the basis of the whole future. These two conceptions are EQUALITY and PROGRESS, or the Incarnation of the Word in all men, making all thereby the sons of God, and therefore equal one to another; and the indefinite perfectibility of the race; giving therefore an ideal to the church, and making it its duty to labor for the realization of this perfectibility for all men, and in all the aspects of their being. These two conceptions were already in the mind of Jesus, but were only partially embraced by the church. It admitted the divinity of human nature only in the case of one man, and progress, perfectibility, only in the spiritual order. Now all men are divine, and progress must be sought in the material order no less than in the spiritual. This progress is indefinite; no term can be placed to it. These are the grand conceptions,

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which have come forth from past labors and past struggles. They have cost much, but they are worth all that they have cost. These are the foundations of future society, EQUALITY AND PROGRESS, LOVE TO ALL MEN, AS HERETOFORE THERE HAS BEEN LOVE TO JESUS, efforts to set the race forward to more and more advanced stages of civilization. Here is the ideal. Morality, piety, all that is praiseworthy and noble will consist in efforts to realize this ideal. This ideal is now affirmed, and not by one man only, but by millions of warm hearts that thrill at the very words EQUALITY and PROGRESS. They are affirmed in the very soul of the age in which we live, and the church must accept them, and become an organism for their realization, direct all activities, intelligences, and sympathies to their realization. The existing church may accept this ideal. She is already an organism for that purpose, did she but know it. Her clergymen may become prophets, and from the heights of every pulpit in Christendom proclaim that all men are sons of God and indefinitely progressive; and that the love and worship of God consist in the love of all men, and in efforts to advance the race in civilization. But if she will not thus proclaim, if she will not make it matter of discipline, and regard the neglect to labor in the cause of equality and progress an offence, deserving the censure of the church, then a new church will organize itself, a new temple will rise at the magic words, as did the walls of Thebes as the prophet touched his lyre.9 The time of denial has gone by. Protestantism is obsolete. The time has come to affirm, and to affirm with emphasis. The race is tired of mere analysis, criticism, dissecting, which gives not life, but takes it away. It demands a broad and generous synthesis, positive convictions, positive institutions, and a positive mission. It would act. Infidelity there may yet be; men no doubt are still disputing, whether there be or be not a God, whether the Scriptures were or were not given by divine inspiration, whether there be or be not a life beyond this life. Vain disputings all. He who would have faith must go forth and act. He who will do the will of God shall know there is a God. He who will cultivate love to all men, by seeking to do good to all men, shall never doubt that there is a common Father of all; and he in whose heart eternally wells up a living love for all that live, who perpetually aspires, shall want no arguments to convince him that he cannot die. He lives immortality. Let the church once more 9

[Ed. According to Greek legend the building of the celebrated seven-gated wall of Thebes was the work of Amphion who was supposed to have charmed the stones into moving by playing on his lyre.]

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aspire, let its face be turned to the future, and let it command the moral, physical, and intellectual advancement of the race, command it in the name of God, and bless him who is able and willing to live or die for it, and faith will be restored, and men will live again. Christ will then reappear, and the kingdom shall in very deed be given to the saints who will possess it forever and ever. Even now, they who have eyes may see the Son of MAN coming in the clouds of heaven, in all the glory of his Father, surrounded by all pure and loving spirits, to gather his elect from the four corners of the earth, into a holy association, animated by a single spirit, and directed by a single will, for the brilliant conquest of the future. He comes. Lift up your heads, ye who have sighed under bondage, open your eyes, ye who have sat long in the region and shadow of death, exult, ye who have waited to see the salvation of God, for he cometh, and the day of redemption is at hand, and all the ends of the earth shall see the glory of God, and rejoice together.

2. REFORM AND CONSERVATISM1 Boston Quarterly Review 5 (January, 1842): 60-84.

We do not introduce this sermon to our readers in consequence of its intrinsic merit, for it is but a commonplace performance; altogether beneath the talents and genius of its author, a most estimable man, and a successful preacher; but for the purpose of saying something on the very important and deeply interesting subject it broaches. The man, who helps us to detect our errors, we always hold to be our friend; for he renders us an essential service, the most essential that one man can render another. We, therefore, feel that we are not a little indebted to the author of this sermon; for we had no conception of the impotent doctrine we had all along been insisting upon, till we found him reproducing it. We cannot reflect on our advocacy of the doctrine, here drawn out at length, without taking shame to ourselves, confessing our sins, and promising an endeavor at amendment. The leading doctrine of this sermon is that the well instructed scribe is one who retains a firm hold on the past, while exerting himself to conquer the future; that reform is progress; and that the true reformer labors ever to fulfil the old, never to destroy it. This is a doctrine, which our readers know that we have insisted on from the first; it is a doctrine which covers a great and vital truth; but as we have often brought it out, and as it is brought out in this sermon, its effect must be worse than that of falsehood itself. By its light Mr. Clarke proceeds to read a lecture of conservatism to reformers, and of radicalism to conservatives. To the first he says, virtually, though not consciously, “my good friends, you are too hot”; to the second, “you are too cold. Let me beseech you, therefore, reformers, to cool off a little, and you, conservatives, to warm up a little; and then we may all come peaceably together, in a state of most perfect and blessed luke-warmness.” 1

[Ed. Brownson’s review of James Freeman Clarke’s The Well-Instructed Scribe, or Reform and Conservatism; a Sermon preached at the Installation of Rev. George F. Simmons and Rev. Samuel Ripley, as Pastor and Associate Pastor of the Union Congregational Society, in Waltham, Mass., October 27, 1841 (Boston: Benjamin H. Greene, 1841).]

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This is not Mr. Clarke’s language, nor does it express the effect he aims to produce; but the effect the doctrine in question, as set forth, must produce, so far as it produces any effect at all. But is it necessary to labor to produce lukewarmness? Is it not more acceptable to the great head of the church, to be either too cold or too hot, than it is to be neither cold nor hot? Nothing is, or can be, more nauseating than to be lukewarm. Give us, we say, open, energetic, uncompromising enemies, or firm, staunch friends, who will take their stand with the truth, for weal or for woe, to live with it, or die with it; and not your half and half men, blowing hot out of one side of the mouth, and cold out of the other; neutralizing always their own exertions, and producing only a state of absolute indifferency. Mr. Clarke must pardon the strength of our expression. We are censuring ourselves more than we are him; for we are an older sinner, and with less excuse for our sins. We, like him, have been for years blowing hot and cold with the same breath, though unwittingly and unintentionally; and like him have mistaken an imbecile eclecticism for a powerful and living synthesis.2 We are both wrong. Reformers unquestionably often mistake their means and fail in their ends; but they are never too hot, too much in earnest. The true man, he who feels the great heart of humanity beat under his left breast, is always terribly in earnest. He speaks out from a soul full of love, as if life and death hung on the issue, burning words, which fall like coals of fire on the naked heart of the sinner, and make him shriek out, in the agonies of hell, “What shall I do to be saved?” He can make no compromise with sin and iniquity, whether in church or state, in the individual or in society; but, armed with the word of God, and the terrors of God’s law, pursues them through all their windings, fearless of the hosts of enemies he may rouse up, the blows he must give or receive; resolved to save the soul or die in the attempt. There is his work, right before him; and he can eat not, slumber not, pause not, till he has done it. Woe to the anointed preacher that calls out from the height of the Christian pulpit, “Stop, my good friend, you are running too fast, you are too hot; cool off a little, let me pray you.” How the fiends must laugh to hear him! Man was made for progress. The race, nay, the entire universe is in motion, flowing onward with all its waves of worlds and beings, as the current of a mighty river, and will flow on forever; for it flows out from the inexhaustible infinite, is the unremitted effort of the infinite God to realize out of himself his own infinite ideal. But progress 2

[Ed. This is the first sign of a severe critique of Cousin’s Eclecticism.]

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is effected by growth, by accretion, assimilation, not by abstraction and waste.3 The race advances by assimilating to its own life and being the truths which God successively reveals to it; and that which its own generations, by constant striving, successively discover and promulgate. We of today are enlarged by all the past accumulations of the race. Into us flows all that has been; and which, swollen by our contributions, flows on through us, and will flow on, ever enlarging by new contributions, into the unknown ocean of eternity. Here is the significance of the doctrine we and others have been striving after. Here is wherefore the true reformer retains ever a hold on the past while he labors for the future. He retains the past because it has flowed into him, been assimilated to his actual life; because he is the past, as well as the presentiment of the future, and can no more divest himself of it, than he can divest himself of himself. There is no question that it is idle to war against the past. No man can be a reformer who has no tradition.4 Divest us of all tradition, of all that we have derived from the past, or which the race has assimilated of past labors, as the body assimilates food, and we were mere naked savages, without industry, science, or art, wandering the earth forlorn, with no shelter but the caves or the inclement skies, and no means of subsistence but the scanty pittance doled out, with a grudging hand, by step-dame nature. They who would so divest us, so cut us loose from all tradition, must ever be as impotent as they are mistaken. They are mere false meteoric lights that rise and deceive for a moment, it may be, the simple; but instantly melting into nothing, leaving the glorious vault brilliant as ever, studded, as of old, with all its “sapphire flames,”5 which shine on in their mysterious beauty, all unconscious of the mimic stars that collect and dissolve at infinite depths below. There is no need of exhorting the reformer to venerate the past. If he really be a reformer he carries all the past in his soul; and to tell him that he must retain it, is like telling the child that, if it do not retain from day to day the accessions it is constantly receiving, it will not grow! The folly we are guilty of on this subject arises from our not having fixed in our minds, WHAT PAST it is that we should retain. We have supposed that it must needs be the past that subsists in 3

[Ed. Brownson reveals here his reliance on Pierre Leroux for his new understanding of progress.] 4 [Ed. The concept of tradition will continue to have significance for Brownson as he develops his religious philosophy over the next two years.] 5 [Ed. Could be a reference to Percy B. Shelley’s “Written Among the Eugenean Hills,” lines 71-72, or to Thomas Gray’s (1716-71) The Progress of Poesy Ib, line 12.]

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monuments, doctrines recorded in books, or engraved on tablets, moral precepts, lessons of experience, forms of faith or practice existing out of the soul, and the essence of which has not as yet been assimilated to the life of the race. But these, so far as they are true, and unassimilated, forming as yet no integral part of the life of humanity, belong to the ideal and not the actual, and therefore to the future and not to the past. The past is only that which has been realized, and become an integral part of the life which the race is now living. This is the only real past. This is what we term tradition; and this we cannot throw off, if we would; for it is a part of the very being with which we who now live were born. It constitutes our past progress, the growth to which we have already attained; and is the point of departure for new progress, for further and nobler growth. So much is gained, and can never be lost. We need, then, give ourselves no concern about retaining it; but turn our whole attention, and exert all our zeal and energy in behalf of new acquisitions. The mistake of preachers, and even philosophers, is in overlooking the true principle of progress, and in supposing that it consists only in the accumulation of monuments. Moses and the prophets, it is thought, live for us only in the Old Testament; Jesus and the apostles only in the New; Grecian art and philosophy and Roman jurisprudence, only in the few fragments which all-devouring time has spared. Poets, prophets, philosophers, who sung, inspired, taught, lived, toiled, suffered, and died, of whom there are no external monuments remaining, are to us as if they had never been. But this is false. As the warm life-blood that flowed in the veins of Adam in the garden, still circulates in ours, so lives in us the life of all who have gone before us. Not alone in Old Testament or New, not in the Fathers, nor in ecclesiastical historians, live Moses, and David, and Isaiah, and Jesus, and Paul, and James, and John, but in that new life they have given to the world, into which, through them, the race has been initiated; and which we should live, and could not but live, were all exterior monuments of them destroyed. In order to slay Jesus and the apostles, you must annihilate the race. Their moral life circulates in the soul of him who attempts to revile them; and gives force to his attacks on their pretended representatives. Lycurgus, Solon, Socrates, Plato, speak in your pettiest village politician, and debate through your least significant disputant in your least significant lyceum.6 6 [Ed. Lycurgus (flourished sometime between the tenth and the eighth century B.C.) is credited for establishing the Spartan code of law and many of the Spartan institutions; Solon (flourished in the sixth-century B.C.) established the Athenian constitution and code of law.]

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We must remember that there is a progress of MAN, as well as of men; and that this progress consists, not merely nor chiefly in external monuments, whether industrial, scientific, or artistical, but in the enlargement, the actual growth of human nature itself. We say growth, by which we do not mean the creation of new faculties, or new elements of our being, but an enlargement of those with which man was originally constituted. These original elements are perpetually growing, and in their growth consists the progress of the race. Man today is a larger being, has more being, if one may so speak, than he had three thousand years ago. He can do unaided, today, what formerly surpassed the combined powers of the race. In the age of Moses no man, without a special revelation from God himself, could rise to the conception of one pure and spiritual divinity.7 And no community could then take in the idea, though God, through Moses, proclaimed it. Now we need no supernatural assistance to possess ourselves of the conception of one God. We read his being and unity in all nature, in our souls, in all the events of history. When Jesus came, no man was equal to the great conception of the universal brotherhood of the race. It required a positive revelation from God to place the doctrine in the world; and though so placed, the apostles themselves very imperfectly comprehended it; none of our sectarians even now comprehend it; yet the more advanced portion of the race see it, as it were naturally, and embrace it as a truth selfevident. All that theologians today call natural religion, which they distinguish from revealed religion, and suppose man by nature may attain unto, surpassed the natural powers of the race in its infancy, and needed to be revealed specially from heaven. We find no such natural religion among the savages of antiquity, nor among the New Zealanders of today. Now it is natural religion with the more advanced Christian nations, because by the aid of Providence, always acting the part of an educator, their natural powers have become equal to it. Natural religion is always that amount of revealed religion, which the race has assimilated, and for which no positive divine authority is any longer needed. The schoolboy of today, it is often said, knows more than the wisest of the Greeks. He is in advance of the wisest of the Greeks, not because he can in a few months learn all that Plato could teach, or the great and wise of the race have since been able to teach; but be7 [Ed. This represents a significant development in Brownson’s view of special revelation as a source of growth and progress; opposition to natural religion, too, is something new for Brownson.]

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cause there circulates within him a life, far above the highest life of which Plato dreamed. The child born of civilized parents, carried at the most tender age, and left in the cabin of the savage, other things being equal, will grow up with a nature superior to that of his savage associates. He will adopt but refine their manners. He will have thoughts surpassing their comprehension, dreams which visit not them. They will marvel at his words and deeds, and bow to him as their chief. Catch, on the other hand, young as you please, the savage infant, and bring him into the bosom of your civilized life, and surround him with all that is most advanced in your social state, he will, in spite of all your efforts grow up with an untamed soul; the wild Manitou will speak to his heart, and he will pine for his native forest, and the wandering life of his forefathers. Our missionaries repeat to us ever the exceeding difficulty they find in making the children of the heathen comprehend the most familiar conceptions of Christian civilization; not dreaming that ages of growth are needed to bring the heathen races up to the level of the advanced life of Christendom. Proofs of this doctrine may be found in families. Nature has her aristocracy, and the more advanced races are always the ruling races. Family pride, nobility founded on birth, is not altogether without reason in fact and experience. It is not absurd to ask of one, Who was his father? What was his mother? Find a man really distinguished, and you may be sure he comes of an improved stock; that he has, as we say, good blood running in his veins. A man who has no ancestors is nobody. Patricians and plebeians intermarry, before they become equal in the state. This comes not from the fact that God did not make all men of one blood, but from the fact that your patrician stock, your real nobility, have had, for ages, superior means of culture; and their children inherit the growth thus effected. It takes many generations to wash out the churl’s blood. The novus homo betrays himself at a glance. The doctrine of hereditary descent, plays a more important part in the affairs of the race, than we democrats admit. Nay, we all feel it; we all are proud of our ancestry, if they were at all distinguished. We inherit the features, the diseases, the moral and mental qualities of our parents. The child of truly noble parents, brought up in the family of the churl, will be no churl. How many tales and romances have been founded on this fact. They are not mere fictions; they must contain a vein of truth, or the race would not, could not, relish them as it does. We repeat it, this comes not from the fact that God made originally men of different bloods; for he made all of one and the same

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blood. But some families and nations, being more favorably situated for improvement than others, have obtained the lead; and retained it, unless corrupted and exhausted by vice and luxury. By continued, superior moral, intellectual, and physical culture, they have improved, if we may so say, the blood. They have become really superior; and their children are born with more enlarged capacities than the children of those whose ancestors, for countless ages, have had no advantages of education. When, by a fixed regimen of the state, you separate these families from the community at large, the fact becomes striking, and productive of the greatest evils. But in a society like ours, where wealth makes up for the want of birth, there is a general intermixture, which produces comparative equality, and the gradual elevation of all. There are, in consequence of the perpetual whirl of our society, of its ups and downs, few families with us that cannot boast as good blood, in some of its branches, as flows in the veins of our proudest aristocrats. Democracy, therefore, needs not shriek at our doctrine. Nay, it may accept it; for it shows strongly the necessity of laboring for the universal culture of the race, and keeps alive its hopes, by making it appear that the progress effected in one generation, is so much capital in advance for the succeeding. Unquestionably all men are born with the same nature, but with that nature in different stages of development or growth. A Leibnitz8 has nothing of which the New Zealander has not the germs; but between the New Zealander and Leibnitz there intervene a hundred centuries of growth. Leibnitz thinks without effort, and assumes as self-evident axioms, what surpasses the utmost conception of the New Zealander; and would, were the New Zealander educated from his earliest infancy in the bosom of our own social state. Yet the New Zealander may one day be to a Leibnitz, what a Leibnitz now is to him. With this view of progress, that it consists not in the accumulation of exterior monuments only, but in the moral assimilation of truth, in the continued growth of our being, and enlargement of our actual life, there is no danger that the past will be unduly depressed, that it will be forgotten, or that men will cut themselves loose from tradition. The thing, we repeat over and over again, is impossible; for we are the past as well as the presentiment of the future. We are the synthesis of what has been and of what is to come; and while the humanity that was, the humanity that is, and the humanity that is to 8 [Ed. Leibniz’s Monadology expressed a radical optimism about the world as the “best of all possible worlds.”]

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be, all beat in our hearts, circulate in our veins, think in our thoughts, and love in our love, we should give ourselves no further concern with the monuments of the past, than is necessary to decipher its lessons, so far as they can instruct and warm us for new efforts to advance the race. What we want, then, is not, as we have heretofore carelessly contended, though the doctrine we have now advanced has been for years our faith, and as Mr. Clarke contends, a molding of Conservatism and reform into a sort of systematic eclecticism, compelling its disciples to keep perpetually turning from the past to the future, and from the future to the past, in endless gyration, and therefore making no progress; but a real SYNTHESIS. Mere eclecticism taken strictly, is impotent. So far as it is at all influential, it is mischievous, by withdrawing our attention from the ideal, damping the ardor of hope, quenching philanthropic zeal, and rendering us indifferent and imbecile. Alas, we have felt this. We have labored long and hard; no man more zealously, and with scarcely a perceptible effect. The world has felt that we contradicted in one breath what we had asserted in another. We felt that this was unjust, for we knew that we were consistent. We knew we were right, so far as concerned our own thought; and marveled that with tolerable powers of expression, we could never make the public perceive the precise position we chose to occupy. The amalgamation of conservatism and reform, as existing in our own mind, was well enough; but no form of expression we could devise would enable us, when we undertook to speak to others, to escape apparent contradiction. The moment that we had awakened them to efforts for progress, we struck them all aback, by telling them that they must not run away from the past. Our progress doctrines offended conservatives, and our conservative doctrines offended reformers; and we received little except, as we deserved perhaps, the execrations of both. We trust that we have shown the cause of this failure. The fault was not in the public, but in ourselves; in a certain confusion in our own mind. The public must judge whether that confusion is still there or not. We have felt that the past was venerable, and should be retained, and that there should still be efforts to conquer the future. But, in stating this, we so stated it that our readers, and especially those who listened to our public discourses, could not see how the past could be retained and venerated, while by our efforts to conquer the future, we were running away from it as fast as we could. This came from mistaking eclecticism for synthesis, a system composed of shreds for an entire new garment, woven without seam from top to bottom. Eclecticism wants life, power to quicken men’s souls, to make their hearts beat, pulses throb, and prompt bold

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and energetic and continued efforts for humanity; but a synthesis, which binds the past and the future into a living unity, obviates the difficulty, and gives us an effective system. By our doctrine we retain the past, because we live it; live what has been, as well as fore-feel what is to be. Here is a genuine synthesis. Not a speculative synthesis, existing only in a system, only in the abstract; but in actual life, in the actual life of the race, and in that of the individual. Every man, in his degree, is this living synthesis; and, therefore, every man in his own way struggles for progress. There is, then, no real foundation for this distinction, harped upon so much, between conservatives and reformers. In our civilization, the question at issue is never, Shall there, or shall there not, be progress? but, simply, What is, or what is not progress? Every man has an ideal, and admits that it is his duty to labor for the perfectibility of man and men, and only asks you to show that what you propose will tend to realize that perfectibility. They in whom the past is most living, and the future most present, are they who can best tell what is or what is not most favorable to progress. There is no foundation for the distinction that is made between the movement party and the stationary party, when one looks a little below the surface. Men are not so radically different in their tendencies, as this distinction supposes. All men aspire, some with more energy than others, but all in a degree. They differ, not in their tendencies, but in their judgments, and their faith. One believes in more progress than another; and one believes that that is progress, which another regards as a retrogression. At bottom all men are the same, else what means the great doctrine of fraternity? These distinctions we make, convenient and true enough under a certain point of view, are after all mischievous, and sunder men instead of bringing them together, make men feel to each other as strangers, not as brothers. The less we insist on them the better. Are we not all of one family? Hath not one God made us? Are we not bound up together in one common lot? Nor is there ever a class of men who really deserve the name of destructives. The human race goes forward by a series of transformations. All things change their forms. Nothing is stable but truth itself, but God; and of truth, of God, our views undergo, whether we will or not, a ceaseless metamorphosis. Old forms must be modified to new conceptions; the garments of childhood must be thrown aside as we approach manhood, and others fitting our new size must be obtained. The modification of old forms of society, of faith and practice, is after all by no means a destruction, any more than the prun-

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ing of a fruit tree, to improve its beauty and advance its growth, is a destruction. Jesus and his apostles were not destructives; and yet they destroyed the old forms of the Jewish and Pagan religions. They were not destructives, for there came forth from their labors new dogmas, a new temple, a new worship, a new and a higher life for the world. In no country, in no age of the world, have the men called destructives deserved the name. These men, at all epochs, demand a reform, a progress of man, of men, or of institutions. They are men who have an ideal they would realize. They are believers in perfectibility; and, therefore, in some sense religious. The much decried French philosophers, of the last century, belong to the great brotherhood of believers. They were not irreligious, nor merely destructive in their aims, nor in their tendencies. They were not skeptics, as we sometimes foolishly imagine, but men of strong faith, full of zeal and enthusiasm; and faith, however small the quantity, when once at work in a man’s soul, redeems him from sin, and brings him into harmony with God. But these men, it is said, were atheists, they denied God and Christ, and reviled the Holy Scriptures. All a mistake. Just as if a man who has faith and love enough to do valiant battle for humanity, could possibly want faith in God, or be a denier of Christ, or a reviler of the Bible! Voltaire, Condorcet, Helvetius, and Rousseau, are of the same fraternity with Luther, and Calvin, and Zwingli, and Knox.9 And they labored in the same cause with them, and, for all that appears, with motives as pure, and as Christian. No doubt they said many foolish things, many absurd things, which no wise or good man will repeat; but from their labors, and that of their age, the Christian ideal has come forth enlarged. A grand, a Christian idea, eminently so, has been brought out, and placed in the common faith of mankind by these same philosophers, whom we and others have been foolish enough to call infidels, atheists, and destructives; the 9

[Ed. Voltaire was the pseudonym of François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), an ardent opponent of Catholicism, advocate of Deism, and a clever writer, during the French Enlightenment. Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743-94), a French philosopher of the Enlightenment, advocate of educational reform, and a major formulator of the ideas of progress and indefinite human perfectibility. Claude-Adrien Helvétius (1715-71) was another French Enlightenment philosopher and writer, best known for his De l’Esprit (1758), a treatise that emphasized what might be called environmental behaviorism. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) was a philosopher, essayist, and novelist who expressed in his works the prevailing freedoms of the Enlightenment; his Contrat social (1762) had a major influence on political thinking in the American colonies before the Revolution. John Knox (c. 1513-72) was a Scottish religious reformer and founder of Scottish Presbyterianism.]

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grand and brilliant idea of the PERFECTIBILITY OF THE RACE. This idea was in the mind of Christ, and may be found in the monuments we have remaining of him; but it was not embraced by the church. The church had embraced only the ideal or the perfectibility of individuals. The philosophers did not war against the church because it labored to perfect men, but because it refused to labor to perfect man and society. The church was right in what it asserted, but wrong in the point of view from which the philosophers attacked it. They were right in their attacks. They destroyed nothing. The idea embraced by the church is as firm as ever; but they have added to it another idea, even broader and more powerful, which the church may embrace if she will; and if she will not, she will find it exceedingly difficult to retain her hold on the race. The two ideas are perfectly compatible; and now we can see that the adherents of the one have no occasion to make war on the defenders of the other. Tell us not, then, that these men, who have enlarged our ideal, given a positive dogma to the faith, a second table to the law of the race, were mere destructives. They did their work, as most men do, imperfectly, with a due mixture of human passion and weakness, but they did it, as time and circumstance permitted; and it were more fitting for us to make sure of our own faith than to be questioning theirs. They have labored to advance the religion of the race, and why shall we undertake to separate them from the great brotherhood of religious men? The professed believers in Christ must go and study yet longer the meaning of the Christian dogma of EQUALITY, if they find it difficult to embrace them as brothers. What these French philosophers say of Jesus, of Paul, of the Bible, and the Fathers, is all very foolish, very absurd, and very saddening withal; and cannot fail to make us regret that men cannot be found to advocate truth without a mischievous admixture of error. But we can see the error of these philosophers, their folly and absurdity, and therefore need not to imitate them. We are under no necessity of denying what they denied, nor of reviling what they reviled. We can do, what they could not, separate their truth from their error. Both they and the church, in their respective denials were pitiable enough; but both were grand, kindling, and Christian, in their positive faith, in what they asserted and really sought to establish. Mole-eyed sectarianism will, no doubt, shriek with horror at these remarks; but her shrieks have no great power to touch a wise man’s heart, who will rarely think her end untimely should she even shriek herself to death. She would no doubt take it very unkindly in our heavenly Father,

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should he suffer Voltaire, Condorcet, and Diderot,10 to escape being damned; but we have never been able to persuade ourselves that of all his numerous offspring, God loves none but a few Presbyterians, Baptists, and Methodists. What mighty thing have they done, or are they doing, for religion or morals, that they should rise up and arrogate a monopoly of heaven’s favors? They are, doubtless, passable people enough, as the world goes, and we shall be happy to renew our acquaintance with them in a fairer and better world than this; where, we trust, we shall find their views somewhat enlarged, their tempers sweetened, and their charity not diminished. Equally happy shall we be to meet in company with Calvin and Edwards, and Gill, and Wesley, Voltaire, Turgot, d’Alembert, Diderot, Condorcet, and d’Holbach.11 Sure heaven is large enough to contain these as well as those; and God’s love is broad enough to cover them, and rich enough to bless them. It is time to leave off this nonsense about infidels and destructives, and to remember that all men are brethren. No man is an infidel who believes a greater good can be obtained for the human race, and who exerts himself according to the measure of his strength and of his light to obtain it. We heartily repent us of the charge of infidelity, which we have so often thrown out in the pages of this journal, against greater and better men than ourselves. God is no respecter of persons; but, in every nation, he that feareth him and worketh righteousness is accepted with him, whether he embrace our creed or not. Thank God! We are not the wielders of his judgments, nor the distributers of his bounty. If we were so, alas, for our brethren! Nevertheless, we are not among those who believe all opinions alike good; and that every man does all he can, or all he ought, for the progress of man and of men. We deny utterly all such radical difference among men in regard to religion and infidelity, or reform and conservatism, as is commonly contended for; but we recognize a 10 [Ed. Denis Diderot (1713-84) was a French Enlightenment Encyclopaedist who opposed organized religion and moved intellectually from rationalist deism to an Epicurean materialism.] 11 [Ed. John Gill (1732-85) was a Massachusetts publisher and a leading advocate of American independence from Britain. John Wesley (1703-91) was the founder of the Methodist Church. Anne-Robert-Jacques, Baron de L’Aulne Turgot (1727-81) was a French economist whose efforts to bring about financial reform were frustrated by the privileged classes. Jean Le Rond d’Alembert (1717-83) was a French Encyclopaedist, mathematician, and philosopher who identified himself with the rationalist critics of organized religion. Paul Heinrich Dietrich d’Holbach (1723-89) was a French encyclopedist who produced a number of volumes dedicated to the destruction of religion.]

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wide difference among men in the justness or sagacity of their practical views, and in the energy and fidelity with which they labor for human perfectibility. Some mistake entirely the means of realizing a greater good for the race; and others neglect almost entirely to use the means they do not mistake. Men are fallible in their judgments, and they come short in their actions. They err and they sin; and hence the slow progress of individuals, and of the race. History records man’s weakness not less than his grandeur; his crimes, sins, misdeeds, as well as his virtues. Over her scroll we must blush and weep, as well as tremble and hope. There is darkness no less than light in our past doings. And men now, in seeking to do what they believe to be right, often war against the best interests of the race. Ever does Satan delude them by coming to them in the guise of an angel of light. And not this alone. Indolence, like an incubus, rests upon thousands to whom God has given intellect and means, and paralyzes their souls; selfishness and sensuality drive thousands and thousands of others in a direction their better feelings and soberer judgments assure them is false and wicked. We believe neither in the infallibility nor the sinlessness of the race. We believe only in its capacity for progress, in its perfectibility; not in its perfection, nor power to become perfect, but merely to approach perfection. Errors are peculiar to no one class of men. They who are called reformers and they who are called conservatives err not because they advocate or oppose progress, but in their adoption and application of means to obtain the end common to them all. They are all brethren; their faces are really all the same way; but they all, in no small degree, mistake the most effectual means of setting humanity forward. Our transcendental theologians, saving so far as they are animated by an intenser zeal than their opponents, are no more the party of the future, no more reformers than the others. They err by mistaking, in no small degree, both the end and the means. Their merit consists in their assertion of the inspiration of all men, and thereby declaring all men to stand in intimate relation with their Maker. This is a great and glorious truth; but it is not the whole truth. Their opponents, in rejecting this truth, are wrong, and mischievous in their influence. But these opponents contend for another truth equally great, and equally if not more essential, the SPECIAL INSPIRATION OF INDIVIDUAL MESSENGERS, as the providential agents of the progress of the race. The tendency of the transcendental theologians is to overlook the agency of these special messengers, these providential men; and to assert the sufficiency of the inspiration common to all men. Hence

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Bibles and messiahs to them are but natural occurrences, and entitled to no special reverence or authority. Through the aid of Bibles and messiahs they have grown so large that they fancy Bibles and messiahs are no longer necessary; nay that they were never necessary. We have no sympathy with this tendency. Undoubtedly all men stand in intimate relation with their Maker; undoubtedly all men are inspired, for all men love; undoubtedly many of the great essential elements of religious faith have been so far assimilated to the life of humanity, as to be now natural religion; and, therefore no longer needing, with the more advanced nations of the earth a positive supernatural revelation either to assert them, or to confirm their authority; but, after all, it is mainly through the agency of specially inspired, and extraordinarily endowed individuals that the race is itself improved; and through Bibles, prophets, messiahs, revelators that it has attained its present growth. God is nearer to us than transcendental theology teaches. He is near us, not merely in the fixed and uniform laws of nature, but with us in his Providence, taking free and voluntary care of us, and tempering all events to our strength and condition. God is not a resistless fate, an iron necessity, inaccessible to human prayer, which no tears, no entreaties, no contrition can move; but a kind and merciful Father who hears when his children cry, and is ready, able, and willing to supply all their wants. True, we see him not, know him not, save in his manifestations, save in the effects he produces, and so far as he enters, by his power and love, into his creatures. But this we know, that we have never sought help of him in vain; and have never gone to him with a broken and contrite spirit without finding relief. We see a special as well as a general Providence in the history of individuals, and of the race. All is not the result of natural tendencies. Moses, no doubt, embodies in himself all the tendencies of his people, but how much more! These tendencies did not produce him and his legislation; for ages on ages were requisite for his people to come up to his level, to reach the point where his legislation must cease to be an ideal for humanity. The absurdest of all theories is that which would make Moses the natural production of his age and people; and that people, utterly incapable of comprehending him; so sunk in ignorance as, the moment his presence was withdrawn, to fall down and worship a calf of gold!12

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[Ed. A reference to Exod 32:1-8.]

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We have indeed no sympathy with Jewish exclusiveness, none with the doctrine that teaches God had disinherited all nations but the Jewish; and we may add, just as little with the modern doctrine, that, Out from the heart of nature roll’d The burdens of the Bible old; The Litanies of nations came, Like the volcano’s tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe.13

This is to mistake the effect for the cause. These litanies came not from the “burning core below”; but they came from God, and kindled that “burning core.” They originated not in the human heart, sprung not from the effort of the soul to utter or to satisfy its own inherent wants; but they came from abroad, to create in the soul a deep want for God, and to make the heart and flesh cry out for the living God. Tell us not that nature has produced the Bible. Man has not degenerated; he lives in as close communion with nature as ever, has the same senses, the same soul, the same “burning core,” and yet out from his heart no Bible rolls its “burdens.” Christianity is no natural production. It had, no doubt, its reason in the age in which it was born; it was, no doubt, that to which all preceding progress pointed, which all the previous tendencies of the race demanded as their fulfillment; but if it was the mere natural and inevitable result of the natural development of the human race, why appeared it not first where that development was most manifest? Why was not its first appearance in Athens, Rome, or Alexandria, and in the temples, the mysteries, or the schools; instead of a by-corner of the world, in an obscure hamlet, and in the person of an obscure peasant, followed by humble fishermen, and despised publicans? Had the tendencies of the age reached furthest, become most manifest, the development of the race most advanced with the fishermen and boatmen on the Lake of Genesereth? Undoubtedly Christianity was the last word of Oriental and Grecian philosophies; a word for the utterance of which all previous providences had been preparing the way; but a word none but God could utter; and not till he had uttered it in thunder tones from his dwelling in the heavens, and his well-beloved Son had echoed it from the cross and the tomb, could the nations hear it, and leap at the sound. 13 [Ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Problem,” lines 13-18, in The Dial 1 (July, 1840): 122.]

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For ourselves, we confess our utter inability to explain the past history of the race on the theory of natural development, or even on that of the supernatural inspiration, which we believe to be common to all men. That history is all bristling with prodigies, which are inexplicable to us, save on the hypothesis of the constant intervention, in a special manner, of our ever-watchful Father. It is through the agency of prophets, and messengers, and messiahs, specially and supernaturally endowed by God’s spirit, coming when they should come, that the race is initiated into higher and higher degrees of moral and social life. It is our profound belief in this agency that sustains us in the darkest days, and enables us to hope in the midst of despair. It is because there is a God, a great and good God, who never deserts his child, humanity, but is always near and able to succor, that we look forward to a higher moral and social state; and have the courage and the strength, though single-handed and alone, to demand progress, and to labor for it. We have thought differently in our day; but let this confession, written while tears of contrition and joy are falling fast, plead our pardon. Nor let it be supposed that in clinging to the Bible and Jesus, men are mere conservatives, that they have no aspirations. Some of the truths of the Bible have been assimilated; a portion, if we may so speak, of the divine life of Jesus, has become the life of Christendom. Some portion of the Christian ideal has been realized. But not all. There are depths in that old Hebrew Book, which no human plummet has sounded; heights in the life of Jesus which no human imagination has scaled. In contending for the Christianity of the Bible, and of Jesus, we are not looking back but forward; for we are contending for truths far, far in advance of our age. Here is the truth of those who war against what is called transcendental theology. They see, as well they may, in the rich store-houses of the gospel, of the Bible, of Christ, enough for the warmest heart, the profoundest intellect, the loftiest aspiration. Their error, if error they have, is in misinterpreting Christianity, in not being true to the law they acknowledge, in not laboring with sufficient faith and energy to realize the ideal of Christ. They are hearers and not doers of the word. They are as the man who seeth his face in a glass, and then goeth away and forgetteth what manner of man he was. Let them really bring out the Christian ideal, and labor with zeal and energy to form Christ, the hope of glory, in the individual and in the race, and they will be true and efficient reformers. Their works will live after them. Nor, again, let it be supposed that they who cling to the authority of revelation, are necessarily inimical to the rights of the mind, or

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to progress in the knowledge of truth. The Christian ideal, so far as realized, needs no foreign authority. The human mind is equal to it. But what is the authority for that ideal, so far as yet unrealized? The individual reason? Alas! We have seen enough of mere individual reason. It is impotent when it has not, for its guide and support, the reason of God, speaking not only to the heart, but through revelations and the traditions of the race. The great doctrine we are laboring to establish, the reforms we would effect, we confess our inability to demonstrate by mere individual reason. We ask for them, both on our own account, and on account of others, a higher authority than mere individual reason. That reason may be sufficient for here and there one. But how can it suffice for the ignorant, the bigoted, the superstitious, the incredulous, the sensual, the wicked; the men in whom conscience slumbers, love sleeps, and only the world with its impurities, is awake? Alas! Man’s word is impotent to arouse them; man’s authority too weak to command even their attention. They may speculate with us, or debate with us, but not act with us, not live with us, for God or for man. You must go to them with a higher authority than your own; speak to them in a name above all names, and which they dare not resist, or your preaching and efforts will be fruitless. Deprive the preacher of the authority of God, let him go in his own name, not as the messenger of God, and men will laugh at his truths, and mock at his most earnest expostulations. No. They are sorry reformers, who would reduce God to nature; and the authority of his word to that of the individual reason, varying with every individual, and with every age. Nor can we sympathize with the doctrine that makes “religion a matter wholly inward and spiritual.”14 Does Mr. Clarke call this a new doctrine, or an old? It is as old as the oldest records of the race, excepting the Bible; and its legitimate results may be seen in the Indian Faqui,15 who sits all day with his eyes turned downward, contemplating the celestial light playing upon the end of his nose. It may be seen in the sublime indifferency and refined sensuality of the great Goethe,16 the modern transcendental saint; who cared not how the world went, providing he succeeded in cultivating all sides of his 14

[Ed. Clarke calls this the transcendental view of theology. See The WellInstructed Scribe, 15.] 15 [Ed. Faqui, or Fakir, are Islamic mendicants belonging to the sect of Sufism. They practice asceticism and various feats of endurance and self-torture in order to reach a mystic union with God. Fakirs are also found among the Hindu in India.] 16 [Ed. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe(1749-1832) was a German poet, dramatist, scientist and court official.]

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“many sided” being. Whenever we make religion a matter wholly inward and spiritual, we either make sanctity consist in the calm, quiet, contemplation of the beauty and excellence of truth; or we run into a vague, dreamy sentimentalism, which is never slow to lose itself in sensuality. In either case the result is to be deprecated. Mr. Clarke tells us that prior to the rise of transcendental theology our community was divided into two classes, Both of which sought to be justified by works rather than by faith; the one by religious works, the other by moral works. According to both systems the free soul of man was bound beneath the yoke of opinions and outward practices. Christianity was not enough regarded as lying in the state of the soul, and in its inward union with God.17

This account of our religious community does not state the precise evil which existed. Assuredly we shall not here advocate a round of rites and ceremonies, but we utterly deny that those who sought to be justified by “religious works” were wrong in principle. The doctrine, which led our orthodox Christians to seek the favor of heaven by works of piety and love, which led them to maintain what they believed to be the truth, to build churches and assemble for worship, to form Bible, missionary, and tract societies, and to contribute liberally of their wealth for evangelizing the world, was no false doctrine. It led them out of themselves, to seek heaven by doing good, and in this it was right. Their error was not one of principle, but merely mistaking the most direct methods of doing the greatest amount of good for their brethren. Nor did our Unitarian community err in principle. We should like to know how a man is to be justified, if not by the performance of moral works. The “baptized atheism” with which we some time since charged Unitarianism,18 belonged to its neglect of tradition, to its excessive rationalism, and its want of a broad and comprehensive faith in the progress of man and society; in a word, to its coldness and want of power to inspire love, and prompt its believers to bold, earnest, and successful efforts for human salvation; and to its contending for a philosophy, the logical results of which could not fail to end in speculative atheism. We never thought of charging Unitarians, as such, with being atheists, or of censuring them for making religion too outward and formal. Either the orthodox principle or the Unitarian is altogether preferable to the antinomianism of the transcendentalist. So far as the transcen17

[Ed. See The Well-Instructed Scribe, 15.] [Ed. See, “Emerson’s Essays,” EW, 5, Chapter 13, p. 532.]

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dentalists have recognized in man the power to perceive truths which transcend the outward senses, so far they have been of service and have aided progress; but so far as they have represented these transcendental truths to exist in the soul, and taught us it is in ourselves that we see them, and led us to suppose them to be mere developments of the soul itself, they have falsified the truth, and retarded progress instead of aiding it. No, these transcendent truths are no more in the soul, no more the patrimony, as somebody calls them, of the race, than are the objects of external nature. They are objects of the soul’s intelligence; and therefore are out of it, exterior to it, and possessed by it, only when it beholds them. It is always out of us we are to look for the truth; never in us; for it is only as we are reflected from what we are not, as in a glass, that we learn what we are, or even that we are. It is making religion consist in the frame of the soul, not in the intensity and direction of its activity, that leads the author of this sermon, when speaking of the duty of the Christian minister, to say, that he has a “work to do on the hearts of his hearers.”19 This is the highest conception of the duty of the minister of Jesus that he can take with his mysticism and quietism. According to him the question is not what we do, but, what we are; just as if what we are is not the result of what we do; as if our being is not in our doing. We exist not for ourselves any further than we act; and all consciousness of our very existence ceases the moment we cease acting. The great end of life is not to be, but to do; and, in doing, being is developed and enlarged. This cant of the followers of our transcendentalists about being, and cultivating one’s being, is quite nauseating. Assuredly we do not regard the frame of the mind and heart a matter of indifference; assuredly we do not object to self-culture, nor the cultivation of one’s whole nature; but there is for us no sadder image than that of a man who sets out “with malice aforethought” to cultivate himself. Sad, sad, is it to see a man engrossed wholly with himself; and thinking only of the effect this or that act may have in cultivating the barren soil of his own puny being. The great question the apostles made their hearers ask was, What shall we do? And Jesus bids us do the works he commands, if we would know whether they be of God or not. The preacher must not aim at doing a work on the hearts of his hearers—although, if true and faithful to his mission, a great and glorious work he will do—but he must aim to make his hearers do 19 [Ed. According to Clarke, the preacher ought “to do a work in the souls of his hearers.” See The Well-Instructed Scribe, 10.]

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something, to point them to a work, out of themselves, which they must do in order to be saved; and inspire them by bold words, and warm love, with zeal and energy to do it. In doing this work, in being drawn away from themselves, forgetting their own salvation even, and laboring to realize a good for humanity, they will cultivate their souls, improve their hearts, and advance in the internal life of Christ. We do not cultivate love to God by trying to look into ourselves, by calm contemplation of his commands, nor by internal, isolated strivings to love him; but by active efforts to do his will, which is to love and serve our brethren; that is, by “moral works.” Nor do we come to love mankind by efforts carried on by ourselves alone; but by going forth among them, into active life, and by striving to do them good. No man loves his race till he has served it. If we waited for faith and love, before acting, we should never act. Faith and love are born in the effort to do. The love to God, or to man, that comes in any other way is no true love; but a vague, dreamy sentimentalism, weak and effeminate, weeping and sighing at the recital of wrong and outrage, fainting at sight of human suffering; but unable to lift even a finger to lighten the load of misery that weighs man down in the dust. No; your Christian minister is not one who contents himself with, or thinks of, the work he may do on the hearts of his hearers. He comes from God to man, and points to a work the sinner must do. On that work he fixes the attention of his hearers. He speaks with authority; and infuses a new and a higher life into the world, by awakening the world to the performance of nobler deeds. He carries every man’s thoughts away from himself, and instead of concentrating them on his own self-culture, he fixes them on God, on duty, on humanity; and warms and kindles, enlightens and directs, everyone to bold and vigorous efforts for truth and progress. Self-culture, the redemption and sanctification of the individual heart, will follow, as a natural and necessary result. But it is time for us to close. We have extended our remarks beyond what we proposed, because the subject itself is one of vital importance; and because it is one, on some points of which, we are fully satisfied that we have often spoken too hastily, without due deliberation, and on which we have been still more mistaken by others. We trust that we have now expressed ourselves so clearly, and so distinctly that we shall not be again misapprehended on these points. It will be seen that for the foundation of our faith and our general tendencies we take our stand with those who do not accept the transcendental theology. We go for progress; not in truth, for truth is

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immutable, but in the knowledge of the truth; and that truth is no innate property of our souls. We are not born in possession of it. We obtain a knowledge of it only by a sincere and earnest study of man and the universe, the Bible, and the life of Jesus. We have no wish to separate ourselves from common humanity. We go with our brethren. Their traditions are ours; their God is our God; their faith is our faith; and all we ask of them is, to permit us to labor in common with them for a more perfect understanding of the gospel, and a more complete realization of its great truths, in both man and men, in the individual and society, in church and state, in industry, science, and art—in the whole sphere of man’s life and activity.

3. CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT Boston Quarterly Review 5 (January, 1842): 27-59

Government is not, as the author of Common Sense asserts, “at best a necessary evil.”1 It has its origin and necessity in what is good, not merely in what is bad in human nature. It rests for its support on elements as pure, as elevated, and as indestructible as those on which rests religion itself. It will not, therefore, cease to operate, nor become less essential as an instrument of social progress and well being, in proportion as men advance in wisdom and virtue, as is contended by a portion of our modern philanthropists. Man was made to live in society, in intimate relations with his race, and he can live nowhere else. It is only in society, and by its aid, that he can grow, and expand, and fulfil the end of his being. Society is inconceivable without individuals, but it has an existence, a destiny distinguishable, if not separable from theirs. It acts ever in relation to individuals, and through individuals, but its action is not theirs, nor merely an aggregate of isolated activities. It is not itself an aggregate, a collection, but a unity, an individuality, living its own life, which extends from the indefinite past to the illimitable future. Society becomes a unity, an individual, by organizing itself into the state or commonwealth. So organized, it is government, and its action is governmental action. Or in other words, and a more limited sense, government is the result of this organization, and the agent through which it operates. Society organized into the state or commonwealth, that is, as government, has for its mission the maintenance of every member of the community, in the free and full possession of all his natural liberty, and the performance, in harmony with this natural liberty, of those labors demanded by the common good of all, which necessarily surpass the reach of individual strength, skill, and enterprise. The maintenance of each and every member of the community in the full possession of his natural liberty is the first duty of govern1 [Ed. Thomas Paine, Common Sense, in The Complete Writings of Thomas Paine, ed. Philip S. Foner (New York: Citadel Press, 1945), 4.]

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ment. Till this be done, nothing is gained. But this is not all. No individual is sufficient for himself, and however free individuals may be, if left to act always as individuals, without concert, without union, association, they can accomplish little for themselves, or for the race. Savages are as free, individually, as can be wished; but the savage state is the lowest conceivable form of social life. In it there is no progress. The individual is poor and solitary, wandering the earth as an outcast, and doomed to subsist on wild berries, or the scanty products of fishing or the chase, always precarious, and at best but feebly sufficing for his subsistence. There are labors demanded for the growth and well-being of the individual, which no single individual can perform. These must be performed by association, that is, by government. Government, besides maintaining the natural liberty of the individual, must open the resources of the country, construct roads and bridges, railways and canals, open harbors, erect light-houses, protect commerce and navigation, build school-houses and churches, asylums and hospitals, and furnish the means of universal education, of the highest industrial, scientific, and artistic culture for all the children born into the community. The end of government is then twofold. Those of legislation we are perhaps behind England, France, and even Germany; for we are struggling with great zeal and perseverance to fasten upon the country a policy which these nations are casting off. Politically we have declared all men to be equal; the rights of one man to be the measure of those of another; but in all other respects we are nearly as unequal in our condition as are the people elsewhere. Property, instead of becoming more equally diffused, becomes relatively more and more concentrated in a few hands. Poverty keeps pace with wealth, and even outruns it. There is as gross ignorance, as filthy wretchedness with us, though confined within narrower limits, as can be found on the face of the globe. Laws are partial, and unequal in their operation. One section of the country, or one interest is favored at the expense of another; the administration of justice is affected by the relative condition of the parties concerned; he with the longer purse, or the most influential friends, is pretty sure to have the better cause, and a rich man, though acknowledged to be a murderer, is seldom hanged; swindlers and rogues on a large scale are high-minded and honorable men; and the many are taxed for the support, or the benefit of the few. Government maintains not individual liberty, nor does it confine itself to those labors which are for the common good of all. It is perpetually legislating for classes, for

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interests, and protecting one at the expense of another. Whence the cause of this failure? And what is the remedy? One class of politicians attribute the failure to the general diffusion of democracy, to the almost universal extension of the right of suffrage; and the remedy they would propose, if they dared, is the restriction of this right to men of property and respectability, or at least to those who have a property stake in the community. The number properly qualified in any community for the exercise of political power is unquestionably small. The voice of the multitude is rarely the voice of God. But the few, who are qualified, are as likely to be found among those, whom these politicians would exclude from the elective franchise, as among those to whom they would extend it. The ignorant multitude are as likely to be on one side of the line as on the other; and vice is as prevalent among the rich as among the poor, and altogether more dangerous. Restrict the right of suffrage to the property holders, and none of those would be excluded who are now influential in giving to government its false direction. The men who cause all the mischief are not the poor, the men who live by daily wages, but the men of property, businessmen, bankers, traders, speculators, and designing politicians, who want government administered for their special benefit. The restriction of suffrage, so far as it would have any practical effect, would be to throw still more power into the hands of these, and enable them to turn government further and further from its true end. The evils, which obtain, result from the attempt of government to build up certain property interests. Government never makes direct war on the natural liberty of individuals; but destroys it by legislating for classes, for special interests, instead of confining itself to those measures which are equal and for the common good of all. To place it entirely in the hands of any one class, or under the control of any special interest, is merely to aggravate the evil, not to cure it. For it is the invariable nature of every class, of every interest to wield, so far as it can, the whole force of the government, for its own protection and furtherance. Found your government on property and its whole force will be wielded in favor of property. Man, except so far as his rights and interests are involved in the protection of property, will be disregarded, and even depressed. The evil complained of cannot then be redressed by restricting the elective franchise to the property holders. In point of fact these have already too much power and hence the evil. Another class of politicians propose to remedy the evil by enlarging the power of the democracy. The government, they say, is too

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aristocratic, and ought to be made more democratic. This, if it were said in England or France, would be very intelligible, but in this country it has no meaning, or a meaning the reverse of that intended. Democracy here is triumphant; that is, if we mean by democracy the people, or the government of the people. Here all are people, and all interests popular interests. The interests fostered by government are no more aristocratic interests than those it neglects or depresses. It is no more aristocratic to spin cotton than it is to till the soil, to fit out a ship for Canton than it is to saw wood or black boots. All are alike interests of the people, and therefore democratic interests. The people here are already sovereign. They frame the government and administer it. They make and execute the laws, determine and enact the public policy of the country. What more, then, in favor of democracy, can be asked? There are only two ways in which democracy can be politically extended in this country. The first is by removing the few remaining restrictions on the right of suffrage; the second is to abolish the constitutional checks now imposed on the action of the government. The first cannot amount to much. No man, who watches elections, and comprehends the influences which decide them, can believe that making suffrage absolutely universal would vary at all their results. The second would be to increase the power of the government, and to enlarge the sphere of its activity. But the evil complained of does not arise from the weakness of the government, nor from the fact that it is restricted to too few matters; but the reverse; from its too great strength, and from its attempting to do what government ought not to do. The proposed remedy would be merely rendering the people as a body politic an unlimited sovereign, and giving, in practice, to the majority unlimited freedom to pass any laws they please. This would lessen no evil. On this subject of democracy our politicians fall into some mistakes. A portion of them have clear and systematic minds. They start with the doctrine that the people are sovereign, and proceed on the maxim that the people can do no wrong. Once clear the field for a free and full expression of the will of the people, and government would always protect the liberty of every citizen, and be administered for the common good of all; no monopolies, no partial or special legislation, no fostering of special interests, would be tolerated; no laws bearing unequally on sections, interests, or individuals, would be enacted; no iniquitous public policy would be pursued; but government, imposing burdens upon none, would shed its blessings, like the dews of heaven, alike on all, whether rich or poor, learned or

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unlearned, powerful or without influence. But unhappily for this theory, it is already in practical operation. It is difficult to conceive what now hinders the free and full expression of the will of the people. They are sovereign and can do as they please. The government and laws that we now have are precisely what the sovereign people will. They vote as they please, elect such men to office as they choose to elect, and men who usually take good care to support such a policy as they believe will be most satisfactory to their constituents. How then can it be pretended that the will of the people is not freely and fully expressed? Or that if there could be a freer and fuller expression, it would vary the result? There can be no question that the government is not administered for the good of the great mass of the community; no question that the many are taxed directly or indirectly enormously for the exclusive benefit of the few; but whose is the fault? Bankers, capitalists, corporators, stockjobbers, speculators, and trafficking politicians control the government, and in nearly all cases shape its policy. By their arts and intrigues they unquestionably succeed in giving predominance to their will over the will of the rest of their fellow citizens. But they are a portion of the people, and therefore a portion of the democracy. They do not constitute a class apart from the democracy. The late President of the late United States Bank2 is as much one of the people, as the hod-carrier who aided in the construction of his marble palace. In speaking of the people, the democracy, these must be included, and their will be counted the will of the people, as much as the will of any other portion of the community. In estimating the course likely to be taken by the people, we must take into the account the liability of the people to follow the advice or dictation of this portion of their number, and the interest this portion has in misleading them, and the means it possesses of misleading them. The whole people must be included in our estimate, and taken as they are, and for precisely what they are. Whatever the result of an election in this country, it must always be taken to be as free and as full an expression of the popular will, as democracy with us can collect. The fact that this will is after all in reality but the will of a small minority, alters not the truth of this statement. It simply proves that 2 [Ed. Nicholas Biddle (1786-1844) was a Philadelphia banker whom President James Monroe appointed to serve as a government director of the Second Bank of the United States (1819-21). In 1822, Biddle became the president of the bank, which was renamed the Bank of the United States of Philadelphia in 1836. He held his presidency until 1839, when he retired. Brownson had never favored the Bank as a depository of governmental funds.]

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in a country like ours, under a purely democratic order, or under an unlimited democracy, the will of the people, that rules, will always be the will of the smaller number. It shows, then, not that we should render our institutions more democratic, but that it is not in absolute democracy that we are to seek the remedy of the evil complained of. The will of the people, which it is possible to collect, can never be in advance of the people themselves. So long as the people are what they now are, made up of the same materials, with the same diversities of character, condition, and interest, no other will of the people can exist, certainly no other can be officially uttered than that which now rules through the government. The democratic theory, now under consideration, requires for its success a community, in which all the citizens have in all respects one and the same interest and are all substantially equal in position, wealth, and influence. Whether such equality and such identity of interests be or be not attainable, be or be not desirable, neither one nor the other is attained here. As men all are indeed equal, and so far forth as men, they all have the same interests; but as members of the community their conditions are diverse, their callings are different, and their interests are often hostile one to another. Their interests, so far forth as men, are not, as democracy demands, the interests which predominate. These interests count for little or nothing with electors and legislators. In elections and legislation the interests which predominate are never those which belong alike to all men, but the special interests of classes, sections, or individuals. Men are governed at the polls, and in the legislative hall, by the same passions and interests which rule them in the ordinary business of life. No man, when he acts as an elector, or as a legislator, divests himself, or can divest himself, of these passions and interests. They are his life. The planter votes and legislates for the planting interest, the farmer for the policy that will enhance the price of wheat, the manufacturer for that which will pay him a bounty on his wares, and the stockjobber, or speculator, for a paper currency as best adapted to his gambling propensities. Each demands a policy most favorable to that branch of business in which he is specially interested. The several special interests of the country go to the polls, each pitted against the other, and the stronger triumphs, possesses itself of the legislature, and wields the whole force of the government in its own favor. This is inevitable in a democracy, where there are diversities of interest. The stronger interest, by whatever means it is the stronger, whether by numbers, wealth, position, talent, learning, intrigue, fraud, deception, corrup-

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tion, always possesses itself of the government and taxes all the other interests of the community for its own especial benefit. This fact is not duly considered by our democratic theorists. They tell us the voice of the people is the voice of God; that what the people will is for the good of the whole; but however this may be in some refined transcendental sense, in practice the will of the people is the will of that interest in the community, which is able to command a majority, and the voice of the people is the voice of that interest. Political theories must be tested not by their abstract beauty and excellence, but by their practical operations, the people being taken just as they are. In Fourth of July orations, or in caucus speech, the noblest sentiments, the purest and loftiest enthusiasm for justice and humanity, are always received by the assembled mass with the heartiest rounds of applause. Appeals to patriotism and philanthropy will always make you most effective as an orator, or as a writer; but patriotism and philanthropy, when carried to the polls or into the legislative hall, are identified by each man with the special protection by government of his peculiar interest. Patriotism and philanthropy with the planter are in his cotton bags, with the farmer in his wheat field, with the manufacturer in his spindle and loom, with the banker in his notes, with the merchant in his ship or counting room. What most benefits ME is most patriotic and for humanity. No government will work well that does not recognize this fact, and which is not shaped to meet it and counteract its mischievous tendency. There is altogether too much fulsome flattery of the people, too much nonsense uttered about independent voters. One fourth of your independent voters will not take the trouble to go to the polls unless called out by more zealous partisans; and the party which can make the most noise, and has the most money to expend for electioneering purposes, will always be able to call out the larger portion of them, and usually enough to decide a closely contested election in its own favor. Nearly as many more make it a rule to vote always with the stronger party, and always do vote with that party, which they believe has the greatest likelihood of succeeding. Of the remainder, not one in ten has any clear conception of the questions at issue, or any tolerable judgment of what will be the practical operation of one policy or another. With these facts staring us in the face, it seems idle to seek a remedy for the evils complained of in a further extension of the democratic principle. The form of our government is already as democratic as need be; and were it made more so, it could only aggravate the disease, so long as there is in the community the present inequal-

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ity of conditions, or the present diversity of interests. This remark will of course be offensive to our demagogues and trading politicians, whose stock in trade consists mainly in their ability to scream democracy, DEMOCRACY, in our ears from morning to night, and from year’s end to year’s end. It will deprive them of many of their present facilities, should it gain credit with the people, and render it somewhat doubtful whether this ability to scream democracy does in reality of itself qualify a man for any and every office, from pathmaster to President of the United States. But as this is a sacrifice demanded by the public good, perhaps these pure patriots will consent to make it. In these remarks nothing is said against democracy, when interpreted to mean, as many of our friends interpret it, a government which is so constituted and administered, as to maintain the natural liberty of the individual, and to perform those social labors, surpassing the reach of the individual, demanded by the common good of all. But when democracy is so interpreted, the end of government is confounded with its form, an error into which we ourselves, we are sorry to say, have on some occasions fallen. That what is thus declared to be democracy, is the end that government should aim to realize, that which it should be so constituted and administered as to realize, is unquestionably true. But the purely democratic form of government, that is, a form of government which recognizes the absolute sovereignty of the people, and leaves the ruling majority the unlimited freedom to do whatever it pleases, will not secure this end, as is abundantly proved by the considerations already alleged. Democracy, when it is interpreted to mean the end to be gained, is worthy of all acceptation; it is defective only as a means. It cannot as a form of government secure the end proposed because there are in the country a diversity of conflicting interests, and the government must always take the direction of the stronger interest, which with us has been heretofore, if not now, what may with sufficient accuracy be termed the interest of business capital. The government, following the direction of this interest, can be for the common good only on condition that the interest of all classes, sections, and individuals is identical with the interests of the small minority engaged in business. Nor is this all. The interest which triumphs and obtains for itself the fostering care of the government is not in reality promoted thereby. The specially protected interests, in the long run, suffer in consequence of the very protection they receive. This is now admitted by the more enlightened statesmen both at home and abroad. All interests prosper best under that government which proceeds on the

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maxim, “justice to all, favors to none.” In political economy, as well as individual, a departure from the principles of common justice breeds confusion, hostility, and brings with it a day of terrible retribution. The laws of God, whether for individuals, or for societies, are equal and just, opposed to all favoritism, to all special privileges, and in neither case are they ever transgressed with impunity. But all interests are short-sighted. The dram of protection exhilarates today, and they think not that it will debilitate tomorrow, and finally, if persisted in, destroy the system. The evils of government all proceed from its attempts to protect or further special interests; that is, in not confining itself to those matters, or to such lines of policy as necessarily affect all interests and all individuals alike. The interests of a community are twofold, those which are common to all its members, and those which are peculiar to classes, or to individuals. The first only are proper objects of government. True statesmanship consists in so constituting the government that it can never, in its practical operations, obtain any power to act on any matters but these. Government should be so constituted, as to operate for man, not for his accidents. It should legislate not for the merchant, the manufacturer, the farmer, the planter, the speculator, the banker, the laborer, but for the man. The problem to be solved is how to constitute and administer the government so as to recognize always, and in all its practical bearings, the supremacy of the man. Aristocracy with us is not the solution of this problem, because the aristocracy, whatever its basis, birth, wealth, learning, or military service, will always administer the government for the exclusive benefit of the aristocratic class. Monarchy will not answer because there everything must bend to the glory of the monarch. Democracy will not answer because it concentrates all power in the hands of the ruling majority for the time, and that majority will always consist, as has been shown, of the stronger interest in the community, and therefore of the interest that should be checked rather than suffered to rule. The common vice of all of these systems, as of all conceivable absolute governments, is in their CENTRALISM. All power is centered in the government, and the interest, class, or individual oppressed, or neglected, has no effectual veto on its tyrannical acts. The great and difficult problem for the statesman, but at the same time his first and indispensable duty, is to provide a veto on power. No government can operate well, where there is no power in the community to arrest it, peaceably and effectually, whenever it runs athwart the interests or the rights of the people at large, or of

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any portion of them. The prosperity of Rome dates from the establishment of the tribunitial power, which was a veto on the government; and it continued till both the government and veto power were absorbed in the emperor. Then centralism triumphed. All power was in the same hands, in one and the same body, and Rome declined and fell. The merits of the old feudal system, now so universally repudiated, consisted in the veto the great vassals had on the crown, and on each other. England is indebted, for the stability and beneficial influence of her government, to the imperfect veto her House of Commons has, in granting or withholding supplies. In Poland the veto power was carried too far, and proved the ruin of the Republic. But always, in order to secure good government, must there be somewhere in the state the POSITIVE power called the government, and a NEGATIVE power, naturally and peaceably arresting the action of the government, whenever it attempts to play the tyrant. These two powers must be lodged in different hands. For the veto power is nothing, if vested in the government itself. It would then be only the government vetoing its own acts. It must be separated from the positive power, and placed in other hands, as was the case at Rome. The patrician order governed, but the plebeians, through their tribunes, could veto its acts. The patricians, therefore, while they constituted the governing power of the state, could enact no laws, pursue no line of public policy, which would not be so far acceptable to the plebeians as to escape the tribunitial veto. But if this veto power had been lodged in some branch of the Senate itself, or in a portion of the ruling order, it would have been no veto at all; because the interest that must exercise it, if exercised at all, would have been the very interest against which it must be exercised. It may be assumed then as an axiom in political science that in order to secure a wise and just administration of government, there must be a division of powers into positive and negative, and the negative power must be placed in such hands as will have a direct interest in interposing it against the encroachments of the positive or governing power. Till quite recently nearly all American statesmen have recognized the necessity of a veto power. They have not, however, always perceived the necessity of placing it in a distinct organization. They have sought to obtain it by various artificial divisions in the positive power itself, and have trusted to the ruling interest to veto its own acts, at least to some considerable extent, and wholly where circumstances were not against them. The necessity of a limitation on the exercise of power has been felt by all; but, except in the case of the federal

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government, they do not appear to have had any clear conceptions of the nature of the limitation demanded, nor of the effectual means of constituting it. The methods, they have for the most part relied on, are frequency of elections, the division of the legislative branch into two houses, the executive veto, and written constitutions. Frequency of elections is well, as far as it goes; but is by no means an effectual veto. For it rarely happens that the veto is needed when it must not be exercised against the majority of the people themselves, as well as against a majority of their representatives in the legislature. The new elections will then almost always return men pledged to the obnoxious policy and the acts of the new house will need vetoing as much as those of the old. The division of the legislature into two houses answers a good purpose, when, as in England, they are differently constituted, and really represent different interests; but in this country, for the most part, the two houses represent the same interest, and differ from each other only in the fact that one is more numerous than the other, as is evinced by the fact that the instances of disagreement between the Senate and House are few, and comparatively trifling. Both houses are usually of the same political complexion. Nevertheless, this division, when the members of one house are chosen for a longer term of service than those of the other, or when the local interests of the state are such that by making the members of one house more numerous than those of the other, one may be made to represent different interests from those represented by the other, answers a good purpose, and to some extent secures the veto power demanded. The executive veto is inefficient from the fact that it will be rarely exercised. The executive is in all cases chosen by the people at large, or by the legislative branch of the government. In most cases his term of office is the same, or very nearly the same, with that of the members of the legislature, and he must, therefore, agree with the ruling majority in his politics; and will, for the most part, represent the same interests. In general, then, the chances are much greater that he will approve an improper exercise of power on the part of the ruling majority than that he will veto it. In a few instances, the presidential veto has been exercised against the wishes of the political friends of the President, but never when there was not good reason to believe that a majority of the people would sustain it. Written constitutions are indispensable in this country; but mere written constitutions impose only a slight restriction on the power of the ruling majority. If there be not a veto power behind them, in the very constitution of the commonwealth, able and interested in sustaining them, they will be violated with impunity, whenever the rul-

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ing majority find them in their way. In the estimation of those who have the power, that is always constitutional, which they believe to be conducive to their own especial interest. The minority may protest, adduce the very letter of the constitution, but what avails it? Power cares not for a few slopes, curves, and angles, drawn on parchment. It cares not on what rights or interests it tramples. It goes straight to its object, from which nothing can avert it, but an antagonistic power, which effectually resists it. Experience abundantly proves this. Nothing is more evident than the unconstitutionality of a United States Bank, and yet there has been scarcely a Congress from the origin of the federal government not ready to charter one; the Constitution authorizes no tariff for protection, as the advocates of the protective policy admit by the fact that they never dare bring in a bill for protection that declares on its title its purpose; and yet the protective policy has been able to command large majorities in Congress and among the people. No law can be more right in face and eyes of the Constitution than that of the extra-session of Congress last summer, distributing the proceeds of the public lands among the states, and yet it found a majority in both houses of Congress in its favor, and received the executive sanction. These and numerous other instances show that written constitutions are as mere waste paper when in the way of ruling majorities. There is a mistake in regard to constitutions, somewhat prevalent, fraught with much mischief. It is supposed to be the easiest thing in the world to frame a constitution, and therefore to secure the wise and just administration of government. Let the people assemble by their delegates in convention, debate for three or four months, and then draw up an instrument, which, when ratified by the people in their primary assemblies, shall be a constitution, the fundamental law of the land. All this is well enough. But what makes this instrument a constitution, a fundamental law? Does the convention merely draw up an instrument? Or does it give a constitution to the body politic? The common opinion seems to be that it merely draws up an instrument with a certain number of articles, and sections, and declares that that shall be the law, according to which the government shall be administered, or power exercised. But where is the guaranty that power will be so exercised, that the sovereign authority will not transgress its provisions? The common reply will be that the people, who make the constitution, will see that it be not violated. This is the mistake. Constitutions are intended to be a restriction on power, and are needed because power has a perpetual tendency to exceed whole-

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some limits. But, with us, power is the people. The people here are the sovereign authority. Constitutions are needed then to be a check on the people, a limit to their power in order to save us from the calamities of absolute government. To form a constitution and entrust its preservation to the people is, then, a manifest absurdity; for then the very power is relied on, to protect the constitution from violation, which the constitution is created to restrict, and from which alone the violation of the constitution is to be apprehended. It is like locking up the culprit in prison, and entrusting, him with the keys. To say that the people will voluntarily, of their own accord, sustain a constitution that restricts their sovereign power, is only saying that they will voluntarily, of their own accord, forbear to exercise that portion of their power so restricted. What, then, is the use of the constitution? It affords no additional security; but leaves us right where we should be, in case we had no constitution at all. We have with the constitution nothing but the discretion or pleasure of the sovereign on which to rely, and we should have that without the constitution. In this view of the case, constitutions are a great absurdity. Let not these remarks be misinterpreted. Nothing is intended against constitutional governments, but the reverse. Constitutional governments are the only governments which really secure the freedom of the subject, or citizen. But, then, they must be constitutional governments. The constitution must be something more than the roll of parchment, with its slopes, angles, and curves. To make the constitution is not to draw up the written instrument, but to organize the body politic, to constitute its several powers; and if we really intend it to be a constitution, so to organize the state as to have always a negative power capable of arresting the positive power whenever it is disposed to exceed the bounds prescribed to it. The constitution, then, must virtually consist in the manner in which the different interests, classes, sections, or natural divisions of the community, are organized in relation to the government. The great point to be always kept steadily in view is the constitution of the veto power. The positive power can always take care of itself. There is rarely any danger that it will not be able to do all the good that the community requires. The danger is that it will absorb too much into itself, and become tyrannical and oppressive. Almost the sole art, in constituting the government, consists in devising an effective veto, one that shall operate naturally, peaceably, when, and only when, it is required. The constitution of the veto is, by no means, an easy problem; nor will it admit of an arbitrary solution. It must have its reason and origin, in the previous divisions, habits, conditions, or institutions,

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of the country. In some countries it is almost, if not quite, impossible to constitute a veto power; in others it already exists, if statesmen but knew how to avail themselves of it. In one sense it is always the people that possesses and exercises the veto; but not the people as a whole, constituting one simple body, but the people taken in parts. The whole people, through the majority, are the positive power, the governing power; the negative power must be sought in the parts, and secured by so constituting or organizing the parts, that each part, when an oppressive measure is attempted, may have an effectual veto on the action of the majority, or positive power. But where these parts do not already exist, or where the population of a country, or its natural or geographical character, the productions of the soil, or the pursuits of the people, do not permit the organization of the community into distinct parts, the constitution of a veto power is nearly or quite impossible; and such countries seem doomed to all the horrors of eternal despotism. Liberty is not for them, except as it comes from abroad, and through conquest. Conquest, by foreign powers, may introduce upon the soil a new race, which by virtue of its previous habits, institutions, divisions, coexisting with those of the conquered race, shall furnish them the necessary elements, and pave the way for the eventual establishment of an effectual veto power, and thus save them from despotism, and bring them into the family of the free. This is the process by which western Europe was redeemed from the despotism, into which Imperial Rome had degenerated. Modern Europe owes its freedom, saving the moral influence of the church, to the conquests of the Northern barbarians. England owes hers to the Norman Conquest. The Barbarians, by their military divisions, and possession of the land, furnished the feudal lords; the conquered population, by being forced into industrial pursuits, gradually emerged into communes, commons, and third-estate. The superiority of the English commons over the corresponding class in continental Europe is owing to the fact that their ranks were recruited by the old Saxon nobility and gentry, dispossessed of their former rank and estates by the followers of the Conqueror. In western Europe and in England conquest supplied the elements out of which free governments could be ultimately constructed, by instituting such divisions as could be made available in time, for the constitution of a veto on the sovereign power. In this country we have been favored by Providence. Here the constitution of the veto power is more natural and easy than anywhere else; and our statesmen have not entirely overlooked it, though they have not made as much of the opportunities afforded them, as

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they might, or should have done. Two parties existed at the origin of our government, both honest, no doubt, but each tending to push the other to extremes, and both conspiring to give the government a false direction. Both really desired to obtain a veto power, but neither understood precisely how it should be constituted; neither, in fact, took the right course to obtain it. The jealousy was rather of the power of classes than of the power of the sovereign. One party wished to place a veto on the power of what it called the mob; the other, on the power of what it termed the aristocracy. The first sought its end by laboring to lodge the sovereign power exclusively in the hands of the well-born, the gentlemen, and the holders of property. This would undoubtedly have been an effectual veto on the power of the poorer classes, but none on the power of the government. The positive power of the state would still have been unlimited, and in hands, too, even more liable to abuse it, than would have been the poorer classes it was proposed to exclude. The government, if unlimited, is safer in the hands of the simple-men, than in the hands of the gentlemen; and the democracy, to use the term in its old sense, may be more safely trusted than the aristocracy. The other party sought to place a check upon the aristocracy, the gentlemen, and men of property, by rendering suffrage universal. They were right as far as they went. But their system could not be effectual; for, in the first place, it imposed no check on the sovereign power itself, which was the main point; and none, in fact, on the aristocracy, because the gentlemen, the men of birth, education, manners, and property, could always be the most influential, and thus control the elections and the government. In point of fact, this second party has furthered the aims of the first; and the old party, which called “democracy an illuminated hell,” finds now that it is through democracy it can most effectually secure the triumph of the aristocracy. Hence it claims to be the Democratic party of the country. The struggle between these two parties has engrossed almost wholly the attention of our statesmen, and prevented them from considering, so expressly as they should have done, the all-essential point of constituting the veto power, where it would amount to something. The government, whether lodged in the hands of the gentlemen, or the simple-men, will be tyrannical and oppressive, if the oppressed party have no effectual means of resistance, except that of rebellion; which would end, even if successful, as it does in the Asiatic nations, only in displacing one tyranny and substituting another equally bad. Nevertheless, the veto has not been altogether overlooked. In the constitution of the federal government we have it in as perfect a form

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as can be desired. Providence prepared the way for it, by so ordering it that the country should be settled by distinct colonies, independent one of another, which at the Revolution could become free and independent states. By the union of these states into a single body politic, for certain specific purposes, we obtain the two powers needed. The American people, acting through the federal government, as one people, constitute the positive or governing power; the states, each in its separate, independent capacity, constitute the negative or veto power. The positive power is that of the majority. The majority of the American people govern through Congress. This is right. This is the only possible rule that can be adopted; and the maxim so common among our politicians, the majority must govern, is accepted. But the majority, according to the Constitution, is not absolute. It has a right to govern only within certain limits. Whenever it transcends, in its acts, those limits, its acts are unconstitutional, and therefore null and void from the beginning. When it so transcends, there is, by means of state organization, a veto power to arrest it. By this the constitution of the Union is rendered a real constitution—a constitution of the people, and not a mere roll of parchment. There is a power behind the written Constitution, different from the authorities created under it, capable of compelling its observance. A state is to the Union, what the tribune was to the Roman Senate. When the Union enacts a law which transcends the Constitution, and every law does transcend the Constitution, that bears unequally on the different states, the state can interpose its veto, and arrest its action. The veto sought by means of universal suffrage, that is to say, the veto of the individual citizen, is too feeble to amount to anything; but the veto of a state will always be as effectual as was that of a Roman tribune.3 This veto power is no artificial creation, but is inherent in the constitution of American society. No objection can be brought against its exercise. It can never be exercised, except against an unjust and unconstitutional law. A state will interpose its veto only against such a law, as bears with peculiar hardship upon itself, which oppresses it for the benefit of some one or more of the other states. No state will complain of a law from which it does not suffer, or refuse to submit to a law from which it suffers no more than its sister states. A law affecting all the states alike, and so burdensome as to demand the interposition of the state veto, would be so odious to them all, that its repeal, without a resort to the veto power, could be easily effected. 3

[Ed. This reflects John C. Calhoun’s theory of state rights.]

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The laws of human action forbid us to fear an interposition of the veto without just cause. The Roman Tribunes, it does not appear, ever interposed their veto except when the Senate proposed a law, which threatened to be peculiarly oppressive to the plebeians; and the English House of Commons has never interposed its veto, that is, withheld the supplies, except in the last resort, as the only means left of forcing the government to a redress of grievances, or the abandonment of an oppressive policy. It may be assumed as an axiom that a state will never interpose its veto, except when the acts of the general government are peculiarly oppressive to its citizens, ruining their interests for the promotion of those of other states. Now all such acts are from their very nature unconstitutional. The federal government has no right to impose, directly or indirectly, any heavier burdens on one state than on another. Its taxes must be laid equally upon all, according to a uniform census; and its measures, to be constitutional, must be for the common benefit of all the states. The measures then, which a state would veto, would be always unconstitutional measures, and therefore null and void from the beginning. The veto would then always be interposed to save the Constitution, never to destroy it. The state veto will always be effectual. One of three things must inevitably follow its interposition. The government must reduce the vetoing state by force; obtain a new grant of power, or yield to a compromise. The first is out of the question. There will always be one or more states to sympathize with the vetoing state that will not consent to the employment of force against it; and individual volunteers from all the states, from various motives, will always rush to its support; so that no trifling force will be requisite to subdue it. The states in favor of the policy vetoed, strongly desirous as they may be of carrying it into effect, will pause, before resolving to do it at the expense of a protracted and bloody civil war, and will rather choose to abandon the policy than sustain it at such cost. The second alternative will rarely, if ever, occur. A glance at the geographical character of the country will show us that a policy, bearing so hard upon any one state as to induce it to resort to its veto, will always be opposed by more than one fourth of the states; and power to carry the measure into effect can never be obtained, if one fourth of the states join the vetoing state. Nothing remains, then, but the last alternative. The government must yield to a compromise of the difficulty; and consent to abandon, as soon as may be, the obnoxious policy. The state veto will, then, always be an effectual, peaceable, and orderly remedy. The knowledge of its existence, and the certainty that it will be interposed, when occasion demands, will operate as a salu-

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tary check upon the government, and serve to keep it so uniformly within constitutional limits that a resort to the veto will rarely, if ever, become necessary. This veto power, which Providence, and not man, seems to have constituted for us, has in most cases been overlooked or undervalued by our statesmen. This is bad. For, though it is almost impossible to constitute an effectual veto power, where it does not exist, it is an easy thing, through a false political theory, to abolish it, when provided. The veto power has not done us all the service it might, in consequence of the centralizing doctrines which have prevailed; and because the attention of our statesmen has been turned in other directions. Let the true theory of our Constitution once be clearly brought out, and understood by the people of the several states, and the veto power will be saved, and be found capable, at all times, of saving the Constitution. With this power, fairly recognized as an integral element in the constitution of American society, the American government must appear to all competent judges, as a miracle of wisdom, and adapted to any conceivable extent of territory and fitted to endure forever. It combines all the excellencies of the Roman and English governments; nay, of all preceding governments, without any of their defects. It is the most wonderful creation of political science the world has ever beheld; the résumé, if one may so speak, of all the past political labors of the race, the latest and noblest birth of time. Nothing is wanting to it but to be comprehended, accepted, and administered in its true spirit. In regard to our state governments, we have been less successful in constituting the veto power; and what is worst of all, we have made no progress in obtaining it. On the one hand, there has prevailed the centralism of the aristocracy; that is, of such an aristocracy as the country has been able to produce or import, not very respectable, and hardly deserving to be called an aristocracy; and, on the other hand, we have had the centralism of democracy. The tendency has been, however, steadily in favor of the democratic centralism, which is the better tendency of the two. Every new revision of our constitutions has tended to bring our governments nearer and nearer to the character of pure democracies. This has been effected by the gradual elevation of the laboring classes, but more especially from the disposition of demagogues and political aspirants to court the multitude; and from the fact, already mentioned, that the party, formerly in favor of giving the government an aristocratic cast, have discovered that they can obtain all by means of democracy, they hoped from aristocracy, and without incurring the odium of being opposed

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to the democracy. This party, made up at present, for the most part, of the money-changers, who now, as of old, turn God’s temple into a den of thieves, are so pleased with democracy, and find that they can so easily secure the preponderating influence in elections and in the legislative hall, that they have no wish to return to the high toned doctrines of the old Federal party; but would resist such a return with as much firmness as any portion of our countrymen. Both parties, under this point of view, have come on to the same ground; and are vying with each other, which shall be the most democratic. Both parties combine their influence to establish democratic centralism; that is, to render the government unlimited democracy; one party, because it knows it can always use the democracy in furtherance of the views of the aristocracy; and the other, because it hopes to secure thereby a preponderating influence to the poorer and more numerous classes. Between them both it will go hard, but CENTRALISM, which is but another name for ABSOLUTISM, shall triumph, and freedom and good government be indefinitely postponed. This is now the predominating tendency, and the dangerous tendency, which every statesman, every patriot, and every philanthropist must struggle to arrest before it shall be too late. But the constitution of the veto power within the states themselves even if these dangerous centralizing doctrines of our politicians were abandoned, and the attention of all turned towards it, would be exceedingly difficult, and all but impossible. In the Union it is, as has been seen, comparatively easy. The Union spreads over a vast extent of territory, with many varieties of climate, soil, and productions, which create distinct, sectional interests, embracing entire states, and therefore capable of being organized, each into a veto power on the other. This indicates the importance of an extended territory; and shows us that our federal system must work the better in proportion as the field of its operations becomes extended and varied. Were it to extend over the whole continent of North America, as it one day must, if continued, it would be altogether more beneficial in its operations, and stronger and more likely to be permanent than now. These sectional interests, from the mutual hostility of which, so much evil is apprehended by narrow-minded and short-sighted politicians, are the very life and support of the system. If the Union were not extensive and varied enough to create them, the horizontal division of parties would universally obtain, by which the whole power of the government, with no effective veto, would be thrown into the hands of the upper classes, who would invariably make it an instrument for oppressing yet more the poorer and more numerous classes.

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Of all possible divisions of parties, this horizontal division is the worst, the most dangerous, and the one against which we should labor the most strenuously to guard; for, where it occurs, the lower strata must bear the whole weight of the upper. But with the great extent of territory, and diversity of interests, presented by the Union, parties will divide geographically, and consequently so that each party may have within its ranks a proportional share of the wealth of the community; and will be so constituted that the interest represented by one party can be organized into an effective veto on the preponderance of that represented by another. Where there are so many interests, each embodying the force of an entire state, the federal government must be held in check. No one interest will consent to be sacrificed to another. Each, then, will struggle to prevent the government from granting any special protection to another; and the result must be that the government will, as it should, abandon the policy of specially protecting any interest, and confine itself to the common good of all. When government is so confined it operates always wisely, justly, in favor of freedom and national prosperity. But when we come within the bosom of the states themselves, the whole aspect is changed. In the Union, it suffices to give one sectional interest, by means of state organization, a veto on another; but in the state itself it is not against the preponderating influence of one sectional or geographical interest over another that it is necessary to guard. The territory is, in general, too small, and the interests of all parts of the state are too much the same, for these sectional interests to become of much importance. Parties in the bosom of the state rarely, if ever, divide geographically, but almost uniformly, especially in the non-slaveholding states, horizontally. Parties are classes, with merely individual exceptions. Take the two parties which now exist, and one will be found to embrace much the larger portion of the wealth of the community, nearly all the active business capital of the country, while the other is made up of small farmers, journeymen mechanics, and common laborers. At least, this is eminently so in the New England states; and it is becoming more and more so in the middle and western states, in proportion as the effort is made to render government more just and equitable in its operations. This is a serious fact and one from which the saddest consequences are to be apprehended. With this division of parties, as has already been said, power is all on one side. The poorer and more numerous classes are no match for the wealthy and more influential minority. Universal suffrage serves but to delude them. For wealth can command votes, if not always at the polls, at least, in the legislative hall. The United

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States Bank, when it represented the money power, though unable to prevent the re-election of General Jackson, never failed to have a majority in both Houses of Congress. The upper classes can always triumph, when they think it worth their while to make the effort. Let them once bring the weight of their personal characters, their influence as employers, and creditors to bear, as they always will when there is anything important enough at stake, and the poorer and more numerous classes, with justice, patriotism, and intelligence on their side, are before them but as the chaff of the summer threshing floor before the wind. They sweep over the country in one wild destructive tornado, as they did in 1840. There are no arts too base for them to adopt, no oppressions too gross for them to practice, no corruption and bribery, no fraud and misrepresentation too barefaced for them to countenance, in order to secure their triumph. Having the wealth of the country, they can easily command all that is base and profligate in the community; and be sure of the services of every Iscariot4 that will betray the sacred cause of freedom and justice for “thirty pieces of silver” [Matt 26:15]. Even men, who have generally the reputation of being high-minded and honorable men, from whom better things might be expected, will consent to quaff “hard cider,”5 or play the buffoon, in order to cheat the simple and unsuspecting out of their rights. The election of 1840 reads to the statesman and patriot an instructive lesson. A reaction has indeed taken place for the moment, for there is at present no call for similar exertions; but it will go hard, but similar or worse scenes will be reenacted, whenever the upper classes feel again that power is slipping from their grasp, and that it is necessary to rally to prevent the government from being restricted to its constitutional duties. The evil to be guarded against in the states, especially the nonslaveholding states, is this tendency to a horizontal division of parties. With this division, it may be taken for granted that power will be always virtually, if not nominally, in the hands of the upper strata of society; and the poorer and more numerous classes must be governed for the benefit of the more wealthy and influential minority. The only possible remedy is in the constitution of some veto power, 4

[Ed. A reference to Judas Iscariot, the disciple who betrayed Jesus.] [Ed. The campaign of William Henry Harrison involved constant displays of coonskin caps, cider barrels, and miniature log cabins to demonstrate popular appeal. A Baltimore paper wryly observed after Harrison was nominated for the presidency that he “would be entirely happy on his backwoods farm if he had a pension, a log cabin and a barrel of hard cider.” The Whigs turned the slur into a popular campaign slogan. On this, see Schlesinger, Age of Jackson, 290-91.] 5

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which shall arrest the government, whenever it attempts to act on matters not common to all classes, or to pass laws not for the common good of all. This is the kind of veto needed in the states; a veto operating naturally and effectually to prevent the wealthier and more influential classes from pursuing any line of policy bearing with peculiar hardship on the poorer and more numerous classes. The constitution of such a veto power is the problem; and, it need not be disguised that it is a problem of most difficult solution. It was partly in consequence of observing this tendency, in all small communities, to divide horizontally, and perceiving that in such a division power was, and must be, on the side of the upper stratum, that we were induced, some time since, to suggest the bold and energetic measure of changing the law, by which property now descends from one generation to another. We saw no way of preventing this horizontal division, but by rendering each member of the community an independent proprietor. The substantial equalization of property, could it be effected without violence by the gradual and natural operation of a just and uniform law, we felt would abolish the distinction of classes, and give to each man his proportional share of influence. All being proprietors, and virtually possessing in themselves the means of subsistence, without depending on wealthy capitalists, the interests of all, so far as government is concerned, would become so nearly the same that no one would have an interest in obtaining, or be able to obtain, any law not bearing equally on all the members of the community. We still see no effectual measure of curing entirely the evil complained of, short of the one we proposed, a measure which has been received with almost one universal shriek of horror.6 We still insist that the measure we suggested is deserving the serious consideration of our statesmen. Nevertheless, we have, as we had when we suggested it, no hope of its adoption. It therefore enters for nothing into our plan of organizing the state, or administering the government. The practical statesman, however he may theorize in his closet, never, when he goes forth to act, wastes his strength in vain efforts to effect what he knows, in the circumstances in which he is placed, to be an impracticability. When he cannot adopt the means he believes would be most effectual, he consents to adopt the best within his reach. However beneficial might be the proposed change in the statute of distributions, the class of society that would 6 [Ed. A reference to Brownson’s proposal to eliminate the hereditary descent of property through state taxation. The reaction he asserts here is an exaggeration. There were a number of supporters of his “Laboring Classes” essay Boston Quarterly Review 3 (July,1840): 358-95, see EW, 5, chapter 7.]

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oppose it, have now the power, and it would be impossible to dispossess them without the aid of the change itself; and, perhaps, were we able to obtain for the poorer and more numerous classes power enough to effect the change, we could, without much harm, dispense with effecting it. That change, if it ever comes, and come one day it must, will be effected, not by the direct action of civil government in assuming the initiative, but through moral and religious influences, creating a higher order of civilization, and involving a new and different organization of the race; an organization resting for its foundation, not on wealth, nor military force, nor the accident of birth, but on CAPACITY. The day for that organization is far distant. The new church perhaps will usher it in, or usher in something better. In the mean time government must be organized with such materials as we have at hand; and do the best it can with the race as they are, and as they gradually become. With all we can do, the wail of sorrow, from the heart of the true man over the sad doom of the poorer and more numerous classes, must yet longer be heard. Their friends are few, and without influence; or if they have influence, they lose it, the moment they attempt to befriend them. Nevertheless, that were a detestable philosophy that left us nothing but to wail over incurable evils. Shame on the statesman, or the philanthropist, that can do nothing but sigh and weep. Something can be done. He blasphemes God, who utterly despairs. The division into towns, or small communities, as in our New England states, though it in some measure favors the horizontal division, is not without its beneficial effects. It serves many valuable municipal purposes; and by creating a large number of small offices, and bringing the people frequently together for town affairs, in which almost every citizen takes part, has a happy effect in cultivating the intelligence and independent spirit of the people. The division of the state into small districts, for the choice of one branch of the legislature, and into larger, for the choice of the other, and giving to the members of the separate branches a different term of service are not without use, and in some of the states answer an important purpose. But, for the present, our main reliance must be on the federal government. The legislation, which operates the most to the disadvantage of the poorer and more numerous classes, is that which concerns currency and finance. The state legislation on currency and finance is determined almost solely by the general policy of the federal government. Abstract the laws relative to the banking and credit system, together with the protective policy, and not much legislation would be left, specially injurious to the poorer and more numerous

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classes. The paper system, which has proved so ruinous to the country, will not long survive in the states its abandonment by the general government. The protective policy, which taxes the southern planter and northern laborer, for the especial benefit of the capital invested in manufactures, depends entirely on the federal government, which will not be permitted to continue it. With these two systems will fall most of the measures, bearing with oppressive weight on the poorer and more numerous classes. The laborer will be lightened of his burdens; he will retain in his own hands a larger proportion of the proceeds of his labor; and gradually emerge from his unfriendly condition to one in which he will have more independence, and consequently more weight in the affairs of his town, and more power to protect himself in the state. In the mean time improvements will continue to be made in the science of legislation. The state most favorably circumstanced will take the lead. Its example will influence other states; and gradually, by being on the alert, by availing ourselves of every favorable opportunity, we may hope the state governments will ultimately come to be constituted as wisely for their internal purposes, as the federal government now is for its sphere of action. We have gone, thus elaborately, into this subject of constitutional government, because it is important in itself, and one almost generally neglected by our politicians; and, also, because we have wished to give our own views, which have, in some instances, been misapprehended by our political friends, more fully, and at greater length than we have heretofore done. From the fact that we have objected to an unlimited democracy, we have been supposed to be unfriendly to democratic governments. But we contend earnestly for the popular form of government; we only object to an unlimited government, whatever its form. We are in favor of limiting the sovereign power wherever that power be lodged; that is, we demand CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT; and constitutional government exists for us as a mere name, unless there be in the organization of society a power, which can effectually preserve the Constitution, whenever the government is disposed to violate it. This power we call the negative or veto power of the state. The constitution of this power we hold to be the main problem in the organization of government; and we are unable to conceive of any safe ward for the liberty of minorities, or of individuals, without it. This is the extent of our anti-democracy. For this we have called aloud; for its importance seems to us hardly suspected by the mass of the people, and overlooked by the majority of leading politicians—we were about to say of all parties. But we will not say so. The Republican party, the old states’ rights

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party of ‘98, are beginning to see its importance more clearly than heretofore; and promise, unless we greatly misread the signs of the times, to come into power and place, in 1844, on true constitutional ground. The trafficking politicians and “spoilsmen,” of which that party, as well as all others, has its share, will of course reject the doctrines we have set forth, as they ever do all doctrines, which go to secure a wise and just administration of government. All this portion of the Republican, or any other party, want, is the power to plunder the people, to reward themselves and partisans for their patriotic services. But we trust their counsels will not prevail, that the sound portion of the party will for once count for something, and succeed in placing the government on the constitutional track. If so, the doctrines we have humbly set forth will come into power and with them the country will be safe; and the experiment of the American people to establish a wise and just government, operating always naturally, and without violence, in favor of individual liberty and the common good, will not prove a splendid failure. At any rate, if this very imperfect essay tend to awaken the attention of the people, and to turn it to the paramount importance of CONSTITUTIONAL GOVERNMENT, our purpose will have been accomplished.

4. CHARLES ELWOOD REVIEWED1 Boston Quarterly Review 5 (April, 1842): 129-83

This small volume, written for the most part in 1834, though not published till a couple of years since, was by no means designed to offer an elaborate defence of the Christian religion, far less a complete system of theological doctrines. Its purpose was to state with tolerable clearness, and with a little more than ordinary philosophic precision, the leading questions between believers and unbelievers; to show the unsatisfactory character of the answers usually given to those question; and to indicate with some distinctness a better method of treating them. It is properly a discourse on the method of handling the matters in issue between believers and unbelievers, with only such applications of it as were necessary to make it intelligible, and to establish its justness and sufficiency. It is but justice to the author, to say that he never for one moment considered that the book of itself would be sufficient to convert an unbeliever to the Christian faith; nor that viewed either as a simple argument, or as an exposition of a system of doctrines, it left nothing to be desired. His own painful experience had taught him, that the unbeliever is never converted by mere argument, however forcible or conclusive. He is never reasoned into faith. His conversion under the blessing of God must be the result of the operations of his own mind. Far less can be done for him than is commonly supposed. The most that we can do for him is to present him the proper topics of consideration in a light, which aids him from his position to see them for what they really are. This is what and nearly all that is attempted by the author of Charles Elwood. For the desired effect, he relies on the trains of thought which he believes will be naturally suggested to the unbeliever’s mind, and the feelings that will be kindled up in his heart. These trains of thought and these feelings will carry the intelligent unbeliever further than the book itself goes, if he pursues them. 1 [ Ed. Brownson’s review of his own Charles Elwood: or the Infidel Converted (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1840), see EW, 5, chapter 1.]

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The book is written in the form of an autobiography, and this has led some to infer that the author is the hero of his story. This, except so far as the purely spiritual experience detailed is concerned is not true. The author has merely transferred to Charles Elwood his own experience as an unbeliever, the struggles which actually passed in his own mind, the efforts he made to get the better of his doubts, his repeated failures, and ultimate success. Beyond this he has nothing in common with him. The characters introduced are fancy sketches, though perhaps not unlike some frequently met in actual life. We mention this, because there have not been wanting individuals to demand of us, whether, in sketching the character of Mr. Smith,2 the fanatical preacher, we did or did not mean them! As a literary production, the work has been objected to, that its story is meagre, and its plot without interest. The aim of the author was not to write a story that should possess an independent interest, nor to show his skill in weaving and unravelling an intricate plot. The narrative and incidents introduced are integral parts of the work, essential elements of its discussions, and necessary to its main argument, to which they are designedly subordinated; but to which they contribute perhaps more than our readers in general suspect. Abstract the personal interest taken in Charles himself, the æsthetic effect of his conversations with his betrothed, and of the moral beauty of Mr. Howard’s life, and generous friendship for him; and the life and force of the argument would be greatly impaired, and nearly all the efficacy of the work would be lost. The author relied more on the subtle influence these would exert on the heart of the unbeliever, than on his metaphysics. Knowing this, we were not a little amused by the following passage from a friendly critic. “But we do not think him [Mr. Brownson] qualified, nor do we think that he has attempted, in the book before us, to present Christianity and its grounds so as to satisfy the wants and the tastes of all persons. We think that all must feel—the author and all—that the views to which his logic leads do not entirely satisfy. Logic has to do with the intellect and thought—the philosophic element in man. To this element Mr. Brownson has addressed himself satisfactorily. But 2 [Ed. Smith has a strong resemblance to Reuben Smith (1789-1860), Brownson’s former pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Ballston Spa, New York. On Smith, see EW, 1:5-7, and for Smith’s reactions to Brownson’s depictions of Presbyterianism in Brownson’s autobiography, see William J. Gilmore’s “Orestes A. Brownson’s Development of Himself,” Princeton Review 30 (April 1858): 890-92. For a biographical sketch of Smith see “Orestes Brownson and New England Religious Culture, 1803-1827,” Ph.D. diss., University of Virginia, 1971, 142-66, especially 148, n. 45.]

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the heart, and its affections, and sentiments, the fancy and the love of the beautiful, have wants which logic cannot satisfy; they require what the logical understanding cannot prove to exist; nay they often require a faith in what it pronounces to be impossible and absurd.”3 Doctors disagree. Without offering any comment on the metaphysics of this extract, we will say that it is precisely what this writer supposes the author did not attempt, that he has aimed to do; and that it is precisely in the logical parts of his work that he is least satisfactory. This critic took up a somewhat prevalent opinion, that the author of Charles Elwood is a sort of logic grinder, without heart or soul, or at best nothing but a gizzard; and therefore inferred that he could dream of attempting nothing but the construction of a mere logical argument. Yet from a tolerably intimate acquaintance with the author, of almost forty years’ standing, we must say, that we have formed a somewhat different estimate of his character. We are far from regarding him as the pure intellectual being, the mere dry logical machine supposed. Nay, we doubt whether he has one half the logical power ascribed to him. Abstract the deep, earnest feeling, the passion even, that he mingles up with his arguments, to an extent perhaps little suspected, and we apprehend his logic would be by no means remarkable. But be this as it may, we think that the tone of the book indicates, and we know that its whole design was to show, the utter insufficiency of mere logic to satisfy the wants of the soul, or to effect any real change in one’s faith. In his conversations with Messrs. Smith and Wilson, where only logic is brought into play, Charles is represented as falling deeper and deeper into unbelief, and we apprehend that the reader sympathizes with him; but the moment he comes into the presence of his betrothed, who he loves, and whose gentle tones go to his heart, all is changed; he manifests a stronger and stronger desire to believe; all his feelings, all the force of his sentiments, the motions of soul are on the side of faith; and we feel that he is not far from the kingdom of heaven. A subtler influence than logic is at work now, that of love; and Charles himself says, that if untoward circumstances had not separated him from Elizabeth, she would have reconciled him to the Christian faith; and we are greatly mistaken, if the reader does not feel as much. Could he, who believed only in the efficacy of what this critic calls logic, and who addressed himself only to the “logical understanding,” have written the following? 3 [Ed. William Dexter Wilson, “Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted,” Christian Examiner 28 (May, 1840): 197-98.]

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The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson: Volume VI “ ‘O, there is a God,’ spoken by the sweet lips of eighteen, by her we love and hope in a few days to call our own by the most intimate and sacred of ties, it goes well nigh to melt even the atheist. It comes to us as a voice from another world, and wins the heart though it fail to convince the understanding. It is no easy thing to be an atheist when one loves, is in presence of the one he loves and hears her, in the simple, confiding tones of the child, exclaim, ‘O, there is a God.’ For a moment I gazed on the beautiful being before me, as upon one inspired. Could I see her, hear her, love her with all my heart, and not believe in the divinity? She seemed sent to me from a fairer world, to bear witness to the reality of brighter beings than the dull inhabitants of earth.”4

Or this— “ ‘There may be intellectual beings who are moved by thought alone, beings who never feel but live always in mere abstractions. Such persons are dependent never on the state of the affections and are influenced not at all by the circumstances around them. Of these beings I know not much. I am not one of them. I have believed myself to have a heart as well as a head, and that in me, what the authors of a new science5 I have just heard of, call the affective nature, is stronger, by several degrees, than the intellectual. The fact is, my feelings have generally controlled my belief, not my belief my feelings. This is no uncommon case. As a general rule would you gain the reason you must first win the heart. This is the secret of most conversions. There is no logic like love. And by-the-by, I believe that the heart is not only often stronger than the head, but in general a safer guide to truth. At any rate, I have never found it difficult to assign plenty of good reason for doing what my heart has prompted me to do. Mr. Howard understood all this perfectly, and uniformly practised on the principle here implied, not as a calculation, but because he was led to it by the benevolence of his own heart. He found me out of humor with myself and the world, suffering acute mental torture, and he saw at once that I must be reconciled to myself and the world, before I could look upon Christianity in the proper frame of mind to judge of its truth and beauty. Then again he was not extremely anxious to convert me. He did not regard me in my present con4

[Ed. Charles Elwood, 29. See also EW 5:61-62.] [Ed. Brownson may be referring to phrenology, the study of the size and shape of the skull as indicative of human intellectual and moral characteristics. Phrenology was propagated in the United States by the German physician Johann Kaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832) and the Scottish educational and social reformer George Combe (1788-1858). See Brownson’s “Pretensions of Phrenology,” Boston Quarterly Review 2 (April 1839): 205-29, and in EW, 4, chapter 14.] 5

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dition as an alien from God, or as deserving to be an outcast from man. To him I was a man, a brother, a child of God. If I had been unable to come to the same belief he had, it might be my loss, but could not be my fault. He would gladly see me a believer, but he thought probably the influence of Christian example, and above all, communion with truly Christian dispositions, would go farther than any arguments addressed merely to my understanding towards making me one.”6

It must be owned that critics do sometimes commit mistakes. If we could be persuaded that we fall into as gross errors with regard to the spirit and design of the works we criticize, as others do in regard to the spirit and design of our own productions, we would throw up the trade of critic at once in disgust. Moreover, we are not willing to admit that the plot of this work is quite so insignificant, as some represent it. The philosophical discussions unquestionably in part overlay it, and it is by no means worked up, as far as it might be; but it is far from being without dramatic capabilities. It turns on the struggle between love and religion, the two strongest sentiments human beings ever experience. Ordinarily these two sentiments flow into each other, religion purifying and exalting love, and love softening, condensing, and individualizing religion; but now and then their harmony is interrupted, their alliance broken off, and they assume to each other hostile relations. The conflict which then ensues is terrible. As when Greek meets Greek, then comes the tug of war. Few bosoms can survive the struggle unharmed, a struggle which almost always results in death, or in complete or partial insanity. We have ourselves witnessed during seasons of great religious excitement, several instances of this conflict between love and religion, which we shall not speedily forget. In writing the portions of the work relating to Charles and Elizabeth, the author had in mind a real fact related to him by the young gentleman whom it concerned, and who was at the time one of his parishioners. The poor girl, a most lovely creature, full of life and soul, of captivating manners, and severe principles, was a lunatic, the last time we heard of her. We must, therefore, feel that the story of the book is naturally rich enough in materials, and materials of high dramatic interest. It would have been comparatively easy to have amplified it, and multiplied the incidents; and had it comported with the didactic design we had in view, and had it not been for our horror of writing a big book, which we hold to be a great evil, we should have so done, 6

[Ed. Charles Elwood, 125, 125. See also EW 5:110.]

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or at least tried our hand at so doing, whether qualified to succeed or not. But enough of this. We have heard it alleged that throughout the book the infidel has the better of the argument. He unquestionably does have the better of the argument in the first nine chapters; but not in the rest of the book, at least so far as we can judge. In these chapters it was unavoidable. The design of the writer was to show the real strength of the infidel argument, and the insufficiency of the replies usually given by standard authors on the evidences of our faith. Charles, therefore, must be more than a match for Messrs. Smith and Wilson, the representatives of those authors. But we cannot admit that Messrs. Smith and Wilson are mere men of straw. They reason as well as men can from their point of view, and better than one clergyman out of a hundred does reason in his actual controversies with unbelievers. They had the wrong side of the question on the particular points at issue, and their failure was inevitable, and not the fault of the writer. The fact is, and there is no use in pretending to the contrary, that the works in defence of religion, most in vogue among our orthodox people, excellent as they are in some respects, are utterly inadequate to meet the wants of the unbeliever. They do not reach his case; they do not touch the actual difficulties with which he labors; and they are never able to effect his conversion. Reduced to their elements they are, as arguments, logically defective; and this is what Charles but too easily demonstrates. They, who rely on these works, are themselves believers, and therefore feel no need of their aid to convince themselves. They have never reduced them to their simple elements, and consequently have never discovered their intrinsic weakness. Hence, when the author of Charles Elwood so reduces them, and shows that weakness, they think he has done them injustice. But we will thank those who complain that the infidel has the better of the argument, to tell us what argument for the truth of revelation is to be found in any popular treatise on the evidences of Christianity, that Mr. Smith does not recognize and urge; and what consideration of any value connected with the argument from nature for the existence of God, that Mr. Wilson does not suggest, or that Charles does not meet. These arguments and considerations, it is true, are stated in the briefest possible manner, but as arguments they are stated in all their strength. They are not developed, nor was it necessary. Messrs. Smith and Wilson could have talked more, they might have been made to multiply words, and to bewilder their opponent in the mazes of sophistry, or to overwhelm him with declamation; but they could not have been made to reason better, unless they could have been

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made to change their point of view; because from their point of view religion is wholly indefensible, a fact they would perceive at once, did they rely on their own arguments as the grounds of their own faith. Men are for the most part sounder in their actual faith than in the reasons they give for it. It is rarely the case that they are able to assign the reasons which have actually induced them to believe as they do. Throughout the rest of the book the charge cannot be sustained. We do not now insist on Mr. Morton’s metaphysical arguments, for Charles is represented to be virtually a convert before he makes Mr. Morton’s acquaintance. Mr. Morton is in reality instructing the neophyte, not converting the unbeliever. His arguments would have no weight with one, who was still in fact disposed to question the truth of religion. Mr. Howard is the one who converts Charles to religion, and Mr. Morton labors merely to give a rational and philosophic form to his faith. In judging of the merits of the book this fact is important, and yet it seems to have been altogether overlooked. We do not recollect having seen any notice taken of the ground assumed by Mr. Howard, the only original ground assumed in the whole work, and the only additions, if any, that it makes to the usual arguments adduced in defence of Christianity. The following extract will show what this ground is. “One evening while we were conversing I remarked to Mr. Howard that since I had been in his family, I had been almost persuaded to become a Christian. “ ‘Perhaps,’ he replied, ‘you are, and always have been, much nearer being a Christian than you imagine.’ “ ‘But I can hardly be a Christian without knowing it.’ “ ‘I am not so sure of that. Christianity is not a creed, but a life.7 He who has the spirit of Jesus is a Christian, be his speculative belief what it may.’ “ ‘I have not as yet advanced far enough to admit even the existence of a God. I see not then how I can have much of Christ in me.’ “ ‘Christ is not a dogma to be believed, but a spirit to be cultivated and obeyed. Whoever loves truth and goodness, and is willing to die for their honor and the redemption of man, as Jesus did, I hold to be a Christian in the only worthy sense of the term. He may not indeed have the ‘letter’ which ‘killeth,’ but that is no great loss, so long as he has the ‘spirit’ which ‘giveth life.’” 7 [Ed. Here Brownson is following Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as he had done in some of his previous articles. In Aids to Reflection, vol. 9 of The Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Aids to Reflection, ed. John Beer (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993), 202, Coleridge argued: “Christianity is not a Theory, or a Speculation; but a Life. Not a Philosophy of Life, but a Life and a living Process.”]

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“ ‘You seem determined to make me out a Christian, and that too without changing my faith.’ “ ‘The belief in Christ lies in the bottom of every honest man’s heart. Christianity is nothing foreign to our soul. It is the ideal, the realization of which would constitute the perfection of our nature. Just so far as you advance in the work of perfecting your own nature, do you grow in Christ; and could you attain to the highest perfection admitted by your nature as a man, you would attain to the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus. In yielding obedience to the moral laws of your own being, you are yielding obedience to the Gospel. One of these laws, the one which I term the social element of human nature, you obeyed in your efforts to reform society and augment the sum of the common weal of your kind. Consequently in obeying this element, you were conforming to the Christian law. You fancied you were obeying a law of infidelity, but that was an error of judgment, easily accounted for. You saw that element generally overlooked or discarded by the Christian world; you therefore inferred that it could not be an element of Christianity; and you rejected Christianity because you supposed it rejected this element. But had you seen that Christianity recognized this element as its great, its central law, you would not have thought of rejecting it.’ “ ‘But I was an unbeliever long before I ever dreamed of turning social reformer.’ “ ‘Very possibly; but still for a Christian reason. All the infidelity I have ever met with springs from one of two causes acting separately, or from both combined. The first cause of infidelity I have already spoken of. Some men feel a strong desire to redress social or political grievances, and are repulsed by the church. They therefore imagine the church opposed to political freedom, and social progress; and identifying Christianity with the church, they disown it, and very properly. The second cause of infidelity is found in the development of the philosophical element of our nature. This element is strong in some men. They must be free to inquire what and wherefore they believe. This inquiry the church has prohibited; they have therefore concluded it prohibited by Christianity itself; and therefore have rejected Christianity; and I add again, very properly. In both of these cases the supposed rejection of Christianity has been induced by Christian motives; and the infidel could not have been, with his lights, a Christian, had he done differently.’”8 8

[Ed. Charles Elwood, 127-29. See also EW, 5:111-12.]

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Mr. Howard assumes that there is no radical difference between the inward life of an honest, intelligent unbeliever, and that of an honest, intelligent believer. His argument, therefore, properly consists in establishing the identity of the inward life of the one with that of the other. He proceeds on the ground that the work to be done is not so much to give the unbeliever a new and a different faith, as to enable him to find and comprehend the faith he already has; for paradoxical as it may seem, the unbeliever has a faith. Every man, who is really a live man, has a faith; but not always the faith he thinks he has, nor that which he writes out in articles, or to which he formally subscribes. His faith is the intimate conviction of his soul, that which constitutes his spiritual life, and controls him in his general relations with the unseen world of truth, and in his relations with the world of mankind. This faith, Mr. Howard assumes to be in the case of the unbeliever, in point of fact, as well as with the believer, essentially the true Christian faith. He therefore takes up the inward life of Charles, and shows it made up of Christian elements, that Charles had never really rejected Christianity, and that in supposing he had, he had done great injustice to himself. In confirmation of Mr. Howard’s view, we may appeal to the experience, not of every one who has been a scoffer and has subsequently become a professor of religion; but to every honest man who has at one period of his life doubted, or supposed that he doubted, the truth of Christianity, but has come finally to embrace it, and to find his happiness in living for it. Every such man feels that he is the same man after his conversion that he was before, and that in fact the elements of his faith are the same. He tells us that he was an unbeliever only because he misinterpreted his own faith, and because he misconceived the true character of the Christian religion. We know at least that such was our experience and it was our own experience that led us to place the argument adduced in the mouth of Mr. Howard. We may also come to the same conclusion, or to the conclusion that there cannot be this radical difference, commonly supposed, between the believer and the unbeliever, by the higher consideration of the fraternity of the race, and the unity of the human mind. If there is any one thing incontestable, it is that the brotherhood of the race is a doctrine of Christian revelation. This doctrine of brotherhood must mean something, and more than that all have sprung from the same original stock. It implies that all men have not only a family relation, but a family likeness, and therefore the same general manner of feeling and of thinking. The human mind too is essen-

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tially one; modified in different ages and individuals it may indeed be, but it operates everywhere, and always, by the same general laws; and we see by the records of the remotest past, that the human mind, then at work, was the selfsame human mind that is at work now. All thinkers, then, must be of the same family, the same brotherhood; and instead of supposing themselves to be enemies, they should feel, and know, themselves to be friends and brothers. Mr. Howard, therefore, we insist is right, in contending that Charles was already a Christian in fact. The only thing he should have guarded against, which he has neglected to do, is the universal application, which he does not make, but which some may suppose he makes, of his doctrine. Charles Elwood, though an unbeliever, belongs to Christian civilization, and therefore lives necessarily the life of Christ, so far as that civilization has realized it, whether fancying himself a believer or an unbeliever. Mr. Howard is right, then, in telling him that Christ is at the bottom of his heart. But would the same remark hold true of a savage, or a man born and brought up in an order of civilization less advanced than the Christian, say the Mahometan, or the Braminical? Not to the fullest extent. Christian civilization embraces the elements of all inferior civilizations, but adds to them, what is peculiarly its own. The man brought up in these inferior civilizations could then be a Christian only in a general and feeble sense; only so far as those civilizations constitute elements of the Christian civilization. The question would be not of a difference of kind, but of degree. But in the bosom of Christian civilization itself, no man can be born and brought up without being, in his practical or actual faith, a Christian, so far as that civilization itself is Christian. There is, then, no room for this bitter controversy which rages between believers and unbelievers, when one comes to understand the matter. With this qualification, we are willing to be responsible for Mr. Howard’s argument. To avoid all occasion for misapprehension, we say, what we suppose is sufficiently obvious without being said, that in Mr. Howard’s statement, or in our own present statement, it is not a question either of the account men render of their faith, nor of their actual conduct; but simply of what may be called their spiritual or interior life, so far as spiritual life they have. Hume was a speculative skeptic, but an actual believer.9 In his philosophy he doubted of everything, but in 9 [Ed. A reference to David Hume (1711-76), a Scottish philosopher who emphasized the limitations of human knowledge derived from experience in his A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) and his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), two of his most significant works.]

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reality he was as firm a believer as Reid himself.10 Men differ widely in the accounts they render of their faith, when virtually their faith is the same. In their actual conduct men also differ, and differ widely; but the conduct of the professed unbeliever not infrequently conforms more nearly to the Christian law, than that of the large mass of professed Christians. The church is very far from embosoming all the virtue in the community. The profession of religion is a cloak which sometimes covers a multitude of sins. Taking this view of the argument, with these explanations and qualifications, we must needs believe that the charge, that the infidel gets the better of the argument, is unfounded. The infidel is not convicted of being wrong where he was right, it is true; but he is convicted of having misconceived Christianity, and of having rejected it through ignorance of its real character; and he is brought to believe it, by being made to understand it. What more could have been required, we know not. A writer in the Christian Review, Dr. Wayland, we believe, President of Brown University, objects to Charles Elwood, that he remains the same man after conversion, that he was before; and says that the book ought to have been entitled “Charles Elwood, or Christianity converted.”11 This is very clever; but the reviewer does not seem to have even suspected, what he charges upon the author as a fault, was done with “malice aforethought.” In the first place, the very design of the book was to show, not the radical difference, but the radical identity, between the true believer and the honest, intelligent unbeliever. It would have been then a great blunder on the part of the author, to have made his hero a different man after his conversion from what he was before. Moreover, Charles had, prior to his conversion, we will not say all the Christian graces and virtues of this learned and philosophic reviewer, but at least all that fall to the lot of ordinary Christians; and it would have been difficult to have improved his character by radically changing it. 10 [Ed. A reference to Thomas Reid (1710-96) a Scottish Common Sense philosopher who in 1764 succeeded Adam Smith in moral philosophy at the University of Glasgow. His philosophical disagreements with Locke and Hume were evident in his Inquiry into the Human Mind (1764) and Essays on the Intellectual Powers (1785), two of his more important works. As a Common Sense philosopher he opposed the representational theory of ideas, asserting that the common sense first principles of our faculties are not fallacious. The principles of common sense prevail in daily life against the speculations of philosophers like Hume.] 11 [Ed. Francis Wayland (1796-1865), president of Brown University, critiqued the book from the perspective of his own Baptist background, for the quote see “Charles Elwood,” Christian Review 5 (September 1840): 423.]

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The reviewer also overlooks a very important fact, at least in the estimation of Christians of his persuasion, that Charles Elwood is represented to have experienced religion in his early youth, to have been regenerated even, before he became an unbeliever. To have regenerated him again would have been rank heresy, for which no one would have been more ready to censure the author, than this reviewer, who, we presume, holds to the doctrine, “once in grace always in grace.” Here is the account that Charles gives of himself. “ ‘Do not fancy that I have become what I am without a struggle. I am not ignorant of what men call religion. It has been the study of my life. My first lesson was the catechism, and my earliest delight was in reading religious books, conversing with religious people, and thinking of God and heaven. I was not yet thirteen when I was affected as you have been—had deep and pungent conviction for sin— heard, as I fancied, the Son of God declare my sins forgiven, and felt all the ecstatic joy you now feel.’”12 Now, the author meant to represent Charles as having been really regenerated, or he did not; for in a subsequent part of the book he shows that he holds to the doctrine of regeneration, and therefore could not have intended to represent a religious experience to be of no value. If he did not mean to represent Charles as having had a genuine religious experience, how could he have put this confession into his mouth? If he did mean to represent him as having been really born again in early life, he could not with any consistency have made his subsequent conversion a regeneration. Moreover, the author designedly represented Charles as an amiable, intelligent, and worthy man, even while an unbeliever; not only because there are unbelievers who really deserve to be so represented, but because he had never been able to persuade himself, that the best way to make an unbeliever in love with our religion, is to begin by declaring him a bad man, a great rascal, deserving the utter reprobation of every friend to religion and virtue. When he was himself an unbeliever, he frequently met with good, pious clergymen, who sought to convert him by a similar method; but he never observed that their success equalled their efforts. He had also observed that in books written against unbelievers, and designed for popular reading, the infidel was always represented to be a profane wretch, a drunkard, a gambler, or a debauched villain. Such representations have a very bad effect. They mislead believers; they irritate unbelievers; and in no way advance the cause of religion and morality. They have the 12

[Ed. Charles Elwood, 31. See also EW 5:62-63.]

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very opposite effect from the one intended. They create the impression with unbelievers that believers have no solid arguments to offer for their faith; for they not unnaturally infer, that a man rarely resorts to misrepresentation and abuse, so long as he has anything better to offer. The author aimed, therefore, to avoid this error, as he regarded it, and to be just to the unbeliever, both for the unbeliever’s sake, his own, and that of the cause he advocated. But it is said that Charles is proud, and does not repent and humble himself before God. As to repenting, we do not know, so far as his character is drawn, what Charles had to repent of. No sin or misdemeanor is laid to his charge. That he had doubted is true; that he had dared to be faithful to the light he had, and to follow his convictions, though they exposed him to much popular prejudice, and cost many and heavy sacrifices, cannot be denied; but this, so far from being matter to be repented of, was on all sound moral principles his merit, and his glory. To have made him repent of his honesty, his sincerity, his independence, his moral courage, his devotion to truth, and his willingness to sacrifice himself for the good of mankind, would have been to teach a morality, we should be sorry to find approved by any professed follower of Jesus. And yet, the author must have done this, had he made him repent, and talk like a sinner just converted. Touching his pride and want of humility, we see not wherein the charge can be sustained. Charles Elwood is a man who respects himself; who claims to be a man amongst men; yielding them their dues, but conceding them nothing on the score of the unpopularity of his own faith, or want of faith. He does not make an apology for daring to think for himself; nor does he beg others to grant him the privilege of thinking for himself. He thinks as he can, as he must; and if he thinks differently from others, it may be his misfortune, but it is not his crime, nor their virtue. He meets them as an equal, and demands to be met as an equal. In all this we see only a proper selfrespect, which whoso will not cherish merits only contempt. Towards God he manifests no pride, and no mock humility. He reverences truth, owns his obligation to seek for it, and to obey it; and he is willing to obey it at whatever personal hazard, when once assured that he has found it. Nor has he an overweening confidence in his own judgment. When he utters his own views, he does it in strong terms, simply and directly, in the tones of an earnest mind, believing the truth and importance of what he utters. But he is willing to be taught, listens with the docility of the child to whomsoever profess to be able to teach him, unless they begin by abusing him, or assuming

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to be his masters, who have the right to command him; and yields up his previously expressed opinions without a blush, whenever he sees a reason for so doing. Now this does not look to us like an excess of pride or a sinful want of humility. It is true, Charles Elwood does not adopt the usual phraseology of religious people, especially of what is called the Evangelical school. Herein we acknowledge his heresy. He is a man whom the garment of cant can never be made to fit. He cannot go about, and with infinite pains, try to make people believe in his piety. He speaks in his own natural tones, and wears his face as God made it. He makes his confessions, if he makes them at all, to his God, and not to his brother. He never tells people what a great sinner he has been, and how hot a place in the nethermost hell he deserves, in hopes that they will flatter his pride by telling him, “the greater the sinner, the greater the saint.” When he prays it is not standing in the synagogue, nor in the corners of the streets, nor in the market place; nor does he in revenge go to religious conference meetings, and tell his brethren how often he prays in secret. In a word, he takes none of the usual methods to make men believe in his piety or virtue. He aims to be, and to do right, to be always what he seems. It would have been easy to have corrected all this, to have filled his mouth with pious phrases, to have drawn down his face, turned up his eyes, and made him speak in a sanctimonious tone; but really we are sinner enough to doubt, whether this would have essentially improved his character in the sight of God, or in the estimation of truly Christian people. We have no disposition to deny that there are some practices into which many who are called pious people fall for which we have no great respect. We cannot help thinking and feeling too, that we have a large number among us, who take unnecessary pains to make us believe them pious worshipers. They quite overshoot the mark. Less ostentation of godly conversation, and more deeds of justice and love, would serve their turn altogether better. There was something worth remembering in the remark of one of our old divines, who when asked by one of the pious striplings of the day, if he had any religion, replied, “none to speak of.” Religion should be like the light, the medium through which we see all that we do see, but remaining ever itself unseen. It should be an all pervading spirit, but showing itself only in greater sweetness of temper, kindness of heart, fidelity to the great trusts of life, and untiring zeal and perseverance in the cause of well-doing. It should be worn for use, to cover our nakedness and to keep us warm, not for mere show, to attract the gaze or the remark of the throng.

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According to our method of judging, Charles Elwood, so far as his character appears in the book before us, is not obnoxious to the charges preferred against him, and we would rather take our chance with him, even in the days of his grossest darkness and blindest unbelief, than with the loudest of his impugners. They who think otherwise would do well to “go and learn what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice”[Matt 9:13].13 We say at once, however, that we by no means pretend that Charles Elwood is a true representative of all unbelievers. He represents only the serious, honest, intelligent portion of them, the only portion it behoves us to consider in our controversy with those who reject our faith. For the others, the miserable scoffers one meets in grog-shops, on board steamboats, and in stagecoaches, all we have to say is, that we can address them only in the terrors of God’s law, from the height of the Christian pulpit. We cannot honor them so much as to enter into a serious controversy with them; for the doubts they profess hang as loosely about them, as do their moral principles. Such are the infidels converted in revival seasons, and who keep up a plentiful supply of fanatics and fanaticism. We turn them over willingly to the Nettletons, the Beechers, the Finneys, the Knapps, and the Maffits.14 Thus much we have judged proper to say in defense of Charles Elwood. We recognize the justice of none of the charges which, to our knowledge, have been alleged against him; and the authors of those charges, by bringing them, seem to us to impeach their own piety and Christian understanding. There are, we must be permitted to say, many things for them to learn and some graces for them to acquire. Perhaps they would not do amiss to follow the example of Paul after his conversion, and retire for a season into Arabia, before entering upon the discharge of their functions as Christian teachers. Nevertheless, the book is not altogether free from faults. So far as concerns its spirit and design, its main argument, and the special moral and theological doctrines it inculcates, we do not apprehend that any serious objections can be sustained against it; and if it be interpreted throughout in special reference to the special purpose for which it was written, we are willing to expose it to the rudest criticism. But it bears traces of a system of philosophy, which we are not willing to be responsible for, without some important reservations, 13

[Ed. The passage from Matthew is referring to Hos 6:6.] [Ed. Brownson refers here to various itinerant and revivalist preachers: Asahel Nettleton (1783-1844), Lyman Beecher (1775-1863), Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875), Jacob Knapp (1799-1874) and John Newland Maffitt (1795-1850).] 14

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and which, if accepted and applied universally, cannot fail to induce some grave errors of reasoning, if not of doctrine. It is not so accepted, nor so applied in Charles Elwood as to affect at all the substance of the work, or in the least to impair confidence in the important results of which the author arrives. It merely in a few instances affects the form of the reasoning by which he obtains those results. The faults, which we should charge upon the book, belong to it as the reader will understand it, rather than as it was understood by the author himself. The author of Charles Elwood has the habit of viewing most subjects he treats under a special aspect, and of treating them with reference to a special purpose. If the reader seizes that special purpose, and interprets all that is said solely in reference to it, he will rarely find the author in the wrong, and still more rarely find any difficulty in understanding him. But this habit necessarily involves that of using terms in a more special and definite sense, than the one in which they are used by the generality of people. Hence a perpetual misunderstanding between him and his readers. They are always accusing him of advocating doctrines which he by no means entertains; and whenever he succeeds by a change of phraseology, or of the point of view from which he treats his subjects, in conveying to them some glimmering of his real doctrines, they forthwith charge him with having changed his opinions, and sneeringly allege, that he has obtained “a new stock of ideas.” Part of this grows out of the nature of the subjects which he discusses, and the loose notions generally prevalent on those subjects; part out of the haste with which he is obliged, by circumstances not under his control, to throw off his compositions; but more perhaps from the peculiarities, defects it may be, of his mental constitution. His mind operates usually with great intensity, concentrating for the time being all its forces upon the precise point under consideration. It is also deficient in that power, so essential to the artist, of properly grouping his subjects, and of duly distributing the light and shadow. The main figure is always kept distinctly in view; it is brought out boldly in the foreground, as it should be; but the other figures, essential to the picture, are thrown too far into the back ground, and some of them so far as not to be detected by ordinary eyes. They are so deeply shaded that few discover them, and hence it is inferred that they escaped the observation of the artist. This is a defect which he has tried in vain to overcome, and it is this which occasions nearly all the misunderstanding between him and his readers. Yet, whoso takes the author’s position will, we apprehend, if he have a tolerable pair of eyes, and if he look long and steadily, discover that the figures are all there.

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Without meaning this as an apology for the author, we suggest it for the guidance of his readers. The book must be considered from the point of view of the author, and interpreted by the precise purpose he had in writing it. This is necessary when it is taken as a whole; it is also necessary in considering any particular part of it. The purpose for which any special statement is made must shed the light by which to interpret it; nothing in the book stands alone, and very little that is said has, in itself, an independent value. Its value consists in its bearing on some ulterior purpose. This is not perhaps the best way of writing, but it is our way, and we can write in no other. The faults, which we are about to point out in the metaphysical part of this work, nearly all grow out of the fact, that the author uses terms, which may seem to have a general application, in a special sense; and therefore appears to be affirming universal truths, when he is in reality only affirming special truths, or presenting merely such special aspects of truth as serve to enlighten the particular purpose he has in view. The error involved, then, it may easily be seen, consists rather in the application which others may make of what he says, than in the application which he himself makes of it. It may also, then, be seen how the book, as existing in the author’s mind, can be sound, and yet, as it actually appears, not be free from some grave errors. The book we hold free from the defects to which we refer, till, in the progress of the story, Mr. Morton is introduced to give what may be termed the metaphysics of religion. Till then the author speaks, from his own internal experience, the views which have been elaborated in his own mind. Thus far we would offer no criticism on the book, with the single exception, that Mr. Howard, who is the representative of the peculiar views of the author, in the chapter on rationalism, restricts a little too much the sphere of the philosophical part of human nature, makes philosophy too exclusively retrospective, and separates it too widely from religion. He, however, expressly identifies philosophy with Christianity, which is well. Had he asserted its absolute identity with religion, he would have done better, presented a juster view both of Christianity and of philosophy. His error lies in making Christianity more abstract than it is, and in recognizing in philosophy nothing but the results of cool, unimpassioned reflection. However, Mr. Howard is in the main clear and just in his statements The serious deficiencies of the work commence with Mr. Morton, who attempts to interpret religion by the light of Cousin’s Philosophy, slightly reinforced by some scattered rays from Benjamin Con-

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stant.15 In general he borrows from these two writers only what is worthy of confidence. For the most part, he escapes their errors; but we find on a careful revision that he has not done it altogether, and that, owing to the adoption of their phraseology, he has the appearance of not having done it to so great an extent, as he really has. The points, on which he has fallen into error, or has not been sufficiently explicit in his statements, or guarded in his language, are three. 1. The origin of religion in human nature. 2. The impersonality of reason. 3. The division of reason into spontaneous reason, and reflective reason. The first shows the influence of Benjamin Constant; the other too of Victor Cousin. The first concerns the foundations of religion in the human soul; the second affects the form of the argument offered for the existence of God; and the third the explanation presented of the fact of inspiration. I. Benjamin Constant, in his valuable work on “Religion considered in its origin, its forms, and its developments,” defines religion to be a sentiment of the heart, an indestructible law of man’s nature, seeking ever to embody itself in outward institutions. He attempts to bring all the phenomena of man’s religious history within the range of sentiment. But this he cannot do. Unquestionably religion is a sentiment, but it is also more than sentiment. It is idea as well as sentiment. Religion, in addition to the inward sentiment, is man’s theory of the universe; his solution of the problem of his own existence and destiny, prescribing to him a life-plan he must endeavor to realize, imposing a duty he must labor to perform. It is always legislative; it imposes the law; hence, the Jews, with singular propriety, call their religion “the Law,” and never by any other name. It always involves the idea of that which binds, which lays man under obligation. It implies, therefore, always moral considerations. Morality may not include religion—though without it, it has no adequate foundation—but religion always includes morality. They, who in our times attempt to separate religion and morality, whether in favor of the one or of the other, fall into serious error. The common sense of mankind pronounces the expression, an immoral religious man, a contradiction in terms. Mr. Morton enlarges the definition of Benjamin Constant. He defines religion to be a craving for the infinite, and certain ideas or conceptions, which he calls “intuitions of reason.” This definition, 15 [Ed. On Brownson’s earlier appropriation and interpretation of Benjamin Constant and Victor Cousin, see EW 2: 16-20, 22, 30-34; 361-73, and EW 3: 710, 16-17, 20-22, 79-108.]

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though loosely given, is substantially correct. It was intended to supply the defects of Benjamin Constant’s definition, and is perhaps broad enough to embrace all that has ever been considered essential to religion. We would prefer to say religion, regarded as sentiment, is the aspiration to the infinite, to saying that it is a craving for the infinite; nevertheless, the main point is recognized, namely, that religion is both sentiment and idea. Thus far Mr. Morton makes an evident advance on Benjamin Constant, and is worthy of reliance. But there is another point involved in his statement, about which we are not quite so clear, or rather two points. He says, religion is a fact of man’s natural history, proceeding from a law of his nature, a fundamental want of his soul; and that the ideas or conceptions man seeks to embody in his religious institutions are intuitions of reason; by which last, he apparently means, as may be gathered from his argument, that they are fundamental elements of human intelligence, without which man would not, and could not be an intelligent being. This language is susceptible of a meaning to which we by no means object; but it may be interpreted so as to teach a doctrine, to which we are very far from assenting. What was the precise meaning attached to it, we will not take it upon us to decide; though we apprehend that the author at the time of using it, beyond a certain point, had only a vague and confused meaning. If it mean no more than that man has the natural aptitude to be religious, the natural capacity to aspire to the infinite, and to recognize intuitively the ideas or conceptions of reason concerned, that is, of knowing them when presented, which most likely was his meaning, we have no fault to find; but if it be so interpreted as to teach that the sentiment itself is innate, a law of man’s soul; and that the ideas or conceptions are elements of the faculty of intelligence; that is to say, innate ideas; we hold that it is altogether objectionable. No sentiment is or can be innate. Sentiment is the soul in exercise, exercising its power to feel. It requires a power in the soul, and an exercise of that power to feel, as much as it does to know, or to do. They are out in their psychology, who consider the soul as purely passive in its sentiments. In point of fact the soul is never more active than in what are called the passions. Love is called a passion, but it is its highest possible activity, the fullest possible expression of its interior life and energy. Man then acts when he feels. Sentiment, then, is an act, not a law; an exercise, not an element of the soul. Hence religion, viewed as sentiment, can exist in the soul only when the soul exercises itself, or acts in a particular manner. It is not true, then,

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to say, as some of us do, that the religious sentiment is a fundamental law, an indestructible element of human nature. If it were so, we must have the sentiment at every moment. No man, and at no moment of his existence, could be without it. But we can have no sentiment without being conscious of it. We are never more conscious than in our sentiments. Sentiments are inconceivable without consciousness. We lose sentiment, just in proportion as we lose consciousness. If then, the religious sentiment be an ever present phenomenon of the soul, then must we at every moment of our lives be conscious of it, at least when we are conscious at all. But this is by no means the fact. There are men who rarely, if ever, experience the sentiment; and there are moments in the lives of the most devout, when they have no consciousness of it. The power or capacity to experience the sentiment is, no doubt, innate, a fundamental law of human nature; but the sentiment itself is born and dies with the exercise of its power. Passing over now religion regarded as mere sentiment, to religion as idea; is it, in this last sense, a law of man’s nature? Mr. Morton in this last sense makes religion consist in the idea of the true, the idea of the beautiful, and the idea of the good. This is all well enough. But these ideas, are they constitutive elements of the faculty of reason? Man is born, we presume it will be conceded us, with all his faculties; at least in germ. If reason be one of his faculties; if these ideas are constitutive elements of reason, then he must be born with them. The question, then, is simply, are these ideas innate, elements of the soul; and does seeing them by intuition mean detecting them in the soul itself? This was not the doctrine Mr. Morton intended to teach, but it is perhaps authorized by his language. We have no faith in the doctrine of innate ideas, a doctrine unjustly ascribed to Descartes. Descartes says expressly that all he means by innate ideas is that the power or faculty, by which we think certain thoughts, God, for instance, is innate. By intuition we have in none of our writings understood seeing by looking in, but as the word itself says, seeing by looking on. The soul sees nothing by looking into itself. Nay, it can never turn itself round so as to look at, much less into itself. It is the looker, the seer, and the seer and the seen are as distinct in fact, as they are in logic. When we speak of looking within, we use within merely in opposition to the world of space. By intuition we understand merely the power of the soul to perceive ideas, and by ideas we mean objects or realities of that world which transcends time and space. All ideas, and we use the term in the original Platonic sense, are transcendental. In asserting man’s power

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to perceive them, we coincide with the transcendentalists; but in asserting, as we also do, that it is out of the soul, out of the me and not in it, that they exist, and that we perceive them, we depart from what we suppose is a characteristic feature of American transcendentalism. We deny utterly that these ideas are constitutive elements of human reason, regarded as the faculty or power of knowing. We shall spend no time in justifying this denial; for since the time of Locke it has not been necessary to show that there are no innate ideas. The faculty or power of perceiving, or recognizing these ideas we, however, do hold to be innate, a fundamental law of human nature; and the fact, that man does perceive them, is a fact of his natural history; and if he did not, his actual intelligence would not be what we know that it is. This we presume is all, under the present point of view, the author of Charles Elwood intended to assert; certainly this is all that the facts he adduces go to prove. But admitting all this, admitting that man aspires by virtue of a law of his being, or an innate power, and perceives these transcendental ideas of the true, the beautiful, the good, by means of a fundamental power of his soul, it may still be asked, if no foreign or special agency be requisite to induce him to aspire, and to lead him to the actual perception or recognition of these ideas. If we understand the author of the book before us, he takes it for granted, though he does not expressly say so, that man does aspire, naturally, from his own inherent energy, and that he does perceive these ideas, without any agency but the spontaneous operations of his own reason. At least this may be inferred from his language, though evidently contradicted in his own mind by the peculiar views he adopts concerning reason and inspiration. Now, while we are by no means prepared to maintain absolutely that man does not aspire naturally, that is, by force of his own nature, without any foreign quickening, we are still further removed from maintaining that he does. Taken as he is, today, in the bosom of Christian civilization, we admit that he does aspire by force of his own nature, and both as sentiment and as intelligence. But we have no evidence to satisfy us that this is universally true of mankind. Many facts go to prove to us the contrary. Man is progressive because he aspires, and all men have undoubtedly the capacity of progress. But we are not sure that all are naturally progressive; for we do not find progress wherever we find man. Savage tribes are not progressive; ages on ages pass away and bring no improvement in their condition, no progress in their ideas. Hence, we infer that they do not aspire. If they did aspire, they would come out of their savage state. But we have no record of any savage people emerging by spontane-

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ous effort from the savage state into the civilized. This is asserted by Niebuhr, and admitted by Constant,16 either of whom on this point is high authority. The African negro, as a race, does not aspire, or at least only to a feeble degree. He can therefore be made contented and apparently happy in a condition, from which the proud Caucasian, under the influence of Christianity, recoils with horror. Those negroes, who among us aspire, are stimulated by the example of their Christian neighbors, and have for the most part blood of another race running in their veins. Moreover, the traditions of every civilized people, and we own that we are disposed to consider all traditions of great historical value, ascribe the origin of their civilization to foreign influence, never to indigenous and spontaneous effort. It is a sacerdotal or a military colony from a more advanced nation, some providential man, or some divine interposition, that quickens their faculties, commences their education, and sets them forward on the path to civilization. The facts, so far as we can come at them, seem to authorize us to say, that if man has the natural capacity to aspire, he does not naturally aspire, that is, by the simple force of his own nature. He is not naturally progressive. In order to make him aspire some power or influence, foreign to himself, is necessary to quicken his faculties, kindle his aspirations, and compel him to struggle. Divested of what civilization has done for him, placed at the lowest round of savage life, he is naturally indolent, careless, improvident, averse to all exertion, shrinking from all effort. His greatest delight is to eat and sleep. If the sense of hunger or some outward circumstance arouse him to a sudden effort, he relapses into his torpid state at the earliest possible moment. Nor is it any more evident that man attains at first to the idea of God, than it is that from the first moment of his existence he aspires. The idea of God we hold to be an intuitive perception, today, in the bosom of civilization; but we have no evidence that it is an intuitive perception in the minds of those, who linger yet in the lowest forms of savage life. The first thought of the first human being, no doubt, contains, if we may so speak, the germs of the idea of God; but ages on ages of growth are necessary to develop and ripen it into the sublime conception of the divinity, entertained by Moses, Socrates, or Leibnitz. Today, the Christian philosopher, in the language of Leibnitz, 16 [Ed. Barthold Georg Niebuhr (1776-1831) was a German historian of numerous works on Roman history. Brownson had read Henri Benjamin Constant’s (1767-1830), De la religion, considérée dans sa source, ses formes et ses développements, 5 vols. (Paris, 1824-31), which was probably the source of his comment.]

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“thinks God;”17 but the savage does not. The idea of God belongs to advanced life, to the growth of the natural faculties, not to the primitive man. It is only by successive efforts, and by repeated revelations, that man attains to it, as is evinced by the slow and successive amelioration of his forms of religious worship. In this view of the case, we must take the remark, that man is naturally religious, that religion is a fact in man’s natural history, with some grains of allowance. Taken as we find him, today, in the bosom of our own civilization, he is unquestionably naturally religious. Our children naturally aspire; and our philosophers, with Leibnitz, “think God.” Our faculties, by the nurture of ages, and through the care of an ever watchful Providence, have become equal to the sublime thought. But when we speak of man universally, man of all times, all we can say is that he has the natural capacity to become religious, and wherever his natural faculties, by providential circumstances or influences, are stimulated into activity, he is religious. More than this we do not think that we are warranted in saying. To say more than this would require us to assert that man aspires, where we have no evidence that he aspires, and entertains the sublime conception of God, where we find no traces of it, or at best only the miserable fetiche of the stupid African. The worship of the fetiche, no doubt, tells the philosopher that there the idea of God may one day be entertained, but just as surely that it is not entertained now. Nevertheless, Mr. Morton is not obnoxious to all the criticism here implied. He is answerable mainly for the inaccuracy of his language, into which he was betrayed by his admiration of the work of Benjamin Constant. His argument drawn from intuition remains unaffected by anything we have said, because in the intuitive perceptions of the most stupid savage, we can see, what the savage does not, the idea of God. The error is in supposing that because we, turning back upon those intuitions, discover it there, the savage himself must necessarily have done so. Mr. Morton undoubtedly did fall into this error, in part; but he never meant to say that the savage really was conscious of entertaining the idea. He thought, however, that he was 17 [Ed. In Monadology (1714), #30, Leibniz wrote: “It is also by the knowledge of necessary truths, and by their abstractions, that we rise to acts of reflection, which makes us think of what is called ‘I,’ and to observe that this or that is within us; and it is thus that, in thinking of ourselves, we think of being, of substance, simple or compound, of the immaterial and of God himself.” For the quotation, see Stuart Hampshire, The Age of Reason (New York: The New American Library, 1956), 180-81.]

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justified in saying that it was there, because he had satisfied himself that it was a necessary conception of reason. The apparent contradiction implied here, in asserting the presence of the idea in the intelligence of the savage, while the savage knew it not, he thought he escaped by means of Cousin’s doctrine of the impersonal and spontaneous reason. II. We come now to the doctrine of the impersonal reason, borrowed from M. Cousin, of whose philosophy it is one of the most striking peculiarities. We felt, as has every man who has been at all under the influence of religious ideas, that these ideas have a character of independence and authority. They seem to be over man and to legislate for him; and he seems to be unable to withdraw himself from their presence, if indeed from their dominion. This fact led us to adopt, up to a certain point, Cousin’s doctrine, and to make it the basis of our demonstration of the existence of God. As far as it really serves as the basis of this demonstration, though not so far as it enters into the form of the argument, we believe it unquestionably sound. The author of Charles Elwood never intended to adopt it in its fullest extent, and he thought he had escaped all that was unsound in it. But in this he was mistaken. There runs through all he says on it the same confusion which meets us in Cousin himself. The source of this confusion we have on former occasion pointed out;18 but unhappily, without being aware at that time of the immense importance of a very obvious distinction, which we then suggested, and therefore we neglected, when preparing Charles Elwood for publication, to make Mr. Morton’s language conform to it. We must therefore be allowed to set the matter in what we now deem its true light. Cousin defines reason to be a faculty of human nature, that faculty by which we know all that we know, and in all the degrees of knowledge from the highest to the lowest. He also contends that reason is impersonal and objective, in us, our only light, but not us nor ours. Being impersonal and objective, it is good authority for the objective, an independent witness for what lies outside of us, indeed for whatever it reveals. It reveals the absolute, therefore, the absolute exists; God, therefore, God is. But against this there lie several very weighty objections. 1. If reason be a faculty of human nature, it is absurd to call it impersonal and objective. A faculty is merely a power of the soul. To say that the soul has the faculty of reason is merely saying that the 18 Boston Quarterly Review (April, 1839): 177-80. [Ed. See “The Eclectic Philosophy,” EW, 4:182-85.]

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power to know is inherent in it, essential to its existence, belonging in fact to its very being. It is then merely an aspect of the subject itself, and we might was well in this case call the subject, the ME, objective and impersonal, as the reason. 2. To assert that reason, regarded as our faculty of intelligence, is impersonal and objective, is to deny that we ourselves are persons. Cousin places personality chiefly in liberty or activity. But liberty or the power to act is not the characteristic of personality. Animals have the power to act, as well as we, and yet they are not persons. Personality is never predicated of unintelligent beings, nor indeed of all intelligent beings. The dog, the horse, the ox, are intelligent, yet we cannot call them persons. Personality is not constituted till we attain to a high degree of intelligence, to the perception of moral, universal, and necessary truths; that is, not till we come to that degree of intelligence, which goes by the special name of reason. None but reasonable beings are in any human speech with which we are acquainted allowed to be persons. Divest us of personality—and we should be divested of it, if our faculty of reason were objective—and we should cease to be moral and accountable beings. Then all foundation for morality would be destroyed. 3. If reason be our only power of knowing, as Cousin asserts, and it be also impersonal and objective, then we in ourselves must be incapable of knowing. How then come into relation with intelligence? How can an essentially non-intelligent being be even enlightened by an objective intelligence? If there be no light within how can there be recognition of the light without? 4. If reason, in the sense that it is one of our faculties, be identical with the objective world of immaterial and necessary truth, as Cousin alleges, he merely reproduces the doctrine of Père Malebranche of “vision in God;”19 for reason in this sense he tells us is the Word of God, the Logos, identical in the last analysis with God. Man then does not see at all, but God sees in him. 5. If reason, as we have seen, be essential to our personality, to transfer it from us to God, is to transfer our personality to God. To sink us in God, and to destroy all distinction between his acts and ours; which in this case would be pantheism. 19 [Ed. Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715) was a French Catholic ontologist philosopher, theologian, and priest of the Oratory. Malebranche was influenced by Descartes but modified in significant ways Cartesian ontology, epistemology, and physics. His great work, The Search after Truth (1674), presented his most famous doctrines of vision in God and occasionalism.]

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6. The doctrine is psychologically false. In the fact of human knowledge it is not God nor the reason that knows, but the ME itself. Whatever be the object or the sphere of knowledge, it is always I who know. I as invariably, and as necessarily ascribe the act of knowing to myself, as I do the act of willing. I have as direct consciousness that it is I who knows in the fact of intelligence, as I have that it is I who wills in a fact of volition. On his own principles, then, M. Cousin can no more term reason, regarded as our power to know, objective, than he can activity or our power to will. 7. The power to know, and to know even those eternal verities which M. Cousin so eloquently treats under the names of the true, the beautiful, and the good, constitutes the chief dignity and glory of our being. To declare this power objective, not ours, is to rob us of all this glory and dignity, and to degrade us even below the animal creation, almost to a level with brute matter. 8. The element of necessity, M. Cousin detects in the intelligence, though unquestionably involving objective existence, is not sufficient to establish the fact of the objectivity of the power of intelligence. The same element of necessity may be detected in sensibility; and to a certain extent in activity itself. Our liberty is not complete. We can even will only according to given laws, not of our enacting, and only within given bounds, bounds which we have not prescribed and which we cannot overleap. These objections are conclusive; no reasoning can obviate their force. And yet, in the face of these very objections, we are disposed to maintain that there is a sense in which reason is impersonal and objective. The word reason may be taken in two senses. In one sense it means, what Cousin calls the absolute, the world of absolute ideas, immaterial and necessary truth; in the other sense, the faculty or power by which we recognize this absolute world. In the first it is impersonal and objective; in the second personal and subjective. Cousin nowhere to our knowledge clearly distinguishes between these two senses of the word. But does he really confound them? Does he mean to assert that reason in both senses is one and the same? We confess that we feel unable to decide. His language and his arguments would seem to authorize the assertion that he holds that the absolute ideas, and the power by which we recognize them, are identical. The probability we think is that his mind has not been drawn distinctly to the point in question. And yet, if he does confound them, he only does what others have done before him. Kant confounds them by absorbing the absolute or transcendental reason, in

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reason as a faculty of human nature, and thus lays the foundation of his peculiar kind of idealism, which prepares the way for the egoism of his disciple Fichte.20 If Cousin confounds them, it is by absorbing the subjective reason in the objective, which would lead to Spinozaism,21 and in some sense justify the charge of pantheism, which has been so often brought against him at home and abroad. However this may be, we have his own authority for saying that he means by reason, in the sense in which he contends that it is objective and impersonal, “the world of absolute ideas, the world of immaterial and necessary truth,” which he treats in his Course for 1818, on the philosophy of the absolute, under the names of the idea of the true, the idea of the beautiful, and the idea of the good.22 He uses here both the term idea, and the term reason, in the genuine Platonic sense. According to Plato, the reason is the world of ideas, and ideas are very nearly if not quite, what we mean by abstract relations, universal and necessary truths; of which sort are the truths contained in the propositions—the same thing cannot both be, and not be; the whole is greater than a part; that, which is not, cannot act; no phenomenon can begin to exist without a cause; the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; reason ought to govern the passions; men should do as they would be done by, &c. True science, according to Plato, consists in a knowledge of ideas, that is, a knowledge of these abstract relations, these universal and necessary truths, these eternal principles of things. Now understanding reason in this sense, and this is really a legitimate and even common use of the word, as is evinced by the frequency with which we hear, “he should submit to reason,” “reason dictates,” “he will not be governed by reason,” “that is a truth of reason,” “reason bids us do this,” “reason bids us not do that,” taking reason, we say, in this sense, M. Cousin is right in pronouncing it objective and impersonal; for in this sense it is not us nor ours, ME nor MINE. But in this sense it is as distinct from reason as a faculty of human nature, as is sight considered as something seen, from sight considered as the power to see. 20

[Ed. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was a German philosopher whose critical philosophy had a major impact on all subsequent modern philosophy. Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814) was a German idealist philosopher who promoted the idea of an Absolute Ego that could be known only by philosophical intuition.] 21 [Ed. Baruch Spinoza (1632-77) was a Dutch philosopher frequently accused of pantheism because of his identification of God with nature or substance.] 22 [Ed. Cousin discusses these ideas, without the exact quotation Brownson cites, in Introduction to the History of Philosophy, trans. Henning Gotfried Linberg (Boston: Hilliard, Gray, Little, and Wilkins, 1832), 126-29.]

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Strictly speaking, reason should not be termed a faculty of the soul. They, who call it a faculty, mean thereby the power of perceiving the ideas or truths of reason in the sense already defined. This has been regarded as a distinct faculty of the soul. Hence we find men distinguishing, or trying to distinguish, between reason and understanding, between the power by which we perceive the objects of time and space, and that by which we perceive the objects of the world lying beyond them. But there is no ground here for any distinction. The power, by which we perceive in one world, is precisely the power, by which we perceive in the other. The conditions, degrees, and objects of knowledge may vary, but the power is in all cases one and the same faculty of the soul. I perceive by one and the same power the corporeal world and the ideas of reason. To avoid confusion, we ourselves call this power by the general name of intelligence, or power to know. Man with us is not a reasonable being because reason is one of his faculties, but because he has the power to perceive the truths of reason, and to follow the dictates of reason. Nevertheless, it is not necessary to quarrel about words, and we will not object to calling our faculty of intelligence by the term reason, if in this sense it be distinguished from reason, as the general term for the world which transcends time and space, the world of immaterial and necessary truth. We may consider man as an intelligence, seeing, perceiving, or knowing in three worlds. 1. In the world of space, which seeing or perceiving is called sensation. 2. In the world of time, called in regard to time past, memory, in regard to time to come, presentiment or foresight—history and prophecy. 3. In the world of ideas, the world of reason, the transcendental world in modern phraseology, termed intuition, or intuitive perception. Intuition with us is as applicable to seeing or perceiving in the one world, as in another; for with us all knowledge is intuitive; that is, by looking on the object. In the longest chain of reasoning each link is intuitively perceived, and reasoning is nothing but placing a given subject, in its several parts and relations, immediately before the mind’s eye. Now, to establish the objectivity of reason, according to our view, is to establish the objectivity of this transcendental world of which we speak, of these absolute ideas, called by Cousin the idea of the true, the idea of the beautiful, and the idea of the good. Has Cousin, according to his own system, succeeded in doing this? This is the boast of his philosophy. To show how it may be done was the problem he had to solve, as it is the problem of every philosopher who wishes to go out of the sphere of the subjective, and obtain a solid basis for science. We confess that after the maturest thoughts we have

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been able to bestow on the subject, after having wavered long in our judgment, and disposed from a strong personal feeling to find Cousin always in the right, and to award him the highest praise, we are obliged to return to the judgment we expressed in a paper on his philosophy, inserted in the Christian Examiner, for September, 1836, though we sustain that judgment by other and stronger reasons than those we were then able to adduce.23 We see him perpetually on the verge of solving the problem; nay, we admit that he does virtually solve it, but not systematically, not scientifically, not legitimately. His argument is after all but a paralogism. He shows, what few will deny, that these ideas are at the bottom of the human intelligence; he shows that the human intelligence cannot be developed without them, and that we are necessitated to accept them, to believe in their objective validity. All this is well. But this does not advance him a single step on the Scottish school. It merely demonstrates what Reid himself had done equally well a long time before him, that these ideas are necessary or first principles of belief. Cousin merely proves, according to his system, that these absolute ideas are necessary elements of human intelligence, understood not as our power to know, but as the effect of the exercise of that power. They reside, if we may so speak, in the reason. But the reason, he regards ever as in us. True, he says, the reason is not us, but he places it after all in the ME. Whatever is in the ME, must be the ME. By teaching as he does, that it is in the ME, that these ideas are seen, he necessarily contradicts his own assertion, that they are objective. He falls here into the very common error of representing the ME, if we may so speak, as the locus of ideas. Locke defined ideas very well, when he called them “objects about which the mind is immediately conversant,”24 but destroyed their objective character by supposing it to be in the mind, that the mind converses with them. Cudworth treats them as absolute ideas, in his Immutable Virtue,25 with rare 23

[Ed. See “Cousin’s Philosophy,” in Christian Examiner and Gospel Review 21 (September, 1836): 33-64, also in EW, 3, chapter 6.] 24 [Ed. Brownson is probably referring to Essay Concerning Human Understanding Book 4, Chapter 1, Section 1, though he is not entirely precise: “Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate; it is evident, that our knowledge is only conversant about them.”] 25 [Ed. Ralph Cudworth (1617-1688) was a Cambridge Platonist philosopher whose Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (1731) a number of Unitarians and Transcendentalists had read. Brownson is here summarizing Cudworth’s argument, but for a specific reference to the legislative character of absolute ideas, see A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976), 35, 287-88.]

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sagacity, and labors hard to prove their legislative character; but fails in consequence of considering them as furnished by the mind’s own energy, and as residing in the mind. This same view is taken of them by our American transcendentalists, who regard them as laws of the soul, sometimes as the soul itself, and understand by intuition, seeing them by looking into the soul. But it is idle to pretend that what is in the soul, is objective; that is, that what is in the soul, is not in it, but out of it. Nor will M. Cousin relieve himself by proving these ideas objective to liberty, or the power to act. He himself, notwithstanding some assertions to the contrary, expressly denies that liberty, or activity, constitutes the ME. According to him, the ME is an active, intelligent, and sentient subject. The power to know is as essential to the ME, as the power to act. In proving these ideas to be exterior to liberty, then, he does not prove them to be exterior to the total ME, that is, really objective to man himself, that is again, virtually NOT-ME. We grant that M. Cousin proves that these ideas are objects of human intelligence, that is, objects of thought. But this was not the main point to be made out. The main point to be made out was that they are not only objects of thought, which nobody questions, but that they are really and truly NOT-ME; that is, that they exist out, and independent of the subject thinking them. This point, the boast of his philosophy, he has not established, and he has been prevented from doing it, by that very psychological method on which he so strenuously insists, and which we have ourselves heretofore insisted upon with equal earnestness. According to this method, the soul studies its own phenomena in itself, by an interior light called consciousness, as it studies the exterior world by the exterior senses. The soul, then, can study itself by immediate consciousness. It then stands face to face with itself, and maybe both the subject studying, and the object studied. Hence the ME, as Jouffroy innocently asserts, may be at once both a ME observing, and a ME observed! Grant this, and what is the evidence that these absolute ideas, though objects of thought, are not nevertheless really subjective, belonging to the ME, taken as the object of its own observation? Cousin’s philosophy, we therefore assert, does not and cannot carry him out of the subjective, into the region of the NOT-ME; for the ME observed is no less ME than the ME observing. All he attains to is an objective ME!—or an objective subject, nonetheless subjective, however, for being objective. His philosophy, then, is really, according to his own principles, if interpreted from the point of view which recognizes the subject at all, a system of pure idealism; if interpreted from the objective point

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of view, a system of absolute pantheism. For, with all his eclecticism, he really establishes no distinction between subject and object. To this conclusion we must come if we take his principles as officially declared in his lectures and push them to their last results. But, M. Cousin has suffered few facts in metaphysics to escape him. He has himself, and apparently without knowing it, and at some expense of systematic consistency, furnished us, in some of his Fragments, with the means of relieving both him and ourselves of all embarrassment.26 The simple fact is that the ME being the subject, that is, the thinker, is not and cannot be the object. But as there can be no thought without an object, for it is impossible to think, without thinking something, it follows that the objective element of every thought is really and truly NOT-ME. These absolute ideas, then, inasmuch as they are undeniably objects of thought, are not only objective to the intelligence, as Cousin proves them, but objective to the WHOLE ME, and therefore NOT-ME, existing out of the ME, and independent of it. Cousin is, then, after all, substantially correct in asserting the objectivity of the reason, understood as the world of absolute and immaterial truth; he has only failed in proving it to be so, by failing to follow out certain principles which he has himself recognized. Practically he is right, scientifically he is wrong. But, the objectivity of reason, in the only sense in which it is not absurd to assert it, was, after all, the main problem. M. Cousin, in attempting therefore to establish the objectivity of reason, as the means by which to arrive scientifically at an objective world, is somewhat out in his logic. His demonstration would be in this case a demonstration of the fact to be demonstrated, as the means with which to demonstrate it. We therefore think, with all becoming deference, that his long, tedious labors, on this point, leave us scientifically right where we were when he commenced them; though we feel at the same time that they have upon the whole tended greatly to advance metaphysical science. Assuming now, what the author of Charles Elwood assumes, but does not demonstrate, that these absolute ideas of the true, the beautiful, the good, are objective, out of the ME, and legislative for it, as we now see that they are, we must contend that his demonstration of the existence of God is worthy of being accepted. These ideas constitute the reason. They are absolute, consequently, reason itself must be absolute. This absolute reason is not God, but is, as Plato calls it, his Logos, Word, or Speech, and implies him as necessarily as thought 26

Fragmens Philosophiques (Paris: [Ladrange],1833), 243.

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implies a thinker. This the author of Charles Elwood, we think, has demonstrated. He has demonstrated, in our judgment, now as well as eight years ago, when the demonstration was written, the absolute necessity of a God; and this demonstration, in fact, if not in form, rests on as firm a basis of certainty, as that on which rests our certainty of our own existence. But, let this not be taken for more than it really is. This demonstration of the necessity of a God is not a knowledge of God. God, to speak strictly, is never a direct object of knowledge. We have heretofore used language on this subject that needs some modification. We have assumed, and not without justice, that the absolute ideas of which we speak are the basis of all intelligence. These ideas being absolute, constituting the absolute reason, we have supposed to be in the last analysis identical with God. Now, as these ideas are, to a feeble extent at least, intuitively perceived by all men, we have held, though we know not that we have ever so asserted, that God is known by intuition. This is stating the matter too strongly. In the first place, immense numbers of our race have almost no perception at all of these absolute ideas. They and we and all nature are immersed in them, swim as it were in the mighty ocean of the transcendental, but the transcendental is rarely disengaged by the mind, and is never seen, except so far as it is revealed in the concrete and contingent, with which for the most part it is confounded. The larger part of mankind do not look beyond the outward visible object, and, to speak the language of religion, live only the life of the senses. Their thoughts to the wise man, to the philosopher, involved these absolute ideas, but they themselves know it not, and therefore may be said practically not to think them at all. Then, in the next place, THESE IDEAS ARE NOT GOD. Doubtless they contain a revelation of God, and therefore he enters into them, as a man enters into his thought; but they are not He, any more than my thoughts, or my words are myself. But even if they were God, we know them at best only to a feeble extent. I know truth no farther than I become acquainted with that which is true; and of the beautiful, what know I beyond the beautiful objects I have seen? Or of the good? We have the power of recognizing the true, the beautiful, the good, intuitively, up to a certain extent, when the objects to which they belong are presented to us; but our knowledge of them does not transcend that portion of them contained in these objects, or which these objects manifest. These ideas are absolute, universal, eternal, but our knowledge of them is finite, relative, particular, and transient. We may know that they are absolute, and im-

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ply an absolute God; but we, alas, are finite and relative beings. We may recognize the absolute necessity of an absolute and infinite God, full of power, wisdom, and love, but our knowledge must always be a relative and limited knowledge. In proportion as our knowledge of these absolute ideas, in the divine works which reveal them, extends, may our knowledge of God in his manifestations extend. But, beyond this, knowledge of even the manifest God is not possible. We may unquestionably attain to the discovery of the logical necessity of God. Thus far, we think, Mr. Morton in Charles Elwood has gone. But this implies no extension of our knowledge of God. God is not learned in these logical abstractions. The God that we may know is not the God above the universe, but the God in the universe; and it is by studying him in the universe, that we learn what we may know of him, not by sinking the universe, and seeking by abstraction to attain to a pure spirit dwelling in eternal solitude, but ineffable glory beyond. Doubtless he is over all, but as over all, in his awful supremacy, we cannot approach him. We can know of God only some aspects of his divinity, as revealed in his works. We may hear his speech, but we cannot see his face; listen to his awful word, but never behold the Speaker. This is the sublime doctrine of Christianity, which commands us to behold the Glory of the Father in the face of his Son, and teaches us that it is the Son who is in the bosom of the Father, not the Father himself, who is the object of human knowledge. We must then honor the Son as we do the Father, because the Son, the Word is all that is revealed to us of the Father. We must, in plain terms, limit our ambition to a knowledge of God as he reveals himself; study him in his works, and in the records of his Providences, love him in all nature, especially in the heart of man, but bow down with lowly reverence before the thick darkness with which he hides his face from all mortal vision. III. With the doctrine of the impersonality of reason must go the necessity and legitimacy of the division of reason into spontaneous reason, and reflective reason. We are not sure that we have rightly seized what Cousin really means by this division; for we find upon a closer inspection of his works than we had made, when writing Charles Elwood, that he gives more than one account of it, and we are not able to make his several accounts harmonize with each other. But as near as we can come at his meaning, under a general point of view, he understands, by spontaneous reason, reason operating independently of the ME, by its own inherent force and energy; and by reflective reason, reason operating in subjection to our wills. In the first, the ME does not enter as subject, in the second, it does in some sort so enter.

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Reason, taken objectively, is the world of absolute ideas, of necessary truth, the Logos, Word, or Speech of God. In spontaneous reason, then, the subject, the intelligent force or agency at work, is not man, but God. Whatever, then, the reason spontaneously reveals is revealed by God himself. Its spontaneous revelations are, then, supernatural, really and truly divine, and deserve all the authority usually ascribed to divine revelation. This is the view Mr. Morton takes in Charles Elwood; and it is on this view that he rests his explanation of the fact of inspiration. Mr. Morton is a firm believer in divine revelation, in the full significance of the term. If he errs, it is not in his belief, nor in the doctrine he teaches; but in the account he gives of it. His purpose was so to explain it, as to enable the unbeliever to grasp it, and to sustain it by analogous facts in his own experience. But his explanation will not abide the test of criticism. This explanation, it may be seen at once, rests on the objectivity of the reason. But we have found reason, as the faculty of intelligence, to be not objective, but subjective and personal. It is, then, the subject itself, under one of its aspects. The subject that knows is always the ME. To assert, then, the spontaneity of reason, is only to assert, in other words, the spontaneity of the ME; that is, that the ME is in itself active, capable of acting from its own inherent energy. And this again is only asserting the freedom of the ME; for the only intelligible definition of freedom is the power to act. Spontaneity is the highest possible expression of freedom. Then the ME is never more present, than in its spontaneous phenomena. There is nothing which it can be more truly said to do, than that which it does spontaneously. This is admitted by Cousin himself, when treating of the spontaneous activity of the ME in relation to morals. The highest virtue consists in the fact, that the soul is in such a state that its natural aspirations, its spontaneous emotions, are in harmony with the will of God; so that it obeys God without deliberation, without reflection, from its own natural promptings. It is then sanctified. Raising to this state the fallen soul, a prey to debased and debasing appetites and depraved tastes, is that change of heart, which religious people demand, and which goes by the name of New Birth, or Regeneration. It will not do, then, to say that the acts I perform spontaneously, whether as force or as intelligence, are performed by a subject or agent which is not ME. The more spontaneous my acts, the more strictly are they mine, the more purely subjective and personal are they. The subject in spontaneity, then, is not God, but ME, if we understand it as predicated of reason as the faculty of intelligence.

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Nor shall we gain anything by understanding spontaneity as predicated of reason taken as the absolute, the world of immaterial and necessary truth. Our first perceptions of this world are unquestionably prior to reflection. We have entertained these absolute or transcendental ideas, before we have sought them. We found them to be facts of our intelligence, of our knowledge, the first moment we ascertained its contents. How came they there? Evidently, says Cousin, without any agency of ours. But in this he is wrong. For if there had been no exercise of our power of knowing, would they have been facts of our knowledge? Say, these ideas, without any agency of ours, spontaneously present themselves before us; but we are by nature inherently unintelligent, or if intelligent, we do not exercise our intelligence, would they be recognized? Of course not. The spontaneous presentation of these ideas before our minds, which is all that spontaneity when predicated of the objective reason can mean, would not give us then the actual perception of them, for the act of perceiving them is always our act. Cousin has been misled by the improper view he takes of the ME. He, though not without asserting to the contrary, as we have said already, makes the ME consist in liberty, or the power to act as naked force. Spontaneous activity of the ME, as naked force, he expressly admits to be personal; but the spontaneous activity of the ME, as intelligence, he contends, is not personal. But according to his own philosophy, the ME does not, and never can act as naked force, for this very satisfactory reason that it is not in itself a naked force. He recognizes three fundamental faculties of human nature, activity, or power to act; sensibility, or power to feel; and reason, or power to know. The ME, then, according to him, is inherently, essentially an active, sentient, and intelligent subject, or being. It must, then, whenever it acts at all, act as an intelligent and sentient force, and it is in this fact, in the unity and triplicity of the soul, that he finds the psychological basis of eclecticism, as he calls it, or synthesism, as it would be more properly called. Certainly there can be no fact of perception without an act of the percipient subject. Cousin improperly assumes that this act, which he calls attention, is that of the subject as mere force, when it is, and must be, according to his own principles, an act of a percipient force; both because the particular force in question is inherently percipient, and because no perception could follow the act of a non-percipient force. The act of perceiving is then necessarily as subjective, when the object perceived spontaneously presents itself, as when it is sought by reflection. The force or agency perceiving is not the object spon-

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taneously presented, but the subject itself. This is so obviously true, that, had it not been for his mutilation of the ME, and his effort to make out the knowing faculty to be objective, Cousin could never have overlooked it, or asserted to the contrary. There are unquestionably two classes of intellectual phenomena, which Cousin has done well to recognize. But he errs in considering one class to be less subjective than the other. The true distinction between them is that which Leibnitz has marked, of perception and apperception, or perception without consciousness, or without the recognition of ourselves as subject perceiving, and perception with this recognition. This is the real distinction which Cousin has in mind, as any one may see, who will read his Essay on the First and Last Fact of Consciousness, to be found in his Fragmens Philosophiques.27 To make this distinction intelligible, it is necessary to define the meaning of this word consciousness, a word used with much vagueness, and concerning which, as a philosophical term, people generally have no clear or precise notions. Cogito, ergo sum, said Descartes. I think, therefore I am. Descartes did not here mean to offer an argument for his existence, but simply to state the fact in which he found it. We have no direct perception of ourselves. We cannot see ourselves in ourselves. We can only recognize ourselves in the phenomenon. Our knowledge never attains to being in itself, it only attains to the necessity of being, and to so much of being as enters into the phenomenon. This is as true in regard to ourselves, as we have shown it to be in regard to God. We know being, as Cousin has himself shown, only under the relation of cause. It is only under this relation that we ever find or recognize ourselves; though not as naked cause, but a cause that knows and feels, as well as wills; in one word, that thinks. Thought expresses our highest activity, and in its pure and primitive synthesis. It is a complex phenomenon, at once action, cognition, and sentiment, responding to the threefold power of the soul, to act, to feel, and to know. Now, in thinking, we always recognize ourselves in the phenomenon which we term thought, as subject, or the one who thinks. If we decompose the thought, we shall find it made up of three elements, subject, or thinker, object, or that which is thought, and their relation, or the form of the thought; or, in other words, what the mind takes into its view of both subject and object, that is, notion or conception. The recognition of ourselves in the fact of thinking, as the subject thinking, is precisely the fact, 27

[Ed. Fragmens Philosophiques, 351-61.]

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designated by the word consciousness, which added to the perception of the object constitutes what Leibnitz calls apperception. This fact was called by Descartes consciousness (cum-scientia), because it is something which goes along with knowledge, that is, perception of the object; apperception (ad-perceptio) by Leibnitz, because it is something in addition to simple perception.28 I perceive a rose. This is perception. I recognize myself as the subject who perceives it, that the perceiver is I and not another; this is apperception, or consciousness. Now all those phenomena in which we recognize ourselves as subject, are apperceptions, or perceptions with consciousness; all those, in which we do not recognize ourselves as subject, are simple perceptions, or perceptions without consciousness. That there are these two classes of phenomena is very obvious and very certain. Man is essentially an active and percipient subject. He must then, while living, always act; and as he cannot act without perceiving—for being intelligent in his essence, he cannot act as force without acting as intelligence—he must perceive always and all that comes within the range of his vision; and perceive, too, in all the three worlds with which he stands in relation. But nothing is more certain than that he does not always perceive with consciousness. The power of apperception as Leibnitz, who has treated this subject better than any one else, affirms, is only a higher degree of the power of perception. But we apperceive, that is, are conscious of perceiving, only in the few stronger and more marked instances of perception. In general our perceptions are too feeble and confused for us to recognize ourselves as their subject. They may serve indeed to keep alive a dim and obscure sense of our existence, but the mass of them are too feeble to give us a distinct recognition of it. Now, it is by virtue of these feeble and confused perceptions, which play a much more important part in the conduct of life, than is commonly supposed, that these absolute ideas, of which Cousin speaks, come to be facts of our intelligence, prior to their being found there by reflection, and prior to our having consciously sought them, or been conscious of thinking them. These are rightly termed facts of spontaneity, for they have been perceived by the spontaneous activity of the soul. But this does not in the least separate them, as to their 28

[Ed. In Monadology (1714) Leibniz gave one of his many definitions of the distinction between the two terms. Perception he defined as the “passing state which enfolds and represents a multitude in unity or in the simple substance. This must be distinguished from apperception or from consciousness.” On this see Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Philosophical Papers and Letters, selected and translated by Leroy E. Loemker (Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing, 1969), 644.]

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quality, from the other class of facts. It is by the inherent power of the soul that these are perceived, and it is by the same power, only in a higher degree of exercise, that the soul perceives, in what is called reflection, so much so that in reflection, it not only perceives, but knows that it perceives, is able to find itself as the subject perceiving. The subjective act of perceiving is by virtue of the same power, and is as spontaneous in one case as in the other. Nor do these feeble and confused perceptions, which we have without knowing that we have them, approach any nearer the fact of inspiration, or afford any more solid ground for our faith in objective realities, than the more distinct and vivid perceptions, which we call apperceptions. No doubt, in these as in the others, reflection may discover the fact of a percipient subject, and of an object perceived. But the simple fact, that the object is perceived without the subject being conscious of perceiving it, does not constitute any additional evidence that it is veritably NOT-ME. We think, therefore, that M. Cousin finds in the fact of spontaneity, or in unconscious perception, no explanation of the fact of inspiration, no evidence of the objectivity of reason, and none which he does not also find in reflection, of the existence of a NOT-ME, the great points to be made out by its assistance. M. Cousin, we are disposed to believe, has been, in all his discussions on the objectivity and spontaneity of reason, preoccupied by the desire to refute Kant’s idealism, and Fichte’s egoism. His great aim has evidently been, to show that the ME does not create those absolute ideas, as Fichte seemed to teach, and that they are not mere modes, laws, affections, or categories of a subjective reason, as was taught by Kant. The assertion of the objectivity of the reason, negatived the last, of the spontaneous operation of the reason, the former. He, however, succeeds in neither case. For in asserting the objectivity of reason, he begs the question between him and Kant. Do the best he can, he has nothing but reason with which to prove reason’s objectivity. But the validity of the assertion, by reason of its own objectivity, was the point to be made out. In regard to Fichte he shows, indeed, what Fichte never asserted, that the ME does not create those ideas by free, conscious effort. But he was still obliged to admit the intervention of the ME, as percipient subject, in the facts of spontaneity, or else to deny the agency of the ME in any of its phenomena, not resulting from its conscious and deliberate activity, or from reflection, a denial, that would have not only made sad work of psychology, but have as completely upset all morality, as the sensation transformed of the school of Condillac.

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The refutation of Kant and Fichte, and therefore of all idealism, egoism, and skepticism, whether atheistic or pantheistic, is in a simple fact, which Cousin alleges, over and over again, and which he seems never to have comprehended, the fact already stated, that the OBJECTIVE ELEMENT OF THOUGHT IS ALWAYS NOT-ME. The error of Kant, and the error which has led astray his whole school and all others, is the assumption, that the ME does or may develop itself as pure subject, or, in other words, be its own object, and therefore at once subject and object. Kant assumes that the ME develops itself, without a foreign object, in cognition; hence he infers that all knowledge is purely subjective, and asserts the impotency of reason to carry us out of the sphere of the ME.29 Fichte, taking Kant’s Critique as his starting point, without reference to his doctrine concerning practical reason, asserted the power of the ME to be its own object, and sought the proof of it in the fact of volition. Hence he fell into the absurdity of representing all ideas as the products of the ME, and even went so far as to tell his disciples how it is that man makes God. A bold man, that Fichte; but he lived long enough to correct some of his speculative errors. Cousin seems to have fallen in part into the error of Fichte, while seeking to get rid of it. He seems never to have got quite clear of the notion that the ME can be its own object, notwithstanding he asserts the important fact that the object is always NOT-ME. The truth is, the ME is never object; it is always subject, and subject only. It finds and can find itself only as thinker; it never does, then, find itself as object thought. And as there can be no thought without an objective element, this element is necessarily NOT-ME. This is a fact of the very highest importance in science; but, a simple fact, resting on precisely the degree of evidence that we have for our own existence. This is the great fact which Cousin has struggled through all his writings to establish, but which he, after all, has not established, and which, though asserting it, he has failed entirely to use—misled, as we have already shown, by his psychological method. This fact, that the object is always NOT-ME, established on the degree of certainty we have stated, science becomes possible and le29 We know very well that this was not the real doctrine of Kant; that it was only demonstrated by him to be the result, to which all philosophy must come, that is based on pure reason. He himself relied on practical reason, that is to say, on plain common sense; and his purpose of writing critiques of pure reason was, to demonstrate the unsatisfactory character of all purely metaphysical speculations. A wise man, after all, was that same Emanuel Kant.[Ed. Immanuel Kant’s (17241804) Der Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781) was an attempt to outline the conditions for the possibility of knowledge.]

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gitimate. The certainty of knowledge, when carried into the objective, is precisely what it is in the sphere of the subjective. There is no purely subjective, or purely objective knowledge. We cannot think without finding ourselves as subject, and that which is not ourselves as object. We find ourselves only in thinking. Consequently, we find both the ME and the NOT-ME in the same phenomenon, by the same light, and with equal certainty. They are both fundamental and indispensable elements of thought. Without the ME, no thought, because no thinker; without the NOT-ME, no thought, because no object to be thought. Here is the whole mystery solved, and philosophy and the universal faith of mankind placed on the same basis. Mankind believe in an objective world, because they think it, and cannot think without thinking it. Philosophy can add nothing to this, obtain no other basis for faith, and needs no other. The question as to the validity of our knowledge, that is, as to the grounds of science, disposed of—which, we venture to maintain in opposition to M. Cousin, is the first question in philosophy, not the last—then come up the questions concerning what we actually know, and what are the sources and conditions of knowledge. We must answer the question, what do we actually know? By drawing up an inventory of the wealth of experience; for all actual knowledge is by experience, nothing being a priori, but the capacity to know. Under the head of sources and conditions of knowledge, must be considered the several ways in which knowledge is obtained, and the means we possess of extending our own knowledge and that of the race. In this department of philosophy must be considered the great and striking fact of inspiration, natural and supernatural, human and divine, a fact which plays a more conspicuous part in the origin and progress of human knowledge, than even religious people themselves contend. We did intend to treat this subject of inspiration in this present article, but we have left ourselves no space to treat it at sufficient length, to satisfy either ourselves or our readers. We, therefore, leave it to be a distinct topic of consideration on some future occasion. We will only say at this time, that the views, we have heretofore offered on inspiration, are not broad enough to embrace the whole subject, and by leaving out some important consideration, but imperfectly explain it so far as they do embrace it. But we have given enough of metaphysics for one quarter, and must bring this unexpectedly protracted article to a close, and that, too, while we leave much unsaid, which we had proposed to say. In the course of the article we have spared neither ourselves, nor our master in philosophy, M. Cousin. The criticisms on ourselves will be

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taken, we presume, in good part; but those on Cousin, considering the relation we have been supposed to hold to his philosophy, will most likely excite some surprise, and call forth a new edition of the old stereotyped charge, that we have changed our opinions again. This charge has been rung in our ears from early boyhood, and we confess that is has ceased to be musical, and become somewhat monotonous, and wearisome. Would that our good-natured critics could find some other fault in us, so as to be able to introduce a little novelty and somewhat of variety into their accusations. Both for our readers’ sake and our own, we would that we never had occasion to modify our opinions once expressed. But we are too poor in virtue to be able to part with enough to purchase that consistency, which is maintained only at the price of wilfully shutting the eyes to the light, or by obstinately adhering, in spite of conviction, to one’s first utterances. If we were never conscious of having erred, we should never have occasion to modify the opinions we had once expressed. It is doubtless best never to err; but if we belong to a fallible race, and cannot well avoid falling into error, the next best is probably to adhere to one’s errors no longer than till one discovers that they are errors. For ourselves, we are still disciples, and we have not the least doubt, notwithstanding our proficiency, that there are many things for us to learn. And that we may be free to learn them, we resolve never to be the slave of our own past, the slave of our own shadow. Others may do differently, but perhaps not more wisely; and after all he perhaps is not least deserving of confidence, who is the first to detect and expose his own errors. Nevertheless, we are far from admitting that we more frequently change our opinions, than most men, who are accustomed to think for themselves, do theirs. The principal difference between them and us is that they are prudent enough to keep the greater part of their changes to themselves, or to their few intimate friends, while we are so imprudent as to send ours all out to the public as they come. Still we could, were it worth our while, very easily convince this same public that we have by no means undergone the frequent changes of opinion that they imagine. The great current of our faith has always flowed on in the same direction, and the doctrines, we are putting forth today, are the doctrines, enlarged, and systematized, which we have always been seeming to ourselves to be putting forth, ever since we have been known to this community. The only changes we are conscious of, and the only changes we have acknowledged, have occurred in relation to our views of the value, or soundness, of the views of others, views which we partially adopted for a time, without

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making all the qualifications and limitations they demanded. Our faith has been and is the same. Where we have investigated a subject for ourselves, and relied on the free action of our own mind, we have rarely had occasion to change our views. Even in the criticisms we have offered on Cousin’s philosophy, we have said nothing not substantially anticipated in former remarks upon it. We have, it is true, placed our objections to that philosophy in a more prominent light now, than we had done before, because we are confident that they are of more importance than we formerly considered them. Every man in criticizing favorably, or unfavorably, any system, must view it from the position where he stands. When we approached Cousin’s philosophy at first, we felt deeply the need of a profounder, a more religious philosophy, both for ourselves and our countrymen, than that taught in our schools. We did not feel able to construct such a philosophy as we felt was needed; we knew no one amongst us that was able. There was too great indifference on the subject. It was necessary to kindle up an interest in philosophical studies. It was at that time more important that our countrymen should think, than it was what they should think. Philosophy had no audience. We thought, and so thought some of our friends, that of all philosophical writings, within our reach, Cousin’s were best adapted to the wants of our countrymen. Our first aim was to get them read and studied, confident that by so doing we should prepare the way for a sound philosophy, even in case Cousin’s should be found to be not altogether satisfactory. It was the best, the most satisfactory, that we were acquainted with. It had great and positive merits, and we felt that it was admirably adapted to the state of philosophic thought in our community. We therefore, did what we could to commend it. We had no disposition to dwell upon its defects, for our purpose was, not to criticize it, but to induce others to study it. We commended it not for these defects, but for its merits. But, we own, that these defects were greater than we at the time thought them, and now that an interest is awakened among us in philosophical studies, we have felt that it was time to point them out, as they had not been pointed out before. But we still maintain our respect for Cousin, as a philosopher, and as a man. We abate nothing of what we have heretofore said in his praise. If his philosophy, taken as a whole, is not all that we at first thought it, we still contend, that he deserves a high rank among the eminent men, who have at different epochs contributed to the progress of metaphysical science. His writings contain nearly all the materials requisite for constructing a sound system of philosophy. There is scarcely a point involved in the whole subject, on which he has not

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shed more or less light. We have borrowed from him the very light by which we have been enabled to criticize him; and if we are able on some points to offer a more satisfactory explanation of our mental phenomena than he has done, it is to him that we are indebted for our ability. We know very little that we would say, which he has not already said or implied; and if we were asked what books were best to be studied by one wishing to form just philosophical views, we know of none, that we could more conscientiously or unreservedly recommend than his. They are the best, all things considered, that we are acquainted with. Whoever would become familiar with metaphysical subjects, must study them. They have a permanent value, which no progress in science, or changes of doctrine can altogether destroy. We are pleased, therefore, to find them introduced as text books into our venerable University at Cambridge;30 and equally pleased are we, too, that their introduction has not caused the expulsion of Locke from the same University; for we are not ashamed to own, that our respect for Locke is every day increasing, and we would not repeat the severe things which the indiscreet zeal of his admirers have, on some former occasions, induced us to say of him. The more we study him, the more are we struck with his merits. The philosophy, that commends itself by detracting from the imperishable glory of such a man as John Locke, can be in vogue only far a day, and must soon take its place with the things that are as if they had not been. M. Cousin is a true philosopher and would have given us a sound philosophy in all its parts, if he could have undertaken to do it at once, in a regular systematic treatise. His errors and defects grow, we apprehend, from his having studied philosophy somewhat after the fragmentary manner in which he has treated it in his writings, and from having confounded, too much, philosophy with the history of philosophy. He had nowhere given us a complete system of philosophy; and we confess, that we do not find ourselves able to mould all that he has at different times advanced into one and the same system. We find, or we seem to ourselves to find, in his writings the elements of incongruous systems, which are not, and cannot be made parts of the same whole. We have been forced to this conclusion, by undertaking to mold his scattered fragments into a complete and system30 [Ed. I could not discover whether Cousin’s texts were actually used at Harvard during this period. Edgeley Woodman Todd, “Philosophical Ideas at Harvard College, 1817-1837,” New England Quarterly 16 (March 1943): 63-90, makes no mention of Cousin’s texts at Harvard. By 1842, though, English translations of Cousin’s texts may have been used by some Harvard professors, most of whom were influenced by Locke and/or the Scottish Common Sense tradition.]

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atic body of philosophy, an undertaking we have been compelled to abandon. We could not succeed. We have, however, attempted the construction of a system on our own account, with what success it is not for us to say, though with a success more satisfactory to ourselves than we anticipated. We have the satisfaction of feeling that, for the first time in our life, we have a system, which, though not constructed without assistance, is yet as a system our own. Some of its elements appear in this article; and those familiar with metaphysical matters will not judge them unimportant. The whole system will be laid before the public, at the earliest day possible; and we are confident, when seen as a whole, it will be found able to reconcile many jarring creeds, and in no small degree to meet the wants of both the Old School and the New. This much we may say in advance of its publication, that, viewed in relation to the systems of philosophy already extant, it assumes English philosophy as its starting point; that is, it takes up philosophy where it exists in our literature, and in our national character, and continues it; but attains to all those moral, spiritual, and religious results, for which we and others have valued the metaphysical speculations of modern France and Germany. Without claiming for man more than finite powers, or pretending to solve all problems, it will, we think, show a solid basis for science and religion. We pretend not, however, to have made any discovery that will supersede the necessity of divine revelation, or a childlike trust in the wisdom and goodness of Providence, whose ways are often dark and mysterious, and whose purposes are not seldom past finding out. Man does well to aspire; it is the glory of his nature, and the condition of his advancement; but, he does well, also, to remember that he is a limited being, and his intelligence but a feeble taper burning in the bosom of infinite night. For a feeble distance it may furrow the darkness, and as it grows by burning, it may furrow it farther and still farther; but can never overcome it, and enlighten infinity.

5. MODERN FRENCH LITERATURE1 Boston Quarterly Review 5 (April, 1842): 230-51

We have for some time been seeking an opportunity of offering a few thoughts on modern French literature. With the modern political and philosophical writings of France we have for several years been familiar; but we had paid no attention to its lighter literature, till we saw it denounced in no measured terms, in an article, published, three or four years since, in the London Quarterly Review.2 That article led us to believe that modern French literature must possess some admirable qualities, and be deserving of no little respect; for we have generally been in the habit of construing the Quarterly’s denunciations into high praise. Its denunciations were so loud, and so bitter that we lost as little time as possible in making ourselves acquainted, to some extent, with the class of writers condemned; and we have been not altogether unrewarded for our pains. However, taking modern French literature, as represented by Victor Hugo, H. de Balzac, Alexandre Dumas, and George Sand, otherwise Madame Dudevant, we cannot say that we have found as much to approve, as we were led by the outcries of the Quarterly to expect.3 We have found not much to justify the charges of indecency, of licentious and antisocial tendency; but we have found more than we looked for, offensive to our taste and feelings. In a word, we have not been able, taking it as a whole, to sympathize with it; or to find either the pleasure or the profit, in becoming acquainted with it, that we have a right to expect from the literature of a refined and highly 1 [Ed. Brownson’s review of George Sand’s (pseudonym of French novelist Amandine Aurore Lucie Dudevant, 1803-76) Spiridion (1839).] 2 [Ed. Brownson may well be referring to “French Novels,” Quarterly Review 56 (April 1836): 65-131. See especially pp. 99-131 for a review of George Sands’ works, a review that did not include Spiridion.] 3 [Ed. Victor Hugo (1802-85) was a poet, novelist and dramatist who was one of the more important writers of French Romanticism. Honoré de Balzac (17991850) was a French literary artist, author of a vast number of novels and short stories called La Comédie humaine. Alexandre Dumas (1802-70) was a French dramatist and author of historical novels, such as The Count of Monte Cristo and The Three Musketeers.]

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civilized people. France has few, if any writers, that can compare advantageously with Scott, Bulwer, Washington Irving, or even Charles Dickens.4 Victor Hugo by no means wants genius, talent, or learning; but he is misled by his theory of art, and fails to give us a work that can be read with unmingled pleasure. He is the best of his class. His natural disposition, we should judge to be tender, affectionate, and even sunshiny; but having adopted the notion that the grotesque is an essential element of the beautiful, and the horrible of the pathetic, he gives us works, which chill rather than please, and harrow up the nerves, instead of melting the heart. We have never yet been able to submit to the torture of finishing the perusal of his Notre Dame; and the “Last days of a Convict,” we have left with the leaves uncut. His Han d’Islande has, however, some passages of great beauty and tenderness. His dramas are better; and we have read with much pleasure Marion de Lorme, Angelo, and Hernani, horrible as they certainly are. The Roi s’amuse, and Lucrece Borgia, have proved too much for our nerves.5 We abandon them to the tender mercies of the London Quarterly Review. Balzac is certainly a writer of great power and fertility, but there is something dry and hard in his spirit. He lays open the vices and corruptions of society, it must be admitted, with the hand of a master; nothing can surpass his pictures of its hollowness, its hypocrisy, its vanity, its licentiousness; but we nowhere meet in him the warm and genial aspiration to something better. We do not feel, while reading him, as we do while reading Bulwer, and Boz,6 or our own Irving, that there is at bottom a genuine love of humanity, a hearty sympathy with mankind, and a strong desire to make society better, more favorable to the growth of religion, virtue, and happiness. We rise from his pages, soured, indignant, and misanthropic. We feel contempt for our race, not love; and find ourselves disposed to bid them hasten on to the devil, not to sacrifice ourselves for their redemption. Of Alexandre Dumas we know less than of Hugo and of the others. He is not, however, so cold and freezing, as de Balzac. He has warmer sympathies, a more genial spirit, and is more able to look on 4 [Ed. Edward George Earle Bulwer-Lytton (1803-73) was a British politician, poet, and critic who was primarily known as a prolific novelist. Washington Irving (1783-1859) was an American historian, novelist and humorist. Charles Dickens (1812-70) was also a prolific English novelist.] 5 [Ed. Victor Hugo, Notre Dame de Paris (1831), “Last Days of a Convict,” (1829) Han d’Islande (1823), Marion de Lorme (1829), Angelo (1835), Hernani (1830), Roi s’amuse (1832), Lucrece Borgia (1833).] 6 [Ed. Boz was the early pen name of Charles Dickens.]

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the brighter side of things; and yet he has his faults, and faults of the same class with those we have pointed out in Victor Hugo, to whom he is inferior in talent and genius. Of George Sand we will speak more particularly hereafter. Excluding de Balzac, who seems to write for the Parisian saloons,7 we may say of modern French literature that it is strongly impregnated with what we have sometimes, without much precision, called social democracy. It has a tendency to recognize the rights, the claims, and to some extent the worth, of the masses. It does not bow to the aristocracy, nor court in any respect the high-born and the rich. It is plebeian in its spirit, and recognizes, and sometimes without a sneer, the existence of the proletary. Its heroes can be born without titles, and it can expose vice in high places. It furthermore is indignant at tyranny, impatient of restraint, loud in its demand for freedom and the elevation of the masses. It moreover has a certain humanity. It opposes itself to cruel and sanguinary punishments, and would excite sympathy for even the wicked by showing that they are never utterly abandoned. This is its good side. But this is the good side of all modern literature. It is a remarkable fact that since the French Revolution literature has ceased to be aristocratic. Everywhere, or nearly everywhere, throughout Christendom, and especially in western Europe and America, there has been a decided disposition among all writers of much note, either to expose the vices of the great, to hold up the more favored classes to ridicule or indignation, or to laud the virtues of the low, to paint the less favored classes in the most lively colors, and under the most attractive forms. We everywhere meet the plebeian classes rising into notice or into power. They are no longer introduced upon the stage as subjects of ridicule, for the amusement of the well-born and the refined. They furnish the author his heroes. Their patience under wrong, their quiet and unostentatious lives, their simple habits and gentle virtues, or their rights, and the wrongs and outrages to which they are doomed, constitute the materials of his romance. He only can fetch an echo from the heart of this age, who speaks out for universal man, and in tones of sympathy with the wronged and downtrodden. It is well worth one’s while to trace this tendency. We may see it even in the dominant taste with regard to the use of language itself. In our own language, what scholar would now write in the Latinized English of old Dr. Johnson?8 Good taste is now to avoid as 7

[Ed. Brownson frequently uses “saloons” for “salons.”] [Ed. Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was an English writer, critic, lexicographer, and essayist.] 8

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much as possible the Latin element of the language, and to use those words which are of Teutonic origin. We have discovered an unsuspected richness in the old Anglo-Saxon, and the nearer we approach to the language of Alfred and Edward, the Confessor,9 the more correct is said to be our taste. In France we see something similar. The writers show an increasing affection for words of Celtic origin, or at least for that portion of their language most in use with the great body of the people. All this is easily accounted for. Formerly the reading public was composed almost entirely of the aristocracy and their retainers; and of course all works, written with the intention of being published and read, must breathe the tone, and speak the language of the aristocracy. In France and England, the aristocracy were of an anti-national origin; they could therefore have but few sympathies with the great mass of the people, and hence little fondness for the purely national language. But now, the plebeian classes, the body of the nation, demand a literature, and must be addressed in their own tongue. To speak to the hearts of the great mass of the people, we must use the terms with which they are familiar, the language in which they think, and in which for generations they have been accustomed to express their feelings. Now, as the greet body of the English and American people are of Anglo-Saxon origin, the AngloSaxon is their principal mother tongue; and in addressing them it is necessary to draw upon the Anglo-Saxon funds of the language, because then we speak to them in their mother tongue. The clergy, once the literati of Europe, educated in the Latin language, made always in all their writings as much use of it as possible. So long as they gave the tone to literature, the national languages, the mother tongues of the people, would be discountenanced. But the clergy are no longer in relation to literature what they once were. The laity have been to school, and now control our literary tastes. The laity have less fondness for Latin, and more sympathy with the people who speak their national tongue. This tendency to the Anglo-Saxon elements of the English, and to the old Gallic elements in modern French, and to strict nationality in modern German, indicates the rising importance of the plebeians and the laity, and shows that the clergy and the aristocracy count for comparatively little in modern literature. If we pass from language into the historical works of the day, we shall find the same tendency. We republish old chronicles and bal9 [Ed. Alfred the Great (849-999), king of the West Saxons, wrote English translations from the Latin of Boethius, Augustine and Pope Gregory, among others. Edward the Confessor (c. 1003-66) was king of England just prior to the Norman Conquest.]

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lads, study the bards, scalds, troubadours, trouveres, and minnesangers. We write the history of the Gauls, the Anglo-Saxons, and Sclavonians.10 We seek everywhere for the remains of the old conquered races. We sit in judgment on the conqueror, and sympathize with the sufferings of the conquered, endured in silence for so many ages. This tendency is remarked in the brothers Thierry, especially in Augustin, author of the History of the Norman Conquest.11 The tendency this way is first decidedly marked in England by the publication of the old English Ballads, by Bishop Percy;12 but the man, who has perhaps contributed more to it than any other writer, dead or living, is Sir Walter Scott.13 Whether Scott knew what he was about or not, may be a question; but his writings mark a revolution in literature, and contain even a social revolution. We plead guilty to having misconceived the tendency of Scott’s literary labors, and of having judged him, on a former occasion,14 too superficially. We have just finished a critical perusal of all his novels, and we are happy to be able to say that our estimate of his character, and our judgment of the tendency of his writings, are altogether more favorable to him than what we have heretofore expressed. His sympathies are not always with power, but almost always, and apparently unknown to himself, with the conquered or oppressed classes. In regard to his own country, he has labored to exhibit the merits, the virtues, the noble qualities of the defeated party. In passing into England he is true to the same tendency. In his Ivanhoe,15 he has resuscitated the old Saxon race, and showed the struggle between them and their Norman masters, which continued long after the conquest; and by so doing he has furnished the scholars of Europe with a key to the real history of modern society. When treating of the English Revolution in the seventeenth century, he may not in all cases have been just 10

[Ed. Sclavonian is a medieval form of our current “Slav” or “Slavonian.”] [Ed. Augustin Thierry (1795-1856) was a French historian, and the follower and secretary to Saint-Simon. His L’Histoire de la conquête de l’Angleterre par les Normandes (1825) depicts the Anglo-Saxons as the lovers of liberty fending off the barbarians to revive the parliamentary monarchy. Augustin Thierry’s brother was Amédée-Simon-Dominique (1797-1873), liberal politician and author of Histoire de Gaulois (2 vols. 1828).] 12 [Ed. Thomas Percy (1729-1811) was a British antiquarian and bishop of Dromore, County Down, Ireland. He collected numerous English and Scottish ballads in his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry (1765).] 13 [Ed. Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) was a Scottish poet and novelist who developed the genre of the historical novel.] 14 [Ed. See, Oration of Orestes A. Brownson, EW, 5:574-75.] 15 [Ed. Scott’s Ivanhoe (1819) was set in England in the twelfth century.] 11

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to the Puritans and Republicans; but still he is far less unjust to them than is commonly supposed.16 Then, in selecting his characters, his noblest are always from the lowest or plebeian classes. In Ivanhoe we have Gurth, the swineherd, a noble specimen of the true man; and the man, who could have drawn such a character, and so described his exultation, when the collar of bondage was struck from his neck, could not have been without the soul of the freeman. In this same novel, we find his best female character, a character in which he rises far above his ordinary conception of female worth, and in which he has altogether surpassed himself, Rebecca, the Jewess, taken from the despised tribe, the persecuted of all lands. Edie Ochiltre, the beggar,17 may put to shame the whole race of his noble dukes, counts, and barons, and little barons. Something of this same tendency is to be found in the prosy Wordsworth. He, all Tory as he is, has a fellowfeeling with simple humanity. The tendency is still more decided in Bulwer, and altogether more yet in Boz. Amongst ourselves we see it in Irving, in Cooper’s Bravo, and Headsman, and in some of Hawthorne’s Twice-Told Tales.18 Now this marks not merely a literary, but a social revolution. These lower classes, these plebeians and proletaries, among whom Scott, Wordsworth, and others find their heroes, are, at least, so far as concerns England and France, the descendants and representatives of the conquered races; and this tendency which we have marked indicates that a revolution in their favor has in some degree commenced, and is now in progress. The old Anglo-Saxon rises against his Norman master, the simpleman against the gentleman, and seeks to reestablish his language and his rights; the Gallo-Roman seeks to throw off the yoke imposed by the Teutonic Frank, and to be the freeman of his natal soil. All modern literature bears the marks, if we may so speak, of the revolt of the conquered tribes. It is insurrectionary, rebellious. Consequently it is held in great horror by the representatives of the conquerors, whenever they perceive its real character and tendency. We, 16 [Ed. Brownson could be referring to Scott’s Peveril of the Peak (1822) or Woodstock (1826), both of which are set during the years of Cromwell, or perhaps Old Mortality (1816) which specifically concerns the Covenanter Revolt of 1637.] 17 [Ed. Edie Ochiltree is a character in Sir Walter Scott’s The Antiquary (1816).] 18 [Ed. James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851) was one of the first American novelists to create self-consciously a distinct national literature as in The Bravo (1831) and The Headsman (1833). Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-64) was a novelist and short story writer. Twice-Told Tales (1837) was one of his first major short stories.]

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whose sympathies are always with the rebels, of course approve this tendency. We discovered it in Bulwer, and hence our high regard for his writings; we discovered it in many of the modern French writers, and hence the reason of our respect for them; we did not originally discover it in Scott, Wordsworth, Irving, and Boz, and hence the reason why we have never spoken in their praise. In Irving it is slight, but he belongs after all to modern literature; in Boz it is strong, but not so strong as a superficial reading would indicate. It will, if we are not much mistaken, show itself stronger, and at the same time gentler still, in the author of The Gentle Boy.19 In Scott it is stronger than in any of the rest, though he was probably unaware of the fact. Few, comparatively speaking, have suspected the real tendency of his writings, and hence the praise he has received from those who dread the revolution, which none more than he has contributed to bring about. We, for our part, belong to the conquered race, if not by blood, at least by position, and we feel impatience under the yoke of the conqueror. We cherish the old national feeling, and call all our brothers who labor to retrieve the losses of the defeated party, to restore in England dominion to the AngloSaxon, and in France to the Gaul. Now, as modern French literature is decidedly ruled by the old Gallic spirit, and in this respect purely national; and as it marks an effort of the mass, who have been held in bondage, to recover the rights originally wrested from them by invading tribes; and not only marks that effort, but strengthens it, and promises to render it successful; we approve it, we prize it, and bid its authors God speed. Viewed in this light, it is eminently moral and social, tends eminently to the emancipation of the masses, and to the introduction of a better and a nobler social order. But, viewed under the relation of art, and its bearing on mere private morals, we cannot commend it without important reservations. But in this respect even, we are far from thinking it at all inferior to the great mass of contemporary English literature, while it is decidedly superior to the old French literature. Its general conception is undoubtedly just, but it abuses its freedom from old classic restraints, and runs into innumerable extravagances. Having come down from the stilts on which it stalked over the stage, in the age of Louis Quatorze,20 and finding itself on its natural feet, it is so delighted that it frisks about sometimes in a manner quite unseemly, 19

[Ed. Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Gentle Boy (1837).] [Ed. A reference to Louis XIV (1638-1715), king of France.]

20

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and exhibits a variety of antic motions and tricks, with which we could very easily dispense. We do not infer the degeneracy of France from this literature, nor that French society is necessarily exceedingly corrupt. Nor do we believe this literature will be found generally corrupting. But we should relish it better, if it would veil its horrors, if it would smile less grotesquely, and exhibit less of the satyr. We believe that the writer, who puts us in good humor with ourselves and with the world, who draws us off from the dwarfed and the deformed, to dwell with the grand and beautiful, will do the most for private morals and for social progress. We believe he, who unveils the glories of paradise, and permits the sinner to see the beauty and bliss of the saints, will more effectually convert him to God, than he who only exposes to his view the tortures, and fills his ears with the howlings, of the damned. We are sure that when we stand looking upon a smiling landscape, beneath a serene sky, and inhaling the sweet fragrance of flowers, at peace with ourselves and with the world, we are in our happiest mood to labor for our fellow men, or to give ourselves up to live or to die for a great or noble cause. No doubt virtue leads to happiness; but it is a truth equally deserving our consideration that happiness leads to virtue. The more happy you render your fellow men, the more virtuous will you render them. The man, who finds a paradise in the bosom of his family, who is surrounded by all the charms of home, and whose heart is best formed to enjoy the sweets of domestic affections, the love of wife and children, is not the last to hear the voice of his country or of his race, and to rush to the frontier, to make a rampart of his body against the enemy. The fault, then, of French literature, a fault which we find also with English literature, is that it presents us too many images of vice, crime, and horror, and does not call forth the warmer, gentler, and holier aspirations of our nature. It affects us painfully; it raises a storm of passion in our bosoms, and leaves us mad and miserable. We have been affected by the nightmare, and it is long after reading it, before our blood circulates freely again, and we recover our wonted strength and equanimity. There may have been a period in our life when we should have delighted in the stormy passions described, but we are not ashamed to own, that, as we have had occasion from the vicissitudes of life to enlarge our own experience, and to suffer from the wounds that few in the warfare of life can escape, we grow weary of the battle, and come to envy those who cultivate in peace their native vales, and dance to the rustic pipe. We hear not the war-trumpet with delight, and we shrink from the conflict. Thus it is this stormy

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literature, which only rouses passion and stirs up all within, like the ocean when lashed into fury by the tempest, ceases to charm, and we wish it more peaceful, more serene, more sunshiny. So much for modern French literature in general. We come now to George Sand, otherwise Madame Dudevant, though we disclaim in the outset all intention of offering anything like a regular review of her writings. We have found her loudly and very generally censured, and have therefore, been led to sympathize with her. We have heard her called many hard names, and have therefore presumed, without other evidence, that she must have great and positive merits. Moreover, she is a writer of great ability; we may even say, of powerful genius; the most so of any female writer, we are acquainted with, ancient or modern. She is in many respects the first and best of the authors of modern French literature. We cannot indeed place her above Victor Hugo, but we confess that we prefer her writings to his, and believe them possessed of greater aesthetic and moral merits. In assuming, as we are told she sometimes does, the male attire, Madame Dudevant seems also to assume no little of true masculine thought and spirit. In originality, depth, and vigor of thought and expression her writings betray very little of the woman. Her style is rich, flowing, graceful, delicate, and at the same time, terse, vigorous, and free from that diffuseness, the besetting sin of most French writers, and of French female writers in particular. In a word, she writes so well that for some time she was able to impose upon the acutest critics of France and England, and to make it believed that George Sand was really, as his name and dress purported, a man. This, which we think is high praise, we presume will be thought by some, in these days of “Woman’s Rights,” to be but a sorry compliment.21 Somewhat of a revolution in the relative position of the sexes would seem to be going on. Man’s long-admitted superiority, which has stamped itself upon all the institutions of society, and is inwoven with the very texture of language itself, is now questioned, and we are told that he must cease to regard himself as lord of this lower world, surrender the sacred symbol of authority to woman, don the 21 [Ed. In Boston the “women rights” movement emerged to some extent with the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society and caused a split in that society in 1838. Some of the avant-garde men and women of Boston had read Sarah Grimké’s Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and Other Essays (1838) and had attended a number of her lectures against the slavery of women as well as African Americans. For a good historical analysis of these movements in Boston, see Debra Gold Hansen, Strained Sisterhood: Gender and Class in the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1993).]

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petticoat, and henceforth handle the distaff. Alas! we have fallen on evil days. With your Mary Wolstonecrafts, Fanny Wrights, Harriet Martineaus, your Chapmans and your Folsoms, we can no longer escape by conceding woman’s equality to man,22 but we must own her superiority; and instead of thinking that we praise a woman, by saying that she writes almost as well as a man, we must rather praise the man by saying that he writes almost as well as a woman. Nevertheless, at the risk of being “brained by my lady’s fan,”23 we must still hold on to the old doctrine of man’s superiority, save in what may be called woman’s more appropriate sphere of life. In her own sphere, as a wife, and a mother, in the quiet affections and duties of home, which after all is the more important and the more elevated sphere, we readily own woman’s equality, and even her superiority; but we question her power to compete successfully with man in any of the other departments of life. Science is indebted to her for no important discovery, and art for no master-piece or mistress-piece. She devotes more time and study to poetry than man does, and yet she has produced no Iliad, no Paradise Lost; in music she produces nothing, and cannot even equal man in the bare execution of the melodies composed by the great masters. She has succeeded in copying with tolerable accuracy, but has never been able to give us an original picture or an original statue of much merit. Indeed, she generally does not contend for her power to equal man. They, who assert her ability, as a general rule, to compete successfully with man in art and science, in the several departments of outdoor as well as indoor life, only expose themselves to her scorn. She does not wish to be, nor does she wish to be considered, superior to man. Her great want is, not to love, but to reverence; and she would soon cease to love man, if she could not look up to him, and reverence him. She is so 22 [Ed. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-97) was an early feminist writer whose Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) stimulated a new debate on sexual injustices. Frances (Fanny) Wright (1795-1852) was a social reformer, editor, and lecturer who attacked the institutions of marriage and education as blocks to true reform. Brownson had admired Wright in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Harriet Martineau (1802-76) was an English writer and positivist philosopher whose travel in the United States produced her Society in America (1837) in which she had some good things to report on Brownson. There were a number of Chapman women in Boston, among whom the most important was Maria Weston Chapman (1806-85), a social reformer who supported both abolitionism and the early women’s rights movement. Others were Ann G. Chapman, Mary Chapman, and Sarah Chapman. Abigail Folsom (c.1792-1867) was an activist in the New England abolitionist and woman’s rights movement.] 23 [Ed. William Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part 1, Act 2, Scene 3, line 20-21.]

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made—not so educated, but so made—that she finds the highest and sweetest gratification of her ambition in the success of her husband or her son. She rarely is ambitious for her own sake. Her desire is unto her husband, in whom she would live and reign, in whose existence she would completely merge her own. It is for him only, or as a mother for her children, that she would acquire wealth, fame, or distinction. It is the order of nature that it should be so, and it is in this way that woman becomes really a “help meet” for man, and the peace and loveliness of domestic life are secured. We think, therefore, our “Woman’s Rights” people would do well to let it remain undisturbed. We think also that there is more gallantry than wisdom in the growing fashion of altering the marriage covenant, so that the wife no longer promises to obey her husband.24 This last reminds us of another ultraism coming into vogue. There is already a class of radicals among us who think it a gross outrage upon natural rights that children should be required to obey their parents, and we have even heard it seriously contended that we should have a Rights of Children’s Society, to protect the pretty dears from the despotism of their fathers and mothers, fathers more especially;25 and to secure them the free and unimpeded enjoyment of the natural liberty of going and coming when and where they please. When this society shall have gone into operation, we propose the formation of another to save the needle from its slavery to the pole, and the body from its subjection to the law of gravitation. It is intolerable tyranny that of compelling the needle at all seasons, in all weathers, by day and by night, without the least time for rest or relaxation, to “point trembling to the pole,” and calls aloud upon all the friends of freedom for redress. Moreover, what slavery more gross or complete than that of our bodies, nay, of all nature to the law of gravitation? Now, we may as well complain of those laws to which the natural world is subjected, as of those by which God governs the moral world. This slavery of women and children to the tyrant man, which does so sorely vex the modern friends of freedom, perhaps, correctly rendered, would be merely the protection of the weak and helpless by the strong. The power, man claims over his wife and children, is only that which he needs in order to be the protector of those he loves. 24 [Ed. For the changing ideas of marriage see Glenda Riley, Divorce: An American Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), especially p. 56 for a description of the change in marriage covenants.] 25 [Ed. For background on children’s rights at this time see Joseph M. Hawes, The Children’s Rights Movement: A History of Advocacy and Protection (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1991), chapter 2.]

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Against this power, so far as concerns the wife, the writings of Madame Dudevant are a loud, indignant, and yet an eloquent and touching protest. Her writings to a very considerable extent seem to have been called forth by a deep sense of the real or imaginary sufferings of woman. Women are represented to us as the victims of a false and hollow-hearted civilization, of unjust and tyrannical laws, of barbarous husbands, doomed to be tied to men they cannot love, to suffer from the want of some object for their affections, in a word, to go through life sighing and pining for what they have not, and cannot have, and to die poor, miserable, brokenhearted things. Poor Madame Dudevant, we doubt not that thou hast suffered much, and that thou hast faithfully unfolded to us much of thy own painful experience, for which we are duly grateful. We can easily believe all the sentimental tortures, thou so eloquently and pathetically settest forth as endured by thy sex, are really endured by them. But after all, my dear Madame, a few hours each day of employment in the labors performed by thy cook or chamber-maid, with a simpler diet, would improve thy digestion, and save thee from the greater part of them. Ma chere amie, have you ever reflected how much the digestion has to do with these sentimental tortures? The lady, who should be compelled to live on six pence a day, and to earn it by bodily labor, would keep clear of them all. It is idleness, luxury, refinement, that produce them; and the best way to cure them would not be to sue out a divorce from thy husband, but to dismiss thy servants, and do thyself the labor of thy own house-keeping. Nay, do not frown, and turn away in disgust. Thou hast no conception how it will improve the temper and manners of this brute of a husband, to sit down to a dinner of thy own cooking. Penelope kept off the suitors, and herself faithful to her lord, by keeping herself constantly at the loom.26 Seriously, we think it is time that someone venture to contradict this nonsense becoming so fashionable, about the hard fate of woman, representing her as the slave of man’s passions, and the victim of his tyranny—a poor, frail, sensitive being, that finds earth to her nothing but a vale of tears, and domestic life, for which she is so well fitted, but a sort of hell in miniature. We do not believe a word of all this. Here and there a husband may be found, no doubt, who is disposed to tyrannize, and who does abuse his wife; but as a general rule, man has no such disposition. Wives, no doubt, suffer in many instances from the temper of their husbands, but husbands some26 [Ed. Penelope was the wife of Odysseus and mother of Telemachus in Homer’s The Odyssey. She is celebrated for her constancy.]

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times suffer from their wives; but they have the self-respect, for the most part, to suffer in silence. We see no reason for thinking that the lot of woman is one of peculiar hardship. The principal evil, to which she seems to us exposed, is idleness, brought about in consequence of the changes which have been effected in the forms of our industry. Moreover, we believe, that much of this which is said about woman’s exquisite sensibility is sheer nonsense. The great relief from the ills of life is employment, in a word, work. Man was made to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, and when he does not, he suffers. The changes which have been introduced into society, imposing less active duties than formerly on the women of the easy classes, have given to these women ample time and opportunity to experience the sentimental sufferings, which necessarily spring from comparative idleness and luxury. There is, no doubt, then, much real suffering in these classes. But we have yet to be convinced that woman is so organized as to be susceptible of acuter sufferings than man. For our part, we believe the reverse, if there be any difference, is the fact. Man is more angular, has more elbows to be struck, and a more irritable temperament. Women submit to pain more readily than men, not, we apprehend, because they have more power of endurance, but because they actually suffer less than men in similar circumstances. If we pass from physical to mental sufferings, we believe it is the same. Man can love as deeply, as truly, and as tenderly as woman, and he feels, we apprehend, not less acutely than woman the pang of unrequited or disappointed affection. He, however, bears up against it, because it is not manly to give way to it. We fancy the husband, who has been disappointed in his wife, who finds that between him and her there is nothing of that compatibility of temper, oneness of feeling, and ready sympathy, he had anticipated, suffers no less than the wife, on making the same discovery. And then for remedy, the wife has as many resources as the husband; for she may employ herself as well as he; and when she becomes a mother, she finds, in the pleasures of maternal affection, ample amends for the want of the conjugal. In the love of her children, she has even a resource which the husband has not, or at least only to a feeble extent. He, it may be said, can take an active part in politics, in the church, in the world, in chasing ambition or wealth, and thus find wherewithal to fill up the vacuum in his heart. So may the wife take an active part in housekeeping, in superintending her domestic arrangements, in educating her children, and solacing the afflicted. There is as ample room for her activity, as for his.

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Nor can we go along with our sentimental reformers in looking to divorce as a remedy for the evils they find in married life. Married life unquestionably is not that perfect paradise, which the brilliant fancies of the young couple, who for the first time tell to each other their mutual love, have painted it; and most wisely ordered is it, that it should not be. The life of man in this world is destined to be one of toil and struggle. Man is born to work. If marriage, then, realized that Claude Lorrain dream of youth,27 if it brought us, without interruption, that exquisite delight and perfect satisfaction, which the inexperienced expect from it, we should find it impossible to make the necessary efforts to sustain life, to perform our part in the world; and marriage would be only a sort of euthanasia. A little uneasiness, some little want, is necessary, to compel each to work; for love, when perfect, though very desirable and very pleasant, is after all a little too absorbing. We do not think it, then, an evil, that married life is not a life of perfect bliss. But even were it so, divorce would be the worst possible remedy, save in very rare cases. The truth is, we have more power to control and regulate our feelings than modern philosophy admits. Idleness and indulgence are the principal causes of our inability to control our sentiments. Constant employment and constant effort at selfmastery will work miracles for us. The parties who find themselves not so well matched as they expected to be, then, may get over the difficulty, if they will make the effort. They can conform one to the other and come to harmonize tolerably well. It is a bad doctrine in morals, this, that our feelings are altogether beyond our control. We can, if we will do our best, bring our feelings to go hand in hand with what we believe to be our duty. Then again, we protest against the lawfulness of divorce. Marriage by its own nature is absolutely indissoluble. When a couple enter into the marriage relation, they do it for life; they understand it, and they mean it for life. If they entered it with any reservation, with an understanding that it was to continue only for a period, only so long as it should be mutually agreeable to themselves, they would not look upon it as marriage; it would want, in their eyes, the character of sanctity, and would be not at all distinguishable from a mere transient commerce of passion and caprice. Divorce, then, can never be claimed by the parties themselves, as a matter of justice, can never be granted, merely on the ground of the mutual consent of the par27 [Ed. Claude Lorrain (1600-82) was a French landscape artist, who painted landscapes, some thought, more beautiful than nature itself.]

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ties concerned; and can be tolerated only in those rare cases, which justify the exercise of mercy on the part of the lawgiver; when the lawgiver may arrest the ordinary course of the law, through compassion to one of the parties, grossly wronged or offended by the other, or to prevent a greater moral and social evil. It can be properly granted only by the special act of the lawmaking power. Consequently, it will be wholly impossible to grant that freedom of divorce, contended for by reformers on this subject, without abandoning the marriage institution altogether. But even if divorce were lawful, and marriage were dissoluble at the will of one party, or of both parties, it would bring woman very little relief. The passions or the sentiments, which would crave a divorce, would rarely be able to find the satisfaction demanded. The cause of the suffering complained of is not, after all, so much the result of the incompatibility of the parties, as we sometimes suppose. It is inherent in one or both of the parties, and would be not less active, as a general rule, in any new relations one or the other might form. So far as it concerns certain property relations, we think our laws might, and should be modified in favor of woman. In a commonwealth like ours, where so much attention is paid to female cultivation, where there is a constantly increasing excess of females,28 and consequently where a large number must inevitably remain single through life, women’s facilities for acquiring, holding, transferring, or disposing of property, should approach as near as possible to those of the other sex. But beyond these, we see no special occasion to clamor for woman’s rights, or any more ground to complain of man’s wrongs to woman, than of woman’s wrongs to man. Man is by no means generally disposed to tyrannize over woman; and we do not believe that the instances, in which husbands love their wives, are so rare as is sometimes imagined. Man is more frequently woman’s slave, than she is his. The cords with which she binds him may be finer, and apparently weaker than those with which he binds her; but they are not the less effectual. Through his susceptibility, through those very qualities in him, which it is contended by some that she alone possesses, she is able to do with him very much as she pleases; and we have yet to learn that she never exercises her power, save with moderation. Man, to say the least, is as weak before her, as she is before him; and if she does not enjoy her rights as fully as he does his, the fault is no more his than hers. 28 [Ed. In 1830, 53 percent of the Boston population were women (51 percent of the entire state of Massachusetts were women), but by 1840 only 47 percent were women in Boston (state statistics remained the same). On this see Debra Gold Hansen, Strained Sisterhood, 49.]

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As for this political equality, which some are claiming for woman, we have less and less sympathy with it every day. We formerly contended for it,29 and have preached and written in its defense. But we do not think woman would gain anything by its admission, at least, so long as we retain our present political organization. The peculiar temperament and genius of woman does not fit her to excel as a legislator, or as a judge. The only branch of government, in which she would acquit herself tolerably would be the executive. She is a good administrator, and a keen judge of character, which would enable her to select faithful and competent agents. Nevertheless, were she to enter freely with us the political arena, she would soon compel us to forget her sex, and to treat her as a second or third rate man. We hope the time will never come when, in our intercourse with her, the difference of sex can be forgotten on either side. We have never yet known any good to come from attempts to obliterate the great landmarks of nature. We must therefore conclude with saying that upon the whole we have no sympathy with the clamor about woman’s rights; no belief in the alleged fact that she is universally the victim of that horrid brute, man; or that she has any peculiar wrongs to be redressed. Life, no doubt, has its evils; men and women both suffer, the married and the unmarried, the divorced, and the undivorced, and suffer often, and long, and deeply; but the remedy is not in pitting one sex against the other, but in laboring together with such mutual love and confidence as there may be, to remove those evils which are removable, and in aiding and encouraging each other to bear with firmness, and without a murmur, what must be borne. The cure for these vague, sentimental sorrows, these pangs of disappointed or unrequited affections, and the horror of being wedded, a frail, delicate thing, all life, all love, all sensibility, to a coarse, unsympathizing husband, will not be found in reading sentimental novels, nor in indignant, though eloquent protests against all institutions, domestic or social; but in a firm resolve to do one’s duty, in active employment in some useful calling, and in unremitted efforts to lighten the burdens, and solace the afflictions of our brethren. No small portion of our misery springs from our love of it, and fear of losing it. We hug it to our bosoms, we cherish it, lavish on it the fondest caresses, and cannot be persuaded to let it go. If at any moment it seems to be escaping us, we are 29 [Ed. In July 1834, during his Dedham Address, Brownson called for equal education for all, including women, asserting that a republican education for all would produce equality in the “moral, political, religious and philosophical world.” On this see EW, 2:350.]

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alarmed, and like the Countess in one of Dumas’ plays, not a little grieved to find ourselves on the point of being—happy!30 As society advances in wealth and artificial refinement, as the numbers of those who find themselves in easy circumstances increase, the more decided must be the tendency to these sentimental sufferings, and the more general this ill-at-ease of which we hear and experience so much. Naturally, then, will it find more and more expression in our literature. This is unquestionably an evil, and an evil which has been greatly exaggerated of late, by the large accessions which have been made to the number of female writers. Women are at this moment gaining almost a monopoly of our literature; they have suddenly stepped forth from the retired apartments of domestic life, to lay open before us their feelings, fancies, and caprices. The result is the inundation of the land with a flood of sentimentality. But after all, this evil is of short duration, and one which will cure itself. Woman wants what may be termed productive genius; but she excels as a critic. She has a finer, and in most matters a more correct taste than man. Her powers of execution are not equal to her judgment. Her own productions will never satisfy herself. Nor will she be satisfied with productions by the other sex possessing characteristics similar to those of her own. Woman is herself always more or less sentimental, and sentimentalism will always characterize her productions; but she detests mere sentimentalism in man. He, who would commend himself to woman, must indeed possess deep and genuine feeling, real tenderness and delicacy of sentiment, but he must not sigh and shed tears; he must not whimper; he must be robust, bold, vigorous, energetic, in one word, MANLY. Those dapper little gentlemen, who talk sentiment, or write verses in albums, and who are really fit only to stand behind the counter and sell tape by the half or quarter yard, are never the men, who can gain the approbation or the affections of a genuine woman. She demands always the genuine man. No matter if his arm is brawny, his frame somewhat huge, and his manners unrefined, if there be at bottom a true man with a bold spirit, a brave heart, and an heroic soul. Now these qualities, which woman demands in man she requires him always to express in his literature; and it will ere long be discovered that as soon as the novelty of being herself an author passes off, 30 [Ed. Alexandre Dumas (1824-1895), called Dumas père to be distinguished from his son Dumas fils, best known for such adventures as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo, began his career as a successful playwright. Unable to locate the reference.]

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she will tolerate no literature that is not strong and manly, giving expression to bold and energetic feelings, to brave thoughts, and high aspirings. The sickliness of her own productions she will not tolerate for a moment in those of the other sex. The growing literary influence of woman, which now swells the flood of sentimentality, will ultimately tend to make our literature more robust and healthy. And as men must study to be as unlike women as possible, in their characters, in order to please them, their natural desire to please them will make them, as authors, study to be strong, healthy, and unsentimental. In this way literature will recover its tone, and in turn contribute to the health of society. But we have rambled so far from our subject that it is now too late to return to it. George Sand, upon the whole, though a woman, is to us the most pleasing and the most inspiring of the modern authors of popular French literature. She has great purity of feeling, great depth and delicacy of sentiment, and rare beauty and strength of expression. If she exposes vice, or the defects of existing domestic or social arrangements, it is never in mere wantonness. You feel always that you are reading the utterances of an earnest spirit, always and everywhere aspiring to something better. You feel the unrest in which she is, and from which she tries to escape, and you honor her as a brave and struggling spirit, who would be better, do better, and make the world better, all men and women happier and lovelier, if she could. But you feel all the while that she is out of health, that the tone of her feelings is diseased; and you are unable to rise from the perusal of one of her works, cheered and invigorated for the combat of life. O sing us, my dear lady, a livelier strain; do not oppress us ever with that monotonous wail of the soul, seeking in vain to solve the problem of its own destiny. Enough of those melancholy notes. Sing us a song of gladness; if you cannot, sing us a bold war song, and send us forth ready to do valiant battle against the enemies of our peace and virtue. Spiridion, the work named at the head of this article, is properly a religious work, written with the same purpose that we had in writing Charles Elwood, or the Infidel Converted. It details the experience of an ingenuous mind, in its progress through the several stages of doubt, unbelief, to absolute infidelity, and from that depth of horror and desolation, up to something like faith in God and immortality. The conclusion to which she arrives, the solution she offers of the enigma of existence, is worthy of study, as marking the tendency of religious speculation among the popular writers in France, and more especially as showing the growing influence of the doctrines of l’Ecole

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de Saint-Simonienne. We intended to notice this solution at length; but we have left ourselves no room. We, however, recommend the book to all who are capable of appreciating fine writing, of sympathizing with free thought, and liberal feeling. We consider it a very remarkable book, a book not without a deep significance. It is worthy of a place in Mr. Ripley’s series of Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature.31 We have never read a book on religious subjects that contained so many passages which seemed to be perfect transcripts from our own experience.

31 [Ed. George Ripley (1802-80), former Unitarian pastor and Brownson’s closest friend among the Transcendentalists, believing that individual self-development could best be fostered in the common life, organized the Brook Farm communitarian experiment at Roxbury, Massachusetts, in 1841 and directed it until the end of 1847 when it ceased to exist. Spiridion never appeared in any of the fourteen volumes of George Ripley’s Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature.]

6. THE MEDIATORIAL LIFE OF JESUS1 Reverend and Dear Sir, My apology, if an apology be needed, for addressing you on the Mediatorial Life of Jesus, is in the position which you occupy among the friends of liberal inquiry, the influence your writings have had in forming my own religious opinions and character, and the generous friendship which you have long shown me personally, in good report and in evil. You, sir, have been my spiritual father. Your writings were the first to suggest to me those trains of thought, which have finally ended in raising me from the darkness of doubt to the warm sunlight of a living faith in God, in the Bible as God’s Word, and in Jesus Christ as the mediator between God and man, and as the real Savior of the world through his life, death and resurrection. I can never cease to be grateful for the important services you have rendered me, nor can I forget the respect and indulgence you have shown me notwithstanding all my short comings, and the steadiness with which you have cheered and sustained me, when the world grew dark around me, and hope was dying out of my soul. You know, sir, somewhat of the long and painful struggles I have had in working my way up from unbelief to the high table-land of the Christian’s faith and hopes; you have borne with me in my weakness, and have not been disposed to condemn me because I was not able, with a single bound, to place myself on that elevation. You have not been one to despise my lispings and stammerings; but while others have treated me rudely, denying me all love of truth, and all sense of goodness, you have continued to believe me at bottom honest and sincere. From my heart, sir, I thank you, I feel that you have been a true friend, and that I open my mind and heart to you without reserve. You will receive with respect whatever comes forth from an ingenuous heart, whether it find a response in your own severer judgment or not. You know that many years ago I was a confirmed unbeliever. I had lost, not my unbelief, but my hostility to religion, and had even to a certain extent recovered my early religious feelings, when a friend, 1 [Ed. Brownson’s subtitle was A Letter to Rev. William Ellery Channing, D.D. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1842).]

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now no more, read me one day your sermon Likeness to God, preached at the ordination of Frederic A. Farley, Providence R. I., 1828.2 My friend was an excellent reader, and he entered fully into the spirit of the sermon. I listened as one enchanted. A thrill of indescribable delight ran through my whole soul. I could have leaped for joy. I seemed suddenly to have found a father. To me this was much. I had never known an earthly father, and often had I wept when I had heard, in my boyhood, my playmates, one after another, say, “my father.” But now, lone and deserted as I had felt myself, I too had become a son, and could look up and say, “my father”—around and say, “my brothers.” The train of thought then suggested, pursued with fidelity, led me to believe myself a Christian, and to resume my profession as a Christian preacher. But when I first came into this community as a preacher, my Christianity was pretty much all comprised in two articles, the divinity of humanity, and the brotherhood of the race— which I had learned from your sermon. These two articles suffered me as a preacher to dwell only on the dignity and worth of human nature, and the importance of making this dignity and worth acknowledged in all men, however high, or however low. But this I thought enough. I was honest, I was sincere in avowing myself a Christian, all deficient as I now believe my faith was; and consequently, I could not admit the justice of the charge of infidelity which was brought on all sides against me. So far as sincerity of purpose and honesty of conviction were concerned, I knew myself a believer, and thought I had a right to be treated as a believer. You were one of the few to acknowledge that right. In looking back, sir, on the ten years which have passed, or nearly passed away, since I had the honor and the pleasure of first meeting you personally, I am now satisfied that I came among my Unitarian brethren with a faith quite too contracted for the wants of a real Christian, and with my bosom torn by two contrary tendencies. I had a strong tendency to religion, and to religious faith; but at the same time, unconsciously, another tendency, of quite an opposite character. This last tendency, really the weakest of the two, was almost the only one noted by the public, and hence, the almost universal accusation of infidelity of which I became the subject. This last tendency has shown itself in my efforts to find the grounds of reli2

[Ed. For “Likeness to God,” see the recent republication in William Ellery Channing: Selected Writings, ed. David Robinson (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 145-65.]

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gion in human nature, to discover in the pure reason the evidences of religious faith, and to resolve the Providences of God, as manifested in extraordinary men, prophets and messiahs, into the ordinary operations of nature. But, in my preaching and writings, I have given altogether more prominence to this tendency than it really had in my own mind, in the persuasion that by so doing, I could recommend the gospel to unbelievers. I am now satisfied that in this I not only exposed myself to undeserved reproach, but committed a great mistake as a matter of mere policy. The best way to convert unbelievers to the gospel, is to preach the gospel, the whole gospel, and nothing but the gospel. Preach God’s truth as he has revealed it, in simplicity, and with fidelity; it will not fail to do its work. Nevertheless, though injustice was done by me, by a misconstruction of my own motives, yet this tendency which had originally made me an unbeliever still subsisted to a considerable extent, and under its influence I sometimes uttered things irreconcilable with my present views of the gospel. The truth is, sir, that I have come but slowly and perhaps reluctantly into the Christian faith. I embraced at once the two articles I have named, but I have been slow to go far beyond. I have disputed the ground inch by inch, and have yielded only when I had no longer any ground on which to stand. The debate in my mind has been going on for the last ten years, which have been to me, taken as a whole, years of much severer internal conflict than they have been of external conflict, severe as this last, as you well know, has actually been. You must permit me to say that from the first, I have had some misgivings. In my happiest moments my thought has never been clear to myself, and I have felt that there was more in it than I had mastered. With more than tolerable powers of utterance, both as a speaker and as a writer, I have never been able to utter a thought that I was willing to accept when reflected back from another mind. Neither friend nor enemy has ever seemed to understand me; and I have never seen a criticism from a friendly or an unfriendly hand, with but one single exception, in which there was the remotest allusion to the thought I seemed to myself to have had in writing the piece criticized. Discovering that I was not understood, or rather misunderstood, I have from time to time changed my point of view and my phraseology, with the hope of being able to communicate my real thought. All in vain. I have only gained a sneer for my versatility and frequent changes of opinions. I have at times wondered at this; but I am satisfied that it was owing to the contrary tendencies at work in my mind, and to the fact that I had not fully mastered what I wished

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to say, and therefore had only lisped and stammered, instead of articulating clearly and distinctly. You must pardon me for saying so much of myself. I have wished to confess, explain, and then forget. The difficulties under which I labored, I think, through the blessing of God, I have finally been able to overcome. I think I see wherein my past faith was defective, and why I have heretofore been unable to speak so as to be understood. I think, moreover, that I am now able to solve several problems which have troubled other and greater minds than mine, to throw light on several questions connected with Jesus as mediator, and to point out the ground on which both Unitarians and Trinitarians may unite as brothers, with “one Lord, one faith, one baptism” [Eph 4:5]. I have sir, finally attained to a view of the plan of a world’s salvation through a mediator, which I think reconciles all conflicting theories, discloses new wisdom in that plan, and enables us to take, in its most obvious and literal sense, without any subtlety or refinement, what the Scriptures say of Jesus, and of salvation through his life. The gospel becomes to me now a reality, and the teachings of the New Testament throughout realities, having their corresponding facts in the positive world. The views to which I have attained appear to me to be new, grand, and of the greatest importance. If I am not deceived they enable us to demonstrate with as much certainty as we have for our own existence several great and leading doctrines of the church universal, which have heretofore been asserted as great and holy mysteries, but unproved and unexplained. I think I can show that no small portion of the Bible, which is generally taken figuratively, is susceptible of literal interpretation, and that certain views of the mediator, and his life, from which, our Unitarian friends have shrunk, are nevertheless true, and susceptible of a philosophical demonstration. I think sir, I am able to show that the doctrine that human nature became depraved through the sin of Adam, and that it is redeemed only through the obedience of Christ; that the doctrine which teaches us that the mediator is truly and indissolubly God-man, and saves the world by giving literally his life to the world, are the great “central truths” of Christianity, and philosophically demonstrable. This, if it can be done, you will admit is important, and must involve a theological revolution. My purpose in writing you this letter, is to call your attention to the method by which it can be done, and to ask your judgment on that method. If I am right, I know you will rejoice with me, for the result will prove to be that higher manifestation of religious truth which you and so many others have been looking for, and asserting, must come.

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Before I proceed to lay before you the important views themselves, I must be allowed to say a word as to the means by which I have attained to them; I do this that I may not arrogate to myself what does not belong to me. I have little other merit in attaining to these views than that of following out to their legitimate conclusions, certain philosophical principles, which I have been assisted by others to obtain. The great principle which underlies the whole, I became master of about one year ago. I saw, at once its immense reach in the region of metaphysics; but did not see at the time very clearly its importance in the social world, or the religious world. Leroux, in his work on Humanité discovered to me its social applications. In endeavoring to point out, in a sermon a few Sundays since, this social application, which seemed to me to give new significance to the Communion, I perceived suddenly the theological application, of the principle in question, and the flood of light it throws on long-controverted dogmas. This theological application, which I am about to point out, is all that I claim as original with myself, and all that I claim as novel in the views of which I speak. I really then have done nothing, and pretend to do nothing, but to make an original application of principles which have been discovered for me by others. I say this because I am sometimes accused of plagiarism, and sometimes lauded for being original. I have never yet claimed to be an original thinker; I have no ambition to be thought an original thinker. I might perhaps have deserved the credit of originality some twelve or fourteen years ago. I lived then far away from books and from the society of intelligent men; but men have gained great credit in this city since I have been here by doing little more than echo the doctrines which I then put forth, or which may be found at least in germ in what I, an untutored backwoodsman, then wrote and published. But since I came into this community, I have read what I could, and have sought to obtain a knowledge of just views, and to present just views to the public, without caring whether they originated with me, or with others. But in fact many views which I have put forth, and which it is presumed that I must have borrowed from others, have really been original with me. This is the case with certain doctrines on property which I hold in common with the SaintSimonians, also certain views as to the influence of property on politics and legislation, which are similar in some respects to those of Harrington, &c.3 But after all, the great inquiry of every man should 3

[Ed. James Harrington (1611-1677), an English republican political theorist, wrote The Commonwealth of Oceana (1656) which depicted a utopian republic based upon property.]

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be for the truth, and the truth he should be willing to accept, let it come from what source it may. Our own reputations for originality should never weigh one feather. The only truly original mind after all is the mind that can readily assimilate and reproduce from itself the truth that comes to it. In the doctrines I am about to present, I claim no originality. I merely claim originality for the process by which I demonstrate their philosophical truth. The doctrines have been taught ever since the time of Jesus; they have never, before this attempt of mine, so far as my knowledge extends, been demonstrated. What I have to offer on the main subject of this Letter, I shall take the liberty to arrange under three general heads. I. Whence comes the mediator? II. What is his work? III. What is the method by which he performs it?

These three inquiries will cover the whole ground that I wish at present to occupy, or that is necessary to enable me to bring out all the peculiar views I am anxious to set forth concerning Jesus as the mediator and savior of the world. I. WHENCE COMES THE MEDIATOR? I should not detain you a moment with this inquiry were it not that there is a tendency in some minds among us to rank Jesus in the category of ordinary men. I do not say that any among us question his vast superiority over all other men of whom history retains any record, but in this superiority they see nothing supernatural, no special interposition of Providence. Jesus was a man of greater natural endowments, and of more devout piety, truer and deeper philanthropy than other men. He has exerted a great and beneficial influence on the world, will perhaps continue to exert a beneficial influence for some time to come; but he is divine, it is said, in no sense in which all men are not divine, in no sense in which nature is not divine. He had a larger nature, and was truer to it, than other men, and this is all wherein he was distinguished from other men, or had any special divinity. Persons who entertain this view speak of him in very respectful, I may almost say, in very flattering terms. Their praise is high, warm, and no doubt sincere. But they do not seem to regard him as having been, in the strict sense of the term, a “providential man.” He is providential only in that vague and unsatisfactory sense in which all nature, all men, and all events are providential. They do not look

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upon him as having been, in the plain, ordinary sense of the terms, sent from God to be the redeemer and savior of the world. They give a very loose explanation of the text, “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die, that whosoever should believe on him might not perish, but have everlasting life” [John 3:16]. Jesus was the “Son of God” as all men are sons of God, and in no other sense, and “was given” as all men are given, and not otherwise. This is a conclusion, you are aware, to which some among us have come. The same tendency which leads thus far, leads even farther. It not only reduces Jesus to the category of ordinary men, but, as might be expected, it does the same by Moses and the prophets, by the apostles, and, indeed, by all who have generally been regarded as having been specially sent from God for the instruction and improvement of mankind. These men have not spoken to us from God, words given them by a higher power, and in the name above all names, but out of their own hearts, from their own deep but natural experience. Their utterances are, no doubt, worthy of our respect. We may be refreshed by reading them, as by all genuine utterances, in which men are true to their great natures. The Bible, of course, ceases to be a book divinely inspired, a book authoritative, fit to be appealed to as decisive on matters lying beyond human experience; though it remains a very good book, containing many striking passages, much genuine poetry, some fine myths, some touching narratives, even some philosophy, and worthy to stand on the scholar’s shelf with Homer, Shakespeare, Sir Thomas Brown, and Emanuel Swedenborg.4 This tendency might go farther still. The state of mind and heart which leads us to wish to exclude all special providence or interposition of the Deity from the person of Jesus, and the Bible and its authors, would, if followed to its legitimate result, lead us to exclude God from the moral world altogether. When excluded from the moral world, he of course will not be retained in the natural world, and then is God wholly excluded from the universe. We are then without God, and God, if he be at all, is only an Epicurean God, who reposes at an infinite distance from the universe, disturbing himself with its concerns not at all. It seems to me, sir, that this tendency, which neither you nor I have wholly escaped, is a tendency to resolve God into the laws of 4 [Ed. Thomas Brown (1778-1820) was a modified Scottish Common Sense philosopher who revived David Hume’s argument on causality, demonstrating that it did not necessarily lead to skepticism, as some Common Sense philosophers like Thomas Reid had held. Emmanuel Swedenborg (1608-1772) was a Swedish mystical thinker whose Divine Love and Wisdom (1763) and The True Christian Religion (1771) influenced some American Transcendentalists.]

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nature, the laws of the moral world, and those of the natural world. Now what is this but a tendency to sink God in nature, to lose him entirely, that is, to become atheists? I do not mean to say that you or I have been affected by this tendency to any very great extent, but you know that it has manifested itself in our midst. We have found it in our friends; we have met with it in our parochial visits; we have seen it in the doctrines put forth by men who profess to have outgrown the past; and indeed it has been the decided tendency of the literature and science of Christendom for the last century and a half. Men have deified nature, boasted the perfection and harmony of her laws, forgetful that there are such things as volcanoes, earthquakes, noxious damps and poisonous effluvia, blight and mildew. They shrink from admitting the doctrine of Providence. In reading ancient history they seek to resolve all that is marvelous or prodigious into natural laws, and some entire religious sects are so afraid of the interposition of God that they say men are rewarded and punished according to the “natural laws.” They see no longer the hand of God, but great nature. Out from the heart of nature rolled, The burdens of the Bible old; The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano’s tongue of flame, Up from the burning core below, The canticles of love and woe.5

But I need hardly say to you that this whole tendency is antireligious, and productive, in every heart that indulges it, of decided irreligion. The Scriptures everywhere represent the agents and ministries of our instruction and improvement as sent by a heavenly Father. Noah, Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Peter, James, John, and Paul, are always called of God, and sent. They come to us not of their own accord; they speak to us not in their own name, but as ambassadors for God. God gives to each a special mission, and sends him on an errand of love and mercy to his tribe, nation, or race. This is the only view compatible with religion. When we resolve God into the laws of nature, whether as called the laws of the moral world or of the natural world, we have nothing remaining but nature. Nature, when there is no God seen behind it, to control it, to do with it as he will, in fact that wills to overrule its seeming evil for real good, is a mere fate, an inexorable destiny, a dark, inscrutable, resistless necessity. It has no freedom, no justice. It 5

[Ed. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Problem,” The Dial 1 (July, 1840): 122.]

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sweeps on regardless of what it crushes or carries away before it; now with its lightnings striking down the old man in his sins, and now the infant in its innocence. Where is the ground for religious emotion—religious exercise? All is fixed, irrevocable. What shall we do? Or wherefore attempt to do anything? We may fear and tremble at the darkness before and behind us, but wherefore love, or be grateful? We may be anxious about the future, but wherefore pray? We may wish to be forgiven our sins, but who can forgive them? What is the ground of penitence and pardon? Prayer, many amongst us have felt, is quite useless, if not improper, saving as a sort of äesthetic exercise, saving its spiritual effect on the one who prays. Forgiveness of sins men have seemed, to a very great extent, to consider as altogether out of the question. They either seek on the one hand a scape-goat, a substitute, some one to suffer for their sins, in their place, or they say God leaves us to the natural consequences of our deeds. There is no God who of his own free grace pardons the sinner, and receives and embraces the returning prodigal. In fact, sir, not a few among us, though they admit, in words, that there is a God, do virtually deny his existence by failing to believe in his freedom. You have contended for human freedom and declared that man is annihilated just in proportion as his freedom is abridged. You may say as much of God. Freedom and sovereignty are one and the same. It has been felt that God has hedged himself in by natural laws, laws of his own establishing, so that he is no longer free to hear and answer prayer, or to comfort and forgive the penitent. God acts undoubtedly in accordance with invariable and eternal laws, but these laws are not the natural laws, not laws which he has enacted, but the laws of his own being; that is to say, he acts ever in conformity with himself, according to his own immutable will. The laws which he is not free to violate are not laws out of himself, but which he himself is. That is to say again, God is not free to be other than himself, and in this fact he is proved to be absolutely free. This tendency to resolve God into nature is unscriptural and fatal to religion. Either we must give up all pretensions to religion or follow an opposite tendency. Either we must give up all ground for piety, or suffer Providence to intervene in the affairs of the world and of the human race. We must also guard with great care against all disposition to revolt at this intervention. The true religious theory requires us to regard the authors of the Bible as supernaturally endowed, as sent specially by our Father on special missions, and the Bible therefore as a supernatural book, belonging to a different category from that of all other books.

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According to this view, we must regard Jesus, not as coming but as sent, not as raising himself up to be the mediator, but as having been raised up by the Father in heaven. He is from God, who commends his love to us by him. It is God’s grace, not human effort or human genius, that provides the mediator. It is impossible then to press Jesus into the category of ordinary men. He stands out alone, distinct, peculiar. This much I must be permitted to assume in regard to Jesus if I am to concern myself with Christianity at all. In answer then to the question, Whence comes the mediator? I reply, from God, “who so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to die, that whosoever should believe on him might not perish but have everlasting life” [John 3:16]. II. But, assuming that God sent the mediator, what did he send him to do? What was the work to be done for human redemption and sanctification? In other words, what is the condition in which the gospel assumes the human race to be without Christ, and from which God, through the mediation of Christ, is represented as saving it? A great question this, and one on which I feel that I cannot so fully sympathize with your views as I once did. You say, in the sermon to which I have already alluded that “In ourselves are the elements of the divinity. God, then, does not sustain a figurative resemblance to man. It is the resemblance of a parent to a child, the likeness of a kindred nature.”6 I am not sure that I catch your precise meaning in these sentences, but from these and from your writings generally, I infer that you hold man to be created with a nature akin to that of the divinity. In other words, man is created with a divine nature, and therefore the human and divine must be at bottom identical. This is the doctrine I have been accustomed to draw from your writings, and which is termed, amongst your admirers, the doctrine of the divinity of humanity. This doctrine, which you have set forth on so many occasions, with all the power of your rich and fervid eloquence, I must needs believe is the real parent of that deification and worship of the human soul, which has within a few years past manifested itself among our transcendentalists. Men more ardent but less discriminating than yourself, have seized upon this expression, “in ourselves are the elements of the divinity,” and have inferred that God is nothing but the 6

150.]

[Ed. Channing’s Likeness to God, in David Robinson, William Ellery Channing,

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possibility of man. In your mind, I presume the expression only means that it is in ourselves that we find the germs, not of God, but of the idea of God. Others, however, have interpreted you differently, and have gone so far as to say that God is merely the complement of humanity; and some whom we have been loath to call insane, have not illogically though absurdly proceeded to say of themselves, “I am God”; “I and my Father are one,”7 thus interpreting of the human soul, all that is said in the Bible of Jesus, of the Logos, and therefore by implication all that is said of the infinite God. You will not understand me to intimate that you have had any sympathy with this extravagant, not to say blasphemous conclusion, which not a few of our friends have drawn from what they have supposed to be your premises. I know well that while you have wished to defend the freedom of those who have drawn it, and to do justice to the moral purity of their characters, you have shrunk from the conclusion itself. Yet, you must allow me to say that I feel that you have in some measure warranted this deification and worship of the human soul. Assuming the divinity of human nature as the starting point, as you do, I see not well how a logical mind, not restrained by an abundant stock of good sense, can avoid coming to this conclusion. I must confess that I cannot see how one can avoid it save at the expense of his consistency. I certainly shall not deny that there is something divine in man; but I do deny that what is divine in man is original in his nature, save as all nature is divine, inasmuch as it is the work of God, and made at bottom—if one may so speak, and mean anything—out of divine substance. But you nor I have ever intended to favor pantheism. We do not therefore confound nature with God, any more than we do God with nature. I see not, then, how it is possible for man in any intelligible or legitimate sense of the word, to be naturally divine. The two terms seem to me to involve a direct contradiction. There is something divine in the life of man, I am willing to own; but this divinity which you find there, I think has been communicated to man, superinduced upon his nature, if I may so speak, by the grace of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The error which I seem to myself to find in your view of man is that you assume his natural 7 [Ed. Brownson is thinking here of Amos Bronson Alcott who declared in his “Orphic Sayings,” The Dial 1 (July, 1840): 87, “Men shall become Gods.” Emerson, too, could write, “I am God.” See Ralph L. Rusk, The Life of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1949), 261. Neither Alcott nor Emerson were theoretical pantheists, but their language at times moved in that direction, and Brownson was quick, sometimes too quick, to point it out.]

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likeness to God, that he contains, as essential elements of his nature, the elements of the divinity. I am unable to reconcile with this fact of possessing a divine nature, my own experience, or the recorded experience of the race. Man, if so lofty, so divine, having in himself the elements of God, and therefore of infinity, should not be so foolish, so weak, and so wicked as we know him to have been in all past ages, and as we find him to be even in ourselves. It does well enough now and then for declamation to talk of man’s likeness to God, but alas! few there are who have not been obliged, by painful experience, to exclaim with the Hebrew prophet, “it is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” [Jer 10:23]. Allow me to say that I think it is an error to assume that Christianity takes the divinity of humanity as its point of departure. Christianity seems to me to assume throughout as its point of departure, man’s sinfulness, depravity, alienation from God and heaven. It treats man everywhere as a sinner, as morally diseased, morally dead, and its work is always to restore him to moral life and health; not to a consciousness of the greatness and divinity of his soul, but to righteousness, to a spiritual communion and union with God. And after all, is not this view the true one? Is not man a sinner? Who is there of us, however exalted or however low our estate, cultivated or uncultivated our minds, however pure and blameless may be our lives that does not bear on his heart the damning stain of sin? Who has not exclaimed, nay, who does not perpetually exclaim, “I am a sinner; the good I should I do not, and the evil that I should not that I do. O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”8 The universal conscience of the race bears witness to the fact that all men sin, and come short of the glory of God. All religions are so many additional witnesses to this fact, for they are all so many methods dictated to man, or devised by him, for getting rid of sin, and placing himself at one with God. This much you, I know, will admit, however it may or may not be reconcilable with what you say of man’s divinity. But I think Christianity goes farther than this. It assumes not only that all men are actual sinners, but also that human nature itself has been corrupted, is depraved, so that men by nature are prone to do evil. This is the doctrine which I know you have opposed; but I think I can present it in a light in which you will not refuse to accept it; because I see how I can accept it, and find also a place for the doctrine which you yourself have so much at heart. 8

[Ed. A paraphrase of Rom 7:21, 24.]

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This doctrine of the depravity of human nature is, you will admit, a doctrine of universal tradition. With me tradition is always good evidence when its subject-matter is not intrinsically improbable. This is, I am aware, a broad principle, but I am able to demonstrate its soundness. The pure reason is always incompetent to decide on questions which go out of the department of mathematics. In what concerns the race, tradition is the criterion of certainty, only we must not forget that the individual MAN must be free to sit in judgment on the question, what is or is not tradition. The doctrine of human depravity is admitted on all hands to be a doctrine of universal tradition. If men were not universally conscious of its truth, of its conformity to what they know of themselves, how could they universally believe it? If it were false, it would be right in the face and eyes of what each one knows of himself, and we should naturally expect to find it universally rejected. Men cannot even by your rich and kindling eloquence, which is seldom surpassed, be made to believe, to any great extent, in your doctrine of the divinity of humanity. Even those of us the most anxious to embrace it, find ourselves unable to do so. We are too conscious of our own weakness and unworthiness. If the opposite doctrine were not more true to our experience, we should find equal difficulty in believing that. Moreover, the Scriptures seem to me to teach very clearly that the actual sins of mankind are not all the difficulties in the way of our salvation that are to be overcome. I will say nothing now of Genesis; I confine myself to the New Testament. Paul teaches, beyond all question, that all men died in Adam, that through Adam sin entered into the world, and by sin a corruption of human nature. It was through the disobedience of one man that many, the many, that is, all men, were made sinners.9 Thus John, when he points to Jesus, says, “Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world” [John 1:29]. He does not say sins, but sin, that is, the original depravity of human nature. Experience also, I think, indicates at least that there is in all men, even now, an under-current of depravity, by virtue of which men, if left to themselves, delight in sin rather than in holiness. Children are not always the sweet innocents we sometimes pretend. The little rogues not infrequently show animation, spirit, intelligence only when doing some mischief. Moreover, if human nature were not depraved, if it were what you represent it, and if there were no sin but actual sin, how could there be even actual sin? How comes it to pass that men, 9

[Ed. A reference to Rom 5:12.]

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pure by nature, and possessing in themselves the very elements of God, do no sooner begin to develop their pure and godlike nature than they sin? What is it that works in us, and manifests itself in our acts? Is it not human nature? Since then the workings of this nature are unquestionably sinful, must not the nature itself be depraved? I am willing to admit that the doctrine of human depravity has assumed a form which is somewhat objectionable. Not indeed because it has been said to be total, that is, extending to and over all the faculties of the human soul. For the human soul is not many, but one, and acts ever as a unity. It would be grossly absurd then to assume that one phasis of it could remain undepraved while another was depraved. Sin also blunts the intellect as well as corrupts the heart. They who have pleasure in unrighteousness are easily deluded. They are the pure in heart who see God. But the error has been in assuming perfection as the point of departure for man and nature, and therefore in considering the imperfection we now see in man and nature to be the result of a fall from a perfect state. A fall from such a state is inconceivable. But man being originally created imperfect, as he must have been, naturally, if not inevitably, sinned, and this sin necessarily corrupted human nature. I say necessarily. Grant me what you will not deny, that the first man, whether called Adam or not, sinned, and the doctrine of the inherent, hereditary depravity of human nature follows inevitably, necessarily. This may seem to be a strong statement, but I can justify it. The old doctrine on this subject is that God made a covenant with Adam, by virtue of which Adam became the federal head of humanity, so that all his posterity should be implicated in his transgression. I do not like the term covenant. Say that God so created man, and subjected him to such a law of life, that the first man could not sin without involving all his posterity in his sin, and you will say what I believe to be the strict truth. But how can this be? Shall the innocent be involved in the fate of the guilty? They are so in nature, and in this life, to some extent, in Providence. This world does not realize our conceptions of justice. Hence the promise and the hope of another. But this is not the point. Philosophy has succeeded in demonstrating what everybody has always believed without perceiving its full significance—that we are dependent beings, and are in no case and in no sense able to live by and in ourselves alone. Man can no more live by himself alone, than he can exist alone. Cut him off from all communion with nature, and could he live? Cut him off from all communication with other men, with his race, would he not die? Does not man die in solitude? In

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perfect solitude could he ever be said to live, that is to live a human life? Could any of his affections, moral, religious, social, or domestic, be ever developed? Certainly not. Here then is a fact of immense importance. Let us begin by distinguishing life from being.10 To be is not necessarily to live. Inorganic matter is, but we can hardly say that it lives. To live is to manifest. But no being except God the self-existent, and the self-living being, is able to manifest itself by itself alone. There is no act, no function that man can perform in a state of perfect isolation. He cannot think without thinking himself as the subject of the thought, and thinking something not himself as its object. He has the capacity to love, but he cannot manifest it, that is live it, without loving; and he cannot love without loving something, some object. This which I say of love I may say of all of man’s capacities, whether physical, intellectual, sentient, or sentimental. To deny this and to assume that man can in any case be his own object were to assume that man is capable of living in himself alone; which would imply that he, like the infinite God is self-existent and self-living. If to live is to manifest ourselves, and if we cannot manifest ourselves without communion with an object which we are not, it follows that our life is at once subjective and objective. A man’s life is not all in himself. It is in himself and in his object—the object by means of which he lives. This, if we say man is a dependent being, insufficient for himself, is what we necessarily affirm. Now man’s object, by communion with which he lives, is other men, God, and nature. With God and nature he communes only indirectly. His direct, immediate object is other men. His life, then, is in himself and in other men. All men are brought by this into the indissoluble unity of one and the same life. All become members of one and the same body, and members one of another. The object of each man is all other men. Thus do the race live in solido, if I may use a legal term, the objective portion of each man’s life being indissolubly in all other men, and, therefore, that of all men in each man. It follows necessarily from this oneness of the life of all men that no one member can be affected for good or evil, but the whole body, all humanity in space, time, and eternity must actually or virtually be affected with it. Assume now that the first man sinned, and it is a fair presumption that he did sin, to say the least. This man must have been the 10

[Ed. When writing The Convert (1857) Brownson noted that this distinction between being and life did not take seriously enough the idea of being as the foundation of all life. On this, see Works, 5:141.]

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object by virtue of communion with which his children were enabled to live. They could not live without an object, and he must be that object. Life is indissolubly subjective and objective. He must furnish the objective portion of their life. This portion of their life must partake of his moral character. He had polluted himself by sin. This pollution is necessarily transmitted by virtue of the fact that he is their object, to them, who corrupted in the objective portion of their life, must needs be corrupted in the subjective portion. Adam’s sin must necessarily have been transmitted to his children, not solely by natural generation, as some have contended, but by moral generation. Nor could it stop there. His children must have been the object of their children, and thus have transmitted it to them. These again must have transmitted it to a later generation; and thus, since the preceding generation furnishes always the objective portion of the life of the succeeding generation, it must necessarily be transmitted from generation to generation forever, or till the race should cease to exist; unless the current were arrested and rolled back by a foreign power. Bearing in mind this law of life, which philosophy has succeeded in demonstrating without once suspecting its application, and I think you will agree with me in accepting the doctrine in question, in believing that Paul meant what he said, when he said that all die in Adam, and that through the disobedience of one man all were made sinners, and that, therefore, death hath passed upon all men.11 I think, also, that you will agree that the church generally, with which we have both warred on this point, has been right in asserting original sin, and the innate, hereditary depravity of human nature. The church seems to me to have erred only in considering this depravity, hereditary by virtue of a covenant or imputation, on the one hand, or by natural generation on the other. It is hereditary by virtue of the fact stated, that the preceding generation always furnishes the objective portion of the life of the succeeding generation, and without the objective portion the subjective portion would be as if it were not. This principle of life which I have set forth is one of an immense reach. It shows at a glance the terrible nature of sin. In sin this principle is reversed, but is not destroyed. It operates for evil as, when in its normal condition, it does for good. By virtue of this principle, sin, whatever its degree, however great or however slight, by whomsoever committed, necessarily propagates itself, and must continue to propagate itself eternally, if not arrested by the sovereign grace of 11

[Ed. A reference to Rom 5:12.]

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God. Humanity has originally in itself no more inherent power to overcome it than a body once set in motion has to arrest itself. How little then do they know of the true philosophy of life, who treat sin as if it were a light affair! I am now prepared to answer the question, what is the work to be done? It is to redeem human nature from its inherent depravity, communicate to it a new and divine life, through which individuals may be saved from actual transgression, and raised to fellowship with the Father, by which they shall become really sons of God, and jointheirs of a heavenly inheritance. III. Having now determined the work there was for a mediator to perform, I pass in the third and last place to consider the method by which he performs it; and I think I shall succeed in demonstrating the truth of the four following positions which are held by the church generally. 1. Man naturally does not and cannot commune directly with God, and therefore can come into fellowship with him only through a mediator. 2. This mediator must be at once and indissolubly, in the plain literal sense of the terms, very God of very God, and very man of very man; and so being very God of very God, and very man of very man, he can literally and truly mediate between God and men. 3. Jesus saves man, redeems him from sin, and enables him to have fellowship, as John says, with the Father, by giving his life literally not only for him but to him. 4. Men have eternal life, that is, live a true normal life, only so far forth as they live the identical life of Jesus. “He that hath the Son hath life”; “he that hath not the Son hath not life” [1 John 5:12]; “except ye eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of Man ye have no life in you” [John 6:53]. These are strong positions and such as we Unitarians have not generally embraced in a very literal sense; but I think I can show them to be not only tenable, but positions that we may accept without giving up anything we now have, that we really value. They may require us to enlarge our faith, but not to alter or abandon it. Nay, they are virtually implied in what we are every day preaching. Jesus says, in answer to a question put to him by Thomas, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” [John 14:6]. These words have a profound significance, and a literal truth, which I confess I for one have been but slow to comprehend. I confess, sir, that I have honestly

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believed that we might have a very sufficient Christianity without including the historical person we call Jesus; not indeed that I have ever failed, in my own view of Christianity, to include him. But I have taught from the pulpit, and from the press, that Christianity did not necessarily and could not be made to stand or fall with the fact whether there ever was or was not such a person as Jesus. This I now see was a grave error. Christ, the literal person we call Christ, is Christianity. All begins and ends with him. To reject him historically is to reject Christianity. This is the truth which they have had who have accused some of us of advocating the “latest form of infidelity,”12 though under other aspects we who have been so accused, have been much farther from infidelity than our accusers. The fact is, sir, that the language, in which the catholic or universal church clothes the doctrines I have set forth in the propositions enumerated, has prevented a large number of us from seeing the realities concerned. Many of us have even believed that there were no realities there, that the doctrines of the church do not concern realities at all, but mere covenants, bargains, imputations, legal fictions, &c. Finding no reality under the symbols of the church, we have concluded them to be empty forms, with which it were useless for us to attempt to satisfy the wants of either our minds or our hearts. We consequently rejected them, and sought to find what we needed in the everlasting truth and nature of things. All well enough up to a certain point; but we sought it unfortunately in the abstract truth and nature of things, not in real life. Consequently Jesus became to us a law, an abstract principle according to which man was made. This has been the case with myself in nearly all that I have written. In my New Views, Jesus has for me a high representative value. But having once attained to the principle represented, to the everlasting truth signified, I felt that the representative became as unnecessary as the scaffolding after the temple is erected. This is the vice of Mr. Parker’s South Boston Sermon, and of my Review of it.13 On the other hand were our Unitarian friends of what has been called the old school. These with great truth hung on to the person and life of Jesus, and accused us who sought to resolve Jesus into an 12

[Ed. A reference to Andrews Norton’s pamphlet: A Discourse on the Latest Form of Infidelity (Cambridge, Mass.: John Owen, 1839).] 13 [Ed. “Transient and Permanent in Christianity” Boston Quarterly Review 4 (October 1841): 436-74, Brownson’s review of Theodore Parker’s A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity, preached at the Ordination of Mr. Charles C. Shackford, in the Hawes-Place Church in South Boston. May 19, 1841 (Boston: Printed for the Author, 1841), see also EW, 5, chapter 17.]

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abstract law of the moral world, of rejecting Christianity altogether. But they did not help our difficulties. True they retained a personal Jesus, but they did not seem to us to retain any great matter for him to do; and when they talked of the importance of his life they failed to show us that importance. With the best intentions in the world, we could not see how, except in words, they made out that Jesus was anything more than a very exemplary sort of a man, a very zealous and able reformer, whom we should do well to respect and to remember along with Plato, Alfred,14 Luther, and Swedenborg. We felt that there must be a deeper, a more permanent Christ than this, and we sought him, as I have intimated, in abstract philosophy. You, sir, I know have said much of the life of Christ, and have spoken of its intimate relation to Christianity; but I confess that I do not find its importance according to your views, save as an example and as well fitted to give force and efficacy to his instructions. You seem to me to make Jesus the way, and the truth, an example for man to imitate, and a teacher, through his life as well as through his words of the truth; although I find, in what you say of him, I admit, almost a presentiment of the fact that he is the life. Now, I apprehend that Christendom feels very deeply that Jesus was something more to humanity than a picture hung up on the cross for the world to gaze at, and something more, too, than a teacher of truth; for as a mere teacher, I apprehend he has slight claims to originality. I have been unable to find a single doctrine, a single precept, absolutely peculiar to the New Testament. It will hardly do to stop with Jesus as an eminent teacher and true model man. We have all felt, nay, we all feel that something more was necessary. As a model man, he serves us very little purpose, because we see him in but a very few of the relations of life, and because his perfections are above, altogether above the reach of us human beings. If none could be Christians but those who can be in all respects what he was, we should have no Christians. Taken as a mere teacher, the gospel histories become to us almost a farce. The little that is brought forth in this way hardly justifies the prodigies recorded. Allow me to say again that I think there is a significance in what Jesus says, when he says, “I am the way, the truth and the life,”[John 14:6] which those of us who have asserted the abstract Christ, and those of us who have reduced Jesus to the capacity of an exemplar and teacher of truth and righteousness, have not attained unto, a 14 [Ed. A reference perhaps to King Alfred (849-899) of Wessex, a Saxon kingdom in southwestern England. He promoted learning and literacy and prevented England from falling to the Danes.]

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significance which once attained unto will save the one class of us from our alleged coldness, and the other from our abstractions, and give to us all what we and the world need—LIFE. I begin by assuming that the finite cannot commune directly with the infinite. Like does not and cannot commune with unlike. Moreover, the finite when regarded as depraved, all will agree, cannot commune, hold fellowship with infinite holiness. Man then could not commune directly with God; both because finite and because sinful. Then he must remain ever alienated from God, or a medium of communion, that is, a mediator, must be provided. And this mediator must of course be provided by the infinite, and not by the finite. It would be absurd to say that man, unable to commune with God, can nevertheless provide a medium of communion with him. God must provide it. That is, he must condescend, come down to the finite, down to man, and by so doing, take man up to himself. The mediator, or medium of communion must needs be both human and divine. For if it do not touch man on the one hand, and God on the other, it cannot bring the two together, and make them one. Moreover, it must be really, literally, and indissolubly human and divine, God-man; not figuratively, symbolically, or mythically, for the gospel deals only with realities. Types and shadows disappeared with the Mosaic dispensation. Now, if you will recall what I have said of life, and the law of life, you will see at once how truly, and how literally Jesus was this mediator between God and men. To live is to manifest oneself, and no being, except the self-living being, God, can manifest itself save by communion with some object. Life, then, in all beings, but the Unbegotten, is at once subjective and objective. This is the principle of life, which philosophy has demonstrated beyond the possibility of cavil. Jesus, you admit, to say the least, was an extraordinary personage. I have already shown in this letter that he does not belong to the category of ordinary men. He is special, distinct, peculiar. Say now that God takes humanity, in the being we term Jesus, into immediate communion with himself, so that he is the direct object by means of which Jesus manifests himself. The result would be LIFE; that life, like all derivative life, at once subjective and objective, must necessarily be, in the strictest sense of the terms, human and divine, the life of God and the life of man, made indissolubly one. For God being the object, would be the objective portion, and man being the subject would be the subjective portion, which united is God-man. Here is the mediator at once God-man, and that in no figurative

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sense, in no over-strained, refined sense, but all simply and literally, as the most simple-minded must understand the terms. According to this view, it is the life that mediates; that is, the mediator is the living Jesus, not Jesus the latent, the unmanifested, and, therefore, to all practical purposes the same as no Jesus at all. The living Jesus, the life, is the Christ, and the Christ is then, what Paul and the church have always asserted, “God manifest in the flesh.” How true, now, is what Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” [John 14:6]! All those passages which speak of Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father, become now literally true. Christ is literally the Son of God, begotten of the Father by spiritual generation, and being born from the immediate communion of the human and divine, is in the strictest sense in which you can use the terms, very God of very God, and very man of very man; and as God, distinguishable, as the church has always contended, from God the Father only as the begotten must needs be distinguishable from the unbegotten. If I am right in this, Jesus lived not as we do, merely by virtue of communion with other men and nature, but by virtue of immediate and unrestrained communion with God. The Scriptures nowhere represent Jesus as living an independent, and underived life. He is begotten of the Father; he is the Son; and he says expressly that he lives by the Father. I need on this point make no quotations. He never professes to live without the Father, but professes to live always by the Father and in the Father. Now Jesus being at once God and man in his life, answers precisely the condition of a mediator between God and men. God and man are nothing to us save so far as they are living. They do not exist for us only so far forth as they live. Jesus is all to us in his life. The Jesus men saw and communed with was the life of Jesus, the living Jesus, that is to say, the Christ. Being human he was within the reach of human beings, and being at the same time indissolubly God, by communing with him they necessarily communed with God. Whoso touched him, laid his hand on God. “Have I been so long with thee, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me, hath seen the Father” [John 14:9]. It is the life that mediates. Jesus, I have said, so has said the church, saves the world by communicating to it his life, not as a life for them to look at, to contemplate as an example, and to seek to copy, to imitate, but for them literally to live, to be their life. This is now quite explicable. Jesus was placed in the world in the midst of men. Men communed with him while he was in the flesh. Then by

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the very principle of life already stated, he must have become the objective portion of their life. Then his life literally enters into and becomes an inseparable portion of the life of those human beings, say his disciples, who lived in and by communion with him. He was the object to his disciples; then, the objective portion of their life, by virtue of which their subjective life was developed. But the human race lives, as we have seen, in solido; all are members of one and the same body, and members one of another. There is a oneness of life which runs through them all, making them so strictly one that the whole must feel whatever affects any one. The slightest vibrations in the heart of the least significant member are felt through the mighty heart of the whole. Consequently, the very moment that this new life of Jesus was communicated to the disciples, it was communicated virtually to the race. The disciples became objects with which others communed, and by means of their communion with others, necessarily imparted this life to others, by virtue of that very principle of life by which they had received it, and by virtue of which, when reversed, we have seen the sin of Adam necessarily extended to all his posterity. By the fact that one generation overlaps another, and thus becomes its objective life, the generation in which Christ appeared must necessarily transmit it to its successor, and that successor to its successor, and thus generation carry it on to generation, so long as the succession of generations should last. This doctrine of the transmission of the life from generation to generation is denied by no sect, to my knowledge, except the Baptists, who seem to me to mistake more fundamentally the real character of Christianity than any other sect to which the Protestant Reformation has given birth. In all other churches it is borne witness to by the doctrine of infant baptism. Children are baptized because it is felt that there is a sense in which the children of elect or believing parents are born into the kingdom. Infant baptism, then, has an important meaning. It is the symbol of a vital doctrine of Christianity, which is, to my understanding, rejected by all those who admit only baptism of adults, on voluntary profession of faith. The same doctrine of the transmission of the life from man to man in time and space, by what I have termed spiritual generation, is borne witness to by what is termed apostolic succession. Without meaning to accept this last doctrine, in its episcopal sense, I must say that I see a great truth which it covers. This divine life was communicated to the world through the apostles, and mainly through those who succeeded them in the ministry. A virtue evidently, according to the principle of life, must have been communicated by the apostles to their successors.

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They who have not received this virtue cannot be true ministers of Jesus. For how can I communicate to others the divine life of Jesus, if I have not myself received that life? The doctrine of apostolic succession teaches us simply that the church has held that this divine life is communicable from man to man by spiritual generation. Hence with singular propriety has she called her clergy, spiritual fathers. Every true clergyman is the father of his flock, and verily begets in them a true life. The error of the church has been in supposing that this life could be communicated by laying on of the hands of the presbytery. Probably, however, at bottom, nothing more has ever been meant by this than that the communion between us who are to minister at the altar and the apostles, and through them with Jesus, must be real and unbroken. And if the view I have taken be true, this communion depends on no arbitrary ceremony; it is real, and the very principle of life itself prevents it from being interrupted in any case whatever. Perhaps also that, if we were really filled with this divine life, as we should be, we might impart somewhat of it, merely by the laying on of hands. We see, now, how Jesus can be literally the mediator between God and man, and how by the fact that he lived in communion with men, he must communicate his life to the world, to human nature, so that it must become henceforth the life of humanity, a new life, by virtue of which the human race comes under a new dispensation, and is able, so to speak, to commence a new series. Assume what we have assumed, that this life is at once human and divine, we can readily perceive that its introduction into the life of humanity would redeem humanity from the corruption which was by Adam, so that what Paul says must be literally true, “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” [1 Cor 15:22]. And this discloses the necessity of regarding the life of Jesus as supernatural, superhuman. The life of any man would pass into the life of all men as I have shown must have passed the life of Jesus; but unless that life was a life above that of humanity, it could not redeem humanity, and raise it to a higher life. The merit of the life of Jesus, and the reality of the redemption by him, must be then in exact proportion to his divinity. To deny his divinity would be the denial of all in Christianity worth affirming. Happily this divinity is easily demonstrated; at least, we can easily demonstrate the supernatural, the superhuman character of the life of Jesus. It is historically demonstrable that the life of Jesus was altogether superior to the age in which he lived. He must then have lived in communion with an object which that age, and therefore nature, could not furnish; that is to say, in communion with an object above the world, above nature, superhuman. Here then is his

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supernatural character established at once. Then the introduction of his life into humanity, was a redemption of humanity. He becomes then our Redeemer, the Father of a new age. Nor is this all. By virtue of the fact that the life of Jesus has passed into the life of humanity, humanity is able to commune with God. Through Jesus who is our life, we have access to the Father, may come into communion, as John says, into fellowship, with him. Then we may live in communion with God, and consequently be every moment deriving new life and strength from him. Thus the life of Jesus does not grow fainter and fainter as echoed by generation after generation, but stronger and stronger, as the path of the just grows brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. Hence his life becomes more powerful unto life than the sin of Adam was unto death, and so through Jesus we shall be more than conquerors. This is what Paul means when he says, “not as the offense so is the free gift; for if by one man’s offense death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace shall reign through one Jesus Christ.”15 “But where sin abounded grace did much more abound” [Rom 5:20]. Life is stronger than death, and must be ultimately victorious, especially since by virtue of the indwelling Christ, which is our life, we have access to the Father and can renew our life at the fountain of life itself day by day. I intended to adduce a large number of passages of Scripture in support of these views, but I have not room, nor is it necessary. These passages will readily occur to all who are familiar with the writings of John and Paul. They always speak of Christ and Christianity as the life. “That,” says John in his first Epistle, “that which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the word of life; (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you, that eternal life; which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us); that which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye may have fellowship with us, AND TRULY OUR FELLOWSHIP IS WITH THE FATHER AND WITH HIS SON JESUS CHRIST” [1 John 1:1-3]. This is quite to my purpose. But here is a passage more so still. Jesus says, “As the living Father hath sent me, and as I live by the Father, even so he that eateth me shall live by me” [John 6:57]. As the living Father has sent me. The Father hath life in himself, and needeth not others in order to be able to live. This self-living life hath sent me. As I live by the 15

[Ed. Brownson conflates Rom 5:15 and Rom 5:17.]

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Father. Here is the assertion of the fact that Jesus lives by communion with the Father, and therefore of the fact that his life is indissolubly God-man. Even so he that eateth me shall live by me. Eating is merely a figurative expression for partaking, receiving. It is not the literal flesh, for the flesh profiteth nothing, that we are to receive and assimilate, but the spirit, the very life of Jesus. To those who thus receive him, he is the object with whom they commune, and they live by him precisely as he lives by the Father; and as he by living by the Father lives the life of God immediately, so they by living by him do live the life of God mediately. This view gives new meaning to the doctrine of brotherhood. You have done much to make us all feel that whatever our condition in life, or position in society, we are all brothers, members of one and the same great family. But the doctrine I am bringing out goes even farther, and shows us that the relation subsisting between men is actually more intimate than that which we ordinarily express by the term brotherhood. All men are not only members of one family, but they are all members one of another. The life of each man is indissolubly in himself and in all other men. The injury done to the life of one man is an injury done to the life of all men: the least significant member, however incrusted with filth or polluted with sin, cannot suffer but the whole body must suffer with him. Regard for our own welfare and disinterested regard for others may combine then to ameliorate the moral, intellectual, and physical condition of mankind. Here is the doctrine that shall give power to the preacher, the philanthropist, the genuine reformer, whether moral or social. This intimate relation of all men in the unity of one and the same life, explains the Eucharist or Communion. That rite of the church is not merely commemorative of the Last Supper of Jesus with his disciples. All Christianity clusters around it, centers in it; for all Christianity is in this one word COMMUNION. Jesus was the living bread which came down from heaven to give life to the world. This life, the new life, eternal life, the life by living which we are redeemed from sin and united to God, could be communicated to the world, only by virtue of a communion between Jesus and his disciples, and to the rest of mankind in time and space only by communion with them. The great fact here affirmed is that the life of Jesus is communicated to the world, and spread from man to man according to the very principle of human life itself. It becomes human life, and men become one with Jesus, and one with God, just in proportion as it is lived. Then in order to enable all men to live this life, we must seek to facilitate the means of communion for all men

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in both time and space. This translated into practical life will be the organization of all our domestic and social institutions in obedience to the strictest order and most unrestrained freedom compatible with order. Nay, our domestic and social order, instead of being a check on freedom, should be so organized as to be the support of freedom, or of man’s uninterrupted communion with man, according to the normal wants of his nature and his life. We may now understand and accept what is said of the dignity of human nature. Taken as we find it today, in the bosom of Christian civilization, it unquestionably has a recuperative energy, even, if you will, a divine worth. My objection to what you have alleged of human nature, is that you affirm it of human nature originally and universally. You and the church in some respects agree. Both speak of human nature today, without intimating that the mission of Christ has in the least affected it. If human nature were always what you say, I cannot conceive what need there was of a Redeemer; if it be now what the church generally affirms, that is, inherently and totally depraved, I am equally unable to conceive what the Redeemer has done. If there be any truth in the doctrine of life as I have set it forth; if there be any truth in the alleged fact that the life of Jesus was a new life, a life above the human life of the age in which he came; then assuredly has the coming of Jesus redeemed human nature, and communicated to it higher and diviner elements. Human nature is not today what it was before the coming of Jesus. In speaking of human nature, meaning thereby the powers and capacities of man, we must have regard to chronology. It is false, what we say, that human nature is the same in all ages. The law of human life is the same in all ages; but that life is never the same for two successive generations, or else where were the idea of progress, without which the whole plan of Providence would be inexplicable? To assert that human nature is the same today that it was before the coming of Christ, is to “deny the Lord that bought us” [2 Pet 2:1]; because it either denies that Jesus has come at all, or that he has come to any effect. The coming of Jesus has communicated a new life to the race, which by means of communion of man with man shall extend to all individuals. This new life has not as yet, we all know, wholly overcome and effaced the death which was by Adam; but it is in the heart of humanity, an incorruptible seed, I had almost said, a seminal principle of divinity. The humanity of today has in its life, which is the indwelling Christ, the Christ that was to be with us unto the end of the world, a redeeming power, a recuperative energy, by virtue of which it is able to come into fellowship with the Father, and thus

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work out its own salvation. The possession of this principle, this energy, this life, literally, as I have endeavored to prove, the Christ, is that wherein human nature differs now from what it was before Jesus came. Then it had in its life no redeeming principle, now it has. This divinity is not it, but Christ formed within it, the hope of glory. Human nature in some sense then I own possesses today the divine worth you claim for it; not by virtue of its own inherent right, but by virtue of its union through the law of life to Christ, who is our head, and who is one with God. This union virtually complete, is actually incomplete. To complete it, and therefore to make all men one in Christ, and through him one with the Father, thus fulfilling his prayer, as recorded in the seventeenth chapter of John’s Gospel, is the work to be done, towards which Christian civilization is tending, and to which all true Christians direct all their efforts, individual and social. We may be even far from this glorious result as yet, and we may even be in ourselves weak and inefficient; but the life is in the world; Christ has entered into the life of humanity; the Word has become Flesh, and dwells among us; and as individuals and as a race we may do all things through Christ strengthening us. We can effect this, because God works in us both to will and to do. By communion with Jesus, we derive life, as I have said, from God himself; we are led by the Spirit of God, are sons of God; clothed upon with a life, majesty and power, before which the empire of darkness and sin must be as chaff before the wind. We are placed at one with God. All things then are for us. The winds are our messengers, and flames of fire our ministers. Even the spirits shall obey us. Who can set bounds to our power, since our strength is not ours, but God’s; since our life is hid in God, in whom we dwell, and who through his Son dwells in us. O, sir, I believe it will prove to be literally true, what Jesus said, “he that believeth on me, greater works than these shall he do” [John 14:12]. We know little of the power, of the moral force with which to overcome the world, true fellowship of man with man in the life and spirit of Jesus will give us. God is for us, who can be against us. Here, sir, is my hope. The world lieth in wickedness; man preys upon man; discordant sounds of wrongs, outrages and grief and death strike my ear on every hand; but I despair not; Christ is our life, because he lives we shall live also; Christ is our life, a true life, and I fear not but life will finally swallow up death in victory, and the new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness, become a glorious reality, an everlasting inheritance for the generations of men. Longer I would detain you; I would endeavor to show that by virtue of the law of life which binds in one indissoluble whole all the

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individuals of the race in space, time, and eternity, the mission of Jesus must therefore necessarily be retroactive, extending back to the first born man as well as forward to the latest born; thus giving a meaning to what is said of his preaching to the spirits in prison, to the inhabitants of the world before the flood, and also a meaning to the practice of baptizing for the dead, of which Paul speaks.16 But this would carry me too far for my present purpose. I can only say that this law of life appears to me to be a key to most of the mysteries connected with our faith. It throws a flood of light on many, very many points, which have hitherto been dark and perplexing. It gives to the whole gospel an air of reality; nay, makes it a living reality. We get rid of all types and shadows, symbols and myths, representative, symbolical or mythical interpretations. We are able now to take the gospel as it is, with docile minds, and in simplicity of heart, in its plain obvious sense, without any mystical refinement or philological subtlety. For myself, sir, I value the view I have presented because it removes all doubts with regard to the origin of the Bible. Here is a doctrine of life contained in the New Testament, which has been asserted, preached, believed, denied, controverted, for eighteen hundred years, unproved, unexplained, and pronounced by all the world to be inexplicable, and held to be a mystery by its most devout and enlightened believers. The latest discoveries of philosophy furnish us a key to this mystery, and instantly it is plain, simple, demonstrable. Now, am I to believe that man could have found out and written, what it has taken the race eighteen hundred years of close study to be able to begin to see the reasonableness of? Believe so who can; I cannot. In this simple fact alone, I see that in writing the New Testament there was employed a superhuman mind, and a mind which after eighteen hundred years of growth none of us can equal. For I see there depths which philosophy is yet in no condition to sound. But when every discovery in philosophy but tends to make more apparent and certain the truth of the Book, can I for a moment hesitate to believe that these depths, when sounded, will be found to contain the richest treasures of divine love and wisdom? The Bible is therefore removed at once out of the category of ordinary books, and I can clasp it to my heart as the Word of God, in which is recorded the truths I am to believe, and contained ample authority for asserting them. Though I have come slowly to this conclusion, do not believe that I have come so slowly as my writings would seem to indicate, as they who know me best can readily testify. I have seemed 16

[Ed. On this, see 1 Cor 15:29.]

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to the world to have altogether less faith in the Bible than I have really had, because, as you well know, I have for these last ten years been laboring to bring under religious influences, a class of minds to whom the Bible is an offense rather than an authority. All I say now is that the view I have presented, shows so much wisdom and beauty in the New Testament, so much and so profound truth, altogether beyond the age in which the book was written, that I feel more deeply than ever its supernatural character; and am more and more willing to yield to it as an authority. I can take it now all simply, and do not feel called upon to refine away any portion of it. I have now, I feel, a doctrine to preach. I can preach now, not merely make discursions on ethics and metaphysics. The gospel contains now to me not a cold abstract system of doctrine, a collection of moral apothegms, and striking examples of piety and virtue. It points me to life itself. Metaphysical studies have indeed brought me, through the blessing of God, to the understanding of the doctrine, but having come to it, it suffices for itself. I now need to know nothing but Jesus and him crucified. I can shut up all books but the Bible and the human heart, and go forth and preach Christ crucified, to the Jew a stumbling-block, and to the Greek foolishness no doubt, but to them that are called, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God. I have something besides abstract speculations and dry moral precepts, or mysterious jargon to offer. I have the doctrine of life, the Word of life to proclaim. I have an end to gain; it is to bring men into communion with each other, so that the Word of life may have free course among them, and be glorified in binding them together in that love wherewith God hath loved us. I feel, too, that I can now go and utter the very word this age demands. That word is COMMUNION. The age is waiting for it. It is sick of divisions, sick of mere forms, wearied and disgusted with mere cant; no better pleased with mere metaphysical speculations; impatient of dry disquisitions, and of cold, naked abstractions. It demands life and reality. Away with your formulas; away with your seeming and make-believe! Life and reality; give us life and reality! Life and reality we can give, for such the gospel now proves itself to be. The doctrine that man lives by communion with man, and through the life derived from Jesus with God, will bring us together on one platform, in the unity of life itself, and the church will become one in Christ, “from whom the whole body fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love” [Eph 4:16]; the church shall

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in very deed become one and universal, and be the living body of our Lord, and the race will speak with one tongue, have one faith, one Lord, one baptism. The great doctrine of life may now be preached, and whoso preaches that will bring the world to the life, and through the life save it from death and raise it to God. Nor is this all. With this doctrine of life, I feel that I may go forth in a higher name than my own. I was wrong some time since, as I was understood, in saying that man should not presume to speak to man authoritatively in the name of God, although I was right in my own thought.17 What I wished to protest against was, an artificial priesthood, the members of which by virtue of their membership, should deem themselves authorized to speak to us, nay, to command us in the name of God. My protest was against man-made priests, priests after the order of Aaron, whose authority is in their gown and band. These were the priests I said we must destroy, and for saying which my wise countrymen abused me from one end of the Union to the other. But priests in this sense, I say now, away with. They are dumb dogs that will not bark.18 They are foolish builders that daub with untempered mortar; blind leaders of the blind;19 spoilers not feeders of the flock. Yes, away with them, if such there be. Let us have priests after the order of Melchizedek;20 priests anointed with an unction from the Holy One, whose tongues are touched with a live coal from off God’s altar;21 whose authority is engraved by the great head of the church on their very hearts. These are the priests that we want, and the only ones we want—priests of God’s calling, not man’s. Nevertheless no man should attempt to preach unless he may speak in a higher name than his own. Man is a poor, frail worm of the dust, and what is his authority worth! Let me speak in my own name, who will hear, nay, who ought to hear! I feel, and so does every man feel, when he rises to preach, that is, if he have any humility, that he is insufficient and altogether unworthy. How can I speak? These are older, wiser, more learned, nay, it may be, better than I. Have I the presumption to stand up to instruct, to warn, admonish, rebuke, exhort? Nay, I cannot. I cannot preach; I can only reason, discuss, or 17 [Ed. In Charles Elwood (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1840), 155, Brownson asserted: “No man, no body of men can give me or any one else, authority to teach. Every true preacher of the Gospel goes forth on his own responsibility . . .” See also EW 5:125.] 18 [Ed. A reference to Isa 56:10.] 19 [Ed. A reference to Matt 15:14.] 20 [Ed. On the priesthood of Melchizedek see Gen 14:18; Ps 110:4; and Heb 5:6. 21 [Ed. A reference to Isa 6:6.]

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dispute; I must not speak from the height of the Christian pulpit, as one having authority, but from the level of the multitude I address. Every minister, worthy of the name, has felt this. For years I felt it, and never pretended to preach. I addressed the people who came to hear me. I discoursed to them as well as I could, but did not preach. I could not preach. I had no authority to preach; except the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, and that I felt was not sufficient. But now I feel that I have authority, because now I can say the “doctrine is not mine.” I have God’s truth to preach, and I go to preach it not in my own name, nor in the name of any man, nor any set of men, but on the authority of God’s Word. So far as I am true to the doctrine, so far as I am faithful to the life, I know God will speak through me, and give efficacy to the word. More I would say, but enough. I have addressed you with freedom, but I trust not with disrespect. I have spoken freely of myself, for I have wished to make certain explanations to the public concerning my faith. I have spoken earnestly, for the view which I have presented of the Mediatorial life of Jesus has deeply affected me. I have been verging toward it for years; some of my friends tell me they had obtained it some time ago from my public communications; but I myself have not seen it clearly until within a few weeks. Had I seen it earlier, the obscurities and seeming inconsistencies with which I have been charged, I think would never have occurred. I have found it a view which clears up for me my own past, and enables me to preserve the continuity between the past of humanity, its present, and its future. More than all this; it has touched my heart, and made me feel an interest in the gospel, in my fellow men, and in the upbuilding of God’s kingdom on the earth, deep as my interest has long been in these subjects, which I have never known before. What before was mere thought has now become love; what was abstraction has become life; what was merely speculation has become downright, living earnestness. God is to me my Father; Jesus my life; mankind my brethren. I see mankind practically divided, worrying and devouring each other, and my heart bleeds at the wrong they do each other; and I have no thought, no wish but to bring them back to unity and fraternity in Christ Jesus; so that we may all be one. My early profession I therefore resume, with a love for it I never felt before. I resume it because my heart is full, and would burst could it not overflow. I must preach the gospel. Necessity is laid upon me, and woe is me if I do not. Forgive the liberty I have taken, and believe me, as ever, Yours, with sincere respect, O. A. Brownson

7. LEROUX ON HUMANITY1 Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July, 1842): 257-322

Mr. Leroux, though but recently known in this country, has for some time held a very high rank among the literary and scientific men of France, and indeed of Europe. He first distinguished himself, we believe, by his contributions to the Revue Encyclopédique,2 which was in its day one of the ablest, if not the very ablest, of European periodicals. He is now one of the principal conductors of the Encyclopédie Nouvelle,3 a philosophical, scientifical, literary, and industrial dictionary, intended to render an exact account of the present state of human knowledge; a work which owes much of its value and distinctive character to his contributions; and which, judging from the names of those engaged in it, must be a work of no ordinary scientific and literary merit, and proper to be consulted as an authentic record of the doctrines and aspirations of “la jeune France.” We can claim no great familiarity with the writings of Mr. Leroux, having read but two or three of his productions; but from what we do know of him, we feel warranted in saying that he is one of the most remarkable men of our times. He possesses talents of a very high order, various and profound learning, rare philosophical insight, and rich poetic fervor. Few men can read him without being warmed and instructed. He is a true lover of his race, a firm friend of liberty and equality, and a bold champion of social and religious progress. He is a democrat in the highest, as well as the lowest, sense of the word. He is no mere speculative philosopher. He is sincere, deeply, almost terribly, in earnest; and sometimes he speaks to us in the thrilling tones of the prophet, and makes us tremble before the awfulness 1 [Ed. Brownson’s review of Pierre Leroux’s (1797-1871) De l’humanité de son principle, et de son avenir, ou se trouve exposee la vraie definition de la religion; et ou l’on se explique le sens, la suite, et l’enchainment du Mosaisme et du Christianisme, 2 vols. (Paris: Perotin, 1840).] 2 [Ed. In 1831, shortly after he left the Saint-Simonians, Leroux established the journal Revue encyclopédique.] 3 [Ed. Leroux, together with Jean Reynaud, founded the journal Encyclopédie nouvelle in 1836.]

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of the preacher. He evidently regards himself as a man of destiny, to whom God has given a work to do, and he aspires to be the founder of a school, if not even of a religion—the school, if not the religion, of HUMANITY. At bottom, however, Mr. Leroux belongs to, and continues the school of Saint-Simon, though in some instances modifying, and in others, rejecting its teachings. This in the minds of many of our countrymen will not tell to his advantage. Saint-Simonism is not in the best possible odor, and perhaps because it is so little understood. The Saint-Simonian School was a great school, and may be justly regarded as one of the profoundest and richest schools to which the race has given birth. Saint-Simon4 is worthy to be mentioned with Pythagoras and Plato, Saint Augustine, Descartes, and Leibnitz. He was one of those providential men, whom God raises up, at distant intervals in the world’s history, specially endows, and sends among us to disclose a loftier ideal, and to initiate us into a higher order of life. SaintSimon will be to the church of the future, very nearly what Saint Augustine has been to the church of the past. He has been in our day the truest interpreter of the thought of Jesus, the first since Jesus, to comprehend the SOCIAL character of the new covenant, which God has made with man, to reinstate, if we may so speak, humanity in its rights, and to give it in our systems of religion its due place and influence. Christianity may now become, what in the Augustine “City of God” it was but imperfectly, the RELIGION OF HUMANITY, and without losing for that its character of the RELIGION OF GOD. Of course, we have no sympathy with the follies and extravagances of the Saint-Simonians; nor with their mistake of confounding Christianity with the Catholic Church; nor with their substitution of immortality in humanity for immortality as individual men and women; nor with certain pantheistic tendencies which they have not escaped, but which are in fact no necessary elements of the school. There was an original vice somewhere when they passed from a school to a sect. During the life and influence of Bazard,5 one of the most 4 [Ed. The reference is to Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825), a French social philosopher and reformer who had an impact on the early nineteenth century developments of industrial socialism, sociology, political economics and the philosophy of history. After his death, some of his followers developed a religious sect (the Saint-Simonians) that fostered a new form of Christianity that was to unite the spiritual and material elements of the human condition. Before the middle of the century the sect ceased to exist.] 5 [Ed. St. Amand Bazard (1791-1832) was one of the “supreme fathers” who helped to establish and to lead a new religious community based on the principles of St. Simon.]

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distinguished men they were ever able to claim, a man of large intelligence and much practical sagacity, they advanced with great rapidity, and threatened to become the dominant party in France. Bazard was a salutary restraint upon the bolder, profounder, more religious, but impracticable Enfantin,6 and prevented the school from breaking entirely with the existing social organization. But after, in a fit of disgust, or discouragement, he had foolishly and impiously shot himself, all went wrong with the Saint-Simonians, and their meetings were soon suppressed by the strong arm of civil power. As an outward, visible society, the school or sect is, we believe, no longer extant. Pére Enfantin, at the last advices, was in the service of MehemetAli;7 and the twelve apostles that went even to the gates of the harem of the Grand Turk, in search of a woman worthy to become the Mére Suprême, have returned, reported their ill success, and vanished in thin air;8 yet the school is not dead, nor will it speedily die. The more we penetrate its spirit, the more are we struck with its inherent vitality. Its doctrines, in a modified form, freed from the extravagances and technicalities of the sect, are the only doctrines really making any progress in Europe, or even in this country. Its pantheistic tendencies must be abandoned, its dreams of an hierarchical organization of the race must be indefinitely postponed; but its fundamental principles, as modified by time and inquiry, will rule the future, and justify the confidence expressed by their early expositors. “Our doctrines, we doubt it not, will rule the future more completely than the beliefs of antiquity ruled their respective epochs, 6

[Ed. Barthélemy-Prosper Enfantin (1796-1864) was the second of the “supreme fathers” who led the Saint-Simonians after the death of St. Simon in 1825. In 1831, Bazard and Enfantin split the movement into two separate groups because Bazard wanted to emphasize the political while Enfantin wanted to stress the apolitical moral and social side of the movement.] 7 [Ed. In September of 1833, after being released from prison because he had established a secret society, Enfantin journeyed to Egypt where he discussed with the government of Mehemet Ali, i.e., Muhammand ‘ali Pasha (1769-1849), the prospects of building a railway from Cairo to Suez. He returned to France in 1836 and became involved in engineering projects for the French government, and apparently divorced himself from his former sect.] 8 [Ed. In 1832, one of Enfantin’s disciples, Barrault, formed a new sect, the “association des compagnons de la femme,” and traveled to Constantinople with his companions to find the female Messiah in the East. Following Enfantin, Barrault believed that finding a female Messiah was the way of resolving relations between the sexes and giving complete emancipation to women. Barrault’s trip came to naught and after his return from Constantinople the sect gradually dissolved. On this see, F. M. H. Markham, ed., Henri Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825): Selected Writings (Westport, Connecticut: Hyperion Press, 1979), xxxvii-xl.]

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more completely even than Catholicism ruled the middle ages. More powerful than its predecessors, it will extend its beneficent action over all quarters of the globe. Its appearance will no doubt excite a deep repugnance; its propagation will no doubt encounter numerous obstacles; but we are prepared to overcome the repugnance, and we are sure that sooner or later the obstacles will be removed; for triumph is certain when one marches with humanity, and it is in no one’s power to withdraw himself from the law of his improvement.”9 Saint-Simonism, regarded in its elements, its fundamental principles, is at present the true Wel[t]geist, the real spirit of the age. Men hit upon it without knowing it, and advocate its doctrines without knowing or suspecting their origin. In this fact, we may read the evidence of its soundness, of its adaptation to the wants of our epoch, and of its future destiny. Saint-Simonism is superior to all its rival schools in the fact that it has an ideal and therefore is not merely speculative. The Hegelian school is erudite and profound; and, though we are far from pretending to an intimate acquaintance with it, we know enough of it to know that it contains a large share of truth; but it is merely speculative; it proposes no ideal, does not prophesy, does not legislate for the future. The French Eclectic school, founded by Mr. Cousin, is an admirable school, a great school, rich in learning and original psychological researches, earnest, sincere, explaining with great truth and clearness the past and the present; but it is dumb before the future. To the questions, what has been? What is? It is prompt with an answer, and an answer which is by no means to be despised; but to the question, what ought to be? It has no answer. It has no ideal. It cannot tell what we must do in order to inherit eternal life. It is therefore sufficient only for those rare individuals, who are satisfied with themselves and with men and things as they are; who aspire to nothing better, holier, wiser, or more beautiful; who are contented merely to speculate as amateurs on the past and the present. But these individuals, however estimable they may be, and however admirable or desirable may be their cool, philosophical indifferency, which converts them, to use the language of a popular preacher, “into statues of tranquillity, with forefinger pointing to heaven,”10 towards which they move not, are far from constituting the bulk of mankind. Humanity is no mere amateur. It is terribly in earnest. It is with it always a matter of life and death. It cannot be satisfied with mere diletanteism. 9

[Ed. See The Doctrine of Saint-Simon: An Exposition. First Year, 1828-1829, trans. George G. Iggers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 2.] 10 [Ed. Unable to identify quotation.]

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It does not, cannot feel itself here merely to speculate on its appearance in time and space, and on what passes round about and within it. It feels itself here to act, to live; and it demands a practical philosophy, a RELIGION, able and prompt to answer the ever recurring and tormenting question, What shall I do to be saved? Humanity lives only on condition that it aspires, and it aspires only on condition that it has an ideal. Prophets and messiahs redeem and sanctify the race by giving it new and loftier ideals. The true ideal of humanity is no doubt intrinsically, eternally, and universally the same, though it enlarges ever in proportion as the race advances, and therefore seems to be always changing. In seeking, in laboring to realize this ideal, humanity finds its life. THIS IS ITS LIFE. The Jews lived only so far as they succeeded in realizing the ideal which Moses gave them. Jesus enlarged and generalized the ideal of Moses, translated it out of Judaism into humanity, and therefore of Jews and Gentiles made one; and this enlarged and generalized ideal the race, since his coming, have been laboring to realize. So far forth as we have realized it, we have lived a true life, and a life in some sense, nay, literally derived from Jesus, who in giving us this ideal, which, by his intimate relation with God, he had himself realized, and making us aspire to its realization, has become the father of the new age, the life of the world, the redeemer, and the sanctifier of humanity. The ideal of Jesus has never, in its fullness and beauty, been the ideal of the race. The church has embraced his ideal as interpreted by Saint Augustine, with which it was content, till the times of Martin Luther and John Calvin. Since then it has been seeking an ideal, rather than the realization of an ideal; and hence its apparent want of faith, and the critical and atheistical tendencies of modern society. None of the philosophers have given us any substitute for the Christian ideal, as interpreted by Saint Augustine. The devout have continued as before to seek the City of God, as conceived by him, not as conceived by Jesus and interpreted by Saint Paul and Saint John. Many of them have not even felt the necessity of an ideal; some, however, have sought it; Descartes, Bacon, Leibnitz, Price, Lessing, Herder, Condorcet, and a few others have caught glimpses of it;11 11

[Ed. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-81) was a German dramatist, critic, and philosopher. Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803) was a German philosopher and theologian whose The Spirit of Hebrew Poetry was widely read by American Transcendentalists. Richard Price (1723-91), also widely read by Unitarians and Transcendentalists, was a dissenting minister, moral philosopher and actuary; his A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals (1758) argued for the immutability of right and wrong.]

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but Saint-Simon has been the first, since Saint Paul, to give it an adequate formula. He, paraphrasing the answer of Jesus, has been able to reply to the question asked by young and eager humanity, “Good Master, what good thing shall I do to inherit eternal life” [Matt 19:16]? “Love thyself in thy neighbor, and do thy utmost so to organize society, as to effect in the speediest manner possible the moral, intellectual, and physical amelioration of the poorest and most numerous class of thy brethren.”12 Saint-Simonism does not, then, content itself with mere speculation on the past and the present. It surveys them indeed, for it is erudite and observing, grateful, no less than hopeful; but it does it in a deep, earnest, religious spirit, for the purpose of throwing light on the future, and of determining the end towards which individuals and nations should direct their labors. It aspires to be a religion; that is, to legislate, to impose the law, not merely by telling what has been, and what is, with which most schools content themselves, but by telling what OUGHT to be. The Saint-Simonian City of God, no doubt, differs from the Augustine; but we have not been able to perceive any discrepancy between its ideal and that of Jesus, as interpreted by Saint John and Saint Paul. We do not find that Saint-Simon considered his ideal repugnant to the Christian. In his secret thought he was a disciple of Jesus, as must be every full grown man brought up in the bosom of Christian civilization; and in calling his system Nouveau Christianisme, he did not mean to intimate that it was new in relation to the Christianity of Christ, but in relation to the Christianity enjoined and realized by the Augustine church. His followers have not always been careful to mark the distinction between the Christianity of Christ and the Christianity of the church, and hence the source of their most fatal errors; but the ideal of their master was implicitly at least in the teachings of Jesus, and explicitly in the philosophic commentaries by Saint Paul. The church, however, seeking the Augustine City of God, instead of the Pauline, has failed to perceive the important fact that though humanity is indeed actualized, lives only in individual men and women, it has nevertheless a being, development, and growth of its own, as a race; and individual men and women have no real existence but in their union with it. There is in the Augustine City of God no clear, distinct recognition of the unity of 12

[Ed. This quotation appears to be a paraphrase of Saint-Simon’s basic theme in the New Christianity. On this see Saint-Simon: Selected Writings, ed. and trans. F. H. H. Markham (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 87 and passim.]

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individuals in the race. There is no humanity, no unity of individuals in a one human life, running through them, and identical in them all. Individuals are not members of one and the same indissoluble body; or if so, it is in a sense which tends to absorb man in God, virtually annihilating him, as may be seen in the pantheistic tendency of the Augustine church, as interpreted by Luther and Calvin. These last, in what are now called the doctrines of Calvinism, though no more Calvinism than Lutheranism, have a perpetual tendency to lose the individual in God. Man is nothing before God, has no power, no agency, no virtue of his own. If, on the other hand, an effort is made to save man, the church runs into pure INDIVIDUALISM, asserting the reality of individual men and women, but denying the existence of humanity, without which individuals would be as if they were not; nay, would not be at all. But breaking the unity of the race, the church has isolated individuals from humanity, and conceived them, in the sense they are human, to exist as individuals, and individuals only. It recognizes then men and women, but no MAN, no Adam, as in the beginning, male and female. Now the salvation the church can seek, with this view, can be only the salvation of individuals, mere isolated individuals. Its efforts, therefore, are not to redeem humanity, and save individuals in the race, by leading them back to unity, and making them one in the bosom of humanity, as Christ was one with the Father, but to save these isolated individuals, which, as isolated individuals, have no existence at all; for individuals always have their being in the species, and through the species in God. In consequence of this error on the part of the Augustine church, the ideal of Christianity has necessarily been interpreted to be the improvement of mere individual men and women. It has not been felt that Christ enjoined the improvement of man as well as of men, and of men only in so far as they are man, and because they are man. Yet Saint-Simon is right and the Christian ideal is rightly affirmed to be the indefinite progress of humanity, and of individual men and women in the bosom of humanity. This is what Saint Paul asserts, when he asserts that “As in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive” [1 Cor 15:22]. Indeed, notwithstanding what we have just alleged, the church herself asserts the same, or would assert the same, if she but comprehended the profound significance of her own symbols. She has taught us that in Adam all men sinned, so that all men have become corrupt and guilty. But we could not sin in Adam as individuals, for as individuals we had no actual existence, and nothing can be more absurd than to make men responsible for acts in

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which they do not and cannot participate. We sinned, and still continue to sin in Adam; but not as individual men and women. We sinned and sin in him as the race, as humanity. The corruption is therefore rightly termed a corruption of humanity, of human nature; and we partake of it only in so far as, and because we partake of human nature. It was the race, not individuals, that died in Adam, or individuals only as existing potentially, virtually, but not actually, in the race. So it is the race that is redeemed by Christ the Lord, termed by Saint Paul himself, the second Adam,13 come to repair the damage done by the first. As the fall was that of the race, otherwise it could not have implicated us, but have been merely the fall of two individuals, for which they alone would have been responsible; so the redemption must be that of the race. Adam and Eve, eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, are humanity falling into sin, and dying a moral death; Christ is humanity, for so may the Hebraism, Son of Man, be interpreted, rising from this moral death, from this grave of sin, and reascending to unity in God. The true Christian redemption is, then, that of humanity, and of individuals only so far forth as they exist in humanity, and because it is in them only that humanity lives and is actualized. The church herself, then, virtually rejects the individualism she has countenanced. This individualism is repugnant not only to the deeper sense of the symbols of the church, but to the whole spirit of Christianity. The Christian ideal is not “Suave qui peut,”14 but “love thy neighbor as thyself.” It is not the regeneration and sanctification of individuals, as so many separate, independent forces, without mutual relation or solidarity, that it proposes, but the regeneration and sanctification of the species, of the race, by means of the new life which God, through his only begotten Son, Jesus, communicated to it. This new life was not actually communicated to all individuals, but it was communicated to the race, and through the race to all individuals virtually, because all exist virtually, in the race, and actually to all who commune with regenerate humanity. Translate this doctrine of the redemption of the race, and of individuals only so far as they commune with redeemed humanity, into a doctrine of social and political life, and it becomes precisely the doctrine of social progress, for which SaintSimon contends, and which he proposes as the true ideal of all who will live godly, inherit eternal life, or in other words, live a true life, conformable to the will of the Creator. 13

[Ed. A reference to 1 Cor 15:45.] [Ed. It should read “Sauve qui peut,” French for “save himself who can.”]

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We have no time to pause on this doctrine of Saint-Simon, or rather this Saint-Simonian exposition of the Christian ideal; but we cannot resist the temptation to translate and insert a fine passage from one of Saint-Simon’s works now lying before us, addressed to the young men of France some seventeen years ago; but worthy to fetch even today an echo from the heart of more than one young man of America. “YOUNG MEN, we are not ignorant of the anxiety which oppresses you. The events which have transpired in our country, and which have shaken society to its lowest foundations, have left deep wants in your souls, and caused you to dream of a justice and a beauty which you nowhere behold. Not in vain have you grown up amid the clashing of swords, and the beating of drums; that you live in the midst of soldiers who have become citizens, scarcely remembering that they have lately shaken the world; and that behind you is a glorious past, rich in men and deeds. No; such recollections cannot be fruitless. Through them you become rich in thoughts beyond your age, and capable of emotions and desires unknown to your fathers. Afflicted by the need of an actual literature, the books of the past century no longer speak to your hearts; you cease to comprehend them; and they who write them cease to comprehend you. Nothing can bring repose to your souls. The study of the physical sciences, cannot engross all your thoughts; the study of nature, moreover, makes you only the more anxious to obtain a morality, simple and positive like herself. History, which is now popularized for you, may indeed teach you to judge the past, but cannot content you with the present, or enable you to presage the future. Art assumes in your eyes a grave and touching character, and the greater part of those, who cultivate it, seem to you to be insensible to their high vocation. Of poetry you demand something else than verse; of music, something else than songs; of painting, something else than forms. In a word, you have from the present but one thought, an immense thought, around which clusters everything you value, a thought which has become your very life, THAT OF A UNIVERSAL HAPPINESS, AND AN ILLIMITABLE PROGRESS. “YOUNG MEN, we march not without compass, and will show an end. The principles of literature and morality, of which we are about to produce the application, will furnish your minds solid food, and your hearts a pure and elevated enjoyment; for they afford an ample scope for all the generous sentiments of your nature. We aim to inspire man with confidence in himself, without which he becomes torpid, and a prey to selfishness, which at bottom is nothing

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but a mutual distrust of our strength. Whilst a thousand voices around you will not cease to exclaim, ‘The world is in its dotage;’ we shall continue to reply, ‘Believe them not; the world is young.’ Far from keeping you in that gloomy state, to which the weak and disappointed would doom the present, and which belongs only to sickness and old age, we will make you walk with your heads erect, and with that smile of security and hope which so well becomes the strong and healthy. With us, in a word, you shall have much of the future, and you shall find your souls rise, your imaginations enlarge and extend with the destinies of man. “THE AGE OF GOLD, WHICH A BLIND TRADITION HAS HITHERTO PLACED IN THE PAST, IS IN THE FUTURE; and the future shall show itself henceforth to the nations, not as a breaker, but as a port. Hitherto men have always bequeathed their descendants the love and admiration of the past; tortured by a craving for happiness of which they see no possibility on earth, they fancy it behind them, or in heaven. A prey to positive physical sufferings, or to vague sentimental sorrows, they console themselves with illusions. They say, man is born to trouble, that the time when he could enjoy is fled forever, and that there is now happiness for him only when he shall be no more. They dream of a golden age, when all men lived as brothers, united by the sweetest social ties; when war was unknown; when reigned love, innocence, open-heartedness; when flowed streams of milk and honey, emblems of health and abundance. Thus does man ascribe to the weakness of infancy, what is peculiar to the strength of manhood, and fancy that he finds in the remotest past, what he dares not promise to the latest future. Strange illusion! As if good could precede evil, truth be demonstrated before error, and strength display itself prior to weakness! As if such an opinion were not hostile to morality, the organization of man, and the laws of nature! But what could the nations do, when everything tended to hold them fast in this error, bequeathed them by their fathers? When all that was intended to instruct them, or to charm them, repeated ever this same idea, and represented it under a thousand colors by all the resources of thought, and adorned it by all the graces of imagination? When the vices of their institutions, although successively ameliorated, made them deplore the present, and despair of the future? Moralists, instructors of the human race, have not comprehended their mission, have even been incapable of comprehending it. Instead of instructing, they have consoled. They have attained to only a single science, that of BEARING PAIN. They have looked upon evil as a necessity, and morality as a remedy; and they have

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joined their voices to the harp of the bards, to sing the happiness of the early ages, and to promise man a happier life far away from this fleeting world. Artists cast their eyes never but behind. They draw their inspirations from the past; they seek there whatever the palette or the chisel may reproduce with advantage. The gods, to whom they erect temples, were all communicated to man in the early days of the world; but irritated by his sins, they breathe now only wrath against him, and offer to virtue merely a chimerical asylum, which can be reached only by passing through the tomb. Poets chant the great wars of primitive times, and their imagination is charmed with scenes of destruction and carnage; or if they consecrate their muse to pleasure, it is to the celebration of the pleasures of opulence. They teach men to enjoy a life, which according to them is good only in being well rid of; they say nothing for the poor, nothing for the afflicted; they show not the end to which the labors of man should be directed; they sing only for idleness, which has need of enjoyments, and which pays for their verses as for a refined luxury. “Thus nations improve, without perceiving their improvement, and perpetuate the mischievous error that they depart from good in proportion as they advance into the future. Kings and rulers, who alone in the past have been rich enough to purchase the labors of thought and the productions of genius, have taken good care not to discourage this false notion; they have even done all in their power to sustain and diffuse it. They have felt that it must strengthen their power, by extinguishing in the bosoms of the people the hope of bettering their condition, and by making them believe themselves bowed down to earth, ground into the dust, not by their own fault, nor that of their masters, but by the weight of an irrevocable destiny. But in spite of its rulers, moralists, artists, poets, the social body had continued to acquire strength, and to develop itself by a slow but uninterrupted progress, when all at once it demonstrated to the false prophets, revealed, so to speak, to itself the great fact that the ages had not been lost for it, and that it had fairer days to hope than those of its childhood. Christianity, at length, through the French Revolution, succeeded in tearing away the curtain which had so confined our view; the veil has finally fallen; floods of light have broken in upon us; and the future dawns upon us full of magnificence and joy. “Yes, we proclaim, with full conviction that society since its birth has never taken a backward step. Its development may have been retarded; it may even yet be retarded; but no human power can prevent it altogether. The age of gold, we repeat, is in the future. Paradise on earth becomes visible; and they only, who shall have contrib-

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uted to its establishment, shall be entitled to admission into the paradise above. . . . “All is for us, time, men, and country. We have a land favored by nature, sufficient to satisfy the wants of life, as well as the senses and the heart; covered with fertile fields, beautiful sites, and an enlightened and industrious population, friends of order because friends of labor, and worthy to be free because capable of governing themselves. We have men of science, rich with the accumulations of experience, augmenting daily our conquests over nature; writers who have judgment, intelligence, and a felicity of expression, unequaled at any former period; poets who have more than imagination and talent, since they aspire to serve humanity, and since they demand an end and an occasion on which to act; marble with which to raise statues to the benefactors of mankind; granite with which to erect temples to the only objects which deserve them—science, religion, and art. Young men! Let us unite then. Poets, artists, theologians, literary men, men of industry, men of science, our career is marked out for us, since today we can occupy ourselves directly with the elevation of the mass. Let the past, to which we have paid ample obsequies, repose in peace. Let there be no more funeral orations over its tomb. Yet let us not disdain it, but honor it, since it has brought us to the present, and opened to us an easy route to a brilliant future. Let us all have but one wish, but one hope. Let us, according to the beautiful expression of the author of the book of Judges, march ‘as one man,’ [Judg 6:16] having inscribed on our banners, ‘PARADISE ON EARTH IS BEFORE US.’”15 The readers of this extract, written by Saint-Simon, or rather inspired by his genius, will perhaps pardon us for adding the following complimentary notices of him by one who knew him well. They will give some idea of what he was in his social relations. “All his labors had for their end the happiness of mankind; liberty, industry, philosophy, in their sublimest problems and aspirations, were the constant themes of his meditations. Volumes would be necessary to develop all the ideas which his clear, lively, and brilliant conversation could in a few hours render intelligible and palpable. He never spoke of himself. He appeared to have forgotten his birth, and to have remembered of the blood of Charlemagne only an elevation of mind, and a nobleness of soul, which were perhaps never equaled. He would have as completely forgotten his campaigns and his 15 Opinions littéraire, philosophiques, et industriélles (Paris: [Galerie de Bossange Pére], 1825), 12-22, Introduction, a work which contains the germs of much that we find and admire in the later writings of the Saint-Simonians. [Ed. Brownson’s translation is generally accurate, but not literal.]

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valor, had he not always felt a lively pleasure in having contributed to the success of liberty. Discarding all the distinctions which he held by the accident of birth, it was by himself that he shone; and it was the man within him that it was necessary to acknowledge. If only his writings were considered, one would infer that his life had been purely intellectual; but to consider only his actions, one would believe that he was a man of pure sensibility. If his genius was sublime, his heart was sublimer. All his thoughts passed through his heart. Never, I think, had a human creature cause to complain of him; and he had made many ingrates. He found also several grateful beings, and these were the charm of his life. “A celebrated woman has said that they who fear the superiority of genius are wrong; to comprehend all, to feel all, is to make one very indulgent. No one better than Saint-Simon proves the truth and justice of this remark. He could place himself with inconceivable simplicity within the reach and the tone of any one who enjoyed a conversation. Such was the flexibility of that superior mind, but good, but excellent, that while the wisest went away with the hope of returning to profit by his lessons, the ignorant were able to quit him with the belief that they had instructed him. His sole passion was the public good, which he sought with a self-denial of which we may find some resemblance only in ancient times. Thus he, who had never profited by the thoughts of others, scattered his own with a prodigality serviceable only to those around him. He loved to draw young men to him, the men of the future, to obtain for them the means of opening for themselves an honorable career by their labors or their writings. Little concern did he feel, who employed his ideas; the only thing which he could hold to be essential was their diffusion. The slightest sentiment of selfishness never sullied a character so beautiful. More occupied with the interests of others than with his own, which he neglected, he counted no fortune fine and honorable, but that which one acquires by his own industry; and although he regarded the acquisition of wealth a problem of easy solution, and had solved it for himself more than once, his indifference to wealth made him diffuse it more rapidly than he could amass it. ‘If generosity were not in the heart,’ he would say, ‘it would be a good calculation.’”16 And yet this noble-minded man, who knew so well how to sacrifice himself for others, was misconceived in his day, and, like a greater than he, had to be “made perfect, or consecrated, through suffering.”17 16

Journal de la Province [sic] de Liege Oct. 13,1830. [Ed. Most likely a reference to Heb. 2:10: “to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings.”] 17

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“This fortnight,” he writes, “I have subsisted on bread and water. I have labored without fire, and I have sold all even to my wearing apparel to defray the expenses of some few copies of my work. It is the passion for science and public happiness, it is the desire to find the means of terminating in a gentle manner the frightful crisis in which all European society is now struggling, that has reduced me to my present distress; so that it is without a blush, I avow my present destitution, and solicit the aids I need, in order to be able to go on with my work.”18 One does not read these lines, traced since our own manhood commenced, by a descendant of the Duc de Saint-Simon,19 and, through the counts of Vermandois, of Charlemagne, by a French nobleman, who had served with distinction in our own revolutionary struggle, fighting for liberty under Washington and Bouille20 on American soil, who had acquired a fortune more than once, which he had expended in his efforts [to] advance private and public happiness—one does not read these lines, we say, without thinking of many things, concerning which it is as well to keep silence. Mankind are redeemed only by crucified redeemers. Courage, Saint-Simon; whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son he receiveth as worthy to do his service.21 Courage all who suffer for truth and humanity; ye weep that we may rejoice, are bruised that we may be healed, die that we may live. Courage! The new tomb hewn from the rock, though closed up and guarded with armed soldiery, cannot confine you. Ye shall rise on the third day, fresh, and immortal, standing confess before heaven and earth to be the redeemers and saviors of your race. Not the least of the proofs of thy mission, Saint-Simon, we read in the distress to which thou wast reduced by thy efforts to redeem thy brethren. We join thy enthusiastic disciples in exclaiming, in view of the passage just quoted, “Children of Saint-Simon, generations to come, keep as a religious monument these lines bequeathed you by your father. When his WORD shall have renewed the face of the world, when the great principle, REWARDS ACCORDING TO WORKS, shall have been realized, and the lowest of mortals, by the previsions of society, find 18

[Ed. Claude Henri Saint-Simon’s Mémoire sur la science de l’homme (1813) in Oeuvres de Saint-Simon et d’Enfantin, 47 vols. (Paris: Dentu, 1865-78), vol. 40.] 19 [Ed. The reference is to Claude Henri de Rouvroy, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825).] 20 [Ed. François Claude Amour Marquis de Bouillié (1739-1800) was a French general and veteran of the American Revolutionary War.] 21 [Ed. A reference to Heb 12:6.]

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the certain means of subsistence, and a remuneration proportioned to his merits, Children of Saint-Simon! ye will delight then to repeat that, in order to fulfil this, his regenerating mission, your father was reduced to beggary.”22 Our readers must forgive us for this apparent digression; but we have a sort of affection for Saint-Simon and his school, which it would be in vain for us to attempt to disguise if we would, and which we would not if we could. Moreover, we have thought it not improper to say thus much of the school in which Mr. Leroux was formed, and to which, in all that concerns the elements of his system, he still belongs. He retains, since he came out of the school, or since its dispersion, nearly all it had worth retaining. He retains its ideal, is true to its spirit, and obedient to its inspirations; while he avoids its extravagances, and shows, in the development and defense of its leading principles, a freedom of spirit, a warmth of feeling, a depth and originality of thought, not altogether unworthy of a man who aspires to found a school. Yet our praise of Mr. Leroux, though high, is not unqualified, our confidence in him, though great, is not unreserved, and our sympathy with him, though extending far, is by no means complete. We can almost subscribe to the following criticism by Mr. Lerminier,23 and so far as concerns the book before us, we can without any qualification. “Considerations on the advantages of method have seldom disturbed Mr. Leroux, and with our knowledge of his mind, we are not surprised at this. Numerous notions on many subjects, but acquired in a manner a little confused, more fervor of spirit than strength of mind, more impetuosity in the chase after ideas than power to master them and to translate them, more boldness of imagination than soundness of judgment, all these, qualities of a distinguished intellect, but incomplete, explain the singularly immethodical character of this work on Humanity. Properly speaking, Mr. Leroux has not written a book, but a huge article originally intended for a dictionary. Thus you find it a medley of all tones. At one moment, you seem to be reading a shred of chronology from the school of Freret,24 22

Doctrine de Saint-Simon. Exposition Premiere Annee, 3d ed. (Paris, 1831), 73. [Ed. Brownson may be referring to Jean-Louis-Eugène Lerminier (180357), a French lawyer and professor of law, who collaborated with Pierre Leroux on the Globe and was like Leroux influenced to some extent by the Saint-Simonians prior to his removal from the sect.] 24 [Ed. Nicholas Fréret (1688-1749), an Enlightenment French historian, was imprisoned by King Louis XIV in 1714 because he had maintained (correctly) that the Franks were originally a confederacy of German tribes, and not descendants of a glorious past.] 23

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at another, frothy declamations which indicate a disciple of the school of Rousseau. You pass from the most abstract axiom to an apostrophe wholly unexpected, and you whirl about in a chaos from which you can extricate yourself not without labor. Seek not, then, in the Humanity of Leroux for a work of art. To read it will be laborious to those even, who do not shrink from an ordinary work on metaphysics.”25 This is hardly just. But the truth is, Mr. Leroux is no artist. His mind is a wild, weltering chaos, into which are thrown, in the greatest confusion imaginable, materials various and rich, difficult to be obtained, rare and of great price, in ample abundance for a new intellectual world; but they will not coalesce, combine, assume unity, and clothe themselves with form and beauty, till a more creative spirit than his passes over them. His views are various, profound, often original, ingenious, and striking, but incomplete. Nevertheless he gives us some admirable criticisms, throws light on several dark problems in philosophy and theology, suggests numerous trains of rich and captivating thought, and kindles up many pure and noble aspirations. We honor him for his heartiness, honesty, deep earnestness, and lofty aims. There is nothing little, insignificant, or diletanteish about him. He is a man; thinks, feels, and speaks as a man. I. With these remarks on the general character of Mr. Leroux, the school to which he virtually belongs, and its distinguished founder, we pass to the consideration of the work before us, which comes, as the author tells us, in the train of his Essai sur l’Egalité,26 which it continues. In that essay he had analyzed the present and explained his views of the past, detected the law of progress, found that the human race, having passed successively through all the phases of inequality, stands now on the borders of equality, and a happier future. But before this future, so far as that work was concerned, the author stopped short, daring neither to prophesy nor to dogmatize. The questions came up, What is this future to me? What relation between me and humanity? Between its destiny and mine? Shall I be on the earth when justice and equality reign among men? Shall I hope for the future, love it, and seek to usher it in? Or shall I repel it, and withdraw myself as much as possible from it? The work before us was written, professedly, to answer these and similar questions. 25

[Ed. “De L’Humanité,” Revue des Deux Mondes 14 (Dec. 1, 1840): 665.] [Ed. See “Égalité,” Encyclopédie Nouvelle, ed. P. Leroux and J. Reynaud, 8 vols. (Paris: Librairie de Charles Gosselin, 1836-1842), 4:609-70.] 26

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The work is preceded by an Introduction on Happiness, of considerable length, originally an article in the Encyclopédie Nouvelle.27 It makes a complete work in itself of great value. It would bear being translated and published separately. We should be glad to give an analysis of it, but must pass it over, for the slightest notice of its contents would carry us quite away from our present purpose. Mr. Leroux divides his work into six books, the sixth book occupying the whole of the second volume, and about one third of the first. The first book is taken up with definitions of man and their application. Psychologically, Mr. Leroux defines man, not the man of ancient theologies, but the abstract man of modern thinkers, to be “sensation-sentiment-cognition indivisibly united.” He does not demonstrate, nor attempt to demonstrate the truth of this definition. He collects it historically, taking one element from Descartes, another from Gassendi28 and Locke, another from Leibnitz. This is not a very scientific method, and is the more remarkable in Mr. Leroux, since he condemns it without mercy in his work against Eclecticism,29 in which he unjustly charges this method upon Mr. Cousin. But this is a small matter. Mr. Leroux assumes it as embracing in itself all the psychological knowledge that we possess on what may be called the abstract, or isolated mind of man. Critically considered, we have somewhat to object to this definition. Cognition abstracted, sensation and sentiment are virtually the same. They have a common basis, and depend on one and the same faculty of human nature, to wit, the SENSIBILITY, or power to feel. The two terms are then reducible at bottom to one; and instead of “sensation-sentiment-cognition,” we should define man to be feeling-cognition. But this loses the trinity of ancient and modern psychology, and moreover is not broad enough to cover the whole man. Man acts, as well as feels and knows. We ought then to define him to be “action-sentiment-cognition indivisibly united.” Furthermore, we see no good reason why Mr. Leroux should define man phenomenally, rather than ontologically, since he, as well as we, admits man’s ontological existence. Undoubtedly man recognizes his existence, the fact that he exists, only in the phenomenon; but he does recognize 27

[Ed. “Bonheur,” Encyclopédie Nouvelle, 1:789-806.] [Ed. Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) was a French philosopher who advocated a via media between Cartesianism and the skepticism of Montaigne and Charron with respect to scientific knowledge of the empirically observable material world.] 29 [Ed. Brownson refers to Leroux’s Réfutation de l’eclectisme (1839), a work Brownson had read shortly after it was published. It was a vigorous, if unjustified, attack on Cousin’s Eclecticism.] 28

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his existence, and never as phenomenon. The ontological is always revealed in the phenomenal, and our knowledge of being, as the subject of the phenomenon, is as direct and as positive, as our knowledge of the phenomenon itself. This follows from what Mr. Leroux himself assumes in his Réfutation de l’Eclecticisme. Man never confounds himself with his phenomena. He is never a pain, a joy, or a grief, is never sensation, sentiment, or cognition; but the subject who joys or grieves, is pained or pleased, feels, acts, or knows. He should be defined ontologically, then, from his powers, not from the effect of their exercise. Instead then of being defined “action-sentiment-cognition indivisibly united,” he should be defined “activity-sensibilityintelligence indivisibly united”; that is, man is a being who acts, knows, and feels, and all these at once in each and all of his phenomena. Thus corrected, it is the definition adopted by the Saint-Simonians, by Cousin, and, as Leroux contends, virtually by all modern thinkers. The main point in this definition to be observed in its applications to morals and politics is that according to it man is a unity in triplicity, a trinity. He is not sensation and sentiment and cognition, any more than a neutral salt is an acid and an alkali; but he is a simple unity, inherently and essentially activity-intelligence-sensibility, and therefore each one of his phenomena is indissolubly action-feelingcognition. The distinction of faculties implies no division of essence; the triplicity of elements does not break the unity of man’s being. We cannot then, as do our psychologues, separate the mental phenomena into actions or volitions, sensations or sentiments, and cognitions or ideas, because in actual life there is no separation at all, but each phenomenon is the product of the three elements in their indissoluble unity. This fact marks the true distinction between a synthetic philosophy and an eclectic philosophy, though it does not mark the distinction, as Mr. Leroux fancies, between himself and Mr. Cousin; for, save in name, Mr. Cousin is as synthetic as Mr. Leroux, and even more so; and he insists every whit as earnestly on the primitive and essential synthesis of our faculties in each of our phenomena. Man, according to Mr. Cousin, is a trinity fundamentally and indissolubly, and the fact of consciousness is always action-cognition-sentiment indivisibly united. Mr. Cousin’s error consists principally in the infelicitous choice of a name, which misleads the greater part of the public, and sometimes even himself. His philosophy ought not to be called eclecticism, for by eclectic he really understands synthetic. Had Mr. Leroux been aware of this fact, he might have spared himself and philosophy several portions of his very able Réfutation de l’Eclecticisme.

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This definition of man, Mr. Leroux thinks, was not unknown to the ancients; but the failure of philosophers in all ages has been caused by their exaggerating one of its three terms, sensation, sentiment, or cognition. Plato exaggerates the last; Machiavel and Hobbes the first;30 Rousseau the second. Plato, by exaggerating the cognitive element (connaissance), subordinates to it the other two, which, when transferred to political and social life, will be the subjection of the men of industry (sensation), and the artists or warriors (sentiment), to priests and men of science (connaissance), as we see in his Republic. Machiavel and Hobbes, exaggerating sensation, see in men only a troop of animals, which must be reduced for their own advantage to submission, by the strong arm of power, or by artifice and cunning. Rousseau, in fine, exaggerating sentiment, the ME, the individual will, arrives at a mere individualism, or mere aggregation of equal and mutually repellent individual forces, which can be bound together in society, harmonized only by means of a social compact, according to which each individual surrenders his own freedom to the community, to become free only as an integral part of the city or state, and consents to clothe the majority with sovereign power to do as it pleases, even to employ force to execute its decisions. In either of these cases we have despotism. According to Plato, we should have the despotism of a theocracy; Machiavel and Hobbes would give us the despotism of the law incarnated in the king; Rousseau the despotism of the majority, the worst of the three. Philosophers break the unity of the human being; divide man into separate faculties, nay, into separate beings as it were; then seize specially upon one or another of the fragments into which they have broken him, and with that alone seek to reconstruct man and society. But the man and society, thus reconstructed, are at best fragmentary, incomplete, and must needs be ever at loggerheads with man and society, as God and nature intended them. Our consolation in this case is that God and nature are stronger than the philosophers, and humanity, preserving in actual life her own unity in triplicity, makes her way through the ages, leaving behind the philosophers and their systems. 30

[Ed. Nicholas Machiavelli (1469-1527) was an Italian statesman and political theorist whose principal work, The Prince (1513), denied the relevance of morality in political affairs, and thus Machiavellian has become a term equated with political opportunism. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was a British philosopher who held that sovereignty, although derived from the people and not of divine right, is transferred from the people to the king by implicit contract and that power is absolute. His greatest work, Leviathan (1651), supported political absolutism.]

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From a psychological definition of man Mr. Leroux proceeds to give us, what he terms a philosophical definition; that is, a definition of man not as an abstraction, but as a real being, living and developing himself in the bosom of the race; that is, again, man defined not from the individual, but the species. The ancients defined man to be a “social and political animal.” This definition included all they knew of man. “Have we moderns nothing to add to it? We add to this, MAN IS PROGRESSIVE, SOCIETY IS PROGRESSIVE, THE HUMAN RACE ITSELF IS PROGRESSIVE.”31 “Man is not merely a social and political animal, as say the ancients, but he is also a progressive animal. He lives in society, and in society only. This society may be improved, and he improved in this improved society. This is the grand modern discovery, the supreme truth of philosophy. As in the definition, ‘Man is sensation-sentiment-cognition indivisibly united,’ we possess the whole substance of that part of philosophy which treats of the abstract mind of man, so in the definition, man is progressive, we possess the whole substance of general philosophy, taking for its subject the human mind in a concrete and living state.”32 Mr. Leroux assumes this last definition, as his point of departure, and takes, as an axiom assented to, this thought of Leibnitz, videtur homo ad perfectionem venire posse.33 He does not attempt to prove that man is progressive, but merely that his capacity for progress is an admitted fact, an integral part of the present intellectual life of the race, no more in need of proof than the fact of life itself. In order to prove this, he quotes a large number of distinguished modern thinkers; among whom we may mention Saint-Simon, Pascal, Perrault, Fontenelle, Bacon, Descartes, Leibnitz, Lessing, Turgot, and Condorcet.34 Saint-Simon, we have seen, when speaking of his school, asserts that “the age of gold, which a blind superstition has hitherto placed in the past, is in the future”; that “a paradise on earth is before us,” not behind us. He fully sustains Mr. Leroux, for Mr. Leroux is one of his disciples; but we are not sure that the others quoted sustain his 31

[Ed. De l’humanité, 138.] [Ed. Ibid., 142.] 33 [Ed. Latin for “man, it seems, can come to perfection.”] 34 [Ed. Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher and theologian, who authored a famous argument, called Pascal’s wager, for the existence of God. Charles Perrault (1628-1703) was a French poet and storyteller of fairy tales for children, among which was Tales of Mother Goose (1697). Bernard Le Bovier, Sieur de Fontenelle (1657-1757) was a French scientist and man of letters who authored A Plurality of Worlds (1688) which helped to secure the acceptance of the Copernican system in France and elsewhere.] 32

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doctrine, save indistinctly, vaguely, and at best merely by implication. This doctrine, as Mr. Leroux after Saint-Simon maintains it, is that humanity is a collective being, living in the bosom of universal life, a life properly its own, and developing itself by a law of growth, strictly analogous to that of the individual; that the race, taken as the ideal (in the Platonic sense) or virtuality of man, that is, as human nature, which may be termed the potentiality of the individual, has a growth by way of accretion, or assimilation, which is as truly a growth, as that we witness in the individual in passing from infancy to manhood; not that humanity, as an aggregation of individuals, through successive generations, merely augment their accumulations of monuments, whether industrial, scientific, or artistic, and their skill and wisdom in the application or use of these monuments, but that humanity as the virtuality of the individual becomes really enlarged, that the possibilities or capabilities of human nature itself increase from generation to generation, so that children of later generations are born not only with greater external advantages, owing to the labors of preceding generations, but with greater internal capacities. This is the doctrine for which Mr. Leroux contends, and is the one we set forth at some length in this journal for January last, in a paper on Reform and Conservatism.35 This doctrine we accept. With him we say, “it is the grand modern discovery, the supreme truth of philosophy.” But we are not sure that it is the doctrine generally maintained by modern thinkers. This doctrine consists of two articles; first, the collective life of humanity; and second, that humanity, as well as individuals, is progressive. Pascal maintains that “not merely individual men advance in the sciences, but all men taken collectively advance in them, as the world grows older; for it is with successive generations of men, as with the different ages of the individual, so that the whole series of individuals, continued throughout the ages, should be considered as one and the same man, persisting always and continually learning.”36 Charles Perrault says, “the human race ought to be considered as a single eternal man, so that the life of mankind, like that of the individual, has had its infancy, has now its manhood, but will have no decline.”37 Fontenelle expresses himself to the same effect. Assuredly 35

[Ed. See this volume, chapter 2.] [Ed. Brownson is quoting from Leroux’s L’Humanité, 145. Leroux refers to Pascal’s Pensées, chp. 1, as the source of the citation. Unable to find this quote in Pascal.] 37 [Ed. Brownson is quoting from Leroux’s L’Humanité, 146, where he cites Perrault’s Paralléle des anciens et des modernes, en ce qui regarde les arts et les sciences, 2 vols. (Paris: J. B. Coignard, 1682-93).] 36

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mankind, taken collectively, have in both ancient and modern times been likened to the individual, and said to have four ages, infancy, youth, manhood, and old age; but neither the ancients, nor the modern thinkers referred to, seem to us to have had any conception of the doctrine as we have set it forth. The progress, of which Pascal, Perrault, and Fontenelle speak, is external, in the arts and sciences; and their “one and the same man,” their “single eternal man,” is merely a figure of speech by which they express their faith in the continuance of the species, and that each successive generation shall enlarge the accumulations—not the growth—of the race. No doubt the language of these thinkers, in the mouth of Mr. Leroux, would imply the doctrine in question; but in the mouth of those thinkers themselves, it means something altogether more superficial and commonplace. Bacon was a great man, a man no doubt, as Mr. Leroux contends, who was an idealist in relation to progress in the material order; he unquestionably believed that man, by means of science, would be able to extend his empire over nature, and to improve his external condition; but we do not find in him any trace of the doctrine of the collective life of humanity, as we embrace it; no evidence of any faith in the progress of man’s inherent capabilities, of humanity, human nature itself. We yield to no one in our admiration of Leibnitz, whom we dare maintain to be the greatest thinker of modern times; but we confess that we have not found our doctrine of progress in any of his works which have fallen under our notice. Mr. Leroux thinks that he finds it in Leibnitz’ Law of Continuity. We think that the doctrine we are maintaining is the only true explication of the facts which Leibnitz has under his eyes, but he himself meant, by the law of continuity, not progress, but that nature never proceeds by leaps, that she tolerates no void, no chasms, but is a universal pleroma, at least a just gradation of being from the highest to the lowest, as versified by Pope: Vast chain of Being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, which no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to thee, From thee to nothing.38

His “videtur homo ad perfectionem venire posse” seems to us to express not the doctrine that man is indefinitely progressive, but the reverse, that he is perfectible, able to come to perfection, that is, to become perfect; or in other terms, to realize the utmost capacity of 38

[Ed. Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, Epistle 1, Section 8, lines 237-41.]

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his nature, which is by no means the doctrine contended for.39 Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz, indeed all modern thinkers, a little distinguished, have no doubt had a sort of presentiment of the doctrine of progress; have felt that man must be in some way improvable, and that his future must be holier and happier than his present or his past; but none of them, prior at least to Condorcet, have, so far as we are able to ascertain, given it a distinct, scientific statement.40 Mr. Leroux contends that the ancients had no sentiment, not even vague, of the collective life of humanity; we are not sure but he is virtually correct in his; yet we can find the doctrine in Seneca, even more clearly and energetically expressed than in Pascal or Perrault, if we may be permitted to adopt the same principles in the interpretation of him that Mr. Leroux adopts in deducing it from the moderns. “Men indeed die,” says the Roman philosopher; “but humanity itself, in whose image man was made, survives, and remains unaffected by the sufferings and decay of individuals. Homines quidem pereunt; 39 Il se peut même que le Genre-humain parvienne avec le tems à une plus grande perfection, que celle que nous pouvons nous imaginer presentement. Ainsi les loix du movement n’empêchent point que l’homme ne soit plus parfait; mais la place que Dieu a assignée à l’homme dans l’espace et dans le tems, borne les perfections qu’il a pu recevoir. Théodicée, § 341. [Ed. See Leibniz’ Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil, tr. E. M. Huggard (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952), 330.] In cumulum etiam pulchritudinis perfectionisque universalis operum divinorum, progressus perpetuus liberrimusque totius universi est agnoscendus, ita ut ad majorem semper cultum procedat. . . . Nec proinde unquam ad terminum progressus perveniri. De Rerum Originatione. Op[era]. Om[nia]. Berolini. 1840, p. 150. These passages would seem to indicate a strong faith, on the part of Leibnitz, in the progress of both man and nature; but after all, we must doubt, whether he had any clear conception of the doctrine in question. Mr. Leroux is right in considering that the doctrine of progress lies at the foundation of the whole system of Leibnitz, especially his Théodicée; but it was the defect of Leibnitz that he did not perceive its importance to his argument. Nevertheless, in a more general way, no man can fail to reckon Leibnitz among those who looked for a happier future. 40 Vide “Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain,” a work which has never received the attention from our countrymen, which, notwithstanding some extravagances, it really deserves. We came across many years ago a mutilated copy of a wretched translation of it, which we read with an intense delight, never experienced by a man but once in his life. It was in our boyhood, when we had no surfeit of books; and we have never read it since; but we owe to it much of the good and the bad there may have been in our own influence, so far as we have had any, on our countrymen.[Ed. Brownson is referring here to Jean-AntoineNicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet’s (1743-94) work which was published posthumously in 1795 and translated into English as Outlines of an historical view of the progress of the human mind (Philadelphia: M. Carey, 1796).]

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ipsa autem humanitas,41 ad quam homo effingitur, permanet; et hominibus laborantibus, intereuntibus, illa nil patitur.”42 Even the doctrine of progress, which we call a modern doctrine, was not altogether unknown to this philosopher. “Nec ulli nato post mille saecula praeclud[e]tur occasio aliquid [ad hoc] adjicendi.”43 There is much good sense, as well as dryness, in Mr. Lerminier’s remark, after having quoted these passages from Seneca; “We recommend that much prudence be always observed in making assertions, founded on the supposed ignorance of the ancients.”44 After all, the doctrine of progress, veiled indeed, and not always recognizable by careless observers, runs through all the religions of antiquity; and so does also that of the collective life of humanity. The doctrine of progress is the real significance of the old universal faith in the periodical destruction, sometimes by water and sometimes by fire, and renovation of man and nature. The palingenesia45 of the ancients is the imperfect statement of the progress of the moderns. Christianity, which is Judaism translated from the tribe into the race, making of Jew and Gentile one, reveals, at least to us, both the doctrine of the collective life of humanity, and of the progress of the race and its institutions. This is the doctrine which lies at the bottom of 41 Why is the credit of having been the first to use the word humanity, to designate human nature as it exists in the race, ascribed to the last century, and sometimes even to Herder? Seneca uses it in this sense; and the fact that he so uses the term, almost inclines us to suspect that he was after all no stranger to the modern doctrine. [Ed. Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 4 B.C.-65 A.D.) was a Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, orator and tragedian; he was probably the foremost intellectual leader of the mid first century.] 42 L. Annaei Senecae. Epist. 65. [Ed. Seneca. Ad Lucilium Epistulae Morales, trans. Richard M. Gummere, 3 vols. (1917; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1953), 1:448, Epistle 65:7.] 43 Ibid. 64. [Ed. Ibid., 1:440, Epistle 64:7. Latin for “And he who shall be born a thousand ages hence will not be barred from his opportunity of adding something further.”] 44 [Ed. “De L’Humanité,” 667.] 45 [Ed. Palingenesia refers to the new birth, or regeneration, from an older and lower state of existence to a higher and better life. This idea of regeneration was at the heart of Brownson’s idea of progress in the 1830s, but Brownson’s understanding of the term palingenesia, which he used repeatedly throughout his life, would change significantly as his theology moved from an inherent naturalism in the 1830s to various forms of supernaturalism in the early 1840s and thereafter. Brownson, like some in the French social tradition, emphasized the social as much as the individual dimension of palingenesia. Such a view would be at the heart of his own developing philosophy and theology of history. On the use of palingenesia in French social tradition, see Arthur McCalla, A Romantic Historiosophy: The Philosophy of History of Pierre-Simon Ballanche (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 135-72.]

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the faith in the millennium, so rife in the early ages of the church, so prevalent even yet, and the realization of which all Christians pray for in the petitions, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” [Matt 6:10]. It is the significance of the faith in a Messiah, who, all Christendom still, in common with the Jews, believes, is to come; it is what is implied in the hope of a “latter-day glory”; what Isaiah promises, when, enraptured with his vision of the Messiah’s reign, he breaks forth, “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for his law” [Isa 42:4]! It was chanted in the chorus of angels over the manger-cradle of the infant Redeemer, and was preached by Paul as “the liberty of the sons of God” [Rom 8:21], into which the whole creation groaned to be delivered. The doctrine is, as we have shown in commenting on the Saint-Simonian ideal, peculiarly a Christian doctrine, and to Christianity are we indebted for its principal developments; but it has required eighteen hundred years of training under the Christian dispensation, to enable us to give it a clear, distinct, and scientific statement. As a doctrine clearly, distinctly, scientifically stated, it is probably not older than the close of the last century; but as a doctrine forefelt and foreshadowed, it is older than Bacon and Descartes, than Paul and Jesus, than Plato and Pythagoras, as old as Moses, and we know not but as old as the first aspiration of the race. II. Mr. Leroux in his second book, not the least valuable part of his work, considers man’s nature, destiny, and right. “Man, as we have seen, is, by his nature and by essence, sensation-sentiment-cognition indivisibly united. His life, then, consists in the exercise and employment of these three phases of his nature, and his normal life consists in never separating them in any of his acts. By these three phases of his nature man is placed in relation with other men and the world. Other men and the world, here is what uniting itself to him, defines him, and reveals him, or compels him to reveal himself; what constitutes his objective life, without which his subjective life would remain latent and unmanifested. “The life of man and of each man is then made, by the will of the Creator, dependent on an uninterrupted communication with other men and with the external universe. What man calls his life does not all belong to himself, and is not solely in him. It is in him and out of him; resides partly, and, so to speak, jointly, in other men and in the world which surrounds him.

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“Under a certain point of view, then, we may say that other men and the world belong to him. For, since his life is in them, that portion of which he disposes and calls himself, ME, has virtually right over that portion of which he does not dispose in a manner so absolute, and which he calls not himself, NOT ME.”46 We are not sure that this is quite intelligible to our readers; we will therefore try to bring out more fully the meaning of the author. Mr. Leroux, and in this we coincide with him, holds that man, taken alone, is never competent to the task of his own manifestation. He remains in a virtual or latent state, a mere potentiality, till assisted to actualize himself by that which is not himself. He cannot exist in his own eyes, be conscious, without acting; and he cannot act without an object, which he is not, and cannot of himself furnish. For instance, he is made with the capacity to love, but he does not from the first actually love. This capacity, when he does not actually love, is still love, but love in a virtual or latent state, love “in potentiâ, non in actû.” From this latent or virtual state love can be brought only by means of an object. Or, in simple terms, man is created with the power to love; but he cannot manifest his power to love without loving; and he cannot love without loving something, some object. An object which is loved is as essential to the production of actual love, as is a subject that loves. Love, so far forth as man loves, is his life. But as this love is, if we may so speak, the joint product of the subject loving, which is the man himself, and of the object beloved, which is not himself, his life must be partly in and partly out of himself, and depend partly on himself and partly on that which is not himself. Now this, which we say of the capacity to love, we say of all of man’s capacities. They are all latent, except so far as by means of appropriate objects he is enabled to develop, to manifest, or actualize them. His whole life, then, whether intellectual, sentient, or sentimental, is jointly in himself and in that which is not himself, in the ME and in the NOT-ME. His life unquestionably consists in the manifestation, or actualization, of his latent capacities. As this manifestation, or actualization, is but the echo of the intershock of the ME and the NOT-ME, or of his communion with that which is not himself, it follows that he can live only so far as he has an object. His life, then, is at once subjective and objective. Other men and the world furnish the objective portion of his life. They furnish it only by means of an uninterrupted communion between him and them. As he has need of living, so has 46

[Ed. De l’humanité, 137-38.]

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he need of this communion; and his right to this communion must be commensurate with his right to live; for it is the necessary, the indispensable condition of his life. “Man is so made, or such is his nature, that he communes with other men (ses semblables) and with the world, in three ways, the family, the state, and property. “Property, family, country, respond, in effect, to the three terms, sensation, sentiment, cognition, of the psychological definition of man. Man is manifested to himself and to others in this triplicity, because his nature is threefold. The trinity of his soul, sensation predominating, gives birth to property; sentiment predominating, to the family; cognition predominating, to the city or state.”47 This genesis of property, family, and the state, may be, and in our view is, altogether fanciful; but the great fact stated, that man needs, as the indispensable conditions of life, family, country, and property, is unquestionably true. There is a portion of his nature, what we usually term the domestic affections, which finds its object only in the bosom of the family; another portion, the social, which finds its object only in having a country, a fatherland; and still another, only in acquiring and possessing property. In order, then, to be able to develop, manifest himself, that is, to live, man needs a free, uninterrupted communication with other men and with the world, under the three forms of family, country, and property. This conclusion, though not remarkable for its novelty, save in the light in which it is placed by the metaphysics of the author, is of great practical importance. It is worth considering by all those zealous world-reformers, who are seeking to obtain the palingenesia by destroying family, country, or property.48 They, who contend for a community of goods, would annihilate property. Hence the dangerous tendency those must guard against, who in our days are advocating “the community system.” They, who declaim against the marriage relation, or who would introduce the general liberty of divorce, and they, who strike at separate households, as do the disciples of Charles Fourier,49 together 47

[Ed. Ibid., 139.] [Ed. The reference here is to, among others, Frances Wright (1795-1852) and Robert Dale Owen (1801-77), who were co-editors of the Free Enquirer and supported radical ideas on the education of children, on marriage, and on the rights of workingmen, believing that the ills of society were caused by the institutions of property, marriage, and religion.] 49 [Ed. François-Marie-Charles Fourier (1772-1837), a French social theorist and utopian socialist, believed that personal integrity and growth were possible only in association with others. He had an influence on a number of experimental 48

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with those, who seek to transfer the responsibility of educating and rearing their children from themselves to the community, as was advocated by Frances Wright, in her scheme of a national education, annihilate the family, and therefore the domestic part of man’s life. They, who maintain that all government is a sin and a usurpation, and acknowledge the legitimacy of no government, but each individual’s moral convictions of right and duty, which seems to be the doctrine of our New England non-resistants, and no-government men, by making the state impracticable, annihilate country. Each thus in turn takes away from man the objects indispensable to the development of his latent powers, to the actualization of his virtuality, and therefore the necessary conditions of his life. The NATURE of man is to live by means of an uninterrupted communion with other men and with nature, under the three precise and definite forms of family, country, and property. His DESTINY, that is, the design of his Creator in his constitution, is not, then, to place himself physically, sentimentally, and intellectually in unlimited communion with all men, and with all the beings of the universe. This were to annihilate him by the vast solitude of Sahara, equally destructive with the solitude obtained between four walls in our modern penitentiaries. He would roam from man to man, from object to object, without resting his mind or his heart upon any; weary and desolate in the midst of endless variety and perpetual change, he would die for the want of something permanent and unchangeable. He must concentrate to increase his energy. His philanthropy is too gaseous to be of any practical utility, till condensed into love of family and of fatherland. His intellectual powers are too feeble to attain to science, unless he confines himself to a limited range of studies. The finite seeks in vain to master the infinite. “Man from the first moment of his life is placed in relation with certain of his like, and with certain beings of nature, which his true destiny requires him never to quit.”50 Nevertheless, by the normal methods God has established, man has the RIGHT to communicate with all men, and with all nature. No one has the right to forbid this unlimited communion. To forbid communities in the United States in the early nineteenth century, particularly on Brook Farm after 1844. Albert Brisbane, as already mentioned, was one of Fourier’s American disciples, but Brownson does not seem to be referring to Brisbane here. He is referring to those utopian, experimental communities, called phalanxes, that sprouted up here and there in the early and middle nineteenth century—communities that sought to bring about a new world order through encouraging a zeal for unity among persons of different types of passions.] 50 [Ed. De l’humanité, 166.]

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it, to restrict man in an absolute manner to a particular communion with certain other men, and certain beings of the universe, were to build a prison around him, which, though a palace, were none the less a prison, and in which he would be annihilated by solitude. The recognition of his right to unrestricted communion with other men, and with nature, is what makes his LIBERTY. Who in fact would restrict this right? The scientific? Science claims the right to know everything, to send her searching glance into everything that can be known; and this is what is cherished as the freedom of science, freedom of mind, freedom of thought. Artists? Art knows no limit; it claims the right to seek the beautiful anywhere and everywhere in God’s universe; and this is what we denominate the freedom of art. Men of Industry? Industry claims in turn the right to possess all, and by her labors to increase its fruitfulness; and in this consists the freedom of industry. While, then, man must, in point of fact, because he is finite, restrict himself to precise and definite relations with other men, and with nature, yet he has the right to a free and unlimited communion with all men and with all nature. This conclusion is not without significance, as we shall see in approaching the third book, which treats of evil and its remedy. III. Family, country, property, in themselves are good, excellent, indispensable conditions of man’s life; but their excess is mischievous; and they may, and often do exist in excess. The family may absorb man; the nation may absorb him; property may absorb him. He may be the slave of his birth, the slave of his nation, the slave of his property. Hitherto he has been the slave of all three simultaneously, and of each successively. THE PAST HAS BEEN EVIL, AND ONLY EVIL, because neither the family, nor the nation, nor property has been so organized as to admit, in the bosom of each respectively, man’s free development and progress. Men have been parked, and cut off from their free communion with other men and with nature. This has been done in three different ways. “1. The first method by which to park men is to divide them in TIME; that is, to acknowledge for ancestors to each one only his natural ancestors; to deny all reversionary right stretching from one family to another; but to establish a strict reversion in each family, to make all depend on birth, to subordinate the son to the father who

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begat him, and to make of man an HEIR. This is the hereditary method, the ORDER OF BIRTH. “2. The second method of parking men is to divide them in SPACE; that is, to compose aggregations of men—not merely distinct from each other, but hostile some to the others—under the name of nations, to subordinate the individual to the nation, and to make of him a subject. “3. The third method of parking men is to divide the earth, or rather, the instruments of production, and to attach men to things, subordinating men to property, making of man a proprietor. “There are only these three ways in which the race can be divided, and man subjected, since they comprehend time, space, and things. But this is not all. The effort hitherto has been to demonstrate and to combat the existence of despotism in the bosom of the family, of the city, or of property, by considering each by and in itself. It has not been seen that despotism in the family, in the nation, in property, is the correlative of the fragmentation of the human race; and that the evil that has been found in one or another of these three forms of man’s communion with other men and with nations, results from this fragmentation or division of mankind. In other terms, exception made of a few great religious legislators, no statesman has ever seen why it is that either one or another of them begets evil and despotism. “If the family, the city, property have heretofore produced so many evils, if man has found them so oppressive, it is not, once and again, because they are bad in themselves, or because human nature is inherently vicious; but because, instead of being organized in a manner to subserve the indefinite communion of man with man and with nature, they have been turned against this communion, that is, against man’s rights, and the wants of his nature. Family, country, property are finite things, which ought to be organized in view of the infinite. For man is a finite being that aspires to the infinite. The absolutely finite is for him evil. The infinite is his end; the indefinite his right. Let this indefinite, then, which is progress, be refused him; let the family, or the city, or property be organized in view of the finite, and there is evil on the earth; man’s nature is violated in its essence; man is a slave, and poor and miserable because a slave. “I take, for example, the family. The family exists in and by itself; but not independently of the human race. Either, then, the family will be organized with sole reference to itself, and therefore against the human race; or with reference to itself and the human race. If the first, its organization is vicious, and man is a slave; if the second, its

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organization is good, and man is free. The same may be said in regard to the city, and to property. “All the evils mankind experience come, then, from castes. As soon as you embrace the whole human race in your ideal of society, evil ceases and disappears from your ideal. “The true law of humanity is that the individual man tends by means of family, country, and property to a complete communion, direct or indirect, with all other men and with all the objects of the universe; and that in confining this communion to a sphere more or less restricted, there necessarily result from its forms, imperfection and evil. Family is a good; family CASTE is an evil. The nation is a good; a national CASTE is an evil. Property is a good; property CASTE is an evil. . . . “The evil which reigns on the earth, I mean the evil which reigns in human society, comes from this, that the essence of human nature has been violated in consequence of the principle of the unity of the human race in time and space, that all men are fellow members of one and the same body, living one and the same life, not having as yet been fully understood nor rightly applied. The Christians were therefore right in saying that Jesus, who according to them had introduced the doctrine of unity and fraternity among men, had thereby redeemed men from the curse of original sin. The doctrine of communion, of unity and fraternity, bruises the serpent’s head, strikes at the very root of evil. “Take all the evils which result from the family, the city, or property, and you shall not find a single one which has not originated in the fact that the principle of this communion of man with other men and with nature has been violated in the institution of one or another or all of these forms of communion, in the fact that, instead of tending to the extension of the general communion of men with one another and with nature, they tend to restrict or to negative the very right which founds them, and without which they would have no right to be at all. Then, to speak the language of theology, we may call the violation of this principle the original sin.”51 Mr. Leroux labors this point at great length, and shows that the evils of society, all the wrongs and outrages man inflicts or receives, result never from the inherent depravity of man, nor from the original vice of the family, state, or property; but from the fact that through ignorance these three forms of man’s communion have been organized with a special reference to themselves, so that each becomes, 51

[Ed. Ibid., 174-80.]

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instead of a help, a let and a hindrance to the free communion of each man with all other men and with all nature. That there has hitherto been antagonism between the family and the nation, and between the nation and the race, between the individual and the family and the nation, and between man and the proprietor, there can be no doubt. That this is the cause, the veritable cause of our evils, would seem to result from what has already been adduced, and to be pretty satisfactorily demonstrated in the following, to which we ask attention. “THE LIFE OF THE INDIVIDUAL, AT EACH MOMENT OF HIS EXISTENCE IS AT ONCE SUBJECTIVE AND OBJECTIVE. Now, what furnishes the objective part of his life; that is, what is his object? Man and nature, always man and nature, and never anything but man and nature. Thus in man, the object, is contained a part of the life of man, the subject. Then the improvement of man is of some import to man. Then the human race live in solido, each for the whole. Then all the barriers which separate men in an absolute manner, whether in time or in space, and which are opposed to their mutual communication and improvement, impoverish and dwarf the growth of the life of the individual. You cannot obliterate the objective portion of my life, without injuring me in my subjective life. If you destroy the possibility of my communication with other men, you annihilate in me my possible object; which is to annihilate me myself, and therefore to violate my right. I demonstrate in the same way the same thing in regard to nature. The communication with nature is my right. You cannot absorb nature without annihilating me. You cannot, then, establish barriers which limit in an invariable manner my property, by which I communicate with nature, without injuring my life; since the whole universe is my possible object, and since it virtually belongs to me, because God has made it the object of which I am the subject. From this impediment to my communion with all other men and all nature, results the first form of evil, the form relative to the oppressed, that is, privation, suffering, slavery. Hence also the right of the oppressed. “But thanks to God! The evil inflicted on the oppressed recoils upon the oppressor. If evil had been evil only for the oppressed, it would have been eternal. But from the principle which makes man the object of man, and by that unites man to man, so that at bottom and in God there are not absolutely separate and distinct men, but man; from this principle, I say, follows a consequence which goes to destroy evil itself. This consequence is that you cannot do evil, without doing evil to yourself. Since I am your object, as you are mine,

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since your life has objectively need of mine, as mine has objectively need of yours, I defy you to make me wretched without injuring yourself. If you make me a slave, you are a despot. It is a misfortune to be a slave; it is also a misfortune to be a despot. Homer says, ‘when a man falls into slavery, Jupiter takes away from him the half of his soul.’52 Homer might have added that this half of the soul taken away goes and clings to the master, as on avenging fury, to torture and destroy him. “The Bible, more inspired than Homer, has an admirable word for the expression of this solidarity of the master with his slave, of the murderer with his victim. Cain had killed his brother Abel. ‘And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel, thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother’s keeper? And he said, What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to me from the ground. And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother’s blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength. A fugitive and a vagabond wilt thou be in the earth.’53 It is so because Cain, in striking his brother, strikes himself. In vain he says he is not his brother’s keeper; God, who created them one for the other, demands of him where is his brother; that is, Cain’s conscience, which the Bible represents as speaking by the mouth of God, demands of him again his brother, because his brother is the necessary object of his life. And in vain, after having destroyed by his crime his object like himself, does he seek to compensate this loss of his nature, by attaching himself to the object unlike himself, the external universe; he finds that this universe becomes less fruitful in consequence of the murder of Abel. They together must fertilize the earth; the murder of brother by brother renders it barren for the murderer. It is thus, in effect, that sterility reigns wherever slavery reigns, and that even now the deepest poverty often besieges the rich in our cities, because their brethren the working men are still slaves. “Then the second form of evil, relative this time to the oppressor, results from the violation of the law of the unity and general communion of men. The wicked are struck in the evil they do, and by the very principle of life, which, by the necessary objectivity, binds indissolubly their subjectivity to that of others. People ask the origin of evil. It is nothing but the violation of the law of which we speak. Life requires an objectivity united to a subjectivity. Moral evil, that is, evil in the wicked, is the result of the subjectivity, which is itself 52

[Ed. The Odyssey Book 17, Lines 322-23. Some translations have “half his worth.”] [Ed. A reference to Gen 4:8-12.]

53

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wronged by wronging itself in its necessary object. You reject, you persecute your fellow men; then you do not love them. Then are you already struck by default of loving. What then becomes your life; what befalls in you the subjectivity? It suffers not merely through default of an object, but through default of ability even to have an object; and the default of loving becomes its own punishment. Here you are, by decrees, brought to resemble that Satan, of whom Saint Theresa says so admirably, ‘The wretch, HE DOES NOT LOVE!’54 Or rather, not to love is Satan himself; there is no other Satan. “It is the same with all our vices, with all the corruptions of our hearts. This second form of evil is, then, also at bottom privation, suffering, and in this sense slavery. Yes, the despot, in making himself a despot, becomes a slave. The avaricious by spoiling their brethren impoverish themselves; the cruel in tormenting their brethren rend themselves. Christians are therefore right again in calling by the name of slavery and the law of slavery, both the evil of the oppressor and that of the oppressed. “That this evil of the oppressor, which at bottom is slavery and privation, takes nevertheless, relatively to that of the oppressed, a form somewhat different, is not denied. Externally it may resemble power and abundance. But internally, in the virtuality of things, reparation is made and equilibrium reestablished. “It is also life and the law of life that brings about this reparation, and reestablishes this equilibrium. The evil done to the oppressed passes by the same blow to the oppressor. The oppressor is as the oppressed, sensation-sentiment-cognition, that is to say, a man. Let him then do evil to his life, and in wronging the man out of himself, he wrongs the man within himself; for his brother man is in some sort within him, is himself, and he cannot wrong him without wronging himself. Behold yourself surrounded by riches wrested by you from others. You are rich, you say. Vain boast! You are poor. You are rich only on the outside; you are poor and miserable within. You were made to love men, and you have chosen to love only things; you were sensation-sentiment-cognition; and you have renounced sentiment and cognition, in order to devote yourself exclusively to sensation. Think you that the being within you suffers nothing from this privation of sentiment and intelligence? You feel no suffering, you say; all absorbed in sensation, you complete the same metamorpho54 [Ed. Saint Teresa of Ávila (1515-82) was a Carmelite nun, reformer, mystic, and author of a number of classical texts of Western mysticism, among which is The Interior Castle (1588). A search through her works did not uncover Brownson’s quotation.]

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sis as the companions of Ulysses under the wand of Circe.55 But are you sure that you do not suffer? Push the metamorphosis to the end, become altogether stupid and completely insensible; you would be the poorest of mortals, for you would want of that nature which God gives to all men, and had given to you, both sentiment and intelligence. Then, according to the very principle of life, by outraging human nature out of you, it is found that you have outraged human nature within you; and by impoverishing others under the relation of sensation, you have, by a mysterious but necessary and infallible correspondence, impoverished the man within you under the relation of sentiment and intelligence.”56 This conclusion is not peculiar to Mr. Leroux; but we confess that though many have long asserted it, he is the first writer we have known to demonstrate its philosophical truth. We have all said that by injuring others we injure ourselves; but no one to our knowledge, before Mr. Leroux, has shown us why it is so. We see now that it is so because, according to him, to live is to manifest oneself; and one cannot manifest oneself without an object, and THIS OBJECT IS OUR BRETHREN. Our life exists jointly in us and in them, and to injure them is to injure the objective part of our life, every whit as essential as the subjective part. This is the richest discovery of modern philosophy, and contains in itself the seeds of a whole philosophical, moral, religious, and political revolution. Let it be pondered well.57 We, as well as Mr. Leroux, have contended that the progress of the individual cannot be effected alone; that it can be effected only by the progress of the race, of social institutions, and surrounding nature. Churchmen, to some extent, have disputed us on this point, and assured us that it is by individual culture and progress that the race is advanced.58 In their view, mankind is an aggregate of individual forces or wills, coexisting, but without necessary union, without mutual dependence; and they have sought to reform the world by considerations addressed to these isolated, independent wills or forces, as if the individual man could attain to the highest perfection of a human being, without communion with other men, or with 55 [Ed. In Homer’s Odyssey Circe was an enchantress who transformed Ulysses’ companions into swine by a magic drink.] 56 [Ed. De l’humanité, 181-87.] 57 [Ed. For Brownson this philosophical discovery of solidarity was a major turning point in his intellectual life; and the discovery would have implications for his religious life.] 58 [Ed. Here Brownson clearly separated himself from William Ellery Channing and the Unitarian ideal of self-culture.]

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nature; or as if living in communion with them he could rise to a pitch of excellence altogether superior to them. This doctrine, in great vogue with American transcendentalists, appearing under various names, but more frequently under the names of individual improvement and self-culture, and when so named opposed to the doctrine of those, who seek to reform the world by ameliorating the family, the state, and property, is founded on the hypothesis that man can be his own object, and that his life is all in himself, and therefore wholly subjective. Mr. Leroux has demonstrated this doctrine to be FALSE, and the opposite doctrine to be TRUE, by demonstrating that our life must needs have an objective portion, and that this portion is in other men and nature. It is, then, to me a matter of the deepest concern, what these other men are. They are a portion of my life, and the truth and reality of my life, its worth, its approach to the divine life God requires me to live, depend as much on the character of these other men, as on my own. We can obtain true normal life with a false object no more than with a false subject. The effort, then, to advance men, by isolating them from the race, and treating them as independent wills or forces, able in and of themselves to become better, other men and nature remaining as they are, will prove, as it always has proved, unavailing. The church must enlarge its ideal, and propose, not the progress of isolated individuals, the salvation of the isolated soul, but the progress of men in their union with humanity; and therefore, necessarily PROPOSE THE AMELIORATION OF THE SEVERAL FORMS UNDER WHICH MAN COMMUNES WITH OTHER MEN. We must understand that our progress as individuals is inseparably connected with the progress of other men, with whom we stand in relation, that our lot is bound up with that of humanity, and that whatever be its degree of excellence or of depravity, that degree must be ours. But to return. Evil results from the violation of the law of unity and fraternity. This violation of the divine law is occasioned by the establishment of castes, under the three forms of family caste, the national caste, and property caste. The remedy for evil, under its two forms, the evil of the oppressed, and that of the oppressor, must then be sought in a return to unity and fraternity, to the COMMUNION OF THE HUMAN RACE; men must be brought to the communion—made to commune. To be conformed to my nature, and consequently to be happy and moral, I have need to be intentionally and virtually in communion with all men, with all nature, and through them with the infinite God, from whom they all proceed, and in whom they all breathe and

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live. The family must be so constituted that I can enlarge in all directions within its bosom, without restraint; the state must be so organized as to permit me to develop myself and advance in its bosom, without being oppressed; the same also must be affirmed in regard to property. In other words these three forms, by which man communes with man and nature, must be so ameliorated, as to aid my free and uninterrupted communion with all men and with all nature; not so as to confine me necessarily to my own estate, my own family, within the narrow enclosure of my own country. “Family, country, property, must be harmonized with man’s right to free communion with all men and with all nature, without, however, on that account ceasing to be family, country, property.”59 This brings us to what Mr. Leroux contends is the fundamental principle of all genuine, ethical, and political science. The ancients founded ethics and politics on the maxim, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor,” a profound maxim, which has not yet been comprehended in all its depth. Philosophy now for the first time demonstrates its wisdom and truth, and does so by showing that THY NEIGHBOR IS THYSELF, BECAUSE HE IS THY OBJECT. In other terms, thy life being indissolubly objective and subjective, and the objective part, residing in thy neighbor, being as much thine as the subjective part residing in thyself, there is a oneness, a true solidarity between him and thee, which makes it necessary for thee to love him as the indispensable condition of loving thyself, impossible for thee to love thyself without loving him. To love is to manifest thyself, whether thou lovest thyself or another. But thou canst not manifest thyself without an object, and this object must be other than thyself. Thou canst not love even thyself, then, save in loving an object which is not thyself. Here is the law of thy life. Withdraw thyself from it thou canst not, violate it thou mayst, but never with impunity. Here, then, is selflove itself leading to charity, or love of neighbor. “What are all the sophisms of selfishness before this law of life! Since our life is bound up with that of other men, since we are inseparably united to humanity, and our fellow beings are at bottom in some sort ourselves, as we have seen, what now become all the false doctrines, founded on the selfish and individual interest of each one taken separately? Evidently selfishness turns to its own defeat, is destroyed by itself. Thou wouldst love thyself; love thyself in others, for thy life is in others, and without others thy life is nothing. Love thy59

[Ed. De l’humanité, 190.]

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self in others, for if thou lovest not thyself thus, thou canst not love thyself at all.”60 Mr. Leroux reproduces here the doctrine of Pope, who declares self-love and social the same, and virtually the doctrine of “Interest well understood,”61 or enlightened self-interest, in which, under one of its principal aspects, resulted the philosophy of the last century; but under other conditions, with stronger and nobler sanctions. He unites, to speak truly, “in a pure and fundamental synthesis, both the teachings of Jesus and the conclusions of the philosophers.”62 “Jesus and all great religious legislators have enjoined charity, but have supported it by no other reasons than the authority of God’s will. Philosophers the most irreligious have also boasted charity, but have boasted it as our interest. We have demonstrated by the very principle of life itself that charity is both our law and our interest.”63 IV. We come now to the fourth book, on the “mutual solidarity of men.” The preceding book has prepared the way for the leading doctrine of this; but we approach now more closely the author’s peculiarities, and therefore must be even more than ever on our guard. The mutual solidarity of men, or unity of all men in the one life of humanity, is explained by the law of life already stated; namely, that life resides jointly and inseparably in the subject and the object, and therefore that in life the subject and object are not only placed in juxtaposition, mutually acting and reacting one upon the other, but are in fact unified, if we may so speak, soldered together; or amalgamated, as the acid and alkali in the formation of the neutral salt, so that a separation in time or space is impossible, without destroying life itself. The actual object of each man is his family and his country, his virtual or possible object towards which he aspires, and should be free to aspire, is all men. Then the life of each individual man resides, so to speak, jointly and indissolubly in himself and in all other men. Each man is an undivided and an indivisible part of the life of all men, and the life of all men and of each man is an undivided and an indivisible part of the life of each man. Thus is each in life soldered to 60

[Ed. Ibid., 193, 194.] [Ed. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle 3, line 318; Epistle 4, line

61

396.] 62 [Ed. The concept but not the exact words are evident in Leroux’s De l’humanité, 194.] 63 [Ed. Ibid., 195.]

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the whole, and the whole to each. This, as clearly and as precisely as we can state it, is what Mr. Leroux and the Saint-Simonians mean by the solidarity64 of the race. The doctrine may be easily seized by recalling the old theological doctrine of the federation of mankind in Adam and Christ. According to this old theological doctrine, God made a covenant with Adam, whereby Adam became the federal head of his race, so that in his fall all his posterity were to be implicated; God also made a covenant with Christ, the second Adam, whereby he became another federal head of the human race, so that through his righteousness the elect should be redeemed, and adjudged to be righteous. Understand now by Adam, the father of humanity in its anormal condition; by Christ, the father of humanity in its normal condition; and what theology has heretofore declared to exist virtually, by way of covenant and imputation, but not actually, understand to exist actually and really, as the very principle and law of human life itself, and you have the doctrine in question. It is a great doctrine, and follows necessarily from the position assumed, that to live is to manifest oneself; that man in no sense whatever can manifest himself without an object; and that his object is mankind. It is the clear, distinct, and philosophical statement of the doctrine, which lies at the foundation of what we all say, when we say “man is a social animal; he was fitted to live in society; he withers and dies in solitude.” We confess, important and far-reaching as the doctrine is, we are forced to accept it, not only by Mr. Leroux’s reasonings, but by certain considerations which had brought us independently of him to accept, as the foundation of all sound philosophy, the fact on which it all rests; namely, the absolute impossibility in which the human ME is placed of manifesting itself, that is, of living, without an uninterrupted communion with the NOT-ME. We have seen that this doctrine of the mutual solidarity of men lays the foundation of a genuine charity, universal as well as special, 64 Solidarité. I have anglicized and transferred this term, because I have been unable to find any single term in our language by which to translate it. It is a legal term for an obligation in solido, an obligation in which several individuals are bound each for the whole demand. The doctrine Mr. Leroux wishes to express by the term is not that all men are merely bound in solido, but that, touching the life, all men live IN SOLIDO; that there is a solidity of life, a one life in them all; each individual life being an indissoluble portion of the life of the whole; or rather the life of each being, in itself, in some sort, the life of the whole. The doctrine is well explained by Paul. “For as we have many members in one body, so we being many are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.” Rom 12:4, 5. See also 1 Cor 12:12, and Eph 4:25.

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without for that destroying the enlightened self-interest of the philosophers. It effects the atonement, or rather a perfect synthesis of the love of self and the love of neighbor, of the love of ME and of NOTME by showing that one is never without the other, and can never be but by and with the other. Mr. Leroux, while acknowledging the superiority of Christianity over all other religions of the past, still thinks that it has failed to show this synthesis, and reconcile the love of self with the love of neighbor. “You bid me,” he says, “love my neighbor; you command me in the name of God. Be it so. I obey. But tell me, I pray you, what shall I do with this love of myself, which nature has evidently placed in me, and which God by the voice of nature commands me to follow, whilst you, in the name of God himself, command me to love my neighbor? “See me then with two loves, and two tendencies, between which you demonstrate no possible harmony. And these two loves are alike holy. For if you tell me that the love of neighbor is holy in the eyes of God, then the love of self is legitimate, holy before the Creator of all things, because it is the necessary condition of the existence of the love of neighbor. “It is certain that Christianity has left humanity unsettled and in darkness, relatively to the antinomy of necessary and holy self-love, and equally necessary and holy charity, or love of others. All the precepts of the most excellent doctors of Christianity have always remained vague and undefined. Charity, as they have conceived and taught it, has never been able to be the foundation of a real science of life, because it has never been able to bind up together in one life the ME and the NOT-ME; and because it has made the necessary and holy love of self subordinate to the love of others, or rather, as I shall soon proceed to show, to the love of God.”65 If Mr. Leroux will substitute church for Christianity, and if instead of saying that Christianity falls into the error here pointed out, he will say that some Christians in their interpretations of the precepts of Christianity have fallen into it, we shall have no objection to offer. And it is proper here to observe that Mr. Leroux and others, who for the most part agree with him in his general doctrines, mean by Christianity, Christianity as it has been defined, interpreted, and authoritatively enjoined by the church; in other words, Christianity, if we may so speak, according to Saint Augustine, and not according 65

[Ed. De l’humanité, 198-99.]

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to Jesus, the Son of Mary. Mr. Leroux himself, notwithstanding what he says, exonerates Christianity from the charge he brings; and while claiming his doctrine as a modern discovery, seems to convey the notion that Jesus borrowed it of the Essenians,66 a Jewish sect, which had no doubt anticipate many of the elements of Christian theology and Christian ethics. “Certainly,” he says, “I will not say that Jesus and the other founders of Christianity had no knowledge of the metaphysical principle, which is the true foundation of charity. I have shown, on the contrary, in my Essay on Equality, that a long time even before Jesus, the Essenians, his predecessors, had had a profound conviction of this truth. Besides, it is certain that Christianity, the principal symbol of which is the Communion, or Eucharist, has known and taught, up to a certain point, and under a veil, the law of life, by virtue of which man lives not by himself alone, but by communion with other men and with nature. Nevertheless, we may say, without fear of being deceived that Christianity has not demonstrated its precept of charity, and has not distinctly referred it to the metaphysical principle in which it originates.”67 That Christianity has not metaphysically demonstrated its doctrine of charity is no doubt true, for it demonstrates no doctrine; it teaches, it does not demonstrate; but that it teaches the true doctrine of charity is here admitted; and we have ourselves proved it in our “New Views”; in the essays on the Originality of Jesus and the Christian Movement, published in this journal for April, 1838;68 and in what we have just said in this present article in defense of the ideal of the Saint-Simonian School. Nevertheless, we agree with Mr. Leroux that Christianity, as it has been widely but not universally, nor exactly authoritatively, interpreted by both its learned and its unlearned adherents, is liable to the objections he brings. Christians have rarely comprehended the Communion, or Eucharist. It has been disjoined from charity; and instead of being a feast of love has become a sacred mystery; in these our days too often even a mere rite, or ceremony. We know no doctor of the church who has explained, nay, who has even suspected its 66

[Ed. The Essenes were a Palestinian Jewish ascetic sect that seem to have originated in the second century B.C. and to have survived into the second century A.D. They lived a common religious life with oaths of obedience and secrecy. It is improbable, many scholars say, that Jesus had intimate connections with the group.] 67 [Ed. De l’humanité, 201.] 68 [Ed. For New Views, see EW, 3, chapter 7; for “The Character of Jesus and the Christian Movement,” see EW, 3, chapter 16.]

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profound significance. The Catholic doctors are less untrue to it than the Protestant. Indeed, it may be questioned, if the Protestant doctors, in rejecting Transubstantiation, have not virtually rejected the doctrine itself. The doctrine of Transubstantiation, by which man is said to feed upon the human-divine flesh of Jesus, teaches the profound truth of the solidarity of men in humanity, and of humanity, through Jesus, in God; and that it is only by a living communion of the individual with humanity, through humanity with Jesus, and through Jesus, with God, that he can be redeemed and sanctified; that his true life is indissolubly united to the life of humanity, and through the life of Jesus, to the life of God. Well, well has coming to the Communion, celebrating the Eucharist, been considered the most solemn expression of one’s faith in Christ, and when sincere, the most glorious act of one’s life! Still, we own that the Communion has remained a mystery for the great mass of believers, uninterpreted, or misinterpreted; and Christian charity, therefore, which with Saint Paul was “the bond of perfectness” [Col 3:14], “the fulfilling of the law” [Rom 13:10], which was “the perfect law of liberty” [James 1:25], according to Saint James, has been misconceived, theoretically degraded almost to a nullity. The doctors of the church have erred in condemning holy and necessary love of self, and by that virtually rendering the love of neighbor and of God impossible. They have forbidden the Christian to love himself; they have made his Christianity, his sanctification consist in the annihilation of self; they have commanded him to love his neighbor only in appearance, only in view of God, which is to love him not at all; and have ended by making his duty consist in pure, direct, and absolute love of God, which in this case becomes an impossibility.69 By these three errors the Christian doctors have virtually obliterated charity from their ethical code, and would have obliterated it from the human heart, were it not that life is stronger and more persisting than theories, however high and sacred the authority which promulgates them. “The fervent Christian, turned only towards God, really loves neither himself nor others, and is deceived in supposing that he loves God, as God would be loved.”70 “In point of fact, it is in the pure love of God and in the renunciation of the creature that has ended the teachings of all the Christian doctors a little profound. Whilst with the uninstructed charity 69 [Ed. Brownson has in mind here the New Divinity theologian Samuel Hopkins (1721-1803) whose doctrine of disinterested love Brownson exaggerates here.] 70 [Ed. De l’humanité, 203.]

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assumes somewhat of a human air, whilst these seek to find in it a rule of practical conduct and of life, the deep thinkers of Christianity understand very well that Christian charity has really only God for its object, and that understood as the love of men, it is only an abstract term for love of God.”71 Christian charity, or love, is faulty or deficient on three points, the love of self, the love of God, and the love of others. 1. Christianity as interpreted by the doctors commands us to renounce, to mortify, to sacrifice ourselves. “You will not love yourself. But can you live and yet not live? Vainly you repulse nature; vainly you condemn the human aspirations of your soul, and anathematize them as an innate, radical, and incorrigible vice. Not to love yourself is not to love life, since life necessarily comprehends this you, which you will not love. Not to love life is to love death, that is to say, non-existence. 2. “You make your duty consist in pure, direct, and absolute love of God. You will have only God for your object, only the infinite being. Be it so. But the infinite being does not manifest himself, without you and others. God, then, manifesting himself not otherwise, and appearing to you only in an act which makes you feel at the same time both your own existence and that of others, would not be loved in any other manner; that is, he wills that you should have, in loving him, always the consciousness of yourself and of others. He does not require us to place him outside of us, and to adore him at a distance from us. He would live in us, and has no need of being placed out of us, in order to command us. Is he not in all creatures, without being any one of those creatures, or all of them together? He intervenes in life; he manifests himself only in life; God is the God of the living, not of the dead; preserve then life, if you will commune with him. Love God indeed; but do not pretend to love him directly, and as it were face to face. He is infinite; you are finite. The finite can have no direct communion with the infinite. The finite can communicate with the infinite only mediately, through the intermediary of life, which embraces at once both the finite and the infinite. To love God leads you back always, in the last analysis, to life, which comprehends both the ME and the NOT-ME, a subject and an object, in like manner as it comprehends also the infinite; that is to say, an intervention of the universal being by which the ME and the NOTME, the subject and object, are distinguished even while united.”72 71

[Ed. Ibid.] [Ed. Ibid., 204, 205.]

72

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This pure and exclusive love of God, to which your Pietists, your Fenelons, and your Guyons aspire, is altogether impracticable.73 Men may aspire to it, enthusiasts may struggle to obtain it, and sensitive dispositions may believe themselves in possession of it; but it is never a real love of God. God isolated from self, neighbor, and nature, is, so far as we human beings are concerned, as if he were not, is a mere illusion, an empty form, like the image of the beloved Creusa that appears to Aeneas in his flight,74 and which, when he would clasp it to his aching bosom, melts and vanishes. God can be known and loved only as he manifests himself. And this doctrine, so strongly insisted on by Mr. Leroux, as he pretends, in opposition to Christianity, is the real Christian doctrine, and that also of the church; for the church pronounced Fenelon’s pietism a heresy. What else means this doctrine, that we approach God never directly, but only through a mediator? It is always in the face of the SON that we behold the glory of the Father. “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son that is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared, or manifested, him” [John 1:18]. “No man knoweth the Father, save the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him” [Matt. 11:26]. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us” [John 1:14]. God was manifested in the flesh, that is, in humanity; and it is in and through humanity, and Jesus the father of redeemed humanity, that we have access to the Father. Always is it God in his indissoluble union with human nature, always the God-man Jesus that redeems and sanctifies us. If God is known only as manifested in and through humanity, then is it only in humanity, in the love of neighbor, that we do, or can love him. “No man hath seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us” [1 John 4:11]. “If any man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how shall he love God, whom he hath not seen” [1 John 4:20]? Can anything more explicit be required to prove that, according to Christianity, we love God only mediately, by, and in, loving our brother? 73 [Ed. The Pietists, Fenelon, and Madame Guyon in varying degrees emphasized disinterested love. Madame Guyon (1648-1717) was born Jeanne Marie Bouvier de la Mothe. She became the wife of Jacques Guyon, and soon led a religious and mystical life that has been identified with quietism because of her emphasis upon the total disinterested love of God. Brownson opposed exaggerated forms of disinterested love, but he was not opposed to the concept. On this, see “Christ Before Abraham,” Boston Quarterly Review 1 (January, 1838): 12-13, 15, 16, 17.] 74 [Ed. In Vergil’s Aeneid, Creusa, Aeneas’ wife, was lost in the escape from Troy (Book 2, lines 730-48), but as he searches for her she appears in illusory visions (Book 2, lines 770-94).]

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Mr. Leroux is wrong, then, in pretending that the pure, direct, and absolute love of God is a Christian doctrine. His own doctrine comes much nearer to the Christian doctrine. 3. “Christian doctors enjoin only a fictitious love of neighbor, by requiring us to love him only in view of God, for God’s sake. You will not love really your neighbor, because you say you will love only God. But here again the result is the same as the refusal to love yourself. By ceasing to love yourself I have just proved that you would cease to live, and that instead of turning towards life, you would turn towards death, towards non-existence. The evil is still greater in the negation of real love applied to others. In this case you not only annihilate yourself, but, as far as in you lies, you annihilate others. You are made, you say, to love God, and God only; what to you, then, are your fellow beings? In vain you profess to love in truth only God, and that in view of God, out of love to him, you will act towards creatures as if you loved them. You do not love them, as they ought to be loved. For you are their object, as they are yours; you are necessary to their life, as they are to yours; it is not the semblance of love that is due them, but a real love. It is necessary, in order to be really useful to them, and really to contribute to their life and improvement, that you feel yourself united to them, living one and the same indissoluble life with them. Without this, charity has no efficiency in regard to life and the improvement of life. And the proof is that in proportion as your charity increases, it turns more and more towards God, and the more and more despicable or worthless do your fellow men appear to you. You are willing to go to heaven alone, and leave by the way the companion who might arrest your flight. “Thus, all the world admits it, the last expression of Christianity is to consider this life as a vale of tears, all creatures as nothing, and less than nothing, and God alone as worthy of love. Christianity in its greatest apostles, in the gospel, as in Saint Paul, as in Saint Augustine, as in all the saints without exception, has always labored, has always implored, always been eager for the end of the world.”75 This is expressed too strongly. This ascetic view of the world is not the view taken in the Gospels, nor by Saint Paul. We will not pretend to say that we may not now and then discover a trace of asceticism, imprinted on the form of Christianity, as developed by Saint Paul; but it nowhere penetrates to the foundation, nowhere affects the real substance of the true Christian’s faith. Christianity founds its claims to our love and confidence on the ground that it is 75

[Ed. De l’humanité, 203-06.]

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the religion of reconciliation; that it has power to harmonize all the antinomies of the moral, intellectual, and physical world—God and man, time and eternity, soul and body, heaven and earth, self and neighbor, family and nation, nation and humanity, individually and collectively. The asceticism of the church is of a foreign origin, and belongs not to Christianity. Mr. Leroux, who is sometimes honest at the expense of his consistency, or apparently so at least, admits all this. “I admit,” he says, “that the gospel, if taken in simplicity of heart, without demanding of it any philosophical solution, was truer and more advanced on this point of charity, than afterwards was Christian theology. But Christianity not having either solved or even touched the fundamental knot of the question, theology has necessarily arrived where it has arrived.”76 Theology, no doubt, has arrived where it has; but whether through the failure of the gospel to give it a clear and firm basis is not quite so certain. If the passage already quoted from John does not touch the heart of the question, we know not what can. “If a man say I love God, and hate his brother, he is a liar; for he that loveth not his brother, whom he hath seen, how can he love God, whom he hath not seen” [1 John 4:19]? Does not this plainly enjoin the love of man as well as the love of God? Nay, the love of man as the indispensable condition of loving God? “No man hath seen God at any time; but if we love one another he dwells in us, and his love is perfected in us” [1 John 4:11]. What does this mean, but that we attain to our knowledge of God, and to the realization of his love in us, by loving one another; that it is through the love of one another that we commune with him. Is not this explicit? Jesus himself says, “A new commandment give I unto you, that ye love one another, as I have loved you” [John 13:34]. “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” [John 13:35]. This is the only new commandment Jesus ever gave, and of course it marks the peculiarity of his religion, since men were to be known as his disciples by keeping it. Did Jesus, then, lay any foundation for the asceticism, Mr. Leroux condemns as Christian theology? Nay, we will not rest here. Saint Paul himself says, “He that loveth another hath fulfilled the law; love worketh no ill to his neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law” [Rom 13:8, 10]. We say, therefore, once and again, that the gospel, the New Testament, affords no countenance to the doctrine that has been drawn from it, and which Mr. Leroux does well to 76

[Ed. Ibid., 210.]

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combat. The charge of leaving God out altogether, as an object of love, could be more easily sustained against the gospel, than that of resolving the love of neighbor into the abstract love of God. But we must return to Leroux, and abridge him as much as possible; for our space is rapidly diminishing, and we have much more to say. To the question, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus answered, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, soul, and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself ” [Luke 10:25].77 Here Jesus recognizes three loves, love of self, love of God, and love of neighbor; but, Mr. Leroux contends, without fusing them all into one and the same love. While Jesus does not exclude the love of self, he merely joins to it the love of God and of neighbor, without melting it into them. Christian theology has therefore been permitted to err. “Love thyself has left the world to subsist outside of truth, abandoned it to fatality, and created by that fact the LAICAL SOCIETY. “Love God has engendered ascetic devotion, monks, convents, anchoretism, the regular clergy. “Love thy neighbor has engendered the church, or secular clergy, who seek to adjust matters, fill up the gap left by revelation between natural life and devout life, endeavoring as much as possible to harmonize nature and grace, and striving to serve as a sort of connecting link between asceticism and selfishness, between the true religious life and the laical life. “Yes, the church, I say, has done its best to reconcile these three things; “A God out of the world and out of life; “A man apart from this God; “Another man, the neighbor, equally apart from God, and apart also from man, his like. “But the evil has been too great to be remedied, and all the efforts of the church have proved unavailing, have foundered on the radical vice of this theology, which does not comprehend life. “Christianity had left other men and the world out of us. Then never other men, never the world united to us, were able to give us that after which man aspires, happiness in God; that is, the good, the beautiful, the just. Hence, the rejection of life and nature by Christianity. Hence its terrible God; its paradise and its hell, equally imaginary, placed as they were beyond life; its dogma of an approaching end of the world; also its division of temporal and spiritual; the church 77

[Ed. The lawyer, not Jesus, gives this answer.]

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and the state; human and temporal affairs abandoned to the laics, celestial and spiritual affairs confided to the clergy. Hence the Pope and Caesar, head of the spiritual society, and head of the temporal society. “Besides, the time had not come. Christianity had an intermediate work to perform. It must needs prepare men, by a mystic communion, for a more perfect, a more real communion. Finding men so brutish, so divided, so hostile some towards others, that there was no means of making God felt in a real communion, it has contented itself with making God, thus separate from these men and out of their hearts, descend into the sanctified bread, which it afterwards divided among them, and with which they fed on God.”78 In consequence of the hostility which Christianity, as interpreted by the doctors, suffered to remain between the love of self and the love of neighbor, and the love of man and the love of God, the charity of the gospel has never been organizable. It has never been possible to organize civil society according to its principles. Civil society has, therefore, with the interests of time, been abandoned to Caesar, that is, to ignorance, violence, and brute force. The church alone has been able, in some feeble degree, to be organized for the realization of the doctrine of love. But able now to melt the love of God, the love of neighbor, and the love of self into one and the same love, or rather into one and the same LIFE, we may fuse church and state, and organize the whole society under its terrestrial and its celestial relations, according to one and the same principle, and for the realization of true gospel charity. This will be done by AMELIORATING THE FAMILY, THE NATION, AND PROPERTY, SO THAT THESE THREE FORMS OF MAN’S COMMUNION WITH MAN AND WITH NATURE SHALL TEND UNCEASINGLY TO FACILITATE HIS FREE COMMUNION WITH ALL MEN, WITH ALL NATURE, AND THROUGH THEM WITH GOD HIMSELF, IN WHOM THEY ALL LIVE AND HAVE THEIR BEING, WITHOUT BEING HIM OR HE BEING THEM. This is our work for the future. To the performance of this work we must bring all the energy and enterprise of industry, all the instructions and directions of science, and all the inspirations of art. V. Thus far we have followed Mr. Leroux with comparative pleasure, and as to the substance of his doctrines, with general approba78

[Ed. De l’humanité, 210-12.]

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tion. In what follows, in the fifth and sixth books, our sympathy with him is altogether less. Having brought us to see what we are in and of ourselves, what relation subsists between us and the race, between our destiny and its, and to perceive the work that is to be done for the future, he has felt that some motives and sanctions were necessary to secure the performance of that work. Mr. Leroux is, as we have said, a sincere, earnest-minded man. He is no amateur philosopher. He thinks and writes for the purpose of bettering the condition of mankind. He works, and would induce others to work, and to work zealously and effectively. But he sees and feels, and it is honorable to him that he does so see and feel, that it is impossible to induce them so to work, without the allurements and sanctions of religion. He has seen and felt the utter hopelessness of all efforts for reform, not prompted and sustained by religion. He has, then, sought not a mere speculative philosophy, but a religion; not merely to make a discursion on ethics and politics, but to give men a true, inward, abiding, and all-controlling faith; a faith which, like the early Christian faith, shall enable them to “overcome the world.” To this he says he has attained by his own inductions; but after having thus attained to it, he has seen its connection with ancient theologies, and he has therefore gone into elaborate historical researches to sustain his doctrines by the traditions, the religious and philosophical monuments of the race. Through these researches we have, as our readers must perceive, no space at present to follow him. After having established his doctrine of “the mutual solidarity of men,” by which he has shown us that the life of the individual and that of the race is inseparably united, literally one and the same life; and therefore led each to seek the good of all, and all the good of each, by all the force of both our selfish affections, and our social affections, he has wished to strengthen this force, by showing that this solidarity, this oneness of the life of the individual and that of the race, is not only temporary, during what we call our present existence, but eternal; and therefore that we are as much and as directly concerned in whatever may be the future condition of the race, as we are or can be in its present condition. This established, then both the selfish and the social elements of man, the love of self and the love of neighbor, will be reinforced by all the superiority of an eternal good over a mere temporary one, and thus reinforced cannot be long in making evil disappear from the face of the earth. But in order to establish this, he has felt it—and we regret that he has—necessary to make war upon the old and all but universally received opinions concerning heaven and hell, time and eternity, this

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life and another. He rejects the dualism between heaven and earth, and heaven and hell, as commonly understood, and thinks that the immortality looked for by believers, out of this world and out of this life, is chimerical, is the veriest illusion. The only dualism he admits is the dualism of the absolute and the relative, the unmanifested and the manifestation. There are, he says, two heavens. “An absolute heaven, permanent, embracing the universe, and each creature in particular, and in the bosom of which lives the universe and each creature; and a relative heaven, not permanent, but progressive, the manifestation of the first in time and space. Ask me not where is situated the first. It is nowhere, in no point of space, since it is infinite. Nor when it will come, when it will show itself. It will never come; it will show itself to no creature; it will never fall into time, any more than it will appertain to space, since it is eternal. It is, is always and everywhere; and always and everywhere creatures communicate with it; for it is it which contains them, upholds them, and in which they live. From it we derive our reason, our love, our strength, our light; some more reason, more love, more activity than others; but all derive from it our life, as feeble streamlets may derive a little water from the mighty river or the boundless ocean. “As to the other heaven, it is the life of the world, and of creatures, life derived from God, life manifested. It is time, space, the finite, the manifestation of the infinite; the present manifestation of the eternal.”79 This second heaven accompanies always the first, and Mr. Leroux says, “his faith is that the first heaven, which is for him, God, the eternal and invisible, manifests itself more and more in creatures which succeed one another, and that adding creation to creation, with the view of raising creatures nearer and nearer to itself, it follows that creatures more and more perfect must issue from its womb in proportion as life succeeds to life.”80 But who sees not that here is no creation at all? The two heavens are the plenum and void of Brahminism, and especially of Buddhism. The absolute heaven is the infinite void seeking to become FULL. This void is the seyn of the Hegelians,81 which even they define to be the synonym of the nichtseyn, for its only quality is that it is. It is, according to Mr. Leroux himself, merely an infinite possibility seeking to become real, or an infinite virtuality seeking to actualize itself in time and space. God 79

[Ed. Ibid., 233, 234.] [Ed. Ibid., 234.] 81 [Ed. Seyn was “being.” Brownson understood Hegel’s das reine seyn (pure being) as “simply possible being.” On this, see The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 20 vols. (Detroit: Thorndike Nourse, 1882-87), 5:141.] 80

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has, then, according to him, no real, no actual existence; that is to say, God is nothing but a possibility, or at least a virtuality, save in what we term creation. Abstract creation, and there would be no real, no actual God; there would remain only the possibility of a God, which will become a real God in proportion as there shall be an actual creation. The whole of which seems to us to amount to this, there is no God but the universe, and the possibility, or, if you please, power of the universe to grow and expand itself indefinitely in time and space. Which in our view is, to say the least, nothing better than a mitigated form of pantheism. Mr. Leroux evidently admits creation only by way of emanation, by an efflux, to interpret his own figure, of the infinite into the finite. This determines the character of his theodicy, and proves him a pantheist. The distinction between theism and pantheism is that the last contends that the actual universe emanates from God, while the former contends that God has actually created it; and that though he sustains it, and is its life and being, yet is he independent of it, and as really and truly God without it as within it. Emanation is the besetting sin of all Oriental philosophy, except the Jewish; and we are sorry to find it revived and contended for by a man so distinguished as Mr. Leroux. The immortality for which Mr. Leroux contends may now be easily conceived of. There are only two orders of existence, the possible and the real, the virtual and the actual. The possible, the virtual, is infinite, eternal; the real, the actual, is finite, in regard both to time and space. It is what we call this world, this life, in one word, the present. There is, then, and can be, no actual life but the present life. The only life we have, or can have, is this life, and the infinite possibility of living this life. Mr. Leroux therefore permits us to aspire to no paradise beyond this life, to no heaven beyond this world. Paradise and hell are to him mere illusions. All that he permits us to aspire to is a renewed existence in this life. In other words, the race is eternal, for it is the infinite virtuality of each individual, and being an infinite virtuality it will eternally tend to actualize itself in individuals; which amounts to this, individuals die, but the race survives. We, as individuals, as actual men and women, are after all only for a day; our life extending only from the cradle to the grave. O, my friend, is it with the allurement of such a hope as this that you are to captivate our hearts, and make us give ourselves up, soul and body, to the work of ameliorating the condition of our fellow men on earth! Is this what you call my being on earth, when justice and equality shall reign among men? Never have we feared that the race would become extinct; never has it been over the possible annihilation of humanity

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that we have stood with sorrowing hearts and streaming eyes; but over our own possible annihilation, and that of those we have loved. We did not ask thee to prove that we may exist hereafter, as we have existed heretofore, that we may be born into this world again, as we have already been in the generations which have preceded us; but that I myself shall survive the tomb, and that the beloved of my heart, whose body the earth has covered from my sight, but who comes to me so oft in the sweet visions of my sleeping or my waking, is not dead to me, survives not merely in my own deeply cherished love, but really, actually lives, and shall be again met, again clasped to my bosom, which has been true to the last. The mother did not ask thee to prove that there would continue to be mothers and new-born babes, but that her own, her darling boy, so sweet, so gentle, so beautiful, too sweet, too beautiful for earth, so suddenly taken from her, yet lives, and that she shall press him again to her maternal heart, and know and feel that it is the same, her own long lost, never forgotten child. O mock us not. If you have no faith in such a future as this, in such another life as this, talk not to us of living again. Leave us what faith we already have; or if we have none, leave us to the stern reality, to live, and toil, and weep, and die, and rot, and be no more. Mr. Leroux, after all, recognizes no immortality but that of the race; for he recognizes no life but this present life successively reproduced. We assuredly believe our present life contains in germ our future life; and we believe that our future life, like the present, will be a life in and not out of nature, and like the present linked to the universal life of humanity; but in a far other sense than that of merely being reborn. The departed are not departed. The generations of the past live in us and out of us. They are all here, round and about us, and we might if we would, and some of us even do, at times, commune with them. But this by the way. Mr. Leroux not only takes the view which we have ascribed to him, but he takes up more than two thirds of his whole work in endeavoring to prove that his view of future life is the one taken in all the traditions of the race. We cannot at this time, as we have already said, go into any examination of the question, whether these traditions do or do not sustain him; but this much we may safely assert, his immortality is not that in which the human race has always supposed itself to believe. Universal tradition sustains us in saying that the human race has always believed that it understood, by a future life, something else than mere rebirth into this life; and if so, would not this belief, after all, be the real traditionary belief of the race? Suppose, then, that by ingenious interpretation we can make out

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that the monuments of antiquity do contain the doctrine in question, we by no means prove that these monuments contained it to their authors; and the fact that they have never been so understood by the world at large is no mean proof that they did not. Then again, if the doctrine in question is absolutely that of Moses, Buddha, Pythagoras, Plato, Appollonius of Tyana,82 of all the oriental and western worlds, throughout all antiquity, higher and lower, as Mr. Leroux contends, wherein consists that progress of the race for which he also contends? Where is Mr. Leroux’s originality, if he merely reproduces what was the faith of mankind even before history began? Mr. Leroux goes largely into the exposition of Judaism and Christianity. We may, hereafter, perhaps, call attention again to some of his expositions, for some of them are ingenious, and not without value. He interprets the first ten chapters of Genesis, the Bereshith of the Jews, as a series of myths, intended to teach a system of psychology and political economy. Adam means humanity; Cain, Abel, and Seth reproduce the triad of the human soul, sensation-sentimentintelligence, according to Mr. Leroux’s terminology, the industry, science, and art of Saint-Simonism. Cain is the man of sensation, the physical man, the man of activity, who possesses himself of the earth, and kills his brother so as not to share it with him. Abel represents void, man of desire, of sentiment, who leads not, like Cain, an agricultural, but a nomadic life. The struggle between these two is the struggle between the rich and the poor, between the haves and the have-nots, a struggle in which the haves kill the have-nots; which we know from history is the usual termination of such struggles. Seth is the man of intelligence, and represents the return towards GOOD. His posterity form for a time a parallelism with the descendants of Cain; but ultimately drawn together by the attraction of voluptuousness the two races—knowledge and wealth (without sentiment)— mingle and produce that moral corruption represented by the deluge. Then commences a return of the race toward a better state of things. Humanity is now called Noah, not Adam, and the triad of the soul is now Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Now all this may be very good philosophy, and the ethical and political system Mr. Leroux deduces from it may be very excellent, as we cheerfully concede that it is; but was Moses acquainted with the highest metaphysical formula to which modern philosophy has attained? Was it embodied in a book which the world has possessed 82

[Ed. Apollonius of Tyana (d. c. 98 A.D.) was a neo-pythagorean philosopher whose virtuous life and reforming religious tendencies led some in later centuries to use his biography as an argument against the uniqueness of the life of Christ.]

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and studied for thousands of years, and yet never suspected by any one before Mr. Leroux? If Mr. Leroux had not had the formula in his own mind, we suspect that he would never have discovered it in the Bereshith. That he can interpret Genesis in accordance with this formula does not surprise us. All truth is homogeneous, and is reflected by the veriest monad God has created. Once have the truth, the true formula of truth, and you may find it in every fact of history, in every grain of sand on the seashore; because all is created by one and the same mind, after one and the same original idea, which idea each race of beings and each particular being reflects from its own point of view, in each and in all of its phenomena. We do not complain that Mr. Leroux gives to Genesis a philosophical interpretation, or that he treats the Bereshith as a series of myths; but we do complain that he does not remember that the myth has been accredited as history before becoming a myth. Boötes83 was a man on earth before he was a constellation in the heavens. The sacredness generally attached to the myth, as history, is what leads to its adoption, as a myth. The mythical ideas are attached to well known and profoundly reverenced historical facts, by individual philosophers or reformers, who have new views they wish to embody and in some sort to publish. This borne in mind, we have no objection to treating the first ten chapters of Genesis as a series of myths, intended to teach certain great ethical, political, and psychological doctrines; nor indeed to treating, with Dr. Strauss, even a portion of the New Testament in the same way.84 Indeed we all do so treat it, when we make its narratives cover a great psychological, moral, or religious truth; when we accommodate, as it is called, a passage to a particular purpose which we have in view, to which it may apply, but to which it was not applied by the original writer. We use the narrative of the resurrection as a myth, representing the immortality of truth, of a righteous cause, and the certainty of its ultimate triumph. This is allowable, if it be remembered that the narrative is not only a myth, but also the record of an historical fact. This rule, carried into history, will give the philosopher his freedom, without depriving the historian of his sobriety. We think Mr. Leroux might have been worth 83

[Ed. Boötes is a northern constellation, whose brightest star is Arcturus.] [Ed. David Friedrich Strauss (1808-74) was a German theologian whose Das Leben Jesu (1835-36) applied the myth theory to the life of Christ. The book created a major sensation at the time because of its historical-critical approach to the New Testament and its denial of the supernatural elements in the gospels. Theodore Parker had given the book a fairly positive review in “Strauss’ Life of Jesus,” Christian Examiner (July, 1840): 273-316.] 84

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full as much as a philosopher, and more as a historian, had he observed it. History, when interpreted so as to retain no traces of what it has always been considered to be, ceases to be history. The belief of the race is always a running commentary, not less authoritative than the text. Mr. Leroux may find Saint-Simonism in the Jewish lawgiver, but it will not therefore follow that Moses was merely the precursor of Saint-Simon. Moses was a real character; and though mythical notions may have gathered up around him, he was no creation of a poet’s fancy. He was no Egyptian priest, nor Indian philosopher. He was eminently a Jew, oriental indeed, by the boldness of his genius, the richness of his imagination, and the warmth of his temper; but oriental under the Hebrew type. The attempt to confound him with any other must always be a mark of historic folly. And what we say of him may be said of the Bereshith. The effort to resolve it into one of the cosmological books of the Egyptian priests, and to interpret it according to Egyptian modes of thought, we should think could be made by no one capable of perceiving the connection between the philosophy of a people and their national character; or the difference between the ignorant, superstitious Egyptian, worshiping leeks, onions, calves, and crocodiles, overrunning orchard and garden with gods, gods foul, stupid, uncouth, obscene, and the Jew in stern simplicity, disdaining to bend before aught finite, and standing in awe only before the living Shekinah of the invisible Jehovah. The Hebrew character has no prototypes, no analogies in any of the nations of the earth. It is distinct, peculiar, remarkable for its severe beauty, its chastity, simplicity, freedom from the extravagant, the grotesque, the superstitious, the marvelous. It is distinguished from that of all the other nations of antiquity by its good sense, its sobriety, its reserve, no less than by its force and energy. Yet was the Jew a poet. He struck the harp with freedom, boldness, and delicacy, and drew from it tones which had been caught only from the seraphim, and which were not heard without the heart’s rising anew to its Father and its God. To the Jew, then, let us leave, ungrudgingly, the honor of having originated, through Providence, his own literature; and by that of having become the chosen of God to instruct the nations in the deepest principles of philosophy, of jurisprudence, and theology; and at the same time to charm them by the divinest music, and kindle their aspirations for God by the sublimest poetry.

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VI. Moreover, there is no necessity of seeking to get rid of the ordinary views of the Bible, and of immortality. Mr. Leroux’s motive is a good one. He wishes, by establishing the solidarity of men in time, as well as in space, to enable the generations, which now are, to feel a personal interest in the amelioration of man’s condition on the earth, and also to vindicate the justice of Providence, by showing that all ameliorations may be retroactive; or in other words, that in the future progress of the race, the earliest generations are to participate in an equal degree with the latest. But this may be obtained without sacrificing our hopes of individual immortality. If we admit the existence of races at all, we must admit a one life common to all the individuals of each race. Humanity is not an aggregate of individuals; individuals do not precede the race, and constitute it; humanity precedes individuals, and is their origin and support. It is human nature, that is, the human species that makes individual men and women. The unity of the life of the race of necessity unifies, or makes one, all the individuals through which the race is manifested. All ameliorations of individuals, then, at whatever epoch they may be effected, must retroact, and affect the first-born man, as well the one that will be the last-born. The error of Mr. Leroux consists in supposing that if the future life of individuals be any other than a reproduction of the present life, it must be a life disconnected with the life of humanity, and therefore no longer a human life; then individuals, in ceasing to live this life, would cease to be men; and ceasing to be men, would no longer concern us. But man is already a being who exists in the three worlds of time, space, and eternity. If then at what we call death the individual should cease to exist in time and space, he would still exist in eternity; and by means of the eternal in the individual in space and time could still maintain his hold on the race, and be affected by all the changes the race undergoes in its passage through the ages. In this way the communion between the present and the departed could still be preserved. But we are not yet disposed to admit that those we call the dead do not still live in time and space, and in the condition, to say the least, of possible communion with those we call the living. Man is a being made to live in a body, and disembodied, he probably never lives; but bodies may exist of different degrees of density. Bodies capable of penetrating the most solid with which we are acquainted, to which the most impenetrable that we have analyzed offer no resistance, are

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by no means impossible. Death may be nothing more than casting off this outer integument of flesh, so that we may be clad only in this more refined, as the ancient fathers contended, more “ethereal,” body—a body, material indeed like the present, and therefore not absolutely impassible, therefore defining, distinguishing the individual; but still comparatively impassible, and like the lightning, capable of penetrating and passing on its way through bodies, hard, solid to our senses, either unimpeded, or impeded but partially. These beings commune with one another, and to a certain extent with us who still live in these grosser bodies. In our moments of great spiritual freedom, of exaltation and ecstasy, what may be called trance, by which one seems to live solely in the transcendental, we may, and unless we choose to reject universal tradition, we do, actually commune with them face to face—though ordinarily we must own that it is only as through a glass darkly. The secrets of the country, lying on the other side of that dark river death, are not so well kept as is sometimes alleged. That river is continually passed and repassed. Those who have passed from us still commune with us, are objects to us, as we are objects to them. Here is the great truth the church has shadowed forth under her doctrine of purgatory, which short-sighted Protestants have vainly, not to say rashly, pronounced a popish error. Here too is the ground of that faith which all Christians have, that the life and death of Christ are retroactive, and do mediate for those who died before the coming of Jesus, as well as for those who have been born since. Deny the reality of this communion between the living and the departed, and this retroaction is not real but fictitious, imputative. Here, once more, is the basis of the doctrine of the Communion of Saints, by which the saints above and the saints below are said to make but one communion. This doctrine also authorizes us to offer prayers for the dead, to make efforts for their salvation and sanctification, as we would were they still with us. O, it is not a popish error to pray for the dead, but a blessed privilege, proceeding from a blessed hope, which has its foundation in the everlasting truth of things. On the other hand, if the departed may continue in some degree to be our object, we may also be theirs; and consequently it is as much to them what we are, as it would be were they still clad with this grosser integument of flesh. While we are poor, and miserable, and wicked, and vile, and wretched, they cannot be happy, their beatitude cannot be complete. No, wicked man! Man of vice, low and worthless, thou art not only poor and miserable thyself, thou not only makest all wretched around thee, but thou carriest grief and anguish to bosoms in the world beyond the grave. The solidarity of

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men is universal, and no human being can find complete beatification, so long as any portion of the race is removed from its normal condition, living a sinful life. Death will not free us either from our own sins or those of others, either from the sins of past generations or of future generations. We are all bound up together, are all literally members of one body, and one member, be it ever so insignificant, cannot suffer, but the whole body will suffer with it. This is a weighty consideration, and should rebuke the selfishness of the sinner, and also the selfishness of the saint, who fancies that he can go to heaven alone, be happy though the larger portion of his race should be miserable both here and hereafter. Mr. Leroux seems also to suppose that humanity can grow only by reabsorbing individuals into herself, and pushing them out anew in successive generations. But his doctrine of reversibility, of reversion, is easily enough explained, without recourse to the doctrine of rebirth in the race. The new life developed, or successively developed in the race, whether naturally or providentially, may pass from one generation to another, without supposing the succeeding generation must be the preceding in any sense, which implies that the preceding cannot still exist as individuals in the world lying beyond the grave. The succeeding generation has undoubtedly a reversionary interest in the life of the preceding, that is, the life of the preceding reverts to the succeeding generation. This reversion may be by natural generation. This is the view we took in our paper on Reform and Conservatism, in this journal for January last.85 It is true to a certain extent. The body can be improved by cultivation, and through that the man. This improved body may be transmitted by natural generation, and the child of the cultivated may therefore, other things being equal, be born with superior natural capacities to the child of the uncultivated. Nevertheless there is always danger of pushing this view too far. It is the basis of hereditary nobility, hereditary monarchy, and of hereditary property. When we assert it, if not on our guard, we so exaggerate the family as to interrupt that free communion of man with man and the universe, which his nature demands, to which it is suited, and which it may claim as its right. But we are wrong if we suppose that the life of humanity can descend only by natural generation, that is, in the line of the same family. It descends by spiritual generation altogether more than by natural generation. One generation does not pass off, nor does one generation come on all at once. The generation that now is laps on to 85

[Ed. See chapter 2 of this volume.]

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the generation that is to succeed us, and thus becomes the objective portion of the life of our successors, and in this way transmits to it, not according to the order of birth exclusively nor chiefly, but according to the order of CAPACITY and of WORKS, the higher life which has been developed naturally or providentially within us. This is the true law of progress. In this way, as Mr. Leroux must see, may be secured the growth of the life of humanity for which he contends, without reabsorbing individuals in the race; and we also see now that in this way we can obtain this same growth, without exaggerating the family. With this view of progress we may restrict still more the principle of descent according to the order of birth, within the bosom of the family, than we have heretofore considered to be possible, leaving the state and property to the order of CAPACITY and of WORKS, as we contended in our Essay on the Laboring Classes, which gave so much offence, and as is the virtual faith of all genuine democrats, whether at home or abroad. We do not in this change any opinion. The great doctrine for which we have always contended is that the improved life of the individuals of one generation, independent of its monuments, descends and becomes integrally the life of the succeeding generation. This is what Mr. Leroux, in 1833, very properly calls the “Law of Continuity.”86 This descent, he now contends, is by virtue of the rebirth of individuals, by virtue of the fact that the new generation not only continues the preceding, but is it, the very identical generation itself; we have contended that it descended by virtue of natural generation, taking the aristocratic ground. The truer explication than either is that all life is at once indissolubly subjective and objective, and the objective portion of any given generation is furnished by the preceding, by virtue of the fact that it overlaps it, and becomes its object. More we would say, but we have already lingered too long. We have, after all, given our readers but an inadequate notion of the contents of this remarkable book. Many, however, will read the book, and find nothing in it but absurdities and blasphemies; we have found it one of the most profitable books that we have ever read. We were, in some sense, however, prepared for it, by our familiarity with the Saint-Simonian school, but more especially by the fact that we had by our independent researches attained to the great metaphysical principle on which he bases his doctrine of life. We had not ourselves 86 [Ed. Leroux published his ideas on the law of continuity in Revue Encyclopédique for 1833.]

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applied that principle much beyond the sphere of metaphysics. Mr. Leroux has applied it to humanity, and made it the basis of a social doctrine, at once grand, beautiful, and inspiring; in pursuing his social application of the doctrine we have seen—what he does not appear to have seen—its application to the doctrine of Communion with Jesus, and through him with God, by which must be effected a complete revolution, not in religious belief, but in theological science. These three applications complete the cycle of human relations and inquiries. We hold ourselves able now to produce a perfect synthesis of philosophy, politics, including ethics, and theology, all harmonizing with the “Word of Life,” borne witness to by the apostles, and which Jesus was. This metaphysical principle, which becomes, as it were, a universal solvent of whatever pertains to life, is simply that the ME can never manifest itself, that is, live, save in communion with the NOT-ME. This is the principle on which is based our new system of philosophy, of which we spoke in the last number of this journal;87 but important as we had found this principle in the region of metaphysics, we had not suspected half its importance in the regions of politics and theology, till reading this work by Mr. Leroux. We see now the literal truth of what has been asserted of Christ as the mediator between God and man; we see how he can be both literally and truly, and indissolubly God-man, and therefore strictly a mediator between God and man; how his mediation can and does hold, in God’s providential plan for the salvation of men, the place commonly assigned to it; and how he can communicate his life to the world, and by so doing become literally, really, not by way of example, representation, or imputation, the life and salvation of the world.88 These great doctrines, which have been asserted and held on to by the church, as if life and death depended on them, which have been great and painful mysteries, and which in these days have driven so many from the church and from Christianity, if we do not greatly deceive ourselves, we can clear up, make philosophically plain and certain, in the most simple and literal sense, and on as high a degree of evidence, as that which we have for our own existence. A glorious discovery, for which we thank God, and which restores us without any subtlety, without any refining on terms, to the great household of believers. 87 [Ed. See “Charles Elwood Reviewed,” Boston Quarterly Review 5 (April 1842): 129-83; see also chapter 4 in this volume.] 88 [Ed. Here Brownson separates himself from both the Calvinist and Unitarian views of salvation.]

8. INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS1 Boston Quarterly Review 5 (July, 1842): 366-71

It is with no ordinary feelings that after a virtual suspension of my labors as a minister of Jesus, for nearly three years, I resume them again, with the hope of continuing them so long as God shall lend me life, strength, and opportunity. I return to my early profession, that which I entered from choice and conviction of duty, and to which I solemnly, and at the time, sincerely, pledged my life; and I return to it with chastened feelings, but with a fervent prayer to God that my future labors may be more acceptable to the great head of the church, and more profitable to my fellow men than have proved my past labors. 1 [Ed. An Introductory Address, or Remarks made by the Editor on Resuming his Labors as a Preacher of the Gospel (Boston: First Sunday in April, 1842). Brownson introduced this published sermon with the following: “It is well known, for we have been somewhat communicative, that the editor of this journal was, has been, or is a professed preacher of the gospel. In 1836, he left a parish over which he was settled, and came to this city, at the request of a few friends, for the purpose of gathering into a religious society a portion of the community which usually attended no place of religious worship. In prosecuting this object, he committed some blunders, and after making a good many sacrifices, and suffering much in reputation, he abandoned the enterprise the third year from the commencement. Receiving a small place under government, he ceased for a time to preach. The effort he had made, the misrepresentation of which he had been the subject, had discouraged him, and it need not be disguised, had soured him towards a portion of the clergy of this city who had not extended to him the sympathy to which he knew himself entitled, and without which it was impossible for him to succeed in the very delicate undertaking to which he had been invited. It did therefore remain for some time doubtful in his mind, whether he should ever return to his profession or not. He was determined not to do it, unless he could do so without having to fight the religious world as well as the irreligious. Let me drop the third person and speak in my own name. I have always loved to preach the gospel. Theology has from a child been my favorite study. Politics have been but a mere episode in my life, and would not have been even that, had I not seemed to see my country in such a crisis, as to call for the aid of every citizen. I felt that I could do somewhat, at least that I could try to do somewhat for the cause of freedom and good government. I have done what I could. My countrymen will, to say the least, be none the worse for what I have done. Even while most thoroughly engrossed with political discussions, I was carrying on at the same time

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Some of those who hear me now have listened to me before. They will find me the same man that I was when they first heard me, but I hope wiser and better. Six years have passed over my head since I first came to this city, and I would fain hope not without effect. They have been to me years full of events. In them I have lived much, had no little of painful experience. I come to you now, as I said, with chastened feelings. But I do not come in despair. I come with less of spasmodic zeal, with less of apparent warmth, it may be; but I come with a stronger faith, with higher and firmer hopes. It has taken me long to find and fix my faith; it has taken me long to qualify myself, even in my own estimation, to preach the gospel. The long experience through which I have passed has in some sort fitted me to preach, for it has given me a full and living faith in God, in man, and in man’s progressive and immortal capabilities. I come before you, therefore, at least a firm believer. When I commenced preaching in this city some six years ago, I had not precisely the same special purpose in view that I have now. I aim now at more, and at less than I did then. Then my special purpose was to preach down infidelity, and to gather the laboring classes and their friends into a society. This is not my special purpose now. I have no concern with infidelity; and standing in a Christian pulpit, I know no distinction of classes. I come now to preach the gospel in simplicity, and as far as God permits, with power, so that Christ may be proved unto them that believe, to be the wisdom of God and the power of God unto salvation. The cause for which Jesus lived and died is the cause of God and of humanity. No man can defend that cause from pulpit, tribune, or press, without defending humanity, pleading everywhere for the wronged and the oppressed, and proving that his sympathies are with the masses, his hopes are for the millions, and his labors for the downmy religious and theological investigations, and I felt occasionally the wish to resume preaching. The three years I had spent as a layman had enabled me to see the world on some, to me, new sides; and I felt that they had but qualified me all the better to discharge my duties as a minister of Jesus. Nor was this all. Those three years were to me years of intense suffering. I felt that I had deserted my post, abandoned the cause to which I was early consecrated, and I could not be satisfied with myself. An opportunity offering last April, I returned with joy to the pursuit I should never have forsaken. The following are the introductory remarks I made on returning once more to the pulpit. I insert them, because I hold all my readers my personal friends, and foolishly fancy that my personal movements are not altogether indifferent to them. They must pardon me; nay, I will not say so. Those with whom I have communed, and who have communed with me quarterly for these now nearly five years, are my personal friends and need no excuse.”]

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trodden; but if true to that cause, he will recognize all to be of one blood, all to be children of the same God, and he will speak and act for what he believes to be the common salvation. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, and it is for the deliverance of the whole into the glorious liberty of the sons of God, that we should live, labor, and, if need be, suffer and die. I am not then now a preacher to this or to that class. I preach, as God gives me utterance, to simple human beings, who come to hear me, come they from the more favored or from the less favored classes. All are alike human beings; all are alike sinners; all alike need repentance; and none of them can be saved but by one and the same crucified Redeemer. I come moreover not as an inquirer, as I did six years ago, but as a preacher. I am not here to inquire what I ought to believe, but to tell you what I believe. I have positive doctrines to state, a positive faith to preach, and my purpose will not be to speculate, to philosophize, but so far as possible to point every hungry soul to the bread of life, the living bread which came down from heaven, and gives life to the world, and not only to point to it, but to do what I can to persuade everyone to eat and live. Six years ago I wished to depart in forms of faith and worship, as far as I could without abandoning principle, from the more generally approved forms; now my wish is to depart in faith and practice as little as I can, without sacrificing principle to a desire of conformity. The true Christian and really independent preacher conforms whenever he can in consistency with high-minded integrity, but hesitates not a moment to dissent, and no matter how widely, whenever in his judgment God, truth, humanity, require him to dissent. True independence, manliness of character, consists neither in conformity nor in dissent, but in a calm, earnest, brave adherence to and defense of our honest convictions, whether with the multitude, or whether alone with our God. I am not here to propose innovations, to urge departures from old forms of worship, but to do what I can to aid on the great work, which is common to all Christians, of forming Christ more and more in the heart of the individual, and in that of the community. Thus much I have thought it not improper to say on reappearing once more in the pulpit, with the intention of devoting myself hereafter to the duties of a preacher of the gospel. I am here to raise no new banner. So far as I own any sectarian name, it is the one I have long borne, that is, Unitarian. But I own in reality no banner but that of Christ and him crucified, and would rally my brethren around no other standard than the gospel of peace and love.

9. THEODORE PARKER’S DISCOURSE1 Boston Quarterly Review 5 (October, 1842): 385-512

This volume consists substantially of the five lectures, which Mr. Parker gave in Boston about one year ago, intended to bring out more fully, to illustrate, and defend the doctrines he had broached in his somewhat famous South-Boston sermon, reviewed in this journal for October, 1841.2 The lectures were listened to, when delivered, with attention and interest, by a large, intelligent, and highly cultivated audience; and if we have them here without the charms of the lecturer’s elocution, we have them enlarged, elaborated with greater care, and accompanied by numerous notes, bibliographical and critical, of no slight value, and which prove at least the variety and extent of the author’s reading. In accordance with the original division into lectures, the work is divided into five books, or discourses. The first book is entitled Religion in General, or a Discourse of the Religious Sentiment and its Manifestations; the second, The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to God, or a Discourse of Inspiration; the third, The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to Jesus of Nazareth, or a Discourse of Christianity; the fourth, The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to the Greatest of Books, or a Discourse of the Bible; the fifth, The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to the Greatest of Human Institutions, or a Discourse of the Church. It will be seen from the titles of the several books, that the subjects discussed are the foundations of religion, inspiration, Christianity, the Bible, and the church. These are great topics. None are or can be more so. We hope, therefore, our readers will not be displeased to find us taking them up one after another, and discussing, them with a little profoundness, with as much fullness of detail and illustration, and to as great a length as permitted by our limits. 1 [Ed. Brownson’s review of Theodore Parker’s A Discourse on Matters Pertaining to Religion (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1842).] 2 [Ed. Brownson refers to Parker’s A Discourse on the Transient and Permanent in Christianity (Boston: The Author, 1841), reviewed in “Transient and Permanent in Christianity, ect.,” Boston Quarterly Review 4 (October, 1841): 436-74. See EW, 5, chapter 17.]

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We say in advance that whatever the judgment that may ultimately be formed of the peculiar views which the author has put forth, no one possessed of tolerable independence, and mental fairness, can fail to acknowledge the earnestness, learning, ability, and eloquence with which the work is written. Mr. Parker deserves high praise for having sought for the truth with all diligence, under circumstances not always the most favorable, and for not hesitating, at risk of his reputation as a minister of religion, and of his standing as the member of a particular denomination, to publish freely, boldly, and without apology for so doing, the convictions to which his studies have brought him. He has spoken indeed at his peril, for it is not a light thing for a man to speak, on these great topics, opinions of his own, and whoever speaks on them is accountable for what he says; but he has shown that he has been willing to take the responsibility, as every man who is in earnest and has convictions will never hesitate to do; and all that concerns us or others is to take up his word, and determine, if we can, its value, both in relation to the circumstances in which it was spoken, and in relation to its intrinsic truth. In examining this volume, we shall exercise all the freedom shown by its author; we shall aim to say nothing unkind, or uncharitable, for we see nothing in the book that it is worth one’s while to be angry with or about; but we shall claim the right to treat the author as a full-grown man, able both to give blows and to take them in return. He who publishes such a work as this has the right to demand respectful and fair treatment, but no generosity, no indulgence. He challenges the closest scrutiny, the severest tests; and where he is found wanting, he has no right to complain if exposed without mercy. We trust that these remarks will assure him that, though we make no professions of regard, of sympathy, or of tenderness for his feelings and the like, yet in whatever we may say, there will be no want of respect for his intentions, his understanding, or his ability, and no disposition to say aught which he or his most partial friends may consider unfair, or uncalled for. We shall treat him as we think we should be willing to be treated. We shall take up his work, book by book, and in some instances chapter by chapter, both out of respect to what he himself advances, and to the intrinsic importance of the topics discussed. I. GROUNDS OF RELIGION The first book is divided into seven chapters. I. An Examination into the Religious Element in Man, and the existence of its Object. II. Of the Sentiment, the Idea, and the Conception of God. III. Ex-

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tent and Power of the Religious Sentiment. IV. The Idea of Religion connected with the Science of Life. V. The Three Great Historical Forms of Religion. VI. Of Certain Doctrines Connected with Religion. 1. Of the Primitive State of Mankind. 2. Of the Immortality of the Soul. VII. The Influence of Religion on Life. 1. The aim of the author in this first book, and especially in this first chapter, is to establish the doctrine that religion has its ground in the permanent and indestructible nature of man, in a special religious element in man’s constitution; in opposition, on the one hand, to the infidel philosophers, who contend that religion is an accident in human history springing from causes purely local and temporary; and on the other, to those supernaturalists, who contend that religion is something miraculously superinduced upon human nature. According to his view, man is religious, not supernaturally, not arbitrarily, not accidentally, but naturally, by virtue of his original constitution as a man. “Thus, then,” he says, “it appears that induction from notorious facts; consciousness spontaneously active; and philosophical analysis of man’s nature; all equally lead to some religious sentiment or principle as an essential part of man’s constitution.”3 The doctrine that man is religious by a law of his nature, or a special element of his nature, when interpreted so as to mean that man is, and can be religious, without any transformation of his nature, or superinduction of a new principle upon his nature, is unquestionably sound, and worthy of all acceptation. Man was intended by his Maker to be religious; he has a natural capacity for religion; has a natural need of it; and cannot fulfil his destiny as a man without it. Perhaps this is all that Mr. Parker means; but it is not all that he seems to us to assert. He does not, as we understand him, merely assert that man has naturally a religious aptitude or capacity, nor merely that religion is a constant and universal fact of human history; but that man is religious by virtue of a special religious nature, a peculiar element of his nature, which may be regarded as a sort of sixth sense, having very nearly the same relation to the spiritual world that the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, or the sense of touch has to the material world. In a word, we understand him to assert in man, as the principle of the religious phenomena, a fundamental element of man’s nature, distinct, peculiar, sui generis, which he calls the Religious Sentiment, and defines to be the SENSE OF DEPENDENCE.4 3 4

[Ed. Discourse, 19.] [Ed. Ibid., 13.]

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This theory is not without its plausibility, and is almost sure to captivate at first sight; but we have much deceived ourselves if it will bear the test of rigid investigation. Mr. Parker relies for its support on, 1. Induction from notorious facts; 2. Consciousness spontaneously active; 3. Philosophical analysis of man’s nature. The second ground of reliance must be abandoned at once, for it is a misapprehension of the fact of consciousness. Consciousness can have no spontaneous activity, for it is not a being, nor a faculty, nor yet a fact sui generis. It is simply what Leibnitz calls “apperception,” the recognition by the ME of itself in the phenomenon as the subject of the phenomenon. The activity, the causative force, in consciousness is the ME; and therefore the spontaneous activity of the consciousness is the spontaneous activity of the ME, which is in no wise distinguishable from its general activity. To say the ME acts spontaneously, is only saying in other terms, that it acts; for all acting, of whatever subject predicated, is spontaneous, that is, the actor acting from itself, from its own center, and from its own inherent force or energy. The assertion of Mr. Parker therefore amounts to this, the ME in acting, or in the phenomena of life is conscious in itself of a peculiar religious element, which is an essential part of its constitution. This is not true. We are conscious only of being the subject of certain phenomena, not of what we are in ourselves. We are merely conscious of exhibiting religious phenomena, not, we venture to state, of the peculiar power or essential element by virtue of which we exhibit them. There remain, then, only two sources of evidence of the reality of the religious element, induction of a religious principle, from the exhibition by man of religious phenomena, and philosophical analysis of man’s nature. But leaving these for a moment, we must state what is to us an a priori objection to Mr. Parker’s view. He calls the religious element in man a sentiment, or a principle. To be what he represents it, it should be called principle rather than sentiment, because sentiment is a fact of life, and not an element of nature. But assume that religion originates in a principle of human nature. Man then is religious by virtue of this distinct, peculiar principle. This principle is ontological, not phenomenal. A man then is religious, not, as Mr. Parker himself seems subsequently to contend, in proportion to the quantity of his obedience, but in proportion to the quantity of his being. The quantity of a man’s being, according to Mr. Parker, is always the same; consequently the amount of a man’s religion must always be the same, whether obedient or disobedient, active or inactive!

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But passing over this and assuming that Mr. Parker is right in affirming that man is religious by virtue of a religious nature, or a special, peculiar element of his nature, we must nevertheless assure him that the account he has given of it is one that we cannot accept. He calls it a sentiment; and that he means sentiment, when he so calls it, is evident from the fact that he tells us what sentiment it is; namely, the sense of dependence. “We feel conscious,” he says, “of this element within us. We are not sufficient for ourselves; not self-originated; not self-sustained.”5 True; but one thing is the fact that we are dependent, and another thing the power by which we feel it; one thing is the power by which we feel it, and another thing the fact that we do feel it. This last only is properly termed a sense of dependence. It is not an ontological principle, but a simple fact of experience, a simple phenomenon of life. Now, unless Mr. Parker confounds the phenomenon with the principle, the effect with the cause, the actor with the act, and asserts the identity of the two—which is the principle of either pantheism, or of atheism, as it is asserted from the point of view of the cause, or from the point of view of the effect— he cannot make the sense of dependence an element of man’s nature, “an essential part of man’s constitution.” No sentiment is a principle, and certainly few people will believe that the mere feeling that we are dependent beings, which is all that can be meant by a sense of dependence, is an ontological principle, an element of man’s very being. But even if we could admit the sense of dependence to be a principle of human nature, instead of being, as it is, a fact of experience, Mr. Parker would not have made out his case. His doctrine is that there is a religious nature in man, a special element of man’s nature, that is the principle of the religious phenomena. This element, special religious nature, must be the principle of these phenomena alone, and their sole principle. The religious sentiment must be proved to be a principle sui generis, manifesting itself in the religious phenomena only, or nothing is proved to the purpose. The whole question is not, are there religious phenomena? But, are these phenomena, or are they not, to be ascribed to a peculiar element in man, “an essential part of man’s constitution,” and which may be called a special religious, or spiritual nature? If the phenomena are shown to proceed from a principle, common to them and a great variety of other phenomena, then they do not warrant the induction of a peculiar, religious element in man as their principle; or if the principle assumed be common to them and a great variety of other phenomena, then is 5

[Ed. Ibid., 16.]

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it proved not to be that principle, even admitting such principle to exist. Now, the sense of dependence, admitting it to be what we shall soon proceed to question, the eminent characteristic of the religious phenomena, is at least not peculiar to them. All the phenomena of life conceal at their bottom, in a greater or less degree, the sense of dependence. Man is a limited, an imperfect, a dependent being, and as such he enters into all the phenomena of his life, and as such he must recognize himself in all the phenomena of his life sufficiently marked and vivid to be ranked as apperceptions. All the appetites, passions, affections, desires, involve the sense of dependence. There are probably few of our phenomena in which we have a deeper feeling, a more realizing sense of our dependence, than hunger and thirst, when dying of one or the other, and no food or drink at hand, or to be procured. Are hunger and thirst religious phenomena? If not, the sense of dependence does not constitute every phenomenon in which it appears a religious phenomenon. If they are religious phenomena, then there are no peculiarly religious phenomena, and then no peculiarly religious element in man. But so far is the sense of dependence from being peculiar to the religious phenomena, it is not even their eminent characteristic. No man, not even Mr. Parker himself, will pretend that the simple, naked sense of dependence is a religious feeling. No doubt, appeals to our sense of our own insufficiency, to a sense of our dependence, are among the most successful in arresting men’s attention, fixing it on religion, and in leading them to desire religion, and to struggle to obtain it; but with all deference to Mr. Parker, we must insist that this sense of dependence is not the most prominent feature in the higher religious experience. The man who has really been redeemed, sanctified, united by a living faith to Christ his living head, is not chiefly affected by a sense of his dependence. He is, no doubt, humble, but his soul is filled with a sense of majesty, with reverence, love, joy, and peace. The divine influence flows continually into him, and he feels that he can do all things, for he dwells in God, and God in him. Mr. Parker, we admit, has the high authority of Schleiermacher6 for calling the religious sentiment a sense of dependence; but in the first place, Schleiermacher does not fall into the absurdity of ascribing ontological existence to a sense of dependence, of making it a 6

[Ed. Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher (1768-1834), a German Protestant theologian, was influenced by Romanticism and Idealism, and known as the father of modern Protestant theology.]

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principle of human nature, instead, as it is, a fact of human life; and in the second place, the purpose he had in view, the reconciliation of the cultivated among its despisers to religion, required him to define religion rather according to the principle of identity than the principle of difference; from what it has in common with all other phenomena, rather than from what it has peculiar to itself. With these explanations, we are not disposed to reject Schleiermacher’s definition; though when taken, as in the work before us, as an independent definition, designed to include what is peculiar to religion, and exclude what is common to it and to other subjects, we hold it to be faulty and mischievous. No man will, as we have said, pretend that the mere naked sense of dependence constitutes all that is essential to the religious sentiment; certainly not all that is essential to the religious phenomena. Why then assume it as the basis or principle of these phenomena? In actual life, and it is only in actual life that there is any religious sentiment at all, in actual life the religious sentiment is never the naked sense of dependence. Then it is necessary to include in our definition of it something besides this sense of dependence; not only this, but all else that in actual life is essential to the sentiment. This erroneous definition has resulted from the attempt to carry analysis beyond its legitimate bounds. The fact we analyze is never the fact of actual life, being never at best only a fact of memory. “We murder to dissect.”7 We must kill the fact as a phenomenon of actual life before we can analyze it, and from this analysis we can never obtain life; at best only death. To seek to carry analysis beyond actual life, to dissolve the living synthesis, and to detect and seize separately its abstract elements, will result always and necessarily in declaring the religious sentiment to be in itself of no value; and that whatever value we may ascribe to it, must be ascribed to the elements with which, in the living phenomenon, it is actually associated. We see this very plainly in Mr. Parker himself. “The legitimate action of the religious sentiment,” he says, but does not show any reason for saying, “produces reverence.”8 The religious sentiment, be it remembered, is the sense of dependence. The legitimate effect of feeling oneself dependent is to revere. How know we that? In a very hungry man, who has no money, it may lead very legitimately to the stealing of a loaf of bread; or in a vain man to holding out false appearances, designed to make him pass in piety, learning, and philosophy for 7 8

[Ed. William Wordsworth ( 1770-1850), The Tables Turned, Line 28.] [Ed. Discourse, 44.]

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more than he is worth; or more legitimately still, as the sense of dependence is but another name for the sense of weakness, it may lead him who has it strong to sit down, while the world lieth in wickedness, at his ease, with the feeling that he can do nothing, and that it is useless for him to make an effort. Moreover, we know that the sense of dependence never exists and operates in the human mind alone, never, save in combination with other phenomena. According to Mr. Parker himself, it combines with love and wisdom, or with ignorance and hate. When found in combination with the first, its results are good; when with the second, they are bad. But in the first case was it the sense of dependence, or the wisdom and love, that produced the good? The wisdom and love, unquestionably; for Mr. Parker himself ascribes the bad to the ignorance and hate. More we could say but it is unnecessary. If Mr. Parker in all cases had in his own mind, when he used the phrases, “element of man’s nature,” “religious nature,” “spiritual nature,” and the like, substituted what according to him is the equivalent phrase, “sense of dependence,” we have no doubt but he would have been the first to reject his own definition. We are not prepared in this stage of our examination to give a complete definition of religion; but we should define, not religion, but the religious sentiment, instead of a sense of dependence, looking out for some arm on which to lean, to be an aspiration of the soul to the infinite, and a sense of its moral obligation to do its best to realize the ideal, or form under which the infinite reveals itself to man’s view. Man has always, to some extent, an ideal; an ideal truth, beauty, good, which in their synthesis may be termed with sufficient exactness, an ideal righteousness, or an ideal holiness. This ideal is to him who has it the form, in which to him the infinite, the perfect, the ever-living God reveals himself. The aspiration of the soul to this ideal, the veritable WORD of God, the delight of the soul in contemplating it, and its struggles, and its sense of its obligation to struggle, to realize it in art, science, industry, the family, the state, and property, in every department of life, constitute, in general terms, what we understand by religion regarded as a sentiment. But waiving for the present all further objection to the account Mr. Parker gives of the religious sentiment, and assuming that it is a principle of human nature, we must still dissent from the doctrine that on this ground it implies the existence of its object. Mr. Parker proceeds on the assumption that the religious sentiment is a law of man’s nature; or in other words that man contains in himself the cause of the religious phenomena; and he concludes with apparent

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unconcern from the existence of an element in man’s nature, which is their principle, to the existence of their object, or the existence of God. But when he makes the principle of these phenomena a law, or an element of human nature, he makes it purely subjective; and a purely subjective principle, we need not tell him, is, and can be of no authority out of the sphere of the subject. If, as he contends, we have given us in the very nature of man, as an essential part of man’s constitution, an adequate cause of the religious phenomena, we have and can have no occasion to go out of man to explain their existence, or appearance; and to conclude from the existence of the religious sentiment, in this view of the case, to the existence of God, would in no wise differ from concluding to his existence from the solitariness of the lion, or the gregariousness of the sheep. The assumption of man is sufficient to account for the religious phenomena, without the assumption of aught beyond. Hence it is that we find many professedly atheistical phrenologists, admitting the reality of the religious sentiment, while they deny that of its object. They say it is as easy to account for the sentiment without a God, as it is to account for man himself without a God. “The belief in the relation between the feeling within us, and its object independent of us, comes unavoidably from the laws of man’s nature.”9 The same principle of reasoning. Mr. Parker is intent on what is unquestionably a truth, namely, that this belief is not accidental, arbitrary, nor in the common acceptation of the term, miraculous; but in asserting the truth, he has asserted in addition, as the conditions of that truth, what overthrows his whole argument. The sentiment he says implies its object, for the belief in the relation between the religious sentiment and its object “comes unavoidably from the laws of man’s nature,” and is, therefore, to speak the language of Kant, a category of the reason, or a necessary form of the understanding. But to declare any belief a category of the reason, or necessary form of the understanding, is to declare it subjective, and of no authority out of the sphere of the subject; for as yet philosophers have not succeeded in discovering a passage from the subjective to the objective. The categories are categories of a subjective reason not of an objective reason, but of reason as a faculty of human nature. They imply directly the reverse of the doctrine Mr. Parker needs, that the ME can find its own limitations in itself, be its own object, and has no need to go out of itself in order to live. The ME then is self-living, independent, and the sense of dependence, of which Mr. 9

[Ed. Ibid., 20.]

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Parker makes so much, must be a great falsehood. Once admit that the ME may be its own object, that it can find its own limitations in itself, or that there may be a single phenomenon of life, the slightest imaginable, that is purely subjective, and you are in absolute idealism, where Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason confessedly ends, and which, whoever has the courage to follow his logic to its legitimate results, will not be slow to translate, with the bold and daring Fichte, into absolute egoism. And yet we agree with Mr. Parker that the existence of the sentiment is ample evidence of the reality of its object, but not when we regard it as a category, law of man’s nature, or element of his constitution, instead of a fact of experience; for then we can find the cause of its existence without looking beyond man. But when we take the sentiment as a simple fact of experience, or phenomenon of life, it does imply its object. The ME can never manifest itself alone, never find its own limitations without going out of itself. To the slightest manifestation of the ME, that is, to the production of the slightest phenomenon, the object is as necessary, as indispensable, as the subject. In every phenomenon, then, necessarily enter as its elements, as its indispensable conditions, both subject and object. The subject is always the ME; the object, then, since it is opposed to the ME, is always the NOT-ME. A purely subjective phenomenon is impossible. Every fact of experience, every phenomenon of life, depends for its production on the NOT-ME no less than on the ME. This is the grand discovery of modern philosophy. Let it not be lost sight of. According to this statement, every thought man thinks has necessarily a basis of reality, both subjective and objective; that is, in every thought, that is to say, in every phenomenon that rises to an apperception, there is the recognition of the ME, or subject, and the actual perception of the NOT-ME, or object. Every thought, then, has a basis of truth, and of objective truth, or truth independent of the thinker, though the form of the thought, that is, the notion the mind forms in the act of thinking, of itself and the object it is thinking, may be obscure, partial, in a word, inadequate. In point of fact, the form of the thought, or what Leibnitz calls the notion, must always be inadequate, for the reality to be noted is infinite, while the intelligence that notes is finite. Nevertheless, absolute truth lies under every notion, the feeblest, obscurest, the most inadequate conceivable; so that it is impossible for us to think pure, unmixed falsehood. Man never thinks without thinking objective reality. Add to this that in thinking he thinks as sensibility no less than as intelligence; that he never does, and never can manifest himself as an intelligent

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force, without manifesting himself at the same time and in the same phenomenon, as a sentient force; nor as a sentient force without manifesting himself as an intelligent force. He must in all his feelings, thoughts, acts, operations, phenomena, manifest himself as he is; and he is, in his very essence, indissolubly, sensibility and intelligence; a force which is at once sentient and intelligent. Then no blind feeling, no naked intellection. In every perception there is feeling, in every feeling perception. Hence it follows that in the religious sentiment there is really and necessarily actual perception of its object. God, the object, reveals himself to our perception—intuitive perception, if the term be preferred—under the form of the ideal; and under this form the soul sees and recognizes him, and experiences the emotion, which is the prominent feature in the phenomenon called the religious sentiment. The religious sentiment is therefore as positive evidence of the reality of its object, as sensation is of the material universe. On this view of the case, the religious phenomena, which according to Mr. Parker warrant the induction of a special religious nature in man, warrant a higher assumption, namely, that man is a sentient-intelligent force or being, capable of perceiving and aspiring to God in the ideal; a being of that order of intelligence which is able, as Leibnitz says, to “think God.” The religious phenomena are universal and constantly recurring facts of human experience, not because they are facts of man’s natural history, but because the conditions of their production are permanent and universal. God is always and everywhere present, always and everywhere, in a degree, reveals himself under the form of the ideal, to all men, speaks to “every man in his own tongue, wherein he was born” [Acts 2:8] and is the “true light which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world” [John 1:8]. We agree fully with Mr. Parker that the religious phenomena are universal and constantly recurring facts that man is everywhere their subject; but we cannot agree with him in calling them facts of man’s nature, nor in ascribing them to a peculiar religious element in man, an element sui generis, as their principle; for in our view they are universal, and constantly recurring facts of experience, and are so because man by his general power of intelligence is able to perceive their object, and because their object is ever present to his perception; because their object exists always and everywhere, and always and everywhere in an intelligent and sentient relation with their subject. This, after all, should be a perfectly satisfactory explanation of the religious phenomena to even Mr. Parker and his friends. It is true, in our view he is wrong in professing to be able, by philosophi-

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cal analysis and induction, to establish a special religious nature in man; but the establishment of this special religious nature is not the primary object. He has learned that the religious phenomena are universal and constantly recurring facts of human life. Man, wherever found, in some degree experiences them; has some sort of religious worship. This cannot be by accident, nor from local and temporary causes, whether natural or supernatural. The cause must equal the effect. The essential point, then, is to make out the universality and permanence of the cause, not that the cause is a special, a peculiarly religious element of man’s nature; and it would never have been assumed to be such element, had any other adequate solution of the phenomena suggested itself. We, on our view, secure this universality, and this permanency, to say the least, as well as Mr. Parker does on his hypothesis, while we escape the very serious objections which lie against that hypothesis, and are spared all necessity of resorting to an hypothesis at all; for we rest on the great fact which lies at the basis of all life—namely, the utter inability of the ME to manifest itself in any degree, save in conjunction with a NOT-ME. Mr. Parker says philosophical analysis of man’s nature leads to some religious sentiment or principle as an essential part of man’s constitution. If he be right in this assertion, which we deny, his own philosophical analysis has nevertheless failed to detect such sentiment or principle; for what he takes to be it, is the sense of dependence, which, as we have seen, is not an element of man’s nature, but a fact of man’s life. Furthermore, he says, induction from notorious facts leads to the same conclusion. Induction in his hands has simply led to a phenomenon of human life, and it cannot lead to the principle in question, unless it be assumed as a fact that the ME is selfliving; that is, independent, the sole cause of all the phenomena of which it is the subject. But this no man whose opinions are of the least weight can assume; for life is, as we have on more occasions than one proved, at once subjective and objective; that is, an objective cause is as indispensable to the production of a phenomenon, as a subjective cause. But his failure is really his success. Nothing was further from his wishes, or his thought, than to weaken the foundations of religious belief; and yet, had he succeeded in proving that belief to be a mere category of reason, or a law of man’s nature, he would have proved it to be of no objective validity, at least of no authority out of the sphere of the subject. On the view we take, the religious phenomena become direct evidences of their object, because, according to the very principle of all phenomena of a dependent being, the object is as essential to their production as the sub-

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ject. The view we take, then, ends all controversy on the matter. On the one side, it finds in man’s intelligence one of the conditions of the production of the religious phenomena, and on the other, in the fact of their production, it finds the reality and presence of their object. 2. But it is time that we proceed to the second chapter of this first book, which treats “of the sentiment, the idea, and the conception of God.” Of the sentiment we have already spoken, and we have found it, not as Mr. Parker seems to regard it, a mere feeling, but as an actual perception of God, and aspiration to him in the ideal, or under the form of the ideal. It therefore necessarily implies all that Mr. Parker means by the sentiment, the idea, and the conception of God. For we cannot have the perception and aspiration, without there being at the same time in our minds a belief that God is, and some conception of what he is. But not to dwell on this, Mr. Parker means, we take it, by the idea of God, the belief in his existence, or knowledge of his existence; and in what he here alleges, his main purpose is to show the genesis of this belief or knowledge, and the inadequacy of our broadest and noblest conceptions. The genesis, or origin of the idea, the belief or knowledge of the existence of God, Mr. Parker contends, is the result neither of the argument a priori, nor of the argument a posteriori, nay, of no argument, no reasoning at all; but a fact given us by the very nature of man, coming from the legitimate action of reason and the religious sentiment, called in the language of philosophy, AN INTUITION OF REASON; A REVELATION FROM GOD, in the language of the elder theology.10 What he really means here to assert, we hold to be true, and of great importance. The substance of his statement, or the truth in his mind, which he has stated as best he could, we suppose is, that our belief in or knowledge of the existence of God is not an inference, an induction, a deduction, nor a belief or knowledge obtained by any logical process whatever; but is a primitive fact, given us directly, immediately, and which is incapable of being resolved into any other facts more ultimate, or which may serve as its basis and support. This we hold to be the truth. Man believes in God not by virtue of any process of reasoning, but by the simple virtue of thought. He believes in the existence of God for the very reason he does in his own, because he thinks it, and cannot think without thinking it. Nevertheless, we cannot accept Mr. Parker’s statement. He evidently means, notwithstanding a partial disclaimer, to teach that the idea of God is innate. What else does he mean, when he says it is “a 10

[Ed. Ibid., 21, 22.]

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fact given us by man’s nature?” But an innate idea, in the sense of belief or knowledge, is a solecism, a contradiction in terms. Belief or knowledge, take which you will, is a fact of man’s life, not an element of his nature or being. The phrase, intuition of reason, when reason is used as Mr. Parker uses it in this connection, reason acting spontaneously, independent of us, according to its own laws,11 is inadmissible, though we have ourselves so used it; for the subject of the intuition is not an impersonal reason, but the reasonable or intelligent ME. In calling the idea of God an intuition, Mr. Parker seems also to countenance the notion of its innateness; for according to him, intuition is not the act of looking at or upon, or knowledge by looking at or upon; but it is something which the reason contains in itself, lying perhaps dormant or latent in it, and making its appearance only on occasion; but yet something which the reason contains, not something which it, or rather the subject of reason, beholds. This seems to be, as near as we can come to it, the sense in which our transcendentalists generally use the term intuition. And yet both philologically and philosophically, whether we recur to its etymology, or to the psychological fact it designates, it means neither more nor less than looking at or upon, knowing by simply beholding the object, and is really applicable to every act of knowledge, whether by reasoning, or through the organs of sense, whether of bodies, events, or ideas. The idea is never the intuition, but always the object of the intuition, and therefore is objective and not subjective. Reason is to be understood in two senses. The first sense is that of a faculty of the ME, our power of intelligence, or of intelligencing; in the second sense it is the Logos of the Greeks and primitive fathers; the world of necessary and immaterial truth, or of absolute ideas, according to Cousin; and the ideal, the Word of God, or form under which God reveals himself to man, as we choose to say. In the first sense, ideas are objects of reason in the second sense, they are contents of reason not something which reason beholds, but something it contains. Ideas do not reside in the human mind, but in the divine mind; and though not God, they are, in the beautiful language of Plato, his speech; are in fact to him very nearly what our conceptions are to us. We touch here a point of very great importance. Mr. Parker does not treat the subject of ideas with as much sagacity, or as profoundly, as we could have wished. He seems to us to be unconsciously affected by the old doctrine, which makes the idea something intervening 11

[Ed. Ibid., 21.]

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between the object known and the mind that knows it.12 Philosophers have almost from the first assumed that the mind can know only what is present to it; and assuming also that the mind some how or other is shut up inside of the body, they have inferred the impossibility of its knowing anything not capable of penetrating the body, and reaching the seat of the soul. But as external objects are really out of the body, and therefore out of the reach of the mind, they can be known only by virtue of some intermediary. Hence the old doctrines of intelligible species, forms, and phantasms. All, or nearly all modern philosophy, saving Dr. Reid’s honorable protest in behalf of Common Sense, from Descartes down to M. Cousin, has called this intermediary by the term idea, and understood by idea a somewhat in the mind, and which in all the operations of the mind is the object with which, in the language of Locke, the mind is immediately conversant. It is not the object, whether of the material world or of the spiritual world, that we see, perceive, or immediately recognize; but the idea of the object. Hence the question has been asked, whether there be any objective reality out of the mind to correspond to the idea in the mind. A more absurd question it is not possible for man to ask; for it is simply asking, whether that which is the object of the mind in its operations be or be not objective. We know of no author in our language who has treated the subject of ideas with more sagacity, depth, or justness, than Cudworth in his very valuable Inquiry concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. Cudworth was familiar with Plato; but he read him too much through Proclus and Plotinus, and has failed to some extent to perceive the real doctrine of Plato; or at least to set it forth. He confounds the idea with the intellection or mental conception, and thus makes it subjective, even while contending for its objectiveness. He seems to forget that whatever is in the ME is subjective, and that nothing that is not subjective can be in the ME. Now in our view—and in this we believe we follow Plato, whom on the subject of ideas the world has not yet outgrown—ideas are never contained in the mind, nor furnished, as Cudworth contends, by the mind, “vitally protended and actively exerted from within itself.”13 No doubt, the mind is active in relation to ideas, but active not in the production or generation of them, but simply in the perception of them. They are objects of the mind; never the mental 12

[Ed. The reference is to John Locke’s philosophy of knowledge.] [Ed. Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (New York: Garland Publishing, 1976), 127.] 13

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conception, but its object. In perceiving them the mind is active in the same sense, and only in the same sense, that it is in perceiving any other objects, whether bodies or events. How the ME perceives ideas, or how indeed it perceives anything, what is the actual modus operandi of perception in the world of ideas, or in the world of events, or in the world of bodies, is more than we know, more than philosophy is in the condition to explain, perhaps more than it will ever be able to explain; but that we do perceive ideas, we have precisely the same evidence we have that we perceive anything else; and that they are really objects of perception we know, because we know that we perceive them; that is, think them. Ideas are the form under which the spiritual or transcendental world reveals itself; or rather they are the transcendental world, the non-material world. We know only in the concrete; but in the concrete there is always that which is not concrete; namely, that which is concreted. This is the idea. The three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles. Here is affirmed a relation of equality. This in this case is the idea. It is not a mental conception, does not exist in the mind that perceives it, and is in no wise dependent on that mind; for the truth asserted is a truth just as much when not seen and contemplated, as when it is. “Every effect must have a cause.” “It is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be.” “We ought to submit to the dictates of reason.” “We are bound to obey God.” That which in each of these propositions is affirmed, is the idea. It is the outward and eternal truth which the mind perceives, but does not create. By outward, we mean of course, not out in space, but out in the sense of being independent of the mind that perceives it, in the sense of not being in the ME, as its creation, or as one of its elements, or as a part of its original garniture. What we call, after Plato, ideas, have been known in philosophy by other names. With Cudworth, who to some extent follows the old Conceptionalists, they are intellections, or conceptions, though asserted to have objective validity; with Kant they are termed categories; Reid, whom Mr. Parker seems to follow, calls them principles of common sense, or constituent laws of human nature; Leibnitz, who seems to have best comprehended them, calls them eternal truths (vérités éternelles). According to him they are not merely the noemata of the ancients in contradistinction from the phantasmata and aisthemata—intellections in distinction from imaginations and sensations—but the object of the intellection in distinction from the object of sensation or of imagination. He makes them in no wise dependent on the mind that perceives them; but tells us that “their

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ultimate foundation is in that universal mind, whose existence cannot fail, and whose understanding, to speak truly, is, as St. Augustine with so much force contends, the region of eternal truths. And in fine,” he continues, “that recurrence to them may not be supposed to be unnecessary, we must consider that they contain the determining reason, the regulative principles of even existences, in one word, the laws of the universe. Being anterior to the existences of contingent beings, they must needs have their foundation in a necessary substance. It is here that I find the original of the ideas and truths which are engraved on our souls.”14 Setting aside the expression, engraved on our souls (graveés dans nos âmes), this would serve us for our account of what we mean by ideas. Leibnitz, however, like Cudworth and Mr. Parker, has been affected by the doctrine of innate ideas; yet he never meant to teach that we are actually born in possession of ideas; all he meant was what Descartes had taught before him, that we are born with what Cudworth calls the vis cognitrix, or power of furnishing ideas when the occasion demands them. Cudworth says the mind furnishes them by its own force and vigor; Leibnitz, that they come from our own funds (nos fonds); but what they really meant is best explained, not by calling the vis cognitrix the power of furnishing ideas, but of perceiving them; so that in the noemata, or intellections, there is actual perception of the object, and that object as much out of the mind as in the phantasmata or the aisthemata. By ideas, varying the terms of our definition, we understand those objects of human knowledge which, though appearing only in the material existence, or with it, yet transcend the material existence, and without which the material existence would be incomprehensible, in fact, as if it were not. In every concrete existence, as we have said, there is that which is not concrete, that which concretes, the vis creatrix of the concrete, that which makes it what it is, and is its possibility of being more than what it is. This in relation to any given concrete, sensible existence, is its idea—the ideal as distinguished from the actual, though not from the real. This we have the power of perceiving, dimly, feebly, confusedly, no doubt, but still in some degree; and perception of this is the noesis, intellection, of the Greeks, in distinction from phantasia, fancy, and aisthesis, sensation, and which Cudworth and nearly all modern philosophers fall in some sort into the error of confounding with it; making the act of perceiving and the object perceived, nay, the agent perceiving and the object of the 14 Nouveaux Essais, Liv. iv. c. 11, 14. [Ed. On this see Leibniz’ New Essays on Human Understanding, ed. and tr. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), Book 4, Chapter 11:14, or # 447.]

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perception one and identical. Cudworth even quotes Aristotle to the effect, that “actual knowledge is in reality the same with the thing known, or the idea of it, and therefore inseparable from it; it being nothing but the mind being conscious of some intelligible idea within it; and hence,” he says further on, “the primary and immediate objects of intellection and knowledge are not things existing without the mind, but the ideas of the mind itself actively exerted; that is, the intelligible rationes, reasons of things.”15 This confusion of thought results from not perceiving that objects may exist out of the mind, and independent of it, and yet not for that exist in space; and from retaining traces of the old doctrine already mentioned, that the soul can see and know only where it is, that is to say, in it itself; that as Plotinus contends, “the immediate ta. nohta. objects of knowledge and intellection, are not things without the mind acting upon it at a distance, but contained and comprehended within the mind itself.”16 But after all, Cudworth does not mean what he asserts, that the objects of knowledge and intellection are the ME. He evidently conceives ideas to be objects of intellection, and he regards them as existing independent of the ME, and therefore, in our sense, out of the ME; or else how could he hold them to be rationes, reasons of things? Reasons of things are not in the mind, for man might cease to be, and the reasons of things remain as they were; the mind merely perceives them, without creating them or containing them. There is a truth in the doctrine of Aristotle of the identity of knowing with the object known, which, though misapprehended by Cudworth, is worthy of very profound meditation. The real doctrine of Aristotle on this point, perhaps, is for the first time explained in modern philosophy, and explained too by being reproduced, in a remarkable essay on the “Crisis of Modern Speculation,” in Blackwood’s Magazine for October, 184117—an essay which for originality, acuteness, depth, and importance, is unsurpassed by anything we have lately seen from the mother country, and must have been the product of a metaphysical genius of the very highest order. We assume now, without further comment, that ideas exist out of the mind, are eternal verities, and instead of being conceptions of the human mind, as nearly all modern philosophers contend, and as 15

[Ed. Cudworth, A Treatise, 132.] Cudworth, Immutable Morality, 1. iv. c. 1, § 2, et seq. [Ed. Cudworth, A Treatise, 129.] 17 [Ed. “The Crisis of Modern Speculation,” Blackwood’s Magazine 312 (October, 1841): 527-37.] 16

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is maintained by our countryman Upham,18 in his popular but superficial work, which we are sorry to learn finds its way into some of our more respectable universities, are objects which the human mind perceives, and perceives in the intelligible world, transcendental world, or world of absolute reason, in relation with which we were created and still subsist. The intuitive power of the soul is the power of perceiving these ideas, not as detached, not in the abstract, but in the phenomenon, in the concrete, particular, contingent existence that reveals them, and represents them. When they were supposed to be in the soul itself, the soul’s own garniture or funds, the intuitive power was supposed to be a peculiar power of the soul to look into itself, select out from its stock, and bring forward the particular idea demanded by the occasion; but taking now, as we do, the true Platonic doctrine of ideas, we must cease to regard intuition as a peculiar fact, or as the product of a special faculty. Ideas, we admit, are intuitions, if by intuition we are careful to understand not the act of knowing, but the object of knowledge; not the looking upon, but that which is looked upon. They are unquestionably intuitively perceived; but in this respect, as we have already said, they are not distinguished from other objects of knowledge. There is no division of the cognitive faculty. To know is always the same phenomenon, whatever its sphere, object, or degree. On this point, as on the preceding, philosophers have fallen into some errors, which Mr. Parker has not always escaped. “Looking,” he says, “even superficially but earnestly upon human affairs, we are driven to confess that there is in man a spiritual nature, which directly and legitimately leads to religion; that as man’s body is connected with the world of matter, rooted in it, has bodily wants, bodily senses to minister thereto, and a fund of external materials, wherewith to gratify these senses and appease these wants; so man’s soul is connected with the world of spirit; rooted in God; has spiritual wants and spiritual senses, and a fund of materials wherewith to gratify these spiritual senses, and to appease these spiritual wants.”19 “We are,” he says in another place, “mixed beings, spirits wedded to bodies. Setting aside the religious nature for a moment, and for 18

[Ed. A reference to Thomas Cogswell Upham (1799-1872), professor of mental and moral philosophy at Bowdoin College, and to either his Elements of Mental Philosophy (2 vols., 1831), A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will (1834), or his Outlines of Imperfect and Disordered Mental Action (1840).] 19 [Ed. Discourse, 15.]

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the present purpose distributing our faculties into the animal, intellectual, affectional, and moral,” &c.20 This doctrine of a division of our nature, and of our faculties, runs through the whole of Mr. Parker’s book, and vitiates the greater part of his reasoning. All this talk about an animal nature, an intellectual nature, a moral nature, a religious nature in man, when we choose to speak otherwise than loosely, vaguely, is unauthorized. Man has but one nature, and that nature is identical in all his phenomena, whatever their character. He has no animal nature, and what in him seems to be the animal, is the animal transformed. Every function in him, which seems to correspond to a function observed in the animal world, is never the same, but is transformed by his humanity; nor has man an angelic or a divine nature, as some would have us believe. “Man, thus compounded and formed by God, was an abstract or model, or brief story of the universal; in whom God concluded the creation, and work of the world, and whom he made the last and most excellent of his creatures, being internally endued with a divine understanding, by which he might contemplate and serve his Creator, after whose image he was formed, and endued with the powers and faculties of reason and other abilities, that thereby also he might govern and rule the world, and all other God’s creatures therein. And whereas God created three sorts of living natures (to wit), angelical, rational, and brutal; giving to angels an intellectual, and to beasts a sensual nature, he vouchsafed unto man both the intellectual of angels, the sensitive of beasts, and the proper rational belonging unto man; and therefore (saith Gregory Nazianzene) Homo est utriusque naturae vinculum; Man is the bond and chain which tieth together both natures; and because in the little frame of man’s body there is a representation of the universal, and (by allusion) a kind of participation of all the parts there, therefore was man called microcosmos, or the little world. Deus igitur hominem factum, velut alterum quendam mundum, in brevi magnum, atque exiguo totum in terris statuit. God therefore placed in the earth the man whom he had made, as it were another world; the great and large world in the small and little world.21 For out of the earth and dust was formed the flesh of man, therefore heavy and lumpish; the bones of his body we may compare to the 20

[Ed. Ibid., 184.] [Ed. The reference is to Saint Gregory of Nazianzus (c. 330-89), a Cappadocian bishop and theologian. The text is more than likely from Gregory’s Oration, 38:11; see also Oration, 45:5-8.] 21

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hard rocks and stones, and therefore strong and durable; of which Ovid: Inde genus durum sumus, experiensque laborum, Et documenta damus quo simus origine nati. From thence our kind hard-hearted is, enduring pain and care, Approving that our bodies of a stony nature are.22

“His blood, which disperseth itself by the branches of veins through all the body, may be resembled to those waters which are carried by brooks and rivers over all the earth; his breath to the air; his natural heat to the inclosed warmth which the earth hath in itself, which, stirred up by the heat of the sun, assisteth nature in the speedier production of those varieties which the earth bringeth forth. Our radical moisture, oil or balsamum, whereon the natural heat feedeth, and is maintained, is resembled to the fat and fertility of the earth; the hairs of man’s body, which adorn or overshadow it, to the grass which covereth the upper face and skin of the earth; our generative power, to nature, which produceth all things; our determinations, to the light, wandering, and unstable clouds, carried everywhere with uncertain winds; our eyes, to the light of the sun and moon; and the beauty of our youth, to the flowers of the spring, which either in a very short time, or with the sun’s heat, dry up and wither away, or the fierce puffs of wind blow them from the stalks; the thoughts of our mind, to the motion of angels; our pure understanding (formerly called mens, and that which always looketh upwards) to those intellectual natures which are always present with God; and lastly, our immortal souls (while they are righteous) are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude.”23 We can relish a passage like this, which we have quoted partly for its exquisite beauty, and the rich poetic imagination it discloses in its distinguished author; and we have no objections to poets and even philosophers seeking and pointing out the analogies, real or fancied, of man to nature, to animals, to angels, or to God; but we must always remember man is not a beast, not an angel, not a divinity, but simply man, with one only nature, and that nature none other, and nothing else than human nature. When man is low and base, sensual and selfish, it is not a lower, an animal nature at work within him, 22 [Ed. Ovid (i.e., the Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, 43 B.C.-17 A.D.), Metamorphoses, 1:413-14.] 23 [Ed. Sir Walter Raleigh (c. 1552-1618), The History of the World (1614). See Sir Walter Ralegh’s The History of the World, ed. C. A. Patrides (New York: Macmillan, 1971), Book 1, Chapter 2, Number 5, p. 126.]

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but he himself acting in a low, base, sensual, selfish manner. When he is moral, religious, upright, noble, praiseworthy, it is not by virtue of another nature, a higher nature, but by virtue of the right and proper direction, or rather activity of the self-same nature, whose misdirection had made him a sinner, vicious, guilty. Man is rightly regarded by Leibnitz as a monad, a simple unity; but a monad, or soul of a given order, endued with certain properties or qualities, which separate him by kind from all inferior, and all superior monads, or orders of beings. It is always one and the same active force, one and the same subject, that acts in all our phenomena, however diverse they may be. If we object to this division of man’s nature, we by a stronger reason object to a division of his faculties. We recognize a distinction of man into three faculties, the power to know, to feel, and to do, and we also recognize various modes of feeling, knowing, or acting; but how acting, feeling, knowing, can be fundamentally different from acting, feeling, and knowing, notwithstanding all that phrenologists have said and done to make it clear and evident, is altogether more than we can conceive. On this point, philosophers of no mean note seem to us to have fallen into absurdities, hardly less gross than those of the phrenologists, who give us as many distinct faculties of feelings as they can discover different modes of feeling, and as many distinct, nay, separate faculties of knowing, as there are classes of objects to be known; kindly accommodating us with one faculty with which to know things, another with which to know events, another with which to know analogies, and still another with which to know the special relation of cause and effect. Thus Locke divides the knowing faculty into sensation and reflection, Kant, Jacobi, and Coleridge into understanding and reason,24 a division apparently accepted by Mr. Parker, and to which he adds, in order to carry out the analogy, the division of the 24 [Ed. Immanuel Kant did not so divide the knowing faculty, but that was how Brownson and many Transcendentalists misunderstood Kant. Kant, Coleridge, and Emerson each had a different view of reason. Coleridge distinguished between the two powers of the mind and gave reason much more authority in spiritual matters than did Kant, but he also wanted to maintain a unity between reason and understanding. Emerson went beyond Coleridge, as Coleridge went beyond Kant, in assigning almost exclusive authority to reason in spiritual matters and dividing reason from understanding, and Emerson’s separation of reason and understanding had a significant impact on his valuation of the relationship between spirit and form. Brownson, however, did not perceive the differences, but he did understand Emerson’s more radical separation of the two powers of the mind and at times incorrectly attributed the separation to Coleridge and Kant.]

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sensibility, or power of sensing, the vis sentiendi, into senses for the material universe, and a sense for the spiritual universe! Philosophers have been betrayed into this absurdity, or if they please, mischievous error, by making, or calling the physical organs senses; as if the power of sensing was secreted by them, or at least resided in them. These physical organs are not senses, nor are they the seats of the senses, or more properly of sense. The vis sentiendi, or power of sensing, resides in the ME, is the ME, and is one and identical, however numerous or diverse its organs; and facts go to prove that it is confined to no special organs as the media of its operations. There are certain states, natural or artificial, as the mesmeric experiments, and numerous other facts observed by the ancients and the moderns, seem to us to establish, when the whole body, or the whole nervous, or more strictly, perhaps, the whole ganglionic system, becomes all one organ, and the soul sees, hears, tastes, smells, touches, without the aid of special organs, which warrants the assertion, that the five senses, so called, are at bottom only one and the same sense, one and the same power of the soul, and that it resides not in the physical organs, but in the soul itself, which can at times dispense with them even as instruments. Assuming, then, that the power of sensing is always one and identical, whence comes the division into senses for the material world and senses for the spiritual world? Surely, Mr. Parker will not contend that the religious sentiment is an organ, as are in truth what we commonly call the senses. For in such case it would be either a material organ or a spiritual organ. If it is a material organ, where is it located? If a spiritual organ, what is a spiritual organ? But an organ for seeing the spiritual world, in the sense of a medium, he moreover cannot admit; for he contends that we see that world immediately, by open vision, without any medium. He even contends that we can rise directly to God himself, and as it were commune with the infinite face to face. Hence his rejection of the doctrine of a mediator, and his sneers at the thought of approaching “heaven by attorney.”25 It is following the same division, transferred from the power of feeling into the power of knowing, that has led to the prevailing distinction between perception and intuition. We require for perception a medium; but in intuition we know immediately. We know in perception by means of sensation, and in intuition by virtue of reason. Hence, perception is used exclusively of the external world, and 25 [Ed. Throughout the text, Parker uses this phrase. See, for example, Discourse, 217, 233-34, 287-88, 458.]

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intuition exclusively of the spiritual world. The first marks our mediate knowledge, the second our immediate knowledge; in the first the vis cognitrix is the understanding; in the second, it is the reason. Admirable! How systematic nature is! One would think she was made for the express convenience of philosophers! And yet this is by no means the true statement of the case. Not only is the knowing faculty always one and indivisible, but the knowing itself is always the same, and no more mediate or immediate in relation to one world than the other. The knowing, taken strictly, is always intuitive. In the longest chain of reasoning, notwithstanding what has been said to the contrary, we venture to affirm with Locke that each link is intuitively perceived. For, after all, what is reasoning, but stripping a subject of its envelops, de-monstrating, that is, showing it, pointing it out to the mind free from these envelops, so that it may be seen for precisely what it is. In sensation also the perception is intuitive. The senses, the organs, the pictures, images, species, phantasms, the apparatus discovered or invented by ancient or modern philosophers, serve merely to bring the object more or less distinctly before the mind. Then, on the other hand, in precisely the same sense in which our knowledge of the objects of the material universe are mediate, so is our knowledge of the spiritual universe. It is a great mistake, if we suppose that we have any pure perceptions of the spiritual world. We see always through a medium, per-cipio, not capio. The purely abstract is never an object of our faculties. We cannot attain to it. The spiritual is seen only in the material, the purely intellectual only in the sensible. This is what Locke himself has recognized, and it is this fact which makes the glory of his school, and is that, too, which has misled and ruined it. The grand error has been in attempting to divide our mental phenomena into noemata, intellections, and aisthemata, sensations, as if there could be the one without the other. Man recognizes the ideal only in the actual; it must be concreted, incarnated, made flesh, before it is open to the action of the human mind. The error of Transcendentalists is in overlooking this fact, and attempting to obtain pure intellections, to detach the ideal, the spiritual from the material, the abstract from the concrete, the universal from the particular, the necessary from the contingent, the eternal from the transitory, the divine from the human, and to see and know it as thus detached and pure, which is impossible; the error of the sensualists has been not in asserting that we know only the sensible fact, but in asserting that in the sensible fact there is nothing but the material, the contingent, the particular, and the transitory; in failing to recognize the ideal, which is the basis and possibility of the par-

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ticular concrete, contingent existence in question. To say that one part of the fact is sensible, and the other non-sensible, we hold is to speak without understanding oneself. All knowledge is by sensation, and in every fact of knowledge is that which is not sensation; but the sensible does not stand opposed to the ideal, nor to the spiritual. Sensibility is as truly a medium through which we rise to God, as through which we attain to nature. If any one doubts this, let him contemplate a rich and varied landscape, a noble work of art, an act of heroism or of disinterested affection, or listen to one of Beethoven’s Symphonies. What touches the sensibility, enlivens sentiment, and exalts the soul, is a medium of communion with “the First truth and First Fair.”26 Hence the moral and religious influence of art,27 and the necessity and justification of forms of worship, and forms beautiful, solemn, and imposing. We have dwelt long, perhaps even to weariness, on this point, because we deem it one of great importance. Serious mischief arises from seeking to divide the knowing faculty, and trying to make it appear that we know the material world by one division of it, and the spiritual world by another division of it; one by sensation, and the other by intuition. From this arise those vexatious disputes, those never ending disputes, among philosophers, concerning the origin and validity of our ideas, of our beliefs, of our knowledge; disputes which, when passing from philosophers to the mass of the people, undermine the foundations of religious and moral faith, and generate a species of theoretical unbelief, which they are seldom slow to translate into practice. These are to be ended only by returning to the unity of the soul, and the identity and indivisibility of its faculties, and learning that the soul in all its operations acts always as one. It is always the ME that knows, and by virtue of its own inherent vigor and energy, in conjunction with the NOT-ME, and knows ideas as well as sensible facts, and sensible facts as well as ideas, but never one detached from the other, but both together, indissolubly, in the same phenomenon. Let no one, then, try to abstract the ideal from the contingent existence which represents it, and think to make it, thus 26 [Ed. This is a paraphrase of Alexander Pope, Essay on Man, 2:24, “Go, soar with Plato to th’empyreal sphere, to the first good, first perfect, and first fair.” Brownson often uses this phrase when discussing transcendence and the soul’s orientation towards the infinite. See for example, “A Discourse on the Wants of the Times,” (Boston: James Monroe and Company, 1836), also in EW 3:70, and “American Literature,” Boston Quarterly Review 2 (January, 1839): 1-26, also in EW 4:141.] 27 [Ed. On Cousin’s view of the beautiful and art, see Introduction to the History of Philosophy, 12-18.]

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abstracted, an object of knowledge; and let no one try to confine himself to mere contingent existence; for unless he recognize its ideal, he cannot recognize even it. We hope that we have repeated this so often that it will be remembered. Mr. Parker, however, it is but justice to say, does not understand by the idea of God precisely what our remarks on the word idea would seem to indicate. He uses the word idea in a subjective sense, and makes it the synonym of belief or knowledge. His purpose is to prove that our belief in the existence of God is a simple intuitive belief. This we too believe, when our explanation of intuition is taken. But what we protest against is making this belief an innate idea, a fact of man’s nature, or a law, or the effect of a law of his constitution. We protest with what energy we have against making the facts or the laws of man’s nature a basis or a source of ideas, or of beliefs. This was the grand defect of Reid and the Scottish school, and it is the damning vice of Benjamin Constant’s otherwise invaluable work on Religion,28 a work to which Mr. Parker has been indebted all that he acknowledges. It results from the attempt to study man as we do plants and animals, and to convert psychology into a sort of natural history of the man-plant, or the man-animal. But man is not a plant nor an animal. When we have in the plant or animal generalized all the facts we can observe, and traced them to a fundamental law, or “habit,” of the one or the other, we have learned of the plant or animal all it concerns us to know. But in the case of man, after we have done all this, we have still to go behind the law, or the habit, and ask what is there. Our work is not merely to ascertain what are our habits, but whence come they? Whither do they tend? The real genesis of belief in the existence of God, in Mr. Parker’s language, of the idea of God, we have already given, at least so far as we can without trenching upon the subject of Mr. Parker’s second book, namely, inspiration, without which, in our view, man would never have attained to a knowledge of God. All we say now is that man is created an intelligent being, and when stimulated, naturally or supernaturally, we stop not at present to inquire which, sufficiently intelligent, as Leibnitz says, to “think God”; that is, to perceive him in the ideal, the word, or revelation of God, in which we are, as it were, immersed, and in which we live and move and have our being. We are made sufficiently intelligent to perceive the ideal in the actual, its basis and possibility, and this perception is the origin and foundation of our belief in the existence of God—a belief which we 28

[Ed. Henri Benjamin Constant, De la religion.]

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may fail to name, may fail to perceive is belief in the existence of God, but which we never lose, and therefore do we never become atheists, save in the misinterpretation of our own actual beliefs. Hence the Scripture is not so far out of the way in alleging that it is “The fool who hath said in his heart, there is no God” [Pss 14:l; 53:1]. It is impossible to have the perception of which we have spoken, without having at the same time some belief in the existence of God, and even some sort of conception of what God is. But this conception, though inseparable, yet distinguishable from the belief in the existence of God, Mr. Parker does well to say, even under circumstances the most perfect, must fall short of the reality. And yet he seems to us to be not duly impressed with the extreme inadequacy of the conception. Man is percipient by nature, and therefore perceives always; but he is conscious only in the small number of perceptions, so marked, so vivid and distinct, as to be apperceptions. In all these, that is to say, in every thought, there are always three elements, subject, object, and form. The subject is always the ME; the object is always NOT-ME; the form is the notion, or the view which the ME, in the act of thinking, takes of both subject and object. The notion, that which the mind notes of the two elements of the thought, subject and object, is often taken for the thought itself, and sometimes as the idea, the mental representation of the external object, and is supposed by Locke and others to be the object with which the mind in its operations is immediately conversant. But this is a mistake. The mind in thinking converses directly with the object, and indirectly with itself, which it sees reflected in the phenomenon, as a man sees his face reflected in a glass. Under the notion, or form of the thought, are then always both the ME and the NOT-ME. ME and NOT-ME here is assuredly all reality. All reality is, then, under the form of every thought; all infinitude, God and man, are under every notion, and are indispensably necessary as the basis of the smallest, least significant thought. Of such grandeur is thought! But the notion, being the view taken by the ME of the reality present to its perception, must be proportioned to the intelligence of the ME. As that intelligence is finite, and as we have said the reality to be noted, is infinite, it follows that the notion must always be infinitely inadequate, must on all sides, as it were, shade off into infinite darkness. The notion is the view the mind takes in thinking; conception is the view it takes in remembering its notions. Notions are, if one may say so, the materials out of which the conceptions are formed. As the notions are infinitely inadequate, so must be the conceptions. Do our best then, finite beings as we are, we can never have any adequate

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conceptions of God. He everywhere infinitely surpasses our comprehension. In the language of the Psalmist, he makes darkness his dwelling place,29 and clouds and thick darkness are round about him. On this point, then, we are able to agree with Mr. Parker. All attempts to define God will be fruitless, for how define the indefinable? How compress within a form of words him, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, who embosoms all things within himself, and whose works, all magnificent as they are, are but the hidings of his power? Nevertheless, we are sorry to find that the conception of progress, we mean the progress of the race by continuous growth, seems to find no favor with Mr. Parker. He leaves us in the midst of despair. The doctrine of the progress of the race, which he nowhere recognizes, would come to our relief, by showing us that, however inadequate our notions are and always must be, they are ever becoming less and less so. 3. But we must proceed more rapidly, or we shall fill up our whole Review before getting through the first book, and we have five books to examine. The third chapter is on the extent and power of the religious sentiment, and saving what necessarily grows out of the author’s hypothesis that the sentiment is an element of man’s nature, a religious nature, written in man himself by the Almighty’s hand, which is altogether better rhetoric than philosophy, is for the most part able, eloquent, and just. The religious sentiment is as universal, as powerful, and as indestructible as he alleges. 4. The fourth chapter of the first book is on “the idea of Religion as connected with the Science of Life.” This chapter must detain us a moment. “The legitimate action of the religious element,” says the author, “produces reverence. This may ascend into trust, hope, and love, which is according to its nature; or descend into doubt, fear, and hate, which is against its nature. It thus rises, or falls, as it coexists in the individual, with wisdom and goodness, or with ignorance and vice.”30 This is a remarkable statement and worthy of being pondered well. In the first place, we are told that the legitimate action of the religious element produces reverence. Where is the proof of this? Surely not in Mr. Parker’s philosophy, nor in history, as he has transcribed or interpreted it. Then we are told it may descend to doubt, fear, and hate, which is against its nature. The element, we must remember, is the sense of dependence; whence the proof that it is against the nature of the sense of dependence to doubt, fear, and 29

[Ed. Ps. 143:3.] [Ed. Discourse, 44.]

30

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hate? The sense of dependence is but a polite phrase for a sense or feeling of weakness. Now if the most active element in the production of doubt, fear, and hate, be not a sense of our weakness, and if their occurrence is not most frequent in those who are most conscious of their own weakness or deficiency, we confess that we have studied human life to very little purpose. Experience, we apprehend, proves the reverse of Mr. Parker’s statement; and he has made that statement because his unconscious reverence for religion recoiled from its opposite. But this is not the worst. We have the religious sentiment separated from wisdom and goodness. It is not the basis of wisdom and goodness; is not necessary to their production; nay, does not contribute to their production, but rises into trust, hope, love, if they happen to exist in the individual that harbors it. Now, if this sentiment is thus disconnected from wisdom and goodness, if its action be good or bad, salutary or pestiferous, according to the qualities it finds, so to speak, in the breast, where it takes up its residence, what, we would ask in all sincerity, is its value? Whence comes its mighty power? It is in such a case not a positive element, but a negative element; and it is idle to talk of its power and indestructibleness. We had thought, all the world, till quite recently, had thought, that religion, or, to speak more in accordance with the theory we are considering, the religious sentiment was of a purifying nature; and that when once kindled into action, instead of playing a subordinate part, being nothing save in its combinations, it would assume the mastery, take the lead, and convert doubt, fear, and hate, into trust, hope, and love, by generating in the life wisdom and goodness. What, in all conscience, is it for, if not to produce wisdom and goodness, and to destroy, by so doing, ignorance and vice? What else have mankind esteemed it for? And whence, but in the belief of its power to do this, its wide and terrible dominion over the human heart? Out upon the notion that the religious sentiment is the slave, or that it can be the slave of ignorance and vice. Why it is, and this is its glory, the very power of God in the soul, with which to overcome ignorance and vice, not to succumb to them. It is a perpetual aspiration to the all-good, all-perfect, all-holy. It burns with an undying flame. It may not at once overcome all the evil it finds, but consumes it ever, till all is consumed. The soul that is conscious of it knows no decline, no resting place, no peace, but in working its way upward to its native heaven. As the hart for the water brooks, it panteth for the Lord; its heart and flesh cry out for the living God; and its hourly exclamation is, “I shall be satisfied when I awake in thy likeness!” No, no, religion does not descend with igno-

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rance and vice—is no downward tendency—never has dragged man, nor suffered itself to be dragged downwards; but from the first moment of man’s existence it has been to him an angel of God, ministering to his weakness, raising him upward, and whispering to his failing heart in the soft but kindling tones of heaven, “Aspire, aspire!” But we pass over this to consider the new definition of religion, which Mr. Parker proposes in this fourth chapter. In the first chapter we had religion defined, so to speak, ontologically; we have it now defined phenomenally; there as a principle of human nature, here as a fact of human life; there as the cause, ground, or source, here as the effect, consequence, or result; there in reference to its abstract elements, reduced to its lowest denomination, here as a concrete, living power. There we were told from the abstract point of view that religion was the sense of dependence; we are now told from the new point of view that it is a “voluntary obedience to the law of God, inward and outward obedience, to that law he has written upon the nature of man, revealed in various ways through instinct, reason, conscience, and the religious sentiment.”31 This would seem at first sight to be unexceptionable, and we believe it is so in the mind of Mr. Parker himself. But when he puts forth a definition, it must be considered independently of any mental reservations of his own, and interpreted in the light of his general theory. To us it embraces more than is warranted by the previous definition given, and therefore he has had no right to adopt it; and moreover in our judgment it does not include all that is essential, nor what is peculiar to religion. When Mr. Parker assumed the ground that religion depends on a special religious element in man, and defined that element to be the sense of dependence, he precluded himself from the right to embrace within religion, as a fact of life, anything which could not be traced to a sense of dependence as its principle. But so far is religion, as now defined, from depending solely on the sense of dependence for its principle, that in order to obtain it, Mr. Parker himself has felt obliged to introduce, besides the conceptions of volition, law, obedience to law, the additional elements of instinct, reason, and conscience. Are these reducible to the sense of dependence as their principle? Mr. Parker gives us this definition—voluntary obedience to the law of God—as the definition of absolute religion. To us it is objectionable because it defines religion solely from the subjective point of view; whereas religion is objective, as well as subjective, and is the 31

[Ed. Ibid., 46.]

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law no less than the obedience. It is also objectionable inasmuch as it leaves out all distinct recognition of religion as sentiment, and especially of religion as an aspiration to the infinite, which last is its chief peculiarity regarded as purely subjective. We have been surprised that with all his deep and gushing sentiment, with all his sensibility to beauty, material and spiritual, to observe how little of genuine sentiment Mr. Parker suffers to enter into his conception of religion; and still more surprised that with his bold and lofty spirit—a spirit that seeks the highest excellence in practice no less than in theory—should yet never view religion at all as an aspiration of the soul. We do not now recollect an instance, in which this deep longing of the soul for the perfect, this inward thirst of the soul for the holy, and unceasing struggle to realize it, is ever looked upon as religion, as religious, or as in any way pertaining to religion. His conception of the truly religious man is of one who can stand unmoved amid all the storms of life, “a statue of tranquillity, with forefinger pointing to heaven.” But this, notwithstanding an exquisite sketch of it, á la Retsch,32 by a highly esteemed friend, shown us the other day, we must say is to us cold and freezing. We do not want men to be statues of tranquillity; we do not want them to be statues at all; but living, moving, thinking, feeling, joying, grieving, loving, aspiring men, to whom all is living, and who have life to impart to all. Mr. Parker has not given the name religion to what is purest, holiest, most praiseworthy in his own life. We can extract from his life a better religion than we find in his book. But waiving this, we have another difficulty. The law of God, voluntary obedience to which is said to constitute religion, which at first promised something, turns out, on closer examination, to be nothing but a law of man’s nature, and therefore man himself. Mr. Parker defines it to be that law which God has “written on the nature of man.” This means, if anything, that the law of God we are to obey is a law of our own nature, and is a law of God, because God is the author of our nature, and shows what he wills us to do, by giving us such a nature as he has. The laws of man’s nature are not separable, nor are they distinguishable from man himself. They are the man. Hence, to obey the law of God, written on my nature, is to obey the laws of my nature, that is, to obey my nature, that is, again, to obey myself. Hence, absolute religion, defined to be voluntary obedience to the law of God, proves to be nothing but a voluntary obedience to oneself; which, as we said when reviewing Mr. Emerson’s Address to 32

[Ed. Unable to identify “á la Retsch.”]

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the Students of the Divinity School at Cambridge,33 we must needs believe is no improvement upon the Christian rule, “Deny thyself.” That we do not misinterpret Mr. Parker, we think evident from the fact, that his whole theory is what he calls the “natural-religious view,” and from the fact, that he says it is through instinct, reason, conscience, and the religious sentiment that this law is revealed. We hardly know how to make intelligible what we feel in regard to this “natural-religious view.” As we understand it, while it by no means denies the existence of something above man, it asserts that what is above man, instead of revealing itself to him by a special act or supernatural mode of activity, reveals itself only in and through his nature. Mr. Parker would be the last to deny that God reveals himself to man. No man believes, or believes that he believes, more firmly in divine revelation than he. We state this thus emphatically because it is but justice to him that we should, and because that we would by no means lose sight or suffer others to lose sight of the fact, that he so believes. The question at issue between Mr. Parker and others on this point in his own mind relates solely to the mode of this revelation. He considers it a natural mode, others a supernatural mode. But what is the meaning of a natural revelation? The only answer we are able to give is that God reveals to us what his will is concerning us by the instinctive promptings of our nature. Whatever is natural, whether in thought, feeling, word, or deed, is then in accordance with the will of God. For did not God make our natures? Did he not make them as he pleased? And are they not the expression of his will? Then to obey our natures, that is, to do whatever our natures prompt us to do, is to obey his will, to conform to his law. This is the only interpretation we can give to the doctrine in question. God does not speak to us in harmony with the laws of our nature, that is, without suspending or changing the laws of our nature, but he speaks through our natures, so that the voice of our nature is to be taken and considered to be his voice. Hence Mr. Parker calls, what in one place he expressly declares to be an essential part of man’s constitution, in another, a revelation from God. The voice of nature is to him the voice of God. Now what is the voice of man’s nature but his natural wants, tendencies, desires, appetites, propensities, inclinations, powers, and affections? However nature utters her voice, whether through instinct, reason, conscience, the religious sentiment, it is the voice of God, and therefore obligatory. 33 [Ed. For Brownson’s review of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Divinity School Address,” see EW, 4, chapter 6.]

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Now will Mr. Parker admit that there are or that there can be any such things in the life of men as unnatural phenomena? Does, or can, man act—when all conceptions of supernatural influences, and of all influences below man’s nature, or of diabolical influence are excluded, against his nature, and thus get out of his nature? Of course not; for we cannot place man at one end of the list and man’s nature at the other, and have them run a tilt one against the other. Man, we suppose, always includes and takes with him his nature, go he where he may, and act he how he may. It must be always by virtue of his nature that he does that which is sometimes said to be against his nature. When I follow a sensual desire, however strong that desire may be, or however destructive it may be, I am following my nature, obeying the law of God written on my nature; and when I resist this desire, I am still obeying my nature under another of its aspects, or another of its elements. Exclude, as “the natural-religious view” does, both divine influences and diabolical, and we must say not only that man obeys God by obeying his nature, but we must say that in all his acts, in all the manifestations of his being, he does obey God, and with the strictest fidelity conceivable, as faithfully and as strictly as the needle turns trembling to the pole, or as the stars obey him in their courses, or the ocean in its heaving billows. Is Mr. Parker ignorant of the fact that the doctrines of supernaturalism, against which he so indignantly protests, have for ages been felt by the human race to be necessary to save us from this dark and withering conclusion, to which his natural-religionism would reduce us? Has the world lived up to this day without learning that man, left to his nature, that is, to himself, with no influences to reach him either from above his nature or from below it, can never get out of his nature, nor be in opposition to his nature, or do aught else than obey his nature, and therefore that all his actions, whatever their character, must be natural? And if natural, needs it any remarkable logical power to be able to perceive that they must be right, such as are well-pleasing to God, if the voice of man’s nature be the voice of God? Mr. Parker, while adopting the “natural-religious view,” and excluding all extra-natural influences, whether supernatural or sub-natural, still looks upon man as being in a very unnatural state. He speaks of the religious sentiment as rising into trust, hope, love, which is according to its nature, and of its descending into doubt, fear, and hate, which is against its nature. Here is man restricted to his nature, yet acting against his nature. But on his theory man cannot get out of his nature, cannot oppose it, cannot act against it. This fact he seems

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to us to have everywhere overlooked, and by so doing has given us, under his natural-religionism, nothing but sheer naturalism, which, we suppose, we have no occasion to tell him, necessarily destroys, in theory, all moral distinctions. The only difference between his view and old fashioned naturalism, is, that he is more consistent than were his predecessors; for he thinks man is acting out his nature in the religious phenomena, no less than in appetite, propensity, passion, love, or hate. We do not suppose by any means that Mr. Parker intends this result, or that he will accept it; but we can obtain no other from his premises. The law we are to obey is written, he says, on our nature; it is made known to us in our instincts, reason, conscience, &c. God reveals himself to us in the nature with which he constitutes us. Its laws, which are the laws of our natural development or activity, are his laws, the expression of his will concerning us. Obey them and we obey him. To obey them is to obey ourselves, the promptings of our nature. Here, do the best we can, is the conclusion to which we come. And here we see not why hate is not as natural to him who hates, as love is to him who loves, and therefore as religious; nor why lust is not as natural to the lustful as chastity is to the chaste, and therefore, again, as religious. Nor is this all. Even passing over this and assuming the law to be really the law of God, we still object to the definition. Religion “is voluntary obedience to the law of God.” This, while it makes no distinction, and leaves no real distinction possible, between religion and morality, excludes from the character of religious the greater part of our acts, and those too the purest and best, and which in the clearest and most striking manner evince our sanctity and likeness to God. Volition is predicable only of those actions which are performed, we will not say with deliberation, but with distinct consciousness. In volition there is not only perception, but apperception. But these comprise only a small portion of actions. We act in all the phenomena of life. We act in desire, in affection, in passion. Moreover, we act always with intelligence. Man is intelligent in his essence, and hence he cannot act at all without acting as intelligence. And hence again his accountability, and the moral character of all his actions, his involuntary actions no less than his voluntary actions. Hence, too, the moral character of our desires, our affections, our passions, our thoughts, and, as these all determine them, of our opinions. This moral character extends to our earliest and our latest actions, making the infant and the old man alike accountable, in a degree, that is, in some degree, with him who is in the vigor of his manhood, the full

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energy of his faculties. Our desires, our affections, our passions, all of which are actions, but for the most part involuntary actions, are those which reveal our real characters, and tell what we are in ourselves. The sin of the sinner does not consist mainly nor chiefly in his sinful volitions, but in his unchaste desires and unholy affections. So on the other hand, the sanctity of the saint does not consist in his always willing to obey God; for the good one wills to do, one often does not; and the evil one wills not to do, that often one does; but in having, as it were, his very nature so conformed to the will of God, that all his natural, all his involuntary emotions and actions shall be holy. The saint is redeemed not only from the curse of sin, but from sin itself, is sanctified, finds it his meat and his drink to do the will of God. Now the greater part of the acts of this man, so redeemed, so sanctified, are involuntary; that is to say, unconscious, and yet are they not all religious? He obeys God not only voluntarily, but involuntarily. This is what is meant by Christian perfection; the being raised by grace to that state in which all the natural promptings of the soul are acts of obedience. Mr. Parker, it strikes us, is too narrow in his definition; and by confining religion to voluntary obedience, he would, on the one hand, restrict sin to merely acts of voluntary disobedience, and, on the other hand, would exclude from religion all those acts of deep and ardent piety, of unreserved devotion and lofty enthusiasm, in which the soul seems to lose all consciousness of itself, to act without the least reflection, to flow on with the stream of divine influence, inseparable, and almost indistinguishable from it; when it is transformed, so that it is no vain boast, but a real truth, that it utters, when it says “not my will, but thine be done” [Luke 22:42]. The great truth we here try to bring out, but which we feel our inability worthily to express, Mr. Parker himself recognizes, to some extent, in a subsequent definition that he gives of religion, in which he defines it being good and doing good. Mr. Parker says that “a sharp analysis separates between the religious and moral elements in man.” Morality he defines to be “the harmony between man’s action and God’s law.”34 What is the difference between this and the definition of religion, “voluntary obedience to the law of God?” We can understand no possible distinction between the meaning of the phrase “obedience to the law of God,” and “harmony between man’s action and God’s law.” The only difference then possible for us to conceive between religion and morality, according to the definitions given, is that religion includes only 34

[Ed. Discourse, 48.]

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those actions in which man voluntarily conforms to the law of God, and morality includes all in which he conforms, whether voluntary or involuntary. In this case, his morality is broader, richer, and altogether more desirable than his religion. The true distinction between religion and morality is very conceivable. Religion, viewed objectively, is the law man is bound to obey; subjectively, his aspiration to the truth, beauty, and goodness of the law, and his efforts to realize it in life; morality is his realizations, or rather the form in which he realizes, or seeks to realize it. A man’s morality is the expression of his religion, his cultus exterior by which he seeks to realize and express what is purest in his feelings, truest in his conceptions, and loftiest in his aspirations. Mr. Parker proceeds in this same chapter to draw a distinction between religion and theology, and to declare the first absolute, identical, permanent, while the second is variable and transitory. If we understand by religion a mere sense of dependence, unquestionably we may distinguish religion from theology, and speak of it as being always the same, or as differing only in degree, as more or less; so also as we consider religion, it is always the same. The law we are to obey is always the same law, and the aspiration to the infinite, under whatever form we aspire to it, is, no doubt, always one and the same aspiration. In this sense we may say very truly that there is but one religion, and distinguish this one religion from theology; for there have been, and are, many theologies. But it is impossible to have religion without a theology. In the religious sentiment, we have shown that there is always a perception of God under the form of the ideal, and therefore necessarily a belief in the existence of God, and some sort of a conception of what God is. This belief and conception, which must needs coexist with the religious sentiment, constitute theology. They are our theory of God. Our theologies may be and will be as various as our conceptions, and all of them must be as inadequate as we have shown the conceptions must be. Now, when we speak of religion in general terms, independently, we mean ordinarily, religion in the sense that includes both the sentiment, the conception, and the idea; consequently, in a sense that allows no distinction between religion and theology. Moreover, it is practically impossible to separate them; and they who seek to depress theology, in order to elevate religion, will find that as they depress the one, so do they the other. He is a novice in religion, who has yet to learn the importance of maintaining the form of sound words. They who attempt to be religious, without cultivating theology, will either waste away into a flimsy sentimentalism, weak and weakening, or they will

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sink into entire religious indifferency. If theology is not essential to religion, why has Mr. Parker written this book to correct our theology, and reduce it to a science? Mr. Parker’s assertion that religion marks the practical tendency, and theology the theoretical seems to us not well founded. They who cry out against theory, and in favor of the practical, are the greatest theorizers in the world; having not only a theory for their practice, such as it is, but a theory even against theory. True wisdom requires a man to seek and insist on the theory that will lead to practice, and to right practice. Let us be careful how we fancy that there is in man a moral, or a religious nature, to be exalted above the intellectual. Man is one and identical. Nevertheless, we fully subscribe to the doctrine that, “Though religion itself be the same in all, the forms of religion, or mode of worship, and the practice of religion which is morality, cannot be the same thing in any two men; though one mother bore them, and they were educated in the same way. The conception we form of God, our notion about man, the relation between him and God, the duties which grow out of that relation, may be taken as the exponent of all the man’s thoughts, feelings, and life. They are, therefore, alike the measure and the result of the total development of a man, an age, or a race. If these things are so, then the phenomena of religion, like those of science and art, must vary from age to age, with the varying civilization of mankind; must be one thing in New Zealand, and the first century, and something quite different in New England, and the fifty-ninth century. They must vary also in the same individual; for a man’s wisdom and general character affect the phenomena of his religion. The religion of the boy and the man, of Saul the youth and of Paul the aged; how unlike they appear! The boy’s prayer will not fill the man’s heart, nor the stripling son of Zebedee comprehend the devotion and life which he shall enjoy, when he becomes a saint in mature years.”35 5. Chapter fifth considers the three great historical forms of religion, fetichism, polytheism, and monotheism. We have not read this chapter critically, because we have presumed it designed to be merely an historical verification of the principles we have been considering in the preceding chapters. In the main, we believe his view of fetichism and of polytheism just, and it certainly indicates much reading, and fine powers of historical criticism. We, however, doubt whether he does not fancy traces of fetichism in Judaism sometimes, where in reality there are none. We think also the attempt to obtain the monotheistical system of the Jews from the preceding systems, by 35

[Ed. Ibid., 50.]

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natural genesis and growth, will prove historically as fruitless as it must be philosophically and scripturally unwarranted. Something more than the natural development and growth of the human mind, we apprehend, will be necessary to account for the appearance of the Mosaic system, at the early epoch we find it, and before there was any harmony between it and the general intelligence and virtue of the race. 6 and 7. The sixth and seventh chapters all inviting as they are, and the much they contain that we approve, and the much that we do not approve, we must pass over without a word of comment, in order to come as soon as possible to the second book on inspiration. II. INSPIRATION To give an analysis of this book is more than we have leisure to do; and to take it up chapter by chapter and comment upon all that we deem worthy of remark, would require a space not at our command. We may say, however, that it professes to treat of the relation of the religious sentiment to God, or to be a discourse of inspiration, and is subdivided into eight chapters. I. The Idea and Conception of God. II. The Relation of Nature to God. III. Statement of the Analogy drawn from God’s relation to Nature. IV. The General Relation of Supply to Want. V. Statement of the Analogy from this Relation. VI. The Rationalistic view, or Naturalism. VII. The Anti-Rationalistic view, or Supernaturalism. VIII. The Natural-Religious view, or Spiritualism. 1. The first chapter merely goes over ground already traversed in the second chapter of the first book. It reiterates the inadequacy of our conceptions of God, and infers from it that we ought not to affirm either the personality or the impersonality of God; and that we should hold on with all our might to the idea of God, which, as here explained, is, after all, only a conception; the conception of something not dependent, cause, life, being, and substance of what is. Mr. Parker denies the personality of God, not so much because he consciously denies what all the world means by the personality of God, as because he falls into the very vulgar mistake of regarding human personality as the equivalent of human limitation. “Our conception of personality,” he says, “is that of finite personality; limited by human imperfections; hemmed in by time and space; restricted by partial emotions, displeasure, wrath, ignorance, and will.”36 We 36

[Ed. Ibid., 161.]

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leave to him to show, in his second edition, the reasons he has for placing will in the same category with “partial emotions, displeasure, wrath, and ignorance”; and for regarding it as a restriction of our personality. We had supposed that will, the power to will, that is, the power to act with consciousness, with understanding, intentionally, which in a great measure distinguishes wise acting from foolish, constituted not a limitation of the being possessing it, but its chief glory. Then our conception of personality is not the conception of finite personality. If it were, why should Mr. Parker feel the need of adding to the term personality, the epithet finite? The word personality would express finiteness of itself. The “partial emotions, the displeasure, wrath, and ignorance,” of which Mr. Parker speaks, are not, as he supposes, necessary elements of our personality, but its limitations; the conception of them is not the conception of personality, but the limitation of that conception. The limitation of a thing, we hardly need say, is not it, nor essential to it. We are not persons because we are the subject of these phenomena; but we are the subject of them because we are only limited, finite, imperfect persons. So far forth as we are persons, we are free from them. So far from thinking it improper to affirm personality of God, we hold, and are ready to maintain, that our personality is for us, always and necessarily, the representation of God; and Mr. Parker himself, in rejecting our conceptions of God, and insisting only on what he calls the idea of God, gives us God as represented by human personality. “At the end of the analysis,” he asks, “what is left? BEING, CAUSE, KNOWLEDGE, LOVE, each with no conceivable limitations. To express it in a word, a Being of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness.”37 Will Mr. Parker tell us what this is, but the conception of human personality freed from its limitations. In human knowledge, in all the phenomena of life, the ME, as Mr. Leroux has well contended, represents the infinite, not the finite as Mr. Cousin had maintained. It is in its own eyes the one persisting, identical, universal, immutable, and eternal force. From it we obtain all our conceptions of God. It is from it we obtain our conception of substance or being. Our conception of power originates in our own causality; of permanence in our own persistence; of immutability in our remaining one, and identical, however various and variable our phenomena; and of eternity in the fact that we are always present to ourselves. The ME thus represents the infinite, but undoubtedly in a 37

[Ed. Ibid., 168.]

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finite manner. Our conceptions of personality are finite conceptions of infinite personality. But “we can have no image of God in our mind.”38 True; but our minds are an image of God. Man was made in the image of God, and is, as an old writer says, “the Shekinah of God.” This is not to anthropomorphize the Deity. To anthropomorphize the Deity is not to ascribe to him personality; but the limitations of our personality; which limitations mark the absence and not the presence of our personality. “But do these qualities [infinite power, wisdom, and goodness] exhaust the Deity?”39 That is, do infinite power, infinite intelligence, and infinite love exhaust God, or include the whole of the divinity? Most assuredly; but our knowledge of these qualities does not exhaust them. We know that infinite power, intelligence, love, are God; and, so to speak, God all entire; but what infinite power, intelligence and love contain; what they really are we know only the little that we have experienced of them in man and nature. All that people mean when they ascribe personality to God is that he is a free, intentional causality. Nobody supposes that he deliberates, reflects, doubts, hesitates, and is finally resolved; but that he does what he does with infinite freedom, consciousness, and design; and that he is not a mere fate, necessity, dark, inscrutable, overwhelming; but a WILL, that can do, and doeth as seemeth to him good; who is not only a WILL, but a PROVIDENCE, that careth for all; and not only a Providence, but a FATHER, who loveth all his children, heareth them when they cry unto him, and hath compassion on them in their distress; and not only a Father, but a REDEEMER, who has mercy on the sinful, redeems them from sin, forgives their transgressions, and sanctifies them. Mr. Parker, we presume, will smile when he reads this passage. “We cannot,” he says, “say that God hates, is angry, or grieved; repents; is moved by the special prayer of James and John; that he is sad today, and tomorrow joyful; all these are human limitations of our personality, and no more to be ascribed to God than the form of the reindeer, or the shrewdness of the beaver.”40 It is a limitation of our personality, that is, it is a weakness or a defect in us to be moved or affected by prayers and entreaties! And it is as absurd to suppose that God hears and answers prayers, as it is to fancy him with the form of the reindeer, or the shrewdness of the beaver! 38

[Ed. Ibid., 166.] [Ed. Ibid., 168.] 40 [Ed. Ibid., 168.] 39

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We cannot say of God that “he thinks; that is, to reason from the known to the unknown.”41 To reason is unquestionably to think; but that all thought is a reasoning from the known to the unknown, is certainly something which we have now learned for the first time. To think, we had supposed, was to act, or that thinking is the action of an intelligent and sentient force, and when performed by that force alone, it implied its infinity. “As the absolute cause, God must contain in himself, potentially, the ground of consciousness and personality; yes, of unconsciousness and impersonality.”42 We were not aware before that mere negatives could have any ground. Unconsciousness and impersonality, we had supposed, were mere negatives, mere limitations of the positive, and therefore without any ground of being; for how could that which is no being, but the negation of being, have a ground of being? Can we conceive of a ground of nothing? 2. We are sorry that we are obliged to hasten so rapidly over the second chapter, which treats of the relation of nature to God. A more confused or exceptionable chapter we have rarely read in any work from a source at all respectable. It is a sad mixture of conflicting and irreconcilable elements, of jarring and hostile theories. What in the world was Mr. Parker thinking of, when he laid down his proposition about God’s being in space? Does God dwell in space? Would it be space if he dwelt in it, and filled it? We had supposed that God does not dwell in space, that he inhabiteth eternity; that he embosoms space and its contents—if space can have contents, and still be space— as we embosom our thoughts; not that space contains him, or that he can be said to be in space, save in a loose and vague way of speaking. The doctrine of this chapter is that God is the IMMANENT CAUSE of nature. What Mr. Parker means by immanent cause, we may gather from his saying of God that “He is the substantiality of matter.”43 God is the cause of matter, then, by being its substance. Matter, then, is a mode, or accident of God. What may be said of matter, may be said of the entire universe; it is a mode or accident of God. Is not this Spinozaism? Does Mr. Parker knowingly, intentionally advocate the pantheism of Spinoza? We deny that God is the substantiality of matter. Matter, we own, is not itself a substance, but an assemblage of substances, if one might so say, a continuity of substantial points, which substantial points are immaterial, and very properly termed monads by Leibnitz. But without insisting now upon 41

[Ed. Ibid., 167.] [Ed. Ibid., 161.] 43 [Ed. Ibid., 170.] 42

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monadology, more ridiculed than understood, and which philosophy is rapidly reproducing; we say that we are no longer willing to call God the immanent cause of nature. When we so call him, we cannot possibly escape pantheism. We regard him as the permanent, persisting, unfailing cause of nature, and he is present to all nature; not as its ground, its substance, being, but as its creator. Creation is not emanation, but the actual production of substantial beings where nothing was before. Substance is whatever can support accidents. The number and variety of substances which God may create have no conceivable limit. All these have a real but limited existence. There is no step between this view and pantheism. 3. The third chapter is the statement of the analogy drawn from God’s relation to nature. If God be present in matter, the analogy is that he may be present also in man. “If it follows from the idea that he is immanent in the material world—in a moss; it follows also that he must be immanent in the spiritual world—in man.”44 God is the substantiality of matter; therefore of a moss, and therefore of man. He is as present in the moss as in the man; for he is as present “in the eyelash of the emmet, as in the Jewish holy of holies”;45 and being the substantiality of each, and equally present in each, wherein, then, does man differ from a moss? Does God differ from himself? Is he not identical wherever present? If so, we would like to be shown wherein one phenomenon can possibly differ from another. Man is a moss, and a moss is a man; for are not both at bottom God? Or is not one and the same God both in the moss and the man? Does Mr. Parker propose to have us retrograde to the pantheism, to the dead unity, excluding all plurality, of Xenophanes and the old Eleatics?46 Creation is, undoubtedly, in many respects mysterious; and the precise relation between God and the universe no one can altogether explain. We see where we are when we call God the immanent cause of the universe. We, for ourselves, usually draw our analogy from the relation between a work of art and the artist. Creation is the art of God. In creating, God actualizes out of himself, not himself, but his own ideal, as the artist realizes on the canvass, in the statue, column, dome, poem, or melody, his conception of the beautiful. Seize in the work of art what and only what is from the artist, and the relation 44

[Ed. Ibid., 181.] [Ed. Ibid., 171.] 46 [Ed. Xenophanes was a sixth century B. C. Greek philosopher and poet who along with Greek philosopher Parmenides of Elea founded the Eleatic school of philosophy, a school that emphasized the universal unity of being.] 45

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between that and him, is in our view the image of the relation between creation and God. 4. The fourth chapter is on the general relation between supply and want. The doctrine of it we had in the fourth chapter of the first book. “We find,” says the author, “in nature every want supplied. That is, there is something external to each created being to answer to all the internal wants of that being. This conclusion could have been anticipated without experience, since it follows from the perfections of the Deity, that all his direct works must be perfect. Experience shows that this is a rule in nature. We never find a race of animals destitute of what is most needed for them, wandering up and down, seeking rest and finding none. The supply answers the demand.”47 This rule holds good in relation to man. In his case there is a natural supply for all his natural wants. And moreover he is furnished with the faculties, instinct and understanding, which enable him to avail himself of the supply. This is as true in regard to man’s religious wants as to any other class of wants. Man has naturally religious wants for which there is a natural supply, and which supply he has the natural faculties requisite for obtaining. Here is the essence of Mr. Parker’s whole doctrine. Man is created perfect. He is created with religious wants. There is a supply for those wants. If he is perfect he must have the natural ability to obtain that supply. Hence no need of supernatural aid to direct him to the supply, nor to enable him when discovered to possess himself of it. Here we have this novel theory, which this volume of five hundred and three pages was written to bring out and establish. The great aim of the author is everywhere apparent—it is to get rid of supernaturalism. There is no use in disguising it. Supernaturalism is the demon he seeks to exorcize, and nature the divinity he seeks to enshrine, and whose worship he would institute. What he means is that each race of created beings is created with all that is requisite to enable it to fulfil its destiny. And yet, strange to say, he makes religion consist in a sense of dependence. Man is created with a natural supply for all his natural wants, and with the natural powers of obtaining that supply, and yet the glory and excellence of his nature is to feel himself dependent on God for life, breath, and all things! But let us examine this theory. “Supply answers to demand.” There is not only a natural supply, but a natural power in each race of beings, and, therefore, we presume, in each individual, to obtain it. These are the premises. Man has certain wants, which no one can 47

[Ed. Discourse, 183.]

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question that he seeks to satisfy. He must then satisfy them, that is, obtain a supply, if in his power. It is in his power, as Mr. Parker expressly maintains.48 He therefore does obtain it. Whence then the disproportion we all experience between our wants and the supply? “The supply answers the demand.” And yet, all poetry, all history, all life, is one long, loud, monotonous wail of the human heart over desires unsatisfied, wants unsupplied. It is this disproportion between the want and the supply that creates the universal uneasiness of all creation, and all life’s tragedy. We experience it everywhere. As students, as seekers after knowledge, burning with the eternal thirst to know, we are never satisfied. We stand ever on the borders of a universe of darkness, which no ray of light furrows, oppressed with a sense of the vanity of all that we have as yet learned. In our affections we are never satisfied. Oh, who has found that sweet ideal of his young dreams, which the heart could take in and feel that it was enough! The purest are not pure enough; the gentlest are not gentle enough. Love is an everlasting craving, stretching away and beyond all finite things, satisfied with nothing below the infinite, nor even with the infinite, till it is incarnated in the finite, when it becomes too small to satisfy it. How reconcile all this to the position, that supply answers to demand, and that the supply is within man’s power? We may be told that Mr. Parker means only that there is a supply to every natural want. Be it so. But we have already shown that on his theory there can be no unnatural, as there can be no supernatural, no sub-natural wants. The essence of Mr. Parker’s theory is in excluding all that is extra-natural as necessary to the proper development, growth, and perfection of the being or race concerned. God appears to it, aids it only in the nature he gives it. How then can, as we have already asked, the being get out of nature, or exhibit any unnatural or extra-natural phenomena? All our phenomena must be natural. All our wants then must be natural. It is idle to talk, on this theory, of artificial wants. Then for any and every want we experience there is a natural supply, and within our reach; we know where it is, are able to get it, and try with all our might to get it, and yet all life is, as we have said just now, one long, loud, monotonous wail over wants unsupplied! We do Mr. Parker no injustice. He assumes as his starting point that greatest of all absurdities, the perfection of nature, in each genus and species, and therefore of necessity—unless we have forgotten our logic—in each individual. This, he says, could have been anticipated from the perfections of the Deity, all of whose direct works 48

[Ed. Ibid., 185.]

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must be perfect. He proceeds on the supposition that whatever is done by a perfect being must be perfect. God is perfect. Therefore all his direct works must be perfect. Why direct? Can perfection produce imperfection indirectly any more than directly? Assume that all God’s works are perfect. Then each race of beings must be perfect and then all the phenomena of that race must be perfect. Whence then the imperfection and evil we see in the universe, and mourn over in ourselves? If a perfect God implies a perfect nature as his work, perfect nature must imply perfect phenomena as its work. And hence the impossibility of imperfection is demonstrated. And yet what is the fact? Now, we deny Mr. Parker’s premises. We go so far as to say that God not only has not made nature perfect, but that he could not have made it perfect. The perfections of God are an insuperable barrier to the perfection of his works. The grand error in all ages has been in assuming perfection in nature, in creation, as the proper point of departure. But when we have begun by such assumption, we are wholly unable to account for the origin of evil. The old explanation, by means of a fallen angel for tempter, and the fall of man consequent upon the temptation, will avail nothing, unless the original imperfection of man, even as man, be presupposed. But what is creation? We have defined it to be God realizing out of himself his own ideal. That ideal, as the ideal of an infinite Being, must be infinite. Its complete realization would be an infinite creation. But an infinite creation is an impossibility. Infinite is that which is unbounded. But the Creator must always bound, mark, define his own creation, and consequently his creation must be finite. To assume that creation is infinite, would be to assume that God could create that which he could not bound, that which would surpass himself; which were not only to make the effect greater than the cause, but to deny infinity to God; which, again, would be to assume that a finite creator is equal to the creation of an infinite universe. If God be finite, he cannot create an infinite universe; if he be infinite he cannot, because he must always be greater than his work. The painter is greater than his picture, the poet than his song. But if creation be finite it must be imperfect, and not only imperfect as a whole, but in detail. We cannot then assume perfection as the starting point of any given race of beings. But God’s ideal is infinite. There must be in him then an infinite tendency to its realization, manifesting itself in an infinitely creative effort. Consequently, creation, the universe, must be infinitely progressive, as a whole and in all its parts. Here is the basis of the great

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and kindling doctrine of PROGRESS, on which we here, and everywhere, so earnestly insist. He who would arrest progress, would, if he could, arrest the creative action of God himself. But progress implies imperfection as the point of departure. If a race of beings were created perfect, that is to say, all it could become, in full possession of all lying within its possibility, which is the only conceivable definition of perfection when predicated of a limited being, there could be no progress. Hence, we say that each race of beings has its idea, which is the basis of what it is, and its infinite possibility of being more than it is. The idea of man is the basis of man, and his possibility; that which he is ever actualizing, but which ever transcends his actuality; so that man may always be something more than he is. That is to say, each individual man shall continually take in, as human nature, as humanity, a larger and a larger idea, and have before him to realize ever a loftier and a loftier ideal. This is the conclusion to which we come by reasoning from cause to effect, by strict demonstration, the only really solid reasoning. But experience, as far as it goes, sustains this conclusion. We see nowhere in nature the perfection boasted. The earth on which we tread, what is it but a crust of ruins? Are there no pestilential damps, no noxious effluvia, no earthquakes, volcanoes, blights, mildews, abortions? The “whole creation,” says Paul, “groaneth in pain” [Rom 8:22]. Religious men have everywhere noted these marks of imperfection, and have accounted for them, by supposing that when man sinned, all creation fell with him, that all nature for his sake was cursed. This way of accounting for these imperfections may not be satisfactory, but its vogue proves, at least, that the experience of mankind is against the hypothesis of the perfection of all the Creator’s works. Then, on the other hand, we are able, to a limited extent, to trace empirically the progress of man, the earth, and several races of beings beside man. We therefore dissent from Mr. Parker’s naturalism, not only because it destroys, as we have seen when commenting on the fourth chapter of his first book, all moral distinctions, but because it is contrary to both experience and sound philosophy. We do not then accept the data from which he infers that supernatural inspiration is not necessary. In order to make out his case, and show that there is always, so to speak, for man a natural supply of God proportioned to his natural need of God, he has been obliged to assume the perfection of nature, which would be to transfer infinity from the Creator to the creature; to deny all progress, leaving therefore all creatures without employment, which would be their death; and also to deny

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all imperfection, therefore all evil, and therefore again, all sin, contrary to the universal testimony of the race, and the painful experience of every man. This doctrine of supply answering to demand is all a rhetorical illusion. The assertion that we never find a race of beings wandering up and down, seeking rest and finding none, is unfounded. No race of beings, no being throughout God’s universe, but wanders up and down seeking rest, which it finds not. All creation is struck with one universal unrest. Not a heart but throbs; not a leaf but trembles; not a solid rock but heaves and throes. Man was born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. For six thousand years has the poor child, with aching heart and bare and bleeding feet, wandered up and down God’s universe, seeking rest—some spot on which to repose but for a moment; but none, none. O mock not the poor child by telling him that he has never sought rest without finding it. Man finds rest only in union with God; peace for his soul only in approaching God. He may be eternally drawing nearer to God, but never can become, strictly speaking, one with him. Always then must he sigh for a repose he finds not, and aspire to a good rising far above and stretching far away beyond him. Let no man dream that there is for him here, or hereafter, perfect bliss, any more than there is complete and absolute misery. We have here given Mr. Parker’s theory of natural-religionism, as we understand it, and drawn from it such inferences as it seems to us to warrant; but we ought, in justice to him, to say that he by no means draws, or will accept these inferences. In asserting the general principle of supply answering to demand, he has not meant to assert, what his words imply, that there is never any disproportion between the actual want, and the actual supply; but that for every natural want, there is somewhere, potentially at least, the needed supply; that is, the external object to which the want points, or needs for its satisfaction. Hence, he lays down the axiom, “A natural want of man’s constitution implies satisfaction in some quarter.”49 As a principle thus broadly stated, this is not true, as we have already seen. A want is either a deficiency or a desire. A natural want of man’s constitution is nothing more nor less than a natural or constitutional want, natural and constitutional in this connection meaning the same. “A natural deficiency implies satisfaction in some quarter.” Whence this conclusion? “A natural desire implies satisfaction in some quarter.” This can be so only on the condition that for every 49

[Ed. Ibid., 20.]

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natural desire there is provided a satisfaction. The poor wretch they are leading to the gallows desires, and very naturally, too, not to be hung. Is there satisfaction for this desire? The mother, pale and sorrowful, sits watching by her starving boy. She desires, very naturally, too, a morsel of food, that her dear one may not die. She shall obtain it, and the child shall live! All this is very comforting; but alas, men are hung, and children, notwithstanding the desires of their mothers, do starve. “The tendency to love implies something lovely for its object.”50 The same principle of reasoning again. The tendency to love implies our inability to find and enjoy ourselves in ourselves, and the necessity we are under, in order to live, to go out of ourselves and bind us indissolubly to another. But that it implies that another really exists, we are not so certain. Many of us make wide and diligent search through life for the “lovely object,” without finding it. If Mr. Parker had said, love implies the perception of something lovely, and perception is impossible where there is no object, he would have expressed the truth. Mr. Parker labors hard to establish his right to conclude from the want to the supply, but to no effect. He begins by attempting to prove empirically, or rather by asserting, that in all cases, except that of our religious wants; supply answers to demand: and then, by way of analogy, infers that the same must hold good in the case of these wants; that for them also there must be the requisite supply. Analogy, when made out, is no certain evidence; and what is worse, as we have seen, Mr. Parker fails to make it out; so that he has not even analogy in his favor. We are far from questioning the fact that there are objects which respond to the religious wants of our souls; but we do most unequivocally deny the right to conclude from the want to the object. To conclude from the want to the object, is only another form of concluding from the subjective to the objective, which is, and can be allowable in no case whatever. Where the objective is not given along with the subjective, as an indissoluble part, an integral part, of the same phenomenon, it is not attainable. Mr. Parker also thinks, we presume, that he escapes the naturalism we have charged him with, by making God the immanent cause of man and nature. No one is further from intending to assert man’s sufficiency for himself, or independence of God. In all he says of religion, he seems to himself to imply man’s strict dependence on God for life, breath, being, and all things. We shall do him great wrong, if we suppose him destitute of religious feelings, the common 50

[Ed. Ibid., 20-21.]

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religious experience, or as in any way in his own mind, according to his understanding of himself, making war on what anybody holds to be essential to religion. We are always to remember that we are reviewing the works of a religious man, and of a minister of religion, and therefore that if they contain aught against religion, it was not by him so intended. We repeat, then, that he by no means regards himself as asserting or as implying man’s sufficiency for himself. He assumes everywhere man’s dependence on God. But this dependence is a natural dependence, and the aid man receives is everywhere a natural aid; that is, not aid coming from an extra-natural source to him in harmony with the principles or laws of his nature, but in and through his nature. This, however, he thinks is not naturalism in any offensive sense, because God being the immanent cause of man, is at the bottom of man, the very ground and being of man; so that it is always God that speaks in and through the tendencies of man’s nature. But this avails nothing, because it destroys all distinction between God and man, save that of substance and mode, and loses God in nature, or nature in God. But God is not the immanent cause of nature, although we by no means separate him from nature. We have, it is true, our being in God; but our being is not his being, our substance is not his substance, any more than I am my thoughts which I remember. 5. We have, in these remarks, anticipated pretty much all we had wished to say of the four remaining chapters of this second book. What we have said comprises our leading objections to Mr. Parker’s natural-religionism, or spiritualism. Of the three views he mentions, we, for ourselves, adopt, though by no means as he states it, what he calls the anti-rationalistic view, or supernaturalism, substantially the view taken by the catholic church in all epochs of its history. We should often except to the statements and explications of this view made from time to time, as well by its friends as its enemies; but we have satisfied ourselves that it is substantially true, and that it is impossible to explain the life and growth of man without assuming the supernatural, the miraculous intervention of divine Providence. And in coming to this conclusion, we do not feel that we have abdicated any of our rights as a man, or surrendered any of our independence as a thinker. Some few additional remarks in vindication of this position, and explanatory of our views of inspiration must close what we have to say on this part of Mr. Parker’s Discourse. 1. Life consists in growth. We say growth, not development. The modern doctrine is expressed by the term development, and presupposes that man contains in himself, from the first moment, the germs

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of all that he can be, and that his whole life consists in simply developing and maturing these germs. But this we hold to be false fact and false analogy. The acorn contains the law, or, if we might so speak, the idea of the oak, but not the oak itself. It will never become an oak unless it have the aid of light, heat, moisture, and appropriate food, all of which, though capable of assimilation, are derived from sources extra-natural, that is, foreign to the nature of oaks. So of man. He can grow, that is, he can live, only by virtue of a medium extra-natural, foreign to his nature, to his humanity; and whatever is foreign to his nature as a man, to his humanity, we take it, is extra-natural. 2. We have already remarked that all creation grows, or is infinitely progressive, by virtue of the infinite tendency, we would say, if we did not fear the term would be misapprehended, the infinite necessity of the Creator—a necessity in himself, not a necessity imposed upon him—to create or realize out of himself his own ideal. In consequence of this, not man only, but all creation grows, is in progress, lives, goes forward. But it is progressive; it grows, or it lives, not in this case by virtue of its own inherent energy; but by virtue of the infinite tendency of the Creator to perfect his works, if we may so speak, to continue the effort to realize his own ideal. Man, as a part of creation, lives, grows, is progressive, advances, then, by this continuous creative effort of God. The power then that carries him onward is not his own, not the power of his own nature, but the power of God, and therefore supernatural. What a moment ago we termed extra-natural, we may now term super-natural. 3. According to the very law of life in a dependent being, and according to what is implied in the very conception of dependence, we can never live in and of ourselves alone. We have shown that thought is simultaneously and indissolubly subjective and objective. That is, in thinking, we think, in the single phenomenon, both subject and object. Let no one suppose that this is a fact restricted to the phenomenon usually termed thought. It is equally true of every phenomenon of life, of all dependent life, whatever its character, however feeble or obscure. What we call our life,51 is not all our own. It is a one life, but resting upon a double basis, that of subject, and that of object. It is the result of the communion of subject and object; of ME and NOT-ME. Where no subject, no life; where no object, equally 51 See the article on Leroux’s Humanité in the last number of the Boston Quarterly Review, and the Letter we recently addressed to Dr. Channing; especially Leroux’s work itself. [Ed. For The Mediatorial Life and “Leroux on Humanity,” see chapters 6 and 7 in this volume.]

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no life. Life, then, must be looked upon always as the joint product of subject and object. 4. According to this law of life, it is to be borne in mind, 1. That the object is as actively exerted in the production of the phenomenon, as is the subject. There is no passivity in nature. All existences are active forces, causes. The object is not, as a New-York editor52 in criticizing an essay of ours supposed, the end or goal of the subject, that for the gaining of which the subject exerts itself; but a joint cause actively exerted with the subject in the production of the phenomenon, as essential and as causative in its production, as the subject itself. The alkali and acid are both equally necessary to the formation of the neutral salt. 2. It must also be borne in mind that the phenomenon, that is, the life, partakes equally of the character of the subject and of the object. With a low and worthless object, it is as impossible to have a high and worthy life, as with a low and worthless subject. “Evil communications corrupt good manners” [1 Cor 15:33]. So the hand of an apostle of Jesus laid on the head of the neophyte, the Holy Ghost enters into his heart, and creates him anew. 5. From this it follows that there can be no growth, no advance, no progress, and therefore no life, if both subject and object remain altogether unchanged. To obtain any new fact of life, you must have always either a new subject, or a new object, or what is the same thing, the subject or the object under a new aspect, one or the other in some respects changed. 6. Man’s life results from the communion of the ME with the NOT-ME. But man communes with God and nature never directly. He communes with God, only through a medium, or mediator, as we may by and by show, and with nature, only through the medium of his body. THE DIRECT OBJECT OF HIS COMMUNION, THEN, IS OTHER MEN. His natural life is the result of his communion with the members of his race. They are his object, and he is theirs. But they, as his object, can impart to him only the life they live, and he, as their object, can impart to them only the life he lives. That is to say, if left to their natural life, they can impart to him only what the race, at the epoch assumed, is already living, and he nothing else to them. Consequently, confined to this natural life, the race must come to a stand still; no more progress, no more advance. Individuals would grow up from infancy to the level of this natural life, and there stop, struck with the curse of eternal immobility, which is eternal death. 52

[Ed. Unable to identify the reference.]

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7. Now, of two things one: Either no progress, and therefore no life, or supernaturalism. The race, we see, contains in itself no selfgerminating principle. Therefore, in order for it to germinate, to grow, we must obtain for it foreign aid, a power to concur with the power of the race; and to go out of the race, that is, out of human nature, is to go out of nature. The whole machinery must stop, unless there be a supernatural change or enlargement of the object, or of the subject. The last, we conceive, is done, but through the medium of the supernatural change, or enlargement, of the object; and it is by this, that human nature itself becomes enlarged, that the race rises to a higher and a truer life. 8. The object to be changed or enlarged is other men; that is, a member of the race. This leads us directly to what we term, in one point of view, providential men, and in another, special inspiration. If we assume the perfect equality of all men, as our point of departure, and are able to keep them equal, we place mankind out of the condition to be progressive. If no one rose above the level of the mass, or stood out from the multitude, the prophet and institutor of a higher life, the race would be struck, as we have said, with endless immobility, because it is always man that is the object of man. But one man can stand out thus from the multitude, or rise thus above the level of the mass, by virtue of no natural principle, as yet discovered or conceivable. No man can rise, in his life, above the combined worth of both subject and object. No man can then, naturally, rise above the level of his race. 9. We have now established the necessity of changing or enlarging the object; that is, of having for the progress of the race individuals, who stand out from their brethren, rise above them; and these individuals we cannot have naturally; that is, while confined to simple human nature. If they are to elevate their race, they must have communed with a superhuman, that is, a supernatural object, and therefore, become possessed of a superhuman life, a superhuman worth. Hence, in order to provide for the life and growth of the race, we are obliged to assume individuals supernaturally endowed, or inspired. 10. These individuals are what we term PROVIDENTIAL MEN, what Carlyle calls heroes.53 Their production is miraculous, cannot be otherwise than miraculous. God, by a miracle, raises them into direct communion with himself, or at least with superhuman excellence. The individual thus exalted into communion with a superhu53 [Ed. See Thomas Carlyle’s (1795-1881) On Heroes, Hero Worship, and the Heroic in History (1841).]

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man object, by virtue of the law of life already explained, receives into his own life, up to a certain point at least, the life and character of that superhuman object; and therefore comes to live a superhuman life, which nevertheless in him, by virtue of his subjectivity, becomes a human life. This life becomes, then, a new and a higher life, and is in its elements a life literally, truly, indissolubly human and divine. He who lives this new, this higher life, is the inspired, the providential man, the prophet, the messiah, the regenerator of his race, the Father of the future age. Such was Noah, Abraham, Moses, Socrates, Paul; and in a degree, mediately, Luther and Calvin, Fox and Penn, Wesley and Swedenborg. Jesus we are hardly willing to place in the same category. All these are indeed his brethren, among whom he is the first-born or chief; but in him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. He seems to us to have lived from the moment of his conception in the womb of the virgin, if we may so speak, in direct, immediate communion with God, and so had in its fullness, what these had only in a degree. They are images of him, he the express image of God. 11. This individual, this inspired, providential man, this prophet, this messiah, whom God has selected from the mass of men, called, qualified, and sent forth, becomes, through the individuals who have personal access to him, an object of communion to his race; and by virtue of their communion with him, imparts to them his higher, diviner life, which they, his disciples, through the communion of man with man, and generation with generation, send out through the race, and down to the latest posterity. Thus God inspires the race through inspired individuals. 12. This inspiration we have called that of life. The end sought by it is the introduction of a higher life for the race, through which all men may be redeemed and sanctified. It is a life, because all inspiration must needs be by a life. We attain to truth, as well as to moral worth, only by living it; and the truth, which transcends the life we live, is to us always incomprehensible. Man, moreover, is a unity, and life, therefore, implies the activity of his whole nature. He enters with his whole nature into every one of his phenomena. Purify and exalt the life, then, and you clarify and extend perception. Hence, Jesus makes doing, that is, living, the test of the truth of his teachings. No man ever comprehended the falsity of a doctrine, which he had not at one period of his life believed, or seen under a point of view in which it appeared to him not false. Hence it is said the pure in heart shall see God. If, then, the kind of inspiration we have supposed introduce a higher order of life, it necessarily introduces higher

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conceptions and juster views of all the objects of human knowledge, whether they pertain to God, man, or nature. It is the fact we here state that justifies the world in persisting to believe in a connection between false opinions and an immoral life—a connection which we hold to be very real, but which has been grossly abused, because men are always more ready to conclude from the opinion to the life, than from the life to the opinion. 13. Supernatural aid comes to man in two ways; or, there are two modes of supernatural inspiration. God, we have said, reveals himself to man in the ideal. By this ideal the race is inspired. But by the fact already mentioned of the continued or continuous effort of creation, which follows necessarily from the infinity of the Creator, this ideal must be always enlarging, and consequently presenting itself as a new object of aspiration. It therefore becomes to the race an inspiration incessantly renewed, which renders it in fact a universal and continuous inspiration of mankind; and is therefore sometimes assumed to be natural. It is the Logos, or divine reason of St. John, which enlighteneth every man that cometh into the world;54 the inner light of the Quakers, which they are careful always to distinguish from human reason; it is the supernatural inspiration we contended for under the name of spontaneous reason—that is, the spontaneous activity of reason as the Logos or Word of God, not man’s reason—in Charles Elwood, and in our review of Mr. Parker’s South Boston Sermon.55 By virtue of this, humanity is inspired. Hence what the Germans call the Weltgeist, the spirit of the times, an age or an epoch, and the cause of the fact so often remarked of men in different parts of the globe, without communion with each other, lighting at the same time upon the same thoughts, the same discoveries in science or morals, and the same reforms in church, state, or society. This universal, never failing inspiration of humanity is, perhaps, too little considered by the Christian world, and the value of the recent theological discussions, in this country and in France and Germany, consists in their tendency to bring it more distinctly to the notice of theologians, and to install it in its rightful authority in the church. 14. The second mode of inspiration is that by inspired individuals, or providential men. We here may regard as the inspiration, either the influence of these on the race, or the miracle of their own endowment. We regard them as raised up, specially qualified, to in54

[Ed. John 1:9.] [Ed. For Charles Elwood (1840), see EW, 5, chapter 1; and for Brownson’s review, see “Transient and Permanent in Christianity,” EW, 5, chapter 17.] 55

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spire their race, and lead it onward to higher, more advanced life. This special inspiration and the other are not two different kinds of inspiration, but two different modes of one and the same inspiration, by which God carries on his plans, and effects the progress of mankind. 15. The evidence that a man is thus specially called, designated, and qualified to inspire his race, is very obvious, and very certain. All life is subjective and objective. A man who lives a life above the life of his race, in his own epoch, according to the principles we have established, lives such life only by virtue of communion with a superhuman object. It becomes, then, a simple historical question, whether he does or does not live such a life. Take Moses, as an instance. We, who live now, may see in Moses nothing preternatural, or superhuman, as we find humanity today. But this is nothing to the purpose. Did Moses, in his day, live a life above the life to which the human race had then attained? That is, in any aspect of his life did he present phenomena, that required for their production a higher object than he could then find in other men? If so, his claim to be a providential man, or supernaturally inspired, is established; so of any one else. 16. But will not this imply that every great man is supernaturally inspired? What mean you by a great man? Shakespeare, for instance. He was unrivaled in his epoch. Or say Bacon, or Newton. But did Shakespeare, Bacon, or Newton, live a life above the life already in the race by virtue of the mission of Jesus? We do not find that either of these surpassed, much less equaled this. Shakespeare’s works are marvelous; but who would name his writings in the same day with the New Testament? Or compare the Novum Organum56 with the Gospel of St. John? Or the Principia57 with the Pauline Epistles? Shakespeare, Bacon, Newton, then, do not need to go out of the race. Already is there a life circulating in the veins of humanity above their loftiest attainments. Bring forward one who lives a life surpassing that of Jesus, and we will admit him to be supernaturally inspired; but any other, since the time of Christ, we can admit to be only mediately inspired, through communion with the Holy Ghost, which is the life of Jesus embodied in the true Catholic Church. 56 [Ed. Francis Bacon’s (1561-1626) Novum Organum (1620) outlined the inductive method as a principal way of knowing, emphasizing that knowledge begins with knowledge of particulars.] 57 [Ed. Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was a British mathematician and natural philosopher known particularly for his emphasis on the empirical method. His Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) asserted among other things that belief in God rested on the order of the universe.]

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These are but loose hints on a subject which would require a volume to be treated at full length, and a volume, we hope, one day to devote to it. But few and somewhat disjointed as these hints are, they will indicate, we trust, to the thoughtful, the outlines of a doctrine on inspiration, which, while it is orthodox in its main features, contains nothing to which any man who really believes in God need object. In reviewing Mr. Parker, who rejects the authority of the Bible, and usually prefers to express his religious views in the language of heathens rather than of Jews and Christians, we have not felt at liberty, nor that it was necessary, to justify our views by scriptural quotations. Yet we believe they will be found eminently scriptural; and if we have endeavored to establish them philosophically, it is not because philosophy is with us paramount to religion. Philosophy with us is not the judge of religion, having the right to acquit or condemn it. Religion is the highest authority we acknowledge, and philosophy is merely the form our religion assumes, when subjected to our own mental action. Mr. Parker, we are aware, objects to all special inspiration; or rather, he objects to all inspiration but that which in our view is no inspiration at all. When we mean something totally different from what the world means by inspiration, we should call it by another name. There is a morality in the use of names, which writers would do well to remember. Inspiration is never something which man attains unto, but something which is given him. It is breathed into a man, not forth from him. We leave Mr. Parker to talk as much as he pleases about inspiration, proportioned “to the quantity of a man’s being and the quantity of his obedience.”58 We have no scale or dividers by which to measure its quantity, or ascertain its proportions. All we know of it is, that it comes, when it comes, as a cloven tongue of fire, and he who feels it speaks words which are a mystery unto himself, which take hold of the heart of mankind, and are mighty through God to overcome the world, destroy sin, and establish righteousness. It depends not “on a man’s own will, nor on the faithful use of our faculties,”59 but on the grace of God, who selects now the royal David, now the courtly Isaiah, and now the rustic Amos from his herds, touches their lips with a live coal from off his own altar, and sends them forth the messengers of his truth, his justice, his love, and his mercy. Not unto us, not unto us the glory, O God. If we have spoken words which shall fetch their echos from eternity, it is because they 58

[Ed. Discourse, 219.] [Ed. Ibid., 220.]

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were words which thou gavest us, and thine be the glory and the praise. We are wearied with this everlasting effort to get rid of God, and make it out that man is all and in all. Feeble worms that we are; what were we, if God were to abandon us to ourselves! It is man’s glory to humble himself and exalt his Maker. Alas, the more we see of life, the more we know of our own weakness, the more significance do we discover in that old myth, which made pride the primal sin, the primal curse of the angels, and the cause of man’s first disobedience. In re-reading, since the above was written, the chapter on “the natural-religious view,” we have felt it due to Mr. Parker to say that, though he makes not the proper distinction between faith and inspiration, predicating indifferently of one what belongs only to the other, he has yet described many of the phenomena of inspiration with great justice, and with a depth and earnestness of feeling, a grace, beauty, and force of expression, which assure us that better things than this Discourse lie in the man, and will one day come forth. In simple sooth, his book is far beneath him, and his philosophy does no sort of justice to the purity, strength, and fervor of his religious feelings. We very readily confess that we think most persons who read this chapter, and our account of his views, will feel that we have misrepresented him. In fact we have felt so ourselves for a moment, and have asked ourselves, if it be not true that we have misapprehended his meaning. When one year ago we wrote our review of his South Boston Sermon, we presumed his views and ours of the subject of inspiration were very nearly, if not exactly, the same. We found him speaking of inspiration, divine inspiration, God’s inspiring men, and inspiring all men, in language very nearly the same we had for years been in the habit of using, and it did not occur to us even to ask, if he used this language in the same sense we did. We, therefore, ascribed to him our view on the subject, and developed and defended that view as his. Knowing our own doctrine to be that of supernatural inspiration, we had no suspicion that he was advocating a system of mere naturalism, and we repelled with indignation the charge of doing it, whenever we heard it brought against him by others. But when in the early part of last October we listened to the first two lectures of his course, here expanded into the first and second books of the work before us, we became instantly convinced that we had misapprehended him; and that notwithstanding the great similarity of his language and ours, he and we started from opposite poles. We saw, then, too, that as his language had led us to suppose that he

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accepted our supernaturalism, so our language might have led him and others to suppose that we adopted his naturalism. From that moment we changed somewhat our phraseology, which has led some to accuse us of having changed our belief. But we have not changed our views of inspiration at all, although we may have modified to some extent our manner of explaining and setting them forth. We seemed to ourselves to teach the same doctrine on inspiration in Charles Elwood, under the head of Supernaturalism, that we do in this article. We have always, ever since known to this community, in the strictest, in the most orthodox sense of the word, believed in supernaturalism; and instead of its being true, as some have supposed, that we have been trying to present our naturalism so as to commend it as much as possible to supernaturalists, we have been doing exactly the reverse, trying so to present our supernaturalism, as to win the attention, and ultimately the affections and the belief of the supporters of naturalism. We shall gain no credit for this statement, and yet it is true, and the real key to much that we have written offensive to our more orthodox friends. Mr. Parker seems to us to be a naturalist, struggling to express his views in the language of supernaturalists. While therefore we should demand for ourselves the credit or discredit of being more orthodox than we have seemed, we should claim for him that of being less so. It is this experience driving us to this conclusion, that has led us, upon second thought, to fear that after all we have done Mr. Parker no injustice. He speaks of both universal inspiration and special, and predicates many things of each, which are true and worthy of note. But his inspiration is divine only in the sense that man is divine. It is natural inspiration, and he calls it divine inspiration only because he conceives God to be the immanent cause of nature. With him inspiration has its source in the man, and not out of man in God. “It is,” he says, “co-extensive with the faithful use of man’s natural powers. Men may call it miraculous, but nothing is more natural; or they may say it is entirely human, for it is the result of man’s use of his faculties; but what is more divine than wisdom, goodness, religion?”60 Wisdom, goodness, religion, then, instead of resulting from the proper use of man’s natural powers, aided by the grace of God, are these powers themselves; are faculties of man’s nature. Whoever before called wisdom, goodness, or religion, a natural power or faculty of man? Really, we are tempted perpetually, in reading this volume, to believe in sober earnest that its author recognizes no distinction between a fact of 60

[Ed. Ibid., 227.]

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life and an element of being, that is, between the actor and the act, the cause and the effect; for he is continually confounding the two. Nor is this all. The view he here takes makes wisdom, goodness, religion, the source, not the effect, of inspiration. Is the author aware of the singular doctrine he teaches in this? “A foolish man, as such,” he says, “cannot be inspired to reveal wisdom, nor a wicked man to reveal virtue, nor an impious man to reveal religion. Unto him that hath more is given. The poet reveals poetry, the artist art, the philosopher science, the saint religion. The greater, purer, loftier, more complete the character, so is the inspiration.”61 A man’s wisdom, goodness, religion, are the sources of his inspiration; what then is the source of these? If Mr. Parker were asking by what means one man could inspire other men, he would not be so far out of the way. But this is not the question. Whence the inspiration which the man himself experiences? Not, whence that which he imparts? If a man is inspired only as the result of his wisdom, goodness, and religion, or piety, that is, as the result of the faithful use of his faculties, then it follows that he does not need to be inspired in order to make a proper use of his faculties, or to be wise, good, and religious. What purpose then does inspiration serve? If the poet’s inspiration comes from his power, his excellence as a poet; what is it that makes him a poet? And after you have got the poet without any dependence on inspiration, what need of the inspiration? If we have the saint, what need we care for the inspiration? We had supposed poetic inspiration necessary to constitute the poet, but Mr. Parker has discovered that the poetic inspiration is the result of the fact, that one is a poet. We had thought inspiration necessary to enable one to be wise, good, religious; but Mr. Parker corrects us, and assures us that it is necessary to be wise, good, and religious, in order to be inspired. The great end of life, we presume no one will question, is fulfilled when one is truly wise, good, and religious. We ask again, then, the use of inspiration? Surely, it is bad economy to produce a thing so costly, when we can make no use of it; when it can serve no purpose, and is not needed to enable us to fulfil the great ends of life. We have observed, from the beginning of this volume to the end, an apparently studied effort to represent all that has usually been considered by religious people as essential, to be entirely unnecessary. Thus religion itself is made to derive its character, and all its worth from the wisdom and goodness it finds in the breast where it lodges. So we do not need religion in order to be wise and good. What then do we need it for, but to make us 61

[Ed. Ibid., 221.]

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foolish and wicked? And now inspiration is made to depend on our wisdom, goodness, and religion; consequently we have no need of inspiration in order to be wise, good, and religious. What then do we need it for; to be foolish, wicked, and irreligious? By and by we shall see the same thing when we come to Christianity. We shall have Christianity distinguished from absolute religion; absolute religion declared to be the only religion necessary, to be also easily ascertained, while a relative, historical form of religion, like Christianity, is exceedingly difficult to learn, and one hardly knows when he has learned it. If absolute religion is enough, and Christianity is not that religion, what need of Christianity? If a knowledge of absolute religion is plain and easy to be acquired, and that of Christianity difficult, why trouble oneself about Christianity at all? Is Mr. Parker aware whither all this leads? If so, it will be hard to clear him of disingenuousness; if not, he writes with an almost inexcusable degree of carelessness. “Now, as in the days of Adam, Moses, Jesus, he that is faithful to reason, conscience, and religion, will, through them, receive inspiration to guide him through all his pilgrimage.”62 Very true; so he, who will exercise his reason, will be cured of his insanity. Nothing more true. But alas, the inability to exercise reason is the insanity! “Reason, conscience, religion, mediate between us and God, as the senses do between us and matter.”63 Here is the key to Mr. Parker’s theory. The natural activity of reason, conscience, religion (piety?), is precisely what he means by inspiration. The activity of reason, conscience, religion, is the ME, ourselves, our self. Consequently when we act reasonably, conscientiously, religiously, we are inspired—act by inspiration. We have the natural ability so to act, and therefore the natural ability to be inspired. There is no more need of any supernatural aid to be reasonable, conscientious, and religious, than to eat, drink, or sleep. All may be done in accordance with and by virtue of natural laws. If this is not excluding God, as a free Providence, from the moral world, we know not what is. This, we think, justifies us in calling Mr. Parker’s system sheer naturalism, and proves that we have not misinterpreted his view of inspiration. But to make the matter doubly sure, let us hear Mr. Parker still further, and penetrate if possible his secret thought. Speaking of the fact of inspiration, he says, “It takes the rose out of the cheek, turns the man in upon himself, and gives him more of truth. Then, in a 62

[Ed. Ibid., 234.] [Ed. Ibid., 227.]

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poetic fancy, the man sees visions; has wondrous revelations; every mountain thunders; God burns in every bush; flames out in the crimson cloud; speaks in the wind; descends with every dove; is all in all. The soul, deep-wrought, in its intense struggle, gives outness to its thought, and on the trees and stars, the fields, the floods, the corn ripe for the sickle, on man, and woman, it sees its burden writ. The Spirit within constrains the man.”64 That is, the soul struggles to utter what it feels, constrained by its own intense, earnest spirit, and what it reads as the “burden of the Lord,” is merely what it has projected from itself in endeavoring to give outness to its thought. Once for all, does Mr. Parker recognize any distinction between the soul of man and God, or does he not? We feel almost authorized, from his apparent delight in designating God as the great SOUL OF ALL, to say that he does not. If he does, how can he call the struggles of the soul to give outness to its thoughts, and in poetic fancy writing them on trees, stars, fields, floods, corn, man, and woman, the receiving of the truth of God into the soul? The man “is full of God. While he muses the fire burns; his bosom will scarce hold his heart. He must speak, or he dies, though the earth quake at his word. Timid flesh may resist, and Moses say, I am slow of speech. What avails that? The soul says, go, and I will be with thy mouth, to quicken thy tardy tongue.”65 This is very kind in the soul, for if it should refuse to go with him, Moses would be obliged to go without his soul. Really, this is carrying the poetic license a little too far. We can take much by way of joke or pleasantry; but when a man in downright earnest, in a passage as high wrought as the one from which we quote, talks about a man’s soul rising up and telling him not to be faint-hearted, not to hesitate because he is not of a ready speech, for it will go with him, be with his mouth, and quicken his tongue, we hardly know whether to grieve or to laugh. Mr. Parker unquestionably admits degrees of inspiration and that some are more inspired than others, because they are more obedient, and because they were created with a greater quantity of being. Is not God unjust, partial, capricious, in creating one man with a greater quantity of being than another? But let that pass. These men—for “inspiration, then, is the consequence of a faithful use of our faculties,”66—are not selected out from among their brethren, and specially called and qualified by their Maker through his grace to be his 64

[Ed. Ibid., 223.] [Ed. Ibid., 224.] 66 [Ed. Ibid., 220.] 65

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agents, messengers, or ministers in the accomplishment of his purposes. Indeed, according to Mr. Parker, there does not seem to be any grand providential scheme or plan in the universe, which God is fulfilling, and for the fulfilling of which he raiseth up whom he will and putteth down whom he will, making one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor; or indeed if such plan there be, God raises up no special agents for carrying it on, but makes use of such agents as he finds already furnished to his hand. Thus the specially inspired are not specially inspired to accomplish God’s purposes, but are chosen to accomplish those purposes because they are specially inspired, that is, specially qualified by their own wisdom, goodness, religion, or the faithful use of their own faculties. Hence, they, who have believed that God selects, calls his agents before they are born, and sanctifies then from the womb, are greatly mistaken. We bear the “burden of the Lord,” because he sees that we are strong, and able; and he chooses us to bear it, because he sees that we are able. This is the doctrine we are now to subscribe to! See me, who venture to stand forth in the eyes of the world, the herald of new views. The world denounces me, society scowls upon me, my brother abandons me, but why shall I feel it, or be cast down? Has not God chosen me to be the messenger of his truth? And me, of all men, because I am wiser, better, more religious? Was ever a doctrine more flattering to human pride? O, my brother, if you and I have been chosen to speak to this age words of which it hath need, and to bear the reproach, it is not because we are better, or dearer to God than our brethren, nor because we are stronger or more able to bear the “burden”; but because God’s Providence requires certain individuals to be selected, and it might as well be us as any others; and which of us would not, if we could, like Jonah, flee from the face of the Lord, and so escape the terrible mission of rebuking one’s age, and denouncing the judgments of God upon one’s own city? O my brother, bear with me. This view of thine may seem to thee wise, just, beautiful; but to me, alas, who know what it is to feel my own weakness, and the damning brand of guilt on my heart, and the deep hell of remorse burning in my bosom, this view brings nothing but the blackness of despair. A God, who does nothing till man takes the initiative, and appoints none to a work to which they have not appointed themselves, is to us as no God at all. We want a moral governor in this universe. We want a Father, a merciful Redeemer, who does not wait for our tardy movements, and frown upon us till we, unaided, have become pure and blameless in his sight; but that comes to us, all defiled as we are, that says to us, all outcasts as we are,

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weltering in our own blood, LIVE. O leave us the hope that there is in heaven one mighty to save, for the arm of flesh fails us. O leave the poor sinner, eating husks with the swine, the thought that he has yet a Father, and a Father’s house to which he may return. Think well of it; if in thy zeal thou art not sweeping away every hope that was left us. To thee who mayst not have felt the burden of sin lie heavy on thy conscience, this may be all foolishness; but I tell thee, my brother, that though I should be unable to sweep away the sophistry that hides my God from me, though I had nothing to answer to thy cold and freezing doctrine of human ability, I would not, I could not embrace it. I know something of the pride of the philosopher, and of the reasoner; but I would forswear philosophy, reason, and even, if possible, thought itself, sooner than the sweet hope of a Savior’s love, which makes the heart of the humblest believer glad. III. CHRISTIANITY We come now to the third book, entitled The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to Jesus of Nazareth, or a Discourse of Christianity. It consists of seven chapters. I. Statement of the Question and the Method of Inquiry. II. Removal of Some Difficulties. Character of the Christian Records. III. The Main Features of Christianity. IV. The Authority of Jesus, its Real and Pretended Source. V. The Essential Peculiarity of the Christian Religion. VI. The Moral and Religious Character of Jesus. VII. Mistakes about Jesus—his Reception and Influence. A glance at the titles of these chapters will satisfy anyone that for Christianity Mr. Parker understands something very different from the Christianity of the church, and that he forms a totally different estimate of it from that usually formed by Christian ministers. We have no room left us to follow him as closely as we could wish, and must content ourselves with touching, in the briefest manner possible, a few of the more important doctrines he sets forth. 1. The question to be asked and answered in relation to Christianity is very simple. Religion originates in, and depends upon, a special religious element in man, namely, the religious sentiment. That which exhausts the religious sentiment, or answers exactly to all its demands, is absolute religion—religion as it exists in the facts of man’s nature, everywhere and always the true religion, the only true religion, and all the religion man needs for the perfection of his character. The simple question as to the relation of the religious sentiment to Jesus of Nazareth, or to Christianity, then, is, did Jesus, or did he

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not, teach absolute religion? Does Christianity, or does it not, coincide with absolute religion? If the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, which are Christianity, conform to absolute religion, they are true and authoritative; if not, just so far as they do not, they are false and without authority. The question itself suggests the method of inquiry, or way we must take to answer it. It is a plain, simple question of history and criticism. We do not ask what is religion? Is Christianity true? Is it, or is it not, sustained by miracles? But simply, what is Christianity? In settling this question, miracles and the character of Jesus are of no account. We have only to consult the records of Christianity, whatever they be, wherever deposited, and to the best of our ability ascertain from them what Jesus really taught, what Christianity really is. Having done this, we are to compare it with absolute religion, and note the agreement or disagreement. This is very plausible, and may seem to many quite conclusive; but it proceeds on an assumption which we cannot allow; namely, that man, independently of Christianity, is in possession of absolute religion. Mr. Parker names absolute religion the standard-measure by which to try Christianity. This evidently presupposes that we have absolute religion in our possession, otherwise we could not use it as a standard. But absolute religion is all the religion we want. If we can have that, nay, if we actually have that without Christianity, what is the use of Christianity? What need of troubling ourselves about it, even so much as to inquire whether it agree with absolute religion, or not? But is it true that we are in possession of absolute religion, independently of Christianity? “Absolute religion is perfect obedience to the law of God.”67 No man can possess it, then, since in this case it is a fact of life, not an element of nature, without actually yielding the perfect obedience required. To yield this perfect obedience is to attain to the perfection of the human character. If then every man is in possession of absolute religion, it follows that every man yields perfect obedience to the law of God, and is perfect. Will Mr. Parker admit this conclusion? But it may be said that Mr. Parker does not mean to assert that every man possesses, as a fact of his life, absolute religion in the sense here assumed; but that every man has by virtue of his natural powers, independent of Christianity, or any other professedly supernatural religion, a true conception and knowledge of what is absolute reli67

[Ed. Ibid., 241.]

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gion. It is not the religion, but the knowledge of it, that every man possesses. Well, be it so. We know by living; no man knows love but by loving; obedience but by obeying. Consequently, in order to know what perfect obedience to the law of God is, one must be perfectly obedient. Hence, we return to the same conclusion. Absolute religion is all that is essential to the perfection of the human character. But knowledge itself is an element of human perfection, consequently an element of absolute religion. A perfect knowledge of absolute religion would imply, then, all the knowledge a human being can possibly possess. A character, which has not attained to the utmost limits of its possibility in all directions, is not perfect. This implies that it must attain to its utmost limits in knowledge, as well as in anything else. Consequently, so long as there is any knowledge possible, not yet attained, the character is imperfect. Hence, the assumption, that man has a perfect knowledge of what is absolute religion, involves the assumption, that he already has perfect knowledge; that is to say, he knows all that it is possible for a human being to know. Surely he, who knows what is absolute religion, may be said to know all that man can know, or needs to know. Every man knows this, according to Mr. Parker’s assumption. Why then talk of ignorance? Why write startling and eloquent sermons, essays, lectures, and huge volumes for the enlightenment of the people, when every man, woman, and child is already in possession of all possible knowledge? Why berate so unmercifully even our American priests, who stand in our way, and intercept the light that would shine in upon us from the newly risen theological sun of Germany? But this is all idle. Even Mr. Parker, with all his learning, philosophy, and natural sagacity, aided by all the helps, natural or supernatural, to be obtained from human experience, cannot pretend to a full or even a competent knowledge of absolute religion. In the first place, what he defines to be absolute religion, we have shown, leaves out several important elements of religion. But waiving this, taking his definition as substantially correct, we must still be told much more than he tells us, before we are told what it really is. “Perfect obedience to the law of God.” What is obedience? What is the law of God? What are all its practical requirements in the several departments of life? For the law of God extends to every thought, word, and deed. Can Mr. Parker, can any man answer these questions? At best, only imperfectly; for it needs infinite knowledge to answer them perfectly. Who can tell in every instance what is the exact thought the law of God requires him to think? The exact word to speak? The exact deed to perform?

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We must therefore object to Mr. Parker’s statement of the question. On his own ground, the question is one of mere idle curiosity, and not worth considering; and since we are in possession neither of absolute religion, nor of an absolute knowledge of what is absolute religion, we cannot assume absolute religion as the standard by which to try Christianity. The question of the agreement or disagreement of Christianity with absolute religion is not then an open question. No mortal has the right to ask it; for no mortal, in point of fact, has the power to conceive it, much less to answer it. The true question is, do our views of absolute religion agree or disagree with Christianity? We do not assume in this statement that Christianity is the full, the ultimate expression of absolute religion. For aught we know, there may be higher revelations than those made by Jesus. On that point we assume nothing, one way or the other. We merely assume that Christianity is the fullest revelation that has been made to us, and therefore our highest authority for what is absolute religion. Mr. Parker seeks an authority for Christianity, when in fact Christianity is itself the highest authority he has by which to test it. Instead then of assuming an ideal standard, by which to try Christianity, we take Christianity itself as the ideal standard, by which we are to try all our own conceptions of truth, beauty, goodness. “By what authority do you assume Christianity as the ideal of truth, beauty, and goodness; and therefore as in all cases the law men must obey?” We reply that we suppose it will be conceded us that a man’s ideal is his ideal. What then in point of fact is the ideal of all men, born and brought up in Christendom? Is it not Christianity? Has any one in his loftiest flights been able to soar above or beyond the Christian ideal? No. Mr. Parker will not pretend it; and if he does, we defy him to name us a conception transcending the Christian ideal. The question then is answered. Our authority for taking the Christian ideal is that it is the ideal. The question is really as inappropriate, as it would be to ask one, what is his authority for believing that what is the highest to him, is the highest to him? The authority of Christianity is established the moment it is conceded to be the ideal. The ideal is given us by our Maker. It is the form under which God reveals himself to mankind, and Christianity is the form under which the ideal comes to us. It is for us the absolute. It is Immanuel, God with us. It is itself the sovereign, and therefore has no need to appeal to an authority beyond itself. Our question then is not, what right have we to assume the Christian ideal to be the ideal; but, how far have we realized, and how can we continue to realize

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more and more the Christian ideal, in industry, science, art, in every department and act of life? Here is the question. The great mistake has been in fancying the authority of Christianity an open question, or a question at all. It is no question, and save in words it cannot be asked and never can be asked, till some one arises, who discloses to us an ideal above Christianity, which shall be a standard by which to try Christianity. Till then, Christianity is sovereign Lord and judge. We see this everywhere. Wrangle and fight as we may, we never transcend the Christian ideal. Shakespeare, Bacon, Descartes, Newton, Locke, never go beyond it. Voltaire, the English Deists, German Rationalists, American Transcendentalists, have none of them disclosed an ideal above the Christian, and therefore dethroned the Christian. Christ stands supreme as yet in the whole life of Christendom, and the arrows aimed at him by his infidel foes are stolen from the quiver of the gospel. If the ideal of the infidel—assuming it possible for an infidel to have an ideal—differs from the Christian, it is not by rising above it. We are far from thinking with Mr. Parker that considerations of the miracles, and the character of Jesus and the Bible writers, may be waived, as having no bearing on the question before us. They have indeed no bearing on the question which he asks; but this is not the true question. Our great need is not to be able to determine whether Christianity agree with absolute religion or not, but to be instructed in relation to the practical requirements of absolute religion itself. Instead of its being, as Mr. Parker says, no difficult matter to ascertain what is absolute religion, we hold that this is precisely the difficult matter, and the only difficult matter. This is the question which all men in some form or other are asking; to which, with what skill and force are in them, they are seeking an answer; and to which no man has ever yet found a full and satisfactory answer. All answers, the best even, must be only proximate, and these we have shown can be obtained only supernaturally. To say, then, that it makes no difference who or what were the instructors, is to fall into the grossest of mistakes. For none but miraculous persons, or supernaturally inspired individuals, can possibly give us any instructions worth having; and these instructions, as we have already demonstrated, in discussing inspiration, are, and must be communicated to the world through the medium of a life. The error of those whom Mr. Parker wars against and, which has occasioned his own, has not been in contending for the necessity of supernatural revelation, to enable us to perceive religious truths, but in contending that, after we do perceive these truths, we need miracles,

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or the authority of a miraculous person to endorse them, before we have the right to call them truths. Truth needs no backers. The office of the miracle, or of the miraculous personage, is not to endorse the truth, to assure us that we may believe it without any impeachment of our morals or our understanding; but to elevate us by inspiring us, exalting and purifying our sentiments, to the perception of the truth, that would otherwise be beyond the reach of our intelligence. When we are once elevated to its perception, the work is done. We are made capable of knowing the truth, when we see it. This is what is implied in the simple fact of knowing. We know the truth by perceiving it; intuitively, by looking on it. This is the doctrine of Jonathan Edwards,68 and of the great body of Christian writers in all ages of the church. It is the doctrine Mr. Ripley, whom we consider in metaphysics or theology an authority second to none in this country, maintains in his controversy with Mr. Norton;69 and it is the doctrine which we in our humble way have uniformly maintained from the first establishment of this journal.70 But all truth does not lie, to borrow Mr. Parker’s expression, “in the plane of man’s consciousness.”71 Man is created capable of knowing the truth when he sees it, but not capable of seeing all truth, nor all truth needful for him. He needs miracles and miraculous persons as revelators, as media by which he can rise to the perception of the truth, but not, as we have understood Mr. Norton and others to contend, to be an authority for believing the truth after the mind has grasped it. This distinction between miracles to reveal the truth, and miracles to authorize us to believe the truth, which is the distinction insisted on by Mr. Parker’s friends, and which they hold to be of great importance, Mr. Parker himself does not appear to have noticed at all; and he seems to have taken it for granted that those of us, who have 68 [Ed. Brownson is referring here to Jonathan Edwards’ (1703-58) sermon “The Divine and Supernatural Light,” which Brownson had read in The Works of President Edwards, ed. Samuel Austin, 8 vols. (Worcester: Isaiah Thomas, 1809), 8:296-99.] 69 [Ed. On George Ripley’s controversy with Andrews Norton on the meaning of miracles, see for example Ripley’s letter to the editor of the Boston Daily Advertiser (November 9, 1836) and his “The Latest Form of Infidelity” Examined. A Letter to Mr. Andrews Norton (Boston: James Munroe, 1839). For a historical examination of the controversy, see William R. Hutchison, The Transcendentalist Ministers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1959), 52-97.] 70 [Ed. For one of the clearest examples of Brownson’s view, see “Philosophy and Common Sense,” Boston Quarterly Review 1 (January, 1838): 83-106, also in EW, 3, chapter 15.] 71 [Ed. Discourse, 32.]

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contended for man’s power to know the truth by seeing it, have meant, that we have the natural power of seeing all truth needed for us and therefore have no occasion for supernatural aid, either to reveal the truth, or to be our authority for believing it. If Mr. Parker had fixed clearly in his mind the distinction we have here pointed out, we think he would not have separated from his friends, and put forth a doctrine which, so far as our knowledge goes, none of them have ever entertained. 2. But we suspect that, after all, we differ radically from Mr. Parker in our conceptions of Christianity. We differ radically from him in our conceptions of man himself. Mr. Parker views man as in and of himself competent both to know and to do whatever is required of him by absolute religion. That the first assumption is unwarranted, we have sufficiently proved; that the second is also unwarranted, is evident from the fact that the world over, man’s power to do falls short of his power to know. In our view, man stands in need of two things: 1. INSTRUCTION as to what is God’s law and its requirements; and 2. STRENGTH to obey that law, to conform practically to those requirements. Both, so far as he comes to possess them, are acquired by growth; and growth, we have seen, is possible only by means of the conjunction of the natural and the supernatural. These two things, in harmony with our natural constitution, it is the design of Christianity to furnish. Christianity assumes man to be ignorant and weak, and it proposes to make him wise and strong. But according to Mr. Parker, all it does or proposes to do, is to say to man, Be wise, be strong; imparting to him never a particle of wisdom or strength. According to our view, it is wisdom and strength; Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God; made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption. Yet this, so insisted upon by St. Paul,72 Mr. Parker nowhere contemplates. He asks no favors; he will receive nothing through grace. He condemns popular theology, because, as he says, “its heaven is a place no man has a right to. Would a good man willingly accept of that which is not his? Pray for it?”73 But if Mr. Parker wants Christianity neither as a medium of knowledge nor of strength, for what does he want it? One is almost tempted to say, he wants it for nothing at all; wants nothing of it,

72 73

[Ed. 1 Cor 1:24, 30.] [Ed. Discourse, 6.]

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save what Diogenes wanted of Alexander;74 that is, that it should stand out of his sunshine, so that he may receive, without their being intercepted, the clear light and cheering warmth of absolute religion. But not to insist on this, what after all is in his view the essential peculiarity of Christianity; which again must, since he has identified Christianity with it, be also his view of the essential elements of absolute religion? His statement, like most of his statements, is in a form so negative, that it is not easy to answer this question; but we will answer it as well as we can. As near as we can come to it, it is, 1. FREEDOM from all and every obligation to obey anything but the law of God, written on the soul of man.75 2. It is not a system of religion and life, but a METHOD of religion and life.76 3. It is eminently PRACTICAL.77 Setting aside the strange inconsistency of declaring absolute religion, or Christianity which is absolute religion, to be the way of religion, and not religion itself; these three statements, reduced to a common denominator, mean, obey God’s law written on the tablets of the heart; obey the law of thy nature; that is, obey thyself; that is, do as thou listest. This is, no doubt, a rule eminently practical. But does not Mr. Parker perceive that this rule is a safe rule to be followed, only on the hypothesis, that man has a divine nature, is perfect, and never voluntarily does or desires to do what is not pure, just, and holy? But we have denied to man this divine nature, and all who have any experience of life know by their own internal struggles, by the lusting of the flesh against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh, that he does not possess it. It is the design of Christ so to purify and exalt us, as to make us what Mr. Parker assumes that we are without it. But we come to that sanctified state in which all our emotions, passions, desires are holy and safe to be followed only through grace, through the redemption in Christ Jesus. In assuming Christianity to be merely the method, that is, the way of religion and life, Mr. Parker entirely mistakes it. Jesus says, “I

74 [Ed. According to Plutarch, while Alexander the Great was in Corinth he sought out Diogenes the Cynic philosopher, who was sun-bathing when Alexander found him. Alexander asked Diogenes if there were any services he could provide to him, to which Diogenes is said to have responded that Alexander could get out of his sun. See Plutarch’s Lives, trans. Bernadotte Perrin; vol. 7 of the Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 259, Alexander, chapter 14.] 75 [Ed. Discourse, 282-83.] 76 [Ed. Ibid., 284.] 77 [Ed. Ibid., 286.]

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am the way, the truth, and the life” [John 14:6]. It will not do to understand this, as Mr. Parker does, to mean, simply, that Jesus pointed out the true way to life. This would assume that the only relation Jesus bears to the salvation of the world is that of a teacher of righteousness. This is not the scriptural view of Jesus; and if this were the true view to be taken of him, Mr. Parker’s eulogium on him would be altogether exaggerated. Under this point of view, we confess that we should be unable to award him any peculiar praise. Mr. Parker himself shows, and takes great satisfaction in showing, that Jesus taught no doctrine, and gave no precept, not taught and given by others long before him. The only merit we can find that Mr. Parker allows him is that of having exhorted us to obey the law of God written in our souls, instead of the law written in the ordinances of men; that is, as Mr. Parker interprets the matter, in recommending absolute individualism, which, when absolute, is the real Satan and adversary of souls. But Jesus, so far as such protest is warranted, was not the first to protest against human ordinances. Isaiah, Micah, and the author of the fiftieth psalm, had done it in stronger and more explicit terms, than he did.78 What then were his peculiar merits? We see no answer that it is possible for Mr. Parker to give to this question. This difficulty comes from not taking Jesus at his word, and from attempting to be wise above what is written. Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” [John 14:6]; two very important things, which Mr. Parker leaves out. He makes Jesus simply the way, the method of religion and life. Jesus himself says he was, in addition, the truth and the life. Here is the difference. For ourselves, notwithstanding the charges which have been brought against us, we have never, since our reconversion to Christianity, regarded Jesus in the simple light of a teacher of the true way of life, whether as teaching by precept or by example. In our Discourse on Christ before Abraham, written and preached in this city, in August 1837, and published in the very first number of this Review, January, 1838, the original, as some have thought, and as we ourselves thought till quite recently, of Mr. Parker’s South Boston Sermon, we expressly reject the view, that regards Jesus as saving the world by merely teaching the truth;79 and we lay down the doctrine, which we have recently set forth in our Letter to Dr. Channing,80 that Christianity is not a doc78

[Ed. Isa 1:11-16; Mic 6:6-8; Ps 50:7-14.] [Ed. See “Christ Before Abraham,” in EW, 3, chapter 13, where Brownson wrote that it was not the doctrines or teachings of Jesus and the apostles that was unique, “but the life they lived, the spirit and disposition they displayed.”] 80 [Ed. See The Mediatorial Life in chapter 6 of this volume.] 79

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trine, but a life; not an exemplar life, a life to be imitated, copied; but a life literally imparted or communicated by Jesus through his own life to the world. This life we defined to be the life of pure, disinterested love, which redeems the world by being lived. We did not then understand how this life was or could be communicated literally to the world. This occasioned some confusion of speech; in all other respects, the doctrine of that Discourse, the view taken of Christianity, of the aid it gives, of what that aid consists in, was precisely the doctrine we now contend for. We say, then, as we have always said, that Christianity is not only the way of life, but life itself. It is not a mere example of the life we are to live, although it is that; but it is the identical life itself. Christianity is a life communicated, by the law of life already explained, to the world. Jesus imparted it to his disciples, made it an indissoluble part of their life, through their personal communion with him. They communicated it to others through personal communion with them; and by means of the communion of man with man, and generation with generation, the way is open for it to become ultimately the life of all men. Now Christianity being the infusion, so to speak, of a new life into the life of humanity, it cannot be separated and considered apart from the character of him who instituted it. What is Jesus to us but his life? Let us be understood. Life is the term we use to designate all the phenomena exhibited by an individual or being. In every phenomenon we perceive a subject; but we know the subject only so far as he enters into the phenomena, and of him only what they reveal. Our knowledge of a man is limited then to his phenomena; that is, his life. When we speak of a man, it is of his life, the phenomenal man, that we in reality speak. So when we speak of Jesus; it is not of the being, the esse, but the phenomenal Jesus; that is, his life.81 Back of the life is unquestionably the esse, das Seyn of the Germans; but that transcends our view, save so far as it enters into the life. Jesus is to us all in his living, his life, the phenomena of his being. Now, in this sense, in the only sense in which Jesus exists to us, save as an abstraction, he is not the author of Christianity, but IS IT. Then the whole value of Christianity depends on what he was. The question of what he was is the identical question, what is Christianity? And so 81 [Ed. By 1857, as he indicated in The Convert, Brownson no longer separated as he did here being and life. Gradually he would develop an understanding of the unity of being and life and would come to an understanding of the ontological Christ. The phenomenal Christ was not the Christ of Chalcedon. On this, see The Works of Orestes A. Brownson, 5:141-45.]

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from the first has the Church felt, and in one form or another asserted. There is no separation between Christ and Christianity possible, or conceivable even.82 Now, on what condition can Christ redeem us, or the infusion of the new life prove the redemption and sanctification of the human race? On two conditions, and two only. 1. That the life of Jesus or the Christ be a DIVINE life; and 2. That the communion of man with man be everywhere in time and space free and uninterrupted. The first even Mr. Parker asserts; the second, without having precisely understood it, has been from the first the one steady aim of the church. But Jesus could live a divine life only by direct communion with God; and this direct communion, being born of woman, he could have only MIRACULOUSLY. This is the significance of the miraculous conception, a great and pregnant mystery, which whoso rejects, rejects Christianity. The miraculous or supernatural character, or life, of the man Jesus, must then be assumed in the very outset, as the only condition on which we can get for the race a life sufficiently above the life of the race, to be through its reception the redemption and sanctification of mankind. We are speaking of the life of Jesus; the Wesen, not the Seyn; the living, not the esse; the phenomenal, not the ontological. In this view Jesus is the indissoluble union of God and man. What know we of God? Not the absolute Being itself. We know only God in the phenomenon; that is, not the being of God, but, if we may so speak, the life of God. The term God-man means then, literally and philosophically, the union of the divine life and the human, or a life the resultant of the direct and intimate communion of man with God. All life is two-fold, or rather all life is a one life resting upon a double basis. It partakes equally of the nature of the subject and of the object. Jesus communes directly, miraculously, with God, and it is by virtue of this communion he lives. This life, that is to say, the life resulting, which is after all what we mean, what all men really mean, by Jesus, must be what the church has always contended, indissolubly human and divine. We are obliged then to assert even the divinity of Christ, in order to state truly what Christianity is. The church has been nearer right than most of us have supposed. Her error, if error she has had, 82 [Ed. For a number of years, since at least his New Views (1836), Brownson had radically distinguished the Christianity of Christ from the Christianity of the church, making of Christianity a kind of religious idealism. He emphasizes here the historical and incarnational character of Christianity, attempting to create a synthesis between Christ and the church, and, thus, reversing or at least greatly modifying his earlier religious idealism.]

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has not been in asserting the proper divinity of Christ, but in affirming this divinity of the ontological Christ, of whom we know nothing directly, instead of the phenomenal Christ, the only Christ to us. Christ being the life, and as we now see, by virtue of his divinity, the TRUE LIFE, we at once comprehend how by being formed within us he becomes our Savior. We have true life just so far as we partake of him. The medium of his reception is communion with him in those, within whom he is formed the hope of glory; that is to say, we receive him through union with the TRUE church. But more of this by and by. We see now that, in order to assert a sufficient Christianity, we must assert the supernatural, the miraculous character of its founder. The proof of that miraculous character is, as we have already stated, in the fact that Jesus lived a life above the life of humanity in his epoch. That Jesus did live such a life, or was such a life, is evident historically, and from the fact that he is, as we have seen, even yet the ideal—none of the race being able to conceive of a higher than he. The question of miracles is now easily disposed of. Did Jesus work miracles? It is a simple historical question. He was himself a miracle and that he could work miracles is evident from the fact that he was supernaturally endowed. Life implies feelings, knowing, and doing. Increase the power to feel, and you necessarily increase the power to know and to do; the power to know, you increase the power to feel and to do; and the power to do, you necessarily increase the power to know and to feel, or to love. A miracle is that which transcends the natural, the generic power of the being of whom it is predicated. Exalt that being above his kind, as we have shown is the fact with every providential man, and you have clothed him with the power to work miracles. The historical question we cannot go into now, but we have no doubt of the fact that Jesus did work miracles. Were these miracles proofs of the truth of his doctrines? No. They were media by which God made known to men the truths of absolute religion, and raised them to the perception and reception of a higher and a diviner life. With these remarks we must leave what Mr. Parker has to say of Christianity in this third book, with the single exception, concerning the doctrine of a mediator. Throughout his whole work, Mr. Parker sneers at the idea of a mediator. “Who would go to heaven by attorney?” Now this is not merely in bad taste, but is very wretched as philosophy. Man can be saved or sanctified, we take it for granted, only by communion with God. Now, can man commune directly with God, as it were face to face? We commune never with that which

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transcends our perception. Do we perceive God? Where do we perceive him? In himself; in the abstract? No such thing. We see God only in the ideal, and the ideal only in the actual. By means of the actual we commune with the ideal, and through the medium of the ideal with God. Then the ideal was not the mediator till it became incarnated. Here is the whole doctrine of the Incarnation, and of the mediator; a doctrine essential not only to Christianity, but to man’s redemption and sanctification. The ideal is the Logos of St. John. The Incarnation of the Logos is Jesus, or the life, the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. Now, if Mr. Parker will show us any way by which we can approach this ideal, but by living the life, or God, but through the ideal, Logos, Word or Speech of God, he will show us what we as yet are unable to conceive of, and we will then cheerfully acknowledge to him that man may perhaps commune directly with God, without a mediator, or medium of communion. IV. THE BIBLE Mr. Parker’s fourth book is entitled The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to the Greatest of Books, or a Discourse of the Bible. It is divided into five chapters. I. Position of the Bible—Claims made for it—Statement of the Question. II. An Examination of the Claims of the Old Testament to be a Divine, Miraculous, or Infallible Composition. III. An Examination of the Claims of the New Testament to be a Divine, Miraculous, or Infallible Composition. IV. The Absolute Religion Independent of Historical Documents—the Bible as it is. V. Cause of the False and the Real Veneration of the Bible. The subject of this book is one of great extent, and surpassing importance. We cannot pretend to treat it with any sort of justice. Mr. Parker himself has hurried over it, hinting rather than stating, and stating rather than developing and demonstrating his views. A full discussion of the whole subject he promises us in a work, which he is passing through the press, and which we are waiting for with no little impatience.83 Moreover, we not only want room to treat this subject as we would, but we have treated it so often and so thoroughly in the pages of this journal and elsewhere, that we really have very little to add to what we have already laid before the public. 83 [Ed. Brownson is probably referring to Parker’s translation and edition of Wilhelm M. L. DeWette’s A Critical and Historical Introduction to the Canonical Scriptures of the Old Testament, 2 vols. (Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1843), a text Parker had been preparing for some years.]

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We say in the outset that we by no means accept the Protestant view of the Bible against which Mr. Parker contends. We do not accept the Bible as the only sufficient rule of faith and practice, nor do we accept the doctrine, that every word of it was dictated by a universal and infallible inspiration. On these two points Protestants have set up claims for the Bible, which never have been, and never will be sustained. We think we sufficiently refuted the claims of the Bible to plenary and infallible inspiration, in our review of Mr. Parker’s South Boston Sermon in this journal for October last, and to that we refer our readers. But while we say all this, we are equally far from accepting Mr. Parker’s view of the Bible. We believe him wrong in his estimate of the Bible, and otherwise than wrong he could not be with his views of inspiration. By admitting only natural inspiration, he of course could admit no claims of the Bible to be a divine, a miraculous composition; and must ascribe its superior truth and beauty, not to the influx of the divinity into the hearts of its authors, but to their greater fidelity to their own moral and religious natures. This in fact is his theory of the Bible. He regards it as the greatest of books; he sees and admits its wide and lasting influence; feels and owns its vast superiority over all other books, and finds no language so appropriate as its for the expression of what is deepest, truest, and holiest in his experience; but he after all looks upon it as a human work, produced by human ability and genius, by the human heart and soul speaking out from their own finite depths. His friend, Mr. Emerson, in his poem entitled The Problem, a most remarkable production, which we are astonished to find exciting no more attention, published in the Dial for July, 1840, and which we have quoted already more than once, may be thought to express his view: Out from the heart of nature rolled The burdens of the Bible old, The litanies of nations came, Like the volcano’s tongue of flame, Up from the burning cove below, The canticles of love and woe.84

And after all, these beautiful lines seem to us to take a higher view than Mr. Parker’s; for according to Mr. Emerson, it is not man that speaks out from himself, but the mighty Over-Soul—answering very nearly to what we term the ideal; that hovers over man, underlies him, thinks in his thought, loves in his love, and lives in his life. 84

[Ed. “The Problem,” Dial 1 (July, 1840): 122, lines 13-18.]

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This is the mighty, the one, universal, living spirit, nature, what you will; the power from which all forms proceed; the form in which the infinite I AM is revealed. This is the Creator. It is one, whether it create in what men call nature, or in what they call art; whether it bloom in a violet or in a Madonna; rear an Andes, or with human hands a St. Peter’s. All genuine, all authentic productions are its creations. Human utterances are true, genuine, authentic; are out from the heart, and can reach the heart, only as they are its utterances, the out-flowing of its influx. Man, to be able to speak a living word, must sink back, as it were, into the ideal, and become an instrument or organ of the great soul, which is one and universal. He then speaks with a more than mortal tongue. A higher than man speaks then through man, out from the deep, living heart of all, “the canticles of love and woe.” The Bible comes from no vain or frivolous thought, is no production of human will, human weakness, or human caprice, but of the universal soul; is the speech of that very power that plants the forests, upheaves the Andes, rears the pyramids, guides the chisel of Phidias, the brush of Raphael, and builds with Michael Angelo and Sir Christopher Wren.85 There is then a divinity in the Bible. It has its source in the source of all that is true, genuine, authentic in nature and in art, a source which men may seek to name, but which to the truly devout soul is always the Unnameable. We say this of Mr. Emerson because we wish to note the difference between his views and those of his disciple, and because we have certain suspicions that, in our criticisms on his writings from time to time, we have not always done him the justice we intended. We are every day led to suspect that his thought lies deeper, and is altogether broader than we have usually given him credit for; and in doubting his religious faith or religious feeling, we have done him great wrong. The more progress we seem to ourselves to make in true philosophical science, the more do we discover in his writings, and the profounder is our reverence for his genius. He has been the subject of much foolish detraction, and equally foolish praise; but he is, beyond question, one of the most remarkable men connected with our literature, and altogether more of a Christian than he owns or even suspects himself to be. We apprehend that it will ultimately be found that his seeming denial of God comes from his deep sense of a uni85 [Ed. All references to artists: Phidias (c. 500-432 B.C.), a Greek sculptor and architect; Raphael Aanzio (1483-1520), a high Renaissance Italian painter and architect; Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475-1564), another high Renaissance Italian sculptor, painter and architect; and Christopher Wren (16321723), an English architect.]

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versal presence which he stands in awe of, before which he shudders with fear, love, and delight, but which he does not name. And is not God to every devout soul the Unnameable? To name is it not in some sort to define? But how define the Indefinable? Before the awful majesty of nature, is it not the highest wisdom, as the deepest reverence, to be silent? Mr. Emerson, may we not say, appears to us often irreligious, in consequence of the very excess of his devoutness? Our reading public little suspect the deep significance of his volume of Essays,86 which he published some few months since, Essays which will live as long as the language in which they are written, and of which they are one of the richest specimens to be found. But to return: Mr. Parker seems to us, while struck with the fact, which Mr. Emerson somewhere mentions, of our inability to tell where man the effect ceases, and God the cause begins, to fail to note what, after all, Mr. Emerson really aims to keep always in mind, the distinction between nature in this sense of Over-Soul, of cause of the visible universe, and what may, in a more strict and definite sense, be termed human nature; and therefore confounds in his argument the individual man with that which transcends all individuals, and loses all that is individual in its own unity and universality. Hence, he allows to the Bible only a human origin. The men who wrote it were, no doubt, extraordinary men; but extraordinary, not because supernaturally enlightened, but because they were able to speak with greater fidelity to their own genuine experiences, than is the case with ordinary men. Consequently, the Bible is to be placed in the same category with all other books, and judged of as we judge of all others; received as authoritative, where judged to be true, and rejected as of no authority, where judged to be false. Now from this view we dissent, and very widely. We dissent from any, and every view, which admits nothing supernatural, miraculous in the origin and production of the Bible; and therefore we dissent not only from Mr. Parker’s view, but from that which we have ascribed to Mr. Emerson, all superior to Mr. Parker’s as it really is. We have already demonstrated, if we have demonstrated anything, that the human race goes forward only by the aid of providential men— men supernaturally raised up and endowed to be the lights and the inspirers of their race. Such men there have been. The Bible, in our view, is, in part, the production of men of this class, and, in part, a genuine, an authentic record of their sayings and doings. 86 [Ed. Essays (Boston: James Munroe, 1841), which Brownson reviewed in “Emerson’s Essays,” EW, 5, chapter 13.]

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On any other hypothesis than this, it would be difficult to account for the position the Bible has held and now holds in the estimation of the race; for its wide, and deep, and lasting influence over the most cultivated and enlightened nations of the earth. Indeed, this influence, Mr. Parker may well say, is a very surprising phenomenon. View it in what light you will, the Bible is the basis of all our jurisprudence, philosophy, theology, and literature. It is in every department of life the grand Statute Book of Christendom. It is our standard of faith, and even of taste. Our whole life is more or less exactly modeled after it. Without it, without the thought, the taste, the principles, the cultivation we owe to it, we were still the rude old Teutons in the Black Forests of Germany. Shakespeare’s finest passages are but successful imitations of its poetry; and Bacon’s, and Locke’s, and Kant’s philosophies are but loose paraphrases of a few of its significant texts. Byron sings sweetest, in his purest and loftiest strain, when he takes his key note from its compositions; and the pious soul can find no words so meet for the utterance of its holy aspirations, as the Psalms of David. Is not all this surprising? If the book were a mere human production, produced in the darkness of the semi-barbarous state, in which the Jews were down nearly to the time of our Savior, the production of a petty tribe, inhabiting the mountainous districts of Palestine, shut out from general intercourse with mankind, always despised by its neighbors, and in modern times held as a by-word and a hissing in all the earth—if the Bible were a mere human production, and of individuals from such a tribe as this, held in the estimation this always has been and is, on what principles shall we account for its influence? Whence came these individuals with the power to produce such a book; and whence this universal agreement of mankind to adopt the Book as their supreme law? It would require a greater miracle to give to anything human so wide and so deep an influence as the Bible confessedly has, than is needed on the hypothesis of its supernatural origin and production. Then, again, where else in ancient or modern times have human genius and ability produced aught to compare with the Bible? No critic will place Homer or Shakespeare above the Hebrew bards, or admit any equality in whatever pertains to the grand, the severe, the sublime, the tender. The Book is our ideal. In every department of thought, if we except the mere physical and mechanical sciences, we are far, very far below the Bible. Assuming, then, the doctrine of progress, which we have demonstrated, and which is the authorized creed of our age, we hold it demonstrably impossible that this Book could have been produced in the age in which it was, without the

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supernatural intervention of Providence. We say this not in the canting tone of the ordinary believer, but as the deliberate conclusion of the free thinker and the philosopher. Our right to be heard in questions of pure philosophy, we trust, our countrymen will not readily dispute, and no man has come more reluctantly than we to own the supernatural origin of the Bible. We have felt for that sacred Book the greatest possible aversion; we have fairly detested it, and felt that we were derogating from our dignity as a man in quoting a single text from it, without at the same time expressing our strong disapprobation of it. Slowly, and only by the hardest, have we come from that state of deep dislike to our present state of faith and reverence. The Bible is to us now our classic; we love to quote it not merely for authority, but for its aesthetic beauty and effect. A felicitous quotation from the Bible, in our judgement, is a finer mark of literary taste and skill, than a felicitous quotation from Homer or Horace. We have therefore come not only to believe the Bible, but to admire it, and to love it. We study it as our highest intellectual and literary standard. Between this view and the former one mentioned, there is a distance. What has produced the change? Formerly, we looked at the Bible from too low a stand-point, and saw in it only the mere letter. Time, study, experience, and God’s grace, have enabled us to perceive in the Book a significance, which we once did not and could not see in it. We have been enabled to perceive its immense superiority over all other books, and we have found that all our own moral and mental growth consists in our becoming able to understand and appropriate more and more of its meaning. We survey the present state of mankind; we take an inventory of their intellectual wealth, and we find that with all their progress they have not outgrown the Bible. The remains of that astonishing Hebrew literature still suffice for the human soul, and the thought which pervades them is still in advance of the most advanced thought of the age. From this important inferences may be drawn. But we go back to the age when the Bible was produced, to the people among whom it originated, and ascertain what was the summit then reached by human life. We find the age, the race, was in its highest achievements far below the Bible. Arrived at this conclusion, the question is settled. All life, we have shown, rests upon a double basis; must be at once objective and subjective. A life beyond the summit of one’s age, or country, can be lived only by virtue of an object transcending that age or country. The authors of the Bible could have produced a book transcending the summit attained by the race in their day, only by communing with a superhuman, and therefore a supernatural ob-

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ject. The whole question as to the supernatural origin of the Bible is, therefore, reduced to a simple question of fact; was it, or was it not, in advance of the race at the epoch or epochs of its production? The proof, then, of the supernatural origin of the Bible is complete; as complete as we have shown it to be in the case of the supernatural inspiration of providential men; for it is precisely the same. But it does not follow from the fact of the supernatural origin of the Bible, that its inspiration is full and infallible. The inspiration is unquestionably infallible as far as it goes, but it has its limits. This last fact our Protestant divines are accustomed to overlook. Since the inspiration must needs be infallible, they assume that the inspired must also be infallible; and therefore that all their sayings, on whatever topics, must be authoritative. Hence, their assertion that the Bible is the only and the sufficient rule of faith and practice. But the inspiration, and therefore the authority, of the Bible cannot transcend that of the providential men who wrote it, or whose sayings and doings it records; and the inspiration of these we know to have been a limited inspiration. Had it not been limited, it would have implied their omniscience, and omniscient they were not. Moses, we assume, was a providential man in the full significance of the term. He lived a supernatural life, and was able to comprehend a superhuman truth, wisdom, beauty, goodness. The only miracle there was about him was in the fact of his living a supernatural life. There was nothing miraculous in the mode in which he acted, wrote, or dictated his laws. He in all respects acted from the fullness of his own life, naturally, in harmony with the laws of human nature, as we all do; but living a supernatural life, he was able, naturally, to give laws, to the books, and to perform deeds which transcended the wisdom, discernment, genius, and ability of ordinary men. In this transcendent superiority consisted the supernatural character of his laws, his writings, and his deeds, and this superiority he could not have shown, had he not been supernaturally endowed. So far then Moses is supernaturally inspired, and therefore infallible. But was Moses able to comprehend all wisdom, all truth, all excellence? By no means. Jeremiah and Paul both allege the imperfections of his system, and in the name of the Lord promise a New Covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. However high Moses rose above his own epoch, he fell far below Jesus. Christianity, all must concede, is an advance on Judaism. The inspiration of Moses was not complete. His law was imperfect. It required another and a greater than he, to magnify it and make it honorable—to fulfil it. His glory pales before the star of Bethlehem, and we remember him, still love

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and reverence him, only because he was the type and promise of the Messiah. Now this, which we say of Moses, we may say by a stronger reason of Joshua, and Samuel, and David, and Solomon, and Isaiah and the prophets, who, though inspired, were rather inspired through the medium of the Mosaic life and inspiration, than originally, immediately from God; as we may say that Augustine, Fenelon, Fox, Penn, Swedenborg, and Wesley are inspired by the life of Jesus, or the Holy Ghost embodied in the church.87 Of Jesus and his apostles we may speak very much as we do of Moses and his followers. We have no right to assume that Jesus, we mean the man Jesus, the son of Mary, living, suffering, preaching, dying for man’s redemption, possessed, in an absolute sense, all knowledge. Jesus was, and is to man the full and complete manifestation of God in the flesh; and we are unable to conceive of aught that goes beyond him, or that will in the lapse of ages render another manifestation necessary. In point of fact, we believe the gospel kingdom to be an everlasting kingdom, and that Jesus will reign forever; for in him dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.88 We do not look for another Messiah in the sense in which he was the Messiah. He seems to us to have infused true eternal life into the life of humanity, and that now through communion we may, as a race, be said to possess in ourselves a principle of eternal growth. Yet we ought not to assume that new and higher manifestations of divine life may not, in the lapse of ages, be needed, and be made. Be this, however, as it may, certain is it that the inspiration of Jesus, so far as the Bible contains a record of it, does not extend to all subjects, nor furnish an answer to all possible questions. The same may be said of the inspiration of his apostles. It extends far and enlarges the interior life of its recipients, so that they comprehend what far transcends ordinary vision; but we have no authority for saying that it so enlarges that life, as to enable it to comprehend the infinity, in the bosom of which we are lost as in the bosom of infinite darkness. They saw far, but always is there an infinity beyond them. 87 [Ed. References are to the Catholic archbishop of Cambrai, France, François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1651-1715); George Fox (1624-91) was the founder of the Quakers or Society of Friends; William Penn (1644-1718) was the Quaker founder of the Colony of Pennsylvania; Emmanuel Swedenborg (16081772) was a Swedish mystical thinker whose Divine Love and Wisdom (1763) and The True Christian Religion (1771) influenced some American Transcendentalists; John Wesley (1703-91) was the founder of the Methodist Church.] 88 [Ed. A paraphrase of Col 1:19.]

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This assumed, we can claim for the authors of the Bible only a partial inspiration. God raised them up, endowed them with special spiritual gifts. He enlarged without changing their natures, and so enlarged them as to enable them to comprehend as much of true, eternal life, as suited his purpose, through them to infuse into humanity. This was merely so much added to their natural ability, from which in their own minds it was absolutely indistinguishable. Under its influence, and by its aid, they went forth and uttered what was in them; but always according to the ordinary laws of humanity. They spoke from their own minds, according to their own peculiar habits and tastes, and mixed up with what was supernatural all they had that was natural. Of what they said part only transcended the ordinary powers of human beings, and the part so transcending was far from including all that transcends our natural powers. Of this which so transcends, and which their inspiration did not comprehend, it would be rash to say that we have, and ever shall have, no need. Consequently, it would be false, on the one hand, to say that the whole Bible is given by inspiration of God, and rash, on the other hand, to say that it contains all that is or can be essential to faith and practice. We repeat it, then, that we do not adopt the Protestant view of the Bible. In the next place, our Protestant divines not only assert the sufficiency of the Scriptures, but also the sufficiency of the individual reason to interpret them. This last assertion is at the foundation of Protestantism, and passes in the Protestant world under the name of the right of private judgment—a right which, if once admitted, in its full extent, involves the destruction of all social, moral, and religious order—a right directly hostile to the other Protestant principle, the sufficiency and authority of the Scriptures. Mr. Parker’s book is a fine specimen of Protestantism refuting itself. Taking the right of private judgment as his point of departure, he demonstrates but too easily that the Scriptures are not necessary, and that the Protestant idolatry of the Bible has even less excuse than the Catholic idolatry of the papacy. I have the right of private judgment, only on condition I have the ability to judge for myself. But I have the ability to judge for myself, only on condition that I possess in myself a perfect measure of truth, or am already in possession of absolute knowledge of what is absolute religion. But if I have this, I have no need of the Scriptures. I know all I can know, or need to know, without them. The right of private judgment, then, necessarily negatives the authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures. But if we deny the right of private judgment, we must also deny that of the authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures. The Scriptures

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are not alone sufficient and authoritative, if we need for the understanding of them an authorized or an authoritative interpreter. They can be sufficient and authoritative, only on condition that each man is competent to interpret them for himself. We cannot assert this competency without asserting the right of private judgment to its fullest extent. Consequently we cannot assert the sufficiency of the Scriptures, and declare them to be the only authoritative rule of faith and practice without at the same time asserting, as the necessary condition of this, another principle which destroys it, by superseding the necessity of the Scriptures. Thus Mr. Parker, starting with the Protestant principle of the right of private judgment, has overthrown the Protestant principle of the authority and sufficiency of the Scriptures. The truth is, Protestantism from the first has been divided against itself. Hence its want of organic power; hence the multiplicity of its sects, the anarchic life, which is but death, it has originated; hence its no distant final disappearance from Christendom, foreshadowed in the fact that it has really made no progress on Catholicism since the peace of Westphalia. For ourselves, we are no Protestants. We believe the problem for our age is CATHOLICISM WITHOUT PAPACY, on the one hand, and LIBERTY WITHOUT INDIVIDUALISM, on the other. We can consent to install neither the Pope, nor the Bible, nor the individual reason. Of the three we prefer, as the readers of all our writings for the last eight years must have inferred, the first. But Popery died a natural death with Leo the Tenth;89 we do not believe that it ever can revive; and certainly we see no reason why it should. The time has gone by, when a poor old bishop, often but the tool of those who have placed him, through their intrigues and for their selfish purposes, in the papal chair, can command throughout the Christian world that respect for his decisions essential to the existence of the papacy. Of individualism we have, for the last three hundred years, seen enough. The world has grown weary of it. It can found nothing. In theology it gives us at best only the Natural-Religionism of the volume before us; in morals it gives us nothing better than unmitigated selfishness; in politics it denies the state, and results legitimately in no-governmentism. If you concede me the right of private judgment I demand of you by what right you presume to enact laws for governing me, or to require me to obey any law my judgment does not approve? The Bible cannot in the Protestant sense be made the sovereign, even admitting what we, to a certain extent, deny its ple89

[Ed. Leo X (1475-1521) was pope from 1513 to 1521.]

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nary and infallible inspiration, because it is nothing to us save as it is interpreted. “Understandest thou what thou readest? How can I except some man should guide me?” [Acts 8:30-31] There must be, and in spite of us there will be, an authorized interpreter of it. This interpreter is the real authority; and it is, in our judgment, neither the pope nor the individual reason but the CHURCH. What we mean by the church, we shall soon proceed to state. The Bible is to us the authentic account of God’s dealings with his chosen people, the Jews, and of the sayings and doings of the men, whom he raised up to be the revelators of his will, and his agents in the advancement of mankind. But its real significance we obtain only from the commentaries of the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, the Comforter, which is the living Jesus, who was to be with us unto the end of the world, and of which the TRUE CHURCH, the one Catholic Church, is the real, literal, and living body. In other words, the interpreter of the Scriptures and their authority, without which they would be to us a dead letter, without life or meaning, is the ideal of which the true church of Christ is the living expression. But more of this by and by. The right of the individual to judge is in his union with the church, and not in his separation from it. Taking this our view of inspiration, that it consist in the miraculous life of the inspired, which, though superhuman, is in no case, unless we except that of Jesus, a full, complete, eternal life, we easily see that the inspiration must needs be partial; and if sufficient as far as it goes, does by no means exalt its recipients to the perception of all truth. Assuming the life, which is the inspiration, to be, though superhuman, still incomplete, admitting a life still higher, and that those who lived it spoke from its fullness according to the natural laws of their understanding and imagination, we can easily get over all the difficulties Mr. Parker enumerates in the details of the Bible, without finding aught to impeach its general supernatural inspiration. We would, had we time and room, consider these difficulties at length; but we must pass them over. We can only suggest that Mr. Parker possibly exaggerates them, and in fact feels them, because he takes too low a view of the Bible, and interprets it from the mere local coloring, one may say, the mere costume, not from its real spirit and intent. He seems to us to deny himself the spiritual discernment, which he actually possesses, and exercises in all other cases. He carps at the dialogue Moses is said to have held with the Lord; but his objections do not go beyond the dramatic form adopted by the writer. He does not ask himself, what is the real significance of the passage, nor whether he has aught to object to its real meaning. The case of

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Abraham offering up Isaac disturbs him. What, God command human sacrifices! By no means; and the very passage tells us as much. “Lay not thy hand upon the lad, nor do anything unto him” [Gen 22:12]. But what means the passage? What is the moral it teaches? Simply that where the motive is to obey God, and is so strong as to withhold nothing however dear, even though the act, consequent thereupon, should be in itself as wrong as the offering up of his son on the altar by a father, God accounts it righteousness. Abraham’s act was in itself, viewed objectively, wrong; but the motive with which he acted, his willingness to obey God, not only excused the act, but made it imputed or accounted to him as an act of obedience, and an act even deserving reward. For God does not judge us according to the consequences of our acts, but according to what we are in ourselves; the principles and motives from which we act. Has Mr. Parker anything to object to this? V. THE CHURCH The fifth and last Book is entitled The Relation of the Religious Sentiment to the Greatest of Human Institutions, or a Discourse of the Church. It consists of seven chapters, on the Claims, the Gradual Formation, and the Fundamental and Distinctive Idea of the Christian Church; the Division of Christian Sects, the Catholic Party, the Protestant Party, and the Party neither Catholic nor Protestant, and the Final Answer to the Question. Mr. Parker, we must be permitted in the outset to say, appears to us to have entirely misapprehended the nature, design, and authority of the Christian Church. We can conceive nothing more superficial and unsatisfactory than his statements, unless it be our own past Protestant declamations. With his view of Christianity it was impossible for him to have any just notions of an institution, really Christian in its origin and design. With him Christianity is worthy of our regard only so far as it coincides with absolute religion, and absolute religion we may all have, at all times and in all places, without recourse to any foreign aid. Christianity is not wisdom and strength imparted to humanity for its redemption and sanctification; but a mere reiteration or republication of the great truths, apparent to us all by the light of nature. All its value consists in the fact that we may see what is our duty more clearly through its medium than we can without it. But it gives us no additional power to perform our duty. Jesus is not “made of God unto us wisdom, righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption” [1 Cor 1:30]; but is an elder brother, of

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very exemplary character, who in his life shows us the possibility of man. In what he has done, we may see what man may do. This is unquestionably of some advantage. Since one of our number, poor and humble in life as any of us, has done so much, we are encouraged to undertake the same; and what we attempt with confidence, we are the most likely to succeed in accomplishing. With this view of Jesus and Christianity, we can at best understand by the Christian Church nothing more than “an assembly of men and women grouped around” Jesus, as the model-man, “to be instructed by his words, and warmed by his example.”90 With this view, nothing can be more unfounded than the pretense of the church that out of its pale there is no salvation, or its claims to authority over the individual, the soul, reason, conscience, and religion. Mr. Parker denies that the church is necessary at all to the salvation of the race, or of individuals. He says Christ established no church, and gave no directions for the formation of a church; and a church in our sense of the term is not so much as named in the gospels. If this be so, it must be altogether wrong to contend in the name of Jesus that out of the church there is and can be no salvation. Equally wrong is it to contend in his name for the authority of the church. “The Christian Church may be defined a body of men and women, assembling for the purposes of worship and religious instruction. It has the powers delegated by the individuals composing it.”91 The church then is a mere congress of independent sovereigns, and has in itself no entity, is nobody, and therefore can of itself have no authority. By what right then does it claim dominion over the individual, to be the master of the soul, of reason, conscience, and religion? The individual could never delegate to another his own sovereignty to be turned against himself. Passing onward from the nature, design, and authority of the church, to its fundamental and distinctive idea, Mr. Parker finds just as little to commend. This idea is, he says, that “God has made the highest revelation of himself through Jesus of Nazareth.”92 But what if he has? Christianity, so far as worth regarding, he has already said, coincides with absolute religion, and therefore consists not in what one believes, but in what one is and does; that is, in obedience to the law of God written on man’s nature. This law, since human nature is everywhere and always the same, is equally revealed to all men. We 90

[Ed. Discourse, 385.] [Ed. Ibid., 387.] 92 [Ed. Ibid., 405.] 91

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may then know the law and obey it everywhere and at all times, out of the church as well as in it. What necessity then of the church? If I know the law and keep it, what matters it, whether I believe that God has made the highest revelation of himself through Jesus of Nazareth, Moses, Socrates, Plato, Appollonius of Tyana, Mahomet, Joanna Southcote, Joe Smith,93 or through my own reason, conscience, sentiments, and instincts? The fundamental and distinctive dogma of the church, then, is utterly worthless, and so must needs be the institution it originates and founds. But passing onwards still, leaving by the way the Catholic party and the Protestant party, rejecting entirely the old church, as needless, and even as mischievous, what are we to have in its place? What is Mr. Parker’s “final answer to the question?” He tells us that our old garments are unseemly, do not become our complexions, fail to set off the beauty of our forms, restrain our free motions, cramp and dwarf our limbs, and render us deformed and hideous. He, in his love of truth, beauty, and freedom, strips them off, and drives us forth from our old dwellings into the streets, naked and shivering. Well, wherewithal does he propose to reclothe us? What new garments has he prepared? Or what directions has he to give for preparing new garments? We would not do him injustice, but, so far as we can collect from his volume, garments he is resolved that henceforth we shall not wear. His great aim seems to be to restore us to the simplicity of nature, to live in the innocence of humanity, before men and women learned to blush that they were naked, or to seek with such fig-leaf aprons as churches and religious institutions to cover their nakedness. But we must tell him that this world is too bleak and wintry, and withal too full of sin and shame, for us to be able to go through it without some covering. Ask us not, we beseech thee, to be Adamites. Even the “Sartor” will teach thee better, that institutions for our souls are as necessary as clothes for our bodies.94 We cannot lodge naked on the bare ground and yet, what else dost thou propose? We ask this last question in no vain or captious spirit. We have followed with no indifferent feelings our brave young theological 93 [Ed. Apollonius of Tyana (d. c. 98 A.D.) was a neo-pythagorean philosopher whose virtuous life and reforming religious tendencies led some in later centuries to use his biography as an argument against the uniqueness of the life of Christ. Joanna Southcott (1750-1814) was a religious prophet who claimed that she was the woman of Rev 12. Joseph Smith (1805-44), founder of the Mormons, claimed to have received a revelation from the angle Moroni.] 94 [Ed. A reference to Thomas Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus (1836).]

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Hercules. Thou wouldst rid the earth, we have exclaimed in our admiration, of all monsters; thou hast the courage to attack all hydras, chimeras, specters, illusions; thou makest noble war against all imposture. Fight on, fight on, wield club, sword, spear, axe, or mattock, whatever comes to hand; lay about thee, spare not; but when thy work of destruction is done, the armies of imposture routed, the monsters all slain, what then wilt thou have to do? We too have had our day of destruction; we too strong in our youth, and brave through our inexperience and the natural buoyancy of our spirits, went forth in this warfare against the chimeras, illusions, specters, which make children of us all. We even carried our war into heaven and hell. We would have no God to tyrannize over us; no devils or damned spirits to jabber at us, to mock and torment us. We drove the harmless ghost from the old churchyard and deserted tower, and the fairies from the green dell where they danced in the moonlight. We would be no longer imposed upon. We would worship no dumb idols, bow down to no gods made of wood or stone, or gods created by men’s passions, their hopes or their fears. We would stand upon the firm earth, upon our own two feet, and say “Get behind me, Satan,”95 to whatsoever did not come to us in a shape real, solid, rational. All went on gloriously for a while, and answered admirably, till we felt that our work was completed, and we had rid ourselves of all illusions, of all impositions; but then aye, then! Then, a sickness came over the soul, and we seemed to stand on a mere point, solitary and alone, surrounded by a deep and yawning gulf, which nothing filled or could fill. It would have been a relief to have been able to believe it filled with ghosts, goblins, and devils; for these would have been somewhat and anything is always better than nothing. A time comes, when we can no longer be satisfied with pulling down old temples and clearing away rubbish; a time comes to all of us, who have human hearts, human affections, and human interests, when we would erect us a dwelling, settle down, and feel that we have a home, and are at home. We care not who knows it, nor who laughs at us; but we own that we, for ourselves, have reached this stage in life’s journey. Our thoughts and our feelings go beyond the work of demolition, beyond the smoke and dust raised by the fall and crash of old institutions, to something which must take their place. We must have clothing and a shelter. We must have something positive, something that will help us by the gaining of which we may be saved from our sins, have our hearts purified, and be enabled to 95

[Ed. A reference to Mark 8:33 and Matt 16:23.]

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commune with our God. We must have something we can grasp, hold on to, and that will not break the moment we need its support, and leave us to fall helpless, hopeless, headlong over the precipice. In deep, solemn earnest have we ourselves sought for this support; in deep, solemn earnest have we listened to our young prophet, to catch his final answer to the awful question, which not he only, but all humanity raises. Alas, the oracle recoils from its own response. Mr. Parker himself evidently feels the insufficiency of what he has to offer. His conclusion is almost tragic. “Jesus fell back on God; on absolute religion, absolute morality; the truth its own authority; his works his witness. The early Christians fell back on the authority of Jesus; their successors on the Bible, the work of the apostles and prophets; the next generation on the church, the work of the apostles and fathers. THE WORLD RETREADS THIS GROUND. Protestantism delivers us from the tyranny of the church, and carries us back to the Bible. Biblical criticism frees us from the thraldom of Scripture, and brings us to the authority of Jesus. Philosophical spiritualism liberates us from all personal and finite authority, and restores us to God, the primeval fountain, whence the church, the Scriptures, and Jesus draw all the water of life wherewith they have filled their urns.” But when we have retraced this ground, and left behind us the church, the Bible, and Jesus, what shall we have then? “Thence, and thence only, shall mankind obtain absolute religion and spiritual well-being.”96 In what shall this spiritual well-being consist? O tell us that. In the knowledge of the fact, that “THE SOUL IS GREATER THAN THE CHURCH.”97 No, not so; we shall then be restored to God, and derive our spiritual well-being from him. Illusion, illusion all! All Mr. Parker means, by the restoration of the soul to God, is its restoration to itself, or rather the leaving of it to itself alone, to its own resources, with nothing to aid it upward in its way to heaven. And his absolute religion is absolute solely because it is indefinite, means nothing in particular, in fact nothing at all. But take a more favorable view. Does not Mr. Parker know that the church, the Bible, and Jesus have been sought as constituting a medium, through which we may rise to God? Admit that they are not true media, nay, reject them as altogether inadequate and false; does it follow that the soul will then stand in immediate relation with God? Does nothing now separate us from 96

[Ed. Discourse, 483.] [Ed. Ibid., 482.]

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God, but the church, the Bible, and Jesus? What is it to stand in immediate relation with God, to be at-one with God? Is it not to bear his moral likeness, that is, to be good and to do good? Can we be good and do good without a medium? What medium does Mr. Parker provide us? His absolute religion at best, even according to the most favorable account which he himself gives of it, merely says to us, “Be good, do right, obey God.” With all my heart; but what is good? What is right? What is it to obey God? And how am I, weak and helpless as my sins have made me, and are still making me, to obtain the strength, the moral force to obey God, and to do right? I am sick, but he brings me no physician; I am blind, and he says, see, and thy blindness will be removed; I am dumb, and he says, speak, and thy dumbness will cease to afflict thee; I am lame, and he says, walk, and thy lameness will be cured; I am dead in trespasses and sins, and he says, be good and do good, and thou wilt have moral life. Thy mockery is too bitter. How without moral life am I to be good and to do good? We have looked over Mr. Parker’s whole volume to find the Savior; we do not find him; we find nothing to meet the wants of the sinner. In speaking of Jesus, he says, “He lived for himself; he died for himself; worked out his own salvation, and we must do the same.”98 Jesus then did not come into the world, preach, suffer, and die, that the world through him might be saved! In all that he did, he had sole reference to himself, and was concerned merely with saving his own soul! And we must do the same. Where then is the Lord that bought us? Where is our Savior? We have no Savior. We must save ourselves. Here is the conclusion of the whole matter, the final answer to the question. Man must look no longer to churches, Bibles, nor Messiahs for salvation; but to his own stout heart, and strong right arm. Alas, man’s very difficulty is the want of this stout heart, and this strong right arm. It is he himself that is lost, and to this very lost self you send him for salvation! But enough. We have already shown the utter insufficiency of Mr. Parker’s Christianity to meet the wants of the sinner. We, as we have said, differ radically from him in our views of what Christianity is. He does not preach the same gospel that we do. Consequently our views of the church are essentially different from his. We hold the church absolutely essential to the salvation of the race and of individuals, and we contend that it has supreme authority in all that pertains to human life. These are, no doubt, strong positions, but we 98

[Ed. Ibid., 487.]

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believe ourselves able to maintain them. In order, however, to do it, we must begin by stating as briefly as we can what we ourselves understand, not by a Christian church, but the Christian church. 1. What is the Christian church? In one word, the Christian church is not an assembly of men and women grouped around Jesus as great model-man, but the real living body of our Lord. To make this plain, we refer to the doctrine of life, already alluded to more than once in this discussion, brought out in the article on Leroux’s l’Humanité in the last number of this journal, and in our recent Letter to Dr. Channing on the Mediatorial Life of Jesus. Jesus, according to the New Testament, does not save the world, as great modelman, as great prophet and teacher, nor as grand expiatory sacrifice, though he was all these; but by communicating, through fellowship, communion, his divine life to humanity. How he could do this is already explained. All dependent life is at once subjective and objective; that is, the product of the conjoint and simultaneous action of both subject and object. The name for this conjoint action is COMMUNION. Jesus, by virtue of the miraculous communion in him of humanity with divinity, lived a life at once human and divine. This human-divine life is the living Jesus, the Savior, and saves us by becoming our life, our righteousness. Hence, we are said to be saved by Christ’s righteousness, not by our own. But the righteousness of Christ does not save us by being imputed to us, being accounted to us for our righteousness, as theologians have falsely contended, but by becoming truly, literally, really, not symbolically, our righteousness, so that we actually have that mind in us, which was in Christ Jesus. This is what is called, having the blood of the atonement personally applied. The righteousness of Christ is true righteousness. By possessing it—not through our own works, but by the gift of God—we of course possess true righteousness, and are blameless before God. Theologians, having learned that we are saved by Christ’s righteousness, and not perceiving how it could become literally ours, have supposed it was ours only by way of imputation, God being pleased to adjudge it ours, for and in consideration of the great merits of his Son. They may now see how it can be literally our righteousness, and abandon their old hypothesis of imputation, with which nobody was ever yet satisfied, and opposition to which has induced some mischievous errors. The righteousness of Christ, which saves, is his life, and this life is communicated to others by communion. Jesus was in the bosom of the Father, lived, in a miraculous communion with God, a life which was by its objectivity the life of God, and by its subjectivity

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the life of man; which yet was a single life, and as we have said, by virtue of the subjectivity of Jesus, a human life. All divine as it was, then, it could pass naturally into the life of those with whom he communed, or who communed with him. He was the direct object of communion to the disciples, and through them the indirect object of all who communed with them. Between him and the disciples, and those who had fellowship with the disciples, there must have been then a mutual solidarity, a one life flowing through them all. Now the true Christian church is composed of all those men and women who are thus united into one body by the unity of the life, termed by St. Paul “the unity of the Spirit” [Eph 4:3]. At first it consisted only of those who had personally communed with Jesus, that is, of his immediate disciples; and then of those who communed, or lived by communing with these; and now of all those between whom and Jesus, through the transmission of life from man to man and generation to generation, the communion has been instituted and preserved, constituting them all one with each other, and one with Jesus, agreeably to his prayer: “Neither pray I for these (the disciples) alone; but for them also which shall believe on me through their word; that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that thou hast sent me” [John 17:21-22]. And also according to the doctrine of Paul; “For as we have many members in one body; so we being many are one body in Christ, and members one of another” [Rom 12:4-5]. “For as the body is one and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free” [1 Cor 12:12-13]. No life ever dies. Virtue went out of Jesus through the communion of his disciples with him, never to be recalled. It is the life that saves, the identical life to which we give the name Jesus. This, when the man Jesus was on the earth, before “he went away,” was incarnated in an individual body. “The WORD was made flesh and dwelt among us” [John 1:14]. But it, when the disciples saw their Master go up from them, did not ascend, but remained on the earth, embodied in these very disciples of Jesus, whom he treated not as servants, but as friends, on whom he had breathed, saying, “Receive my spirit.” The Life, thus remaining when the personal Jesus departed to his Father, and as God with us, is the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete, Comforter, the Spirit of truth, that was to lead us into all truth, and which is one with the Son, and one with the Father, but, as the church has always taught, proceeding forth from the Father and the Son.

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This is what is termed in Theology “the Procession of the Holy Ghost.” The Father through the miraculous conception takes humanity into intimate union with himself, and begets the Son, through whom the Holy Ghost is shed abroad in the hearts of all them that believe, or through the communion are united into one body. The Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth, the life, the indwelling and abiding Jesus, is one and the same. This was to be the life of every true believer. Hence Jesus says to his disciples, when commissioning them as apostles, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you unto the end of the world” [Matt. 28:20]. In this way, Christ Jesus really and literally lives in the life of all true Christians, as much as in the fleshly tabernacle in which he dwelt as Son of Mary, in the days of Peter, James, and John. The Christian Church is composed of all those who, in any age or nation, by whatsoever name they may be called, live this life; in whom Christ “dwelleth,” or is “formed the hope of glory” [Col 1:27] or who have “that mind in them which was also in Christ Jesus”; to whom Christ is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” [1 Cor 1:24]; to whom he is “made of God, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption” [1 Cor 1:30]. In this view of the case, the church cannot be a mere assembly or aggregation of individuals; for there is but one Lord, one Spirit that animates them all, and by the unity of the life of Jesus they are united, compacted, solidified into one firm and indissoluble body, according to the assertions of Paul, already quoted. It is a one body composed of many members, but all these are members one of another, and all members of Christ, and united to him as their one living head, from whom is derived all the life of the members. But, if there be only the one life, and all they who live it compose the church or body of our Lord, it follows that there can be but ONE church; and as this one church must include all who are members of Christ’s body, and as men and women become members everywhere by virtue of communion with the one and the same life, the church must not only be one, but CATHOLIC. The modern notion that there may be churches many and diverse, in any deep, significant sense of the term, is unwarranted; because it implies that the body of Christ may be cut up, or broken into fragments, and still the warm life-blood circulate uninterrupted throughout the parts. The church, moreover, is not only one, and catholic, that is, we must not only assert the unity and universality of the church, as the Roman Catholic Church has always done, but we

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must also assert its INSPIRATION, and therefore, what has always been called, the SUPREMACY of the church. The church is constituted by the indwelling of Christ the Lord, by living not a life like that of Jesus, but the identical life which was made flesh and dwelt among us. This life is the Spirit of truth, and just in proportion as it is lived, does it lead into all truth. Inspiration is, we have shown, always through the medium of a life. The divine life is in the church. It is, therefore, inspired through the medium of this life. Hence, through the church we have a continuous inspiration, not original and immediate, but derivative and mediate, yet full and authoritative. This is the ground of the authority of the church, and of the ability, and the right consequent upon its ability, to be the interpreter of the Scriptures, and to exercise authority over the soul, reason, conscience, religion, whatever pertains to human development and growth. 2. The relation of the church to the salvation of the race, and of individuals, must now be obvious. We have already identified Christ and Christianity. There is no separation possible or conceivable even between Christ and Christianity. Christ saves by giving himself, by becoming “THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS” [Jer 23:6; 33:16]. But Christ without the Church would be to us no Christ at all. We cannot commune, we can have no intercourse, with pure spirit. It escapes us on all sides, forever eluding our mental grasp. We know it, commune with it, only as embodied, incarnated. God outside of the universe is to us an abstraction, a mere nullity; he is a reality to us only as realized, embodied in his works. Abstract creation, abstract the works of God, which are the media through which he reveals himself, and we could have no conception of him. So, when the personal Jesus ascended into heaven, he would have been no more to us, than if he had never been, had he not embodied himself in the church. All life is derived from him through communion. But where do we meet him? Where do we commune with him? We commune with God in his works, especially in man, the direct object of man, and can commune with him nowhere else. Where do we commune with Jesus, but in his works, in the church, which is his creation, his body? We can approach him only where he is, and where he is only through a medium. He is in the church, and to us nowhere else; and the church, as his body, becomes the medium through which we have access to him, through whom we have access to the Father. In other words, and perhaps plainer; the life is the Savior, and the life is obtained only by personal communion with those who live it. These are the church. It follows then that salvation is possible only on condition of communing with the church. The life that saves,

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and the only life that saves, is in the church; and, therefore, the church assumes nothing which it has not a right to assume, when it says that out of the pale of the church there is no salvation. “I am,” says Jesus, “the true vine. Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, and ye are the branches. He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; for without me ye can do nothing” [John 15:1, 4-5]. Now Christ is in those who through communion have received him, in whom he lives, is embodied. These, we say again, are the church. We can receive him, then, only by communion with the church, and can abide in him only by abiding in the church. Out of the church we are as the branches severed from the vine, in which is the life of the branches. Out of the church, then, no salvation. The same truth is taught by the parable which likens the kingdom of heaven to leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened.99 On what condition could the whole be leavened? Simply on condition that it remained in one mass. Had the woman divided it into two parts, put her leaven in one part, and placed it out of communication with the other, could the whole have been leavened? It is plain then if, as we have proved, that we are saved by living the life of Christ, and if we can live that life only by communion, that out of the church there is no salvation, for out of the church no access to the life that saves. In order to partake of the life, we must be joined as members to Christ’s body. Here is the profound significance of the communion, of excommunication, and of sects and schisms. The one steady aim of the church, as we have said, has been to bring all men to the communion; its greatest dread has always been of sects and schisms, and its severest penalty upon disorderly members, excommunication. How profoundly true! Communion is the one thing desirable; for it is the medium of life; sects and schisms are fatal to the life, for they mutilate, cut up, or break into fragments the body of our Lord, and prevent the free circulation of the divine life through all its parts; and excommunication is a terrible penalty, for it cuts off the disorderly member from the communion, and therefore from all chance of salvation. How true, then, is it, that Jesus gave unto the church, and to Peter, as the representative of the church, the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and that whatsoever it shall bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever it shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in 99

[Ed. A reference to Luke 13:21 and Matt 13:33.]

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heaven! Call not this the false assumption of the popish church; it is literally true, and grows out of the very nature and design of the Christian Church. They, who are received into communion with those in whom Christ dwells, do receive of Christ, and by virtue of the Christ received their sins are remitted; and they, whom the church cuts off from its communion, being debarred from all access to the life, must of necessity remain in the “bonds of iniquity and the gall of bitterness” [Acts 8:23]. Is not the doctrine we here teach the true doctrine? Do we assert, in fact, aught which is not incorporated into the authentic creed of our own age? What is it that hinders the progress of Christian principles? Why does darkness still brood over so many lands, and the voice of man’s injustice to man still ring in our ears and pierce our hearts? Is it not all owing to the want of communion? The human family have been broken up into fragments; and the free, mutual intercourse of its members with those who embody the Savior has been hindered, interrupted by our divisions into hostile nations; by family pride, fostered by false political institutions, and the unequal, and therefore unjust, repartition of the fruits of industry. Reorganize the state, family, and property, so as to favor the universal communion of man with man, which is only what the age is struggling for under the name of liberty, national, political, civil, social, and the life will have free course and be glorified in the redemption and sanctification of all men. Just in proportion as we extend the communion, do we become more truly Christian. Commerce and the missionary, literature and the arts, even war and conquest, are in the Providence of God made media for extending the intercourse of man with man, and of all quarters of the globe with Christendom. Trade and politics, perhaps aided somewhat by philanthropy, have brought the whole world, to a partial extent, under the same system. The progress of the Russians and English in Asia, of the French in Africa, and the growth of America, compel Europe in settling her own domestic concerns to consult all quarters of the globe. By and by the whole world will be brought under the influence of Christian civilization; and in each particular nation, national caste, family caste, property caste, the three forms in which Satan wars against the communion, will be abolished; and then will Christ no longer have any let or hindrance. Then will all things be subject to him, that God may be all and in all. We hardly need add that by the communion we do not mean the Eucharist, but that which the Eucharist symbolizes; not the symbolical communion, but the real communion; not feeding on God, eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus, figuratively, as Protes-

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tants pretend, and with which they seem satisfied, but literally, really, actually, according to the very words of Jesus, “Except ye eat my flesh, and drink my blood, ye have no life in you” [John 6:53]. The real work of bringing men to the communion is not that of bringing them to celebrate the feast of the Eucharist, but that of so organizing the state, family, and property, that all men may truly commune one with another, and so all men come to love one another, as Jesus hath loved us, and given his life for us. 3. The AUTHORITY of the church will not detain us long. We have already stated its ground. The true church, living the life of Jesus, as the body of our Lord, whose indwelling life is the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of truth, is an INSPIRED BODY. Its life is Christianity, which we have shown is the form in which the ideal is revealed to us, and therefore is the authority to which we must submit; because the ideal, in that it is the ideal, is necessarily sovereign. All limited beings are imperfect; all imperfection tends to generate disorder; all disorder is fatal to freedom, and therefore to growth; therefore to the life of the being concerned. The highest freedom, and therefore the highest good of any or all beings, is expressed in that one word, ORDER. Where there is disorder there is confusion, clashing, friction, no freedom; for the action of one is perpetually impeding the action of another. Hence no free and harmonious development and growth. Hence the necessity of order, which allows all to move on, each in its appointed sphere, without clashing with, or infringing upon, the action of another. To maintain this order, government is necessary, and must needs be that which restrains the tendency we spoke of, and keeps each in its proper sphere. But by the very fact that the tendency which renders government necessary, grows out of the nature of the beings it concerns, it follows that these beings cannot furnish the government; and therefore government must come from a source above them. For if it came from them, it would have the same imperfection, and the same tendency that they have, and therefore would need to be governed as much as they. Here is the absurdity of all Individualism, and of such theories as “self-government,” and “government by consent of the governed,” whereby government must very humbly crave of the murderer permission to choke him to death! Man can doubtless exercise a control over himself, but only indirectly, through cultivation; for he is never the direct object of his own activity, as he would be in case he could directly govern himself. So a people may doubtless govern itself without kings and nobles; but only indirectly through constitutions, state organization, by which a power that governs is

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created distinct from the people governed. For that which governs must of necessity be other than that which is governed. If it governs, it must also be supreme, and must restrain; on any other condition it is not government. Now, the state must use force in case its decrees are resisted. But the employment of force to compel obedience, except in a very few cases, cannot be permitted, without paving the way for gross oppression. It must be restrained to the material interests of society and individuals. It must not extend to spiritual matters, to men’s feelings, sentiments, thoughts, opinions, beliefs. Yet these beliefs, opinions, thoughts, sentiments, feelings, are really the great matters. These constitute the man, and the outward actions, which you submit to the control of the state, are only the outward expression of these. To allow the utmost freedom to these, while you restrain the others, were to act, if we may borrow a simile from Milton, as absurdly as he who thought to keep out the crows by shutting his park gates.100 Man needs instruction. But all instruction is, from the nature of the case, authoritative. All instruction should also be in relation to the end for which man was made, and should answer the question, “What is the chief end of man?” What is the destiny of man? But if there be nowhere a power that has authority to teach, and that has a full right to demand and to compel, by all moral and spiritual discipline, submission to its teachings, how shall we have any instructions at all? How shall we be able to preserve that order in the spiritual world, without which order in the material world is impossible? Moreover, we deny that a man has the right to think and believe as he pleases. We deny any man’s right to think or to propagate falsehood. He who, having aimed to propagate the truth, and done all in his circumstances he could do to ascertain the truth, will doubtless be pardoned for errors of doctrine, as Abraham was for attempting to offer up his son Isaac; for God is just, and never exacts impossibilities, unless they are voluntarily incurred. Furthermore, we deny the ability of the individual, regarded as a mere isolated individual, to decide for himself on the great and awful question, What is the END to which man must direct all his efforts? He will always decide this question according to his own life, be that life what it will; and therefore if his life be not in the right, be not the true Christian life, his decision will not be the just one. 100 [Ed. John Milton, Areopagetica. A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicenced Printing to the Parliament of England (1643). See Roy Flannagan, ed., The Riverside Milton (Boston, NY: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998), 1008.]

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We have proved over and over again that we cannot come to the knowledge of the truth but through supernatural inspiration. This inspiration, which is through the life of Jesus, we have also proved is in the church, and it is only by union with the church that we receive it. He who is separated from the church, we are speaking now of the true catholic church, is destitute of this inspiration, and therefore incapable of answering the question. We then become able, as individuals, to know the truth only by becoming members of Christ’s body. Now, if we as individuals become able to judge by becoming members of Christ’s body, how much more shall the whole body itself be able to judge? This life in each individual is mixed up with that which is local, personal, peculiar, but when it is taken as the life of the whole body, it is taken in its unity and catholicity, and therefore in the purest state in which mortals can obtain it. Hence the decision of the whole church is always superior to that of the individual, and also the highest authority we have, or can have, in any case whatever. We then hold that the one catholic church, as the body of our Lord, is the authoritative body, the governing body, having, by virtue of the indwelling Christ, the right to decide authoritatively in all matters touching human life, whatever. Inasmuch as we admit the authority of Christianity, so do we admit the authority of the church, which is the living expression of Christianity. We say the church has the right, the authority to teach, and to say authoritatively what is the end to which we should direct, socially and individually, all our labors, and to make our Christian character and fellowship depend on our following its prescriptions. But do you not sacrifice in this the liberty of the individual? What do we mean by the liberty of the individual? The freedom to think and do as he pleases? That were license, not liberty. That he is not accountable for his belief, whatever it is, and that there is no standard to which he is intellectually bound to conform? We should once have answered this question in the affirmative, because we formerly, in our metaphysics, lost sight of the living synthesis of the human soul, and supposed that man was passive in all matters of faith. But we have learned that human nature is one nature, and that man is active in all his phenomena, and therefore his opinions are deeds for which he is as accountable, as for any other deeds. What then do we mean by individual freedom? That the individual shall be compelled neither morally nor physically to submit to an authority not approved by his own conscience? But conscience is uniform only in telling men to do right; as to the practical question, What is right?

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It varies with each individual. Adopt it as your rule, and you have all the disorder we have complained of; you run into absolute individualism, which is incompatible with all social order, and therefore with all good, whether social or individual. What then? We know individual freedom in no sense in which it must not be subjected to the action of authority The only definition of it we can give is, Freedom to do whatever the sovereign authority commands or permits. In the present case individual freedom is simply the right and the liberty to do whatever is authorized or permitted by Christianity, and practically, by the church. We do not understand in the spiritual region where we now are anything of this inherent right to freedom about which men talk. We may say as the Jews did, that “we be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man” [John 8:33]; but still we are free only as the Son makes us free, free in the freedom of the Spirit, of Christ, through the truth. We know no step between this and absolute individualism. But if the individual is subjected to the authority of the church, and has no right to depart from its decisions, he has, from the nature of the case, the right to sit in judgment on the question, what is the real decision of the church? And also on this other question, not less important, what is the meaning of Scripture according to this decision? We may also say, for the quieting of those who have not learned that liberty can be enjoyed, only as the result of authority which ordains and secures it, that there is never tyranny in enforcing a man to do that which he feels is commanded by the highest authority. The highest authority, the sovereign, we have proved is Christianity, the ideal, therefore, the supreme law of Christendom. The true catholic church can and will enjoin only its own ideal. As this is Christianity, it follows that it neither can nor will enjoin only that which every man in Christendom acknowledges to be the law to which he is accountable. Tyranny on the part of the church is out of the question. We might as well say that there is tyranny in demanding that a man submit only to the right. There is then no danger to be apprehended to liberty by any who love truth and progress, though there may be danger to be apprehended by those who love license and anarchy, and who would rather “reign in hell than serve in heaven.”101 Moreover, we do not assume that the individual may never dissent from the Church. All truth is sacred and authoritative. He who has it has a right to entertain and promulgate it, whether it agree with the church or not. But whoso puts forth doctrines in opposi101

[Ed. John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667), Book 1, Line 261.]

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tion to, or different from those of the church, does it at his own peril, and can find his warrant for so doing only in the truth of his utterances. If he is willing to run the hazard, he will take the responsibility, and speak. If it turn out to be a true word, he will be justified; if false, he will be under condemnation. The prophet is superior to the priest, but then he must be a prophet—show that he speaks by divine commission, by revealing a life above the life of the church, the which in Christendom, to say the least, can rarely happen. The authentic creed of the church of Christ is that which every man is bound, in foro conscientiae,102 to adopt and to follow, and the church can never be oppressive in commanding obedience to that creed. This authentic creed is not in the Thirty-Nine Articles, nor in the Westminster Confession of Faith, nor in the formularies of any of the so-named churches, whether Grecian, Roman, Anglican, or Protestant. And yet it is drawn up, and easily ascertainable. It is written on the very heart of this century, and inscribed on the very front of its literature and science. We read it in every social movement of the age, from the terrible French Revolution down to the Chartist outbreak for bread;103 and hear it in the clear and piercing tones of every young prophet of God who rises up and demands a fuller manifestation of divine life, a more general effusion of the Holy Ghost, for the glory of God, and the progress of humanity. We almost dare ourselves venture to give its formula. We gave it six years ago, in two words, UNION and PROGRESS, the mutual solidarity and continuous progress of the race. We give it now in the words of another, “Christian character consists in unremitting efforts to effect the continued amelioration, in the speediest manner possible, of the moral, intellectual, and physical condition of mankind, especially of the poorest and most numerous class”;104 or in other words still, SEEK TO BE SAVED FROM SIN, AND TO SECURE THE BLISS OF HEAVEN HEREAFTER, BY DOING THY BEST TO CREATE A HEAVEN FOR ALL MANKIND ON EARTH. This, let men say what they will, is in substance the genuine, the authentic creed of the church of Christ in the nineteenth century, the only creed that men feel themselves bound to obey, that they have no right to call in question; and it is the only creed that has not ceased to make proselytes. 102

[Ed. Latin for “in the tribunal of conscience.”] [Ed. On the British Chartist movement of the early 1840s, see Asa Briggs, Chartism (Gloucestershire: Sutton, 1998).] 104 [Ed. This quotation appears to be a paraphrase of Saint-Simon’s basic theme in the New Christianity. On this see Saint-Simon: Selected Writings, ed. and trans. F. H. H. Markham (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 87 and passim.] 103

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The so-called churches of Christ are the real, living body of our Lord, so far forth as they adopt this creed, enjoin it, and command obedience to it. The church of Christ has, by virtue of its being the church of the ideal, the right, and as an outward, visible organization, ought to have the right, to dictate the end here implied, and to declare the means by which we must attempt to realize it; and it has, and of right ought to have, the power to discipline all those who, whether in a private or public capacity, neglect it, fail to adopt measures which tend to promote it, or pretending to favor it, adopt such measures as they must needs see are hostile to it. There is for us no liberty, and no real advance, but on condition of our having such an authority. We need it. We need an authority back of us that shall make the hard, stony-hearted man of the world tremble before his ill-gotten wealth, and feel that he must disgorge his hoards, and give himself and all he has up to the service of God and man, or have his part with devils and the damned; an authority which shall arrest the voluptuary, rolling sin as a sweet morsel under his tongue, and make him feel that he can enter into heaven only through the gates of chastity and selfdenial; a power that shall overawe your selfish demagogue, your ambitious politician, seeking power but for his own aggrandizement, and before which he shall not dare propose other than just ends, or adopt other than just measures. The church should subject to its severest discipline, or mark with the deepest brand of its utter condemnation, the false-hearted senator, or the base magistrate, who, under pretense of raising the wages of labor and benefitting the workingman, will recommend or support measures, which tax the poor for the rich, and which do necessarily make the poor poorer and the rich richer. No man should be suffered to wear the Christian character in the community who does not use whatever power he may have been entrusted with, for the greatest good of the poorest and most numerous class of his brethren. There is more than one prominent politician and leader of the business world in this Commonwealth, as well as elsewhere, steeped in corruption, whose constant study is to make the government a mere instrument, by which to plunder the many for the benefit of the few, who nevertheless is fawned upon by a professedly Christian community, courted, praised even by men who call themselves ministers of Jesus; no pulpit dares rebuke them; none of our churches dare subject them to their discipline, to exclude them from the communion, cut them off as gangrenous limbs from the body of our Lord. But there should be a church clothed with a power over these sons of Satan, before which they should feel

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weak and helpless, and which, if need were, could grind its foot into their rebellious necks, as the pope did his into the neck of Frederic Barbarossa.105 When the outward, visible organization comes to be the real expression of the true catholic church, we shall have a church that can and will exercise this power of disciplining its disorderly members—its members who forget the rights and interests of humanity—to the fullest extent, and with the most salutary effect. Thus much we have ventured, in opposition to the Protestantism of the country, and the individualism which we have inherited from our fathers, to say in favor of the unity, catholicity, necessity, and authority of the Church. We have not for twenty years labored, suffered, borne reproach and abuse from all quarters, in behalf of liberty, to desert her sacred standard now, and go over to the camp of our enemies. We fight under our old banner, all torn by its efforts to stream against the wind, as it may be. We belong to the grand army of progress, of universal freedom to universal man, ready to do battle in words, and if necessary, in deeds, at any moment, and against every enemy; but we have learned what we did not always know or consider, that liberty must be organized or it is license, and ordained by authority, or it has no basis, no safeguard, no guaranty. In the name, the sacred, the soul-stirring name of liberty, in which name we feel we have some right to speak, we demand the rehabilitation of the church. Humanity needs, and has a sacred right to an authoritative church, that shall inspire a love of mankind, and command all men to labor for the upbuilding and extension of God’s kingdom on the earth—a one catholic church, clothed with supreme authority over all matters pertaining to human life, whether spiritual or material. This church, in some sort, already exists in Christendom. The Roman Church, to a great extent, was it down to Leo the Tenth. Since then it has been the church in the wilderness. None of the organisms now extant, though they contain it, as the grub contains the psyche, are it, and they must be all transformed before they can be the real body of our Lord. This, we say in conclusion, is the day of the Second Advent. All signs indicate it, all voices proclaim it. Now the Son of Man returns, comes a second time; but not in a body as when born of the Virgin Mary. He comes now in the clouds of heaven, as the lightning flashing upon the world, and rendering its darkness visible. He comes a pure disembodied spirit, seeking a new body, for the old is dead and 105 [Ed. In 1155, Pope Hadrian IV (1154-59) exacted full homage from Frederick Barbarossa (c. 1122-90), the Holy Roman Emperor (1152-90.)]

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buried in the tomb of the past. The church then is now not formed, but in a state of formation; and our ministry, instead of being that of pastors and teachers, is that of apostles and martyrs. The House of the Lord, the church—from Kuvrioj oi;koj—is not yet rebuilt, and there is no publicly recognized altar at which we can minister. We are then thrown back on the apostleship. As apostles of the WORD, we must go forth, in meekness, in love, but bold in the spirit, justified in the faith, and mighty through Christ working within, to found the CHURCH OF THE SECOND ADVENT. We must go forth, and preach anew Christ crucified, to the Jews, the members and supporters of old organisms, a stumbling block, and to the Greeks—the wise men of this world, supporters of naturalism, relying on their own resources—foolishness; but to them that are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God;106 we must speak out from the fullness of the spirit, under a sense of the awful responsibility we assume, and of our own insufficiency, in sorrow and heaviness of heart, yet not as cast down nor without hope; and the immortal atoms of a new moral world will soon begin to gravitate around us, and then will be created the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. The new will gradually absorb or transform the old, and all things will be made new. We have ventured to pronounce the words, CHURCH OF THE SECOND ADVENT; we have used these words not in the low material sense in which they are used by the Millerites and Latter-day Saints,107 but in a high, deep, significant, spiritual sense, as indicating a new epoch in the reign of Christ spiritually in humanity, and a new social organism for the redemption and progress of the race. Young men, men of the future, behold then your work. This new church will be founded; the new house, the second temple, far surpassing the glory of the first, must be erected, and it is yours to take part in its erection. Thank God that you are freed from the terrible work which devolved on your fathers, and elder brothers, that of demolishing old institutions, and of living only amid the rubbish. It is yours to be the workmen in building the new temple, a work in 106

[Ed. A reference to 1 Cor 1:23.] [Ed. The Millerites were the religious followers of William Miller (17821849) a lay preacher who predicted the Second Coming of Christ around the year 1843. Some of his followers established the Seventh-Day Adventist Church. The Latter-Day Saints, also known as the Mormons, were established by Joseph Smith in 1830. They saw themselves as the rightful spiritual heirs of the early American Nephites, the last of whom were Mormon and his son Moroni who in 384 A.D. buried a book of revelations, known as the Book of Mormon, which Smith discovered in 1830.] 107

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which you will be seconded by the prayers of all good men, by all that is true, beautiful, good, strong, immutable, and immortal on earth or in heaven. The church universal and eternal will be erected. “The corner stone is laid; the materials are prepared. Let then the workmen come forth with joy, and bid the Temple rise. Let them embody the true idea of the GOD-MAN, and Christ will then have come a second time; he will have come in power and great glory, and he will reign, and the whole earth will be glad.”108 But loth as we are to quit this subject, we must draw this article to a close. We have not said all that we wished, nor have we in all cases said what we have, as we would. We have written the larger part of this article under great physical debility, when we were hardly able to sit at our desk. We have been obliged to prepare it in great haste, or not at all, for the time when we must publish it was not at our control. In the hurry of composition, it can hardly be possible that errors of detail and on minor points have not escaped us. For these we ask indulgence. For all that concerns the general argument, and the leading doctrines set forth, we ask only the most rigid criticism. Taken as a whole we regard it as the most important and the most complete of our theological publications. If read in connection with the essay on the Church of the Future, the Review of Charles Elwood, the paper on Leroux’s l’Humanité, the Letter to Dr. Channing, and the article in the Democratic Review on Schmucker’s Psychology,109 which will appear at the same time with this, it will give those, who wish to know our religious views, all the information they can really need, and will take away all excuse for misapprehending or misrepresenting us hereafter. As it concerns the author of the work before us, all we have to say is, that we have criticized him freely, perhaps in some instances severely, yet, we trust, not in malice or wrath. We have meant to treat him throughout with the respect due not only from one man or one minister, but from one friend to another. We have had the pleasure of reckoning Mr. Parker among our most warmly cherished friends, almost from his entry into the ministry; and not willingly could we bring ourselves to feel that we are not so to consider him hereafter. 108

[Ed. New Views of Christianity, Society, and the Church (Boston: James Munroe, 1836), 66.] 109 [Ed. For “Church of the Future,” see Chapter 1 in this volume; “Charles Elwood Reviewed,” Chapter 4 in this volume; “Leroux on Humanity,” Chapter 7 in this volume; The Mediatorial Life of Jesus. A Letter to Rev. William Ellery Channing, Chapter 6 in this volume; and “Schmucker’s Psychology,” Chapter 10 in this volume.]

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We honor, love, and esteem, the man and whenever he shall write a work out from his own life and experience, we know we shall like it. This work is not a genuine production. It has sprung not from his own life and experience, but from his reading, and is that portion of his various reading which his own mind would not digest and assimilate. Deeper in the man is the true religious soul, the high and holy aspiration after truth and excellence. He belongs, notwithstanding the crude speculations of this book, to the great Christian family; and as a brother in Christ we have heretofore considered him, and as such we shall continue to consider him, till we find that his life exhibits no evidence of communion with Jesus.

10. SCHMUCKER’S PSYCHOLOGY1 United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (October, 1842): 352-73

Most Americans, and, we were about to say, all Englishmen, of the present day, who devote themselves to philosophic studies, take altogether too low and contracted views of philosophy; and seem to have no suspicion of the real grandeur and extent of its province. They make philosophy, even when wishing to commend it to our love and reverence, consist in mere speculation; or in the mere analysis and classification of dry abstractions, or the dead phenomena of our past lives, utterly incapable of affording us either light or warmth for the duties that lie before us. Rightly defined, philosophy is so much of the religion of a given country, or of a given epoch, as the human mind in that country or epoch is able to understand and appropriate. It is the science of life, and embraces within its view God, Man, and Nature. Its aim is to enlighten the mind and warm the heart. It does not merely make discursions on what is, or what has been; it does not seek merely to explain and account for the past and the present, to make us familiar with the laws of Providence, of the universe, or of humanity; but aims to disclose to men a new and a loftier ideal of wisdom, beauty and goodness; and, therefore, to have an immediate bearing on everyday life. It surveys the past and the present, it is true; is erudite and observant; inquires into the nature of man and the universe, into the origin and relations of their respective phenomena; but always with a view to practical life—always with the sole aim of making mankind wiser and better; of ameliorating their moral, intellectual, or physical condition, and of inducing them to live in stricter obedience to the law of their being, and the will of their Maker. They wholly mistake the nature and purpose of philosophy who define it to be a merely speculative science. It is not, as too many of 1

[Ed. Brownson’s review of Samuel S. Schmucker’s (1799-1873) Psychology; or Elements of a New System of Mental Philosophy, on the Basis of Consciousness and Common Sense. Designed for Colleges and Academies (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1842). Schmucker was a Lutheran theologian who taught at Gettysburg Seminary and was president of Pennsylvania (now Gettysburg) College.]

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our modern psychologists contend, the product of mere reflection, of what M. Cousin terms the reflective reason. Its province is precisely that of religion, of which it is merely a special phase; it embraces the same objects, contemplates the same ends, uses the same means, and relies on the same authority. The philosopher is never a cold, dry, withered-up being, without heart or soul, surveying with indifference, without passion or sympathy, all systems, all opinions, all beings, and all phenomena; but he is a living man, deeply, often terribly, in earnest, and manifesting in its most awful energy, man’s threefold power to know, to love, and to do. He is no amateur, no dilettante; but a full grown man, hearty, robust, and resolute; meaning what he says, and doing what he means. He thinks, speculates, feels, acts, always to some end. He has always a point to carry—a purpose to accomplish. His philosophizing is never but a means to an end. He is one who is not and cannot be satisfied with what has already been gained. Prevalent systems of faith strike him as defective, false, or mischievous; approved practices as low, corrupt, and corrupting; established forms of worship as puerile, cold, and uninspiring; existing governments as oppressive, tyrannical, grinding, at best inadequate to man’s wants, rights, duties, and destiny; and over them all, over the whole actual, there hovers to his mind, a bright and kindling ideal of something fairer, freer, loftier, wiser, and better; more conducive to the glory of God, and the relief of man. To this ideal, seen clearly or dimly, which forsakes him never, his soul is wedded, for better or for worse, for life or for death, time or eternity; and he studies, toils, struggles, suffers, lives, dies, but to realize it in the practical life of his race. No man is a philosopher who has not an ideal good, as well as an ideal truth or beauty, which he burns to realize, and which he will realize, cost what it may. Something more than reflection, then, is necessary to make the philosopher. He needs to be inspired, as much as does the genuine poet, the prophet, or the founder of a church. Philosophy is not merely the science of man, of nature, or of God. It is the science of sciences; that which brings all the special sciences up to a common unity, disclosing the common basis of them all, and directing their cultivation and application to a common end— the continued progress of mankind, or the uninterrupted amelioration, in the speediest manner possible, of their moral, intellectual, and physical condition.2

2 [Ed. Brownson borrows this idea and terminology from Saint-Simon. See for example in this volume p. 222 and p. 381.

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In this high, this religious sense, we have no generally recognized philosophy among us. We have sciences, but no science. All is special, individual, anarchical; nothing general, catholic, orderly. Thought has no unity, either in aim or result. The special sciences we cultivate are not subjected to one and the same law of thought—are not pervaded by one and the same living idea and do not conspire to one and the same social and religious end. Theology, geology, chemistry, physiology, psychology, ethics, politics, are treated as so many distinct and separate sciences; not merely as different branches of one and the same science. In studying one of them, we must learn what we must unlearn in studying another—receive in this as true what in that we must reject as false. Contradiction, confusion, falsehood, therefore, reign in our scientific world, and science is able to do comparatively little for the advancement of the race. In consequence of this anarchy, arising from the individualism which predominates, all the sciences, not excepting even theology, have with us somewhat of an irreligious tendency. The radical conception of religion is that something which binds, lays under obligation, is authoritative, has the right to legislate, to command. Religion is always authoritative, always legislative; it imposes the law; commands, nay, enforces us to do our best to realize the ideal it proposes. Of this ideal it permits us to lose sight never; but compels us to seek it, though at the risk of being scorned and derided, though we must brave exile and the dungeon, the scaffold, or the cross. But none of our sciences are authoritative; none of them propose an ideal and bind us, in foro conscientiae, to realize it. They have, then, no religious, but an irreligious character. Their authority is lost by the fact that they are mere individual sciences, wanting a common bond of unity, a vivifying principal, embracing, explaining, and uniting them all in one uniform and catholic science. They are now weak, and mutually destructive, like a mass of individuals thrown together, and striving to exist together without any power of cohesion, or principle of social order, which is out of the question; for each is infinitely repellent of the other, and one perpetually neutralizes or thwarts the efforts of another. The secret of this scientific anarchy may be found in the separation which has for a long time been attempted between religion and philosophy. Philosophy is asserted to be of human origin, and religion to be of divine origin. Religious people formerly condemned philosophy as repugnant to religion; philosophers have latterly condemned religion as repugnant to what they have been pleased to call philosophy. More lately still, the rational and better-informed among

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religious people have contended that God cannot teach through nature one doctrine, and an opposite doctrine through revelation; and they therefore, have sought to harmonize religion and philosophy, by making the teachings of the one quadrate with those of the other. This is what Leibnitz attempts in his “Theodicea.”3 But these last fall into as great, though not so obvious, an error as the other two; and do equally separate religion and philosophy. Philosophy is said to be that amount of truth to which we attain by the natural exercise of our faculties, without any special aid from our Maker: religion is the truth which we are taught by supernatural revelation. Here are then two systems of truth, and, if we examine their contents, we shall find them treating precisely the same questions. Now these two systems must needs be either opposing systems or parallel systems. If philosophy, acknowledged to be of human origin, be true, what need of divine revelation? If divine revelation be necessary to teach us the truth, what is the use of philosophy? Or how can philosophy, resting upon a basis independent of revelation, possibly be true? The separation of religion and philosophy, then, necessarily declares, to say the least, that one or the other is superfluous. But there is no separation between religion and philosophy admissible. We do not mean to say by this, that the two coincide or harmonize in their teaching; but that the two are not two, but one. We have no original means of arriving at the knowledge of truth but the supernatural revelation of God. This revelation is the necessary basis of all that can be received as truth, whether termed religious truth or philosophical truth. Revelation is as necessary to furnish the basis of philosophy, as it is to furnish the basis of religion. Philosophy, then, is not a system of truth built up on a separate foundation, independent of religion, and able, and therefore having the right, to sit in judgment on religion, to overthrow it, or to explain and verify it; but is, if it be philosophy, identical with religion—the form which religion necessarily assumes when subjected to the action of the human mind. Instead, then, of seeking to reconcile religion and philosophy, we should seek their synthesis, to resolve philosophy into religion, and to find in divine revelation the one solid basis for our whole faith, whether termed religious or philosophical. A people believing in the Christian religion can have, can at least tolerate, no philosophy resting on a basis independent of Christian3 [Ed. A reference to Leibniz’ Essais de Théodicée sur la bonté de Dieu, la liberté de l’homme et l’origine du mal (1710), a work that was explicitly theological rather than exclusively philosophical.]

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ity, and contemplating any ideal but the Christian. Christianity is the philosophy, and the sole philosophy of Christendom. It is with all Christian people the supreme law of life. It has then the right to preside over the whole moral, intellectual, and physical development of humanity. Its ideal is the only authorized ideal. In Christianity, then, we must seek the science of sciences, the common bond, the catholic principle, that raises up all special sciences to a common unity, vivifies them, and directs their application to a common end. The anarchy and irreligious tendency of modern sciences grow out of the fact that the authority of Christianity in regard to them is denied, and the principle of individual liberty, in its most unrestricted sense, is affirmed. This must be corrected. For after all, we cannot get rid of Christianity, nor of its authority, even if we would; and our efforts to do so only confuse our language, and render us unintelligible each to himself, and all to one another. Christianity has become our life; it lies at the bottom of all our literature; and we cannot think, feel, or act, without thinking, feeling, acting it. It, so far as we have realized it, has become human nature, natural reason, the soul, the heart, the mind of all men. What is needed then in the philosophical world is the reassertion of the legitimate authority of Christianity, in all that pertains to human development. By this reassertion we shall attain to a complete and living synthesis of every branch of human science; and the whole of life will be harmonious and consistent, and society in all its departments will be subordinated to the one catholic principle of the gospel, for the realization on earth of the true Christian ideal, that is, the establishment of the reign of God in all human affairs. The work before us is a sincere effort of its author to contribute his quota towards advancing our knowledge of ourselves; and, as such, whatever estimate may be formed of its positive merits, deserves to be cordially welcomed, and honestly considered. We have read the work with some interest. We like its spirit; its general tone and sentiment. It has given us a favorable opinion of the worth and ability of its author, as a man whose personal influence on the young men committed to his care must be pure and elevating. As a work on an interesting branch of science, it displays more than ordinary capacity; and makes us regret that the author did not enlarge his views, adopt a more comprehensive plan, and take in a wider range of topics. Still, it bears on its face, and we are able to find, after the most diligent search, no proofs that its author has any tolerable conceptions of philosophy in the broad, catholic sense in which we have defined it. It is true that he professedly treats only a special depart-

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ment of philosophy, and it would be unjust to demand, in a work intended to discuss merely a particular science, all that belongs to science in general. We do not, therefore, complain of the book because it treats merely a special branch of general science, nor because it confines itself to what properly belongs to that special branch; but because it does not treat that special branch in the light of general philosophy. The author does not show us its precise place in universal science; its relation to the Christian ideal; nor its practical bearing on the great duties of everyday life. A genuine psychology—one worth the writing or the reading— cannot possibly be written but in the light of a general philosophy of God, man, and nature. Such a work must answer the questions of man’s wants, rights, duties, and destiny. But these questions are never answered by studying man in the abstract, as isolated from nature, from his race, and his God, but by studying him in the concrete, as a living man, as existing in God, in nature, in humanity; that is, in his actual relations, connections, and dependencies. To study man in these relations, connections, and dependencies, is to study him in the light of a general philosophy. Dr. Schmucker does not so study him, and therefore leaves all these great questions of man’s wants, rights, duties, and destiny, not only unanswered, but even unasked. A psychology which leaves out these questions, the only questions of any practical importance in the conduct of life, is, to say the least, of questionable utility, and by no means precisely the psychology a wise man would wish to have studied in our colleges and academies. For, after all, what is its subject-matter? Man as a living being? a social being? A moral being? A religious being? Not at all; but simply man as an abstraction, as isolated from God, nature, and humanity; in which sense he has no actual existence, does not live at all, and is at best a mere possibility or virtuality. To know man in this isolated and abstract sense, in which the questions of his wants, his rights, his duties, and his destiny, find no appropriate place, is no more to know man in any true and worthy sense of the term, than knowledge of the properties of the triangle is knowledge of that threefold energy of our natures by which we are able to act, to know, and to love. Dr. Schmucker seems to us, therefore, like a great many others, to have mistaken in the outset the real significance of psychology, and the real questions it ought to discuss. By rejecting the concrete man— the living man—man in his relations with God, with nature, and with other men, and confining him solely to the mere isolated and abstract man, he has given us not psychology, but at best a mere psycho-anatomy, bearing no more relation to psychology, properly so

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called, than anatomy does to physiology. It is a mere dissection of the dead subject, an analysis and classification of the phenomena of the dead subject, which can throw little or no light on the living. But not to cavil at a term—admitting that the work before us is rightly named psychology, or an analysis and classification of the phenomena of the soul, we may still ask, what is its use, if it leave out all religious, ethical, social, and political questions? What does man live for? In relation to what should he be instructed? Is a work which throws no light, which does not even profess to throw any light, on any of the great practical questions of real life, precisely the work for our young men to study—a work that indicates no lofty social, political, moral, or religious ideal on the part of the author, and that demands no pure, deep, serious purpose, no high, holy, and moral aspirations on the part of the student? What, again, do we live for? Has life no purpose? Was man made merely to play at marbles? If man was made for an end more serious, high, and solemn, what is it? “What is the chief end of man?” That end once determined, should not all instruction, all education, nay, all life, be directed to its fulfilment? Will Dr. Schmucker tell us what relation there is between making ourselves familiar with these psychological abstractions, distinct from all the great practical questions of life, and living to fulfil the end for which God made us, and clothed us with the power to do, to know, and to love? The author who leaves all the great moral, religious, social, and political questions by the way, and passes over untouched all that concerns us in the daily conduct of life, is infinitely removed, in our judgment, from producing a work of practical utility, and from the right to call himself a philosopher, or his speculations philosophy. To have gone further, to have left the abstract regions to which he for the most part confines himself, and to have entered upon the great concrete questions of actual life, would, no doubt, have compelled Dr. Schmucker to touch upon debatable ground, perhaps to stir up long and bitter controversy. It would very likely have involved him in the party and sectarian conflicts of the day, and have effectually excluded his book from colleges and academies. But what then? What is the use of books or of essays that touch no practical question, that throw, or attempt to throw, light on no doubtful or still unsettled point of moral, religious, social, or political faith? No man who speaks freely, boldly, and honestly, on questions which really concern us in the conduct of life, in which men do really take an interest, questions on which it is worth one’s while to speak at all, but must run athwart somebody’s convictions or prejudices; but must

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stir up somebody’s angry feeling; because there will always be somebody indicted by what he says. He must necessarily tread on somebody’s corns. But what then? This is the risk every man who is really in earnest to spread truth, and ameliorate the moral, intellectual, or physical condition of a race, must run. It is only at this price that he purchases the opportunity to labor for human progress. Whoso counts this price too high, or feels unwilling or unable to pay it—let him hold his peace. His silence will hardly prove to be a public calamity. All faith, if genuine, if deep, if earnest, if living, is, say what we will to the contrary, exclusive and intolerant. Nothing is so exclusive and intolerant as truth, which has no patience with error, but excludes the semblance even of falsehood. This excessive liberality, about which some men take it into their heads to talk, which regards all opinions with equal respect, and alike proper to be inculcated, is not liberality but indifferency, and more to be dreaded in society, in church or state, than the most narrow-minded bigotry, or the most ranting fanaticism. There is no sound morality nor practical wisdom in the remark, “I care not what a man’s opinions are, if his conduct be good.” Just as if a man’s opinions were not a part of his conduct, and usually the most important part of it. The events of history are nothing but so many experiments, successful or unsuccessful, of the race to embody its opinions, to realize its faith. Men’s beliefs are powers, and the only earthly powers of which the wise man stands in awe. A simple geographical opinion entering and germinating in the breast of a bold mariner, discovers a new continent, and changes the direction of the whole industrial activity of the race. A simple belief that we should obey God, rather than kings, parliaments, and prelates, taking possession of a few honest, earnest-minded men in the western and midland counties of England, sends them on board the Mayflower, lands them one cold December’s day on our bleak and rockbound coast, and makes them the instruments of laying the foundation of a free republic, of opening a new school of social and political science for the world, and of demonstrating what man is and may be, when and where he has free scope to be what his Creator designed him to be. Faith is everything. There is not a single act of ordinary and everyday life that could be done without faith on the part of the actor. Every honest man does and cannot but hold his own faith to be the true faith; and therefore does and cannot but hold every opposing faith to be false. To be as willing to see that opposing faith prevail, as to see his own prevail, would imply on his part, as much respect for falsehood as for truth; that in his estimation, falsehood is as good as truth, and worth as much to mankind. A man who is as

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willing to see falsehood as truth propagated, is no true man. He may be learned, polite, decorous, but God, truth, righteousness, have no greater enemy than he, on earth, or under the earth. Such are the men who are always in our way. They care for none of these things. They chill our hearts; they damp our zeal; they weaken our hands. They belong to the race of do-nothings. The advancement of mankind owes nothing to their exertions. Never out of their class does God raise up prophets, sages, heroes, and martyrs, by whose unwearied efforts, generous self-immolation, and unshrinking obedience to a high and living faith, the race is enabled to advance towards a higher and happier state. They are the lukewarm, the neither-coldor-hot, insipid and nauseating, whom God, in addressing the angel of the churches declares he will “spew out of his mouth” [Rev 3:16]. But happily for the cause of truth and righteousness, the bulk of mankind are sincere and earnest, and are strongly attached to their faith. Their opinions are to them serious matters, matters to be lived for, or if need be, died for. They do not and cannot hold it a matter of indifference to individual or social, to temporal or eternal wellbeing, what a man believes; and so long as this is the fact, no man will be able to put forth on practical questions, new, uncommon, or unpopular opinions, without stirring up controversy, without encountering serious opposition, and most likely not without calling down upon his head, many a shower of wrath and abuse. This result is inevitable, unless mankind be reduced to that state of perfect indifferency, in which the opinions one puts forth, whatever their character, can excite no interest, command no attention. But, once more, what then? If we are to refrain from discussing in our elementary works the great questions of practical life, which “come home to men’s bosoms and business,”4 through fear of this controversy, opposition, wrath, abuse, what will be the advantage of a free press? Nay, in such case, what will be the meaning of a free press? Public opinion would control it more effectually than the edicts of tyrants, backed by an armed police, fines, dungeons, and gibbets. A true man will never be rash; will never forget that his opinions are deeds, for which he is accountable to God and to society; but having done his best to ascertain the truth, fully assured of the purity and sincerity of his purpose, and having a word pressing upon his heart for utterance, he will go forth, modestly, reverently, and utter it, fearlessly and honestly, without stopping for one moment to confer with flesh and 4 [Ed. Brownson is paraphrasing Sir Francis Bacon, The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral, Dedication, line 1.]

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blood. He knows that he speaks at his own peril; but he takes the responsibility, and asks not that it be less. He knows the penalty he must pay for daring to be true to his own convictions of duty; but he is willing and able to pay it. He who shrinks from it, has no reason to applaud himself for the manliness of his soul. He may be assured that he is held in no high repute in the City of God, and is by no means chosen by Providence to be an instructor of his race. Were he to speak, it would be to tell us that which can have no practical bearing on life or the truth long since told and realized. Admitting, then, that Dr. Schmucker could not have constructed a system of mental philosophy, in the full significance of the term, without touching on debatable ground, and giving rise to long and even bitter controversy, we are far from holding him excusable in sending us forth such a work as this—a work scrupulously avoiding the discussion of the only questions for the discussion of which philosophical works should be written or are needed. Thus far we have objected to this work on the ground that it is not a part of a general system of philosophy; that it is mere speculation on naked psychological abstractions, which have no real existence; that it leaves out of view all the great philosophical questions which relate to man’s wants, rights, duties, and destiny; and therefore, leaves out the only religious object for which a work on philosophy can be written. But we do not stop here. Passing over these grounds of objection, taking the work as psychology in the most restricted sense possible, we hold it defective and false, and were it likely to be introduced very extensively as a textbook in colleges and academies, we should hold it to be not only defective and false, but mischievous. The very title page creates a presumption against it. The author calls it “The Elements of a New System of Mental Philosophy.” A new system of mental philosophy, if by system is meant anything more that the order and dress in which old doctrines are presented, can hardly be looked for. Additions may be made to the old, but nothing radically new can be obtained. The human race is subjected to a law of continuity, which presides over all its development and growth, whether considered generically or individually. From this law human thought does not and cannot escape. The present was elaborated in and evolved from the past. The future must be—so far as human effort is concerned—the elaboration and evolution of the present. The law of progress is that of continuous growth, which is in no case interrupted or disturbed, save as Providence aids it on, by granting, at such intervals as seems to it good, supernatural acces-

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sions of moral and intellectual strength. But these special grants, accessions, revelations, which God makes to us from time to time, as the conditions of our progress, do not break the law of continuity. They are all made in harmony with one and the same divine thought, of which human nature, as well as they, is an expression. They merely swell the tide of life; or as fine musical accompaniments blend in with the tones of the human voice, swell and enrich their melody, without being in ordinary cases distinguishable from them. Jesus does not build on the ruins of Moses: Christianity does not supplant Judaism; but generalizes and fulfils it. From the first to the last, the life of humanity is a continuous growth, not strictly speaking, by development, but by assimilation, accretion. According to this law, all radicalism, that is to say, all destruction of what was fundamental in that which has preceded, or the creation of an order of life, religious, social, or philosophical, that is new in its fundamental elements, is necessarily condemned. What is, must be always our point of departure. This is the principle that must govern us in relation to the race at large, and also in relation to a particular nation or country. Each reformer must connect his proposed reforms with the past of his own church, school, or nation; so that the continuity between its past and its future may be preserved. If he do not, he will labor to no end; he will fail in his projects, and deservedly fail. The American philosopher, then, must not attempt a new system of philosophy; but must seek to continue uninterruptedly by improving it, the philosophy the race has always embraced, and as modified by the faith and practice of his own nation. In other words, the American philosopher cannot transplant into his own country the philosophy of France or Germany, nor will it answer for him to seek to construct a philosophy for his countrymen from the French or German point of view. He must construct it from the English point of view, and continue English philosophy, as modified, as we may say, by Jonathan Edwards, our only American metaphysician, and by our peculiar civil, political, social, and religions institutions. Our philosophy must be English philosophy Americanized, like the great mass of our population. We do not, then, want, as we cannot have, a new system of philosophy. Locke, Reid, and Jonathan Edwards, have laid the foundation for us, have begun the work, which we are merely to continue. But even if a new system of philosophy were needed, and could be looked for, we must assure Dr. Schmucker that he deceives himself if he thinks that he has furnished such a system. Saving his terminology, in some instances barbarous, and rarely felicitous, the distri-

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bution of the several parts, for the most part immethodical except in appearance, and now and then a statement no other philosopher would willingly hazard, we [do] not recollect a single portion of the work, either as to its thought, reasoning, or illustration, that can be called new. The author is rarely up with the Scottish school of Reid and Stewart,5 and is far below, as a mere psychologist, the Eclectic school of modern Germany and France. Even Upham’s Philosophy,6 superficial and meager as it unquestionably is, taken as a whole, is altogether superior to this, which throws no new light on a single metaphysical question, sets in a clearer point of view not a single fact of human nature, and adds nothing to our knowledge of the laws of the production or association of the psychological phenomena. If the author had spent less time in studying his own mind, and more in making himself acquainted with the views of such men as Plato, Aristotle, Bacon, Descartes, Locke, Leibnitz, Malebranche, Reid, and Kant, to say nothing of Schelling, Hegel, and Cousin,7 he would hardly have ventured to call his crude notions a new system of mental philosophy. They can be new only to those who are not at all in the habit of reading on metaphysical subjects. Dr. Schmucker not only tells us that his system is new, but that it is constructed on the basis of consciousness and common sense. Has he any clear and definite notion of the sense in which he uses these terms, when he declares them the basis of his system? Or has he adopted them, without reflecting much on their import, from Dr. Reid, in whose philosophy they play so conspicuous a part? We have looked through his book without finding any clear or exact definition of them; and in any sense in which either is intelligible or acceptable to us, neither constitutes a basis of his system. Common sense, as the term is used by Dr. Reid, does not properly designate, as he supposed, a distinct and separate faculty of hu5

[Ed. Thomas Reid (1710-96) and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828) were Scottish Common Sense philosophers who criticized John Locke’s pure empiricism and opposed it by emphasizing the role of intuition in human understanding.] 6 [Ed. Upham tried to refute Kant’s philosophy by distinguishing between the intellect, the sensibilities, and the will in his A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on the Will (1834).] 7 [Ed. Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715) was a modified Cartesian philosopher, theologian, and French Catholic priest. Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was a German philosopher known for his objective idealism. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) was the most influential of the German idealists. Victor Cousin (1792-1867) was a French historian of philosophy who was known for his attempt to create a synthesis between the Scottish Common Sense tradition and German idealism.]

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man nature, but a special degree of our general faculty of intelligence. Man by nature, in his very essence, is intelligent, capable of knowing, and intelligent to the requisite degree for seeing, perceiving, or knowing, in the three worlds of space, time, and eternity. The world which we call the world of eternity, is sometimes called the transcendental world, because its realities transcend those of time and space; and also, sometimes, the world of absolute, universal, immutable and necessary truth. The contents of this world, after Plato and Platonists, we call IDEAS; Reid called them constituent elements of human nature, first principles of human belief; Aristotle and Kant term them categories of the reason, and in their view categories of the reason as a faculty of human nature. They are the first principles of all science, and of each of the sciences. They, however, do not, as some moderns seem to suppose, reside in the mind, but out of it, in what Plato and the Greeks call the Logos (Logoj) and which we may call, with M. Cousin, “the world of reason,” of absolute, universal, and necessary truth. But, though these ideas or first principles do not subsist in the human mind, the human mind is constructed in accordance and placed in intimate relation with them; so as to be always capable of perceiving them, not detached, not as mere abstractions, but so far as they enter into and constitute the basis of the finite, particular, contingent, concrete objects of time and space, save in connection with which we never recognize them. The power to perceive these ideas, or first principles of belief, is what Dr. Reid really understood by common sense; that is, not merely a sense common to all men, but a power in each man to perceive, to entertain, or to assume certain first principles, common and indispensable to every act of intellectual life. The reality of this power cannot be questioned. Without it, as Dr. Reid has shown over and over again, man could have not only no firm basis for metaphysical science, no recognition of objects transcending time and space, but in point of fact no science at all; but would be incapable of a single act of cognition whatever. But this power, the reason (Vernunft) of Coleridge and the Germans, which they seek to distinguish from the understanding (Verstand),8 is not a distinct and separate faculty of human nature, but, as we have said, 8 [Ed. Brownson interpreted Vernunft as the power of reason to reach the transcendentals, that is, knowledge of spiritual realities not obtained in or through the senses. Verstand he understood as the power of the mind, relying upon the senses and reflection, to grasp empirical reality, or knowledge of material realities. He interpreted these German terms very much in the same way as Emerson and many other American Transcendentalists.]

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merely a special degree of the general faculty of intelligence. To know may indeed have various conditions and degrees, but, as M. Cousin has well remarked, it is always one and the same phenomenon, whatever its sphere or degree. I know always by virtue of one and the same faculty of intelligence, whether the objects of my knowledge be the contents of space, of time, or of eternity; that is, whether these objects be bodies, events, or ideas; or whether I know mediately through external bodily organs, or immediately by intuition. Had Dr. Reid carried his analysis a little farther, he would have perceived that his “first principles” are objects of the mind, not laws of human belief; and he might then have escaped the error of calling common sense a distinct and separate faculty of human nature. Does Dr. Schmucker understand by common sense this power of human nature to perceive ideas or objects which transcend the worlds of space and time? In this sense, it is the power to perceive substance in the cause, being in the phenomenon, the infinite in the finite, the universal in the particular, the absolute in the relative, the necessary in the contingent, the permanent in the transient. But this power he denies from the beginning of his book to the end, and admits as objects of knowledge, of cognition, only the objects of space. His pretension then to have based his philosophy on common sense, according to Dr. Reid’s use, or virtual use, of the term, is wholly unfounded. He goes right in the face and eyes of common sense. The only other intelligible sense of the term is the common or universal assent of mankind. We have no objections to using the term in this sense, and none to making it in this sense authoritative. We know in matters pertaining to politics, and morals, matters pertaining to the race, no higher authority, under divine revelation, than the common assent of mankind. But what is the exponent of this common assent? Whence shall we collect this universal assent of the race? Unquestionably from tradition. The universal assent of the race is the universal tradition of the race, and the authority of the race is nothing else than the authority of tradition. Tradition taken in the true and large sense of the term, and so as to include not only what may be termed natural, but supernatural, or providential tradition, in all that relates to politics, morals, and society generally, we recognize and hold to be authoritative. But we do not find Dr. Schmucker appealing to tradition; nay, he rejects it, in calling his system new, and in seeking, as he tells us was the case with him, to construct his system, not by consulting the philosophical monuments of the race, but by refusing for ten years to read any work on the subject, and by devoting himself solely to the study of his own mind. We must needs

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believe, then, that he deceives himself, when he thinks that he has made common sense a basis of his system. The author’s claims to having made consciousness another of the bases of his system, we apprehend, in any sense acceptable even to himself, are no better founded. Consciousness is not, as Dr. Reid seems to have taught, a distinct and separate faculty of the human mind; nor is it a peculiar act of the mind, by which it not only knows, but takes note of the fact that it knows, as seems to be Dr. Schmucker’s own opinion. The precise fact of consciousness is not the mind taking cognizance of its own operations, but of itself, in its operations, as their subject, as the operator. We perceive always; for we are by nature and essence active and percipient; and nature, sensible and transcendental, is at all times around us, and streaming into us with its influences: but we are not always conscious; we are conscious only in those more vivid, more distinct perceptions, in which we comprehend in one view, by one simple act of the percipient agent, both the object perceived, and the ME as subject perceiving it. Consciousness is therefore simply the recognition by the ME of itself, in the fact of perception, as the agent perceiving; in thought as the subject thinking; in love as the subject loving; in contradistinction from the object perceived, thought, or loved. A system of philosophy based on consciousness must be based on the agent revealed by consciousness, that is to say, the ME, or subject. A system of philosophy based on the ME must be purely subjective, and incapable of attaining to existence exterior to the ME. It would be then the reduction of all our knowledge to the sentimental affections of the sentient subject, the last word of the sensual school; or the irresistible categories of the reason, or forms of the understanding, the last result of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason—a rationalistic idealism; or to mere volitions or voluntary creations of the ME itself, with Fichte, or an egoistic idealism, if the expression will be permitted us. Is it in either of these results that Dr. Schmucker would end? Is his philosophy purely subjective? So far as it is systematic, it is so, in our view of it; but he has not intended it to be so, for he asserts objective reality, the independent existence of entities out of the ME, though by what authority he does not inform us. But in saying that his philosophy is based on consciousness, we suppose the author intends that we should understand that in constructing it he has had direct recourse to the facts of human nature, the phenomena of his own mind, as revealed to him by immediate consciousness. On this point he is nowhere very explicit; but we presume that we do him no injustice, when we say that he probably

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adopts what is called the psychological method of studying the phenomena of the human soul. M. Jouffroy,9 the pupil, friend, and successor of M. Cousin in the department of the history of modern philosophy, in the Faculty of Letters at Paris, who, we regret, has, by his premature death within the year, been lost to philosophy, is, perhaps, the best exponent of this method. He tells us that there are two classes of facts; each class alike real, each alike open to our inspection; facts of the outward, material universe, and the facts of that interior, but nevertheless important world which each man carries in himself. The first class we observe by our outward senses, the second by means of an interior light, or sense, called consciousness. Is this Dr. Schmucker’s method? And is the adoption of this method what he means by constructing his philosophy on the basis of consciousness? If so, perhaps he is not aware of all the consequences of this method. This method never carries us out of the subjective; but let that pass. We deceive ourselves if we suppose the light by which we see in the external world is different from the light by which we are conscious, or by which we observe in the world within. The percipient agent is the same in both cases; and it is by virtue of the same faculty of intelligence that he observes or knows in one world and the other. The external senses do not observe, nor are they the light by which the man observes; the man himself observes through his external organs by means of his own inherent power of knowing, or faculty of intelligence; and it is by virtue of the same power of knowing, or faculty of intelligence, that he observes in the bosom of consciousness itself. In the second place, what is called internal observation is not, strictly speaking, internal. If by within is meant within the ME itself, we have no power with which to look within. The ME is the observer, and, therefore, must needs be distinct from the object observed. It is all on the side of the subject, and do the best it can, it cannot, turn it ever so swiftly, get on the side of the object. The object observed, be it then what it may, must be, strictly speaking, exterior to the ME, and, therefore, veritably NOT-ME. In the third place, these facts, which are called, though improperly, internal facts, are never observed, that is, studied, by immediate consciousness. The fact of consciousness is the recognition of myself in the intellectual phenomenon, as the subject of 9

[Ed. Théodore Jouffroy (1796-1842) was a disciple of Victor Cousin. Following Cousin he emphasized the importance of observing the operations of the soul to discern the character of all human knowledge.]

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the phenomenon; that is, as the subject thinking. The moment I seize this fact, and attempt to examine it, it ceases to be a fact of consciousness; for the fact of consciousness is now myself thinking on this fact, which I remember was a fact of consciousness a moment ago. It is impossible, then, to observe, analyze, and classify the facts of consciousness. What psychologists study for the facts of consciousness, are the facts of memory. They are, no doubt, an important class of facts; but they are not, and cannot be observed, studied, by immediate consciousness. We can, no doubt, study them by means of memory; but our knowledge of them cannot be more immediate and certain than is our knowledge of many other things. Memory is not always faithful. It does not always, nay it rarely, if ever, reproduces the fact exactly as it was, in all its relations and connections; and one grand cause, perhaps the chief cause, of the failures of psychologists, has been in the fact that they attempt to construct their systems with these facts alone. If Dr. Schmucker means, then, that he makes the facts of consciousness the basis of his system, he deceives himself; for, instead of observing the facts which he studies, by immediate consciousness, he studies them only by means of the memory. But this is lingering too long on the very title page of the work. It is time to proceed at least as far as the Introduction. This the author devotes to what he calls methodology, and to the difference between mathematical and metaphysical reasoning. “It has long been a subject of remark,” says the author, “that while the science of mathematics, which discusses the properties and relations of space and number, is accompanied by the most conclusive evidence, and bears conviction with it at every step of its progress, the philosophy of the mind still remains enveloped in comparative darkness and uncertainty, after the intellect of ages has been expended in its investigation. The question arises, are not both similar in their nature, and alike susceptible of demonstrative evidence?”10 Dr. Schmucker, while he admits that the two sciences may be dissimilar in their nature, yet considers the difference of the results obtained in the one from those obtained in the other, as owing to the different method of investigation adopted in mental science, from that pursued by mathematicians. “The superior force of mathematical reasoning arises,” he says, “from three sources. First, from an intrinsic difference in the nature of the subjects discussed. Secondly, from the more rigidly analytic method of investigation pursued in mathematics. And, thirdly, from 10

[Ed. Schmucker, Psychology, 13.]

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a less elegant, indeed, but more precise and perspicuous method of conveying to others the knowledge we have acquired.”11 The first of these reasons for the superiority of mathematics in clearness and evidence, may have some force, the other two, none. The third is dwelt upon much by English philosophers, and it held a conspicuous rank in the estimation of Leibnitz. But it is a great mistake to attribute the clearness and evidence of mathematics to the peculiar language adopted by mathematicians. Their signs, no doubt, abridge the labor of recording their results, and also the mechanical process of obtaining them; but their science is in no sense dependent upon them, and there is not a mathematical problem the solution of which cannot be obtained and given out in the ordinary language of reasoning. Then, again, the adoption of a precise, exact, definite, technical language for metaphysics, similar in its character and office to the algebraic signs, as Leibnitz wished, and as some modern metaphysicians seem to judge desirable, would avail us very little. A sign is no sign to us, till we know that it stands for something; and it tells us nothing till we know what that something is which it stands for. Philosophy is not a purely verbal science. It deals with realities, and it is and can be intelligible no further than these realities themselves are known. Nor do we perceive the force of the second reason assigned for the superiority of mathematical reasoning. Reference had to the nature of the subject, mathematical reasoning is not more rigidly analytic than metaphysical reasoning. The human mind is so constituted that, whatever the subject of its investigations, it must pursue one and the same method, what the Greeks called analysis and synthesis, and we, after the Latins, observation and induction. To hear some Englishmen talk, we might be led to attribute the invention of this method to Lord Bacon; but we may as well attribute to Lord Bacon the invention of the human mind itself. Bacon was no doubt a great man, and rendered important service, if not to science, at least to the sciences; but his merit was not precisely that of the invention of a method of philosophizing. The true method, and the only possible method, is given in the human mind itself. Every operation performed by the mind is performed by virtue of this method; without it the mind cannot operate. It cannot observe a fact, declare it to be a fact, or even to appear to be a fact, without a synthetic judgment, which is to a greater or less extent an induction; and without facts, real or supposed, it has no possible basis for any synthetic or 11

[Ed. Ibid.]

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inductive operation whatever. There has been a great deal of learned nonsense uttered about the inductive method, especially by Englishmen and their descendant American, a method always observed by the human mind in all its investigations, and as faithfully observed and as rigidly followed, in proportion to the extent of his ability and mental operations, by the simplest ploughboy as by a Newton or a Laplace.12 The real cause of the difference between the results of mathematics and of metaphysics is, in the fact that mathematics require acquaintance with but a small number of facts, and of facts which are obvious to every eye, and can be learned in a few moments; whereas metaphysical science, dealing with actual life, requires acquaintance with all reality, which is infinite. Mathematical science is merely the science of quantities. Quantity can differ from quantity only in more or less. He then who has the conception of more or less, has all the conceptions essential to mathematics; and he who knows how to measure more and less, in any conceivable degree, comprehends the science of mathematics. All beyond this in the whole science is, as it were, identical proposition piled upon identical proposition. No wonder, then, that mathematics were cultivated at an early day, and soon arrived at a high degree of perfection. We say high degree of perfection; for the science is not yet perfected, and it is far from having reached the utmost limits of its applications. But its further progress, or the progress of its applications, will be found to depend in no small degree on the progress of metaphysics. With philosophy the case is quite different. Here, instead of two, or at most three ideas, which are all that are required by mathematics, which may be obtained by acquaintance with a single concrete existence besides ourselves, and from which we may proceed by the calculus to the system of the universe, we have an infinite variety of complex ideas, which we can fully master only by an actual acquaintance with all contingent existences. The purpose of philosophy is not, as too many fancy, acquaintance with the relations of abstract ideas, which would give us for resultant only dead abstractions, not of the least conceivable value; but acquaintance with life—acquaintance with all that lives—to know really and truly the nature and law of every living being, from God himself to the veriest monad of his creation. A child can master all the facts essential to the science of 12 [Ed. Pierre Simon, Marquis de Laplace (1749-1827) was a French Mathematician and astronomer known particularly for the fundamental differential equation in physics which bears his name.]

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mathematics; none but God himself has or can have the knowledge requisite for the construction of a perfect system of philosophy. Philosophy, then, is and always must be imperfect. Its subjectmatter is all infinity, in all its unity and multiplicity. Man is finite, and can have only a finite knowledge. He can, therefore, never take into his view the whole subject-matter of philosophy, the infinite reality that underlies it. He can see this reality only on the side turned towards him, and comprehend it only under a single aspect. His system, then, though woven with infinite pains, can be at best only relatively true. It will always be defective, inadequate—falling short of the reality to be comprehended. But man is, through Providence, progressive—has a continuous growth, and therefore becomes able every day to enlighten a larger portion of reality, and to comprehend more and more of it in his systems. Yet never will he advance so far as to be able to construct a system of philosophy that will abide forever. The systems of today, as mere systems, will always be absorbed by the discoveries and necessary modifications of tomorrow. This is no doubt a sad conclusion, well adapted to check our pride and presumption, and to teach us modesty and humility in our theorizing; but it is warranted by the whole history of the past, and is a legitimate inference from the finiteness of all our faculties. Saddening, then, as it may be, we must accept it. It is not given to man to build a tower that shall reach to heaven. There is no escaping the floods that will sooner or later come, in some sense, to swallow up our old world. There is no help for it. All that we can ask, then, of the philosopher of today is that he embrace in his system, not absolute truth, but all the truth, in relation to God, man, and the universe, to which the human race has, thus far, whether naturally or providentially, attained. Passing over now the difference between mathematics and philosophy, we touch more especially what Dr. Schmucker calls methodology. Methodology! Why could he not have used, with Descartes and all the masters of the science, the simple term method? Methodology, if it mean anything, means a discourse on method; but it was not a discourse on method, but method itself, that Dr. Schmucker was to consider. But what is his methodology, or simply, his method of philosophizing? No man can tell from this Introduction, nor from reading the whole book, or at best can only guess it. Method is given in the human mind itself; that needs no discussion. What Dr. Schmucker means by methodology is doubtless what we should term the application of method. All philosophers, in the strictest sense of the term, adopt one and the same method; they

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differ, however—and in this consists the difference of their systems— in their mode of applying this one and the same method. The mode of applying method to the construction of philosophical science is the important matter. Descartes began in doubt, by doubting all existences but his own. To follow his example, we must begin by doubting all that can be doubted, push doubt to its furthest limits, till we come to that which cannot be doubted, and then admit into our system only what rigidly follows from what has been ascertained to be not doubtful. This is well enough for all those who really entertain the doubt recommended; but all men do not entertain this doubt; and we deceive ourselves whenever we think we have assumed in our system a doubt which we do not in reality feel. No man can take an artificial point of departure. A man who believes in the existence of God, cannot, even in thought, divest himself of that belief, and place himself in the position of him who really doubts that existence. In his arguments to prove the existence of God, he invariably and inevitably assumes the point to be proved, as the basis on which to rest his argument. A man, do his best, cannot divest himself of himself. He cannot assume, really and truly, as his logical point of departure, what is not his real and true point of departure; for he cannot both be and not be at the same moment, as would necessarily be the case were this possible. The human race has lived a long while, and not altogether in vain. It has ascertained some things; settled some truths. These, in all our philosophizing, we necessarily assume, whether we know it or not, and have the right to assume, as our point of departure. The existence of God has become to the race a fact, which it is no longer necessary to attempt to prove, nor allowable to call in question. Any alleged facts which go to contradict it, or to make it doubtful, are by that fact proved to be no facts; for it is more certain than any fact which can be brought against it. The same may be said of man’s unity, personal identity, moral freedom, and accountability. No matter what may be alleged against these facts, for we have for them the highest degree of certainty that we can have in any case whatever. Your science, or your fact, which contradicts them, is proved, by its contradicting them, to be no science, no fact. All facts of a similar nature the philosopher has the right to assume as so many points settled. His business then, instead of seeking to create and answer a doubt that he does not feel, is to ascertain what the human race has thus far established. This has not to be established over again. When ascertained, it is so much capital in advance. Our business is merely to add to it, and transmit it to our successors enlarged, to be transmitted by them to their successors still more enlarged.

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The next thing with regard to method—and concerning this as well as the foregoing Dr. Schmucker is silent—is that we confine ourselves to the order of facts which belong to the special science we are constructing, and not conclude to one subject from the facts of another and a different subject. This rule is violated by phrenologists who are perpetually concluding to what must be true of man, from what they observe, or fancy they observe, to be true of animals, forgetting that between man and animals there is a distance, and that man has and can have no animal nature. Man is not an animal, but an animal transformed. The great merit of Bacon, under the head of method, consists in his having contended earnestly for this rule. He has been called the father of the inductive method, simply and solely, we apprehend, from his having laid down, and insisted on this rule. This rule, all important as it may be when rigidly understood and applied, has been too strenuously insisted on in English and American science. Each special science is supposed to have a separate and an independent foundation, to the confusion and virtual destruction, as we have already seen, of all catholic science. This has come from a too violent and too long continued reaction against the Scholastics. The Scholastics were said, and to some extent justly said, to subject physics to their metaphysics, and their metaphysics to their theology. They concluded from their theology to their metaphysics, and from their metaphysics to what must be true in nature; instead of going forth into nature, and ascertaining with open eyes what she contained. In this way they committed some gross errors, for which, however, science has amply avenged herself. It was against this method of studying nature that Bacon entered his protest. In point of principle, however, the much decried scholastics were by no means so far in the wrong as the disciples of Bacon, Hobbes, Locke, and Condillac,13 have supposed. The universe is constructed by intelligence, in its own image, or after one and the same divine idea. Man was made in the image of God. The human soul is the finite representative of the infinite intelligence, to which it corresponds in all respects; that is, so far as the finite can correspond to the infinite. The universe, outward nature, corresponds to man, and is therefore, as we may say, the image of the image of God. There is, then, one and the same law of intelligence running from the infinite reason down to the faintest echo of it, in the simplest monad God has created. All things are created according to one and the same law, 13 [Ed. Étienne Bonnot de Condillac (1714-80) was a French empirical philosopher.]

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and this law is the law of all intelligence. We may say, then, with the Hegelians, though not, if we understand them, precisely in their sense that a perfect system of logic were a complete system of the universe. The universe, if we may so speak, is the logic of the Creator, and a perfect system of logic would be a key to all its mysteries, and enable us to comprehend as thoroughly the operations of the material universe, as the operations of the human mind itself. There is nothing extravagant or unheard of in this statement. It contains nothing not in a degree verified by naturalists everyday. Fulton constructs his steamboat by his logic, before he does by his handicraft;14 and Franklin establishes by reasoning the indentity of lightning and the electric fluid, before he draws the lightning from the cloud, and makes it run down the silken cord of his kite and charge his Leyden Jar. Every scientific man, for the most part, succeeds in his theory before he does in his experiments. Very few important scientific discoveries are made by accident, or without having been, to some extent, predicted. Naturalists reason and say, “It must be so”; and then go forth and interrogate nature, who answers, “It is so.” These, and similar facts which might be indefinitely multiplied, prove not merely the uniformity of nature, and that its order does not change; but that nature has, if we may so speak, a rational basis, is made in the image of mind, and that its laws are, as Plato asserted, ideas or images of the laws or principles of intelligence, reason, Nouj, logoj. Assuming the fact, for which we here contend, and which we hold to be unquestionable, the scholastics were far from being wrong in principle. So far as we have a true system of theology we have the right to conclude from it to metaphysics. So far as we have a true system of metaphysics, we have the right to conclude from it to the facts of physical science. Metaphysical science has the right to preside over all mathematical and physical science. It does and will give the law to the mathematical and physical sciences, even if we try to have it otherwise, for it determines the character of the facts on which they are founded. We do not see the whole fact; and the fact we see and analyze varies as varies the metaphysical light in which we contemplate it; as the landscape varies as we shift the position from which we view it. But as our metaphysics are by no means perfect, we must never venture to rely solely on conclusions from metaphysical science to the facts of physical nature, till we have, to the best of our 14

[Ed. A reference to Robert Fulton (1765-1815), the inventor of the steamboat.]

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ability, corrected or modified them by actual observation and experiment in the bosom of nature herself. Dr. Schmucker’s error, under the head of method, seems to us to be in attempting to construct a science of the human mind by confining himself to a single class of facts, namely, the mere facts of memory, called by our modern psychologues facts of consciousness, and which we have seen are insufficient for his purpose. Speaking of himself, in his preface, he says, “He then resolved to study exclusively his own mind, and for ten years he read no book on this subject. During this period, he spent much of his time in examination of his own mental phenomena, and having traveled over the whole ground, and employed the leisure of several additional years, to review and mature his views, he now presents to the public the following outline of a system as in all its parts the result of original, analytic induction.”15 But it does not seem to have occurred to him that he might possibly have overlooked some one or more of the mental phenomena, and seen some of them but dimly, in a partial or even a false light; that in a word no analysis of one’s own mental phenomena is or can be an adequate basis for a genuine psychology. Is there no difference in individuals? Are the mental phenomena of a New Hollander and of a Leibnitz the same? Is Dr. Schmucker the standard-man, for all men? He would have done well to have conformed to the method of M. Cousin, which, though on one side too exclusively psychological, seeks always to correct or verify the psychology of the individual, by history, or the psychology of the race. M. Cousin really does what Dr. Schmucker professes to do, constructs his philosophy on the basis of consciousness and common sense, or what the individual can ascertain by the study of his own mental phenomena as presented, not indeed really by consciousness, but by memory, and by the study of the phenomena of the race, as presented in history in general, and that of philosophy in particular. He is therefore protected against taking the peculiarities or idiosyncrasies of his own mind, for universal and permanent laws of human nature. But Dr. Schmucker does not seem to have ever heard of M. Cousin, or his school. In concluding our criticism on what Dr. Schmucker calls methodology, we will add that in order to construct a true system of mental philosophy, or a psychology at all worthy of the name, we must, in addition to what Dr. Schmucker calls the mental phenomena, study— 15

[Ed. Schmucker, Psychology, viii.]

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1. PHYSIOLOGY, and in that enlarged sense in which it includes not only the functions of the human body, or organism, but nature in general. Man is not body, but he is, as Bossuet has finely expressed it,16 made to live in a body, and to manifest himself through bodily organs. By virtue of his union with a body, man is placed in relation with external nature. The body has in some way or other, not explicable to us, an influence on the mental and moral manifestations of the man; and nature an influence on the body. The relation then between the soul and body, and the body and nature, becomes an indispensable subject of study, in the construction of an adequate psychology. Climate, soil, productions, have a decided influence on our bodies, and therefore on our characters. There is a marked difference between the inhabitants of mountainous districts and those of the plains; between the dwellers in the interior and the dwellers on the coast; between those who live amid laughing landscapes, under a sky ever serene, and those who live in regions of perpetual storm and mist. Under the head of physiology, then, we must study not only the human organism, but all nature so far as it affects that organism. 2. SOCIETY. Man is not only made to live in a body, and through that in relation with other men, in the bosom of society. The individual does not, and cannot exist isolated from his race, but has his life and being in the race, as the race has its in God. God makes and sustains all creatures “after their kind,” as races, and it is only by a knowledge of genera and species that we can come to a knowledge of individuals. In constructing our philosophy of man, we must study him as a race, or the individual as a member of the race, in his relations to other men, living one and the same life with them, and as modified by friendship and love, patriotism and philanthropy, by the family, the church, and the state. 3. HISTORY. Man, we have said, has a progress, a continuous growth, and therefore changes from age to age, and that too as a race no less than as an individual. He has an existence, therefore, in time, as well as in space. The study of physiology and society, gives what concerns him as living in the world of space; the study of history, what concerns him as a being of time. History is threefold—individual, general, and natural. The first is what is ordinarily termed memory, and comprises what are usually treated as facts of conscious16 [Ed. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704) was the French Catholic bishop of Meaux. See Bossuet’s De la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-même (Paris, 1722; Paris: Fayard, 1990), 103, 164, 166. Brownson got the reference from Pierre Leroux’s De l’Humanité, 109, 112.]

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ness, or mental phenomena. General (from genus) history is the history of the race, and is the memory of the individual enlarged into the memory of the race, and records the changes and modifications, which humanity, human nature, has itself undergone. The law of human life, by virtue of which human nature is manifested, is in all ages the same; but the actual volume of human nature, so to speak, is perpetually enlarging, so that we must always have regard to chronology in what we affirm or deny of it. Between the human nature of the Hottentot, and the human nature of a Newton, there is a distance of many centuries. Moreover, nature, the outward material universe, has a growth, is successively ameliorated, so that it is ever exerting a kindlier influence on human organism, and therefore on human character. The history of these successive ameliorations, or the history of nature, is then essential to a complete system of mental philosophy. 4. INSPIRATION. We have no confidence in the philosopher who believes himself able to explain the phenomena of human life, whether in space or time, without assuming the special intervention of Providence. “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth him understanding” [Job 32:8]. The acorn must be quickened and fed by foreign influences, or it grows not into the oak; so man must be quickened by the spirit of God, and fed by divine revelations. Through the aid of providential men, prophets, messiahs, and God’s Only Begotten Son, the human soul has been quickened into life, human nature redeemed, and humanity advanced by the infusion into its life, successively, of new and higher manifestations of life. The modifications and growth of human nature, effected by these supernatural communications, must be studied in order to have a complete knowledge of the actual, concrete, living man, as we find him today, in the bosom of Christian civilization. Here is the vast field which he who would give us a psychology worthy of the name, must cultivate; and he who has not cultivated it long and assiduously, has no right to call himself a philosopher. To become even tolerably acquainted with this vast range of studies will require more than ten years devoted exclusively to the study of the phenomena of one’s own mind. After having dwelt so long on the general method and design of this new system of philosophy, it cannot be necessary to spend much time in disposing of its details. These are at best of moderate value, rarely new, and when new, just as rarely true. The author does not appear to have sufficient acquaintance with the thoughts of others, to be able to form any tolerable appreciation of his own. His reading

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is very far from having brought him up to the present state of metaphysical science, even in this country and England, to say nothing of France and Germany. In running over the whole work, we have found nothing worthy of special commendation, unless it be a single remark respecting what he makes the third division of the mental phenomena. He divides the mental phenomena into three classes: 1. Cognitive Ideas; 2. Sentient Ideas; 3. Active Operations. In this third division he includes the unconscious, the spontaneous operations of the mind, as well as the phenomena of the will proper, which are operations performed with consciousness, and reflection, and which are all that Upham and some of the Germans include under the third division. Dr. Schmucker is more correct than they; for I am active in as true and high a sense in my unconscious operations, as in what are properly called my volitions. If this were not so, moral character could attach only to those acts which are performed after deliberation, which is not true. The real moral character of the man is determined, almost solely, by his spontaneous operations, the unconscious motions of his soul. So far, then, we find Dr. Schmucker in the right. But we do not accept the terminology of this classification. What is the meaning of cognitive ideas? Surely, not ideas that know; why not then say simply cognition, the only proper word in our language for what Dr. Schmucker probably means. Sentient ideas certainly are not ideas that feel. Then they are simply sensations, sentiments, or feelings. But who before, ever dreamed of calling a sensation, sentiment, or feeling, an idea? Locke uses the term idea to express the objects about which the mind in its operations is immediately conversant. We do not accept this use of the term, the most favorable to Dr. Schmucker of any authorized use he can find; but even according to this use, the feeling, is never an idea, because the moment it becomes an object with which the mind is conversant, it has ceased to be a feeling and become merely the memory of a feeling. Then, again, what is the use of saying active operations? Just as if there could be any operations that were not active, or did not imply activity on the part of their subject, or the operator. Again, we protest against Dr. Schmucker’s use of the word idea in general. The terminology of a science is not, we own, of the highest, but it is of some importance; and it is desirable that it should be as uniform as possible. For ourselves, we are no friends to neologism, either in the coinage of new words, or new senses to old words. It is

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rarely necessary to introduce a new term into our philosophical language, and the only novelty allowable in the use of an old term is its restriction as much possible to its primitive, radical meaning. This radical meaning, guard against it ever so carefully, will always accompany the use of the word, and mislead both writer and reader, when it is not the exact meaning intended. The nearer we keep to the etymological meaning of a term, the more distinctly we express that meaning, the more just and proper will be our use of the term. Every language, too, has, a genius of its own, and certain indestructible laws, which can never be offended or transgressed with impunity. There is no wisdom in the common sneers against a studied nicety in the use of words; and, he who seeks to express his ideas in terms which are, as he would say, free, general, and familiar, will find, if he reflects that his objections to this nicety arose from the very great vagueness and looseness of his thoughts. The term idea was originally used in philosophy to designate that objective reality we take cognizance of in all our mental operations, which transcends what are called sensible objects, though never seen but in connection with them. This objective reality was originally termed idea by Plato, because he held it to be an image of the Logos, or divine mind. Now this conception of image goes, and always will go, with this word idea. It is impossible to get rid of it because it is the radical, the primitive sense of the word. When, then, we call our notions of the objects of time and space, ideas, as does Dr. Schmucker, we shall always, whether we so intend or not, teach that by idea we understand that the mental phenomenon we so name is in some sort a representative or image of the object concerned. Thus, the idea of a book will be the image of a book in the mind; the idea of a horse will be a little picture or likeness of a horse; the wound by a sword will cause pain, which pain will give us an idea, that is, a mental image, or copy of the sword. This is precisely Dr. Schmucker’s own philosophy, with this exception, that he does not contend that the idea is an image or likeness of the object, but merely a representation of it. Accept this, call our notions, representations, and then say, with Dr. Schmucker, that the immediate objects of the mind are not the entities themselves, but their mental representatives, and you have the very idealism which Berkeley deduced from Locke’s philosophy,17 and which Reid spent so much time, and not without success, in 17 [Ed. George Berkeley (1685-1753) was a British subjective idealist philosopher, known for his view that material things exist because they are perceived (esse est percipi), either by humans or by God.]

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overthrowing. Since Dr. Reid’s Inquiry,18 it has not been allowable to talk of mental representatives, or ideas, as objects of the mind, separate from the external realities themselves. The mind does not hold communion with the external world through the medium of ideas, but converses directly with it; and what Dr. Schmucker calls ideas or representations of that world, are merely the notions we obtain by conversing with it, the form our thoughts assume, when we think it. By his use of the term idea, he revives an old error, long since exploded, and for which we had supposed no new champion would ever be found. Moreover, we object to the principle on which Dr. Schmucker makes his classification of the mental phenomena. “The proper materials of this science, doubtless are,” he says, “not the supposed faculties, of which we know nothing directly but the known phenomena of the mind.”19 It is true we know nothing directly of ourselves or our faculties; but who ever contended that we do not know ourselves, or our faculties, as well as the effect of the exercise of these faculties, indirectly, by studying the phenomena of life? If we can know nothing of our faculties, what is the use of trying to obey the injunction, “Know thyself ”? But we do know ourselves; that is, indirectly, so far as realized in the phenomena of life. In every act of life, of which we are conscious, we recognize always ourselves as the subject; in cognition the subject that knows; in feeling the subject that feels; in love the subject that loves; in action, the subject or agent that acts. In every phenomenon we recognize, back of the phenomenon, the subject of the phenomenon, that which manifests itself in the phenomenon, the being, cause, or agency producing the phenomenon. Thus, in every one of the mental phenomena, we recognize, in addition, if we may so speak, to the phenomenon itself, the invariable, persisting subject of the phenomenon. This subject is always our self, the ME. The power of the ME (what I mean when I say, I am, I think, I love, &c.) to exhibit, produce, or cause this phenomenon, or more accurately to manifest itself in it, is precisely what we mean by the term faculty. Now, if we can know nothing of the faculties of the ME, how can we classify its phenomena? What will be the basis of our classification? If we cannot know the fact that we have the faculty of knowing, we can know nothing at all; and then how can we call a portion 18 [Ed. A reference to Thomas Reid’s Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense (1764).] 19 [Ed. Schmucker, Psychology, 22. Brownson is paraphrasing Schmucker here.]

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of our mental phenomena, cognitions, or “cognitive ideas”? When we assert that a portion of our mental phenomena are cognitions, do we not thereby assert that we have the power to know, and, therefore, that we have the faculty of intelligence? The same questions may be asked in reference to what Dr. Schmucker calls “sentient ideas “ and “active operations”; that is, feelings and operations. Can a phenomenon be known to be an operation, without the recognition of that which is the operator? Is it not the perception in the phenomenon of the operator that leads us and enables us to call it an operation? Dr. Schmucker must pardon us for asking if he has ever read Plato? We presume that he has not, and we therefore recommend him to do it forthwith, or at least some portions of Plato; and without referring him to any difficult portions, we would mention the Hippias,20 which is on the beautiful. From that he may learn that to be able to call a particular thing beautiful, we must needs know that by virtue of which it is beautiful; that to be able to say of this or that act, it is just, wise, or virtuous, we must be able to conceive of justice, wisdom, and virtue. He who knows not the general (the genus), cannot know the special and the individual. We know only by ascending from individuals to species and genera. Thus, we know, an individual to be a man only by virtue of our ability to detect in him the genus, the race, humanity or human nature; for in affirming him to be a man we affirm him to partake of this race, that is, of humanity, human nature. It is only by our power of perceiving genera and species, what Plato would call, and what we ought to call, the power of perceiving ideas, that we can know at all, that we can say of this individual he is a man, it is a horse, an ox, or a dog. Our modern metaphysicians who neglect the study of the ancients, show more selfreliance than true wisdom. In all that belongs to pure metaphysics, so far as the science concerns or rests on abstract principles, powers, or reasoning, no additions have been made since the time of Plato and Aristotle, unless Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason and Cousin’s reduction of the categories be exceptions.21 Our advance on the ancients is no doubt great, but it does not consist in the fact that we surpass them in our knowledge of the conditions of knowledge, of first principles of science, or in the strength, subtlety, or soundness of our reasoning; but in a wider range of observation in a richer experience, and a more thorough knowledge of life. Descartes in his doc20 [Ed. Plato’s Hippias, either Major or Minor, is a dialogue between the Sophist Hippias and Socrates on the beautiful and the foundation of all value judgments.] 21 [Ed. Cousin had reduced the Kantian categories to cause and substance.]

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trine of innate ideas, or more properly innate capacities or faculties, Reid, in his constituent principles of human nature, or first principles of human belief, virtually, even Kant in his categories, and Cousin avowedly in his absolute ideas, have done nothing but reproduce, and, in our judgment, not in improved forms, Plato’s doctrine of ideas, which asserts in all cases the reality of genera, ideas, or objects transcending time and space, and of our power to perceive them, as the absolutely indispensable conditions of all science. Against this doctrine we find the old Epicureans, and Sceptics, the Nominalists among the Scholastics, Bacon, Hobbes, Gassendi, Locke, Condillac, Hume, and Dr. Schmucker, among the moderns; although this must not be said of Bacon and Locke without some important reservations, owing to the fact that they were both as men and as practical philosophers, broader, richer, and truer than their official theorizing. We side with Plato, and in fact with Aristotle, who on this point is virtually a Platonist. All we contend is that we never perceive genera, ideas, separate, detached from the individuals in which they are concreted, or actualized; but we do really perceive them in these individuals; and it is only by virtue of this fact that the individuals themselves are objects of knowledge. But we are wandering too far from our present purpose. We will only add that the principle involved in Dr. Schmucker’s assertion that the proper materials of mental philosophy are the mental phenomena themselves, considered independent of their relation to the faculties of which they are the manifestations, involves, as all who are really masters of metaphysical science know full well, the denial of all solid basis of knowledge, the possibility of science, and therefore plunges us, theoretically, into absolute Pyrrhonism, or universal skepticism. He takes the side taken by all the philosophers whose speculations have led to the denial of religion, and the assertion of atheism. We are far from thinking, and far from intending even to intimate that we think, Dr. Schmucker is aware of this fact, or that he would not recoil from it with horror. But he who denies man’s power to know anything in the phenomenon, but the phenomenon itself, has made a denial which involves the denial of the possibility of recognizing in any or all of the phenomena of man, or of the universe, the power, or even to be made acquainted with the power, being, agency or cause, on which they depend for their existence, and from which they receive their birth, their reality, and their law. But waiving even this, we are far from adopting Dr. Schmucker’s classification of the mental phenomena; not, indeed, because we hold it less correct than the classification proposed by others, for we really

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know of none that we should be more willing to adopt; but because we hold that no classification of the kind is admissible. There are no mental phenomena that are purely actions, purely cognitions, or purely feelings. The ME acts always as the living and indestructible synthesis of all its faculties. It is in its essence a unity, with the threefold power to act, to know, and to feel; but not to act without knowing and feeling, to know without acting and feeling, nor to feel without acting and knowing; but always all three in each and every phenomenon. The mental phenomenon, then, whatever it be, is primitively a complex fact, at once and indivisibly action, cognition, feeling—complex but not composite, nor susceptible of being resolved into distinct and separate elements without ceasing to be a fact of actual life. We state here a fact of very great importance, to the ignorance or neglect of which may be attributed nearly all the errors of psychologists. Psychologists have never, or at least rarely, been willing to accept the primitive fact of consciousness, as the primitive fact. What is complex or manifold, they have supposed must needs be composite, therefore, secondary; therefore, susceptible of being decomposed and resolved into its primitive elements. Their great study has, therefore, been to decompose the primitive mental phenomenon, and to reduce it to a lower denomination than the lowest. They have been able to do this only by assuming that the distinction of a plurality of faculties in the ME is a division of the ME into a plurality of faculties; that is, they have been able to decompose the phenomenon only by dividing the ME into distinct, separate, and in some sort independent faculties, each able, as it were, to act independently and alone. Thus, the ME may act as pure activity, and give us pure actions, in which nothing of cognition or sentiment mingles; as pure intelligence, and give us pure cognitions, pure intellections, in which enters, nothing of action or feeling—hence the talk about and sometimes the condemnation of mere intellect; and finally, as pure sensibility, giving us mere feeling in which there is no action, no cognition. But having divided the ME, as it were, into three separate mes, or sub-mes, they have not been slow to mutilate it, by retrenching one faculty after another, under the pretense of resolving one into another; and in this way among them all, they have retrenched the whole ME, and left nothing remaining. The sensists, of the school of Condillac,22 resolve intelligence and activity into sensibility, and, there22

[Ed. Brownson and Cousin considered Condillac a sensualist (i.e., he emphasized that all knowledge comes through the senses); in this he modified John Locke’s empiricism.]

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fore, retrench all of the ME, but the sensibility; idealists retrench all but the power to know; and the egoists, the Fichteans, retrench all but the activity. Every system of philosophy constructed in this way, on the hypothesis that the primitive fact of consciousness is a simple fact, the product of a single faculty of the soul, acting independently of the other two, is necessarily false, for its basis is a fact, not of life, but of death. We cannot avoid remarking, by the way, that we are unable to account for the fact that M. Cousin, entitled to a high rank among the most eminent philosophers of any age or nation, while he recognizes the complexity of the primitive fact of consciousness, and even makes it the basis of what he improperly calls Eclecticism, should yet countenance the division of the mental phenomenon into three classes, corresponding very nearly to the division proposed by Dr. Schmucker. It is a singular inconsequence, and one which has led him and his readers into some grave errors. No man can more distinctly assert the primitive synthesis of the phenomenon of actual life; nay, we are aware of no one before him who has stated it at all; it is of the most vital importance in his system; and yet he seems perpetually, when analyzing and classifying the mental phenomena, to have forgotten it. Is this owing to the fact that from his admiration of Proclus,23 he was led, without due reflection, to call his philosophy Eclecticism? Has this name misled himself as it has others? Be this as it may, we regret that he has ever done himself the wrong to call his philosophy Eclecticism, from the Greek, signifying, to choose or select, and, therefore, implying that it is made up of selections from other systems. In consequence of his adopting this name, the public believe, and in spite of all explanations will continue to believe, this to be the actual character of his philosophy; yet nothing is further from the truth. His philosophy is really and truly synthetic, as it should be, founded on the primitive synthesis we have pointed out in the mental phenomenon itself.24 If he had always remembered this, he would never, it seems to us, have given the sanction of his authority to the attempted decomposition of the primitive fact, against which, even in his own name, we protest. Nevertheless, if M. Cousin divides the mental phenomena into three classes, corresponding to the three fundamental faculties of the 23 [Ed. Proclus (c. 410-85) was one of the last major Greek philosophers to spread Neoplatonic thought throughout the Byzantine and Roman worlds.] 24 [Ed. Brownson will call his own philosophy a “synthetic philosophy,” a term that will distinguish his increasing reliance on Leroux and his growing separation from Cousin’s Eclecticism.]

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soul—activity, intelligence, and sensibility—he takes care always to tell us that this division never takes place in actual life, for the mental phenomenon is always a product of the joint and simultaneous action of all the faculties. M. Leroux, therefore, in his very acute, able, ingenious, and instructive Refutation de l’Eclecticisme,25 a work to which we have been largely indebted in the composition of this article, has been wrong to accuse M. Cousin of overlooking this primitive synthesis, and to reason against his system as if it were a system of mere Eclecticism. M. Leroux is not more synthetic in his own system than is M. Cousin. On this point both, in fact, adopt the same philosophy, for both belong to the nineteenth century, which demands a synthetic philosophy, and requires the philosopher to cease “murdering to dissect,”26 to cease his fruitless efforts to decompose what is already ultimate, and to find out the primitive synthesis of actual life, and to make that the basis of a system of science which shall possess at once life, unity, and catholicity. No doubt the mental phenomena vary among themselves. Every phenomenon is, indeed, the joint product of all the faculties, acting at once in the unity and multiplicity of the ME; but in some of the phenomena one faculty, without excluding the others, predominates, and in others, another. How this can be, perhaps philosophy is not in a condition to explain. Perhaps at bottom the power to do, the power to know, and the power to feel, are one and the same, and all force, in proportion to the quantity of being in the subject of which it is affirmed, is essentially sentient and percipient—that all beings, the minutest even, in proportion to the quantity of their being, are active, percipient, and sentient beings, as Leibnitz teaches in his “Monadology,”27 and as seems to us to be taught in the Proem to St. John’s Gospel.28 But be this as it may, our phenomena differ among themselves, and by virtue of the differing degrees in which one or another of the faculties predominates in their production. Also, men themselves differ one from another, in the same way. In some the faculty to act—activity, seems predominant; in others the faculty to know; in others still, the sensibility. This fact has given rise to the St. Simonian classification of mankind into three classes: 1. Men of Action—les Industriels; 25 [Ed. A reference to Pierre Leroux’s (1797-1871) Réfutation de L’Éclectisme (Paris: Charles Gosselin, 1841). The text was originally published in the Encyclopédie nouvelle in 1839.] 26 [Ed. A paraphrase of William Wordsworth’s The Tables Turned (1798), Line 28.] 27 [Ed. A reference to Monadologie (1720).] 28 [Ed. A reference to John 1:1-14.]

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2. Men of Science—les Savans; 3. Men of Art—les Artistes. M. Leroux, in his work entitled l’Humanité, thinks this classification was well known to the ancients, and that he finds it in the Bereshith of the Hebrews, concealed in the names Cain, Abel, and Seth, in the first series, and Shem, Ham, and Japhet, in the second; and it is worthy of note that the meaning of these names in the original seems to afford no little support to his conjecture; and moreover, we should always expect to find in a book given by divine inspiration, the profoundest philosophy. But without assuming to decide whether M. Leroux is correct or not, this much we may assert that the classification is not without foundation. Men, if born with equal— which is questionable—are born with different capacities. No training can make every boy a poet, a painter, a musician, a mathematician, an expert handicraftsman, or a successful merchant. There is a class who of choice would be and by nature are fitted to be, active businessmen, traders, manufacturers, mechanics, cultivators of the earth; another class, whose great want is to know, who would spend their life in investigating, in acquiring and communicating knowledge; and still another class, who are of a plastic nature, whose souls are alive to the beautiful; who contemplate truth, goodness, holiness, always under the aspect of beauty, of which they become impassioned, and which they seek to embody in song, melody, picture, statue, column, or dome. This distinction of men into three general classes, should be recognized in all our educational provisions, and our statesmen should be unwearied in their efforts so to perfect our social arrangements, as to suffer each one in life to fall into the class to which he naturally belongs, to pursue the calling for which he has a natural aptitude, and to receive according to his CAPACITY and his WORKS.29 We would proceed further in the examination of the details of Dr. Schmucker’s system, but it could serve no purpose, save to give us an occasion of expressing our own views on the points concerned, in opposition; and this we shall have, hereafter, a more fitting opportunity to do, in reviewing several other philosophical works which we intend to bring, seriatim, to the notice of the readers of the Democratic Review. We have found already as much fault with Dr. Schmucker as we are willing to find with any one man, and we could do nothing but continue to find fault were we to proceed. If his work had been on any other subject, we should not have felt ourselves 29

[Ed. Brownson articulates here an honored Saint-Simonian principle.]

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called upon to notice its errors; for we could have safely trusted to the good sense of the people at large to correct it; but works on metaphysical science are precisely the works to which the good sense of the people is the least capable of administering the necessary correctives. They must be examined and judged by persons whose habits, tastes, and studies have in some sort qualified them to judge wisely and correctly. We have no disrespect for Dr. Schmucker, but his work is precisely one of that kind which seems to us, from its size, its method, and its apparent simplicity, likely to take with the public. We have felt, therefore, that it was our duty to warn our countrymen against making it, as the author has designed it, a textbook in our colleges and academies. The author himself, of whom we know nothing but what this book tells us, we hold to be a very estimable man; and we doubt not that if he had written the Institutes of the Christian Religion,30 instead of the Elements of a new system of Mental Philosophy, we should have approved his work—at least have had no serious objections to urge against it; for, in the preparation of such a work he would have studied the Bible still more than the phenomena of his own mind; and he who studies diligently and prayerfully the Bible, we may add, will be as little likely, after all, to err in his philosophy as in his theology. The New Testament is the best manual of philosophy we are acquainted with. The space we have appropriated to the subject of this book, and that which we propose for some time to come to devote to it, we cannot believe misapplied. The taste for philosophical studies in this country is evidently on the increase; and we are preparing to become really a philosophical people. “Young America,” the America of the nineteenth century, is not fuller of life than of thought. Thousands of young hearts all over the country are gushing out with love of truth and humanity. Thousands of young minds, with a maturity beyond their years, are buckling on the harness, eager to go forth to investigate, to explore Providence, man, and nature, and to win glorious laurels, in their battles with darkness and error. God’s blessing on these noble young hearts, and brave young minds! Something will come of their efforts. We as a people are becoming more thoughtful, more profound; are acquiring a rich and varied experience; and we cannot fail to create a literature as much in advance of all the literatures of the most admired nations of ancient or modern times, as our political institutions are in advance of the old world, where the millions are still pressed to the earth by the overwhelming weight 30

[Ed. A reference to John Calvin’s famous textbook on theology.]

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of kings, hierarchies, and nobilities. We are becoming an earnest people, feeling that we are to live, toil, suffer, die—if need be—for the growth of universal humanity; that it is ours to take the initiative in the new school of science which is to be instituted for the world, and to formulate the new thought that is to rule the future. We are THE PEOPLE OF THE FUTURE, and to us the scholars of all nations must ere long look. This is our high destiny. We are not, then, warring against our destiny in seeking to engage our countrymen in the study of the profoundest subjects, and in calling upon them to grapple with the gravest problems of science. There is for us no time to trifle, and we have no thought to waste on what is frivolous and ephemeral. We must be great, grand, solemn. We rejoice in this increased attention to philosophical subjects; in all these new works on philosophy issuing from our teeming press; in the philosophical essays which are beginning to make so large a part of our periodical literature. All augurs well, and is significant of good. We are evidently preparing ourselves for the high mission which God has given us as a people, and unless we strive hard to fail, we shall ere long be found in the front rank of the nations, our faces and our step onward, and still onward towards the true, the beautiful, and the good.

11. BROOK FARM United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (November, 1842): 481-90

The subjoined letter1 from a highly esteemed friend and distinguished literary lady, giving some notice of Brook Farm, or the Community at West Roxbury, Mass., was addressed to me while editor of the Boston Quarterly Review, and would have appeared in the last number of that journal, but for the want of room. This will explain its personal address and allusions. It is laid before the readers of the Democratic Review, because its details can hardly fail to interest them, and because it gives me an opportunity to offer some additional remarks on the importance of establishments like that of Brook Farm, in working out the moral, intellectual, and physical amelioration of mankind, especially of the poorest and most numerous class. That there is something defective in our social organisms, that mankind are susceptible of a far higher degree of moral and physical well-being than they have ever yet attained to has become a very general conviction, and is every day becoming wider and deeper. The spread of Christian principles, the great doctrines of the unity of the race, human brotherhood, and democratic equality, has enlarged men’s hopes, and made quite apparent the glaring disproportion there is everywhere between the actual and the possible condition of mankind. Everywhere do men feel that they have not reached that social state, which they are bound in religion and in morals to labor to realize. Everywhere is the question raised, How shall the actual condition of mankind be made to correspond to the Christian ideal? How shall be introduced that equality of moral and physical well-being which is the expression of the equality of all men before God and the state? This has become, in fact, the one great, all-absorbing question of the age. Every man who has the least moral life, in some form or other asks it in deep earnest, and with an anxious heart; and whenever it is once raised by an individual or a community, it will not down at the bidding. We may seek to hush the matter up; we may 1 [Ed. See United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (November, 1842): 490-96.]

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denounce those who boldly challenge its discussion; but it has taken so strong a hold on the more advanced nations of Christendom that it is useless for us to attempt to blink the question; nothing remains for us but to meet it, seriously, solemnly, in a spirit corresponding to its importance, and to give it such answer as best we may. The present social condition of mankind cannot last forever; something better is reserved for man on earth, than he ever yet has found. How shall he obtain it? Various answers have been given, from time to time, which it may be well in passing briefly to notice. 1. The first of these answers worthy of our attention is the CLERICAL answer, usually given in the words of Jesus, “Seek first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you” [Matt 6:33]. This answer is true from the point of view from which it was originally given; but as commonly interpreted in these days, it is not sufficiently practical. What is the “kingdom of heaven?” What is it to “seek” it? Where and how is it to be sought? In what consists its righteousness? How is that righteousness to be obtained? Unquestionably we are to seek the kingdom of heaven, and its righteousness; but is there any difference between doing this, and seeking the moral and physical well-being of mankind on earth? That we are also to seek the kingdom of heaven by seeking to make all men obey the new commandment which Jesus gave us, namely, that we love one another as he loved us, is unquestionably true; but how are we to make all men love one another, and be willing to die for one another, as Jesus did for us? The clerical answer is rather an exhortation to seek an answer to the question raised, than the answer itself. 2. A second answer may be termed the ETHICAL, insisted upon mainly by moralists, philanthropists, and especially by those who follow theories rather than experience. It is variously given, but in our times most frequently in the words self-trust, self-reliance, selfcontrol, SELF-CULTURE.2 Its essential feature is man’s sufficiency for himself, and, therefore, that he must work out, by his own isolated, unaided efforts, his own salvation, whether temporal or eternal. It implies idealism in philosophy, egoism in morals, individualism in politics, and naturalism in religion; and is, therefore, necessarily atheistical in its spirit and tendency. But man is not sufficient for himself. He cannot perform any act, even the slightest, external or internal, save in conjunction with what is not himself. He is the sub2 [Ed. A reference to Ralph Waldo Emerson, among others. For one manifestation of this philosophy see Emerson’s “Self-Reliance,” in The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2, Essays: First Series, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 25-52.]

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ject that acts, and, therefore, cannot be the object on which he acts. He that cultivates must be other than he who is cultivated. We never cultivate ourselves by direct efforts at self-culture; we cultivate one another—ourselves only in seeking to cultivate others. This is what is implied in the fact that we are social beings; that we can live and grow only in the bosom of society. The whole of this answer proceeds on a false assumption. We form only to a limited extent our own characters. They are in a great measure the result of circumstances over which, as isolated individuals, we have and can have no control. Much depends on who were our parents and ancestors; on the community in which we are born and brought up; on the early training we receive; the early bias given to our minds and affections; and the habits we are suffered to contract before we are old enough to reflect and judge for ourselves. Evil communications corrupt good manners;3 and good communications purify corrupt manners. When so much depends on that over which we can exercise at best only a feeble control, and in general no control at all, what is the use of talking about self-culture? We are all members of one body; the whole body must suffer with each of its members, and each member with the body. In this isolation, presupposed by the doctrine of self-culture, no man lives or can live. The lot of each man is, for time and eternity, bound up with that of all men. The advocates of self-culture, as the medium of social regeneration, proceed on the hypothesis that the evils mankind endure are merely an aggregate of individual evils, the result, in all cases, of individual ignorance and vice. But this hypothesis, in the sense they affirm it, is without any foundation. Mankind is not a mere aggregation of individuals. The race is older than individuals, and is the parent of individuals: for individuals are nothing but the various phenomena through which, or by means of which, the race manifests itself. Society also is older than individuals, and by virtue of the one life which runs through all men, making them all one in the unity of the race, has its unity, and a sort of entity of its own, by which it is superior to individuals, and does and can survive them. There are very few evils that spring from the depravity of isolated wills, or that mere private morality, stopping with the isolated individual, can cure. What we complain of in the actual condition of mankind is the result of no one cause; has been produced by nobody in particular; but is the growth of ages, the product of causes as old and as wide as the race, and as diversified as its members. It is idle, 3

[Ed. A reference to 1 Cor 15:33.]

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then, to suppose that any one individual can, even in his own individual case, throw off the burden which all humanity has been through all its existence engaged in placing upon his shoulders. Individuals, be they never so enlightened and virtuous, must suffer, the world being as it is. The wickedness of one man carries mourning and desolation to hundreds, nay, thousands of hearts. A single bad law, touching social and political economies, enforced by the supreme authority of the state, makes the great mass of the people poor and wretched for hundreds of generations. Who can estimate the amount of public and private wrong, individual vice, crime, poverty, and suffering, occasioned by the combined influence of our banking and so called protective systems? Ages will not undo the mischief they have done. Their deteriorating effects will be felt on this country, and, therefore, on the whole human race, in a degree, as long as we are a people. Private virtues are no doubt the great matter, the one thing needful; but it is only when they are directed to the removal of the depravities of the social state that they become efficient agents in the amelioration of mankind. Another mistake is involved in this theory of self-culture. Its advocates allege that knowledge is power, and infer that a man can always take care of himself if he only be enlightened. This is only another phase of the same notion that all the causes of evil are purely individual, and may be easily removed by each individual, so far as himself is concerned. Knowledge is no doubt power; and I, if I am the only enlightened man in the community, can make all the rest labor for me; it is power also, if all the community are enlightened and direct their efforts to organic amelioration. But knowledge cannot prevent a man from being hungry, from having the heartache, nor his coat from becoming rusty or threadbare. Suppose all your operatives in Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester, and Lowell, should become as knowing as Locke or Newton, the factory system remaining all the time unchanged, and they continuing to be operatives still, how much would their material condition be improved? Their sufferings would be increased a hundred-fold. The nearer the condition of brutes you can keep men and women, if they are to be treated as brutes, the greater the service you do them. Individuals undoubtedly rise by means of knowledge from a very low estate; but it is usually only by making their knowledge the means of laying under contribution the labors of others. Nor is this all. It is impossible to practice, however enlightened or well disposed we may be, all the Christian virtues in society as it is now organized. Consider two men about to make a bargain, endeavoring to do by each as each would be done by, while each is doing his

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best to observe the maxim, buy cheap and sell dear, without which, trade on which so much now depends could not prosper at all! Do I observe the Christian law of love, and treat a man as I would be treated, treat him as my brother, when I make him my servant—my hired servant if you will—my drudge, whom I must needs consider unfit to sit with me at my table, or mingle with my friends in the drawing room? Yet I can live in society as it is only on condition that I so treat him. There is not a luxury I enjoy, scarcely a necessary of life I obtain, but has cost the tears, the groans, the agony, the blood, or—which is worse—the brutalization, of some brother for whom Christ died, who was made with a rich undying nature. Think of this, ye who recline on your soft couches, tread the rich carpets of Turkey, and receive the light through purple silks of India! After all, our main inquiry is as to the means of ameliorating the condition of the poorest and most numerous class. These have no time nor opportunity for self-culture, even admitting self-culture to be all its advocates assume. I know what they who have always had leisure, and have always been in easy circumstances, may allege; but I know also, how extremely difficult it is for a man to work twelve or fourteen hours out of twenty-four, or even ten, and have any power for intellectual pursuits. Here and there one may do the labor and study too; but in most cases, only by the loss of health and almost of reason itself. Tired nature demands rest, and the workingman, when his work for the day is over, especially when he works with as much intensity as he does in most Protestant countries, must lie down and sleep, or keep himself awake by artificial stimulants. The history of the laboring classes in all ages and all countries, proves this beyond all question. Cultivation to any considerable extent is compatible only with leisure and easy circumstances. Instead, then, of enjoining culture as the means of social amelioration, we should effect the amelioration as the condition of the culture. 3. The third answer worth considering, is that of the POLITICIANS. This implies in this country the complete establishment of what may be termed democracy, or more definitely, political democracy. This consists in making every man, who has not by crime or misdemeanor forfeited his manhood, an equal member of the state or body politic; that is to say, in the establishment of universal suffrage and eligibility. But these we already have established so far as they can practically affect the question under consideration; yet they do not prove to be the sovereign remedy it was hoped they would. The evils complained of exist here as well as in Europe, and every day become more widespread and intense. New England and the north-

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ern middle states, in their factory system, are rapidly reproducing Old England; and thus far experience proves that the more extended the suffrage, the greater will be the influence and the more certain the triumph of wealth, or rather of the business classes. The great mass of our operatives are every day losing somewhat of their independence, and sinking into the servile condition of the operatives of the old world. Every day does something to prepare them to be the mere tools of those who have the disposition and the skill to use them. We may deny this; we may flatter the people; talk of their intelligence, virtue, firmness, and incorruptibleness; but we shall do well to remember the election of 1840—an election which is a lucid commentary on many popular theories, full of instruction to those who are not past learning. That election demonstrates this much, that when the leading business interests of the country unite, though for purposes glaringly selfish and base, the result at the polls is never problematical. Some have seen this; nay, the friends of the people very generally see this, and deplore it. They seek to remedy it by UNIVERSAL EDUCATION. The people, say they, are honest, but they are deceived; they mean right, but they are misled by ambitious and designing politicians, by corrupt and selfish men of business. We must enlighten them. We must educate them so that they shall know what are their rights and their interests. Well, and what then? Do you suppose that the evil lies no deeper than the people’s ignorance of their rights and interests? The people are as a mass no doubt tolerably honest and well meaning; but they are not free to act according to their own convictions. The result of an election is rarely determined by the wisdom, the virtue, or the intelligence of the great mass of the electors. It is time for us to cease this mischievous nonsense we have been for so long a time in the habit of uttering about the wisdom, virtue, and intelligence, of the people. Were we in Europe, and did we understand by the people, the unprivileged many, in distinction from the privileged few, there would be some meaning in what we say; for it would imply that these unprivileged many are as competent to the management of their own affairs, as the few are to manage their affairs for them, and better too; which is unquestionably a truth. But here, where there are no privileged orders, where the term people means, not as in Europe, the plebeians, but the whole mass of the population, whether rich or poor, learned or unlearned, refined or unrefined, these praises of the people are worse then idle. The result of an election here, I think I may say, is invariably determined by the necessities which grow out of the condition and relations of the mass of the electors, and would be the same, the political and domestic

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economies remaining unchanged, whatever the extent to which you should carry the education of the people. Formerly, before the banking and protective systems destroyed our old system of home industry, the mass of our people were independent; because there rarely intervened any interest between the interest of the consumer and that of the producer; the consumer was the employer, and consumption and production regulated each other, in each immediate neighborhood, without being dependent on the general state of trade throughout the world. Now, the consumer ceases in a great measure to be the direct employer. The employer is now a middle man, capitalist, speculator, factor, or, as the French call him, l’entrepreneur, who comes between the producer and the consumer. I will not say that this change is unfavorable to the actual increase of wealth in a nation. In the light of what is called political economy, which interests itself in the question of the production of wealth, rather than in the happiness of the people, I will not say but this should be regarded as a progress; yet touching the independence of the people, it makes all the difference in the world. Say, I am a shoemaker. Under the old system I made shoes for the consumer, and received in exchange such articles as he produced, which I needed for the support of myself and family; I was as independent as he, because if he did not employ me he must go without shoes; and he as independent as I, because if I would not make his shoes I must want the means of subsistence. Now I am employed to make shoes, not because my employer must have them or go barefoot, but because he would derive a profit from my labor. Consequently, whenever he can derive no profit from my labor he will cease to employ me. Consumers buy shoes because they need them, and must buy them whether they buy them cheap or dear; but the shoedealer will contract for the making of shoes only when he can sell, or has a reasonable prospect of selling them, at an advance. He believes that to enable him to do this, the government must adopt what is called the protective policy. I must support this policy, or the policy that enables him to derive a profit from my labors as a shoemaker, or else he must cease to employ me, and then how am I to find the means of subsistence for myself, my wife, and children? Here is the difficulty. The employer of the operative and the purchaser of the surplus produce of the farmer, what I call the businessman, may be an enlightened, honest and benevolent individual, but he cannot do business unless he can derive a profit from it. The new relations created by the banking and protective systems have however rendered him absolutely indispensable both to the producers and the operatives. Hence the necessity imposed

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upon both producers and operatives to support that policy which will enable him to derive a profit from employing the labor of the one, and from buying the produce of the other. Both of these classes to a very considerable extent become dependent on the business class. Now, you may educate as much as you please, but so long as this dependence remains, your elections will have virtually but one termination. The businessmen, not through their wickedness, not through their inordinate selfishness—for the business class is as enlightened, as liberal, and as high-minded as any class of the people— but through laws which even they cannot control, become the actual rulers of the community. It is useless to contend against them. True wisdom consists, not in endeavoring politically to wrest the power from their grasp, but in so constituting the state, that one branch of business is always able to interpose an effectual veto on the efforts of another to obtain any exclusive privilege or undue advantage. I am far from intending in these remarks to undervalue the importance of a well-ordered commonwealth, or to speak lightly of universal suffrage or universal education for both of which I have contended when to do so was less popular than it is now. Every man, who can substantiate his claim to be a man, should be admitted an equal member of the body politic under the dominion of which he was born; and that community which neglects to bestow the best education in its power on all its children, of whatever condition, and of both sexes, forfeits its right to punish the offender. What I mean is simply that universal suffrage, and universal education, do not give us the power we need to introduce the moral and physical equality demanded. We must change our political and domestic economies before they can effect anything; and they who suppose universal suffrage and education able to effect the change needed in these economies, overlook the laws which grow out of them, and which override all the other laws of the commonwealth, and in a majority of cases of individual action. These economies must be changed by other agents than suffrage and education. 4. The fourth answer is that of the POLITICAL ECONOMISTS, and is sometimes expressed by the term FREE TRADE. So far as it concerns trade in its strict technical sense, I certainly am an advocate for its entire freedom. Nothing can exceed the absurdity, unless it be the wickedness, of the so called protective or American system.4 But 4 [Ed. Henry Clay (1777-1852) and other promoters of the so-called American system in the United States Congress supported the Second National Bank, protective tariffs, the extension of the National Road, and congressional bills that designated moneys from the sale of public lands to be used for education and other internal improvements. Brownson had previous opposed all these issues.]

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the principle of free trade is some times extended beyond the province of trade proper, to man’s whole intercourse with man. Its advocates contend that government is a necessary evil, and therefore the less of it the better. Its sole province is to maintain an open field and fair play to individual enterprise. This is the laissez-faire doctrine, and was maintained with great force and consistency by the lamented William Leggett.5 It presupposes that in all the concerns of life FREE COMPETITION between individuals will regulate everything, produce justice, harmony, universal well-being. To the gospel principle of LOVE, it opposes the principle of COMPETITION, and bids each look out for himself. If all men were born with equal powers and capacities, moral, intellectual, and physical, and could all, from the first moment of existence, be placed in circumstances precisely equal, so that no one should have any natural or artificial advantage over another, this doctrine would have some degree of plausibility, although even then it would be fatal to all social as to all political order; but diverse and unequal as men are by nature and condition, no greater calamity could befall a people than the serious attempt to carry it out in practice. It is nothing but the doctrine of pure individualism, which is the principle of anarchy, confusion, war. Government is not a necessary evil, finding its excuse only in man’s depravity; but is a great good, and a necessary organ of society for the maintenance of its own rights, and the performance of its own duties. It has more to do than merely to protect individuals; it has a positive work to perform for the common weal. The saying that “the world has been governed too much,” I am far from accepting. There has not been too much government, but wrong government, government falsely instituted, and mal-administered. Freedom does not consist in the absence of government, but in the presence of a government that ordains and secures it. Liberty is always the result of authority, the creature of civil society, and impossible without it. No doubt much should be left to the individual; but all true government consists in such a constitution of society as leaves each individual to move on freely without obstruction so long as he keeps in the right line of duty, but compels him to feel, the moment he attempts to depart from that line that the way is hedged up, and that he cannot proceed a single step. But without insisting on these views of govern5

[Ed. William Leggett (1801-39) expressed some of his most radical thought on the subject in the New York Evening Post, which he co-owned and edited with William Cullen Bryant, and in the Plaindealer. Some of his works can be found in A Collection of the Political Writings of William Leggett (1840), edited by Theodore Sedgwick, Jr.]

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ment, which are not precisely those of any party in this country, the doctrine of free trade, meaning thereby anything beyond the opposite of the restrictive and monopoly system—the doctrine, as it is sometimes called, of free competition—we must all admit cannot introduce or preserve the equality we are in pursuit of, unless we can secure to all equal chances. Equal chances imply equal starting points. Do we all start equal? Has he who is born to no inheritance but the gutter, an equal chance with him who is born to a good education, an honorable name, and a competent estate? 5. The fifth answer is that of the SOCIALISTS. This is subdivided into the agrarian, the no-property, and the community doctrines. Of the agrarians we have in this country very few, if any. The project of introducing a better state of society by an equal division of property, finds with us no advocates. Thomas Skidmore, since deceased, some years ago, in his “Rights of Man to Property,”6 a work of very considerable ability, makes something of an approach to it; but my own scheme, which made so much noise in 1840,7 and which was called agrarianism, was nothing like it; for it concerned merely the reappropiation to individuals of that which had ceased to be property, through default of ownership, and as merely a project to modify or change our probate laws. The agrarian scheme would accomplish nothing, even were it just; because were property made equal today, with the existing inequality in men’s powers and capacities, it would soon become as unequal again as ever. Moreover the right to property is sacred, and the legislature has no right to disturb it. The legislature has discretionary power only over that portion of property which becomes vacant through default of ownership, whether by the death or abandonment of the proprietor. It may say how that shall be reappropriated. But this at any one time is but a very small portion of the whole property of any community. The no-property doctrine has but few advocates. It is sometimes set forth by philanthropists who are deeply impressed with the doctrine of Christian beneficence. From the fact that my neighbor, who has the ability, is bound in Christian love to administer to my necessities, it has been inferred that therefore I have a right to that portion of his property which I need more than he. Justice, says Godwin, is reciprocal.8 What it is just for my neighbor to give me, it is unjust for 6 [Ed. See Thomas Skidmore’s (1790-1832), The Rights of Man to Property (1829). Skidmore was a leader in the New York Workingmen’s party.] 7 [Ed. See, “The Laboring Classes,” Boston Quarterly Review 3 (July,1840): 358-95. See also EW, 5, chapter 7.] 8 [Ed. William Godwin (1756-1836), a political writer and novelist, was author of An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793), a book Brownson read as a young man.]

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him to withhold; and what it is unjust for him to withhold from me, I have a right to claim as my due. But this would banish from the world all such virtues as generosity, charity, and gratitude. I have the right, if I have the means, to be generous, and I am no doubt guilty if I do not relieve the wants of my brother, as far as I have the ability; but I am not accountable to him. If I do not, I am not to be condemned as unjust; but as ungenerous, unfeeling, inhuman. Moreover, admit that he who has the greatest need has the best right of property in what I possess, who shall be the judge of this greater deed? If he, then no security for property; then no industry; then no production; and then all must starve together. If I am the judge, it amounts to acknowledging in me the right of property. The community doctrine is also subdivided. We have, first, the answer as given by Owen and his followers, secondly, as given by Fourier and his disciples; and thirdly, as given in the experiment at Brook Farm.9 Owen’s system was discordant. In all matters except property, it was a system of pure individualism; in property it was the denial of all individualism. Individualism cannot co-exist with a community of property. Either individualism will triumph and dissolve the community, or the community will triumph and absorb the individual. The first was the actual result of Mr. Owen’s experiment at New Harmony; the last would have been the result had he succeeded in fairly introducing his system. Mr. Owen also overlooked the necessity of marriage laws to restrain the passions and preserve the family; and of religion to kindle holy aspirations, to exalt the sentiments, and produce a community of feeling. The experience of the race may be said to have demonstrated that no scheme of social organization will succeed which does not recognize as its basis, individual property; civil law, or the state; and religion, or the church. Of Fourier I must speak with some diffidence, not having as yet been able to submit to the drudgery of fully mastering his system. He seems, however, to have taken juster views of man and society than Mr. Owen; but his metaphysics, though broad and comprehensive, are often unsound; and his theodicea, or theodicy, is, if we understand it, nothing but material pantheism, a polite name for atheism. He denies, at least according to his able and indefatigable American

9 [Ed. Robert Owen (1771-1858), the Welch social and educational reformer, believed that social environment influenced the development of character. In 1825 he established an experimental community at New Harmony in Indiana to realize this idea; it ceased to exist in 1828.]

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interpreter, Mr. Brisbane,10 the progress of humanity, and proceeds on the assumption of that greatest of all absurdities, the perfection of nature. The only progress he admits for man is simply a progress in his power over external nature. This progress may be completed in time; the race then will be thrown out of work, come to a standstill, which is only another name for its death. Moreover, his scheme is too mechanical, making of the phalanx not a living organism, but a huge machine. It is withal too complicated and too difficult to be introduced to meet the wants of our people. Its details are not always satisfactory. Its operations will fail to diminish inequality in wealth or condition. Too much goes to capital, not enough to labor. How obtain equality or anything approaching it, when capital draws four twelfths, skill three twelfths, and labor only five twelfths? Then again how measure skill? Skill has various degrees. How determine these several degrees? And shall every degree of skill be rewarded alike? If we make skill one of the bases of the distribution of the fruits of industry, what shall prevent the perpetuation of the very evils we are seeking to redress? Skill, which comes under the head of spiritual superiority, belongs to the community. If God has made me with talent and capacity superior to my brother, it is not that he would confer on me a personal advantage, and enable me to lay his labor under contribution; but that he would impose upon me the duty of performing more valuable services to the community of which we are both members. Nor am I quite satisfied with the rank assigned to woman in the phalanx.11 In every reorganization of society, which shall be an advance on society as it now is, the equality of the sexes must be recognized, and male and female labor receive the same compensation. I say equality of the sexes, without intending to deny that the talents of the sexes as well as their appropriate spheres in life are different. Equality does not exclude diversity. Woman should not handle the spade and mattock, nor man the distaff; nor would there be wisdom in shutting up man in the nursery and sending woman to the legislature. Each sex has its peculiar talents and virtues, and its appropriate sphere of duty; but yet there is no reason why one should be placed above or below the other, or receive a higher or a lower rate of compensation for its labors. 10 [Ed. Albert Brisbane (1809-90) explained his and Fourier’s views in Social Destiny of Man: Or Association and Reorganization of Industry. Our Evils are Social not Political (1840).] 11 [Ed. On Charles Fourier’s understanding of the liberation, especially sexual liberation, of women, see Jonathan Beecher, Charles Fourier: The Visionary and His World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, 1986), 304-06.]

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For my part, I am disposed to regard with altogether more favor the establishment at Brook Farm, which seems to me to escape all the objections we have raised against Owen and Fourier. It is simple, unpretending, and presents itself by no means as a grand scheme of world reform, or of social organization. Its founder12—and I speak from personal knowledge, for it has been my happiness to enjoy for years his friendship and instruction—is a man of rare attainments, one of our best scholars, and as a metaphysician second to no one in the country. No man amongst us is better acquainted with the various plans of world-reform which have been projected, from Plato’s Republic to Fourier’s Phalanx; but this establishment seems to be the result, not of his theorizing, but of the simple wants of his soul as a man and a Christian. He felt himself unable, in the existing social organization, to practice always according to his conceptions of Christianity. He could not maintain with his brethren those relations of love and equality which he felt were also needful to him for his own intellectual and moral growth and well-being. Moved by this feeling, he sought to create around him the circumstances which would respond to it, enable him to worship God and love his brother, and to live with his brother in a truly Christian manner. A few men and women of like views and feelings grouped themselves around him, not as their master, but as their friend and brother, and the community at Brook Farm was instituted. The views, feelings, and wants of these men and women are those of the great mass of all Christian communities; and the manner in which this establishment at Brook Farm responds to them, suggests and points out the method in which they may be responded to everywhere. The mode of introducing such an establishment is exceedingly natural and simple. The theory to be comprehended is the gospel LAW OF LOVE, and the rule to be observed is HONOR ALL MEN, and treat each man as a brother, whatever his occupation. In other words, the community is an attempt to realize the Christian ideal, and to do this by establishing truly Christian relations between the members and the community and between member and member. To make this experiment requires no rupture with society as it is; imposes no necessity of protesting against any existing organism. Men and women may engage in it without foregoing any of the relations they already hold with society. This is a great recommendation. Owen and Fourier are too radical. They propose, with “malice aforethought,” the reorganization of society. This community propose no such thing. 12

[Ed. George Ripley.]

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They do not break the law of continuity. The transition from what is to what they are attempting is easy and natural. A community on the plan of Fourier or of Owen aims to be a little world in itself, and to be a complete substitute for the larger associations of the state and the church. Communities like this at West Roxbury leave the state and church standing in all their necessity and force. They are mere aggregations of families, as a family is an aggregation of individuals; as the family is more than an aggregation, as it is in some degree an organism, having its own life and unity, so, also, is the community more than an aggregation of families, it is a one body, has life and unity of its own; but is, after all, like the family, a member of a larger whole. It enlarges the sphere of the family, or rather seeks not to supersede the ties of blood, but to extend the family feeling and relations, if I may so speak, beyond these ties. It essentially breaks the family caste, while it preserves the family inviolate. This is a consummation much to be wished. The family is and should be sacred: but the family caste, to borrow the expression of M. Leroux, is one of the scourges of humanity. The community feeling is introduced, but without destroying the individual. Individual property is recognized and secured. But by making time, not skill nor intensity, the basis according to which the compensation of labor is determined, and by eating at a common table, and laboring in common and sharing in common the advantages of the individual excellence there may be in the community, the individual feeling is subdued, and while suffered to remain as a spring to industry, it is shorn of its power to encroach on the social body. So far as I can judge there will be in this establishment rarely any clashing between individuals and the community. Establishments like this are easily introduced. Owen and Fourier require immense outlays for the commencement of their schemes. A phalanx cannot well go into operation without a capital of half a million. A simple establishment like the one at Brook Farm has gone into operation with less than five thousand dollars, and would be able to do well with ten or twenty thousand. This is a very great consideration. Fourierism is obliged to enlist in its scheme heavy capitalists, and in order to enlist them, is obliged to make the investment of capital in the phalanx desirable as a business operation; which can be done only at the expense of labor. But the most desirable thing is not to find out a profitable investment for capital, but a ready means by which they who have no capital can place themselves in such relations that by their mutual labor and support, they can secure all the real conveniences and advantages of the highest civilization. This may

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be done on the plan of Brook Farm. An outlay of fifteen or twenty thousand dollars will enable some twenty or thirty families to associate, and by their industry to sustain themselves in competence and independence, and to secure to their children the advantages of the choicest education, and themselves all the pleasures and enjoyments of the most refined society. It is proper, however, to remark, that Brook Farm is not an establishment for the indolent, nor for those who are in need of charity. It is an INDUSTRIAL ESTABLISHMENT. Industry is its basis and its object. It is established on the principle that man must obtain his bread by the sweat of his face. This must be borne in mind in attempting like establishments. The founder of this establishment very justly remarks: “Every community should have its leading purpose, some one main object to which it directs its energies. We are a company of teachers. The branch of industry which we pursue as our primary object, and chief means of support, is teaching. Others may be companies of manufacturers or of agriculturists; or may engage in some particular branch of manufacture or of agriculture. Whatever the branch of industry agreed upon, it will be necessary to make that the principal object of pursuit as the only way in which unity and efficiency can be secured to the labors of the community.”13 Of the advantages of associated and attractive industry there is no occasion to speak. They are well known, and have been ably presented by Mr. Brisbane, in the pages of this journal and elsewhere. The common merit, and the chief merit of the schemes of Owen and Fourier, is in their proposing associated and attractive industry. These Mr. Ripley secures at Brook Farm, without their complicated machinery, and multiplicity of details, of details often frivolous; at any rate foreign to the habits, tastes, and convictions of the American people. Families of moderate means associating in this way, by their union and cooperation may obtain an industrial and pecuniary independence to which they cannot aspire under existing social relations. What we most want is such an arrangement as shall secure to every man a competence as the reward of his industry, and which shall render industry in any or all of its branches compatible with the highest moral and intellectual culture, and the greatest delicacy and refinement of manners. This we cannot have as things are; but this by means of association on the principles of the Brook Farm estab13

[Ed. Unable to identify the quotation. Perhaps Brownson is trying here to summarize the substance of the Brook Farm ideals, and attributing the quoted remarks to Ripley.]

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lishment we may have. And when once this is obtained, when I am once sure that by the labor of my hands I can earn an honest and an honorable livelihood, and without being obliged to forego any of the real advantages, pleasures, and refinements of society and social intercourse, I shall no longer feel that I was cursed by my Maker, when he commanded me to “eat my bread in the sweat of my face” [Gen 3:19]. There is another point of view in which I should like to consider communities of this kind, had I the time and the room at my command. I mean in their relation not only to industry, and to domestic and social economies, but to the CHURCH. The day is coming when we shall learn that we worship God only by serving man, and that the church, instead of being a company of teachers and exhorters organized merely to teach men their duty and to exhort them to do it, will be a company of men and women associating for the express purpose of doing their duty; of worshiping God not in types and shadows, through symbols, but in spirit and in truth, by organizing all the relations of life in harmony with his will. These communities are models of what must hereafter be the social elements of the Christian church. It is only by adopting, as was in some degree attempted originally by the monastic orders, the democracy of the church, industry as a branch, if I may so speak, of the temple service, and thus writing “holiness to Lord” on all things, as the prophet says, even on “the bells of the horses” [Zech 14:20], that a truly Christian state of society will be realized. In this way we may have a true Catholic Church; a really republican state; a wise political economy; an intelligent, virtuous, refined, and happy people.

12. SYNTHETIC PHILOSOPHY United States Magazine and Democratic Review 11 (December, 1842): 567-78

1. THE SUBJECT AND THE OBJECT Philosophy is the science of life. Its problem is to find the ultimate from which we may explain the origin of man and nature, determine the laws of their growth, obtain a presentiment of their destiny, and become inspired with a pure and noble zeal to live and die for the glory of God, and of mankind. There is and can be no higher problem than this, none more worthy to engage the whole force of our minds and our hearts. It is the problem of problems; it includes all other problems; and on its solution depend all other problems for theirs. We have answered no question, whether of man or nature, of society, religion, or morals, till we have traced it to the ultimate, beyond which there is no question to be asked, or to be answered. But the ultimate forever escapes us. It recedes always in proportion as we advance; and is never seized save in a finite and relative form. The complete solution, therefore, transcends, and forever must transcend, the reach of our powers. All that we can do, and all that we should attempt, is to obtain the solution that shall meet the wants and satisfy the heart of our own epoch. This solution, though it must one day needs be outgrown as we outgrow the garments of our childhood, will, nevertheless, bring us a measure of peace, become the point of departure for new inquirers, and pave the way for new and more adequate solutions. Philosophy is the creation of the human understanding, naturally or supernaturally enlarged and enlightened. All begins and ends with thought, our only medium of knowledge, whatever its sphere or its degree. Thought is, for us, always ultimate. We cannot go before nor behind thought; for we have nothing but thought with which to go before or behind it. What, then, is thought? What is its reach? What are its conditions? “For thought,” says Locke, “that the first step towards satisfying certain inquiries the mind of man was very 440

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apt to run into, was to take a survey of our own understandings examine our powers, and see to what things they were adapted.”1 Thought implies both subject and object, that which thinks and that which is thought. What, then, is the subject? What is the object? The SUBJECT is the me, that which I call myself, and express by the pronoun I in the phrases I am, I think, I will, I love; or by the pronoun me, when I say of some particular thing, it pleases me, grieves me, injures me, does me good. I do not know myself by direct immediate knowledge; I come to a knowledge of myself only in phenomenon, in which I see myself reflected as in a glass. I am never my own immediate object. “The understanding,” Locke very properly remarks, “like the eye, whilst it makes us see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own object.”2 This if we substitute no direct notice for “no notice,” is as true when affirmed of me, as when affirmed of my understanding. I never stand face to face with myself, looking into my own eyes. The seer and the seen, the subject and the object, are as distinct in psychology as they are in logic; and they are distinct in logic, because they are distinct in the nature of things. Yet some modern psychologists, misapprehending the fact of consciousness, have questioned this statement, and contended that the subject may be its own object, and that I may know myself by direct, immediate knowledge. But if this were so, I could know at once, and prior to experience, all that I am, and all that I can do or become. I could know myself active without having acted—thinking without having thought; sentient without having felt. I should know beforehand the nature and the reach of the passions; love without having ever loved; hatred without having ever hated; grief without having ever grieved. I should know at once all that I ever can know, whether of myself or of that which is not myself. But it is only God who can know himself by direct immediate knowledge; for only that which is independent, self-existent, and self-living, can contain in itself its own object. No man knows thoroughly himself, or can say, till enlightened by experience what he is able to do, or to become. Even they who best obey the injunction, “Know thyself,” are but slight proficients in self-knowledge. The bulk of mankind are grossly ignorant of themselves. Moreover, we advance in the knowledge of ourselves. Every 1

[Ed. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 7. ] [Ed. Ibid., Section 7.]

2

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day reveals us to ourselves under some new aspect. The older we grow, the more varied our experience, severe our struggles, and trying the vicissitudes of life, the better do we come to know and comprehend ourselves. But did we know ourselves by direct, immediate knowledge, what room would there be for this progress? And how could this varied experience, and these struggles, trials, and vicissitudes, become the medium of advancing us in the knowledge of ourselves? But, though I know not myself by direct, immediate knowledge, yet I know myself immediately, indirectly, through the medium of my acts. Whenever I think, I find myself as one of the elements of the thought. I never think without knowing that it is I and not another that thinks. This is the meaning of the “Cogito ergo sum” of Descartes, “I think, therefore I am.” Descartes did not offer in this, nor pretend to offer, as he himself expressly tells us, an argument for his existence; but merely stated the fact in which he found it. Not being able to see or to recognize myself in myself, to see, as it were, my own eye, I should be to myself as if I were not, did I not think. When I do not think, I do not exist to my own apprehension. How know I then that I exist at all? I cannot prove my existence; but I have no need to prove it for whenever I think, I always find myself in the thought as THAT-WHICH-THINKS. As certain as it is that I think, so certain is it then that I am; for I always think myself as the subject of the thought. I do not infer my existence from the fact of thinking. I do not infer it at all; but in the act of thinking I find it. My existence is never an inference, and logic has nothing to do with establishing it. I cannot prove my existence, neither can I deny it, nor doubt it. To doubt is to think. But I never think without finding myself as the one who thinks. Consequently, in doubting my existence I should find it. I cannot deny my own existence; not only because in denying it I should logically affirm it, by affirming the existence of the denier, but I should be conscious of myself, in the act of denying, as the one who makes the denial. This finding of myself in the phenomenon, or as the one who thinks, is precisely what is meant by the term CONSCIOUSNESS. Consciousness is not a faculty, nor even an act of a peculiar sort. It is simply a higher degree of what philosophers call perception. As its name implies—cum scientia—it is something that goes along with knowledge, or something in addition to simple perception—adperceptio, apperception—and is easily comprehended. I think a rose. This is a simple phenomenon, or rather a single act of the mind; but,

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in addition to the perception of the rose, the object of the thought, I recognize, but as an integral part of the same phenomenon, myself as the agent thinking, or the one who perceives the rose. This recognition of myself is the consciousness. All acts in which I so recognize myself as actor or thinker, are called by Leibnitz APPERCEPTIONS.3 All thoughts are properly apperceptions, for they all include in the view of the thinker, both the subject thinking and the object thought. But according to this, consciousness is not, as is sometimes supposed, the immediate perception of myself in myself. I am conscious of myself only in the phenomenon, and even then only under the relation of its subject. I can speak, I can think, or even conceive of myself only as the subject of an act. I can define myself only by referring to my acts. I express myself, indeed, by the personal pronoun, but never without joining it to the verb. I, me, taken alone, without a verb, expressed or understood, means nothing. It must be always I am, I do, I think, I will, I love, or I hate. In my essence, save so far as my being is, revealed in my doing, I never know or apprehend myself. I find myself never as pure essence, but always as cause, and as being only so far forth as cause; that is to say, I find myself, exist to myself, only in my efforts, productions, or phenomena. I am conscious, therefore, of myself only under the relation of subject or cause; and, therefore, it is only under this relation of subject or cause, only as projected into the phenomenon that I can be my own object, that I can study myself, and learn what I am and of what I am capable. But the phenomenon is never the SOLE product of the subject. There is and can be no thought with a single term. It is impossible to think without thinking an OBJECT as well as a subject. I never think without encountering an object, and only in concurrence with the object. But in the act of thinking where I find myself, and where only I find myself, I always find myself as subject, never as OBJECT. I find the OBJECT always, invariably opposed to the subject, and, therefore, never as me, but ALWAYS AS NOT ME. 2. REALITY OF THE OBJECT I recognize myself, am conscious of my own existence, am able to affirm that I am, only in the act of thinking. But I can think only on condition of encountering in the phenomenon an object which, as opposed to the subject or me, must needs be not me. Then I can 3 [Ed. See, for example, Leibniz’ The Principles of Nature and Grace, in The Philosophical Works of Leibniz, trans. G. M. Duncan (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1890), 215.]

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never find myself without finding at the same time, and in the same phenomenon, that which is not myself. But I do find myself in every thought. It follows, then, that both myself and that which is not myself, the me and the not me, are given in each and every thought, in the first and simplest, as well as in the last and most complex. The highest degree of certainty I ever have or can aspire to is that of my own existence. This is merely the certainty I have that in thinking I recognize myself as the subject of the thought. But the certainty I have that in thinking I encounter an object, which is not me, is precisely equal to this. Consequently, the certainty I have of the existence of the object, in all cases as not me, is precisely, objectively and subjectively, the certainty I have of my own existence, that is my highest degree of certainty. This conclusion is of immense reach in philosophy. It settles the question so long agitated concerning the objective validity of human knowledge, and puts an end at once and for ever to all IDEALISM, and to all SKEPTICISM. The object is no creature of the subject; for it is as essential to the production of the phenomenon we term thought, as is the subject itself. Where there is no subject, of course there is no thought; where no object, equally no thought. Since the object precedes thought as one of its conditions, it cannot be a product of thoughts; since its existence is essential to the activity or to the manifestation of the subject, it must be independent of the subject, and therefore not me. If not me, it must be what I find it in the phenomenon; that is to say, it must be in itself what I think it, or what it enters for into the thought as one of its elements. For, if it were not what I think it; if it entered into the phenomenon for what it is not in itself, it would not be not me, but me; and therefore not object but subject, which were a contradiction in terms. Every thought contains an object; and this object, whatever it be, is therefore not me, but exists really out of me and independent of me. The object I think then really is; and is, not because I think it, but I think it because it is, and could not think it, if it were not. Whatever then I think exists, and independent of me. If I think an external world, then is there an external world; the finite, then is there the finite; the infinite, then is there the infinite; God, then God is. This is no forced result. It is asserted when we assert that every thought contains an object, and that the object is in all cases not me. But if we accept this result, we are saved no little labor. The passage from the subjective to the objective ceases to be that long, circuitous way commonly imagined, and the great problem which has vexed philosophers in all ages, is found to be no problem at all.

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The great problem with philosophers has always been to establish the objective validity of our knowledge; that is, the existence of the not me. We are conscious of our own feelings, beliefs, and convictions; but is there anything out of us, and independent of us, to respond to these subjective affections? How know I that God and nature are not mere modes or affections of my subjective life? How know I that aught exists beside this subject which I call myself? and how know I that the outward universe, with all its wondrous beauty and variety, is anything more than myself projected, or taken as my own object? Here is the problem which has always in some form or other tormented the metaphysicians; and yet this is a problem that cannot be solved. There is no passage possible between the subjective and the objective. There is no possible equation between me and not me, by which one may be obtained from the other. It is impossible to conclude from my own existence to that of another. There is here no room for logic. Logic can operate only on data previously assumed or established; and it never does and never can operate with only a single factor. Unity multiplied by unity gives unity, and nothing more, is as true in logic as in arithmetic, which is only a special application of logic. With the me alone, or with the not me alone, logic can obtain no result. God, man, and nature, instead of being results logically obtained, are in fact the necessary bases of logic, and must be found, or assumed, before logic can commence its process of demonstrating them. Nevertheless, the human race has contrived, some way or other, to open relations with the objective world. From the first day of its conscious existence, it has not ceased to believe itself in strict relation with a world out and independent of itself. God and nature have been and are realties to it, as much so as its own existence. Strange! The human race, the savage in his forest, the shepherd on his hillside, the rustic following his plough—all believing what the metaphysicians have hitherto been unable to demonstrate, and what the more sober-minded among them contend cannot be demonstrated! This fact should have induced them to inquire, if, after all, they have not erred in assuming any demonstration to be necessary. When Dr. Johnson4 was asked what answer he would use against those who denied the reality of the external universe, he replied by striking his foot against a stone. This reply was not logical, but it was 4 [Ed. Samuel Johnson (1709-84) was an English writer and critic who wrote, among other things, a number of moral essays in The Rambler (1750-52), which he also edited.]

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philosophical and just. It recognized this fundamental fact, namely, that I find myself only in opposition to that which is not myself; and directed the inquirer to the simple fact in which originates all faith in external realities. In striking his foot against the stone, Dr. Johnson had as positive evidence that the stone was not himself, and therefore that it was in relation to him, an external reality, as he had that it was he and not another who performed the act of striking his foot against it; or that the act of striking his foot against it was followed by an affection of his sensibility. The cause of this error of the metaphysicians, in seeking a passage where none can be found, and where none is possible or needed, must be looked for in their assumption of a false point of departure of philosophy. They have supposed that philosophy must begin either with the subject, that is, with the me; or with the object, that is, with the not me. But when we begin with the subject we can never get to the object, as Hume and all the skeptical philosophers but too easily demonstrate. When we so begin we necessarily end in idealism. When we begin with the object, the not me, taking our point of sight in God, as do the larger part of theologians, we necessarily end in pantheism, with Spinoza; or taking our point of sight in nature, the effect, we end necessarily in atheism with Evhemere5 and D’Holbach; for it is as impossible to go from the object to the subject, as from the subject to the object. The true point of departure of philosophy is never in BEING, in the ESSE, DAS REINE SEYN of the Hegelians, whether of the subject or of the object; but in LIFE, which is the manifestation of being. And in LIFE, according to what we have established, THE SUBJECT AND OBJECT, ME AND NOT ME, ARE ONE AND INDISSOLUBLE.6 To make this still plainer: Kant, in his Critique, has with masterly skill and wonderful exactness, drawn up a complete list of the categories of reason. His analysis of reason may be regarded as com5

[Ed. Henry Brownson added the following in a footnote to the text in Works, 1:64: “Or Euhemrus, usually classed with Bion Borysthenita, the Sophist, as a disciple of Theodorus the atheist; but who probably lived earlier. His ‘Iera anagraya’ may be found in Diodorus Siculus, vol. 2, part 2, p. 180. He is said to have started from sensibility and denied all objective reality. Virtue and truth consisted only in pleasure, vice and error in pain.”] 6 [Ed. Henry Brownson added the following in a footnote to the text in Works, 1:65: “This is not only contrary to the author’s later views, but was not the exact expression of his thought then. He did not mean to assert the unity and indissolubility of subject and object, of the me and the not me, but only that they are indissolubly united in thought.”]

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plete and final. Cousin has followed him, and, with true metaphysical sagacity, reduced these categories to two, the category of SUBSTANCE, and that of CAUSE; or, as I prefer to say, the category of BEING and that of PHENOMENON. Whatever we conceive of, we must conceive of it existing either as being or as phenomenon. Being or substance, in itself, transcends the reach of the human mind: we can know it, can conceive of it, only in the phenomenon; or, as M. Cousin would say, only under the category, or relation of cause. I find myself, as we have already seen, only as the subject of the phenomenon; that is, only so far as I do something. In like manner do we know or conceive of nature never only under the relation of cause, only as it manifests, and therefore as that-which-manifests itself, in the phenomenon, as the object which opposes or resists the subject. God is never seen or conceived of in himself. He is to us only in his DOING, only as cause, or creator; thought as wise, holy, good, and all powerful Cause or Creator. The category of substance is then conceivable only in the category of cause: that is, we know being only as cause, and only so far forth as it is a cause. We seize it only in the phenomenon, the manifestation, not in itself. The manifestation of being, that is, being putting itself forth in the phenomenon, is what I term LIFE; and when this life is so intense that the subject recognizes itself as well as that which is not itself, I term the phenomenon, THOUGHT, or apperception. Now thought, and, as we shall hereafter see, all life, is the JOINT PRODUCT of both subject and object. I know myself indeed as subject or cause; but never as able to cause or produce without the CONCURRENCE of that which is not myself. In other words, the subject, as we have seen, cannot manifest itself without an object; and the object cannot manifest itself without a subject, which, of course, relatively to it will be object. Now, as the phenomenon is single and indissoluble, and yet the joint product of both subject and object, it follows that both subject and object are, though distinct, one and inseparable in the phenomenon or fact of life. Here, in the phenomenal, in the fact of life, where only we are able to seize either the subjective world or the objective world, the subject and object are given, not as separate, not one to be obtained from the other, but in an INDISSOLUBLE SYNTHESIS. This is wherefore I call philosophy not the science of BEING, but the science of LIFE and also wherefore I add to it the epithet, SYNTHETIC. If metaphysicians had begun in the fact of life, instead of trying to begin with pure being, the ESSE, the REINE SEYN, they would have found, as data already furnished to their hands, both the objec-

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tive and the subjective; and finding them both in the indestructible synthesis of thought, they would never have conceived the problem. The one being given, how to obtain the other? In point of fact, this problem is really inconceivable, and philosophers have been for ages asking, not so much an unanswerable, as, if we may so speak, an unaskable question; for the one term is never found without the other, or conceived of, save in conjunction with the other. This is what we must mean when we say that we never find ourselves but as the subject of the phenomenon, and never as subject without finding ourselves in conjunction with that which is not ourselves, as object. There has been no error in asserting the existence of God, man, and nature. We are not to arraign the faith of mankind in this threefold existence, because philosophers have been unable to legitimate it. It needs no legitimating; and we have erred only in attempting to legitimate it. Mankind believe in God, in themselves, in nature, for the best of all possible reasons, BECAUSE THEY THINK THEM, AND CANNOT THINK WITHOUT THINKING THEM. Here is the whole mystery of the matter. The profoundest philosophy can add nothing to this, and take nothing from it. All that philosophy is called upon to do in relation to it, is simply by reflection to place the fact that the me alone is incapable of generating a single phenomenon in a light so clear that none can mistake it. Taking this view, there ceases to be any discrepancy between philosophy and what is called common sense. Humanity is never a sceptic. Even the skeptical philosophers themselves, are practically no sceptics. Hume, not withstanding his philosophical doubts, believes as firmly in God, nature, and the necessary connection between cause and effect, as his great opponent, Dr. Reid himself. Both admitted that the reality of this connection, and that of an external world, could not be demonstrated; both also contended that neither could be disbelieved. The only difference there was between the sceptic Hume, and the realist Reid, was that the former thought the demonstration in question essential to a scientific belief, while the latter stoutly maintained, but without showing any great reason for so maintaining, that it was not. There is much misconception about this matter of proving or demonstrating. Nothing is more absurd than to conclude that whatever cannot be proved true, must therefore be regarded as false. That which is less evident, is proved by that which is more evident. But when the fact alleged is of itself of the highest degree of evidence we can have, it is incapable of proof. What is more evident than the circular appearance of the sun? Yet how can I prove to myself or to

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another, that the sun appears to me of a circular form? But facts of this kind need no proof. EVERY FACT IS INCAPABLE OF PROOF JUST IN PROPORTION TO ITS CERTAINTY. A proposition is demonstrated by being resolved into another proposition more ultimate, or by being shown to be involved in another proposition held to be true. But when the proposition is itself ultimate, when there is no proposition more ultimate into which it can be resolved, or from which it can be obtained, it is, and must needs be, incapable of demonstration. But then it needs no demonstration. It is certain of itself, and one of the grounds of certainty in regard to other propositions. Now, the ground we assume is that both the me and the not me are ultimate, and both being found in the same phenomenon as the essential conditions of its production, are incapable of demonstration or of proof, but are sufficiently evident without either. 3. RELATION OF SUBJECT AND OBJECT The subject and object cannot meet in the fact of life without generating a result. Their shock one against the other cannot take place without an echo. This echo adds another to the elements of thought. Thought may therefore be defined to be a phenomenon with three indestructible elements, all equally essential to its production; no one of which can be abstracted without destroying thought and the possibility of thought. These three elements are, 1. SUBJECT; 2. OBJECT; 3. FORM. The subject is always ME; the object always NOT ME; the Form is the NOTION, or what the subject notes, in the act of thinking, of both subject and object. Subject and object are the bases of thought, and necessarily precede the phenomenon. The subject must exist before it can think, the object before it can be thought. Neither then is produced by thought. Both do and must remain in themselves what they are, be the notion the mind takes of them, or the Form of the thought, what it may. The subject generates neither, nor determines the office of either in the generation of thought, for it cannot think without including both as the necessary conditions on which it thinks. But with the FORM of the thought, or notion, it is altogether different. This is the product of the subject; not indeed of the subject alone, as free, voluntary cause; but of the subject acting in conjunction with the object. It is the view which the subject takes of both itself and the object, and according to the conditions of thought cannot be produced without the presence, and so to speak, cooperation

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of the object or not me. But the intelligence that notes, views, or perceives, is the subject exclusively. The conjunction of subject and object can generate thought only on condition that the subject is intelligent. In thought there is always intelligence; as we have seen, always direct perception of the object, and a reflected perception of the subject. This intelligence is the subject. The form of the thought, being the notion which the subject takes of both subject and object, is therefore the product of the intelligence of the subject, only of the subject displaying itself in conjunction with the object. The subject taking note of both subject and object, in the fact of life, is called the fact of consciousness. Consciousness is myself perceiving that which is not myself, and recognizing myself as the agent perceiving. It is not one thing to perceive, and another to be conscious. It is not correct to say that I am conscious of my perceptions. Consciousness is not a phenomenon separate or even distinguishable from perception, unless it be in the fact that it marks a certain degree or intenseness of perception. Both perception and consciousness are the subject displaying itself in conjunction with the object; both are manifestations of one and the same intelligent subject. In every fact of consciousness I perceive; though I am not conscious in every fact of perception. But those perceptions in which I am not conscious, differ from those in which I am, that is, from my thoughts or apperceptions, only in being feebler, more confused, less marked or distinct. They, in like manner as thought, imply both subject and object, but in them the subject perceives the object, without any reflected perception of itself as the percipient agent. Not seeing itself in those perceptions, the subject is unable to give them form, or to note distinctly what they reveal of either subject or object. Add another degree of perception, render the perception sufficiently vivid and distinct to be what I call thought or apperception, and it is instantly clothed with a form; the mind notes, marks or distinguishes both itself and the object. It follows from this the form or notion is merely that higher degree of intelligence which includes in one view both subject and object, and therefore is identical with the fact of consciousness. The form of the thought, or notion, is often taken for the whole of the phenomenon. Thought is indeed impossible without form, and where there is no notion of either subject or object, or of both, there is no thought; but if the form, or the notion, were the whole phenomenon, thought would be a mere empty form, a notion where nothing is noted. Locke called the form of the thought or notion, idea, which would have been well enough, if he had not made ideas a sort of intermediary between the subject and the object. Locke does

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not teach that we perceive the object, but an idea or notion of the object. This was his fundamental error. We perceive the object itself, never a notion of it, for the notion, instead of being the immediate object of the perception, is simply what, in perceiving, we note of the subject and the object of perception, the form which by virtue of our intelligence we are able to give to the perception. In the fact of consciousness, or under the form of the thought, are always, as has been said over and over again, both me and not me. Then under the form of every thought, even the simplest, the feeblest, lies always absolute truth. Me and not me, these two certainly embrace all reality. These both are essential to the production of the least conceivable thought. All reality lies then under every notion as its conditions. God, man, and nature, all three conspire to produce each one of our thoughts and each one of our thoughts reflects them all three. Without the combined activity of them all, no thought, nor even possibility of thought. How wonderful a creation then is thought! Of what inconceivable grandeur! Before it the wise stand in awe, or bow down and revere as before the transparent symbol of the Almighty. But, if absolute truth enters into every thought as its basis, is essential to its production, yet no more of this truth is expressed by the form of the thought than comes within the scope of the intelligence of the subject. This intelligence in the case of all beings but One, is and must be limited. Man is an intelligence, or else he could not think; but he is a finite intelligence. His light is a true light, as far as it is bright; but it is feeble and dim. It shines only a little way into the darkness, and even that little way merely as a sudden flash, permitting us to see that there are objects there, but vanishing too soon to enable us to see what they are. It cannot enlighten all reality.7 It can enlighten only that side of reality which is turned towards us; that turned from us it throws into shade. The smaller body can never illumine at once all sides of the larger body. Man, therefore, cannot comprehend the infinity which lies at the bottom of his thoughts. Always then must his NOTION, or views of that infinity, partake of his own feebleness, and be inadequate, dim, and partial. With these dim, inadequate, partial, one-sided views, man constructs, and must construct, his systems of religion, morals, and politics. Compelled by the necessities of his nature, to conclude from the luminous to the dark, from the known to the unknown, the certain to the uncertain, error is the inevitable consequence, and his systems 7 [Ed. Henry Brownson added the following in a footnote to the text in Works, 1:70, “The author here thinks the light the product of the subject, not of the object, as shown in later essays.”]

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reared with honestest intention, and infinite pains, can be, even while they stand, little else than monuments to the wide disparity there is, and ever must be, between his ambition and his strength. But this while it may well humble pride, and check theoretic presumption, need not alarm or dishearten the inquirer. Thought, owing to the finiteness of the human intelligence, is always inadequate, and therefore has and must have its face of error; but since it necessarily includes under its form both the ME and NOT ME, and therefore the infinite, the absolute, it must also have always its face of truth. Man, moreover, as will hereafter be demonstrated, is a progressive being. He stands indeed on the borders of a universe of darkness, hoping, trembling, half-longing, half-fearing to plunge in; and never will that universe wholly disappear; but it shall ever recoil from his glance, and leave a larger and a larger space within the circumference of his vision. Nature as a whole, and in its parts, is in a state of uninterrupted progress. Man goes on with it, and by its aid. His faculties are continually enlarging, by the successive growth of ages, and his whole being becomes elevated and expanded, enabling him to penetrate farther and yet farther into the darkness, to enlighten a larger and a larger portion of the infinite, and to give to his thoughts clearer and more adequate forms. The face of truth is thus ever becoming broader and more radiant, while that of error is continually diminishing. 4. FORMULA OF THE ME, OR SUBJECT I am revealed to myself only as the subject of an act; that is, as agent or actor. We find ourselves only in acting, and only so far forth as we act. To act is to cause, create, or produce. The ME, then, since it acts, must be a cause, a creative or productive force. If a cause, it must be a real, substantive being. That which is not, cannot act. In order to do, it is necessary to be. Being necessarily precedes doing; but it is only in doing that being is made known. In recognizing myself to be active, I necessarily recognize myself to be a real existence—a limited, relative substance, no doubt; but still a substance capable of supporting accidents or phenomena; and, therefore, not myself a phenomenon, nor a collection of phenomena, whether of matter or of spirit. The substantiality of the me affirms its UNITY. If I am substantial, I am one substance; for two substances would be two mes, instead of one. Moreover, I am always revealed to myself as one. My phenomena may vary, but I do not vary with them. They may pass away, but I survive. We never confound ourselves with our phenom-

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ena. We think, but are not the thought; are pleased, but are not the pleasure; are pained, but are not the pain; nor do we become it when pained. There is always unity of consciousness. The me that wills, knows, feels, is always one and the same me. The me, then, is a unity; that is, a simple substance, being, cause, or force. But I am not a mere naked substance; that is, a mere abstraction. I am a living substance, clothed with attributes. I find myself in the act of thinking. But to think is to perceive, no less than to act. An unintelligent actor would not be a thinking actor. No being but an intelligent being can think. The ME, then, since it thinks, must be INTELLIGENT. I am also capable of feeling. The naked conception of substance does not necessarily involve the power to feel; nor does it imply that of intelligence. The fact that I am intelligent is learned by experience, not deduced from the nature of being or substance, considered apart from its manifestations. There is no particular substance or being whose attributes or properties can be known, a priori. The naked idea of being—the reine Seyn of Hegel—is simply the idea of something which is, and does not necessarily suppose the being to possess any other quality, property, or attribute, than that of being able simply to be. From this idea, some philosophers have, indeed, attempted to deduce, logically, the universe, with all its infinite variety of phenomena. But from being, nothing but being can be obtained; and the universe constructed with this simple idea would be the veriest abstraction, and in the last analysis identical with no universe at all. The faculties of the particular being in question must always be learned empirically, and be taken as facts of experience, and not as facts of reasoning. It would not be difficult to conceive of beings created with the simple FORCE or power of acting without thinking or feeling. But such a being is not man. We may add to force intelligence, and conceive of a being capable of acting and knowing, and yet incapable of feeling. Such a being is very conceivable; there may be, for aught we know, many such beings; but man is not one of them. He is capable of feeling. The sentiments, love, joy, grief, hope, pleasure, pain are among those phenomena which nobody questions, for they are facts of everyone’s experience. Man, then, is not only a substance, but an intelligent and sentient substance, a being that ACTS, KNOWS, and FEELS. From this it follows that man has three faculties, which may be named, 1. Activity, 2. Intelligence, 3. Sensibility.

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Activity is the power of acting; intelligence the power of knowing; sensibility the power of feeling. There may, for aught we know, be beings endowed with more than these three faculties; but these are all that we have found ourselves to possess, and all that we can conceive it possible for us or for any other being to possess. But the me has already been shown to be a UNITY, one and indivisible. This distinction of faculties, then, implies no division in its essence. There is not one part of it that acts, another part that knows, and still another part that feels. It is all and entire in each one of its faculties—a simple substance, with the threefold power of acting, knowing, and feeling. It must then act in knowing and feeling; know in feeling and acting; feel in acting and knowing. This follows inevitably from the fact that I am in myself a cause. I find myself always as a cause, and never under any other character. I find myself in all my phenomena, in those of intelligence and sensibility no less than in those of activity. Then I find myself in all as a cause. Then I am active in them. Since I am a unity, and therefore must act ever as a whole, in all my integrity, I must act in them all with my threefold power of acting, knowing, and feeling. According to the formula now obtained, man is a being that acts, knows, and feels, and ALL THESE IN THE SAME PHENOMENON, AND IN ALL HIS PHENOMENA. He is then a trinity, a living type of that sublime doctrine which lies at the bottom of all Christian theology and not only the type, but in some sort the origin and basis. Two facts here must never be lost sight of, the Unity and Triplicity of the me. Man acts always as a unity, but with a threefold power of activity, or rather with a capacity of giving to his activity a threefold direction. We can discover in his nature the distinction of faculties, but no division of essence. There is a broad distinction between an action and a cognition, between a cognition and a feeling, and between a feeling and an action; but in actual life there is no separation. The faculties designated are essentially the ME, and the activity displayed in them is the activity of the one invariable and indivisible subject. We cannot say that activity acts, intelligence knows, and sensibility feels; for this would be to separate the faculties from the me, and to give them in some sort an independent existence. The intellectual phenomenon is always the product of the ME displaying itself in its unity and triplicity; therefore of the simultaneous and joint action, so to speak, of all the faculties. This fact is important. Neglect of it has generated much confusion, and no little false philosophy. Psychologists have mistaken the

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facts of memory for the facts of consciousness. The facts of memory may be dissected, decomposed, and distributed into separate classes. As the soul has three faculties, and each of these faculties performs an office in generating the phenomena, we may detect the part of each, and distribute the phenomena into classes corresponding to the distinction of faculties. In the analysis of these acts, activity will be found to give us actions, intelligence cognitions, and sensibility sentiments or feelings. We may distribute them, then, into actions or volitions, cognitions or ideas, and sentiments or feelings. But this distribution, however true it may be to me as studied in the products of my past life, will not be true to the me of actual life. In actual life all go together. There is no action which is not at the same time a cognition and a sentiment; no cognition not at the same time a sentiment and an action; no sentiment not at the same time an action and a cognition. But, losing sight of this fact, psychologists not infrequently transfer to actual life the classifications they obtain by studying our past life, and therefore destroy the me, by resolving it into its attributes. In the facts of memory there is no living unity. That living unity has left them behind, has passed on, and is now merely looking back upon them. That living unity is the me itself, and being no longer in them, but merely contemplating them, as it were, at a distance, cannot, of course, find itself in them. They are to it what the dead body is to the living. There being, in fact, no unity in them, reflection cannot find it, any more than anatomy finds in dissecting the dead body the one vital principle which controlled all the functions and gave a common direction to all the activities of the living body. The me obtained by studying these facts exclusively is necessarily multiple and not simple. Taken, then, for the ME of actual life, it gives to the me of actual life no unity, separates it into parts, into independent beings, and, instead of a me that at once, by virtue of its own nature, acts, knows, and feels, gives us three separate, and in some sort independent mes—a me that acts, another me that knows, and still another that feels, displaying themselves sometimes in concert, sometimes one after another, and sometimes, as it were, one in opposition to another. But the faculties do not exist independent of the me. There is not a me and by its side a power to act, a power to know, or a power to feel. The threefold power is the me, and the me is it. Activity does not act, I act because I am in my essence active; intelligence does not know, I know because I am by my nature intelligent; sensibility does not feel, I feel because I am in myself sentient. In consequence of transferring to the living subject the classifications we have obtained by studying the dead subject, or facts of

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memory, we have supposed that we could perform actions or generate phenomena which should not necessarily imply all our faculties. Thought which expresses the highest activity of the soul, has been regarded as a purely intellectual act, and intellect has been defined to be the thinking faculty, as distinct from activity or sensibility. Thought is looked upon as something dry and cold; and a “man of thought” would designate a man without soul, without heart, destitute of love or sentiment, living only in abstractions. But there are no abstractions in actual life. A purely intellectual being may, as has been said, be conceived of, but such a being man is not. Such a being might indeed think, that is, know, but thinking and knowing in such a being could not and would not be what they are in us. Man is in his essence sentient. He cannot divest himself of his sensibility, for he cannot divest himself of himself. Always and everywhere, then, must he feel. When he acts, act where or to what end he will, he must feel. He can perform no dry, cold, intellectual act. Even the metaphysician, poring over his abstractions, withered and dry as he may seem, is still a man, and has a heart; and when, after days, weeks, months, and years of painful watching and laborious study, truth at last draws on his soul, and he grasps the solution of the problem which had tortured his heart, he too is moved, and in a sort of rapture exclaims, “I have found it, I have found it!” The me never acts as naked cause, as pure intelligence, nor as pure feeling. It acts as it is, and for what it is. Thought, then, since it implies the activity of the me, implies the me with all its essential attributes. It implies sentiment as well as cognition. The me, it has been shown, enters into every thought as subject. It enters then as a whole, for it cannot leave one half of itself behind, and go forth and act with the other half. Thought then covers the whole phenomenon of actual life, and instead of being the product of pure intelligence, it is simultaneously and vitally action-cognition-sentiment. The various distinctions introduced into the phenomena of actual life by psychologists, or rather psycho-anatomists, of facts of activity, facts of intelligence, facts of sensibility, facts of reason, facts of understanding, of a higher nature and a lower, of a moral nature and a religious, however convenient they may be for certain purposes, are really inadmissible, and while they recognize the multiplicity of the me, tend to make us lose sight of its unity. It is always the self-same me that acts, whatever the sphere of its activity, or tendency of its action. It has but one nature, and it is always by virtue of that one nature it does whatever it does. If a man be base and groveling in his propensities, worthless or vicious in his life, it is not a lower

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nature that is at work within him, that is at fault, but the man himself misdirecting his activity; if he aspire to the generous and the heroic, to the pure and upright, it is not a higher nature, nor a nobler faculty of his nature displaying itself, but the man himself conducting with greater propriety and in stricter conformity to the will of his Maker. All these distinctions go to destroy the unity of the soul, to perplex and mislead our judgments. The distinction which has latterly been contended for between the moral nature and the religious is unfounded. Man is not moral by virtue of one set of faculties, and religious by virtue of another set of faculties. The same faculties are active in both cases, and the only difference there is or can be between religion and morality is in the direction man gives to his activity. Nor is there any distinction between the faculty by which man knows what some call the truths of the reason, and what are termed truths of the understanding. There is not a reason taking cognizance of one class of objects, and an understanding taking cognizance of another. To know may indeed have various conditions, but it is always one and the same phenomenon, and by virtue of one and the same intellectual power. The whole me acts in knowing, let it know wherever it will. In knowing material objects it uses material organs, but the faculty by virtue of which I know through these organs is, as will hereafter be shown, the same as that by virtue of which I know in the bosom of consciousness itself. The pretense that sensibility is the faculty by which we know material objects, and reason the faculty by virtue of which we know spiritual objects, is arbitrary and without any just foundation in actual life. Without reason, our senses would be as the telescope without a seeing eye to look through it; without sensibility, we never do, if we ever could know, even spiritual truths. To raise men to a perception of what are called the higher truths, it is always necessary to purify and exalt sentiment. Beethoven carries us nearer to God, than Kant or Hegel. Without love man cannot soar; and without that exultation, that enthusiasm which goes by the name of inspiration, there are few truths of an elevated nature that are discoverable. Man acts ever with all his faculties, in that least as well as in the greatest of his actions. 12 (January, 1843): 38-55 5. OPERATIONS OF THE MIND Psychologists, in addition to activity, intelligence, and sensibility—the three faculties of the subject already enumerated—distinguish in the mind certain powers which they divide into moral pow-

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ers and intellectual powers. These powers are perceiving, remembering, imagining, reflecting, comparing, compounding, distinguishing, abstracting, desiring, willing, and reasoning; all of which may be arranged, and treated, under the three general heads of 1. Perception, 2. Willing, 3. Reasoning. But as these are facts of life, mere modes of the activity of the subject, not principles, or elements of human nature, they are more properly termed, as Locke terms them, operations of the mind, than powers or faculties of the mind, as they are termed by Reid and Stewart.8 1. Perception. Perception is the official name, in the Scottish school, for the recognition by the external senses of material objects, and answers to the sensation of the old French school of Condillac. But the restriction of the term to this class of our cognitions is purely arbitrary. The fact designated by it is common to all our mental operations. We perceive in sensation, in sentiment, in desire, in volition, in reasoning, in consciousness. This is implied in the fact, which lies at the basis of all science of life, that the subject never manifests itself, in any degree, nor in any direction, or under any aspect, save in conjunction with the object. It is not easy to define perception. It is the simplest operation of the subject, and therefore incapable of being resolved into a simpler operation, or explained by being shown to have some analogy to another operation more easily apprehended. Reference to the etymology of the word, here as well as elsewhere, may help us to seize the psychological fact designated by it. The word comes to us from the Latin per-capio and means to seize, to take hold of, to possess, or invade. Its radical meaning is to seize, and implies that the subject establishes between itself and the object the relation of possession. Every being capable of establishing or sustaining any relation between itself and another, must be percipient. Hence Leibnitz endows his monads, or elements of things, with perception. In perception the percipient subject contrives in some way to invade and possess the object. Hence with the French the word perception is applied to the collection of taxes and imposts. 8 [Ed. Reid does speak of the faculties of the mind as is clear in his An Inquiry into the Human Mind, ed. Timothy Duggan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 6, passim. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), a Scottish Common Sense philosopher, was a follower and promoter of Reid’s positions.]

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Locke says that “in bare naked perception the mind is for the most part passive”;9 but according to the view just given of the meaning of the term, the subject must be not passive but active. Even Locke himself implies as much, notwithstanding what he says to the contrary; for he reckons perception among the operations of the mind, and assures us that there can be no perception, though all the requisite external conditions be present, unless there be also a noting of the mind from within. This noting from within must needs be an active operation. The subject, in point of fact, never is passive at all. According to the formula of the me already established, the subject is inherently, essentially a cause, or productive force. We cannot then be passive, for our passivity would negative our activity. Perception must always be taken, then, as an active operation. Analyzed, it gives us: 1. The subject perceiving: 2. The conatum, or effort of the subject to perceive: and 3. The presence of the object, the seizure or apprehension of which, is the perception. The doctrine of passivity, that we are passive in the reception of external impressions, has no solid foundation. It is unquestionably true that there can be no mental phenomenon save by the concurrence of an active force from without; but it is also equally true that there can be no mental phenomenon but from the concurrence of an active force from within. Even in the reception of an external impression we are not passive but active. If we did not exist, we could not receive an impression; if we were totally inactive, that is, literally dead, we should be precisely as if we were not, and therefore as incapable of receiving an impression as of giving one. No phenomenon, whether we speak of man, animals, plants, or inorganic matter, can be generated save by the concurrence of two FORCES, both of which must act, and act too from opposite directions. Every phenomenon of every dependent being, is necessarily THE RESULTANT OF TWO FACTORS. In life, no more than in arithmetic, can we obtain a product with only a single factor. All nature is created according to one and the same original type or idea. Through the whole runs a never failing duality; all is bifold, or separated, as it were, into two sexes, without whose conjunction there is never a generation. But more of this when we come to speak of the FORMULA OF THE OBJECT, or what some philosophers call ontology, or the science of being, in opposition to psychology, or the science of the SUBJECT

9 [Ed. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 9, Section 1.]

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though very improperly, for being is as predicable of me or subject, as of not me or object. Though in perception the subject is always active, yet in simple perception it is not sufficiently so, to be as Locke contends, able to note the object. In simple perception nothing is noted, distinguished; and therefore, strictly speaking, nothing cognized or known. Clear, vivid perceptions, in which the subject marks or distinguishes the object, are APPERCEPTIONS. These, however, do not differ at bottom from simple perceptions. Simple perceptions are so feeble, so dim, confused, and short-lived, their objects are so numerous, run one so into another, come and go in such rapid succession, that the subject is unable to distinguish them one from another. In the apperceptions we distinguish; in the perceptions we do not. In the former we think our existence; in the latter we have only an obscure and confused sense of it. Any seizure of the object is an act of intelligence, if the subject seizing be only conscious. That which enables one to be conscious, to include ones-self, is sentiment, or sensibility. A being destitute of sentiment, would be capable of perception; but might be incapable of cognition. But, since man is sensible in his essence, he must always act whenever he acts, in some degree, as sensibility. Consequently, a certain degree of sentiment must enter into each one, even the feeblest and most obscure, of his perceptions. The perception then does not, as we might at first sight suppose, become apperception by the addition of sentiment, but by becoming more marked and distinct. Perception, then, in man, is of the same nature with cognition, and always is cognition when there is not such a multitude of perceptions rushing as it were upon us at once, and with such rapidity that nothing can be distinguished; as when we witness the rapid revolutions of a wheel, the points follow one another in such quick succession that there appears to us to be no succession at all; as a top when it spins with the greatest rapidity does not appear even to move. 2. Memory. Under the head of remembering, or memory, may be considered more at large, certain objections to the doctrine that the subject never does and never can know itself save in the phenomenon in conjunction with the object, and that the object is always veritably not me; that is always really and truly existing out of the subject and independent of it. In opposition to the first of these assertions, it is alleged that the subject can know itself in itself; for there is an order of facts open to our inspection, when once we retire within ourselves, in which we

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may study the subject by direct, immediate consciousness. In opposition to the second assertion, it is urged, that though it is unquestionably true that the subject must needs have in every fact of life an object, yet since we can, as in reflection and imagination, think on the facts which we have ourselves created, the object may, in certain cases at least, be of our own creating, and therefore not necessarily not me, in the strict sense contended for. 1. Our life, as we look upon it, consists entirely in efforts to explore and find out ourselves. The soul, restless and uneasy at home, goes out into the not me, to find what is necessary to fill up its view of itself. Since it finds itself only in finding the object, and only so far forth as it finds the object; and since it finds the object only in finding itself, and only so far forth as it finds itself, all our inquiries may be summed up in the two questions, WHAT IS THE SUBJECT? WHAT IS THE OBJECT? The answer to the one of these questions, will always be the answer to the other. At bottom they are not two questions, but one question, and those old sages who summed up all in the injunction, “KNOW THYSELF,” were not so far out of the way. According to the doctrine, thus far contended for, man knows himself only so far as he comes to know God and nature, and God and nature only so far as he comes to know himself. The knowledge of the one is always by the knowledge of the other, and the knowledge of both is but one and the same knowledge; or at least, only the reciprocal knowledge of two correlative terms, as will hereafter be shown at full length. The question, what is the subject? it follows from this, can never be fully answered, save by one who knows all that there is to be known. Before we can answer it, we must know both God and nature, and know them completely. The whole of our life, individual and social, temporal and eternal, cannot suffice for a knowledge so extensive; for in order to be able to suffice for it, we should need to be capable of an infinite knowledge. The subject unquestionably represents in life the infinite, but represents it only in a finite manner; in order to represent it in an infinite manner, it must itself be infinite, which it is not and never can be. The complete and final answer to the question, what is the subject? must then forever transcend our powers. The only question we can answer, is what has the subject found itself to be? The answer to this question would be an inventory of the present intellectual wealth of the race, and a sort of Novum Organon of science, and a means of advancing the sciences. This question, what has the subject found itself to be? though by no means easily answered, can be answered by profound study of the

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monuments of the individual and the race; that is, the facts of memory, and the facts of history. But a class of modern psychologists smile at our modesty, when we talk of the difficulty of answering this question and of limiting our inquiries to this relative knowledge of the subject and the object. They tell us that the soul may know itself as it were absolutely; for it can study, if not itself in itself, yet itself in its facts, and these facts in itself. The facts which reveal the soul, are in the soul; we carry them always about with us, and may find them whenever we look steadily within. We can study them as easily and as certainly, as we can the facts of physical science. We observe the facts of external nature by the external senses, and proceed by induction to the construction of a science of the universe; we may, in like manner, observe the facts of the soul by immediate consciousness, and proceed by induction to the construction of a complete psychology, or science of the soul. If this were so, nothing would be more simple and easy than to know ourselves; for nothing is or can be more certain than the facts of consciousness. But even admitting that there is the order of facts, of which these psychologists speak, and that we can study them by immediate consciousness, the study of the soul in them would not be the study of the soul in itself, for they are the phenomena of the soul; and the study of the soul in them would still be the study of the soul in its phenomena, according to the principle laid down, that being must always be studied in the phenomenon; that the category of substance can be seized and studied only in the category of cause. Moreover, the knowledge of the subject obtained from these facts, even admitting that we can know them in the manner and to the extent alleged, would not be a complete and final answer to the question, what is the subject? unless it be assumed that the subject has already completely realized itself. If it be conceded that man has not as yet attained to the utmost limits of his possibility, that he has yet an ideal, and therefore a future, the knowledge contended for would not be an absolute knowledge of the subject; but merely a knowledge of what it has thus far found itself to be; that is to say, the same relative knowledge to which we contend all our knowledge is necessarily restricted. But these psychologists misapprehend the character of the order of facts of which they speak; the world which contains them when they are observed; and the light or psychical faculty by means of which they are studied. The distinction they contend for, between what they call external senses and an internal sense or consciousness, does not really exist, and has been made in consequence of too strong

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a desire to establish, as it were, a parallelism between physical science and psychological science. This parallelism no doubt in some sort exists; but not in the sense contended. There is in fact no purely physical science; and no purely psychological science. Our physics depend always on our metaphysics; because the subject always includes itself as one of the elements of all its thoughts. It therefore necessarily constitutes one of the elements of physical science, as much as it does of psychological science; and the worth of its physical science always depends on the view which it takes of itself. As it knows itself only as the correlative of object, in all its science of itself, it must include as one of the elements of that science, the object or not me. Each science therefore contains the other, and the two are, as has just been intimated, not two sciences, but one science. As the science of nature is always by the science of the subject, and as the science of the subject is by the science of nature, the method of studying one or the other is doubtless the same. But we have not two sets of senses, one for the external, and one for the internal, one for nature, and the other for the subject. The observer is always the subject, the me, the whole me and nothing but the me. I always observe, whatever the field of my observation, by virtue of my own inherent intelligence, rather power of intelligencing. This power is one and indivisible, as is necessarily implied in the unity of the subject, which we found affirmed by its substantiality. This is always one and the same light, whether it shine out through those windows of the soul called the external senses, or whether it blazes but in the brilliant but brief light of consciousness. What this illumines I observe; what it leaves in the shade I cannot observe. In external sense, and in consciousness, the observer is always the same, always the one invariable, persisting subject, which I call me, myself. The light, or power, by which I observe, or by which I am rendered capable of observing, is not only one and indivisible, but is always myself, and in no sense whatever distinguishable from me. It is me, inherently, essentially, not something separable from me, and capable of being distributed among different organs. The brain is called an organ of the mind, but the power to think is not the brain, is not secreted by it, does not reside in it. It does not think, I think; It is not the intelligent subject or force; I am that intelligent subject or force. The material, or physical organs, improperly termed senses, since they are not senses, but organs of sense, do not observe; I observe. The body does not feel; I feel. The pain which I say is in my foot, is not a pain which my foot feels, but a pain which I feel; and I may even continue to feel it for a time, after my foot has been ampu-

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tated and removed far from me. Consciousness does not know, for it is not an agent, nor even the faculty of an agent. I am the agent and I, not the consciousness, know. It is not correct to speak of the senses as observing the external world, and consciousness the internal world, as if I, the real and only subject, were standing idly by, with no conceivable employment, but that of merely listening to the reports which consciousness and the senses are so obliging as to make to me. It is always I myself that sees, hears, feels, knows, although by means of appropriate organs, according to the conditions of my being and modes of activity. Consciousness, it cannot be repeated too often, is not a sense, a faculty, a power, nor even a fact of a peculiar sort; but simply the subject becoming able to recognize itself in the phenomenon, and to say, I am, I think, I will, I know, I love. All activity, whether voluntary or involuntary, intelligent or sentient, is in the subject, is in fact the subject itself. Whatever is done, the me or subject does it; that is, when we contemplate the fact from the subjective side. It observes, because it is an active intelligence; knows, because it is an intelligent force. It is itself both the intelligence and the force in their indissoluble unity. There can be, then, no external intelligence unless we can conceive the subject being external to itself, that is, out of itself. All intelligence is and needs must be internal, in the subject itself; and therefore must be internal also all our powers of observation, whatever they be, and whatever, or wherever, their organs. Nor is this all. There not only are not the two sets of faculties for observing, supposed, but there are not even the two fields of observation contended for. There is not an external field of observation, and an internal field. It is admitted that the subject may study itself in its facts, and learn itself, so far as it has entered into them; but it cannot and does not study these facts in itself. It is the observer; and all on the side of the observer. It cannot double itself over, as it were, and be at once the observer and the observed; nor can it divide itself into two halves, and observe one half of itself with the other. Now, nothing can be in the subject, or on the side of the subject, but the subject itself. If then these facts are in the soul, they are subject, and not object; and therefore cannot be studied. Nothing which is in the subject, till projected in the phenomenon, can, for this reason, be observed. All observations, since the subject is the observer, must therefore needs be external. All objects of contemplation, reflection, observation, study, or even imagination, must therefore be exterior to the subject. The very term object, implies that the facts concerned are out of the subject, standing over against it. It is because they are thus out of the subject, standing over against it, that they are called

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objects, instead of subject, which they would be, were they in the me. The light, power, or faculty of observing is internal, subjective; but the observation itself is made always from within outwards, made in the external, and just as much, and as inevitably so, in the case of the facts of consciousness, as in the facts of the material world. What is so often said, about “introspection,” “looking within,” “studying the soul by immediate consciousness,” must not then be too strictly construed. The facts which philosophers and divines have in view, when they exhort us to look within, are no doubt very real, and very necessary to be studied, in order to become acquainted with ourselves. They are facts, nay, facts open to our inspection; but they must be regarded as existing out and independent of the subject, not in it, and therefore, as not me. Moreover, these facts, which are called facts of consciousness, and which constitute what is called the internal world, are not, when objects of study, facts of consciousness, nor are they observed by immediate consciousness. A fact of consciousness, or a fact in which I am conscious, is always a present intellectual act in which I recognize myself as the subject acting. The thought I am thinking, whatever it be, not the one I have thought, is the fact of consciousness. Consciousness concerns always the present, and, like the subject itself, has no past, and no future. The moment I arrest myself thinking, and attempt to seize the thought, and to make it an object of reflection, it ceases to be the thought I am thinking, and becomes the thought I was thinking, and on which I am now reflecting. The fact of consciousness, is now myself reflecting on the thought I was thinking or rather the thought I am thinking on that thought. The fact of consciousness, then, dies the moment we attempt to seize it, and to make it the object of our observation, and a new fact is born. Observation of psychological facts by means of immediate consciousness, is then out of the question. That there is the order of facts we are considering, and that they must be studied as the indispensable condition of being able to answer the question, what is the subject? there is and can be no doubt. They are the products of our past living; they are the facts of the subject, what it has done, or rather, the facts in which it has realized itself, so far as realized itself it has; and they must therefore, if known, reveal the subject to itself, as a picture reveals the artist, or a book its author. There has been no error in directing our attention to this order of facts, as a means of learning ourselves; nor in the importance which has been ascribed to them; but in calling them, when studied, facts of consciousness; in alleging that it is by immediate conscious-

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ness that we study them; in pretending that it is in the subject that they are studied; and in calling the study of the subject in these, a study of the soul by itself in itself, and not the study of itself in its phenomena. They are facts, no doubt facts having a peculiar relation to the subject, but still facts, and in the condition of all facts which fall under our observation, exterior to the subject, and therefore really and truly not me. So much I have thought it not improper to say in answer to the first objection urged, an objection which can hardly have failed to suggest itself to the most careless reader. No one pretends that the subject cannot study itself; but simply, that it cannot study itself directly, immediately; but indirectly, mediately, in its phenomena. The facts which are sometimes called facts of consciousness, are, properly speaking, FACTS OF MEMORY. They are, as I have said, products of our past life; but not on this account facts of consciousness, any more than is the book I have written, or the machine I have constructed, a fact of my consciousness. When remembered, I no doubt am conscious that, when present, I found myself in them as their subject. It is this fact which connects them in a peculiar manner with myself, and which has led some able psychologists to call them facts of consciousness. But they are not facts of consciousness, even when remembered; for the difference between a pain which we are now experiencing, and one which we merely remember to have experienced, is very obvious, and escapes no one’s attention. 2. But these facts are unquestionably products of our past life. They can be remembered, as we say, recalled by memory; and when so recalled, they are objects of study—objects of thought—and, therefore, according to the principles laid down, not only object, but veritably NOT ME. But, if they are products of our past life, the creations of the subject, even admitting that the subject can manifest itself only in conjunction with the object, does it not follow that the object may be its own creation, and therefore after all really, and, so to speak, vitally subjective? If the subject can create its own object, as in reflecting on its own products, what evidence does the fact that it cannot manifest itself without an object, furnish that the object is really not me existing out of the subject and independent of it? That the facts of memory are products of our past life is conceded; that when they are objects of thought, is not only conceded but contended; and therefore that in certain cases, and under certain restrictions, the object is a product of the subject, will not be denied. But, in calling these facts, products of our past life, we necessarily assume that our life began prior to their production. They could not

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have been produced before we began to live, that is, to manifest ourselves. We must have acted prior to them. If then we can never act, as is certainly the case, save in conjunction with the object, we must have had, prior to them, an object, which could have been in no sense whatever the creation of the subject. Moreover, let it be borne in mind that these facts are not created by that act of the subject in which they are the object. They were the product not of that act, but of a prior act, and therefore had a sort of independent existence of the subject, before they became the object of his life. But, although the facts of memory are products of our past life, they are not products of the subject acting alone. The past life of which they were the products, consisted, like all dependent life, in the reciprocal action and reaction of subject and object. They were never then, even when facts of consciousness, purely subjective facts. Nothing is purely subjective but the me itself, or that which is all on the side of the subject; but all on the side of the subject, these facts never were. They are indeed the products of our past thinking but like all thought, the resultant of TWO FACTORS, the joint product of the simultaneous action and reaction of both subject and object. They are, then, even considered in their origin, no more subjective facts, than they are objective facts. They are neither one nor the other, but partake of the nature of both. Moreover, MEMORY itself, or the power by which we remember them, and are able to make them objects of reflection, is, in its manifestation, no more purely subjective than is the manifestation of the power to think or to perceive. Memory, properly speaking, is not a faculty of the subject, but an act, and therefore, according to the condition of all acting, the subject displaying itself in conjunction with the object. The subject by itself alone can no more remember than it can think. It needs physical and external conditions as much as seeing or hearing. In some states of the body we can no more remember than in some states of the visual organs we can see. In some states we remember with ease, in some with difficulty, in others not at all. Sometimes it is impossible to remember in one state what has been experienced in another, as is witnessed by the phenomena of sleep and natural or artificial somnambulism. Moreover, some outward circumstance, some external occasion, some motive or reason more or less urgent for remembering, is essential to induce us to remember, and even then, will we never so energetically, if the objective conditions of remembering are not favorable, we cannot remember. There must always be some fact of our present life, some present occasion, which demands the past, to cause us to resort to the past,

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and to consult its records. Since, then, we can remember only in concurrence with the objective, memory itself must not be regarded as purely subjective; and therefore, of course, must not be regarded as purely subjective the facts of memory. The fact, then, that the facts of memory may be objects of reflection, therefore of thought, makes nothing against the fundamental position that THE OBJECT IS ALWAYS NOT ME. 3. But what after all is memory? Where are these facts of our past life when we cannot, or do not, remember them? They are not in the subject, for if they were, and the subject had the power of looking into itself, they would be always present in fact both to the subject and to its view, and therefore there would, and could be no memory. They could never fall into the past, never be lost sight of, forgotten; but would be always present facts; for the subject being always itself present, of course whatever it contains would also be present. If they were always present in the soul, and the soul could always look into itself, it could also always see them, and be immediately conscious of their presence. But neither is by any means the case. These facts do fall into the past, and not infrequently escape wholly from our sight. We do not carry our whole past always, as it were, under our eyes. We can remember but a very little of our past life, only here and there a thought, a sentiment, or an event that stood out in bold relief, only here and there one flower that bloomed amid the millions that faded, and wasted their fragrance and beauty unnoted. The rich trains of thought, the pure and eloquent feelings awakened in us by the beauty, the grandeur, the agitation or the repose of nature, by the sweet and thrilling melodies of the harp, the conversation of the great and the wise, the venerable and the good, the true, the lovely, and the loved, have passed away and become to us as the receding echo of a pleasant dream, which we remember to have had, but which we can no longer recall. Could this be so, if the products of our past life were still in us, and we had the power of looking into ourselves, and reviewing them at our leisure? But, if these facts do fall into the past, and, to some extent, fade away from our sight, they do not vanish entirely. Some of them we remember, and the fact that we can remember them is a proof that they in some sense do still continue to exist. What I remember is never a new creation, but always an old friend or acquaintance, revisiting me, with or without invitation. If these products of our past life, when not remembered, had ceased to exist, they would have become precisely as if they had never been, and it would be no more possible to remember them, than to remember, if the expression will

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be permitted, what had never occurred. The past, then, since, to some extent at least, it is open to memory, cannot be dead, but must be still something. It has not ceased to be. Forgotten it may be; we may not hear its eloquent voices, nor be charmed by its melodies, but it has not gone wholly out. One day, one happy moment, it shall return to our view in all, and even in more than all its original freshness and beauty. As we grow old, the veriest trifles of our childhood and youth come back to us, and we find again thoughts, sentiments, events, which move us, and even more powerfully than they did when they were actually present. We still find the friend of our youth so early and so suddenly taken from us; the beloved of my heart, from whom I have been separated by death, for long years, returns to me again, and my heart swells and my eyes overflow, as I look upon the sweet face that won me, and listen to the silver tones of that voice which charmed me. Could that which had ceased to be, which had become as if it had never been, come back to my heart with such vividness, and have such power to move me? No, no. The facts of my past life then still are, WHERE ARE THEY? It may be answered that they are in the memory, but this answer cannot be accepted, for it is merely a repetition of the fact that prompts the question. It is merely saying that we remember that under certain circumstances, we seem to ourselves to find again, though not as present, the facts of our past life. Memory is not something distinct from me. There is not the subject, and by its side, but distinct from it, a memory. Memory is the subject itself, the subject remembering. Nothing can be said to exist in the memory which may not be said to exist in the subject. These facts, we have seen, do not exist in the subject; they do not exist in what is called the world of space, for they are not corporeal; where, then, do they or can they exist? There is but one answer to be given to this question; it is that they EXIST IN TIME as bodies do in space. Memory, though involving much which is, in the present state of our knowledge, wholly inexplicable, may be defined, THE SUBJECT PERCEIVING IN TIME. This view of memory, which, I believe, is not a very common one, though not altogether original with me,10 is of very great impor10

[Ed. Very much like Kant, Brownson perceives the subject as related transcendentally to time. Brownson’s understanding of memory as the subject perceiving in time seems to reflect Kant’s notion of the transcendental unity of apperception. On this see Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Norman Kemp Smith (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965), A 30-41/B 46-58; trans. 74-82. To some extent, Brownson had modified what he read on time and memory in Victor Cousin’s Elements of Psychology, trans. Caleb S. Henry (1834; New York: Ivision and Phinney, 1856), 144-52. ]

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tance, and may help us to explain some phenomena which have hitherto been inexplicable. It recognizes a world of time as well as a world of space, and in man the power of perceiving in the one world as well as in the other. On any other view of memory, time would have no meaning, would have no contents. The future we should say is not yet, and the past has ceased to be. There would, then, remain only the present, which is a mere point, and the type, if I may so speak, not of time, but of eternity, that is, of NO-time. Space marks the relations which bodies hold to each other, not merely as they exist in our mind, as Kant maintains,11 but as they exist in the divine mind, that is, as they really exist. Time marks the order in which events succeed, and not only the order of the events which have been, but also of the events which are to be. Events bear, then, the same relation to time that bodies do to space, and perception of the events is properly perception in time, as perception of bodies is perception in space. But time has two divisions, the past and the future. Memory is the subject PERCEIVING IN THE PAST; but may we not also perceive in the future? Cannot man look before as well as after? Does not the prophetic element, then, bear the same relation to the soul that the historical does? And is not PROPHECY found to be a fact as well attested in man’s history as memory itself? It may, or it may not exist in as great a degree; man may not have the same power of foresight that he has of after-sight; yet the power to foresee is as unquestionable and as universal as the power to remember. Every man presages to a greater or less extent, has always a more or less vivid presentiment of what is to fall out. Most people can relate some remarkable instances of foresight or presentiment which have occurred in the course of their experience. This FORESIGHT is not always clear and distinct, but in general feeble and confused; and so is it with our perception of bodies in space. It is only here and there one that is distinctly marked; the greater portion coming within the range of our vision are perceived only confusedly, as are the small particles of water which compose the wave I see rolling in upon the beach, or the hum of each separate insect which goes to make up the total hum of the swarm to which I listen. In memory, too, our perceptions are for the most part of the 11 [Ed. On Kant’s notion of space, see Critique of Pure Reason, A 22-30/B 3745, trans. 67-74. Philip Rossi, S.J., informs me that Brownson has not interpreted Kant correctly on space. Kant’s notion of space as an a priori intuition does not involve making a contrast between things “as they exist in our mind” and “as they really are,” but, as Rossi notes, Brownson’s misreading of Kant has a long history. I want to thank Rossi for pointing this out to me.]

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same confused character. We often foresee with as much distinctness as we remember; and the objects of which we have a presentiment not infrequently stand out before us in as clear and as brilliant a light as the objects we perceive in space, and are capable of being discerned with equal ease and exactness. Leibnitz contends that we not only have a reminiscence of all our past thoughts, but a PRESENTIMENT of all our thoughts,12 though in a confused manner, without distinguishing them. The fact that we perceive only in a confused manner without distinguishing one perception from another, makes nothing against the fact that we do perceive. We must not suppose that our actual perceptions are confined to the few distinct perceptions in which we not only perceive but apperceive. The me, or subject, is essentially active and percipient; the object, all nature, is always before it, around it, and streaming into it with ten thousand influences, each of which must, from the nature of the case, be perceived; for, unperceived, they would not and could not be influences; they would be as if they were not. In deep sleep, in fainting, in stupor, there is perception, but no apperception; or how otherwise could we awaken, or return, or be recalled to consciousness? We close the eyelids unconsciously, when any foreign body approaches the eyes. We are at times, swayed to and fro, are powerfully affected, we know not how, and cannot tell wherefore. We experience the most pleasurable, or the most painful sensations, without a clear or distinct perception of any external cause. When we walk for our pleasure, we not seldom take one direction rather than another, without any reason of which we are conscious; and when we walk, lost in revery, or rapt in our own meditations, we turn aside, and with perfect unconsciousness carefully avoid the obstructions to our progress, which may be lying in our pathway. We must needs perceive what comes within the range of our organs of perception; and yet we seldom mark the roar of the ocean near which we live, breaking on the distant beach; the hum of the city through which we daily pass; the rich and varied beauty of the landscape which has been lying spread out before us in warm sunlight from our childhood; and yet these influence our characters, and nice observers can easily tell, on seeing and conversing for a short time with a stranger, the general description of the natural scenery amidst which he has 12 [Ed. According to Leibniz, “An immaterial being or spirit . . . retains impressions of everything which has previously happened to it, and it even has presentiments of everything which will happen to it.” See G. W. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, trans. and ed. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett (1765; London: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 239.]

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been brought up. Objects are constantly before us which we do not note; sounds are perpetually ringing in our ears of which we are unconscious; and yet remove those objects, silence those sounds, and we should instantly miss them; a sense of loneliness or desertion would come over us, and we should look around to find that of which, when present, we took no notice. These considerations, and many more of the same kind, warrant the induction that we may perceive without apperceiving, and that we are never to assume that we do not perceive, when all the conditions of perception are present, merely because we do not distinguish our perceptions one from another, or because they are too numerous and too rapid in their transit across the plane of our vision, to allow us to clothe them with form, and thus convert them into thoughts. While, then, we may say with Locke that the soul does not always think, we must still contend with Leibnitz that it always perceives, and everywhere. These feeble, confused, undistinguished perceptions, play a very important part in the conduct of life. It is by them that we must explain what are called involuntary actions. By them we are also able to account for a great variety of phenomena, which without them would be wholly inexplicable. Assuming that we may perceive without apperceiving, and in the world of time as well as in the world of space, we can readily account for the fact that we are so seldom surprised when we become conscious of perceiving, and for the fact long ago noted by Plato, and by him made the basis of his argument for the immortality of the soul, that all knowledge comes to us ever as a reminiscence, as something which we have previously known, and now suddenly remember. When a man utters a new and striking thought in my hearing, I seem to myself to have had that thought before. In all my observations on nature, in all my reflections, on science, art, and morals, I seem to myself, for the most part, to be reviewing what I had before seen, though hastily and imperfectly. The authors who take hold of the popular heart, and enter into the life of their race as its restorers, rarely surprise us; they seem to us to be saying what we all had always thought or felt, but had never been able to express, and had never before heard expressed. This is precisely the effect we should look for in case we had, as Leibnitz says, “a presentiment of all our thoughts.” The soul had had a presentiment, a dim and confused perception, before the clear and distinct view which converts the perception into a thought. What is subsequently thought had, as it were, in some degree, been foreseen and predicted. Hence we find that prophecy never surprises us; and the bulk of mankind, they who are not prejudiced by systems and theories, find

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no difficulty a priori in crediting to the fullest extent, those individuals who from time to time stand out from their race as the providential representatives of the prophetic power of our nature. Our power of clear and distinct perception in time as well as in space, varies with the state of our mind and body. We know by experience that in our own case the power to foresee in certain states of nervous excitement or exaltation of sentiment, in trance, or what the Alexandrian philosophers called ecstasy,13 is altogether greater and more certain than in our ordinary state. Hence the Pythoness14 who gave forth her oracles in her moments of almost convulsive excitement, natural or artificial, may readily have perceived what she predicted. The belief in oracles among the heathen, then, as well as in the prophets and seers among the Hebrews, may have had something solid at bottom. To the same power of perceiving without apperceiving, and of perceiving in time, as well as in space, must be attributed our faith in the order and stability of nature. On this faith is founded the whole conduct of life; and yet it is no induction from experience, and no logical inference from the immutability of the Creator. It is never obtained by a logical process. Because the sun rose today, or because I have seen it rise for a thousand days, I cannot say that it will rise tomorrow. Men, too, have this faith, who never think of inferring it from the experience of the past. It is not inferred from the immutability of the Creator; for it may be found where there is no belief in the Creator, and where men have not asked themselves, if the immutability of the Creator involves the immutability of the creation. Nor is it inferable from the immutability of the Creator. We all admit that God is immutable, but none of us admit the immutability of creation. If we have a right to infer the order and stability of nature from the fact that God is immutable, it is only because this fact implies that there can be no change in his works. If no change in his works, then, no progress, no deterioration; all is fixed, immovable. And yet in the case of man, we know this is not true. Humanity is capable both of improvement and of deterioration. There are no data from which this faith can be inferred, and, as a matter of fact, it never is an inference. Yet all men have it, and in every act of their lives, in the least and the greatest, presuppose it. Whence comes it? The soul perceives in time, and in time future, as well as in time past. It has 13 [Ed. Brownson got this idea from Cousin. See Cousin’s Course of the History of Modern Philosophy, tr. O. W. Wight, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1952), 1:448.] 14 [Ed. Pythoness was the priestess of the Delphic oracle who possessed the spirit of prophecy.]

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always a presentiment of the continuance of this order and stability, which must survive, whatever the changes nature may undergo. To this same power we must attribute our faith in our own personal identity, a faith which we retain, notwithstanding the perpetual interruptions of consciousness, as in deep sleep when we do not dream, in fainting, and stupor. These interruptions never shake our faith in our own identity. We are always the same, invariable, persisting subject. The subject finds itself, recognizes its own existence only in its acts. It is not always conscious, does not always think; and, therefore, if it acted only when it thought, it would at times lose all sense of itself, which in point of fact never happens. It perceives always; and in all perception it acts; and in all acting, however feeble or confused, it must have a feeble and obscure sense of its own being; too feeble and obscure, it may be, to give it a clear and distinct consciousness, yet always sufficient to keep alive a faith in its own identity and persistence. The fact here touched upon, might perhaps carry us further yet, and account, in some manner, for our faith in immortality, and, at the same time, show us that the substance of that faith rests on as high a degree of certainty as that which we have of our present existence. The faith in immortality, which in some form is, and always has been the universal faith of mankind, is after all nothing but the faith which we have in our own identity and persistence, and requires no other conditions. It is a presentiment of the soul, an actual perception in time, shading off as all time does into eternity. How the soul can perceive in time, past or future, is no doubt inexplicable; so is it, how it can perceive in space. There is no more mystery in the one case than in the other. All we can do, is to determine what it perceives; how it perceives, we shall never be in a condition to explain. All we can do, all we shall ever be able to do, is to say that it perceives because it is essentially a percipient activity, which after all is only saying simply that it perceives. 3. Imagination. Imagining or imagination is commonly reckoned among the original faculties of the soul; but it is more properly a fact of human life, implying the presence and activity of all the faculties. As an operation of the mind, taken in a broad and perhaps loose sense, it is hardly a simple operation, but partakes in some degree of reasoning as well as of perceiving, and of perceiving in time as well as in space; yet taken strictly, it is in the main, if not entirely, a mere mode or degree of perceiving, and therefore appropriately enough treated under the general head of PERCEPTION.

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The name of this operation is borrowed, not from what may be regarded as its essence, but from one of its incidents, or frequent, though not unfailing, accompaniments. Taken literally, the word implies the act of representing by images, and perhaps, the act of so representing actual existences; but the operation itself is chiefly concerned with ideal existences; and its essence consists rather in the degree of intenseness and energy with which those existences are perceived, than in the mode in which they are expressed or represented. In imagination, as in perception, as in apperception, there are both subject and object; but the object is for the most part ideal, and therefore commonly supposed to be a mode, affection, or creation of the subject; and therefore again as wholly subjective and without objective validity. Hence, imaginary would say fictitious, unreal, without any solid foundation. But the object in imagination, as in thought, according to the doctrine already laid down, must be really not me, and therefore really existing out and independent of the subject. The subject in imagining, is as far from being or creating its own object as in apperceiving or remembering. Imagination in its elements differs not at all from apperception, nor indeed from simple perception. The difference is a difference in quantity, not in quality. It is distinguished from apperception, as apperception is distinguished from perception, that is, by being a higher degree of the same activity. We may reckon FOUR degrees of activity, which may be named, 1. Perception. 2. Apperception. 3. Imagination. 4. Ecstasy or Trance. Heighten perception to a given degree, and it is apperception; heighten apperception to a given degree, and it is imagination; heighten imagination to a given degree, and it is ecstasy or trance. The reality of the phenomena included by the ancient Alexandrian school under the head of ecstasy, and which the modern believers in mesmerism ascribe to the mesmeric state, cannot be altogether denied; but as they are still wrapped in great obscurity, and as we are unable to affirm anything with much positiveness, concerning them, they are best classed under the head of imagination, with which they are certainly allied, and from which in the present state of our knowledge they are by no means easily distinguished. Including then the ecstasy of the ancients, and the mesmeric state of the moderns, under the head of imagination, we must reduce the degrees of activity to THREE, perception, apperception, and imagination; of which imagi-

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nation will be the highest, and differing from the other two only in being a more intense and energetic degree of the same activity. In imagination we apperceive, but with greater intenseness and energy than in ordinary thought. Hence, the NOTION or form with which the subject clothes the naked elements of the thought, is more real, living, substantial, than in ordinary thinking. A man imagining is a greater, a more vigorous and exalted being, than a man merely thinking. Herein is the true distinction between the ordinary thinker and the poet, and between the artisan and the artist. Intensify ordinary thought, and it is poetry; as is evinced by the fact that all real thinkers, all men of sincere and earnest minds, in their more felicitous moments, when acting with the whole force and energy of their being, become more or less imaginative, and rise into strains of genuine poetry. Intensify the power of the artisan, and the miserable sign he is painting for some obscure village inn, becomes a Madonna, in which shall be enshrined “the beauty of holiness.” The rough, jarring tones of the rude peasant, grating harsh discord on the ear, become sweet, musical, tender and touching, the moment his heart warms up with a generous passion, or melts with love and devotion. The fact here insisted on deserves the attention of all who are concerned with esthetics, or the science of the fine arts. Everyone has felt that poetry depends on the imagination, but wherein imagination differs from other mental operations, no one seems to have been able to determine. It is evidently not in the expression, otherwise all figurative or symbolical expressions would be poetical; and the huge, ill-shapen beasts of Hindoo and Egyptian mythology, would be truer specimens of art, than the symmetrical, graceful, and finished productions of Grecian genius. “White as snow,” “swift as the wind,” “quick as lightning,” and similar expressions, are figurative in a high degree; but, whatever they may once have been, are now far from being poetical, or indicating the presence of imagination. They may be used poetically, but they are ordinarily nothing more than extravagant prose. Those who have agreed that imagination is not in the expression, have usually considered it a special faculty of human nature, and have considered poetry to be the result of a special power of the soul not called into exercise in ordinary prose. Yet analysis of the finest passages of poetry taken from Homer, Dante, Milton, or Shakespeare, will by no means sustain this view. These passages indicate the presence of no original element of human nature not essential to the driest and dullest prose. Art contains no elements not requisite to the most ordinary productions of the artisan. Every stonecutter is an incipient Phidias; and the richest and sublimest of

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Beethoven’s Symphonies, contain no elements not contained in the usual tones of the human voice, and brought into play in ordinary speech. Few men are artists; yet all men are able in a degree to relish art. The germs of the poet are in all hearts; hence, the true poet fetches from all hearts an echo to his song. All men love the poet, for he is to them what they are aspiring to be—is themselves enlarged. All men love art, and are moved by it. The rude Indian paints the prow of his canoe, polishes his war club and his bow; and the Indian maiden strings her beads of wampum, and decks her hair with shells, to win his admiration or his love. The artist, whether painter, poet, sculptor, architect, or musician, is no doubt above the mass of men, and very distinguishable from them; but not by having aught of which they have not the elements. In this respect, all men are brothers, and equals. The simple truth is there is not the radical distinction between poetry and prose, between imagination and ordinary thinking, commonly contended for. Poetry and prose differ not in kind, but are merely different degrees of what at the bottom is the same. All prose writers, of the least genius, when warmed up, are poetical in thought and expression; and our truest poets, for the most part of the time, give us merely measured prose. Prose rises imperceptibly into poetry; and poetry sinks imperceptibly into prose. No man can define the exact boundary line between them; and it is only when at a considerable distance from the line that we can tell whether we are in the territory of the one or of the other. On each side of the line, there is and always must be a disputed territory, which will be enlarged or contracted according to the intensity and energy of the life of him who undertakes to adjust the dispute. Imagination has at times been called the creative faculty of the soul, and therefore looked upon as the highest faculty of our nature. But all activity is creative. To act is to do, to effect, or produce something; that is, to create. Man is active by nature, and therefore must act in all his phemomena. He must then be creative in them all. He is then creative, not because he is imaginative, but because he is active. Including, as we have said, under the head of imagination, the phenomena which the ancients ascribed to ecstasy, and the moderns to the mesmeric state, man is more active in imagination than in any other of his operations, because imagination is the highest degree of activity of which he is capable. In regard to this higher degree of activity men differ one from another, and the same man differs, from himself, at different epochs of his life. The susceptibility of this degree of activity, that is, of imagination, depends on the relative proportion in which the faculty we

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have called sensibility, enters into our original constitution, or the special degree of excitement it may at the moment be undergoing. The sensibility, by which must be understood, not merely the power of being placed in relation with the external world, the RECEPTIVITY of the Kantian philosophy, is, if I may so speak, the central element of the me or subject. It is this which is more especially at the bottom of all those of our phenomena which indicate the highest and intensest degree of life, as emotion, passion, affection, love, joy, grief. This faculty is not possessed by all men in the same relative proportion. In some men it is scarcely discernible. These are cold, dry, hard, and though not infrequently passing for men of thought are usually regarded as unamiable, dull, uninteresting, drudges, mere plodders, who doubtless are not without their use in the world, but who are never among the chiefs of their race, the lights of their age. In others again this faculty seems to predominate; and these are those of our race who have, if one may so speak, the largest, the richest, and the loftiest nature; and life, that is, action, that is, again manifestation of our being, must needs be with these more intense and energetic than with those of a narrower and less richly endowed nature. Just in proportion, then, as this element predominates in the original constitution of the individual, or just in proportion as it is for the time being, naturally or artificially, rendered the predominating element in the life of individual, will be that individual’s susceptibility of imagination. Life being in this individual more intense and energetic than in ordinary men, or at least than in their ordinary state of inward excitement, he must necessarily clothe his thoughts with richer, more vivid, and substantial forms; which again will require a more vivid and expressive language for their utterance. Hence the peculiar language of imagination; hence poetry; hence all the various forms of art. All are but the various language the soul adopts in its states of highest and best sustained activity, as the means of giving utterance to its own intense, energetic, and, therefore, creative life. But after all, the difference is not a difference in kind. In the simplest act we perform we are creative, in a degree; and the simplest and most prosaic forms of expression we ever adopt, are constructed on the same principle, after the same laws, and are in fact at bottom the same with those of the sublimest and richest art. The Greeks, it is true, seem to have regarded the imagination as a specially creative faculty. We see this in the fact of their calling the poet a maker. They must have supposed that imagination, on which poetry depends, deals only with the ideal, and that the ideal is the

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mere creature of the subject. Hence, they make the essence of poetry consist in fiction. Fiction is that which is made up by the poet out of himself, his own fancies and conceits, and needs, and has no objective basis. All the truth or reality there is in poetry, and therefore in imagination, on this hypothesis, is simply and exclusively of the subject’s own creating. But this is by no means true. Imagination, unquestionably, deals much with the ideal, but not exclusively; nor is all dealing with the ideal, imagination. Metaphysics, ethics, transcendental mathematics and geometry, nay, all reasoning, as will hereafter be seen, the most abstract, the driest, the dullest even, deals with the ideal not less than does imagination. We may perceive the ideal feebly, listlessly, as well as intensely and energetically; and it is only in the last case that perception of the ideal is imagination. We may also perceive the actual with intensity and energy, with the highest degree of activity we can experience. If so, imagination may deal with the actual world as well as with the ideal world. The essence of imagination does not consist either in the object with which it deals, nor in the mode or manner in which the subject represents the object; but solely, as we have seen, in the intensity and energy with which the object is seized. The actual world is often seized with great intensity and energy, as we may learn by reading historical, descriptive, and didactic poetry. In the “Hind and Panther” of Dryden,15 even political and theological speculation and reasoning become imaginative and poetical. It must be a very defective definition that excludes from the domain of poetry, Pope’s Essay on Man and his Moral Essays, the Satires of Horace and Juvenile, the “Rerum Natura” of Lucretius, the sixth Book of the Aeneid, or even Wordsworth’s Excursion, with the exception of some of the details and descriptions.16 15 [Ed. John Dryden (1631-1700) was an English poet, critic, dramatist, and author of The Hind and the Panther (1687).] 16 [Ed. Alexander Pope’s (1688-1744) An Essay on Man (1733-34), Moral Essays in Four Epistles to Several Persons (1781); Horace, i.e., Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 B.C.), was a Roman poet and author of two books of Satires (35 B.C., and 30-29 B.C.); Juvenal, i.e., Decimus Junius Juvenalus (c. 60-140 A.D.), was also a Roman poet and author of five books of Satires (c. 96-127 B.C.); Lucretius, i.e., Titus Lucretius Carus (c. 96-55 B.C.), was a Roman poet and philosopher who authored De rerum natura, an extensive statement of the Greek philosopher Epicurus’ philosophy of nature and ethics; Vergil, i.e., Publius Vergilius Maro (70-19 B.C.), was the author of the Aeneid, a long Latin epic poem that recounted the adventures of Aeneas; the sixth book of which focused on the underworld; William Wordsworth’s (1770-1850) The Excursion (1814) was a long poem that developed four dramatic voices: the wanderer, the poet, the solitary, and the pastor.]

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Nevertheless the object with which imagination deals, unquestionably, for the most part, belongs to the ideal world, and it may be maintained, with great plausibility at least, that in what may, for distinction’s sake, be termed the poetry of the actual, the poesy consists in the detection and representation of the ideal. This is evidently the thought of those who place the essence of poetry not in fiction, nor in imitation, but in what is called INVENTION, that is to say, in finding. In our ordinary state, or at least the bulk of mankind in their ordinary state, stop with the actual. A primrose by the river’s brink is a primrose and nothing but a primrose; man is merely a twolegged animal without feathers; all nature appears, and is what, and only what, it appears. There are individuals who never get beyond this state; individuals to whom there is never the mighty and dread unknown before which they stand in awe, or shrink into insignificance. Even whole nations, with the exception of a cultivated class, little numerous, rarely if ever get through the actual. In proof of this, might be cited the much boasted Anglo-Saxon race. The genuine Englishman of the lower class, is perhaps the least imaginative human being conceivable. English literature surpasses that of all modern nations in genuine works of imagination; and yet there is, strictly speaking, for the Anglo-Saxon race, no genuine national poetry. The English have no national songs, no national airs, as have their neighbors the Scotch and the Irish, or the Italians, and the people of Northern and Eastern Europe. The peasant Burns17 could hardly have been born south of the Tweed. Similar remarks may be made on the AngloAmericans. We are by no means an imaginative people. We import our songs and music, as we do our silks and broadcloths. And yet, however it may be with the mass of the uncultivated English and Americans, however it may be with some individuals through their whole lives, and with all men during their ordinary state of inward excitement, there are to most men moments when the actual becomes transparent and reveals to their view the rich and magnificent world of the ideal lying beyond its basis and its possibility. To all intense and energetic action the actual becomes merely a symbol of the ideal. All men, when wrought up to a high degree of well sustained activity, are imaginative, and do perceive more than has as yet been realized. Perhaps, were we to change our point of view somewhat, even the English and American branches of the Saxon race, would themselves be found to be not altogether without imagina17 [Ed. A reference to the Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-96) whose works reflected the rural life of Scotland.]

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tion. They are a practical people, but they often display in the direction of mere practical life, an intense and energetic activity that approaches very nearly to the poetical. They have, after all, a national song in the steam-engine and the deep-laden ship, and national music in the ringing of the ever-busy hammer of industry. Let it be admitted, then, if it be insisted on, that poetry consists in the intense and energetic detection and representation of the ideal in the actual, and therefore that imagination, according to the common faith of mankind, deals altogether with the ideal; it will not follow that the object is merely a modification, affection, or creation of the subject. The ideal is always found by the poet, not made, and is as truly objective as the actual in which he finds it. The ideal exists out of us, and independent of us; only it exists as the ideal, not as the actual. It is as truly perceived, and in the most fervid imagination is as truly an object of perception, as is a man, a horse, a plant, or an animal. When I see an individual man, I call him at once a man— but by what authority do I so call him? Unquestionably because I recognize in him the genus, or race, by virtue of which he is a man, and not a horse, or a dog. This genus or race is not actual, but ideal, and it has no actual existence save in individual men and women. Yet it is not itself individual, is not all in one individual, nor all in all individuals; for it is at once in all individuals, is the basis of each individual, and the infinite possibility of each to be more than he is. Whatever force, or substance, or power, we recognize in a particular man, it belongs to him not as a pure individual, but as a representative of humanity. To deny, then, in the case of man the objectivity and independence of the ideal, would be to deny the objectivity and independence of the actual, which never is but by virtue of the ideal. Imagination, then, by dealing with the ideal, no more deals with the unsubstantial, the fictitious, the supposititious, the chimerical, or the subjective, than though it dealt solely with the actual. This is not the common opinion. Men have made poetry consist in fiction, not in truth; and the severest remark is to accuse one of “drawing on his imagination for his facts.”18 Even Shakespeare, whom one may dare cite for his philosophy, as well as for his poetry, seems to have adopted the common notion that in imagination the subject creates its own object: “Hip. ’Tis strange, my Theseus, that these lovers speak of. “The. More strange than true; I never may believe 18 [Ed. The quotation is attributed to Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816), Speech in Reply to Mr. Dundas.]

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The Early Works of Orestes A. Brownson: Volume VI These antique fables, nor these fairy toys, Lovers and madmen have such seething brains, Such shaping fantasies, that apprehend More than cool reason ever comprehends. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, Are of imagination all compact: One sees more devils than vast hell can hold: That is the madman; the lover, all as frantic, Sees Helen’s beauty in a brow of Egypt; The poet’s eye in a fine frenzy rolling, Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven; And, as imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name, Such tricks hath strong imagination.19

And yet according to the formula of thought, already established, which makes it a phenomenon with three indestructible and inseparable elements, namely, subject, object and form, these airy nothings are not nothing, but something; for the subject is always me, and the object always not-me. But must we then take all the creations of the poet, the chimeras, hydras, monsters, and demons of popular superstition, the fairies, genii, heroes, demigods, gods, and goddesses, bodied forth by the various national mythologies of ancient and modern times; all the heroes and heroines of novels, fables, and what we term fictitious history, must we take all these as so many real personages, as actually existing, out and independent of the subject, as Peter, James, or John? To us who contemplate them, reflect on them, they are unquestionably not-me, that is, really objective existences, but existing as facts of memory, and belonging therefore to the world of time. To the subject who created them, they were the NOTIONS, or the FORMS with which he clothed real thoughts or actual apperceptions. The form of the thought or apperception is always, as has already been shown, the creation of the intelligence of the subject; but it is never created save when that intelligence acts in conjunction with a real object, belonging to the world of immediate perception; to the world of memory; or to the world of foresight. These creations differ only in degree from our ordinary notions, or the commonest forms which we give to our apperceptions. They are created by the subject, not by the 19 [Ed. William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1, Lines 3-20.]

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subject acting without an object, but acting in conjunction with the object; and therefore they conceal under them an objective reality, no less than a subjective reality. This will be evident, if we but analyze any one of these “airy nothings” of the poet. The elements out of which they are constructed are always real apperceptions, never pure fictions. We may imagine a mountain of gold, when no mountain of gold shall actually exist; but what is this mountain of gold but the combination of two facts of memory, namely, the conception of gold obtained from the memory, or, what here is the same thing, experience of gold and the conception of mountain obtained from the same source? Had we never had any experience of gold and mountain, we should have been wholly unable to imagine a mountain of gold. Take the dainty, delicate spirit Ariel of Shakespeare, or the devil-begotten Caliban,20 and it may be seen by even a slight analysis that Shakespeare has created nothing but the form with which he has clothed the actual facts of his own experience. The same remark may be made of Oberon, Titania, Robin Goodfellow, and the whole race of little people, as well as the giants of Teutonic Mythology.21 The pattern men and women of our novel writers are nothing but combinations, more or less felicitous, of what they have really experienced. All the conceptions out of which these pattern men and women are constructed, are furnished by actual experience. They may surpass the men and women one actually meets in society, but they do not surpass the ideal suggested or revealed by them. In chiseling a Venus or an Apollo, the artist has unquestionably embodied a beauty which surpasses all actual beauty, but not all the beauty actually present to his view. There hovered before him as he worked, a beauty, which perpetually baffled his efforts to seize and fix in his glowing marble. He has created nothing. The beauty I worship in a Madonna is not supposititious; it is not the creation of a mortal. The mortal has but found and revealed the immortal. He has but imperfectly embodied what his actual experience has enabled him to perceive. Find an artist who, having never looked on the delicate features and graceful form of woman, can yet give us a Venus, or who, having never marked the masculine form and vigor of man, can yet give us an Apollo, and you will find one who can create out of 20 [Ed. Ariel was an airy spirit employed by Prospero, and Caliban was Prospero’s deformed savage slave in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.] 21 [Ed. Oberon was the king of fairies and husband of Titania in William Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Robin Goodfellow, or Puck, was a mischievous fairy or elf also in Midsummer Night’s Dream.]

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himself without needing to draw on experience for the materials with which to work. All the creations of the poet, or the beings of imagination, whether lovely or unlovely, chaste or unchaste, are nothing but the forms with which men attempt to clothe their apperceptions, all of which include necessarily subject and object, though in some cases the object may be the product our past life, or what we have termed a fact of memory. Out of these apperceptions they are all constructed. They differ, then, at bottom not at all from what we have already termed the NOTION or form of the thought. Intensify the notion in ordinary thinking, and you have one of these poetical creations, a Venus or an Apollo, an Ariel or a Caliban, a Miranda or a Lady Macbeth.22 The object in imagination is, then, really not me. There is always truth, and even a high order of truth, under the wildest and most extravagant fancies and conceits of the lover, the madman, and the poet. Not all unreal is the bright world of Romance into which we rise from the dull actual in all our moments of higher and intenser life. The “land of dreams,”23 in which the lover and the poet, in their intensest frenzy, rise free and delighted, is, if we did but know it, more substantial than this cold, dry, work-day world, in which for the most part of the time we merely vegetate, and call it living. In these moments the soul penetrates beyond the actual to the ideal, which is the basis of all reality, that in which we are all, without seeming to know it, immersed as in a vast ocean of being. But every notion, we have seen, has its face of error, because it is the creature of the subject, and the subject is finite. So also must all the forms of imagination have their face of error. None of these express, or can express, the whole truth, or nothing but the truth. Nevertheless, as man in the imaginative state is in his highest state of activity, acting with his greatest force and energy, both as sentiment and as intelligence, it follows that the forms of imagination are the truest and the least inadequate of any of the forms with which he clothes his thoughts. They are the highest and most expressive forms he ever adopts; and contain the highest and most comprehensive truth to which he ever naturally attains. There is profounder truth in the Parthenon or Saint Peter’s, than in the Novum Organon; and a Head of Jupiter by Phidias, or a Madonna by Raphael, is worth more 22 [Ed. Miranda is the daughter of Prospero in William Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Lady Macbeth is the wife of Macbeth in Shakespeare’s Macbeth.] 23 [Ed. A reference to English poet and mystic William Blake’s (1757-1827) poem by the same name.]

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than the Critique of Pure Reason. Homer, Dante, Shakespeare, and Milton, contain more philosophy than Aristotle, Saint Thomas, or Leibnitz, can comprehend, and the Thousand and One Nights more than the Essay on the Human Understanding.24 The only real instructor of the human race is the artist, and it is as artists, as men wrought up to the intensest life, and therefore acting from the full force of their being, that Socrates, Plato, Descartes, the great and universally admitted philosophers, have been able to quicken the race, and set it forward to higher and more comprehensive life. No man is really a philosopher till warmed up into the artist. Here is the sacredness of art, and the explanation of the fact that the highest truths are always uttered by men when under the influence of the loftiest and most genuine imagination. 12 (March, 1843): 241-54 4. Willing. The second general operation of the mind, or subject, is WILLING, or, as it is sometimes denominated, the will. There is, however, an obvious distinction between will and willing. The term will means, 1. The power or faculty of willing; 2. The interior result, effect, or product of the exertion of this power or faculty. It should be confined in its use to this last meaning, in which sense it is the synonym of VOLITION. Willing is neither the power regarded as a faculty, nor its effect, that is, the power regarded as having acted; but the power regarded as in action, that is, as operating. It is, then, strictly, not a faculty, that is, a principle of human nature, but an OPERATION, and therefore a fact of human nature. Will is often treated by psychologists, ancient as well as modern, as a special power or faculty of human nature. Thus Saint Augustine, who with Moses, Pythagoras, and Plato, recognizes the triad or trinity of human nature, which we have affirmed in our formula of the me or subject, terms one of the elements of this triad will—his trinity being, am, know, WILL, to be, to know, and to will. Swedenborg, Edwards, Kant, Reid, and others, also make the will a faculty of human nature. That there is a power or faculty of willing of course must be true, or else there could be no such operation as willing, and no such phenomena as volitions; but this power or faculty is in nowise distinguished, nor distinguishable, from the general power or faculty of acting, which we have called the ACTIVITY. 24

[Ed. The Thousand and One Nights, also called The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment was a collection of Oriental stories of uncertain date and authorship. It records tales of Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Sindbad the Sailor.]

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WILLING, according to this view of will, can be only a specific mode of acting in general, without any generic difference from any other species of acting. But wherein is it specially distinguished from acting in general? This is no easy question to answer. Locke makes it consist in the “mind, thinking upon its own actions, and preferring their doing or their omission;”25 Edwards makes it consist in preferring or choosing; Swedenborg, Kant, and Reid reckon under it all those phenomena in which we are active, as distinguished from passive; Cousin and his school identify it with liberty, make it both spontaneous and reflective, and define it to be the RESOLUTION of the subject, on the presentation of a case, to act or not to act. All these definitions are more or less defective. Choice and preference are judgments; and, then, if we distinguish, as Locke and others do, between the will and the understanding, acts of the understanding, intellections, the nohmata of the Greeks, not volitions. M. Cousin avoids this objection, but only by giving a definition which defines nothing, and which fails to distinguish willing from any other species of acting. All these psychologists have erred in consequence of their asserting a passivity in man, as well as an activity, and assuming that we are passive, not active in a portion of our phenomena. But we have already seen that there is no passivity in man or in nature. What we call our passivity, is not in us, but out of us, not-me, and is no more passive than the me itself. All our powers are active powers, and we are active in all our phenomena. To resolve to act or not to act, is itself to act; so also is to prefer or to choose; so also, again, is to perceive, to reason, to understand. If the subject, or me, were not a unity, if faculties were little beings or agents in us, as Locke says he suspects some are in the habit of considering them, we should find it comparatively easy to define what we mean by willing; but as the case stands, a definition is all but out of the question. Willing is not a peculiar, nor an isolated phenomenon; it is an operation which enters as an integral, an essential element, in some degree, into every one of our phenomena. There are no phenomena of human life, which are pure, unmixed volitions. The volition is never alone, never the whole phenomenon, but always an inseparable part or portion of it. The only distinction which it seems to us possible to make between willing and acting in general, is analogous to the distinction we have already made between apperceiving and perceiving. It is the subject exerting its general power to 25 [Ed. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book 2, Chapter 21, Section 15.]

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act in a special degree, or under special conditions, with a distinct consciousness of acting, and of the end to which, or in view of which, it acts. But the distinction which we have sought to mark, amounts to very little, and all but escapes us when we examine it closely. The me, or subject, is essentially intelligent, and therefore never acts, never can act without intelligence, without, to some extent, perceiving that it is acting and the grounds of its acting. The whole me, since it is a unity as well as a multiplicity, acts and must act together. In all its phenomena it must be always active, always sentient, and always intelligent. Then it never does, and never can, as we say, act blindly. If, then, we were to define a volition, an act done with intelligence, we should fail to distinguish it from any other act we may perform. If we go a step farther, and assume that the intelligence with which it acts, rises to distinct consciousness, we still distinguish volition from any other act, only in the degree or energy of intelligence with which it is performed. According to Guizot, in his very able view of the Pelagian controversy,26 willing takes place only after the case has been investigated, and the decision of the mind made up. We have decided what it is we ought or ought not to do, and the act of the will is the resolution we now take to do or not to do, what we have already decided we ought or we ought not to do. This would seem to define a voluntary act, to be an act done after deliberation. But deliberation itself involves volition. We do not deliberate without willing to deliberate, nor without being conscious of some motive for deliberating. Moreover, we deliberate only where there is doubt, obscurity, or uncertainty. Where our knowledge is complete and immediate, there is no occasion for deliberating. The highest intelligences deliberate the least. They comprehend at a glance what ought to be done, and take their resolutions instantly. Are these less voluntary in their actions than are those feebler intelligences who deliberate, adduce the pro and the con, doubt, hesitate, for a long time, and after vacillating between acting and not acting till the time for acting has passed away, are finally resolved and conclude to act? Have they less of what we call will? Nor is this all. There are few persons who always act with a clear and distinct consciousness of the fact that they are acting. There are very few of us who always clearly and distinctly understand what we are doing, or why we are doing what we are. Ask any man at a venture to give you the reasons which induced him to act as you see him acting, and in nine cases out of ten, if he attempt to assign any reasons at all, he shall assign those which are not the true reasons, rea26

[Ed. Unable to identify the reference.]

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sons which have come to him as after-thoughts, and which were not present to his mind as his motives for acting. We are rarely able to assign the true motives of our actions even to ourselves. Nothing is more frequent, or morally more disastrous, than self-deception. But shall we deny all volition where the motive is not clear and distinct? Shall we say that the bulk of mankind are involuntary in their whole conduct, and that even the choice few are also involuntary in by far the greater part of their lives? The truth after all, we apprehend, is that all actions are in some sense voluntary; and under the point of view of voluntary or involuntary, one action will be found to differ from another only in its energy and the degree of intelligence with which it is performed. No man is responsible in a moral point of view for what he does involuntarily; but who would not revolt at the moral doctrine, which should hold us responsible for only those actions which we perform with clear and distinct consciousness of the act and its motives? Responsibility is unquestionably proportioned to the degree of the intelligence of the agent, enlarging or contracting as that intelligence is more or less. But as man is intelligent in his nature, in his very essence, and therefore must always act with some degree of intelligence, it follows that he must begin to be responsible as soon as he begins to act. Infants, in this view of the case, have a moral character, and do incur, in a degree proportioned to their intelligence, moral responsibility. The question between the responsibility of the infant and the full grown man, can be only one of degree. The infant perceives as well as the man, and therefore acts with intelligence. It perceives doubtless to an altogether feebler extent, and thus far acts with an altogether feebler degree of intelligence and of moral obligation. The clearer, farther reaching, more distinct and certain, one’s knowledge, the greater his responsibility and the more culpable he becomes if he acts improperly. This is the universal sense of mankind, and the rule as laid down by our religion. Moral responsibleness begins with life, and continues through it; and since man acts always and everywhere, in all his phenomena, it must needs attach to him as intelligence and sensibility, no less than as activity. A man’s thoughts, feelings, desires, passions, emotions, affections, are in some sort his acts, are in the strictest sense his acts. He must then be as responsible for them as for any other of his deeds. The desires of a man’s heart are to a great extent the test of his character, and the gospel teaches us that we must be brought into judgment for every one of our thoughts, words and deeds. The notion which sometimes obtains among us, that a man is not account-

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able for his desires, his feelings, in case he restrains their outward expression, is exceedingly low and mischievous. Jesus assures us that he who looks upon a woman to lust after her in his heart, hath committed adultery with her, and he who is angry with his brother is a murderer.27 The desires, feelings, inward affections as they are called, are the all-important matters. They prove what the man is. They cannot, and will not be impure, unchaste, ungodly, unless the man be himself inwardly corrupt. Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh. Therefore are we commanded to keep our hearts with all diligence, for out of them are the issues of life. No man is truly moral who is not purified in his very essence, so that no impure, no unchaste, no ungodly desire can spring up within him. He must not only refrain from possessing himself of what is another’s, but he must not even covet; he must not only refrain from committing murder, but he must not even feel the slightest desire to injure his brother; not only withhold the expression of anger, but he must be “slow to anger,” and “rule his own spirit” [Prov 16:32]. Thoughts and opinions, according to this view of the case, have a moral character, for they are in some degree voluntary. A man acts in thinking, acts in forming his opinion, and it is not a matter of moral indifference what thoughts a man thinks, or what opinions he forms. Error of opinion is never harmless, even to the man himself, much less to society. Opinions, doctrines, are deeds which live after the man is dead, and, if false, may corrupt the minds and the hearts of multitudes. He who steals, robs, or murders, on the largest scale possible to a private man, is harmless in comparison with him who successfully propagates a false doctrine on morals, politics, or religion. A man has, then, nothing of that unrestrained license of opinion we sometimes claim for him. No man is or can be at liberty to think as he pleases, to reject or embrace any doctrine or any opinion he chooses. He has no more right to embrace a false doctrine than he has to commit a crime, or to be guilty of a vice. A heavy responsibility rests upon every man, and every man is as much bound to seek for truth in his opinions as he is for moral rectitude in his ordinary actions. This rule reaches to those who cling to old opinions, to old theories, to old established doctrines, no less than to the advocates of new views. A man who upholds a popular error is no less, and often even more, in fault than he who propagates a new one; for he often upholds it, not because he really believes it, but because it is popular, and he is too indolent to expose it, or because he is too indifferent to 27

[Ed. A reference to Matthew 5:21-22, 28.]

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truth, too little in love with his race, too little in earnest, to be willing to submit to the inconvenience, and perhaps personal danger there may be in ranging himself on the side opposed to it. Such a man is guilty on all sides of his characters and most of all for his moral indolence, selfishness, cowardice, and want of fidelity to God and humanity. The truly moral man is always energetic, disinterested, and heroic. Nor does this rule concern merely the utterance of opinions. A man must not aim merely to be blameless before the public, but before his conscience and his God. He must be right in his private thoughts. His whole life is nothing but a succession of thoughts, and therefore can be a true normal life no further than he thinks truth. Nay, furthermore, a man can think truth only in proportion to his inward purity and moral conformity to the law of God. Every man thinks with his whole nature, therefore thinks as he is. If inwardly corrupt, his thoughts will be corrupt and false. They are the pure in heart who see God. He who would be able to form correct views of God, man, or nature, must cleanse his heart from all iniquity, must wash his hands in innocency, and be clean before his Maker. The man who propagates a doctrine on morals, politics, or religion, nay, a man who believes on these great subjects, a doctrine radically false, does by that fact show forth that his heart is radically depraved. The world has not been always in the wrong in judging a man’s morals by his doctrine, and in maintaining that there is a necessary connection between soundness of doctrine and purity of life. In morals, then, we must hold that a man is just as responsible for his opinions as he is for any other of his deeds. If he do his best to obtain the truth, no doubt God will pardon him the errors into which he may fall; for God is merciful, and never exacts impossibilities. Whether a man should be held socially, or rather civilly, accountable for the doctrine he may propagate or entertain is a question of social ethics, which will be considered in a subsequent part of this work. All we say now is that while we utterly deny the maxim, not infrequently put forth, and on high authority too, that “error is harmless if truth be free to combat her,”28 for error will have traveled half over 28

[Ed. Brownson is probably referring to Thomas Jefferson’s famous line in his first Inaugural Address of 4 March 1801: “We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists. If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” See Inaugural Addresses of the Presidents of the United States (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1974), 14.]

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the globe, before truth has pulled on her boots for the pursuit; yet it does not follow from this that society ought to seek forcibly to prevent the utterance of such doctrines as may be judged sound; nor because society may not by the application of force hinder the utterance of error, that a man is not responsible in foro conscientiae to society for the doctrines he entertains, upholds, or promulgates. The difference between will and activity, and between willing and acting, is, it would therefore seem, not only difficult to define, but, in a moral point of view, of no great practical importance; for it is impossible to define with any tolerable exactness the line where the one loses itself in the other. Here, as in the case of perception and apperception, of apperception and imagination, of imagination and trance, there is a disputed territory, and till we have advanced a considerable distance into the interior, we can never say whether we are in the territory of the one or of the other; everywhere the one shades off into the other without any abruptness of outline, and is, even when most obviously distinct, so only in degree and not by any real difference at bottom. The debates which we carry on in ourselves, and which are generally explained as debates between inclination and judgment, passion and reason, may seem at first view to make against the doctrine of the unity of the subject for which we contend, and also against the general identity we have asserted of acting in desire, passion, and affection, and of acting in willing, or, in what are commonly termed volitions; but these debates are, in point of fact, not carried on in ourselves, between one branch of our being, so to speak, and another, and it must not be pretended that the subject acts with a greater degree of purity or exclusiveness in volition than in desire. This apparent duality of the subject is one of the mysteries of our nature, which has been taken notice of in all ages, and is unquestionably of difficult solution. St. Paul has stated it as clearly, and with as much distinctness as can be desired, in his Epistle to the Romans, “For that which I do, I allow not; for what I would that I do not; but what I hate that do I” [Rom 7:14]. So again, Ovid, in a passage often quoted: Sed trahit invitam nova vis, aliudque cupido; Mens aliud suadet. Video meliora, proboque; Deteriora sequor.29 29

[Ed. Metamorphoses 7:18-19. Latin for “But new strength brings itself unwillingly, and I desire something else; another convinces the mind. I see the better and I approve; but I follow the worst.”]

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That there is this apparent duality, and, so to speak, internal antagonism, suggesting, if not justifying, the old hypothesis of two souls, or two principles, one good and the other evil, one from Ormuzd, the other from Ahriman,30 must needs be admitted; for, I presume, every man’s experience bears witness to it; but we must not thence infer that the me, or subject, is not a unity, that it is essentially a duality; for, after all, the I, active in desire, in passion, affection, or inclination, is identically the I that is active in volition, in reason and judgment. A little psychological analysis suffices to identify the two. But what is the explanation of the apparent contradiction? The explanation is not in the hypothesis of two souls, nor yet in what is termed the antagonism of soul and body, spirit and matter. In point of fact, this alleged antagonism between spirit and matter, soul and body, has no existence. The secret nature of the relation between soul and body is no doubt a mystery to the wisest; but whatever it be, this much we may affirm of it, that it is a relation of perfect harmony, making of the two not two but one in the unity of life. Man, as we shall hereafter see, is neither soul nor body, but the union of the two, or more properly, soul in and through body. The body is as essential to the full conception of a man as is the soul. Desire, passion, appetite, inclination, do not originate in the body, regarded as a force or activity distinct from the spiritual man; they are not physiological phenomena as distinguished from psychical phenomena; but are as interior, and come out as much from the spiritual center of the man, as do volition, perception, reason, judgment. Lust is love, but love profaned; evil passions are nothing but the perversion, inversion, or profanation of good passions. When I sin it is I and not my body that sins; and, I sin with precisely the same faculties and by the exercise of precisely the same powers wherewith I do good, as St. James affirms, when speaking of the tongue, he says, “therewith bless we God, even the Father; and therewith curse we men who are made after the similitude of God. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing, and cursing” [James 3:9-10]. The dissolution of the body does not free the Soul from the condemnation of sin, nor cleanse it of its moral pollutions. The true explanation of the problem will be found in distinguishing, so to speak, between the fact of consciousness and the fact of memory. I desire to do what I see to be evil, and instantly this is opposed by my desire to do good, or to receive good. Conscience, 30 [Ed. In Zoroastrian religion Ormuzd was the god or principle of good, and Ahriman the principle of evil.]

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the rule of right which a man’s own experience establishes for him, and which, therefore, belongs to the world of memory, condemns the evil desire. That is, I see by comparing the desire with the rule, that it is wrong, and therefore condemned. But this condemnation does not extinguish it. I see it is opposed to what I have decided to be good, which I also desire. There are now two desires, between which I am torn and tormented. But these two desires are not at the same instant facts of consciousness. The desire to do evil, when combated by the desire to do good, is not a fact of consciousness, but a fact of memory; so the desire to do good, when combated by the desire to do evil, is not a fact of consciousness but also a fact of memory. Again; the desire, passion, or inclination, when I am judging it, when I am comparing it with the rule of right which I have obtained by my experience, is, since it is obviously the object concerning which I am thinking, not a fact of present consciousness, but of past consciousness. The duality, then, is not in the subject, but is composed of the me present, living, the subject, and the me that was, that is to say, the me of memory, whether the me actualized, or the me disclosed by the ideal, and which we feel should be actualized. The question, whether the will be free or not, that is to say, whether man be a free agent, or a mere machine acting only as propelled, or necessitated by a force foreign to himself, is easily disposed of. The power to act is the only possible definition of freedom. A being that has the power to act is free to act; and the being that is free to act, has the power to act. A being that is necessitated, has no power to act. The actor is that which necessitates, not that which is necessitated. If man has the power to act, he is free to act, and free to the full extent of his power. The question, then, whether will be free or not, whether man be a free agent or not, resolves itself into the question, whether he be or not an active being; and finally to the question, whether he does or does not act. That he does act, he knows as certainly, as positively, as he knows that he exists; for, as we began by showing, it is only in acting-thinking that he finds his existence, and it is only under the relation of actor that he finds himself at all. I know myself free, then, with all the certainty with which I know that I am; and indeed the measure of my freedom is the exact measure of I am. I AM is found only in I am FREE. I know myself only as actor, that is, as a cause. But I do find myself in every fact of consciousness to be a cause, as has been shown by the fact that I find myself always as the subject of the act. If a cause, I must be free, and free to the full extent to which I am a cause, for a cause that is necessitated is no cause at all. The real cause is that which necessitates. In finding him-

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self an actor, that is to say, a cause, man finds himself free. The phrases free will and free agency are absurd. Will is not will any further than it is free, and an agency which is not free is no agency at all. But in affirming that man is a cause, we do not affirm that he is a universal, unlimited cause. His freedom is not an unlimited freedom, but is co-extensive with his power to cause. How far this goes must be learned by experience. It is not determinable a priori. No man knows, or can know, what he can do before he has tried; and much which was once pronounced impossible for man to do, we now find he can do with great ease. The power varies with different individuals, and with different epochs in the life of the same individual. It is feeble in the child, but grows with his growth, it grows also with the progress of the race. The progress of freedom in society is but the expression of the progress of freedom in humanity in its individual manifestations. It may be advanced by moral and intellectual culture. Practical wisdom, the purification and exaltation of sentiment, whatever tends to give energy and intensity to man’s activity, enlarges his power, and therefore his freedom. Under the head of willing, according to the relation we have established between it and acting in general, may be arranged the acts of attending and reflecting, and also the several appetites, inclinations, propensities, desires, passions, emotions, affections, however they may be designated, all those in which sensibility predominates, as well as those in which the intellect predominates, those which are normal and good in their tendency, as well as those which are anormal, perverse, and evil; but as their special treatment belongs to the special departments of science termed ethics and esthetics, we pass them over till we come, in the progress of our work, to those special departments; which we must do both for the sake of systematic harmony, and because we cannot treat them properly till after we have discussed the third general operation of the mind, which we have termed reasoning, and which we proceed in the following section to consider at length. 5. Reasoning. In order to understand the precise operation of the mind, termed REASONING, it is necessary to have a clear and exact notion of the proper meaning of the word REASON. Reason is sometimes reckoned among the powers or faculties of human nature, but upon no sufficient authority. When taken for one of our powers or faculties it must be identical with what we have called the intelligence, or power of knowing. The power to know is always the same, whatever the field or the objects of knowledge. Reason is the object of the faculty

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of knowing, rather than the faculty itself; and man is a reasonable being, not because reason is one of his faculties, but because he is created in relation with reason, and made capable of perceiving its truths, and following its dictates. Reason, properly defined, is the world of necessary relations, abstract and universal truths, or the world of absolute and necessary IDEAS, using the word idea in its original Platonic sense. According to this view of the case, reason answers to the Logos of the Greeks, and, as we shall see hereafter, to the Logos, or divine speech, of the Evangelist, the WORD that was in the beginning, which was with God, and which was God,31 and which may perhaps be properly termed the MIND of God, using the word mind to designate the mental operation, rather than the substantive power that operates. But more of this when we come to consider CHRISTIAN THEODICY. The objects of human knowledge are divisible into two classes, the IDEAL and the ACTUAL. The ideal includes the abstract, the universal, the necessary, the permanent, the immutable, the absolute, the infinite; the actual includes the concrete, the particular, the contingent, the transient, the variable, the relative, the finite. The first class is the world of ideas, and the constituent elements of what we understand by the reason. This may be easily explained. A=A, is a proposition which contains two concrete, particular, contingent objects, between which there is the abstract, necessary, and universal relation of equality. But this relation of equality by no means depends on the presence or absence of these two particular, contingent, concrete objects; for, B=B, is another proposition with other concretes, between which there is precisely this same identical relation of equality. The whole is greater than a part. Here is asserted a truth which is the same identical truth, whether asserted of one contingent whole or of another. The same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time, is just as true when asserted of one particular thing, as when asserted of another particular thing. That which is not, cannot act; no phenomenon can begin to exist without a cause; every quality supposes a subject; men should govern their passions; they should love one another as each loves himself; are all propositions which express universal and necessary truths, for the truths are the same whatever be the particular thing, phenomenon, quality, or men in question. We are here far from attempting to draw up a complete list of the ideas of reason. That work has been done, and so done as not to 31

[Ed. A reference to John 1:1-2.]

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need revision, by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason. Those which we have enumerated, we have enumerated merely by way of example, for the purpose of explanation, of making apparent the order of objects in question. These ideas, indeed, all ideas, though they are sometimes termed sentia rationis, beings of reason, and therefore regarded as having no existence as not-me, are really objective and independent of us, as is evinced by the simple fact that they are objects of thought; for it has already been demonstrated that the object of thought is always not me. If they were, as some philosophers pretend, mere modes or affections of the subject, they would be all on the side of subject, and therefore could never be found in the mental phenomenon as object. They would, also, not only be subjective, but would needs vary with each subject. But they do not so vary. The three angles of the triangle are equal to two right angles, is equally a truth whether perceived or not, a truth which may be perceived at the same instant by a million of differently constituted minds; and these millions of differently constituted minds are not perceiving a million of different truths, but one and the same invariable truth. It must then be independent of them all, and instead of a mode or affection of the subject, an object of its intelligence. Ideas, absolute, necessary and universal truths, are perceived by the subject, but not in himself. This is the fact which modern psychologists have overlooked, and the overlooking of which has occasioned their principal errors. Locke makes the idea objective to the mind, it is true, for he defines it to be that about which the mind is immediately conversant; but he still seems to regard it as in the subject, a sort of intermediary between the percipient agent and their external reality which is the real object of the mental perception. Hence, Locke’s difficulty is to establish the agreement or disagreement between the idea in the mind, the immediate object of its perception, and the external reality, of which the idea was the image or representation, a thing which he never succeeds, and never can succeed, in doing. Locke confounds idea with notion, and tries to make, if one may so say, a distinction between the seeing and the seen, as if the object of sight could be conceived of, and in some degree ascertained outside and independent of the sight or seeing of it; as if there was an object for us outside of the object of perception. There may be, and we shall hereafter show that there is, a higher than the idea, but this higher is the absolute God, in his own infinite and incomprehensible, because unuttered essence. Nevertheless, the idea is the real object with which Locke is concerned, and the agreement or disagreement he was seeking, instead of being the agreement or

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disagreement of the ideal with the infinite real, or God, shining out through it, was merely the agreement or disagreement of the notion, which is unquestionably subjective, with the object, whether that object belonged to the actual or to the ideal. Even Cudworth, who has treated the ideal, or ideas, in his Immutable Morality,32 with more depth and justice than any other writer in our language, and who asserts, and for ample reasons, its objectivity, fails to establish, scientifically, that objectivity, in consequence of regarding ideas as the property, or rather as the creation of the subject, existing in the mind as its original garniture, or produced by it, “vitally protended” from itself by its own energy. But, if existing in the subject, if they are, as Kant contends, laws or categories of subjective reason, that is, of reason as a faculty of human nature, they are subjective, and of no authority outside of us. If these ideas are in the subject, the subject can find its object, and be able to display itself, without going out of itself. It would then be under no necessity of going out of itself in order to find itself, and consequently would be sufficient for itself. If sufficient for itself, that is, if the assumption of itself be sufficient to account for all its phenomena, then there is no occasion for the assumption of aught beside itself; nay, not only no occasion for the assumption of an object, but actually no possibility of even conceiving of an object, for whatever we should agree to call object, would be subject. Nevertheless, we should be wrong to suppose that either Locke or Cudworth, ever for one moment, doubted the objective reality of what is, in regard to ideas, really the objective element of the mental phenomenon. This reality both affirmed, and both labored to maintain, and both failed to maintain it, only because both placed the idea in the subject, instead of out of the subject. Cudworth also seems to have failed, because affected by a belief in innate ideas, and because, like some of his successors, he was preoccupied with what we regard as a useless, if not even an unaskable question. He contended that in certain cases our knowledge is intuitive, that is to say, we know by looking on, or as I should say, by simply perceiving the object. A man makes a certain affirmation, there is a God, for instance, or two things respectively equal to a third, must be equal to one another. Now, one does not need to have these and like propositions proved, demonstrated; we see their truth at once, intuitively, as it is said. But how is it that the mind is able to perceive and recognize 32 [Ed. Ralph Cudworth, A Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality, 126-27.]

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these truths intuitively? That is to say, what is the medium through which we know that which we know immediately? The question is absurd and yet it has been asking and attempting to answer this question that has caused no small part of our metaphysical aberrations. How is it that I am able to call an object beautiful? That is, how do I know that beauty is beauty, when I see it? By virtue of the fact that I have in myself, it is said, the idea of the beautiful, which idea becomes the touchstone by which I try the object and determine whether it is beautiful or not. But what is the real purport of this answer? It is that there is a distinction to be made in the subject, between the subject and the power or agency by which it knows the object. According to this doctrine, the idea is subjective, but intermediate between the subject and the object, as the condition on the part of the subject of knowing the object. Be this so, it only resolves the idea into the power or faculty by which we know what we know. To say simply that we know the beautiful by virtue of the fact that we are intelligent agents, is saying all that we say, when we say that we know the beautiful by virtue of an original pattern or idea of the beautiful instamped on our natures. Nor is this all. The question, what are the subjective conditions of knowledge? is very different from the question we are considering in regard to the objectivity of ideas; but they have really been confounded, and are so confounded by Cudworth himself. He really confounds idea in the sense of intermediary between the subject and object, or rather as the power or faculty of the subject to know the ideal, the abstract, necessary, universal, the absolute, with the ideal, with the absolute ideas themselves. This, too, is the precise error into which M. Cousin, who can rarely be detected in an error, has fallen, as may be seen in the fact that after defining the reason precisely as we have done, he declares it a faculty of the subject, the power by which the subject knows all that he knows. This error is avoided only by distinguishing between reason as the faculty of intelligence, and reason as the object of intelligence, between idea as an inward property or power, a subjective picture or pattern of the objective, and idea in the old Platonic sense, answering very nearly to the genus or kind. Idea, in the Platonic sense, and in the only sense in which it concerns us, is transcendental. It transcends the actual, but is the transcendental in us? This is what say our modern Transcendentalists, and this is their error. Assuming that ideas are the medium of knowledge, that is to say, that we know because the idea of what we are to know is innate, instamped by the hand of God on the retina of the human soul, and then identifying idea in this sense with idea in

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the Platonic or true transcendental sense, they have fallen into the gross absurdity of asserting that the Transcendental is in the subject, and therefore, the eternal logos, nay, the infinite and absolute God himself. But greater is the container than the contained; and, therefore, said the author of the Orphic Sayings,33 to us one day in conversation: “I am greater than God, for I contain him.” It is this confounding of idea in one sense with idea in a different sense, that has originated the systems of philosophy and religion among us, founded on the alleged infinity of the soul, on the alleged fact that it is absolute, and therefore sufficient for itself, and for all things, being in itself, as the old Sophist contended, “the measure of all things.”34 Hence comes the profane nonsense, so common among a portion of our young men and maidens, about “the great soul,” “the soul,” “the divine soul,” “the infinite soul,” and “the divinity of man.” Hence the presumption of our professors and lecturers in setting up natural religion as the measure of revealed religion, and in undertaking to allow to popular assemblies what is, and what is not, fit and proper for God to do or not to do. Locke and Cudworth, no doubt, believed in the objectivity of transcendental ideas, when they considered them apart from the subjective power of knowing of them; but in consequence of conceiving it to be in the subject that the subject perceives them, they were unable to demonstrate their objectivity; for, in point of fact, nothing can be objective that is in the subject. If these ideas were in the subject, they would be the subject perceiving, not the object perceived; for we have already demonstrated that whatever the subject perceives is out of itself, as it were standing over against it, opposing, resisting it. The subject does not even perceive itself in itself, but only as projected in the act or phenomenon, and reflected from the phenomenon as from a glass. The objectivity of the ideas which constitute the reason, and therefore of the reason itself, is established the moment we find them to be objects of thought, and their objectivity establishes not only that they are not-me, but out and independent of me. The reluctance of many philosophers to admit the externity, so to speak, of ideas, comes, in part, from their conceiving that out of 33 [Ed. A reference to Amos Bronson Alcott; his “Orphic Sayings” appeared in The Dial 1 (July, 1840): 85-99 and 2 (January, 1841): 351-62.] 34 [Ed. A reference to Protagoras (c. 490-20 B.C.), Greek philosopher and contemporary of Socrates. For various ancient references attributing this phrase to Protagoras see Rosamond Kent Sprague, ed., The Older Sophists (South Carolina: South Carolina University Press, 1972): 6-18.]

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the me, must needs imply out in space. In their view there are only two worlds, the world without and the world within. The world within, is the world within the subject, and therefore necessarily subjective, though they seem never to have so believed; and the world without is the world of space, the material world, the world of senses, with which we become acquainted through the medium of the senses. All knowledge, say they, consists in knowing the world without, and the world within. The facts of memory, the products of our past living, since they are not outward material facts, must subsist in the soul; and God himself, since he has no extension, and therefore cannot occupy space, must also exist in the world within; therefore must be subjective, must be me; and therefore I must be the infinite God, at the same time that I am poor, miserable, and sinful! But, after all, these philosophers are the victims of their own vicious terminology. What they really mean to assert is merely the transcendental character of ideas, and they have really intended by their IN-World, not the world within the subject, that is, when they understand themselves; but the world which stands opposed to the worlds of time and space. Their In-World is really as much out of the subject as their external world itself; and it is properly not an In-World, but the world of eternity and immensity; that is to say, the world which transcends time and space, or more strictly still, which transcends the actual, and is, therefore, in the old Platonic sense, ideal. Man, in some sort, stands in relation with three worlds—the world of space, the world of time, and that of eternity. The world of time and that of space are identified and declared to be one world under the name of the actual. But beyond the actual there is for man always the ideal. The actual world, the moment we examine it, is seen to be insufficient for itself. There is obviously something back of it, realizing itself in and through it. I take up a fact of memory, that is to say, an act which I have performed. I see at once that it could not have performed itself. It may have been, for aught I know, a cause, an actor in relation to certain effects or consequences which have followed it; but it could itself have never been without an actor. I take a tree, an oak or a pine, for instance. Now this pine, or this oak, I see is obeying a law which it is not. This acorn will never produce a pine. There is something back of this, individual oak, a principle, pushing itself out and actualizing itself, which transcends this actual oak, and can survive it. So when I see a man I immediately recognize in him that which makes him a man, to wit, humanity. This individual man I see is but a deed, an act of some power back of him actualizing itself in and through him, and this, which I call the

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kind, find to be the same in all men. The actual, moreover, never suffices for us. The actual beauty I behold never quite satisfies me, and always reveals to me a beauty transcending it. The goodness I see actualized is always a little defective, and I see beyond it a goodness that is purer and more perfect. Now, this which transcends the actual, which is revealed by the actual, on which the actual depends, and which is realizing itself in the actual, is the transcendental world, the world of ideas, or, in one word, reason. The objects of this world are not facts nor events, not what has been done, nor what has happened, that is, from our point of view, and therefore do not belong to the world of space nor of time, but to the world of eternity and immensity, that is to say, of No-Time and No-Where. Yet their reality, or substantiality, can no more be questioned than can be the actual existences in time and space. For, abstract the transcendental idea, humanity, and who could conceive of an actual man? Or who, seeing an individual man, could say he is a man? Who could know individuals without knowing genera? Or, if there were no genera, how could there be individuals? Man is so constituted that he can and does recognize this transcendental world, which I call the ideal; but he does not recognize it in himself any more than he does the actual; nor is he it, any more than he is the world of time and space. He is a reasonable being because he is able to recognize it, and the power of recognizing it is, no doubt, to a very considerable extent that which separates him from the animal world, and gives him his character of personality, that makes him a person, and therefore morally accountable. Still this power differs only in degree, not in kind, from that which perceives in the feeblest and obscurest perception, and probably not from the power of perceiving common to all percipient beings, the lowest as well as the highest. Man, if he rises to an intuition of the ideal and through that to a recognition of the absolute, is still kindred to all nature, and may call the worm his brother. How man can perceive the ideal, in or out of the actual, is no doubt an inexplicable mystery; nor is it less a mystery how he perceives in time, or in space, that is, how he perceives at all. How does the subject establish the relation we express by the word perception between itself and the object? What is the perception, the knowing power, regarded solely in itself? Strictly on its subjective side? Who knows? Who can answer? The speculations of philosophers, their various hypotheses of ideas, phantasms, species, images, vibrations, nervous fluids, electric or magnetic influences, throw no light on the subject, but leave us as much in the dark as ever. How we can see external objects, by means of the picture painted on the retina of the

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eye by the refraction of the rays of light from the object, any better than without the intervention of such picture, it is impossible to conceive. How do we perceive the picture? Philosophers have imagined an analogous picture, which they call innate idea, intervening, if we may so say, between the percipient subject and the transcendental object of perception; but how the mind can grasp the transcendental object any easier through the intervention of this innate idea than without it, is still an inexplicable mystery. All their efforts to explain the how, are worse than useless. The how does and forever must transcend the reach of our powers, because, answer as we will, the question will perpetually renew itself, however far back we may drive it, till we come to the infinite itself. There is no instance, save in a loose and superficial sense, that we ever do or can answer the question of the how. The most that we can do is, within given limits, but within limits always extending, to tell what is, and what are the usually accompanying phenomena. The mystery of perceiving is always the same, and no greater in one world, or by means of one kind of apparatus, than another. Man himself is a mystery unto himself, and always will be. Ever sits the Sphinx by the wayside with her riddle of the manchild, and ever is a new Oedipus demanded to solve it.35 All we can say is that we perceive because we have the power to perceive; we know we have the power to perceive because we are conscious of exercising it. The extent of this power we know only by experience, and when we have experienced it with regard to the world of reason, we know its competency there as well as anywhere else. But, from the fact that man perceives the ideal, necessary relations, abstract and universal truths, absolute IDEAS, we must not suppose that he perceives them independent of the actual, and in an absolute manner. Man is finite, and so are and must be all his perceptions. He perceives the world of reason, but does not comprehend it; that which transcends time and space, but only in time and space. He perceives the necessary, but his view of it is contingent; the permanent, but his view of the permanent is transient; the infinite, but not with an infinite perception; the universal, but always in a relative and particular manner. The ideal is seen and known, but only in the actual. The objects of the higher mathematics and transcendental geometry, belong to 35 [Ed. In Greek mythology the sphinx was a winged monster with a woman’s head and breasts and a lion’s body who destroyed those unable to solve her riddle. After guessing the riddle of the sphinx Oedipus accidentally killed his father and unwittingly married his mother.]

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the world of reason; but they are revealed to us only in the concrete, that is, through concrete, finite, particular, and contingent objects, belonging to the actual world of time and space. Magnitudes, quantities, dimensions, relations, what mathematician could talk of these, seek to determine or measure them, if he had not found them concreted? That the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, is an abstract, universal, necessary, and therefore absolute truth; but would it be possible for us to conceive of it, to have any notion of it, if we had before us, either as a present fact or as a fact of memory, no actual triangle and right angle? A=A. This relation of equality is not dependent on the given concretes A and A; but without concretes, we could no more conceive of it than we could of whiteness, independent of that which is white, or roundness without our having seen something which is round. For this reason, in the mathematical sciences, we are obliged to make use of signs. But they are not sciences of signs, but of realities. They deal with real relations, and make use of artificial signs as representatives of the natural concretes, because without concretes the relations cannot be conceived of. This fact that we know the ideal only in the actual, is still more obvious when we leave the region of mathematics. It is here the old question concerning universals and particulars: Whether know we the particular in the universal, or the universal in the particular? The last is the true answer. It is the prerogative of God to know the particular in the universal, but finite intelligence can know the universal only in the particular, the kind only as revealed by the individual. Whence know I humanity? In individuals, and in individuals only, and only so far as I know individuals. Abstract all actual men and women, and what would be humanity to me? Humanity is inconceivable save in individual men and women. So of all genera. God himself is known only in his works, that is to say, his works of nature, Providence, or grace. Hence it is that no man sees God, or can see him, save through a mediator, as manifested in the face of his Son; and hence, too, the reason why we cannot even see the Son, through whom the Father is revealed, till incarnated, and only so far as made flesh and dwelling among us. Here is the philosophy of the Christian Fathers, and which some modern theorizers have seemed to themselves to find exceedingly absurd, and probably for the sole reason that they were unable to comprehend it. This is the doctrine of Aristotle, the doctrine in reality of Locke and the English School, and what the old Nominalists had in their doctrine that was true, and worthy of being set forth and preserved.

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But, if we perceive the ideal only in the actual, we must not fall into the opposite error, of asserting that we perceive only the actual. We have seen that we attain to genera only in individuals, but then we do attain to them; and if we did not, we could not even know the individuals. This is the truth so insisted on by Plato and the Platonists, by the Realists among the Scholastics, and by the modern Transcendentalists and Eclectics of Germany, France, and America. The genera are what Plato calls ideas. Humanity is an idea, which is actualizing itself in individual men and women. Now, if I had no power, on seeing a man or a woman, to detect the idea, that is, humanity which is transcendental, I could not say whether the individual in question belonged to the human race or to some other race, or to any race at all. I could not say of this woman, this picture, this statue, how beautiful! if I had no perception of the idea, of the kind, namely beauty, or the beautiful, of which I speak and of which the woman, picture, statue, is a representation. The conception of the individual, then, always involves that of the kind, race, or idea, which has led some to suppose that the knowledge of the idea, the race, the kind that is, of the universal in the language of the schoolmen, precedes as a matter of fact the knowledge of the actual, the individual, the particular. It does, as M. Cousin shows in his examination of Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding,36 logically precede, but not chronologically. The simple fact is that the knowledge of the one is always by and through the knowledge of the other, and therefore both are to be regarded as simultaneous, and as ONE SIMPLE KNOWLEDGE, rather than as two distinct kinds of knowledge. The actual reveals the ideal, but knowledge of the actual is knowledge of the actual only so far as it is knowledge of the ideal, which is the basis and possibility of the actual. We are now in a condition to answer the question, What is reasoning? Reason is the transcendental world, the world of ideas, kinds, genera, universals, what I call the ideal. Only let it be kept in mind that the ideal, if not actual, is still real, and exists not in the subject, but out of it, and is truly objective, and therefore not-me. It is as much and as truly an object of perception as a tree, a house, or a man. If it be asked how we know that we perceive it? The answer is, the perception is the knowing that it is perceived. The perception is not the medium of knowing, but the knowing itself. Reasoning is simply

36

[Ed. Brownson is referring to Cousin’s Elements of Psychology: Included in a Critical Examination of Locke’s Essay on the Human Understanding, and in Additional Pieces, tr. Caleb S. Henry (1834; New York: Ivison and Phinney, 1856).]

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detecting and bringing forth in a clear and distinct light, in the various concrete objects of the actual world, the ideal. It is to generalize. But what is it to generalize? Merely to classify, to aggregate, to arrange under distinct heads, or in separate groups? This answer may suffice for our naturalists, but can by no means suffice for the philosopher. For if this were all, why not arrange the oak under the head of the pine, and place the sheep in the same class with the wolf? Some rule or principle must be adopted according to which our classifications of the individual objects shall be made. What is this rule or principle? Is it arbitrary, or natural? Should not our classifications be those which really are in the nature of things? Should not individuals and particulars be arranged according to their nature, like with like? Then, to generalize is to detect the genus, and to bring back all individuals to their respective genera. According to the doctrine we have laid down, the genera, or ideas, are not fictions, are not mere abstract nouns, mere abstract nouns invented for the convenience of scientific classifications, but realities, living powers, as much superior to the individuals, as we are to our individual actions. We know individuals, particulars, only so far forth as we detect in them the idea they are actualizing, or rather which actualizes itself in them. In every act of reasoning, we are always seeking this transcendental idea. When we abstract, what is it we do but eliminate the transient, the particular, the concrete, that is to say, the actual, in order to get at the ideal? In decomposing a phenomenon, are we not always doing the same? In comparing, are we not merely endeavoring to find out whether this particular belongs to that kind, or to this. In proving, demonstrating, assigning reasons, what are we but seeking to exhibit the reason, that is, to point out the kind to which the particular in question belongs, the idea of which it is a more or less perfect actualization? To reason, again, is to define. All logic consists in definition. But we define only, as say the schoolmen, per genus, and per differentiam: that is, by detecting what is common to all the individuals concerned, and discovering whence they differ one from another. But the definition per differentiam, must necessarily depend on the definition per genus, of which it is only the development. Reasoning, therefore, after all, resolves itself into the detection in the individuals of the genus or kind. We detect the kind, the genus, the idea, and consider it apart from the particular. This is erecting it into a science. Man considered in this way gives us the science of humanity. Man, nature, all classes of particulars considered in this way, considered solely in what is common to them all, in relation to the idea of ideas, of which all

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their genera and sub-genera are but so many individual manifestations, give us philosophy, the, science of sciences, which some go so far as to term not only the science of the absolute, but absolute science. It is this science of the sciences, this science of ideas, that is, of kinds, genera, in their unity, or one divine original, which M. Cousin and his school term ONTOLOGY, and which in their view is the science of the absolute. They with us, or we rather with them, call ideas objective; and as all ideas are universal, necessary, and immutable, and as they are all united or made one in the reason, or Logos, in the language of Plato, the Speech of God, which therefore must be one, universal, necessary, and absolute, they must in the last analysis be identical with the absolute God, as says Saint John, “And the Word was God” [John 1:1]. Hence, as we know ideas, and know nothing but ideas, for individuals are nothing, abstracted from the genus or kind, we may be said to know God. Hence, M. Cousin denies the incomprehensibleness of the Deity,37 and asserts that he is intelligible. This, however, is too strongly expressed. On the wings of ideas we can unquestionably soar to God; for God reveals himself in ideas, as ideas reveal themselves in deeds, or genera in individuals; and as the act carries us back to the actor, the individual to the genus, the genus to the original, or universal generator, the GENUS of genera, we have a direct and sufficient medium through which, from the simple recognition of ourselves as actors, we can rise to God himself. But we must remember that we know God only in ideas , and ideas only in individual actualizations of them. We can, therefore, know of God no more than these individual actualizations reveal of him. Our knowledge of these individual actualizations is very imperfect. Moreover, even if it were perfect, it would not be a complete knowledge of God, for God has not put himself all forth in his creations. Supposing we had a perfect acquaintance with all the individual men and women that now are, and that all have been, we should have only an imperfect knowledge of humanity, because humanity has not been all manifested, and has, as we learn from the fact that new individuals are continually pushed out, possibilities which are as yet unrealized by any or all of the individuals which have been and are. Then, again, were we even to know all the actualities and possibilities of humanity, we should still be defective in our knowledge of God, unless we were in like manner to know the actu37

[Ed. On Cousin’s view, see “The Comprehensibility of God, and the Necessity of Creation,” in Elements of Psychology, tr. Caleb S. Henry (New York: Ivison and Phinney, 1856), 559-68.]

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alities and possibilities of all actual and all possible races of beings in his actual and possible universe. So it is in vain to pretend that we have a full knowledge of God the absolute. Our knowledge of God after all, if we consider him as the infinite reality of which the ideal is the revelation, and the actual the actualization, is little more than knowledge of him as the infinite UNKNOWN. Science must not pretend to absolute knowledge, for the human mind cannot grasp all things, and if it could, that would not suffice; for all things remain never the same for two successive moments. Always will there be the infinite unknown before us, and therefore, never for us any restingplace in the pursuit after knowledge. Eternally must we aspire to know, and eternally may we rise higher and higher, in the scale of our knowledge, and still see the infinite unknown, rising dark, and dread, and frowning above us. Yet let us hope, and toil on, never weary or disheartened.

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INDEX of BIBLICAL REFERENCES Gen. 3:19 ...................................439 4:8-12............................249 n. 53 14:18...............................215 n. 20 22:12........................................365

Luke 2:4.........................................62 10:25.....................................263 13:21...................................375 n 22:42 ......................................314

Exod. 32:1-8..................................90

John 1:1-14..................420, 495, 506 1:8............................................290 1:9.................................333 n. 54 1:14....................60, 61, 260, 372 1:18........................................260 1:29.........................................198 3:16................................192, 195 6:53................................202, 377 6:57........................................209 8:33..........................................380 13:34, 35................................262 14:6..........25, 202, 204, 206, 350 14:9........................................206 14:12.......................................212 15:1, 4-5.................................375 18:36 ........................................65 17: 21-22........................212, 372

Judg. 6 16.....................................228 Ps. 14:1........................................306 50:7-14..........................350 n. 78 53:1.........................................306 110:4 .............................215 n. 20 143:3 .............................307 n. 29 Prov. 16:32...................................489 Isa. 1:11-16.........................350 n. 78 6:6................................215 n. 21 42:4..........................................241 56:10 .............................215 n. 18 Jer. 10:23.....................................197 23:6.........................................374 33:16 ......................................374 Mic. 6:6-9...........................350 n. 78 Zech. 14:20..................................439 Matt. 5:7.......................................63 5:21-22, 28.............................489 6:10.........................................241 6:33..........................................425 9;13........................................137 11:26.......................................260 13:23...................................375 n 15:14.............................215 n. 19 16:23...................................368 n 19:16 ......................................222 22:21.........................................65 26:15 ......................................118 28:20.......................................373 Mark 8:33.................................368 n

Acts 2:8........................................290 8:23........................................376 8:30-31...................................364 Rom. 3:8, 10.................................262 5:12..........................198 n, 201 n 5:15, 17..................................209 5:20........................................209 7:14.........................................491 7:21, 24...............................197 n 8:12..........................................241 8:22.........................................325 12:4-5....................15, 255 n, 372 1 Cor. 1:23, 24, 30.......... 348 n. 72, 365, 373, 384 12:12, 13.....................255 n, 372 15:22 ..............................208, 223 15:29 ......................................213 15:33 ...........................330, 426 n 15:45......................................224

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Eph. 4:3.......................................372 4:5..........................................189 4:16.........................................214 4:25.....................................255 n Col. 1:19............................361 n. 88 1:27.........................................373 Heb. 2:12............................229 n. 17 5:6.................................215 n. 20 12:6.................................230 n. 21 James 3:9-10................................492 2 Pet. 2:1.....................................211 1 John 1:1-3.................................209 4:11................................260, 262 4:19.........................................262 4:20........................................260 5:12..........................................202 Rev. 3:16......................................395

index of names and subjects A Abraham, 332, 378 abstraction, and genera, 505 accretion, and progress, 16, 20 actions, 472, 488 moral character of, 313-14 activity, and willing, 485, 491, 493 actual, the, and ideal, 354, 475, 480, 495, 502-04 and imagination, 479 Abel, Leroux’s interpretation of, 249, 269, 421 Adam, 255, 269 and original sin, 23, 198-99, 201, 223-24 See also Fall, the; depravity, human; human nature Aeneid (Vergil), 260 n. 74, 479 agrarianism, 433 Aids to Reflection (Coleridge), 129 n. affections, moral character of, 313-14, 488-94 Alcott, Amos Bronson, 42, 196, 499 Alexander III, Pope, 66 Alexandrians, 8, 473, 475 Americans, and imagination, 480 American system, 431-32 Angelo (Hugo), 168 anthropology, and communion, 23 apologetics, Christian, and the unbeliever, 128 Apostles, 192, 261 apostolic succession, and salvation, 26, 207-08 apperception, 158-59, 283, 442-43, 447, 460 and Kant, 469 See also intuition; knowledge; Leibniz; perception; reason; thought; understanding Appollonius of Tyana, 269, 367 Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas Areopagetica (Milton), 378 n. aristocracy, 82, 106, 112, 115 Aristotle, 297, 398-99, 416-17, 485, 503

Arnold, Thomas D., 48 Arouet, François-Marie. See Voltaire art, 70-71, 176, 304, 485 freedom of, 245 and imagination, 476-77 asceticism, and Christianity, 261-62 assimilation, and progress, 16, 20 atheism, 126, 193, 284, 446 See also infidelity; skepticism; unbelief Atonement, and new church of future, 19 Augsburg Confession, 64 n.5 Augustine, Saint, 218, 221, 223, 261 and ideas, 296 and life of Jesus, 361 and the will, 485 avariciousness, as poverty, 250

B Bacon, Francis, 221, 236, 238, 241, 334, 395 n. and Bible, 358 and Christianity, 346 and ideas, 417 inductive method of, 9, 404-05, 408 and progress, 239 and Schmucker, 398 and Scholastics, 408 Balzac, Honoré de, 53, 167-68 Bancroft, George, 16, 46, 52 banks, and changed social conditions, 430 baptism, of infants, 207 Baptists, 88, 207 Bazard, St. Amand, 218 n. 5 beauty, idea of, 498, 500 Beecher, Lyman, 137 n. 14 being, 158, 447 belief, as category of reason, 291 believers, issues of, 123 Bible, 23, 36, 198, 249, 357 and Church, 364

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freedom from, 369 and God-Man mediator, 24, 189 and history, 270-71 and inspiration, 192 interpretation of, 189, 270-71, 362, 364 and Jesus, 189 and life by communion, 30 and Parker, 280, 335, 346, 354-65 and philosophy, 422 and Providence, 36, 193 as special revelation, 91, 194 as rule of faith and practice, 355, 360 and tradition, 30 and Transcendentalists, 90 ordinary view of, 272 as God’s Word, 186, 213-14 See also Church; Gospel; inspiration; interpretation; Jesus; New Testament; religion; revelation biblical criticism, 369 Biddle, Nicholas, 102 n. Blackwood’s Magazine, 297 Blake, William, 484 body, 68-69, 272-73, 411, 492 Bohemian Brethren, 64 n. 5 Bonald, Louis de, 14 “Bonheur” (Leroux), 233 n. 27 Bossuet, Jacques Bénigne, 411 Boston Daily Times, 47 Boston Quarterly Review, 37, 43-44, 53 Bouille, François Claude Amour Marquis de, 230 Boz. See Dickens, Charles Brahminism, and Leroux, 266 Bras-Chopard, Armelle Le, 10 Bravo (Cooper), 172 Brisbane, Albert, 244 n. 49, 435, 438 Brook Farm, 50-53 “Brook Farm,” (Brownson), 52, 42439 brotherhood, 131-32, 187, 210, 424 Brown, Thomas, 192 Brownson, Henry, 1, 18 Brownson, Orestes A., 16 as outside agitator, 49 called an agrarian , 48 and the Bible, 359 and William Ellery Channing, 186-

91, 251 n. 58 changes, in opinions, 84, 163, 18889 as constitutionalist and not a democrat, 48 conversion of, 190 and Cousin, 164-66 reactions to criticism, 188 hermeneutic for his writings, 138 and Leibniz, 69 n. key difference with Leroux, 30 as logic grinder, 125 orthodoxy of, 337 and Parker, 281, 336-37, 385-86 no slave of the past, 163 accused of plagiarism, 190 and Plato, 417 and progress, 383 returns to preaching, 277-79 not a Protestant, 363 from rationalism to belief, 368-69 reviews Charles Elwood, 123-66 reviews New Views, 56-76 and discovery of solidarity, 251 n. 57 and theology, 277 n., 385 unbelief of, 186-87 Brownson, Orestes Jr., 53-54 Buddha, and immortality, 269 Buddhism, and Leroux, 266 Bulwer, Edward Lytton, 53-54, 168, 172 Burke, Edmund, 48 Burns, Robert, 480 Bushnell, Horace, 18 businessmen, as rulers of the country, 431

C Cain, Leroux’s interpretation of, 249, 269, 421 Calhoun, John C., 44-46, 113 Calvin, John, 86, 88, 221, 223, 422 as providential, 332 Calvinism, and individualism, 223 capital, and government, 105 capriciousness, charged against Brownson, 38 Carlyle, Thomas, 331, 367

Name and Subject Index castes, as opponents of communion, 247, 252-53, 376 Catholicism, 14, 383 and ancien regime, 13 and the Eucharist, 258 and Middle Ages, 220 and Saint-Simonians, 218 “without the papacy,” 37, 363 See also Christianity; Church; papacy; and various popes centralism, 106, 115 certainty, highest degree of, 444 Channing, William Ellery, 4, 16, 2223, and Brownson, 27 and the historical Christ, 25, 204 and Likeness to God, 187, 195 and Mediatorial Life of Jesus, 186216 Chapman, Ann G., 176 Chapman, Maria Weston, 176 Chapman, Mary, 176 Chapman, Sarah, 176 “Character of Jesus and the Christian Movement, The” (Brownson), 257 charity, 28, 253-64 Charles Elwood (Brownson), 22, 38, 333 n. 55 Brownson’s review of, 123-66 and inspiration, 337 and preaching, 215 n. 17 and Spiridion, 184 “Charles Elwood” (Wayland), 133 n. 11 “Charles Elwood” (Wilson), 125 n. “Charles Elwood Reviewed” (Brownson), 123-66, 276 n. 87, 385 Chateaubriand, René, 14 Chartism, 381 chemistry, 389 children, 177, 198, 488 choice, as judgment, 486 Christ. See Jesus “Christ Before Abraham” (Brownson), 350 n. 79 Christian idealism, and Brook Farm, 52 Christianity, 15, 131, 256, 258-59

513 and absolute religion, 339, 369 and Augustine, 256-57 and Brook Farm, 436, 439 without Christ, 24, 31, 203 and the Church, 374-75 as communion, 210 and democracy, 52 and depravity, 197 and divinity of humanity, 197 as the ideal, 130 and Judaism, 240, 397 Leroux’s view of, 240, 269 as life, 35, 129, 351 and New Views, 57 and Parker, 35, 280, 339, 342-54 and philosophy, 139, 390-91 positive role in history 14, as religion of humanity, 218 Saint-Simonian views of, 227-28 central truths of, 189 as vale of tears, 261 See also Bible; Catholicism; Church; Jesus; Protestantism; religion; revelation; theology Church, 16, 36, 59, 63, 69, 264 authority of, 370-71, 377 as authorized interpreter of Bible, 364 and Brook Farm, 439 Brownson’s view of, 371-86 as body of Christ, 15, 215, 364, 371 distinguished from Christianity, 256 and civilization, 67 and communion with Jesus, 353 criticisms of actual, 74 historical development of, 58 doctrine of, based on Incarnation, 60 and political freedom, 130 of the future, 63-64, 73 and the individual, 223-24, 378-80 marks of, 36, 373 and teachings on mediator, 202 necessity of 26, 366-67, 370-71, 375 and original sin, 201 and Parker, 280, 365-86 and perfectibility of individuals, 87

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and progress, 130 realities under the symbols, 203 and state, 64-65, 67, 70, 73 and tyranny, political, 65-66 universality of, 36, 373-74 visibility of, 382 See also Bible; Catholicism; Christianity; Incarnation; Jesus; New Testament; Protestantism; religion; revelation; state; theology; tradition City of God, 221-22 civilization, 62, 120, 144 and Christianity, 65, 132, 143, 376 Clarke, James Freeman, 20, 77, 84, 93, 94 Clay, Henry, 431 n. clergy, 64, 72-73, 208, 381 See also ministry; priesthood Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 38, 129 n., 301, 399-400 Combe, George, 126 n. 5 common good, and government, 100 Common Sense (Paine), 98 n. common sense, 398-401, 448 See also Reid, Thomas; Scottish Common Sense Communion. See Eucharist communion, 54, 252-53, 330 and amelioration of family, nation, and property, 264 basis of Brownson’s philosophy, 276 and the Church, 371-72 with the dead, 273-74 with God, 259-60 of the human race, 200, 252-53 with Jesus, 27 and Judaism and Christianity, 15, Leroux’s doctrine of, 11, 52 of like with like, 205 and progress, 12, 16 as remedy for evil, 252-53 and theology, 276 and transmission of divine life, 26 word for the age, 214 See also Leroux; life; life, by communion communion, of the saints, 30, 273 community, Christian ideal of, 52, 424, 433-39

competition, and political economy, 432 “Comprehensibility of God” (Cousin), 506 n. Comte, Auguste, 13 Conceptualists, 295 Condillac, Etienne, 8, 160, 408, 41719, 458 Condorcet, Marie-Jean-AntoineNicolas de Caritat, 12, 86, 88, 221, 236 and progress, 239 connaissance, and Leroux, 10, 12 conscience, 492-93 consciousness, 152, 453 fact of, 418-20, 441, 450-52, 465 meaning of, 158-59, 401-03, 410, 442-43, 464 conservatism, 77 Constant, Benjamin, 12, 22, 51, 14445 philosophy of, 139-40, 305 “Constitutional Government,” (Brownson), 44-46 constitutions, 108-110 continuity. See law of continuity conversion, 1, 126, 128 Convert, The (Brownson), 1, 2, 3 Course of the History of Modern Philosophy (Cousin), 473 n. 13 “Cousin’s Philosophy” (Brownson), 151 n. 23 Cousin, Victor, 1, 22, 38, 51, 388, 398-400 and art, 304 Brownson’s criticism of, 38 and the categories, 416-17, 447 and ecstasy, 473 and ideas, 294, 498 and incomprehensibility of God, 506-07 and objective knowledge, 148-53, 155-62 and Leibniz, 69 n. and Leroux, 7-10, 234 and liberty, 147 and Locke, 504 and method, 410 philosophy of, 13, 139-40, 145, 318, 399, 419-20

Name and Subject Index and synthetic philosophy, 234, 41920 and time, 469 n. and the will, 486 See also consciousness; Eclecticism; knowledge; philosophy; reason covenant doctrine, 23, 199, 201, 255 covenant, new, social character of, 218 creation, 321-22, 324 immutability of, 473 as infinitely progressive, 329 Leroux’s doctrine of, 28, 267 “Crisis of Modern Speculation,” 297 Critique of Pure Reason (Kant), 289, 401, 416, 446-47, 485 and ideas, 496 and space, 470 and time, 469 n. Cudworth, Ralph, 151, 294-97, 49799 currency, federal legislation on, 120

D Daily National Intelligence, 48 D’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 88 Dana, Charles, 54 Dante Alighieri, 476, 485 Dark Ages, and Christianity, 65, 66 David, King, 71, 80, 361 death, 201, 272, 274 deification, of human soul, 195 deists, 346 D’Holbach, Paul Heinrich Dietrich, 88, 446 De l’Allemagne (Heine), 57 De la connaissance de Dieu (Bossuet), 411 n. De la religion (Constant), 140, 144, 305 n. De L’Humanite (Leroux), 3, 13, 190, 371, 411 n. Brownson’s criticism of, 265-66 Brownson’s summary of, 217-76 and Channing, William Henry, 16 and classification of mankind, 421 Lerminier’s review of, 28, 232 n. 25 democracy, 44, 45, 83, 106 centralism of, 115-16 defined, 46, 101-03

515 as end of government, 45, 105 and social reform, 428-31 and special interests, 102-04, 106 See also Christianity; government; politics; state Democratic Review, 43, 52, 424 dependence, sense of, 282, 284-87, 307-08, 328 depravity, human, 187, 197-202 and doctrines, 490 effects of, 199 and Leroux, 247-48 of the social state, 427 See also Adam; Fall, the; human nature; original sin Descartes, René, 142, 158-59, 218, 221, 398 and art, 485 and Christianity, 346 cogito ergo sum, 442 and ideas, 294, 296, 416-17 and Leroux, 8-9, 233, 236 and method, 406-07 and modern problem of philosophy, 41 and progress, 239, 241 desires, moral character of, 313-14, 326-27, 488-94 despotism, 235, 246, 250 development, 34, 92, 328-29, 396-97 DeWette, Wilhelm M. L., 354 n. Dickens, Charles, 168, 172, 173 Diderot, Denis, 88 discipline, in the church, 382 Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion (Parker), 2-3, 18, 30-37, 280-386 dissent, 279, 380-81 “Distribution Bill, The,” (Brownson), 44 “Divine and Supernatural Light, The” (Edwards), 347 n. 68 divinity, 187, 195-96, 356 “Divinity School Address” (Emerson), 310-11 divorce, 180-81, 243 Doctrine of Life, The (Greene), 17 doctrines, as accountable deeds, 48991 doing, reveals being, 443, 452

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Dorr Rebellion, 44, 48-50 Dorr, Thomas, 48-50 doubt, and method, 407 Dryden, John, 479 dualism, 10, 64, 263-64, 266 Dudevant, Madame Amandine Aurore Lucie. See Sand, George Dumas, Alexandre, 53, 167-68, 183 Dwight, John Sullivan, 17

E Eclecticism, 1, 220-21, 398-99 Brownson’s criticism of Cousin’s, 38, 78, 84, 157 criticisms of, 54 as imbecile, 38, 78 and Leroux, 7-9, 233 as misnomer, 40, 157, 234, 419 as synthetic, 157, 234 See also Cousin, Victor; synthesis “Eclectic Philosophy, The” (Brownson), 146 n. Eclectics, 13, 504 economics, 14, 15, 431 ecstasy, state of, 473, 475 education, 15, 244, 393, 429-31, 438 Edwards, Jonathan, 35, 88, 347, 397, 485-86 egoism, and Fichte, 149, 160-61, 289, 401, 419, 425 Eleatics, 321 elections, 104, 108, 429, 431 Elements of Psychology (Cousin), 469 n., 504 n. emanationism, and Leroux, 267 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 16, 91, 193 and Bible, 355 and Brownson, 356-57 and the faculties, 301 n. and obey thyself, 310-11 and pantheism, 196 and subjectivism, 42 “Emerson Essays” (Brownson), 94 n. 18, 357 n. emotions, moral quality of, 488-89 Encyclopédie Nouvelle, 217, 233 Enfantin, Barthélemy-Prosper, 219 Engels, Frederick, and Leroux, 7 English, and imagination, 480

Epicureans, 417 “Equalité” (Leroux), 12, 232, 257 equality, 74-75, 182, 435 democratic, 424 doctrine of, 47, 87, 232-33 and government, 103 of opportunity, 433 of all persons, 331 error, 484, 489-90 Essay Concerning Human Understanding (Locke), 151 n. 24, 441 n. 1, 459 n., 485-86, 504 Essay on Man (Pope), 238 n., 254, 304 n. 26, 479 Essays on the Intellectual Powers (Reid), 133 n. 10 esthetics, and imagination, 476 eternity, and time, 474 ethics, 30, 276, 389, 479 Eucharist, 26, 257-58, 264 and doctrine of life by communion, 15, 22, 30, 190, 210, 376-77 Evangelicalism, 136 evidences, of Christianity, 128 Evhemere, 446 evil, origin of, 248-50, 252, 324, 42627, 492 See also Adam; depravity, human; Fall, the; human nature; original sin excommunication, significance of, 375 Excursion, The (Wordsworth), 479 experience, as interaction of subject and object, 289

F factories, effects of, 429 faculties, 234, 304, 402, 452 division of, 298-301, 453-54 faith, 128, 186, 394-95 Fall, the, 224, 324 See also Adam; depravity, human; human nature; original sin family, 243-47, 437 fanaticism, 394 Federal party, 116 feelings, 126, 488-89 Fénelon, François, 28, 260, 361 fetichism, 145, 316-17

Name and Subject Index Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 149, 160-61, 401, 419 fickleness, charged against Brownson, 38 finance, federal legislation on, 120 Finney, Charles Grandison, 137 n. 14 Folsom, Abigail, 176 Fontenelle, Bernard Le Bovier, Sieur de, 236-38 foresight, and memory, 470-71 forgiveness, of sins, as meaningless, 194 form, of thought, 449-52 forms, religious, changes in, 85-86 Fourier, François-Marie-Charles, 24344, 434-38 Fox, George, 332, 361 Fragmens Philosophiques (Cousin), 153, 158 fragmentation, of modern society, 376 Fragments (Cousin), 153 Franklin, Benjamin, 409 fraternity, doctrine of, 12, 85 Frederic Barbarossa, 66, 383 freedom, 12, 47, 147, 193, 377 and an authoritative church, 37980, 382 as unrestricted communion, 245 definition of, 156, 380 of God, 3, 5, 194 and government, 98, 110, 432 and the Incarnation, 62 “without individualism,” 37, 363 and the modern sciences, 391 and sovereignty, 5, 194 of trade, 46, 431-32 of the will, 493-94 free trade, and social reform, 431-33 Free Suffrage party, 44, 49 French Revolution, 12, 54, 169-70, 381 Saint-Simonians’ view of, 227 Freret, Nicholas, 231 Fulton, Robert, 409 future, the, and Saint-Simonians, 22628

G Gassendi, Pierre, 233, 417

517 genera, knowledge of, 411, 416-17, 481, 501, 503-06 generalization, and genus, 505 Genesis, and Leroux, 269-70 Gentle Boy, The (Hawthorne), 173 geology, 389 Gill, John, 88 Gilmore, William J., 124 n. Gnosticism, 64 God, 61, 192, 194, 200, 249 arguments for existence of, 128, 140, 153-54, 292-307, 407 as cause, 327-28, 447 communion with, 205, 252-53, 330 conceptions of, 60, 306-07 as Father, 5, 341-42 and freedom, 5 origin of idea of, 144-45 and the ideal, 354 immanence of, 34 as immutable, 473 as incomprehensible, 496, 506 as infinite concrete, 60 knowledge of, 154-56, 447, 506-07 as moral governor, 341-42 and nature, 192-93 not an iron necessity, 90 perfection of, 324 personality of, 317-19 as mere possibility for Leroux, 19596, 267 as Redeemer, 341-42 self-knowledge of, 441 in the subject, 499-500 as substantiality of matter (Parker), 320-21 See also God-Man; Holy Spirit; Jesus; mediator; Son of God “God is life,” 11 God-Man, as literal truth, 205-06 Godwin, Parke, 17 Godwin, William, 433 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 93 golden age, the, and Saint-Simonians, 226-28 good, the, 492, 501 Gospel, 57, 130, 214, 261 as living reality, 23, 189, 213

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government, 47, 105, 106, 382 abolition of, 244 American, 44-45, 115 Brownson’s understanding of, 4445 constitutional, 98-122 as necessary evil, 432 popular form of, 105, 121 and order, 377-78 class powers over, 102-04 See also democracy; politics; state; Whigs grace, 194, 314, 335 Greeks, the, 478-79, 495 Greene, William B., 16-17 Gregory VII, Pope, 66 Gregory Nazianzus, 299 Grodzins, Dean, 2 Guizot, François Pierre Guillaume, 487 Guyon, Madame Jeanne, 28, 260

H Hadrian IV, Pope, 383 Ham, Leroux’s interpretation of, 269, 421 Hans d’Islande (Hugo), 168 happiness, and Leroux, 233 Harrington, James, 190 Harrison, William Henry, 118 n. 5 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 172 Headsman (Cooper), 172 heart, the, 125, 126 heaven, doctrine of, 28, 265-66 Hebrew, character of, 271 Hecker, Isaac , 53 Hegel, Georg, 13, 16, 398, 453 Hegelianism, 220, 266, 409, 446 Heine, Henry, 57 hell, doctrine of, 28, 263, 265-67 Helvétius, Claude-Adrien, 86 Henry II, King of England, 66 Henry IV, Holy Roman Emperor, 66 Henry IV (Shakespeare), 176 n. 23 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 221, 240 n. 41 heredity, doctrine of, 82-83 and progress, 274 Hernani (Hugo), 168

heroes, and Carlyle, 331 “Hind and Panther” (Dryden), 479 Hippias (Plato), 416 historical criticism, and Parker, 2, 32, 316, 343 history, 13, 150, 353, 411-12 and the Bible, 270-71 History of the Norman Conquest (Thierry), 171 History of the World, The (Raleigh), 300 n. 23 Hobbes, Thomas, 235, 408, 417 Holy Ghost. See Holy Spirit Holy Spirit, 372-73, 377, 364, 381 See also Church; God-Man; Jesus; mediator; Son of God home industry, and personal independence, 430 Homer, 249, 358, 476, 485 Hopkins, Samuel, 258 n. 69 Horace, 479 “Horrible Doctrines,” 47-48 Hugo, Victor, 53, 167-69 humanity, 29-30, 211-12, 221, 223, 237 acceptance of divinity of, 24, 19596 precedes individuals, 272 See also human nature; human person; human race; man; women human nature, 188, 195, 211, 237 and depravity, 189, 197-202, 24748 growth of, 412 and Incarnation, 61 and progress, 19, 29, 81 See also Adam; Fall, the; depravity, human; freedom; humanity; human person; human race; man; nature; original sin; women human person, 9-10, 62-63 See also humanity; human nature; human race; man; women human race, 81, 246, 267, 424 indefinite perfectibility of, 74 live in solido, 200, 207, 247-48 as progressive, 29, 236 See also humanity; human nature;

Name and Subject Index human person; man; women Hume, David, 132 n., 133 n. 10, 192, 417, 446 and common sense, 448

I ideal, the, 287, 481, 484, 504 and actual, 296-97, 303, 354, 475, 480, 495, 502-05 and imagination, 479 mystery of perception of, 501-02 Idealism, 1, 2, 419, 425, 446 and Berkeley, 414 and Brownson, 21 and Cousin, 152-53, 160-61 end of, 444 Kant’s, 149, 160, 289, 401 Leroux’s modified, 37 ideas, 292-98, 413, 498 of God, 154-55 independence of religious, 146 as intermediaries in modern philosophy, 294 and Locke, 450 meaning of ,142-43 as objective reality, 414, 496 as objects of the mind, 294-95, 415 Parker’s understanding of, 305, 414 Platonic understanding of, 149, 293, 399, 417, 495, 498 Schmucker’s understanding of, 41314 See also under various philosophers identity, principle of, 286 idleness, 179-80 ignorance, as source of evil, 425 imagination, 474-85 immortality, 218, 272, 472, 474 and Leroux, 28, 266-68 imputation, 35, 201, 255, 371 Incarnation, 21, 26, 61, 74 and the Church, 19, 69 and doctrine of communion, 15, 354 visible effects of, 62 incomprehensibility, of God, 154-55, 506-07 individualism, 363, 377, 425 and Christianity, 223 and laissez-faire doctrine, 432

519 and Parker, 350 and Protestantism, 383 and Robert Owen, 434 and Rousseau, 235 and the sciences, 389 indulgence, 179-80 industry, 70-71, 245, 435, 438 infant baptism, and salvation, 26 infidelity, 128, 130, 133, 184 and Brownson, 187, 278 See also atheism; skepticism; unbelief infinite concrete, the, 19, 26, 60 “Influence of Property on Civilization,” (Brownson), 47 inheritance, law of, 47, 118 innate ideas, 142, 143, 292-93, 417 Inquiry into the Human Mind (Reid), 133 n. 10, 415 inspiration, 71, 305, 331, 360, 379 Brownson’s doctrine of, 328-35 of the Church, 374 for Cousin, 9, 140 and knowledge, 162 and Parker, 280, 317-42 and philosophy, 388, 421 and psychology, 412 and Transcendentalists, 89 verbal, 355 See also Bible; providential men; revelation Institutes of the Christian Religion (Calvin), 422 instruction, 378, 393 intelligence, 150, 452, 464 Introduction to the History of Philosophy (Cousin), 149 n. 22, 304 n. 27 intuition, 150, 298, 497-98 and idea of God, 144, 292-93, 305 and knowledge of God, 154 meaning of, 142 and perception, 302-03 and truth, 347 See also apperception; knowledge; perception; reason; sensation; thought; understanding invention, and poetry, 480 Irving, Washington, 168, 172, 173 Isaiah, 71, 80, 361 Ivanhoe (Scott), 171-72

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J Jacobi, Friedrich Heinrich, 301 James, Saint, 80 Japheth, Leroux’s interpretation of, 269, 421 Jefferson, Thomas, 43, 490 n. Jesus, 80, 129, 207, 352, 365-66 as abstraction, 203-05 as second Adam, 255 and Brownson’s view of, 23-25 and charity, 254 as Christianity, 203 and the church, 73 and communion with God, 25, 210 and desires, 489 divinity of, 35 and the Essenes, 257 as example, 204 and the heart, 130 and humanity, 221 and Incarnation, 61-62 as infinite concrete, 26 knowledge of, 361 and life by communion, 202, 20607, 350-51 as Logos, 196 and love, 262-64 not ordinary man, 191-92, 205 as mediator, 23, 26, 186-216, 195, 276 mission of, 334 and Moses, 360, 397 ontological, 25, 35, 352-53 and Parker, 346, 370 and perfectibility of human race, 87 phenomenal, 25, 35, 351-53 and progress, 74, 86, 241 as providential man, 71, 332 as power and wisdom of God, 348 and Redemption, 211 and reform, 86 and religious sentiment, 342-43 and retroactive salvation, 273 and revelation, 367 as self-authenticating, 35-36 as sent, 194 as Son of God, 62, 192 as superior to his age, 208 as teacher, 204, 350

See also Christianity; God; GodMan; Holy Spirit; mediator; Moses; Son of God Jesus Christ. See Jesus Jews, and humanity, 221 See also Judaism John, Saint, 80, 221 Johnson, Samuel, 169 n. 8, 445 Joshua, and Moses, 361 Jouffroy, Theodore, 152, 402 Judaism, 14, 15, 221, 269 and Christianity, 360, 397 See also Jews Judas Iscariot, 118 jurisprudence, and Bible, 358 justice, 193, 433 See also democracy Juvenal, 479

K Kant, Immanuel, 38, 51, 160, 398401, 446-47 and Bible, 358 Brownson’s misreading of, 470 n. and the categories, 416-17, 497 Cousin’s refutation of, 160-61 and the faculties, 301 and ideas, 295, 496 and memory, 469 n. and reason, 148-49 and receptivity, 478 and religious sentiment, 288-89 and space, 470 subjectivism of, 41 and time, 469 and the will, 485-86 Kirk, Russell, 44 Knapp, Jacob, 137 n. 14 Kneeland, Abner, 48 knowledge, 39, 427, 496-97 conditions of, 417, 496-98 by experience, 162 of individuals, 411, 416 objectivity of, 148 of self, 415, 441-42, 461 as simultaneously subjective and objective, 39, 162 as purely subjective for Kant, 161 See also apperception; intuition;

Name and Subject Index perception; reason; thought; understanding; and various philosophers knowing, as indivisible, 303 Knox, John, 86

L “Laboring Classes, The,” (Brownson), 47-48, 119 n., 275, 433 n. 7 laboring classes, 428, 430 laissez-faire, doctrine of, 432 Lamennais, Félicité de, 14 “Land of Dreams” (Blake), 484 language, 170, 335, 478 Laplace, Pierre Simon, Marquis de, 405 “Last Days of a Convict” (Hugo), 168 Last Supper. See Eucharist Latest Form of Infidelity (Norton), 203 Latter-Day Saints, 384 law of continuity, 52, 238, 275, 39697, 437 law of life. See life, by communion legislation, and the power of classes, 99-100, 102 legislature, and veto power, 108 Leibnitz, Gottfried Wilhelm von. See Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm von, 69 n., 83, 144-45, 218, 390, 398, 410 and unity of faculties, 420 and the ideal, 221 and ideas, 295-96 and Leroux, 233, 236 and man as monad, 301 and mathematics, 404 and matter, 320-21 and notion, 289 and perception and apperception, 158-59, 283, 442-43, 458, 460, 472 and presentiment, 471-72 and progress, 238, 239 and think God, 290, 305 Leggett, William, 432 Leo X, Pope, 383 Lerminier, Jean-Louis-Eugène, 27-28, 230-32, 240

521 “Leroux on Humanity” (Brownson), 27-30, 217-76, 385 Leroux, Pierre, 1, 24, 38, 79, 190, 217-76 and Brook Farm, 51 and Brownson, 2-7, 18, 190 and Christianity, 28, 260-61 and Cousin, 420-21 criticisms of, 27-28, 230-32 and family, 437 and freedom of God, 6 and Victor Hugo, 53 and knowledge, 318 and Leibniz, 69 and doctrine of life, 371 religious philosophy of, 7-16, and Georges Sand, 53 political thought of, 12, and Saint-Simonians, 218-32 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, 12, 15, 221, 236 liberty. See freedom light, inner, 333 Likeness to God (William Ellery Channing), and Brownson, 187, 195 life, 11, 206, 242 and being, 12, 200, 351 as point of departure for philosophy, 446 as growth, 328-34 meaning of, 351, 447 as subjective and objective soldered together, 200, 254, 291 See also Bible; Church; communion; law of continuity; Leroux, Pierre; life, by communion; providential men; tradition life, by communion, 1, 22-23, 78-81, 199, 200, 213, 371 See also “Charles Elwood Reviewed”; communion; Leroux; “Leroux on Humanity”; Mediatorial Life of Jesus; life; “Parker’s Discourse”; “Synthetic Philosophy” literature, 53, 167-85, 358 See also, art; philosophy; poetry Locke, John, 42, 133 n., 151, 306, 397, 414 and Bible, 358

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and Christianity, 346 and Condillac, 418 n. error of, 451 and the faculties, 301, 458 at Harvard, 165 and ideas, 143, 294, 413, 417, 45051, 496, 498 and intuition, 303 and knowledge of particulars, 503 and Leroux, 233 and perception, 459-60, 472 and progress, 239 and Scholastics, 408 and thought, 440-41 and the will, 486 logic, 124, 125, 505-06 Logos, 60, 333, 354, 399, 414, 495 London Quarterly Review, 167-68 Lorrain, Claude, 180 love, 127, 176, 253-64, 436 capacity for, 242 disinterested, 28, 258 of God, 28, 61, 258-29 and marriage, 180 Christian misunderstandings of, 263-64 of neighbor and self, 28, 61, 25354, 256, 258 practical realization of, 425 loving, and communion, 200 Lucretius, 479 lust, as love profaned, 492 Luther, Martin, 66, 86, 204, 221, 223 as providential, 332 Lutheranism, and individualism, 223 luxury, 179-80 Lycurgus, 80 Lynch, Anne Charlotte, 24

M Macbeth (Shakespeare), 484 Machiavelli, Nicholas, 235 Madame de Staël, 12 Madonna, 483, 484 Maffitt, John Newland, 137 n. 14 Mahomet, 367 majority will, 101, 113, 235 Malebranche, Nicholas, 147, 398 man, 181, 407, 477, 500, 502

as aspiration to the infinite, 246 moral character of, 413 classification of, 420-21 definitions of, 299-301 destiny of, 378, 393 divinity of, 499 as image of God, 61, 319, 408 and Leroux, 233-41 as living substance, 68-69 as progressive, 78-79, 143, 144, 236, 406 as social, 98, 236, 255 as sentient substance, 453-54 a unity in triplicity, 234, 453-54 See also humanity; human nature; human person; human race; women Manicheanism, 64 Marion de Lorme (Hugo), 168 marriage, 61, 177, 243-44, 434 indissolubility of, 180-81 Martineau, Harriet, 176 Marx, Karl, and Leroux, 7 maternity, holiness of, 61 mathematics, and philosophy, 404-05, 409, 479, 503 Maynard, Theodore, 2 mediator, 23, 195, 205 and knowledge of God, 503 mission of, 195-202 Parker’s rejection of, 302, 353-54 See also communion; Jesus; Mediatorial Life of Jesus Mediatorial Life of Jesus (Brownson), 4-5, 18, 22-27, 40, 186-216, 385 and life by communion, 22-23, 371 See also communion; Jesus memory, 150, 403, 411-12, 455, 46074 mesmerism, 475 messiahs, 90, 332 Metamorphoses (Ovid), 300 n. 22, 491 metaphysics, 139, 405, 409, 463, 479 Methodists, 88 methodology, Schmucker’s, 403-04, 406-10 Midsummer Night’s Dream, A (Shakespeare), 482-83 millennium, in early church, 241

Name and Subject Index Millerites, 384 Miller, William, 384 n. 107 Milton, John, 71 n., 378, 380, 476, 485 mind, operations of, 457-507 minister. See clergy ministry, and salvation, 26 See also clergy; priesthood miracles, 36, 346-48, 353 mobs, veto power over, 112 Monadology (Leibniz), 83, 145, 159 n., 420 monarchy, and government, 106 monasticism, and Brook Farm, 439 monetary policy, and paper system, 121 money, and elections, 104 monotheism, 316-17 Monroe, James, 102 n. Moral Essays (Pope), 479 morality, 192, 363, 488 Parker’s definition of, 314-15 and religion, 140, 313-16, 457 partial view of, 451-52 Moravians, 64 Mormons, 384 n. 107 Moses, 71, 80-81, 144 and the Bible, 360-61 and the ideal of humanity, 221 and immortality, 269 and inspiration, 340 and Jesus, 397 Leroux’s interpretation of, 269-71 as ordinary man, 192 and progress, 241 as providential, 90, 332, 334 and revelation, 367 and the will, 485 See also Jesus movement party, 85 “Mr. Brownson on the Property Question,” 48 music, and women, 176 mysticism, of Clarke, 95 myth, 270-71, 482-83

N Names and Titles of the Lord Jesus Christ (Spear), 24

523 natural generation, 274-75 naturalism, 313, 336, 339, 425 and Parker, 32, 33 n.92, 34, 325-26 religious, 3, 313 natural laws, and God, 194 nature, 197-98, 322-23, 459 and Bacon, 238 communion with, 330 as deified, 192-94 divinity in original, 196 and God, 320-21 as resistless necessity, 193-94 order and stability of, 473 has no passivity, 330, 486 perfection of, 323-24 and progress, 452 See also human nature necessity, and contingency, 495 Necker, Anne-Louise-Germaine, Baroness de Staël-Holstein. See Madame de Staël neighbor, as self, 253-54 Negro, 144 Nettleton, Asahel, 137 n. 14 New Christianity (Saint-Simon), 222, 381 New England, and political parties, 117 New Essays on Human Understanding (Leibniz), 296 n., 471 n. New Harmony, 434 New Testament, 189, 213-14, 334, 422 See also Bible; Gospels; Jesus; revelation Newton, Isaac, 334, 346, 405 New Views (Brownson), 19, 56-76, 385 n. 108 and Jesus, 203, 257, 352 n. Niebuhr, Barthold Georg, 144 Noah, 269, 332 Nominalists, 417, 503 no-property, doctrine of, 433-34 Norton, Andrews, 347 notion, 289, 496 as form of thought, 306-07, 44952, 476, 484 Notre Dame (Hugo), 168 Nouveau Christianisme (Saint-Simon), 222, 381

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Nouveaux Essais (Leibniz), 296 n. Novum Organum (Bacon), 334, 484

O obedience, 310-11, 344, 349, 394 object, the, 330, 443-49, 464-65, 468 objectivity, of knowledge, 444-45 Odyssey, The (Homer), 249 n. 52, 251 n. 55 On Heroes, Hero Worship (Carlyle), 331 n. ontological axiom, Leroux’s, 11 ontology, 233-34, 459, 506 opinions, 43, 313-14, 489 as accountable deeds, 379, 394-95, 489-91 oppressed, right of, 248 originality, and Christian truth, 19091 original sin, 201 and Brownson, 23-24, 197-202 as violation of communion, 20002, 247-50 See also Adam; depravity, human; Fall, the; human nature “Orphic Sayings” (Alcott), 499 O’Sullivan, John J., 43 “out of the church no salvation,” 36 See also Church, necessity of Over-soul, and Bible, 355 Ovid, 300, 491 Owenism, 16 Owen, Robert, 434, 436-38

P Paine, Thomas, 45, 98 n. palingenesis, 15, 240, 243 Palmer-Peabody, Elizabeth, 16 pantheism, 42, 147, 284, 446 and Cousin, 149, 153 and Fourier, 434 and Leroux, 28, 267 and Saint-Simonians, 218 and Spinoza, 320-21 and Transcendentalism, 196 See also Alcott, Amos Bronson; Emerson, Ralph Waldo papacy, Catholic idolatry of, 362-63 paradise, doctrine of, 263, 267

Paradise Lost (Milton), 380 n. Parker, Theodore, 1-3, 6, 30-37, 280386 and Henry Brownson, 18 religious feelings of, 336 and Leroux, 17, and Strauss, 270 n. 84 and subjectivism, 42 “Parker’s Discourse” (Brownson), 3037, 280-386 Pascal, Blaise, 236-39 passions, moral character of, 313-14, 488-94 past, the, and progress, 80 Paul, Saint, 64, 221, 241, 261 as providential man, 71, 332 Pelagius, 487 Penn, William, 332, 361 people, the, 104, 429 perception, 157-59, 290, 458-60 and consciousness, 442 as finite, 502 and imagination, 474-75 inevitable errors of, 451-52 and intuition, 302-03 and memory, 469-72 and the spiritual world, 303 See also apperception; intuition; knowledge; Leibniz; reason; thought; understanding Percy, Thomas, 171 Perrault, Charles, 236-39 personality, and Cousin, 147 phalanx, 16, 435, 437 phenomenology, 233-34 Phidias, and imagination, 476, 484 philosophers, and progress, 74-75 philosophes, and Leroux, 14 philosophy, 12, 165-66, 387, 393, 446 Alexandrian, 473, 475 and art, 485 and Bible, 213, 358 and Brownson, 37-43, 166, 190 in Charles Elwood, 137-38 of Christian Fathers, 503 and communion, 276 and Cousin, 8, 164-66 and human dependence, 199-200 richest discovery of modern, 251 as Eclectic, 234

Name and Subject Index purpose of, 405-06 and religion, 9, 39, 139, 335, 387 as science of life, 387-88, 440, 447 as science of sciences, 506 subjectivism in, 41, 503 as synthetic, 41, 234, 447 See also Cousin; Kant; Locke; Plato; Idealism; synthesis; and various other philosophers phrenologists, 288, 301, 408 physics, and metaphysics, 463 physiology, 389, 411, Pietists, and pure love, 260 piety, as sanctimonious and ostentatious, 136 Pitman, Joseph, 49 Plato, 80-82, 204, 218, 398-99, 416 and art, 485 and Brownson, 294-95 and ideas, 293-95, 414, 504 and immortality, 269, 472 philosophical limits of, 235 and Logos, 60, 153, 495 and progress, 241 and reminiscence, 472 and revelation, 367 and Transcendentalists, 43 and the will, 485 Plotinus, 294 poet, the, 477, 484 poetry, 176, 476-81 political economy, 430 political theory, and Brownson, 45 politics, 15, 44, 104, 389 Brownson’s episodic interest in, 277 n. and communion, 30, 276 and individualism, 363 and social reform, 428-31 in the states, 117 partial view of, 451-52 See also Church; democracy; government; philosophy; religion; state; theology polytheism, 316-17 Pope, Alexander, 238 n., 254, 304 n. 26, 479 power, and government, 100, 107, 109-10 prayer, 30, 194, 273 preacher, 93, 95-97

525 preaching, 1, 21-22, 26, 214-16 preference, as judgment, 486 Presbyterians, 88 Present, The, 17 presentiment, 150, 471-72, 474 “Pretensions of Phrenology” (Brownson), 126 n. 5m Price, Richard, 221 pride, the primal sin, 336 priesthood, Brownson’s views on, 215 See also clergy; ministry priests. See clergy Principia (Newton), 334 Principles of Nature and Grace (Leibniz), 443 n. private judgment, and the Bible, 36263 “Problem, The” (Emerson), 91, 193, 355 n. Proclus, 294, 419 progress, 74-75, 324-25 by accretion or assimilation, 78-79, 237 and the Bible, 358-59 and Brisbane, 435 and the church, 59 and communion, 251-52 and conceptions of God, 307 not development, 34 as external, 238 and God, 329 of humanity, 223 idea of, 8, 211 law of, 275, 396-97 Leroux’s view of, 8, 16, 29, 217, 232 and moral assimilation of truth, 83 and Saint-Simonianism, 225-28 and union, 381 Progress of Poesy, The (Shelley), 79 property, 47, 100, 181, 433 at Brook Farm, 437 substantial equalization of, 119 evils of, 246 and Leroux, 243-45 and Saint-Simonian doctrines of, 190 See also inheritance; “Laboring Classes” prophecy, 150, 470, 472-73

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prophets, 192, 332, 381 Protagoras, 499 n. 34 protective policy, 120-21, 430 Protestantism, 66, 72, 75, 273 and the Bible, 355, 362-63 and tyranny of the Church, 369 and the Eucharist, 258 and individualism, 383 and Parker, 362-63 See also Bible; Christianity; Jesus; Unitarianism Providence, 4, 23, 25, 191, 387 assumed, 34 and Bible, 358-59 and communion, 376 doctrine of, 193 and idea of God, 145 and philosophy, 412 and progress, 20-21, 396-97 manifested in nature, 188 and religion, 81, 194 in United States, 111-12 See also Bible; Christianity; Church; inspiration; Judaism; Jesus; providential men; revelation providential men, 144, 191-92 and progress, 20, 71, 357, 412 and special inspiration, 89, 331-32, 333-34 See also inspiration; Jesus; Moses; Paul, Saint; Plato; Providence Psalms of David, 358 psycho-anatomy, 392-93 psychological method, 152, 161, 402 psychologism, 9, 38, 152, 403 psychologists, 418, 441, 454-55 psychology, 387-423, 459-60 and Cousin, 152 and Leroux, 8-9, 234 and Schmucker, 387-423 Psychology; or Elements of a New System of Mental Philosophy (Schmucker), 39-41, 387-423 Purgatory, 30, 273 Puritanism, and power of love, 72 Puseyism, 16 Pythagoras, 60, 218, 241, 269, 485 Pythoness, 473

Q quietism, of Clarke, 95

R radicalism, 77 rationalism, 32, 34, 346 Raleigh, Sir Walter, 300 n. 23 reason, 146-51, 293, 494-507 authority of, 93 defined, 494-507 as impersonal, 38 , 146-48 impotence of, 161, 198 and Kant, 161, 399, 446-47 reflective, 38-39, 388 two senses of, 148-49, 155-56, 293 as spontaneous, 38-39, 146-48, 157, 333 and understanding, 38, 150, 303, 399, 457 See also apperception; intelligence; intuition; knowledge; perception; thought; understanding; and various philosophers rebirth, Leroux’s doctrine of, 274 receptivity, and Kant, 478 reconciliation, heart of Christianity, 262 Redemption, 189, 208, 212, 224, 352 reflection, function of, 160 “Reform and Conservatism” (Brownson), 274 reform, 77, 397 clerical form of, 425 economist form of, 431-33 ethical form of, 425-28 political form of, 428-31 socialist forms of, 433-39 See also social reform Reformation, Protestant, 66, 207 Réfutation de L’Eclectisme (Leroux), 3, 8-9, 38, 233 n. 29, 420 and human psychology, 234 regeneration, 15, 35, 134, 224 Reid, Thomas, 133, 151, 192, 397-99, 458 and common sense, 448 and consciousness, 401 defect of his philosophy, 305, 400

Name and Subject Index and ideas, 294-95, 414-15 and the will, 485-86 See also common sense; philosophy; Scottish Common Sense religion, 14, 59, 265, 282 absolute, 1-2, 31, 309, 342-44, 349, 369 as aspiration to the infinite, 141, 310, 434 radical conception of, 389 and Constant, 140-41 for Cousin, 9 of humanity, 3, 9, 15 as idea, 141 and Leroux, 8, 13-16, as light, 136 and morality, 457 as natural, 21, 140, 499 and Parker, 280-317 and philosophy, 387-90 as progressive, 58 as sentiment, 127, 141 partial view of, 451-52 See also Catholicism; Christianity; Church; democracy; Parker, Theodore; philosophy; Protestantism; revelation Religion Considered in Its Origin (Constant), 140 religious sentiment, 34, 287 as fact of life, 283, 289 and Parker, 282-83, 288-89 as a sense, 302, 307-08 See also sentiment representation, and salvation, 35 Republic, The (Plato), 235, 436 republicanism, principles of, 47 Rerum natura (Lucretius), 479 responsibility, degree of moral, 488 restorationists, French Catholic, 14 revelation, 40, 60, 131, 145 authority of, 92-93 and intuition, 292-93 in and through nature, 311 and philosophy, 40, 390 as progressive and successive, 79, 81 and spontaneous reason, 156 See also Bible; Christianity; Genesis; Gospel; inspiration; New Testament; “Parker’s Discourse”;

527 Providence reverence, 176, 286, 307-08 reversibility, Leroux’s doctrine of, 274 Revue Encyclopédique, 217 revivals, religious, and conflict, 127 Rhode Island, and universal suffrage, 49 Rights of Man to Property, The (Skidmore), 433 Ripley, George, 17, 50-51, 185, 347, 438 on Brownson, 54 as metaphysician second to none, 436 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 86, 232, 235 Ryan, Thomas R., 2

S sacramental idealism, 19 Saint-Simon, 218, 224, 228-29, 236 Saint-Simonians, 218-22 and Leroux, 12, 14-15, 218-19, 231, 255 and doctrine of life, 275 and classification of mankind, 42021 and New Views, 57 and progress, 225-28 and property, 190 and religion, 13-14, 241 and Sand, George, 184-85 salvation, 35, 189, 370 and the Church, 36, 366-67, 37071, 374-75 and individuals, 223, 252 and preaching, 278-79 See also Church; Christianity; grace; Jesus; mediator; Redemption; religion; revelation Samuel, and Moses, 361 sanctification, 224, 352 Sand, Georges, 53, 167 n. 1, 169, 175, 178 and Spiridion, 184-85 Sartor Resautus (Carlyle), 367 n. 94 Satan, and failure to love, 250 satisfaction, and salvation, 35 savages, as unprogressive, 143-44 sects, significance of, 375

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senses, external and internal, 463-64 Seth, Leroux’s interpretation of, 269, 421 Sceptics, 417 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph, 398 schisms, significance of, 375 Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 51, 285-86 Schlesinger, Arthur M., Jr., 2 Schmucker, Samuel S., 39, 41, 387423 Brownson’s criticism of, 391-92, 396-423 “Schmucker’s Psychology” (Brownson), 37, 385, 387-423 Scholastics, 408-09, 504 science, 9, 70-71, 176, 389 and Bacon, 238 freedom of, 245, 391 and philosophy, 166 physical and psychological, 463 and theology, 409 See also knowledge; philosophy; revelation Scott, Walter, 168, 171, 173 Scottish Common Sense, 9, 151, 165 n., 192, 398-99 defective philosophy of, 305 See also Reid, Thomas Scripture. See Bible Second Advent, church of, 383-84 self-culture, 95, 96, 251 n. 58, 425-28 self-interests, 102-04, 253-54 “Self-Reliance” (Emerson), 425 n. Seneca, 239-40 sensation, 10, 12, 150 sensibility, and willing, 494 sensualists, errors of, 303-04, 418-19 sentiment, 10, 12, 141-42, 460 See also religious sentiment sentimentalism, 94, 183 Seventh-Day Adventists, 384 n. 107 Shakespeare, William, 176, 192, 334, 346, 481-82 and the Bible, 358 and imagination, 476 and philosophy, 485 and The Tempest, 483-84 Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, 481 Skidmore, Thomas, 433

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 79 Shem, Leroux’s interpretation of, 269, 421 Simonism, 16 sin, 23-24, 326, 492 actual, grounds of, 198-99 and affections, 314 universality of, 197 See also original sin skepticism, 161, 417, 444 See also atheism; infidelity; unbelief slavery, 62, 66, 249 Smith, Joseph, 48, 367, 384 n. 107 Smith, Reuben, 124 n. social compact, and Rousseau, 235 social democracy, 53, 169 Social Destiny of Man (Brisbane), 435 n. 10 socialism, humanitarian, and Leroux, 7 social order, and freedom, 211 social progress, doctrine of, 224 social reform, 52, 130, 425-39 See also reform society, 15, 62, 411 defects of, 424 and individuals, 98, 426 as progressive, 29, 236 Socrates, 80, 144, 332, 367, 485 solidarity, 12, 265 meaning of, 255 n. and Brownson, 251 n. 57, Leroux’s notion of, 11, 253-55 as universal, 273-74 Solomon, and Moses, 361 Solon, 80 Son of God, 62, 206 Son of Man, meaning of, 224 soteriology, and life by communion, 23 soul, 369, 499 and body, 411, 492 unity of, 304, 457 wants of, 125, 326-27 Southcott, Joanna, 367 sovereignty, of the people, 101 space, 470 species, knowledge of, 411, 416 Specimens of Foreign Standard Literature (Ripley), 185 Spinoza, Baruch, 149 n. 21, 320, 446

Name and Subject Index Spinozaism, 149, 320 spirit, and matter, 64, 69, 303, 492 spiritual generation, 274-75 spiritualism, Parker’s, 32, 328, 369 Spiridion (Sand), 184-85 Spurzheim, Johann Kaspar, 126 n. 5 state, the, 70, 243-45 See also government; politics statesmen, and progress, 74-75 stationary party, 85 Stewart, Dugald, 398, 458 Strauss, David Friedrich, 270 n. 84 “Strauss’ Life of Jesus” (Parker), 270 n. 84 subject, the, 461, 469 as cause, 452-53, 493-94 and freedom, 493-94 and the object, 440-43 as substance, 452-53 unity and trinity of, 455-57, 491 subjectivism, 42, 401-02 of Kant, 38, 401-02, 497 of Parker, 288-89 suffrage, 49, 100, 117, 428-29 supernaturalism, 328-29, 331, 337 Parker’s criticism of, 32, 33, 282, 312, 322-23 supply, Parker’s doctrine of, 326-27 supremacy, of the church, 374 Swedenborg, Emmanuel, 192, 204, 332, 361, 485-86 synthesis, 10, 84-85, 157 See also Cousin, Victor; Eclecticism; Leroux, Pierre; “Synthetic Philosophy” synthetic judgment, and reasoning, 404-05 “Synthetic Philosophy” (Brownson), 37, 40-43, 440-507

T Tables Turned, The (Wordsworth), 286 n. 7, 410 n. 26 Tempest, The (Shakespeare), 483-84 temporal, separated from spiritual, 263-64 Teresa of Ávila, Saint, 250 Theodicea (Leibniz), 390

529 theodicy, 267, 434, 495 “Theodore Parker’s Discourse.” See “Parker’s Discourse” theology, 20-21, 363m 389 and Bible, 358 Brownson’s, 1, 7, 30-37, 276, 277 n., 385 and charity, 262 covenant, 35, 255 and metaphysics, 409 and philosophy, 446 popular, 348 and religion, 315-16 transcendental, 54, 89-90, 92, 93, 96 See also Christianity; communion; Mediatorial Life of Jesus; “Parker’s Discourse”; Parker, Theodore; philosophy; religion Thierry, Amédée-Simon-Dominique, 169, n. 11 Thierry, Augustin, 171 thinking, 200, 444, 490 Thirty-Nine Articles, 381 Thomas á Becket, 66 Thomas Aquinas, 485 thought, 292, 440-41, 447 definition of, 449 freedom of, 245 moral character of, 43, 313-14, 488-89 as simultaneously subjective and objective, 329-30, 389 See also intuition; knowledge; perception; reason; understanding; and various philosophers Thousand and One Nights, The, 485 time, and memory, 469-70 tradition, 30, 83, 144, 400 concept of, 79-80 and individual immortality, 268-69 value of, 198 See also Bible; Christianity; Church; Providence; revelation traditionalists, French Catholic, 13 Transcendentalism, 1, 31, 192, 252 antinomianism of, 94-95 Brownson’s departure from, 4 and Christianity, 346 communitarian, 51

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errors of, 303-04 and ideas, 142-43, 152, 498-99, 504 and refined sentimentalism, 54, 94 social, 51 and soul worship, 195 See also Alcott, Amos Bronson; Emerson, Ralph Waldo; Parker, Theodore; Ripley, George; Unitarianism “Transcendentalism, or the Latest Form of Infidelity” (Brownson), 33 n. 92 Transcendentalist Club, 31, 51 “Transient and Permanent in Christianity” (Brownson), 203 n. 13, 280 n. 2, 333 n. 55 “Transient and Permanent in Christianity” (Parker), 2, 31, 203 n. 13, 280 n. 2 Transubstantiation, 258 Treatise Concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality (Cudworth), 151 n. 25, 294, 497 Trinitarians, and Jesus, 189 truth, 85, 347, 448-49, 496 Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques, 88, 236 Twice-Told Tales (Hawthorne), 172 tyranny, and the church, 65-66, 380

U ultimate, the, finite understanding of, 440 unbelief, 123, 131, 133-35, 188 See also atheism; infidelity; skepticism understanding, 38, 150, 303, 399, 457 See also apperception; intuition; knowledge; perception; reason; thought; and various philosophers Unitarianism, 1, 31, 202 as baptized atheism, 94 and Brownson, 22, 27, 279 and Jesus, 189, 203-04 See also Transcendentalism United States Bank, 102 See also democracy; politics; state

United States Magazine and Democratic Review, 37 Universalism, and Brownson, 26 universals, and particulars, 503 Upham, Thomas Cogswell, 298, 398, 413

V Vergil, 260 n. 74 Vernunft, 399 Verstand, 399 veto power, 115, 121 and government, 106-08, 110-11 and the states, 113-14, 121 vision of God, and Malebranche, 147 volition, 161, 485-94 Voltaire, 86, 88, 346

W Washington, George, 230 wealth, and power in government, 117-18 Well Instructed Scribe (Clarke), 20, 77, 93-95 Wesley, John, 88, 332, 361 Westminster Confession of Faith, 381 Whalen, Doran [Rose Gertrude Whalen], 2 Whigs, 46, 115-17 wife, and husband, 177-78 willing, 485-94 Wilson, William Dexter, 125 n. Wolstonecrafts, Mary, 176 women, 176, 178-79, 182 rights of, 53, 175-77, 435 and sexual liberation, 435 n. 11 Wordsworth, William, 172, 173, 286 n. 7, 479 works, moral, and justification, 94 worship, 70-72, 195, 291 forms of, 279, 304 Wright, Frances (Fanny), 176, 243-44

X Xenophanes, 321

Name and Subject Index

Y Young America, 422-23

Z Zanoni, (Bulwer), 53 Zinzendorf, Nicholas Ludwig Graf von, 64 Zwingli, Ulrich, 86

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