‘Each waits the other’s license to disturbThe deep, unbroken silence.’Note 53a, page 152.It is questionable, how far they could lay claim to be the real friends of humanity, who would reason away this last, best solace of human wretchedness, even were it proved an illusion. But man is just as certainly and necessarily a religious being, as he is a being constituted with appetites and passions. Grant, that there are people, who seem wholly destitute of the religious sentiment. Such are the real Atheists from internal conviction; for observe, there are many, who assume to be such, to pass for free and independent thinkers, and who are most likely, in their dying moments, to require absolution and extreme unction. But if there are men thus monstrously constituted, so are there individuals apparently as destitute of the common appetites and passions. We take no account of such exceptions, in indicating a general rule; and say, that man is constituted a religious being, and possessed of certain appetites and passions; although there may be selected a few individuals, who seem entirely without either.Religion is the key stone of the arch of the moral universe. It is the fountain of endearing friendship; and on it are founded those sublime relations, which exist between the visible and the invisible world; those, who still sojourn here, and those who have become citizens of the country beyond us. It is the poesy of existence, the basis of all high thought and virtuous feeling; of charities and morals; and the very tie of social existence. Let no person claim to be good, while laying an unhallowed hand upon this ark of the covenant of the Eternal with the children of sorrow and death.Note 54, page 154.Treatises upon the evidences of religion may be useful for theological students; and I have heard people affirm, that they have been rescued by such works from the gloom of unbelief. But, believing, as I do, that we were constituted religious animals, if such a term may be admitted, and that the religious sentiment is a part of our organization, I have quite as much confidence in the arguments of the heart, as of the head. I undertake not to pronounce, whether M. de Chateaubriand were a good christian, or not. But I affirm, that I have nowhere seen my own views of the process, by which the original endowment of the religious sentiment is called into action, so eloquently described, as in the following extract from that writer.‘My mother, after being thrown, at the age of seventy-two years, into a dungeon, where she saw a part of her children perish, expired at last upon a couch of straw, to which her miseries had consigned her. The remembrance of my errors infused great bitterness into her last days. In death she charged one of my sisters to recall me to that religion, in which I had been reared. My sister transmitted me the last wish of my mother. When this letter reached me beyond the seas, my sister herself was no more. She had died from the consequences of her imprisonment. These two voices, proceeding from the tomb, this death, which served as the interpreter of the dead, deeply struck me. I did not yield, I admit, to great supernatural lights. My conviction proceeded from the heart. I wept, and I believed.’Note 55, page 157.The belief naturally originated by the sentiment of religion, or what may be called the faith of the heart, is presented in the last fruitless attempt of the old man, to cheer the despair of Paul in the exquisite tale of Paul and Virginia. ‘Andwhy deplore the fate of Virginia? Virginia still exists. There is, be assured, a region, in which virtue receives its reward. Virginia now is happy. Oh! if from the abode of angels, she could tell you, as she did, when she bade you farewell, “O Paul, life is but a trial. I was faithful to the laws of nature, love and virtue. Heaven found I had fulfilled my duties, and snatched me forever from all the miseries, I might have endured myself; and all, I might have felt for the miseries of others. I am placed above the reach of all human evils, and you pity me! I am become pure and unchangeable, as a particle of light, and you would recall me to the darkness of human life. O Paul! O my beloved friend! Recollect those days of happiness, when in the morning we felt the delightful sensations excited by the unfolding beauties of nature; when we gazed upon the sun, gilding the peaks of those rocks; and then spreading his rays over the bosom of the forests. How exquisite were our emotions, while we enjoyed the glowing colors of the opening day, the odors of our shrubs, the concerts of our birds! Now at the source of beauty, from which flows all that is delightful on earth, my soul intuitively sees, tastes, hears, touches, what before she could only be made sensible of through the medium of our weak organs. Oh! what language can describe, those shores of eternal bliss, which I inhabit forever! All, that infinite power and celestial bounty can confer, that harmony, which results from friendship with numberless beings, exulting in the same felicity, we enjoy in unmixed perfection. Support, then, the trial which is allotted you, that you may heighten the happiness of your Virginia, by love, which will know no termination, by hymeneals, which will be immortal. There I will calm your regrets; I will wipe away your tears. Raise your thoughts towards infinite duration, and bear the evils of a moment.”’Note 56, page 160.Phrenologists affirm, that along the centre of the crown is situated the organ of veneration, or religious sentiment; that, where it is large, the subject is strongly endowed with religious feeling, and the contrary, when it is otherwise; that, with some few monstrous exceptions, all possess this organ in a larger or smaller degree; and that, as the sentiment springing from the action of this organ is directed towards proper or improper objects, enlightened by reason, rendered gloomy by fear, or superstitious by credulity, is the religious character of the person. Neither my subject, nor my inclination calls upon me to agitate a system, which has generally been met only with unsparing ridicule, instead of manly argument. With its doctrines or merits I intermeddle not in this place. But, as far as the system declares, that those people, whom we call pious, whose tone of mind seems to dispose them to strong religious feeling, are so inclined from organization, rather than volition, or argument, I most confidently believe. Morals, whatever is taught by the science of ethics, dogmas, ceremonies, commonly phrased religion, make, in my mind, no part of it. I consider religion to be simply love, originating from instinctive impulses of veneration in the mind, for whatever is powerful, beneficent, and worthy of love. Its native tendency is to expend its affection, first upon the unknown and incomprehensible power, from whom we derived our being, whom the heart, without argument, intuitively perceives to be good. Its next and associated tendency is philanthropy, or the love of what bears the impress and image of God. If we possess not this original organization, no argument will ever persuade us to be religious. If we have it, we may be liberal, or bigoted, Christians or Mahometans, earnest or cold, according to our proportion of endowment, our training and circumstances. We may even adopt the flippant arguments of the unbelieving, and enlist ourselves under their banner. But the original principle is still within us,uneradicated, and uneradicable; and ready, if circumstances should favor the change, to present us in the form of devotees, or, as the phrase is,converted. The whole wisdom and excellence of religious training consist in enlightening this noble sentiment, and giving it a right direction. I am the rather confirmed in these views, by having remarked, that the chief, palpable and tangible influences of religion, which I have witnessed in all the sects, that I have had occasion to observe, have seemed to me to result from the affectionate spirit of their worship, creating in them strong dispositions to love one another.Open the gospels and the epistles, and what is the first impression from perusing these unique and original writings, so wholly unlike any other recorded compositions, and bearing upon a theme of such astonishing import? The simplicity and fervor, with which the spirit of love is impressed upon the pages. The strong and before unwitnessed manifestation of this spirit was the striking aspect, which the first Christians presented to pagan beholders. ‘See!’ said they, ‘how these Christians love one another.’ Every time, I peruse the writings of the New Testament, this peculiar badge of discipleship seems more visibly impressed upon them. In what other institution, but that of Christianity, was it ever practicable to possess all things in common? Where has been the community, in which no one felt want, when a disciple had wherewith to satisfy it? In what other chronicles do we meet with such affecting and sublime examples of devotion to each other, and a constancy of affection, which showed itself proof against all other human passions, selfishness, hope, fear, earthly love, and the terror of death? What tenderness and singleness of heart in their affection for each other! How beautifully they demonstrate, that the sentiment, which actuated them, had gained a complete triumph over all considerations, arising from objects below the sun? He on whose bosom the loved disciple leaned must certainly be admitted to know the peculiar and distinguishing feature of his religion. This feature stands forth embodied in all his teachings. Philanthropyis the predominant trait in the life of him,who went about doing good. Consider the basis of religion to be a sentiment implanted in our constitution, and this result would naturally be expected to flow from its development.True religion, consisting in an enlightened and affectionate direction of the heart towards the divinity, and manifesting itself in love to the human family, and in consequent obedience to the universal and unchangeable laws of the Creator, can only be expected to result from the highest discipline of the mind, and the ultimate exercise of the purest reason. But the sentiment, from which this religion springs, in some form or other, as naturally impels the heart towards God, and its faith and aspirations towards immortality, as fishes desire to find their home in the water, or birds in the air; and as everything, that has life, obeys the peculiar instincts and impulses impressed by the divine hand. Why else, should every people under heaven, in all time, have been found with a religion in some form, and hopes and fears beyond the grave? Consider religion in this light, and its hopes are as sure, as those objects, towards which the instincts of all other animals prompt them.Do I undervalue morals, since I do not deem them a part, of what should be properly called religion? I trust, I cannot be so mistaken. Ethics may be taught, as a science, and, however important, seems to me no more a part of religion, than mathematics or natural philosophy. Love will create morals; and its perfection the perfection of morals, that we ascribe to angels. All that has been urged from the pulpit, in regard to faith and works, as cause and effect, may, with still more justice, be applied to love and duty. Love is the faith of the heart, and its original impress, when rightly trained in the science of ethics, and enlightened by pure and simple reason, produces its results in the best exemplification of the christian character.Note 57, page 165.That person has no right to complain of the shortness of life, who lies in bed, either sleeping, or dozing, until nine; and thus voluntarily consigns to unconsciousness a twelfth part of his existence. As little reason has he for indulging a querulous spirit on this score, if he spends without object a considerable portion of his time with people, about whom he knows nothing, except that they are incapable of furnishing a moment’s pleasure, or instruction to any one. If each one noted down at night the incidents of the day, that had occupied his time, and how much of it he had appropriated to each, I fear all that portion, that we call people of leisure would be able to show but a lean schedule either of utility or enjoyment, as the result.Complaints of the brevity of life are equally interdicted to all those, who do not wisely improve every hour of the brief and uncertain present. He, who regretted his stinted fortune, would find, and deserve little sympathy, if, in the very moments of complaining, he was seen inconsiderately squandering from that limited fund. To form a resolution to mark every moment of life, that we might, with a succession of pleasant ideas, would probably triple the duration of most human lives. To sleep no more than nature requires, to rise early, to discipline ourselves to preserve an elastic and active spirit and a vigorous will, are parts of this resolution. It is a much greater part, than is commonly apprehended, to waste as little time as possible on those, who are incapable of understanding us, and whom we are as little capable of understanding. Reciprocal good feeling is much more likely to be created, and sustained by those who are determined to avoid this course, than those who, from mere unmeaning civility and common etiquette, bring their incompatibilities together, to make common stock of a mutual weariness with each other, which soon ripens into concealed, if not expressed ill feeling.They, who are accustomed to think in this direction, will easily fill out the fine outline of the author’s views touching the right mode to arrest the flight of time. To add to this sketch would require an extent of detail, for which I have here no place. The general principle of this process seems to consist in meeting pain and adversity with a spirit so philosophic and firm that they will recoil from it; and to dwell upon every innocent enjoyment, as though it were our first, and would be our last; to prolong it by investing it with all possible moral relations; and to discipline the mind never to become hackneyed, sated, wearied, and callous to the sense of objects in which man is bound to feel an interest, alike by his duty and his nature.Never was a more stupid maxim, than that common one, thatnil admirariis the proper motto of a philosopher. To preserve a freshness, a juvenile sensibility of the heart for the admiration of whatever is new, beautiful and striking, for all the pleasures of taste and the understanding, seems to me the true secret of the highest wisdom. Who can fail to be inspired with disgust at witnessing the common spectacle ofcognoscenti, men ofvirtu, travelled fools, who have been everywhere, and seen everything; and by the contemptuous sneer, with which they effect to see, hear, feel and speak of all, that passes under their present observation, instruct you, that they are too wise, and of a taste too refined, to be pleased with what satisfies untravelled people. For my part, when I hear them boast of the music, paintings and architecture of continental Europe, and England, as though all the sources of beauty were there, I can only say, that nature is always at hand, to mock at all the puny efforts of art; that she delights to mould living faces and forms in remote country cottages, that nobeau idéalcan reach; that the songs of the birds, that return from other climes to their forsaken groves with the first sunny days of spring constitute a music richer to the heart, than the most fashionable opera; and that a pure spring landscape is a pictured thousand times more splendid, than any that ever adorned the walls of the Louvre. He, who preserves,to his utmost age, his youthful sensibility of heart, and who is willing to be pleased with whatever will impart innocent pleasure, will find innumerable and never failing occasions to give his heart up to the full impulses of joy.‘I pity,’ says Sterne, ‘the man, who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry ’tis all barren; and yet so it is; and so is all the world, to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. I declare said I, clapping my hands cheerly together, that were I in a desert, I would find in it the wherewith to call forth my affections. If I could not do better, I would fasten them on some sweet myrtle, or seek some melancholy cypress, to connect myself to. I would court its shade, and greet it kindly for its protection; I would cut my name upon it, and swear, it was the loveliest tree in the desert. If its leaves withered, I would teach myself to mourn; and when they rejoiced, I would rejoice with them.’Note 58, page 166.I consider it no unimportant part of the process of prolonging our earthly sojourn, to lay in, if I may so speak, as great a stock as possible, of pleasant remembrances. I appeal to the experience of every one, if the sudden recollection of a foolish thing that we have said, or done, returning upon us after a lapse of years, has not brought back with the convulsive shudder of shame, a long train of associated remembrances, which have carried us back whole days upon the scene? How long seem the periods, in which these incidents occurred! Pleasant recollections are no less efficient, in prolonging the periods, in which they occurred, adding their duration to the sum of the fugitive existence that is stealing from us.For myself I can confidently affirm, that I have long since learned to find my purest and most abiding satisfactions in the memory of the past. I repeat all its happier passages and incidents. I recall the bright days, verdant landscapes, loved persons, and joyous sensations from their shadowy mansions. I renew my youthful sports; and watch for the trout along theflush spring brooks. I seat myself again on the sunny banks of the pleasant spots of my career. I would be glad to convey some idea of the vivid pleasure, I experience after a lapse of forty winters, from the deeply impressed remembrance of one beautiful spring morning, after a long and severe winter, when I was still a school-boy. The vast masses of snow were beginning to melt. The birds of prey, shut up in their retreats during the bitter winter, sailed forth in the mild clear blue. The blue bird whistled; and my heart expanded with joy and delight unknown, in the same degree, before or since. The place where these thoughts, comprising my youthful anticipations, hopes and visions occurred, will never be obliterated from my mind, while memory holds her seat. I have a thousand such treasured recollections, with which I can at any time, and to a certain extent, cheer pain, sorrow and decay. These are enjoyments stored beyond the reach of fortune, which we can prolong, and renew at pleasure.Is there not practical wisdom, in commencing every day with the steady effort, to make as much of it, as if it were to be our whole existence. If we have duties to perform, in themselves severe and laborious, we may inquire, if there be not some way, by which to invest them with pleasant associations? A man may find amusement in his free thoughts, while following his plough upon the hill side; in digging up the words for a dictionary, or in copying out a brief. He may train himself, by an inefficient and shrinking spirit, to recoil from these tasks, as insupportable burdens. How many men find their pleasure, in what would be the positive horror and torment of the indolent! How weak the spirit, and how silly the vanity which we display, in ever renewing narrations of our little personal troubles, pains and misfortunes! If we would have the discretion to measure the sympathy, which we may expect from others, in such discourses, by that, which we are conscious of feeling for theirs of the same character, it would go far to teach us the folly of that querulous spirit, which doles forth the story of sufferings and sorrows, as though the narrator were the only sufferer, and were entitled to a monopoly of all the passing pity.Note 59, page 169.This compendium of the moral acquirements, entering into the character of an accomplished philosopher, I consider one of the happiest, which any book of morals can show. Here is an ample volume of ethics, on a page. How differently would a modern auto-biographer have announced the same facts! In what rounded periods and circuitous expressions would he have striven to convey the same ideas, to impress the reader, that his modesty forbade the frank personality of the Roman philosopher. The whole spirit of this admirable summary would have evaporated in barren generalities. What we admire in the ancients is their noble simplicity and directness, which disdains the vanity of circumlocution, that wishes to hide itself under the semblance of modesty.It seems to me, that it would not be amiss for the clergy of the day to seek the models of their homilies and sermons in such a manner of declaring moral truth. Abstract ethical declamation, and all the scholastic acquirements and thelimæ laborare but poor substitutes for that searching directness, which, avoiding abstractions and generalities, appeals at once to the personal consciousness. I allow, that I should love to hear such sermons, as that of Dr Primrose to his fellow prisoners, in the Vicar of Wakefield. There is no eloquence, there can be none, except in simple and direct appeals to thought and conscience.Note 60, page 171.Various writers of splendid genius have tasked their imagination, to present us with the results of endowing a person with immortality on earth. Such a character has been delineated with great power by Godwin, in his St Leon; and by Croly in the story ofSalathiel, or the Wandering Jew. It is an instructive labor, to record the wanderings, changes, weariness, abandonment, and final despair of a wretch cursedwith immortality; and by the circumstance rendered a monster, out of relation with human beings; and cut off from all real sympathy with his mortal kind. It is questionable, whether these writers, or any others who have drawn similar pictures, have formed adequate conceptions, of what would be the actual result of an earthly immortality. The view of the author before me seems just. I can easily imagine the immortal delivered from earthly sorrows. But, when I contemplate him divested of the hopes, fears, affections and sympathies, which trace their origin to our common mortal nature, I cannot imagine the affections, that are to replace these.I can conceive none other, than a being, who would become drowsy at sixty, and sleepy at a hundred. All beyond presents to me a lethargy of almost unconscious existence, from which my fancy can devise no effort of sufficient energy to arouse him. In fact, it is sufficient, that nature has awarded, in her universal decree, that man should not be out of analogy and relation with the rest of nature; to convince us, that the decision involves our best interest. The more our views of nature enlarge, the more we become conscious, that she has arranged all her laws with such perfect wisdom, that if we could reverse any of them, we should do it at the expense of our own happiness.Of all pictures of men, rendered immortal upon earth, the most forcible, brief and revolting, is that of Swift. ‘After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the Struldbrugs among them. He said, they commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old; after which they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession; for otherwise, there not being more than two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they come to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, covetous, peevish, morose, vain, talkative,but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and their impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects, against which their envy seems particularly directed, are the vices of the younger sort, and the death of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament, and repine, that others have gone to a harbor of rest, at which they can never hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything, but what they learned, and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than their best recollection. The least miserable among them, are those, who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories. These meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities, which abound in others.‘If a Struldbrug happen to marry one of his kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those, who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are considered dead in law. At ninety they lose their teeth and hair, and have no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to, still continue without increasing, or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellations of things, and the names of persons, even of those, who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might be capable.‘They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, andthe women more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen, I soon distinguished who was the oldest, although there was not above a century or two between them.‘The reader will easily believe, from what I have heard and seen, that my keen appetite for perpetuity and life was much abated. I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed, and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure, from such a life. The king heard all that had passed between me and my friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly, wishing I could send a couple of Struldbrugs to my own country, to arm our people against the fear of death.’Note 61, page 171.Fear, absolutely useless, gratuitous fear, probably constitutes much the largest proportion of the whole mass of human misery; and of this proportion the fear of death is the principal part. There are but very few people who, in examining the feeling of revulsion and horror, most constantly present to their minds, will not find it to be the dread of death. The whole observation, which I have made upon human nature, has only enlightened me the more as to the universality and extent of the influence of this evil. I see it infusing bitterness into the bosoms of the young, before they are as yet capable of reflection; and ceasing not to inspire its terrors into the heart, which has experienced the sorrows of fourscore winters. I see little difference in the alarm with which it darkens the mind of the heir, elate with youthful hope, and the galley slave—those apparently the most happy, and the tenants of penitentiaries and lazar-houses. All cling alike convulsively to life, and shudder at the thought of death.Part, and perhaps the greater part, of this fear is a sadheritage, which has been transmitted down to us, an accumulating fund of sorrow, for a hundred generations. I have stated my conviction in another place, that our education, religious ceremonies, domestic manners, in short, all the influences of the present institutions of society tend to increase this evil. I am well aware, at the same time, that the number of those, who will admit it to be an evil, is but small. Most view it as it has been considered in all Christian countries, from time immemorial, as an instrument in the hand of God and his servants, to awe, and restrain the mind, recall it from illusions and vanities, and reduce it to the seriousness and obedience of religion. The broad declamation of the pulpit for effect, revolting representations of hell-torment and the vindictive justice of God, have passed with a readier tolerance, under a kind of tacit allowance, that if the means were unworthy, the proposed end was such as would sanctify them. It is almost unnecessary to remark, that all my hope of producing any useful impression is with the small, but growing number, (in the next age, I trust, it will be a majority) who hold this whole doctrine in utter unbelief; who have no faith in amendment and conversion, that grows out of the base and servile principle of fear; and least of all the fear of death; who believe that a great reform, a thorough amelioration of our species, will never be effected, until it is made a radical principle of our whole discipline, and all our social institutions, to bring this servile passion completely under the control of our reason. With these, it is a deep and fixed conviction, that every thing base, degrading and destructive of intellect and improvement, readily associates with fear; and that the basis of true religion, generous conception, high thoughts and really noble character, is firmly laid in a young mind, when trained to become as destitute of fear, as if it were conscious of being a sinless angel, above the reach of pain or death.It would be to no purpose for me to pause in this place, to obviate the strictures of those who will denounce this doctrine, by quoting from the scriptures the frequent inculcationsof thefear of the Lord, and the Apostle’s declaration, that by theterrors of the Lord we persuade men. The true and religious fear, inculcated in the scriptures, not only has no relation to the passion I am discussing, but cannot exist, any more than the other requisite traits of religious character, in a bosom swayed by the grovelling and selfish passion of servile fear.That nature has implanted in our bosoms an instinctive dread of death, I readily admit. But fear, as a factitious and unnatural addition to the true instincts of human nature, has been so accumulated by rolling down through a hundred generations, that we are in no condition to know the degree, in which nature intended we should possess it. We have innumerable base propensities, which we charge upon nature, that are, in fact, no more, than the guilty heritage, bequeathed us by our ancestors. Nature could have implanted no higher degree of instinctive dread of death, than just what was requisite, to preserve the race from prodigal waste, or rash exposure of a gift, which, once lost, is irretrievable. If nature has inwrought in any constitution one particle of fear, beyond what was required for this result, she has, as in all other excessive endowments, granted reason and judgment, to regulate, and reduce it to its due subordination.Will not religion achieve the great triumph of casting out the base principle of fear? I would be the last to deny, or undervalue the trophies of true religion. I have no doubt that religion has, in innumerable instances, extracted the pain and poison from the sting of death. More than this, it would unquestionably produce this triumph in every case, if every individual were completely under the influence of the true principle. It would attain this end by processes and discipline exactly concurrent, if not similar, with those I am about to propose. But it is a lamentable fact, that very few are under the influence of true religion. Of those, whom charity deems most sincerely pious, under all professions and forms, the far greater number exhibit, on the bed of dangerous sickness, the same fear of death with the rest. Weconsider this a generally conceded fact; for, among all but the most extravagant sects, death-bed terror, or triumph has ceased to be considered a test of the personal religion of the deceased. Even in the cases of enthusiastic triumph in the last moments, which we have all witnessed, and which are justly so soothing to the survivors, it would often be difficult to determine the respective influence of laudanum, and partial insanity doing its last work upon the nervous system.Be this as it may, the triumph over the fear of death, which I would inculcate, should not be tested by the equivocal deportment of the patient, in the near view of death; but by his own joyous consciousness of deliverance from this tormenting thraldom and bondage, during his whole life. Let fear and horror crowd what bitterness they may into the last few hours, it can bear but little proportion to the long agony of a whole life, passed inbondage through fear of death. To produce the desired triumph, the highest training of philosophy should concur with the paternal spirit and the immortal hopes of the gospel; and a calm, reasoning, unboasting fearlessness of death should enable us to taste all the little of pure and innocent joy, that may be found between the cradle and the grave—as unmolested, as unsprinkled with this fear, as if the destroyer were not among the works of God.How may this result be obtained? How may a generation be so trained as to lose not a particle of enjoyment, nor be influenced to one unworthy act, by the fear of death? To answer these questions, in the requisite detail of illustration, would require volumes. It might, perhaps, best be done by selecting a single child as an example; and by developing, at every advancing step, the process of his training; pointing out every instance, in which it would be necessary to withdraw him from the influence of the present systems of discipline; in which, in a word, his whole education should be conducted with a preponderant purpose, among other desirable results, to render him perfectly fearless of death. It is hoped that some one of those, who believe this a chief desideratum in the reformation and improvement of thepresent system of education, will take this great point in hand; and in this way indicate to the age the modes of discipline, through which this result may be expected. It is obvious, that a much severer discipline would be required for the first generation so trained, than for the second; who, with less transmitted cowardice than their parents, would perpetuate a constantly improving moral constitution to the generations to come. My present plan admits only a brief summary of motives and arguments, commonly adduced, as calculated to diminish, regulate, and subdue the fear of death. It is evident, that these motives and arguments are predicated upon present opinions, and such as may be supposed capable of acting upon the existing generation, enduring the hereditary and inculcated bondage of this passion.1. The terrific and undefinable images of horror, that imagination affixes to the termdeath, are founded in an entire misconception. The word is the sign of no positive idea whatever. It conjures up a shadowy horror to the mind, finely delineated, as a poetic personage, by Milton; and implies some agony that is supposed to lie between the limits of existence and non-existence, or existence in another form. This is simple illusion. So long as we feel, death is not—and when we cease to feel, or commence feeling in a changed form, death has been:—fuit mors. So that the term imports a mere phantom of the imagination. In the words of Droz, ‘it is not yet; or it is past.’ If one can arrest thepunctum stans, and the actual sensation, where waking consciousness terminates, and sleep commences, he can tell us, what death is. Every one is conscious of having passed through this change; but no one can give any account, what were his sensations in the dividing moment of interval between wakefulness and sleep.2. Imagination is allowed to settle all the circumstances, and form all the associations belonging to the supposed agony of this event. It is one of the few important incidents in life, upon which reason is never allowed to fix a calm and severe scrutiny. It has been seen in a light, too sacred and terrible,to permit such a lustration. ‘It is dreadful,’ says common apprehension, ‘for it is the breaking up the long and tender partnership, and producing a separation between the body and the soul—dreadful, because it is the wages of sin, and is appointed to be a perpetual memorial of the righteous displeasure of God in view of sin;’ ‘dreadful,’ say others, who most unphilosophically believe that man was not originally intended to be mortal, ‘because a violence upon nature; dreadful, because a departure of the spirit from the regions of the living, and the light of the sun, into an unknown and eternal condition. Suns will revolve, moons wax and wane, years, revolutions, ages, counted by all the particles of mist in the sea, will elapse, but the place, whence the spirit is gone, will never know it more.’ ‘It is terrible,’ says common apprehension, ‘for it is often preceded and accompanied by spasm, and convulsive struggle.’ The psalmody, which we sing in church, speaks of theghastly paleness, thechill sweat, and themortal coldness, circumstances all, which, seen in other associations, would assume no aspect of peculiar terror.Then, too, the attendants in the sick room with a look of horror inspect the extremities of the patient, and petrify bystanders with the terrible words, ‘he is struck with death,’ as though the grisly phantom king of the poet’s song had invisibly glided in, and, with his icy sceptre, given his victim the blow of mortal destiny. Who knows not that, though there are usually mortal symptoms, which enable an experienced eye to foresee approaching dissolution, the termdeath-struckimports nothing but the weakest vulgar prejudice, a prejudice under the influence of which millions have been suffered to expire, that might have been roused! Innumerable persons, pronounced to be in that situation, have actually recovered; and no moment, in the ordinary forms of disease, can with any certainty be pronounced beyond hope and the chances of aid, but that which succeeds the last sigh. Thus every thought of the living, and every aspect of the dying, by a wayward ingenuity, heightens the imagined horror of the event.Then there are conversations and hymns and funeral odes and Night Thoughts, which speak of the coldness, silence and eternal desolation of the grave; as though the unconscious sleeper felt the chill of the superincumbent clay, the darkness of his narrow house or this terrible isolation from the living. The pale and peaceful corpse is contemplated with a look of horror. Two, of stout heart and tried friendship, abide near the kneaded clod, until the living are relieved from their ghostly terrors, by its deposition out of their sight in the narrow house. The family, the children, the friends alike showing the creeping horror, glide quick and silently on tiptoe through the apartment, where the sleeper lies. The first nightfall after the disease is one of peculiar and unmitigated horror. The family, however disinclined to union before, this evening unite, with that impress on their countenances, which words reach not. Now return to their thoughts the nursery tales, the thrilling narratives of haunted houses and wandering ghosts; and if the minister comes among them, it is probably to evoke before their imaginations condemned spirits doomed to eternal sufferings, quenchless flames, groans without respite, and all the ineffable and eternal torments, that the clerical vocabulary of centuries has accumulated.Need we wonder, that in a christian country, and among families of the best training, such impressions have become so universal, that they, who would be reputed brave, blazon their courage, by affirming their readiness to sleep in a cemetery, or the funeral vault of a church! It requires no extraordinary effort, and nothing more than the simple triumph of reason among the faculties, to enable any man, to sleep alone in a charnel house with as little dread, as in the apartment of an inn, so that the places were alike in comfort and salubrity. It does not require us to be wise, or courageous; but simply not cowards and fools, to feel as little horror in the view of corpses, as statues of plaster or marble. One of the most terrible ideas of death, after all, is, that we shall thus, immediately upon our decease, inflict this shrinking revulsion of terror upon all, who look at our remains.The view, which reason takes of the sick and dying bed is, that, in the far greater number of mortal cases, the transition from life to death is as imperceptible, as the progress of the sun and the seasons. One faculty dies after another. The victim has received the three warnings unconsciously. Ordinarily, a person may be said to have paid a third part of his tribute of mortality at forty-five; half at fifty-five; and the whole at three score and ten.When acute and severe sickness assails the patient, he has passed through what may be called the agony of death at a very early period of his disease. His chief suffering is past, as soon the irritability and the vigorous powers of life have been broken down. When the disorder assumes the typhoid and insensible form, the dull sleep, that precedes the final rest of the tomb, is already creeping upon him; and severe suffering is precluded. If there are convulsions after this, as often happens, they are seldom more than spasmodic movements, impressed by the nervous action upon the tendons, more terrible to the beholder, than the sufferer; differing little from those starts and struggles, with which many persons in high health commence sleeping and waking. He who has experienced the sensation of fainting, and, still more, of an epileptic fit, has suffered, I am ready to believe, all that there is in dying.3. Reason, calmly surveying the case of the dying person himself, sees many alleviations, of which imagination, sketching under the influence of the dread of death, takes no account. He finds himself, in this new predicament, the absorbing object of all interests and all solicitude and affection. It is not in human nature, that this should not call up complacent emotions and slumbering affections from their secret cells. The subsequent progress towards the last moment brings an imperceptibly increasing insensibility, manifested by drowsiness and sleep. Of those, who preserve the exercise of their faculties entire to the last, many instances are recorded of persons, who had shown the most unmanly dread of death in their health, that have met dissolution with the calmness of perfectself-possession. Of the rest, the greater number die with little more apparent pain and struggle, than accompany the act of sleeping. The greater freshness, vigor and nervous irritability of young people and children cause that most of the exceptions are of this description. In a great number of cases, which I have witnessed, I have paused in doubt, whether the person had yielded his last sigh, or not, after he had actually deceased. To soften the last infliction, nature almost invariably veils it under a low delirium, or absolute unconsciousness.4. It is impossible to imagine a more obvious and unquestionable principle of philosophy, than that every reasoning faculty of our nature must declare to us, loudly and unequivocally, and with an influence as strong as reason can command, that it is wisdom, nay, the dictate of the least portion of common sense, to dread, to resist, to repine, to groan, as little as possible, in view of an endurance absolutely inevitable. If it be hard to sustain when met with a fearless, resigned and unmurmuring spirit, it must certainly be still harder, when we are obliged to bend our necks to it with the excruciating addition of shrinking fear, dreadful anticipation and ineffectual struggles to evade it, and with murmurs and groans, at finding the inutility of these efforts. Innumerable examples prove to us, that nature has kindly endowed us with reason and mental vigor to such an extent, that, under the influence of right motive and training, no possible form of suffering can be presented, over which this power may not manifest, and has not manifested a complete triumph.Of these innumerable examples, it is only necessary to cite those of the martyrs, of all forms of religion. These prove farther, that this undaunted self-possession, in every conceivable shape and degree of agony, was not the result of a rare and peculiar temperament, a want of sensibility, or the possession of uncommon physical courage; that it was not because there was no perception of danger, or susceptibility of pain; this magnanimity, this impassibility to fear and pain and death has been exhibited in nearly equal degrees by peopleof every age, each sex and all conditions. Let the proper motive be supplied, let the martyr have had the common influence of the training of his faith, and the consequence failed not. All the shades and varieties of natural and mental difference of character were noted in the deportment of the sufferers. But they were alike in the stern proof of a courage, which defied death. The fact is proved by them, as strongly as moral fact can be proved, that the mind of every individual might find in itself native self-possession and vigor, to enable it to display an entire ascendency over fear, pain and death.Nor does this fact rest solely for support on the history of martyrs, or sufferers at anAuto da fé, or by torture in any of its forms. We could find examples of it in every department of history, and every view of human character. The red men of our wilderness, as we have elsewhere seen, are still more astonishing illustrations of this fact—I say astonishing, because the timid and effeminate white man shivers, and scarcely credits his senses, as he sees the young Indian warrior smoking his pipe, singing his songs, boasting of his victories and uttering his menaces, when enveloped in a slow fire, apparently as unmoved, as reckless and unconscious of pain, as if sitting at his ease in his own cabin. All, that has been found necessary, by this strange people, to procure this heroism, is, that the children, from boyhood, should be constantly under a discipline, every part and every step of which tends directly to shame and contempt at the least manifestation of cowardice, in view of any danger, or of a shrinking consciousness of pain in the endurance of any suffering. The males, so trained, never fail to evidence the fruit of their discipline. Sentenced to death, they almost invariably scorn to fly from their sentence, when escape is in their power. If in debt, they desire a reprieve, that they may hunt, until their debts are paid. They then voluntarily return, and surrender themselves to the executioner. Nothing is more common than for a friend to propose to suffer for his friend, a parent for a child, or a child for a parent. When the sufferer receives the blow, there is an unblenching look, which manifeststhe presence of the same spirit, that smokes with apparent unconcern amidst the crackling flames.A proof, that this is the fruit of training, and not of native insensibility, as others have thought, and as I formerly thought myself, is that this contempt of pain and death is considered a desirable trait only in the males. To fly, like a woman, like her to laugh, and weep, and groan, are expressions of contempt, which they apply to their enemies with ineffable scorn. The females, almost excluded from witnessing the process of Spartan discipline, by which the males acquire their mental hardihood, partake not of the fruits of it, and with some few exceptions, are shrinking and timid, like the children of civilization.I know, that there will not be wanting those, who will condemn alike the training and the heroism, as harsh, savage, unfeeling, stoical and unworthy to be admitted, as an adjunct to civilization. But no one will offer to deny, that the primitive Christian, put in conflict with a hungry lion, that Rogers at the Smithfield stake, that the young captive warrior, exulting, and chanting his songs while enduring the bitterest agonies that man can inflict, in the serene and sublime triumph of mind over matter, and spirit over the body, is the most imposing spectacle we can witness, the clearest proof we can contemplate, that we have that within us which is not all of clay, nor all mortal; or doubt, that these persons endure infinitely less physical pain, in consequence of their heroic self-possession, than they would have suffered, had they met their torture in paroxysms of terror, shrinking and self-abandonment.However we may reason, however we may decry these views, as savage, impracticable, unnatural and undesirable, the fact is, that we all feel alike upon this subject. The thousands in a Roman amphitheatre only evinced a trait, that belongs to our common nature, when they instantly, and without consulting each other, gave the signal to save that gladiator, who most clearly manifested cool self-possessionand contempt of death. After witnessing the execution of a criminal, who shows courage, the spectators go away describing, with animated gesture, and in terms of admiration, the fearlessness of the fellow the moment before his death. We all speak with unmingled satisfaction of the circumstance, in the death of our friends, that they departed in the conscious dignity of self-possession and hope. All readers are moved with one sensation, as they read the record of the noble trait in the character of Cæsar, gracefully folding himself in his mantle, after he had received so many mortal thrusts. Few of us hear unmoved of the old English patriot, who requested the executioner to support him up the steps to the scaffold, adding that he would shift for himself to get down; or of the other, who cried, as he stooped his head to the block,dulce et decorum est pro patria mori! If I recollect, it is Silliman, who gives the affecting notice of the last hours of the duke of Richmond, the late governor general of Canada. Invested with all conceivable circumstances to render life desirable, he was bitten by a favorite dog in a rabid state; and died, in the most excruciating tortures, of the terrible hydrophobia. When the horrible paroxysm was felt by him to be approaching, he was accustomed to nerve his sinking courage by these words; ‘Henry, remember, that none of your ancestors were cowards.’ I give the trait from recollection, but have heard substantially the same account from other sources. This is the secret of the perverse general admiration of warriors, and heroes, and great generals. It is this principle in its blindness, which finds a niche of favor in so many hearts for duellists. In a word, intrepidity, deny it who may, is the trait which finds more universal favor with human nature in general than any other. Why? Because we are weak and frail beings, exposed to innumerable pains and dangers; and the quality we most frequently need, is courage. Without it life is a living death, a long agony of fear. With it, we die but once, enduring at the most but a momentary pang, never anticipated, never embittering a moment in advance with imaginary suffering.We have no hesitation in affirming, that it would be no more difficult to educate the coming generation of civilized people to this spirit, than it is to impart it to the whole race of males among the red men. However inferior we may count these people, in comparison with ourselves in other respects, they have at least one manifest advantage over us; they never torment themselves, because they know they must die.But we are told that the actual possession of this spirit would produce such a recklessness of life, that the great ends of Providence would be defeated; and people would expose themselves to death with so little concern, that the race would waste away and become extinct. We never need combat a theory, an abstract opinion, when the case can be settled by a fact. Is it so with the warriors of the red men? On the contrary, can another people be found so wary, so adroit to evade, or resist danger, so fertile in expedients to save life? The coward of their number meets the death he would fly; and the intrepid warrior puts forth all the resources of his instinctive sagacity, all his keen and practised discernment, to discover the best means of evasion. If he must meet that death, which his skill cannot evade, nor his powers resist, he instantly settles down upon the resource of his invincible heroism of endurance.In fact, one of the direct fruits of the intrepidity we would wish to see universal, is, that it will give its possessor all possible chances for preserving health and life. It saves him from the influence of fear, a passion among the most debilitating, and adverse to life, of any to which our nature is subject. Braced by his courage, he passes untouched amidst a contagious epidemic, to which the timid and apprehensive nature falls a victim. In danger it gives him coolness and self-command, to discover, and avail himself of all his chances of wise resistance, or probable escape. In sickness, he has all the aids to recover, which nature allows, in being delivered from the most dangerous symptom in innumerable maladies, the debilitating persuasion of the patient, that he shall not rise from his sickness. In a word, the direct reverse of thecharge is the fact. The wise and enlightened fearlessness, which I consider it so important to acquire, is in every way as much the preserver of life, as it is indispensable to happiness; as cowardice proverbially runs in the face of the hideous monster that it creates.5. The fact, that an evil is felt to be alleviated, which is shared in common with all around us, has been generally recognised, though this perverted sympathy has been traced to the basest selfishness, by a humiliating analysis of our nature, which I have neither space nor inclination to develope. We all know, that the same person, who is most beneficent, most active in his benevolence, and large in his wishes to do good, would shrink from a great calamity, which he saw himself destined to encounter, for the first and the last among his whole race. But inform him, that by an impartial award he shares it in common with all his kind, and you reconcile him at once to his lot. Whether the spirit of his resignation in this case be pure, or polluted in its origin, it is not my present purpose to inquire. It is sufficient to be assured, that there is such a feeling deeply inherent in human nature. The suffering patient, as he lays himself down to part from all friends, to be severed from all ties, to see the green earth, the bright sun, and the visible heavens no more, and to be conscious, that the everlasting circle of ages will continue its revolutions without ever bringing him back to the forsaken scene, cannot repine, that he has been put upon this bitter trial alone. He must be deeply conscious, view it in what aspect he may, that it presents no new harshness nor horror to him. Of all the countless millions, that have passed away, and been replaced by others, like the vernal leaves, death has stood before every solitary individual of the mighty mass, the same phantom king of terrors. Each has contemplated the same inexorable, irreversible award, been held in the same suspense of hopes, and fears, and compelled to endure the same struggles. Looking upon the immense mortal drama of ages, the actors seem slowly and imperceptibly to enter, and depart from the scene. But in the lapse of one short age, the hopes, fears, loves and hatreds ofall the countless millions have vanished, to be replaced by those of another generation. The heart swells at the recollection how much each of these mortals must have endured, in this stern and inevitable encounter, as measured by our own suffering in the same case. It is only necessary for the patient to extend his vision a few years in advance of his own decease; and his friends, his children, his visitants, all that surround him, will in their turn recline on the same bed. Who cannot feel the palpable folly of repining at an evil shared with all, that have been, are, or will be!
‘Each waits the other’s license to disturbThe deep, unbroken silence.’
‘Each waits the other’s license to disturbThe deep, unbroken silence.’
‘Each waits the other’s license to disturb
The deep, unbroken silence.’
Note 53a, page 152.
It is questionable, how far they could lay claim to be the real friends of humanity, who would reason away this last, best solace of human wretchedness, even were it proved an illusion. But man is just as certainly and necessarily a religious being, as he is a being constituted with appetites and passions. Grant, that there are people, who seem wholly destitute of the religious sentiment. Such are the real Atheists from internal conviction; for observe, there are many, who assume to be such, to pass for free and independent thinkers, and who are most likely, in their dying moments, to require absolution and extreme unction. But if there are men thus monstrously constituted, so are there individuals apparently as destitute of the common appetites and passions. We take no account of such exceptions, in indicating a general rule; and say, that man is constituted a religious being, and possessed of certain appetites and passions; although there may be selected a few individuals, who seem entirely without either.
Religion is the key stone of the arch of the moral universe. It is the fountain of endearing friendship; and on it are founded those sublime relations, which exist between the visible and the invisible world; those, who still sojourn here, and those who have become citizens of the country beyond us. It is the poesy of existence, the basis of all high thought and virtuous feeling; of charities and morals; and the very tie of social existence. Let no person claim to be good, while laying an unhallowed hand upon this ark of the covenant of the Eternal with the children of sorrow and death.
Note 54, page 154.
Treatises upon the evidences of religion may be useful for theological students; and I have heard people affirm, that they have been rescued by such works from the gloom of unbelief. But, believing, as I do, that we were constituted religious animals, if such a term may be admitted, and that the religious sentiment is a part of our organization, I have quite as much confidence in the arguments of the heart, as of the head. I undertake not to pronounce, whether M. de Chateaubriand were a good christian, or not. But I affirm, that I have nowhere seen my own views of the process, by which the original endowment of the religious sentiment is called into action, so eloquently described, as in the following extract from that writer.
‘My mother, after being thrown, at the age of seventy-two years, into a dungeon, where she saw a part of her children perish, expired at last upon a couch of straw, to which her miseries had consigned her. The remembrance of my errors infused great bitterness into her last days. In death she charged one of my sisters to recall me to that religion, in which I had been reared. My sister transmitted me the last wish of my mother. When this letter reached me beyond the seas, my sister herself was no more. She had died from the consequences of her imprisonment. These two voices, proceeding from the tomb, this death, which served as the interpreter of the dead, deeply struck me. I did not yield, I admit, to great supernatural lights. My conviction proceeded from the heart. I wept, and I believed.’
Note 55, page 157.
The belief naturally originated by the sentiment of religion, or what may be called the faith of the heart, is presented in the last fruitless attempt of the old man, to cheer the despair of Paul in the exquisite tale of Paul and Virginia. ‘Andwhy deplore the fate of Virginia? Virginia still exists. There is, be assured, a region, in which virtue receives its reward. Virginia now is happy. Oh! if from the abode of angels, she could tell you, as she did, when she bade you farewell, “O Paul, life is but a trial. I was faithful to the laws of nature, love and virtue. Heaven found I had fulfilled my duties, and snatched me forever from all the miseries, I might have endured myself; and all, I might have felt for the miseries of others. I am placed above the reach of all human evils, and you pity me! I am become pure and unchangeable, as a particle of light, and you would recall me to the darkness of human life. O Paul! O my beloved friend! Recollect those days of happiness, when in the morning we felt the delightful sensations excited by the unfolding beauties of nature; when we gazed upon the sun, gilding the peaks of those rocks; and then spreading his rays over the bosom of the forests. How exquisite were our emotions, while we enjoyed the glowing colors of the opening day, the odors of our shrubs, the concerts of our birds! Now at the source of beauty, from which flows all that is delightful on earth, my soul intuitively sees, tastes, hears, touches, what before she could only be made sensible of through the medium of our weak organs. Oh! what language can describe, those shores of eternal bliss, which I inhabit forever! All, that infinite power and celestial bounty can confer, that harmony, which results from friendship with numberless beings, exulting in the same felicity, we enjoy in unmixed perfection. Support, then, the trial which is allotted you, that you may heighten the happiness of your Virginia, by love, which will know no termination, by hymeneals, which will be immortal. There I will calm your regrets; I will wipe away your tears. Raise your thoughts towards infinite duration, and bear the evils of a moment.”’
Note 56, page 160.
Phrenologists affirm, that along the centre of the crown is situated the organ of veneration, or religious sentiment; that, where it is large, the subject is strongly endowed with religious feeling, and the contrary, when it is otherwise; that, with some few monstrous exceptions, all possess this organ in a larger or smaller degree; and that, as the sentiment springing from the action of this organ is directed towards proper or improper objects, enlightened by reason, rendered gloomy by fear, or superstitious by credulity, is the religious character of the person. Neither my subject, nor my inclination calls upon me to agitate a system, which has generally been met only with unsparing ridicule, instead of manly argument. With its doctrines or merits I intermeddle not in this place. But, as far as the system declares, that those people, whom we call pious, whose tone of mind seems to dispose them to strong religious feeling, are so inclined from organization, rather than volition, or argument, I most confidently believe. Morals, whatever is taught by the science of ethics, dogmas, ceremonies, commonly phrased religion, make, in my mind, no part of it. I consider religion to be simply love, originating from instinctive impulses of veneration in the mind, for whatever is powerful, beneficent, and worthy of love. Its native tendency is to expend its affection, first upon the unknown and incomprehensible power, from whom we derived our being, whom the heart, without argument, intuitively perceives to be good. Its next and associated tendency is philanthropy, or the love of what bears the impress and image of God. If we possess not this original organization, no argument will ever persuade us to be religious. If we have it, we may be liberal, or bigoted, Christians or Mahometans, earnest or cold, according to our proportion of endowment, our training and circumstances. We may even adopt the flippant arguments of the unbelieving, and enlist ourselves under their banner. But the original principle is still within us,uneradicated, and uneradicable; and ready, if circumstances should favor the change, to present us in the form of devotees, or, as the phrase is,converted. The whole wisdom and excellence of religious training consist in enlightening this noble sentiment, and giving it a right direction. I am the rather confirmed in these views, by having remarked, that the chief, palpable and tangible influences of religion, which I have witnessed in all the sects, that I have had occasion to observe, have seemed to me to result from the affectionate spirit of their worship, creating in them strong dispositions to love one another.
Open the gospels and the epistles, and what is the first impression from perusing these unique and original writings, so wholly unlike any other recorded compositions, and bearing upon a theme of such astonishing import? The simplicity and fervor, with which the spirit of love is impressed upon the pages. The strong and before unwitnessed manifestation of this spirit was the striking aspect, which the first Christians presented to pagan beholders. ‘See!’ said they, ‘how these Christians love one another.’ Every time, I peruse the writings of the New Testament, this peculiar badge of discipleship seems more visibly impressed upon them. In what other institution, but that of Christianity, was it ever practicable to possess all things in common? Where has been the community, in which no one felt want, when a disciple had wherewith to satisfy it? In what other chronicles do we meet with such affecting and sublime examples of devotion to each other, and a constancy of affection, which showed itself proof against all other human passions, selfishness, hope, fear, earthly love, and the terror of death? What tenderness and singleness of heart in their affection for each other! How beautifully they demonstrate, that the sentiment, which actuated them, had gained a complete triumph over all considerations, arising from objects below the sun? He on whose bosom the loved disciple leaned must certainly be admitted to know the peculiar and distinguishing feature of his religion. This feature stands forth embodied in all his teachings. Philanthropyis the predominant trait in the life of him,who went about doing good. Consider the basis of religion to be a sentiment implanted in our constitution, and this result would naturally be expected to flow from its development.
True religion, consisting in an enlightened and affectionate direction of the heart towards the divinity, and manifesting itself in love to the human family, and in consequent obedience to the universal and unchangeable laws of the Creator, can only be expected to result from the highest discipline of the mind, and the ultimate exercise of the purest reason. But the sentiment, from which this religion springs, in some form or other, as naturally impels the heart towards God, and its faith and aspirations towards immortality, as fishes desire to find their home in the water, or birds in the air; and as everything, that has life, obeys the peculiar instincts and impulses impressed by the divine hand. Why else, should every people under heaven, in all time, have been found with a religion in some form, and hopes and fears beyond the grave? Consider religion in this light, and its hopes are as sure, as those objects, towards which the instincts of all other animals prompt them.
Do I undervalue morals, since I do not deem them a part, of what should be properly called religion? I trust, I cannot be so mistaken. Ethics may be taught, as a science, and, however important, seems to me no more a part of religion, than mathematics or natural philosophy. Love will create morals; and its perfection the perfection of morals, that we ascribe to angels. All that has been urged from the pulpit, in regard to faith and works, as cause and effect, may, with still more justice, be applied to love and duty. Love is the faith of the heart, and its original impress, when rightly trained in the science of ethics, and enlightened by pure and simple reason, produces its results in the best exemplification of the christian character.
Note 57, page 165.
That person has no right to complain of the shortness of life, who lies in bed, either sleeping, or dozing, until nine; and thus voluntarily consigns to unconsciousness a twelfth part of his existence. As little reason has he for indulging a querulous spirit on this score, if he spends without object a considerable portion of his time with people, about whom he knows nothing, except that they are incapable of furnishing a moment’s pleasure, or instruction to any one. If each one noted down at night the incidents of the day, that had occupied his time, and how much of it he had appropriated to each, I fear all that portion, that we call people of leisure would be able to show but a lean schedule either of utility or enjoyment, as the result.
Complaints of the brevity of life are equally interdicted to all those, who do not wisely improve every hour of the brief and uncertain present. He, who regretted his stinted fortune, would find, and deserve little sympathy, if, in the very moments of complaining, he was seen inconsiderately squandering from that limited fund. To form a resolution to mark every moment of life, that we might, with a succession of pleasant ideas, would probably triple the duration of most human lives. To sleep no more than nature requires, to rise early, to discipline ourselves to preserve an elastic and active spirit and a vigorous will, are parts of this resolution. It is a much greater part, than is commonly apprehended, to waste as little time as possible on those, who are incapable of understanding us, and whom we are as little capable of understanding. Reciprocal good feeling is much more likely to be created, and sustained by those who are determined to avoid this course, than those who, from mere unmeaning civility and common etiquette, bring their incompatibilities together, to make common stock of a mutual weariness with each other, which soon ripens into concealed, if not expressed ill feeling.
They, who are accustomed to think in this direction, will easily fill out the fine outline of the author’s views touching the right mode to arrest the flight of time. To add to this sketch would require an extent of detail, for which I have here no place. The general principle of this process seems to consist in meeting pain and adversity with a spirit so philosophic and firm that they will recoil from it; and to dwell upon every innocent enjoyment, as though it were our first, and would be our last; to prolong it by investing it with all possible moral relations; and to discipline the mind never to become hackneyed, sated, wearied, and callous to the sense of objects in which man is bound to feel an interest, alike by his duty and his nature.
Never was a more stupid maxim, than that common one, thatnil admirariis the proper motto of a philosopher. To preserve a freshness, a juvenile sensibility of the heart for the admiration of whatever is new, beautiful and striking, for all the pleasures of taste and the understanding, seems to me the true secret of the highest wisdom. Who can fail to be inspired with disgust at witnessing the common spectacle ofcognoscenti, men ofvirtu, travelled fools, who have been everywhere, and seen everything; and by the contemptuous sneer, with which they effect to see, hear, feel and speak of all, that passes under their present observation, instruct you, that they are too wise, and of a taste too refined, to be pleased with what satisfies untravelled people. For my part, when I hear them boast of the music, paintings and architecture of continental Europe, and England, as though all the sources of beauty were there, I can only say, that nature is always at hand, to mock at all the puny efforts of art; that she delights to mould living faces and forms in remote country cottages, that nobeau idéalcan reach; that the songs of the birds, that return from other climes to their forsaken groves with the first sunny days of spring constitute a music richer to the heart, than the most fashionable opera; and that a pure spring landscape is a pictured thousand times more splendid, than any that ever adorned the walls of the Louvre. He, who preserves,to his utmost age, his youthful sensibility of heart, and who is willing to be pleased with whatever will impart innocent pleasure, will find innumerable and never failing occasions to give his heart up to the full impulses of joy.
‘I pity,’ says Sterne, ‘the man, who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and cry ’tis all barren; and yet so it is; and so is all the world, to him who will not cultivate the fruits it offers. I declare said I, clapping my hands cheerly together, that were I in a desert, I would find in it the wherewith to call forth my affections. If I could not do better, I would fasten them on some sweet myrtle, or seek some melancholy cypress, to connect myself to. I would court its shade, and greet it kindly for its protection; I would cut my name upon it, and swear, it was the loveliest tree in the desert. If its leaves withered, I would teach myself to mourn; and when they rejoiced, I would rejoice with them.’
Note 58, page 166.
I consider it no unimportant part of the process of prolonging our earthly sojourn, to lay in, if I may so speak, as great a stock as possible, of pleasant remembrances. I appeal to the experience of every one, if the sudden recollection of a foolish thing that we have said, or done, returning upon us after a lapse of years, has not brought back with the convulsive shudder of shame, a long train of associated remembrances, which have carried us back whole days upon the scene? How long seem the periods, in which these incidents occurred! Pleasant recollections are no less efficient, in prolonging the periods, in which they occurred, adding their duration to the sum of the fugitive existence that is stealing from us.
For myself I can confidently affirm, that I have long since learned to find my purest and most abiding satisfactions in the memory of the past. I repeat all its happier passages and incidents. I recall the bright days, verdant landscapes, loved persons, and joyous sensations from their shadowy mansions. I renew my youthful sports; and watch for the trout along theflush spring brooks. I seat myself again on the sunny banks of the pleasant spots of my career. I would be glad to convey some idea of the vivid pleasure, I experience after a lapse of forty winters, from the deeply impressed remembrance of one beautiful spring morning, after a long and severe winter, when I was still a school-boy. The vast masses of snow were beginning to melt. The birds of prey, shut up in their retreats during the bitter winter, sailed forth in the mild clear blue. The blue bird whistled; and my heart expanded with joy and delight unknown, in the same degree, before or since. The place where these thoughts, comprising my youthful anticipations, hopes and visions occurred, will never be obliterated from my mind, while memory holds her seat. I have a thousand such treasured recollections, with which I can at any time, and to a certain extent, cheer pain, sorrow and decay. These are enjoyments stored beyond the reach of fortune, which we can prolong, and renew at pleasure.
Is there not practical wisdom, in commencing every day with the steady effort, to make as much of it, as if it were to be our whole existence. If we have duties to perform, in themselves severe and laborious, we may inquire, if there be not some way, by which to invest them with pleasant associations? A man may find amusement in his free thoughts, while following his plough upon the hill side; in digging up the words for a dictionary, or in copying out a brief. He may train himself, by an inefficient and shrinking spirit, to recoil from these tasks, as insupportable burdens. How many men find their pleasure, in what would be the positive horror and torment of the indolent! How weak the spirit, and how silly the vanity which we display, in ever renewing narrations of our little personal troubles, pains and misfortunes! If we would have the discretion to measure the sympathy, which we may expect from others, in such discourses, by that, which we are conscious of feeling for theirs of the same character, it would go far to teach us the folly of that querulous spirit, which doles forth the story of sufferings and sorrows, as though the narrator were the only sufferer, and were entitled to a monopoly of all the passing pity.
Note 59, page 169.
This compendium of the moral acquirements, entering into the character of an accomplished philosopher, I consider one of the happiest, which any book of morals can show. Here is an ample volume of ethics, on a page. How differently would a modern auto-biographer have announced the same facts! In what rounded periods and circuitous expressions would he have striven to convey the same ideas, to impress the reader, that his modesty forbade the frank personality of the Roman philosopher. The whole spirit of this admirable summary would have evaporated in barren generalities. What we admire in the ancients is their noble simplicity and directness, which disdains the vanity of circumlocution, that wishes to hide itself under the semblance of modesty.
It seems to me, that it would not be amiss for the clergy of the day to seek the models of their homilies and sermons in such a manner of declaring moral truth. Abstract ethical declamation, and all the scholastic acquirements and thelimæ laborare but poor substitutes for that searching directness, which, avoiding abstractions and generalities, appeals at once to the personal consciousness. I allow, that I should love to hear such sermons, as that of Dr Primrose to his fellow prisoners, in the Vicar of Wakefield. There is no eloquence, there can be none, except in simple and direct appeals to thought and conscience.
Note 60, page 171.
Various writers of splendid genius have tasked their imagination, to present us with the results of endowing a person with immortality on earth. Such a character has been delineated with great power by Godwin, in his St Leon; and by Croly in the story ofSalathiel, or the Wandering Jew. It is an instructive labor, to record the wanderings, changes, weariness, abandonment, and final despair of a wretch cursedwith immortality; and by the circumstance rendered a monster, out of relation with human beings; and cut off from all real sympathy with his mortal kind. It is questionable, whether these writers, or any others who have drawn similar pictures, have formed adequate conceptions, of what would be the actual result of an earthly immortality. The view of the author before me seems just. I can easily imagine the immortal delivered from earthly sorrows. But, when I contemplate him divested of the hopes, fears, affections and sympathies, which trace their origin to our common mortal nature, I cannot imagine the affections, that are to replace these.
I can conceive none other, than a being, who would become drowsy at sixty, and sleepy at a hundred. All beyond presents to me a lethargy of almost unconscious existence, from which my fancy can devise no effort of sufficient energy to arouse him. In fact, it is sufficient, that nature has awarded, in her universal decree, that man should not be out of analogy and relation with the rest of nature; to convince us, that the decision involves our best interest. The more our views of nature enlarge, the more we become conscious, that she has arranged all her laws with such perfect wisdom, that if we could reverse any of them, we should do it at the expense of our own happiness.
Of all pictures of men, rendered immortal upon earth, the most forcible, brief and revolting, is that of Swift. ‘After this preface, he gave me a particular account of the Struldbrugs among them. He said, they commonly acted like mortals, till about thirty years old; after which they grew melancholy and dejected, increasing in both till they came to fourscore. This he learned from their own confession; for otherwise, there not being more than two or three of that species born in an age, they were too few to form a general observation by. When they come to fourscore years, which is reckoned the extremity of living in this country, they had not only all the follies and infirmities of other men, but many more, which arose from the dreadful prospect of never dying. They were not only opinionative, covetous, peevish, morose, vain, talkative,but incapable of friendship, and dead to all natural affection, which never descended below their grandchildren. Envy and their impotent desires are their prevailing passions. But those objects, against which their envy seems particularly directed, are the vices of the younger sort, and the death of the old. By reflecting on the former, they find themselves cut off from all possibility of pleasure; and whenever they see a funeral, they lament, and repine, that others have gone to a harbor of rest, at which they can never hope to arrive. They have no remembrance of anything, but what they learned, and observed in their youth and middle age, and even that is very imperfect; and for the truth or particulars of any fact, it is safer to depend on common tradition, than their best recollection. The least miserable among them, are those, who turn to dotage, and entirely lose their memories. These meet with more pity and assistance, because they want many bad qualities, which abound in others.
‘If a Struldbrug happen to marry one of his kind, the marriage is dissolved of course, by the courtesy of the kingdom, as soon as the younger of the two comes to be fourscore; for the law thinks it a reasonable indulgence, that those, who are condemned, without any fault of their own, to a perpetual continuance in the world, should not have their misery doubled by the load of a wife. As soon as they have completed the term of eighty years, they are considered dead in law. At ninety they lose their teeth and hair, and have no distinction of taste, but eat and drink whatever they can get, without relish or appetite. The diseases they were subject to, still continue without increasing, or diminishing. In talking, they forget the common appellations of things, and the names of persons, even of those, who are their nearest friends and relations. For the same reason, they can never amuse themselves with reading, because their memory will not serve to carry them from the beginning of a sentence to the end; and by this defect they are deprived of the only entertainment whereof they might be capable.
‘They were the most mortifying sight I ever beheld, andthe women more horrible than the men. Besides the usual deformities in extreme old age, they acquired an additional ghastliness, in proportion to their number of years, which is not to be described; and among half a dozen, I soon distinguished who was the oldest, although there was not above a century or two between them.
‘The reader will easily believe, from what I have heard and seen, that my keen appetite for perpetuity and life was much abated. I grew heartily ashamed of the pleasing visions I had formed, and thought no tyrant could invent a death into which I would not run with pleasure, from such a life. The king heard all that had passed between me and my friends upon this occasion, and rallied me very pleasantly, wishing I could send a couple of Struldbrugs to my own country, to arm our people against the fear of death.’
Note 61, page 171.
Fear, absolutely useless, gratuitous fear, probably constitutes much the largest proportion of the whole mass of human misery; and of this proportion the fear of death is the principal part. There are but very few people who, in examining the feeling of revulsion and horror, most constantly present to their minds, will not find it to be the dread of death. The whole observation, which I have made upon human nature, has only enlightened me the more as to the universality and extent of the influence of this evil. I see it infusing bitterness into the bosoms of the young, before they are as yet capable of reflection; and ceasing not to inspire its terrors into the heart, which has experienced the sorrows of fourscore winters. I see little difference in the alarm with which it darkens the mind of the heir, elate with youthful hope, and the galley slave—those apparently the most happy, and the tenants of penitentiaries and lazar-houses. All cling alike convulsively to life, and shudder at the thought of death.
Part, and perhaps the greater part, of this fear is a sadheritage, which has been transmitted down to us, an accumulating fund of sorrow, for a hundred generations. I have stated my conviction in another place, that our education, religious ceremonies, domestic manners, in short, all the influences of the present institutions of society tend to increase this evil. I am well aware, at the same time, that the number of those, who will admit it to be an evil, is but small. Most view it as it has been considered in all Christian countries, from time immemorial, as an instrument in the hand of God and his servants, to awe, and restrain the mind, recall it from illusions and vanities, and reduce it to the seriousness and obedience of religion. The broad declamation of the pulpit for effect, revolting representations of hell-torment and the vindictive justice of God, have passed with a readier tolerance, under a kind of tacit allowance, that if the means were unworthy, the proposed end was such as would sanctify them. It is almost unnecessary to remark, that all my hope of producing any useful impression is with the small, but growing number, (in the next age, I trust, it will be a majority) who hold this whole doctrine in utter unbelief; who have no faith in amendment and conversion, that grows out of the base and servile principle of fear; and least of all the fear of death; who believe that a great reform, a thorough amelioration of our species, will never be effected, until it is made a radical principle of our whole discipline, and all our social institutions, to bring this servile passion completely under the control of our reason. With these, it is a deep and fixed conviction, that every thing base, degrading and destructive of intellect and improvement, readily associates with fear; and that the basis of true religion, generous conception, high thoughts and really noble character, is firmly laid in a young mind, when trained to become as destitute of fear, as if it were conscious of being a sinless angel, above the reach of pain or death.
It would be to no purpose for me to pause in this place, to obviate the strictures of those who will denounce this doctrine, by quoting from the scriptures the frequent inculcationsof thefear of the Lord, and the Apostle’s declaration, that by theterrors of the Lord we persuade men. The true and religious fear, inculcated in the scriptures, not only has no relation to the passion I am discussing, but cannot exist, any more than the other requisite traits of religious character, in a bosom swayed by the grovelling and selfish passion of servile fear.
That nature has implanted in our bosoms an instinctive dread of death, I readily admit. But fear, as a factitious and unnatural addition to the true instincts of human nature, has been so accumulated by rolling down through a hundred generations, that we are in no condition to know the degree, in which nature intended we should possess it. We have innumerable base propensities, which we charge upon nature, that are, in fact, no more, than the guilty heritage, bequeathed us by our ancestors. Nature could have implanted no higher degree of instinctive dread of death, than just what was requisite, to preserve the race from prodigal waste, or rash exposure of a gift, which, once lost, is irretrievable. If nature has inwrought in any constitution one particle of fear, beyond what was required for this result, she has, as in all other excessive endowments, granted reason and judgment, to regulate, and reduce it to its due subordination.
Will not religion achieve the great triumph of casting out the base principle of fear? I would be the last to deny, or undervalue the trophies of true religion. I have no doubt that religion has, in innumerable instances, extracted the pain and poison from the sting of death. More than this, it would unquestionably produce this triumph in every case, if every individual were completely under the influence of the true principle. It would attain this end by processes and discipline exactly concurrent, if not similar, with those I am about to propose. But it is a lamentable fact, that very few are under the influence of true religion. Of those, whom charity deems most sincerely pious, under all professions and forms, the far greater number exhibit, on the bed of dangerous sickness, the same fear of death with the rest. Weconsider this a generally conceded fact; for, among all but the most extravagant sects, death-bed terror, or triumph has ceased to be considered a test of the personal religion of the deceased. Even in the cases of enthusiastic triumph in the last moments, which we have all witnessed, and which are justly so soothing to the survivors, it would often be difficult to determine the respective influence of laudanum, and partial insanity doing its last work upon the nervous system.
Be this as it may, the triumph over the fear of death, which I would inculcate, should not be tested by the equivocal deportment of the patient, in the near view of death; but by his own joyous consciousness of deliverance from this tormenting thraldom and bondage, during his whole life. Let fear and horror crowd what bitterness they may into the last few hours, it can bear but little proportion to the long agony of a whole life, passed inbondage through fear of death. To produce the desired triumph, the highest training of philosophy should concur with the paternal spirit and the immortal hopes of the gospel; and a calm, reasoning, unboasting fearlessness of death should enable us to taste all the little of pure and innocent joy, that may be found between the cradle and the grave—as unmolested, as unsprinkled with this fear, as if the destroyer were not among the works of God.
How may this result be obtained? How may a generation be so trained as to lose not a particle of enjoyment, nor be influenced to one unworthy act, by the fear of death? To answer these questions, in the requisite detail of illustration, would require volumes. It might, perhaps, best be done by selecting a single child as an example; and by developing, at every advancing step, the process of his training; pointing out every instance, in which it would be necessary to withdraw him from the influence of the present systems of discipline; in which, in a word, his whole education should be conducted with a preponderant purpose, among other desirable results, to render him perfectly fearless of death. It is hoped that some one of those, who believe this a chief desideratum in the reformation and improvement of thepresent system of education, will take this great point in hand; and in this way indicate to the age the modes of discipline, through which this result may be expected. It is obvious, that a much severer discipline would be required for the first generation so trained, than for the second; who, with less transmitted cowardice than their parents, would perpetuate a constantly improving moral constitution to the generations to come. My present plan admits only a brief summary of motives and arguments, commonly adduced, as calculated to diminish, regulate, and subdue the fear of death. It is evident, that these motives and arguments are predicated upon present opinions, and such as may be supposed capable of acting upon the existing generation, enduring the hereditary and inculcated bondage of this passion.
1. The terrific and undefinable images of horror, that imagination affixes to the termdeath, are founded in an entire misconception. The word is the sign of no positive idea whatever. It conjures up a shadowy horror to the mind, finely delineated, as a poetic personage, by Milton; and implies some agony that is supposed to lie between the limits of existence and non-existence, or existence in another form. This is simple illusion. So long as we feel, death is not—and when we cease to feel, or commence feeling in a changed form, death has been:—fuit mors. So that the term imports a mere phantom of the imagination. In the words of Droz, ‘it is not yet; or it is past.’ If one can arrest thepunctum stans, and the actual sensation, where waking consciousness terminates, and sleep commences, he can tell us, what death is. Every one is conscious of having passed through this change; but no one can give any account, what were his sensations in the dividing moment of interval between wakefulness and sleep.
2. Imagination is allowed to settle all the circumstances, and form all the associations belonging to the supposed agony of this event. It is one of the few important incidents in life, upon which reason is never allowed to fix a calm and severe scrutiny. It has been seen in a light, too sacred and terrible,to permit such a lustration. ‘It is dreadful,’ says common apprehension, ‘for it is the breaking up the long and tender partnership, and producing a separation between the body and the soul—dreadful, because it is the wages of sin, and is appointed to be a perpetual memorial of the righteous displeasure of God in view of sin;’ ‘dreadful,’ say others, who most unphilosophically believe that man was not originally intended to be mortal, ‘because a violence upon nature; dreadful, because a departure of the spirit from the regions of the living, and the light of the sun, into an unknown and eternal condition. Suns will revolve, moons wax and wane, years, revolutions, ages, counted by all the particles of mist in the sea, will elapse, but the place, whence the spirit is gone, will never know it more.’ ‘It is terrible,’ says common apprehension, ‘for it is often preceded and accompanied by spasm, and convulsive struggle.’ The psalmody, which we sing in church, speaks of theghastly paleness, thechill sweat, and themortal coldness, circumstances all, which, seen in other associations, would assume no aspect of peculiar terror.
Then, too, the attendants in the sick room with a look of horror inspect the extremities of the patient, and petrify bystanders with the terrible words, ‘he is struck with death,’ as though the grisly phantom king of the poet’s song had invisibly glided in, and, with his icy sceptre, given his victim the blow of mortal destiny. Who knows not that, though there are usually mortal symptoms, which enable an experienced eye to foresee approaching dissolution, the termdeath-struckimports nothing but the weakest vulgar prejudice, a prejudice under the influence of which millions have been suffered to expire, that might have been roused! Innumerable persons, pronounced to be in that situation, have actually recovered; and no moment, in the ordinary forms of disease, can with any certainty be pronounced beyond hope and the chances of aid, but that which succeeds the last sigh. Thus every thought of the living, and every aspect of the dying, by a wayward ingenuity, heightens the imagined horror of the event.
Then there are conversations and hymns and funeral odes and Night Thoughts, which speak of the coldness, silence and eternal desolation of the grave; as though the unconscious sleeper felt the chill of the superincumbent clay, the darkness of his narrow house or this terrible isolation from the living. The pale and peaceful corpse is contemplated with a look of horror. Two, of stout heart and tried friendship, abide near the kneaded clod, until the living are relieved from their ghostly terrors, by its deposition out of their sight in the narrow house. The family, the children, the friends alike showing the creeping horror, glide quick and silently on tiptoe through the apartment, where the sleeper lies. The first nightfall after the disease is one of peculiar and unmitigated horror. The family, however disinclined to union before, this evening unite, with that impress on their countenances, which words reach not. Now return to their thoughts the nursery tales, the thrilling narratives of haunted houses and wandering ghosts; and if the minister comes among them, it is probably to evoke before their imaginations condemned spirits doomed to eternal sufferings, quenchless flames, groans without respite, and all the ineffable and eternal torments, that the clerical vocabulary of centuries has accumulated.
Need we wonder, that in a christian country, and among families of the best training, such impressions have become so universal, that they, who would be reputed brave, blazon their courage, by affirming their readiness to sleep in a cemetery, or the funeral vault of a church! It requires no extraordinary effort, and nothing more than the simple triumph of reason among the faculties, to enable any man, to sleep alone in a charnel house with as little dread, as in the apartment of an inn, so that the places were alike in comfort and salubrity. It does not require us to be wise, or courageous; but simply not cowards and fools, to feel as little horror in the view of corpses, as statues of plaster or marble. One of the most terrible ideas of death, after all, is, that we shall thus, immediately upon our decease, inflict this shrinking revulsion of terror upon all, who look at our remains.
The view, which reason takes of the sick and dying bed is, that, in the far greater number of mortal cases, the transition from life to death is as imperceptible, as the progress of the sun and the seasons. One faculty dies after another. The victim has received the three warnings unconsciously. Ordinarily, a person may be said to have paid a third part of his tribute of mortality at forty-five; half at fifty-five; and the whole at three score and ten.
When acute and severe sickness assails the patient, he has passed through what may be called the agony of death at a very early period of his disease. His chief suffering is past, as soon the irritability and the vigorous powers of life have been broken down. When the disorder assumes the typhoid and insensible form, the dull sleep, that precedes the final rest of the tomb, is already creeping upon him; and severe suffering is precluded. If there are convulsions after this, as often happens, they are seldom more than spasmodic movements, impressed by the nervous action upon the tendons, more terrible to the beholder, than the sufferer; differing little from those starts and struggles, with which many persons in high health commence sleeping and waking. He who has experienced the sensation of fainting, and, still more, of an epileptic fit, has suffered, I am ready to believe, all that there is in dying.
3. Reason, calmly surveying the case of the dying person himself, sees many alleviations, of which imagination, sketching under the influence of the dread of death, takes no account. He finds himself, in this new predicament, the absorbing object of all interests and all solicitude and affection. It is not in human nature, that this should not call up complacent emotions and slumbering affections from their secret cells. The subsequent progress towards the last moment brings an imperceptibly increasing insensibility, manifested by drowsiness and sleep. Of those, who preserve the exercise of their faculties entire to the last, many instances are recorded of persons, who had shown the most unmanly dread of death in their health, that have met dissolution with the calmness of perfectself-possession. Of the rest, the greater number die with little more apparent pain and struggle, than accompany the act of sleeping. The greater freshness, vigor and nervous irritability of young people and children cause that most of the exceptions are of this description. In a great number of cases, which I have witnessed, I have paused in doubt, whether the person had yielded his last sigh, or not, after he had actually deceased. To soften the last infliction, nature almost invariably veils it under a low delirium, or absolute unconsciousness.
4. It is impossible to imagine a more obvious and unquestionable principle of philosophy, than that every reasoning faculty of our nature must declare to us, loudly and unequivocally, and with an influence as strong as reason can command, that it is wisdom, nay, the dictate of the least portion of common sense, to dread, to resist, to repine, to groan, as little as possible, in view of an endurance absolutely inevitable. If it be hard to sustain when met with a fearless, resigned and unmurmuring spirit, it must certainly be still harder, when we are obliged to bend our necks to it with the excruciating addition of shrinking fear, dreadful anticipation and ineffectual struggles to evade it, and with murmurs and groans, at finding the inutility of these efforts. Innumerable examples prove to us, that nature has kindly endowed us with reason and mental vigor to such an extent, that, under the influence of right motive and training, no possible form of suffering can be presented, over which this power may not manifest, and has not manifested a complete triumph.
Of these innumerable examples, it is only necessary to cite those of the martyrs, of all forms of religion. These prove farther, that this undaunted self-possession, in every conceivable shape and degree of agony, was not the result of a rare and peculiar temperament, a want of sensibility, or the possession of uncommon physical courage; that it was not because there was no perception of danger, or susceptibility of pain; this magnanimity, this impassibility to fear and pain and death has been exhibited in nearly equal degrees by peopleof every age, each sex and all conditions. Let the proper motive be supplied, let the martyr have had the common influence of the training of his faith, and the consequence failed not. All the shades and varieties of natural and mental difference of character were noted in the deportment of the sufferers. But they were alike in the stern proof of a courage, which defied death. The fact is proved by them, as strongly as moral fact can be proved, that the mind of every individual might find in itself native self-possession and vigor, to enable it to display an entire ascendency over fear, pain and death.
Nor does this fact rest solely for support on the history of martyrs, or sufferers at anAuto da fé, or by torture in any of its forms. We could find examples of it in every department of history, and every view of human character. The red men of our wilderness, as we have elsewhere seen, are still more astonishing illustrations of this fact—I say astonishing, because the timid and effeminate white man shivers, and scarcely credits his senses, as he sees the young Indian warrior smoking his pipe, singing his songs, boasting of his victories and uttering his menaces, when enveloped in a slow fire, apparently as unmoved, as reckless and unconscious of pain, as if sitting at his ease in his own cabin. All, that has been found necessary, by this strange people, to procure this heroism, is, that the children, from boyhood, should be constantly under a discipline, every part and every step of which tends directly to shame and contempt at the least manifestation of cowardice, in view of any danger, or of a shrinking consciousness of pain in the endurance of any suffering. The males, so trained, never fail to evidence the fruit of their discipline. Sentenced to death, they almost invariably scorn to fly from their sentence, when escape is in their power. If in debt, they desire a reprieve, that they may hunt, until their debts are paid. They then voluntarily return, and surrender themselves to the executioner. Nothing is more common than for a friend to propose to suffer for his friend, a parent for a child, or a child for a parent. When the sufferer receives the blow, there is an unblenching look, which manifeststhe presence of the same spirit, that smokes with apparent unconcern amidst the crackling flames.
A proof, that this is the fruit of training, and not of native insensibility, as others have thought, and as I formerly thought myself, is that this contempt of pain and death is considered a desirable trait only in the males. To fly, like a woman, like her to laugh, and weep, and groan, are expressions of contempt, which they apply to their enemies with ineffable scorn. The females, almost excluded from witnessing the process of Spartan discipline, by which the males acquire their mental hardihood, partake not of the fruits of it, and with some few exceptions, are shrinking and timid, like the children of civilization.
I know, that there will not be wanting those, who will condemn alike the training and the heroism, as harsh, savage, unfeeling, stoical and unworthy to be admitted, as an adjunct to civilization. But no one will offer to deny, that the primitive Christian, put in conflict with a hungry lion, that Rogers at the Smithfield stake, that the young captive warrior, exulting, and chanting his songs while enduring the bitterest agonies that man can inflict, in the serene and sublime triumph of mind over matter, and spirit over the body, is the most imposing spectacle we can witness, the clearest proof we can contemplate, that we have that within us which is not all of clay, nor all mortal; or doubt, that these persons endure infinitely less physical pain, in consequence of their heroic self-possession, than they would have suffered, had they met their torture in paroxysms of terror, shrinking and self-abandonment.
However we may reason, however we may decry these views, as savage, impracticable, unnatural and undesirable, the fact is, that we all feel alike upon this subject. The thousands in a Roman amphitheatre only evinced a trait, that belongs to our common nature, when they instantly, and without consulting each other, gave the signal to save that gladiator, who most clearly manifested cool self-possessionand contempt of death. After witnessing the execution of a criminal, who shows courage, the spectators go away describing, with animated gesture, and in terms of admiration, the fearlessness of the fellow the moment before his death. We all speak with unmingled satisfaction of the circumstance, in the death of our friends, that they departed in the conscious dignity of self-possession and hope. All readers are moved with one sensation, as they read the record of the noble trait in the character of Cæsar, gracefully folding himself in his mantle, after he had received so many mortal thrusts. Few of us hear unmoved of the old English patriot, who requested the executioner to support him up the steps to the scaffold, adding that he would shift for himself to get down; or of the other, who cried, as he stooped his head to the block,dulce et decorum est pro patria mori! If I recollect, it is Silliman, who gives the affecting notice of the last hours of the duke of Richmond, the late governor general of Canada. Invested with all conceivable circumstances to render life desirable, he was bitten by a favorite dog in a rabid state; and died, in the most excruciating tortures, of the terrible hydrophobia. When the horrible paroxysm was felt by him to be approaching, he was accustomed to nerve his sinking courage by these words; ‘Henry, remember, that none of your ancestors were cowards.’ I give the trait from recollection, but have heard substantially the same account from other sources. This is the secret of the perverse general admiration of warriors, and heroes, and great generals. It is this principle in its blindness, which finds a niche of favor in so many hearts for duellists. In a word, intrepidity, deny it who may, is the trait which finds more universal favor with human nature in general than any other. Why? Because we are weak and frail beings, exposed to innumerable pains and dangers; and the quality we most frequently need, is courage. Without it life is a living death, a long agony of fear. With it, we die but once, enduring at the most but a momentary pang, never anticipated, never embittering a moment in advance with imaginary suffering.
We have no hesitation in affirming, that it would be no more difficult to educate the coming generation of civilized people to this spirit, than it is to impart it to the whole race of males among the red men. However inferior we may count these people, in comparison with ourselves in other respects, they have at least one manifest advantage over us; they never torment themselves, because they know they must die.
But we are told that the actual possession of this spirit would produce such a recklessness of life, that the great ends of Providence would be defeated; and people would expose themselves to death with so little concern, that the race would waste away and become extinct. We never need combat a theory, an abstract opinion, when the case can be settled by a fact. Is it so with the warriors of the red men? On the contrary, can another people be found so wary, so adroit to evade, or resist danger, so fertile in expedients to save life? The coward of their number meets the death he would fly; and the intrepid warrior puts forth all the resources of his instinctive sagacity, all his keen and practised discernment, to discover the best means of evasion. If he must meet that death, which his skill cannot evade, nor his powers resist, he instantly settles down upon the resource of his invincible heroism of endurance.
In fact, one of the direct fruits of the intrepidity we would wish to see universal, is, that it will give its possessor all possible chances for preserving health and life. It saves him from the influence of fear, a passion among the most debilitating, and adverse to life, of any to which our nature is subject. Braced by his courage, he passes untouched amidst a contagious epidemic, to which the timid and apprehensive nature falls a victim. In danger it gives him coolness and self-command, to discover, and avail himself of all his chances of wise resistance, or probable escape. In sickness, he has all the aids to recover, which nature allows, in being delivered from the most dangerous symptom in innumerable maladies, the debilitating persuasion of the patient, that he shall not rise from his sickness. In a word, the direct reverse of thecharge is the fact. The wise and enlightened fearlessness, which I consider it so important to acquire, is in every way as much the preserver of life, as it is indispensable to happiness; as cowardice proverbially runs in the face of the hideous monster that it creates.
5. The fact, that an evil is felt to be alleviated, which is shared in common with all around us, has been generally recognised, though this perverted sympathy has been traced to the basest selfishness, by a humiliating analysis of our nature, which I have neither space nor inclination to develope. We all know, that the same person, who is most beneficent, most active in his benevolence, and large in his wishes to do good, would shrink from a great calamity, which he saw himself destined to encounter, for the first and the last among his whole race. But inform him, that by an impartial award he shares it in common with all his kind, and you reconcile him at once to his lot. Whether the spirit of his resignation in this case be pure, or polluted in its origin, it is not my present purpose to inquire. It is sufficient to be assured, that there is such a feeling deeply inherent in human nature. The suffering patient, as he lays himself down to part from all friends, to be severed from all ties, to see the green earth, the bright sun, and the visible heavens no more, and to be conscious, that the everlasting circle of ages will continue its revolutions without ever bringing him back to the forsaken scene, cannot repine, that he has been put upon this bitter trial alone. He must be deeply conscious, view it in what aspect he may, that it presents no new harshness nor horror to him. Of all the countless millions, that have passed away, and been replaced by others, like the vernal leaves, death has stood before every solitary individual of the mighty mass, the same phantom king of terrors. Each has contemplated the same inexorable, irreversible award, been held in the same suspense of hopes, and fears, and compelled to endure the same struggles. Looking upon the immense mortal drama of ages, the actors seem slowly and imperceptibly to enter, and depart from the scene. But in the lapse of one short age, the hopes, fears, loves and hatreds ofall the countless millions have vanished, to be replaced by those of another generation. The heart swells at the recollection how much each of these mortals must have endured, in this stern and inevitable encounter, as measured by our own suffering in the same case. It is only necessary for the patient to extend his vision a few years in advance of his own decease; and his friends, his children, his visitants, all that surround him, will in their turn recline on the same bed. Who cannot feel the palpable folly of repining at an evil shared with all, that have been, are, or will be!