Chapter I: Part 1

THE ANGEL
IN THE CLOUD

BY

EDWIN W. FULLER

PRIVATELY PRINTED
MCMVII

_Copyright, 1907
Sumner Fuller Parham_

TO THE

HALLOWED MEMORY OF MY FATHER,

WHO,

EVEN WHILE I WAS GAZING UPON THE GOLDEN CITY

PASSED WITHIN ITS WALLS,

THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS INSCRIBED,

WITH TEARS.

PREFACE

To those who may favor these pages with perusal, I make this earnest request: that, if they commence, they will read all. Knowing that the best mode of dealing with doubts is to state and refute, successively, I regret that the plan of the present work forces a separation of the statement and refutation. To read one without the other were to defeat the object in view; hence my request.

Many of the subjects of thought are worn smooth with the touch of ages, so that hope for originality is as slender as the bridge of Al Sirat; but in the bulrush ark of self-confidence, pitched with Faith, I commit my first-born to the Nile of public opinion; whether to perish by crocodile critics, or bask in the palace of favor, the Future, alone, must determine. May Pharaoh’s daughter find it!

E. W. F.

LOUISBURG, Jan. 17th, 1871.

A NOTE

_First published more than thirty-five years ago, in the lifetime of the poet, THE ANGEL IN THE CLOUD has long since passed not only out of print but out of the memory of most living men. Of the copies of the original edition, only few are known to exist. Upon his surviving family is imposed the obligation, and to them comes the privilege, of rescuing from the realm of forgotten things these evidences of a graceful and genuine poetic gift in one whose memory they revere and whose genius they are unwilling to have die. It is therefore with the sense of performing a grateful duty that they have caused to be printed this new edition of Edwin Fuller’s poems, in the hope and belief that others, like themselves, will value it both as friends of the gentle poet and as disinterested lovers of good literature._

August, 1907.

THE ANGEL IN THE CLOUD

’Twas noon in August, and the sultry heat
Had driven me from sunny balcony
Into the shaded hall, where spacious doors
Stood open wide, and lofty windows held
Their sashes up, to woo the breeze, in vain.
The filmy lace that curtained them was still,
And every silken tassel hung a-plumb.
The maps and unframed pictures o’er the wall
Gave not a rustle; only now and then
Was heard the jingling sound of melting ice,
Deep in a massive urn, whose silver sides
With trickling dewbeads ran. The little birds,
Up in their cages, perched with open beaks,
And throbbing throats, upon the swaying rings,
Or plashed the tepid water in their cups
With eager breast. My favorite pointer lay,
With lolling tongue, and rapid panting sides,
Beside my chair, upon the matted floor.
All things spoke heat, oppressive heat intense,
Save swallows twittering up the chimney-flue,
Whose hollow flutterings sounded cool alone.
To find relief I seized my hat and book,
And fled into the park. Along a path
Of smoothest gravel, oval, curving white,
Between two rows of closely shaven hedge,
I passed towards a latticed summer-house;
A fairy bower, built in Eastern style,
With spires, and balls, and fancy trellis-work,
O’er which was spread the jasmine’s leafy net,
To snare the straying winds. Within I fell
Upon a seat of woven cane, and fanned
My streaming face in vain. The very winds
Seemed to have fled, and left alone the heat
To rise from parchèd lawn and scorching fields,
Like trembling incense to the blazing god.
The leaves upon the wan and yellow trees
Hung motionless, as if of rigid steel;
And e’en the feath’ry pendula of spray,
With faintest oscillation, dared not wave.
The withered flowers shed a hot perfume,
That sickened with its fragrance; and the bees
Worked lazily, as if they longed to kick
The yellow burdens from their patient thighs,
And rest beneath the ivy parasols.
The butterflies refrained from aimless flight,
And poised on blooms with gaudy, gasping wings.
The fountain scarcely raised its languid jet
An inch above its tube; the basin deigned
A feeble ripple for its tinkling fall,
And rolled the little waves with noiseless beat
Against the marble side. The bright-scaled fish
All huddled ’neath the jutting ledge’s shade,
Where, burnished like their magnet toy types,
They rose and fell as if inanimate;
Or, with a restless stroke of tinted fin,
Turned in their places pettishly around;
While, with each move, the tiny whirlpools spun
Like crystal dimples on the water’s face.
The sculptured lions crouched upon the edge,
With gaping jaws, and stony, fixèd eyes,
That ever on the pool glared thirstily.
Deep in the park, beneath the trees, were grouped
The deer, their noses lowered to the earth,
To snuff a cooler air; their slender feet
Impatient stamping at the teasing flies;
While o’er their heads the branching antlers spread,
A mocking skeleton of shade! A fawn,
Proud of his dappled coat, played here and there,
Regardless of repose; the silver bell,
That tinkled from a band of broidered silk,
Proclaiming him a petted favorite.
Save him alone, all things in view sought rest,
And wearied Nature seemed to yield the strife,
And smold’ring wait her speedy sacrifice.

The heat grew hotter as I watched its work,
And with its fervor overcome, I rose,
And through the grounds, towards an orchard bent
My faltering steps in full despair of ease.
Down through the lengthened rows of laden trees,
Whose golden-freighted boughs o’erlapped the way,
I hurried till I reached the last confines.
Here stood a gnarléd veteran, now too old
To bear much fruit, but weaving with its leaves
So dense a shade, the smallest fleck of sun
Could not creep through. Beneath it spread a couch
Of velvet moss, fit for the slumbers of a king.
Here prone I fell, at last amid a scene
That promised refuge from the glaring heat.
Beyond me stretched the orchard’s canopy
Of thick, rank foliage, almost drooping down
Upon the green plush carpet underneath.
Close at my feet a crystal spring burst forth,
And rolled its gurgling waters down the glade
Now spreading in a rilling silver sheet
O’er some broad rock, then gath’ring at its base
Into a foamy pool that churned the sand,
And mingling sparks of shining isinglass,
It danced away o’er gleamy, pebbly bed,
Where, midst the grassy nooks and fibrous roots,
The darting minnows played at hide and seek,
Oft fluttering upwards, to the top, to spit
A tiny bubble out, or slyly snap
Th’ unwary little insect hov’ring near;
Till, by its tributes widened to a brook,
It poured its limpid waters undefiled
In to the river’s dun and dirty waves,--
A type of childhood’s guileless purity,
That mingling with the sordid world is lost.

Far in the distance, lofty mountains loomed,
Their blue sides trembling in the sultry haze.
From me to them spread varicultured fields,
That formed a patchwork landscape, which deserved
The pencil of a Rembrandt and his skill;
The hardy yellow stubble smoothly shaved,
With boldness lying ’neath the scorching sun;
The suffering corn, with tasselled heads all bowed,
And twisted arms appealing, raised to Heaven;
The meadows faded by the constant blaze;
The cattle lying in the hedge’s shade;
Across the landscape drawn a glitt’ring band,
Where winds the river, like a giant snake,
The ripples flashing like his polished scales.
Above the scene a lonely vulture wheeled,
Turning with every curve from side to side,
As if the fierce rays broiled his dusky wings;
And circling onwards, dwindled to a speck,
And in the distance vanished out of sight!
Complete repose was stamped on everything,
Save where a tireless ant tugged at a crumb,
To drag it o’er th’ impeding spires of moss;
And one poor robin, with her breast all pale
And feather-scarce, hopped wearily along
The streamlet’s edge, with plaintive clock-like chirp,
And searching, found and bore the curling worm,
Up to the yellow-throated brood o’erhead.
Behind the mountains reared the copper clouds
Of summer skies, that whitened as they rose,
Till bleached to snow, they drifted dreamily,
Like gleaming icebergs, through the blue sublime.
And as they, one by one, sailed far away,
Methought they were as ships from Earth to Heaven,
Thus slowly floating to the Eternal Port.
The Thunder’s muttered growl my reverie broke,
And looking toward the West, I saw a storm,
With gloomy wrath, had thrown its dark-blue line
Of breastworks, quiv’ring with each grand discharge
Of its own ordnance, o’er th’ horizon’s verge.
Some time it stood to gloat upon its prey,
Then, girding up its strength, began its march.
Extending far its black gigantic arms,
It grimly clambered up the tranquil sky;
Till, half-way up the arch, its shaggy brows
Scowled down in rage upon the frightened earth;
While through its wind-cleft portals sped the darts,
That brightly hurtled through the sultry air.
And down the mountain-sides the shadow crept,
A dark veil spreading over field and wood,
Thus adding gloom to Nature’s awful hush.
The fleecy racks had fled far to the East,
Where sporting safely in the gilding light,
They mocked the angry monster’s cumbrous speed.

Then, while I marked its progress, came a train,
Of dark and doubting thoughts into my mind,
And bitterly thus my reflections ran:
Strange is the Providence that rules the world,
That sets the Medean course of Nature’s laws;
Sometimes adapting law to circumstance,
But oftener making law fulfilled a curse.
Yon brewing storm in verdant summer comes,
When vegetation spreads its foliage sails,
That, like a full-rigged ship’s, are easier torn;
Why comes it not in winter, when the trees,
With canvas reefed by Autumn’s furling frosts,
Could toss in nude defiance to the blast?
The murd’rous wind precedes the gentle shower
And ere the suffering grain has quenched its thirst,
It bows the heavy head, alone of worth,
And from the ripening stalk wrings out the life,
While gayly nod the heads of chaff unharmed.
The rank miasma floats in summer-time,
When man must brave its poisoned breath or starve;
It hovers sickliest over richest fields
While over sterile lands the air is pure;
The tallest oak is by the lightning riven,
The hateful bramble on the ground is spared;
The crop man needs demands his constant work,
The weeds alone spring forth without the plow;
The sweetest flowers wear the sharpest thorns,
The deadliest reptiles lurk in fairest paths!
Wherever Nature shows her brightest smile,
’Tis but a mask to hide her darkest frown.
The tropics seem an Eden of luscious fruits
And flowers, and groves of loveliest birds, and lakes
That mirror their gay plumage flitting o’er;
Where man may live in luxury of thought,
Without the crime of schemes, or curse of toil--
The tropics seem a Hell, when all with life
Are stifled with the foul sirocco’s breath;
When from the green-robed mountain’s volcan top,
A fire-fountain spouts its blazing jet
Far up against the starry dome of Heaven;
Returning in its vast umbrella shape,
Leaps in red cataracts adown the slope,
Shaves clean the mountain of its emerald hair,
And leaves it bald with ashes on its head.
Below, the valley is a crimson sea,
Whose glowing billows break to white-hot foam;
And as they surge amid the towering trees,
They, tottering, bow forever to the waves;
The leaves and branches, crackling into flame,
Leave only clotted cinders floating there;
The darting birds, their gaudy plumage singed,
Fall fluttering in, with little puffs of smoke.
The fleeing beasts are lapped in, bellowing,
And charred to coal, drift idly with the tide.
The red flood, breaking through the vale, rolls on
Its devious way towards the sea; the glare
Illuminating far its winding track,
As if a devil flew with flaming torch,
Or when an earthquake gapes its black-lined jaws,
And, growling, gulps a city’s busy throng
Into its greedy bowels. Or the sea bursts forth
Its bands of rock, and laughing at “Thus far!”
Rolls wildly over peopled towns, and homes
In fancied safety; playing fearful pranks,
O’er which to chuckle in its briny bed;
Jeering the stones because they cannot swim,
And crushing like a shell all work of wood;
Docking the laden ships upon the hills,
And tossing lighter craft about like weeds;
Till, wearied with the spoiling, sinks to rest.

Thus Nature to herself is but half kind,
But over man holds fullest tyranny;
And man, a creature who cannot prevent
His own existence! Why not happy made?
For surely ’twere as easy to create
Man in a state of happiness and good,
And keep him there, as to create at all.
If misery’s not deserved before his birth,
Then misery must from purest malice flow;
Yet malice none assign to Providence.
But some may say: Were man thus happy made,
He would not be a person, but a thing,
And lose the very seed of happiness,
The consciousness of merit. Grant ’tis true!
Then why does merit rarely meet reward?
And why does there appear a tendency,
Throughout the polity divine, to mark
With disapproval all the good in man,
And bless the evil? Through the entire world
Is felt this conflict: some strange power within
Exciting us to good, while all events
Proclaim its folly. Throughout Nature’s laws,
Through man in every station, up to God,
This fatal contradiction glares. The storm,
With ruthless breath, annihilates the cot
That, frail and humble, shields the widow’s head;
And while she reads within the use-worn Book
That none who trusts shall e’er be desolate,
The falling timbers crush the promise out,
And she is dead beneath her ruined home!
The prostrate cottage passed, the very wind
Now howls a rough but fawning lullaby
Around the marble walls, and lofty dome,
That shelter pride and heartless arrogance.

And when the Boaz Winter throws his skirt
Of purest white across the lap of Earth,
And decks her bare arborial hair with gems,
Whose feeblest flash would pale the Koh-i-noor,
The rich, alone, find beauty in the scene,
And, clad in thankless comfort, brave the cold.
The gliding steels flash through the feathery drifts,
The jingling bells proclaiming happiness;
Yet ’neath the furry robe the oath is heard,
And boisterous laughter at the ribald jest.
The coldest hearts beat ’neath the warmest clothes;
And often all the blessings wealth can give,
Are heaped on one, whose daily life reviles
The very name of Him who doth bestow.
While in a freezing garret, o’er the coals
That, bluely flickering with the feeble flame,
Seem cold themselves, a trusting Christian bends;
Her faith all mocked by cruel circumstance.
The cold, bare walls, the chilling air-swept floor;
Some broken stools, a mattress stuffed with straw,
Upholstering the apartment. Through the sash,
The wind, with jaggèd lips of broken glass,
Shrieks in its freezing spite. A cold-blued babe,
With face too thin to hold a dimple’s print,
With famished gums tugs at the arid breast,
Thrusting its bare, splotched arms, in eagerness,
From out the poor white blanket’s ravelled edge.
Beside the mother sits a little boy,
With one red frost-cracked hand spread out, in vain,
To warm above the faintly-burning coals;
The other pressing hardly ’gainst his teeth
A stale and tasteless loaf of smallest size,
Which lifting often to the mother’s view,
He offers part; she only shakes her head,
And sadly smiles upon the gaunt young face.
Yet in her basket, on a pile of work,
An open Bible lies with outstretched leaves,
Whose verses speak in keenest irony:
“Do good,” and “verily thou shalt be fed.”
And so through all the world, the righteous poor,
The wicked rich. Deceit, and fraud, and craft
Reap large rewards, while pure integrity
Must gnaw the bone of faith with here and there
A speck of flesh called consciousness of right,
To reach the marrow in another world.
But man within himself’s the greatest paradox;
“A little animal,” as Voltaire says,
And yet a greater wonder than the sun,
Or spangled firmament. That little one
Can weigh and measure all the wheeling worlds,
But finds within his “five feet” home, a Sphinx
Whose riddle he can never solve.
“Thyself,”
The oracles of old bade men to know,
As if to mock their very impotence;
And man, to know himself, for centuries
Has toiled and studied deep, in vain.--
Not man in flesh, for blest Hippocrates
Bright trimmed his lamp, and passed it down the line,
And each disciple adding of his oil,
It blazes now above the ghastly corpse,
Till every fibre, every thread-like vein,
Is known familiar as a city’s streets;
The little muscle twitching back the lip,
Rejoicing in a name that spans the page.
But man in mind, that is not seen nor felt,
But only knows he is, through consciousness.
He sees an outside world, with all its throng
Of busy people who care not for him,
And only few that know he does exist;
And yet he feels the independent world
Is but effect produced upon himself,
The Universe is packed within his mind,
His mind within its little house of clay.
What is that mind? Has it a formal shape?
And has it substance, color, weight, or force?
What are the chains that bind it to the flesh?
That never break except in death, though oft
The faculties are sent far out through space?
Where is it placed, in head, or hands, or feet?
And can it have existence without place?
And if a place, it must extension have,
And if extended, it is matter proven.
Poor man! he has but mind to view mind with,
And might as well attempt to see the eye
Without a mirror! True, faint consciousness
Holds up a little glass, wherein he sees
A few vague facts that cannot satisfy.
For these, and their attendant laws, have fought
The mental champions of the world till now
That each may deck them in his livery,
And claim them as his own discovery.

Hedged in, man does not know that he is paled,
And struggles fiercely ’gainst the boundaries,
And strives to get a glimpse of those far realms
Of thought sublime, where his short wings would sink
With helpless fluttering, through the vast profound.
Upon the coals of curiosity,
A writhing worm, he’s laid; and twists and turns,
To find, in vain, the healing salve of Truth.

But grant that mind exists in fullest play:
How does it work and what its modes of thought?
Here consciousness may act, and hold to view
A dim outline of powers, contraposed.
In such a conflict, every one may seize
The doctrine suits him best. Hence different creeds--
Desire battling reason, reason will,
And will the weathercock of motive’s wind;
Motive the cringing slave of circumstance.
And here Charybdis rises; no control
Has man o’er circumstance, but circumstance
Begets the motive governing the will;
Then how can man be free? Yet some may say,
Man can obey the motive, or can not.
He can, but only when a stronger rules.
That we without a motive never act,
I do declare, though in the face of Reid.
That that is strongest which impels, a child
Might know, although Jouffroy exclaims,
“You’re reasoning in a circle.” Let us place
An iron fragment ’twixt two magnet-bars,
What one attracts is thereby stronger proved.
Or it may be the really weaker one,
But yet, because of nearness to the steel,
Possess a relatively greater force.
And so of motives, howe’er trivial they,
The one that moves is strongest to the mind.
To illustrate: Suppose I pare a peach;
A friend near by me banteringly asserts
That I can not refrain from eating it.
Two motives now arise--the appetite,
And the desire to prove my self-control.
I hesitate awhile, then laughing say,
“I would not give the peach to prove you wrong.”
But as my teeth press on it, pride springs up,
And bids me show that I am not the slave
Of appetite, and far away I hurl
The tinted, fragrant sphere.
Was not each thought
Spontaneous? Could I control their rise?
How perfectly absurd to talk of choice
Between two motives offered to the mind!
As if the motive was a horse we’d choose
To pull our minds about. There is no choice
Until the motive makes it; then we choose,
Not ’tween the motives, but the acts.
If, then,
The spring of action is the motive’s power,
The motive being far beyond our sway,
Where is our freedom? But a fabled myth!
And man but differs from a star in this,--
The laws of stars are fixed and definite,
And every movement there can be foretold;
Of man, no deed can be foreseen till done.
At most we can but form a general guess
How he will act, at such a time and place.
Even if we knew the motives that would rise,
We could not prophesy unless we knew
Our subject’s frame of mind; for differently,
On different minds, same motives often act.
Hence, we can tell the conduct of a friend
More surely than a stranger’s, since we know,
By long acquaintance, how his motives work.
But should new motives rise, we cannot tell
Until experience gives us data new.
Thus we will ride beside a friend alone,
And show to him our money without fear,
Because we know the motives--love for us,
Honor, and horror of disgraceful crime--
Are stronger with him than cupidity.
But with a stranger we would feel unsafe;
Nor would we trust our friend, were we alone
Upon an island, wrecked, and without food,
And saw his eye with hunger glare, and heard
The famished motive whispering to him, “Kill!”
If he were free, would we feel slightest fear?
For all his soul would shudder from the deed,
And never motive could impel such crime.

Upon this principal all law is made;
For were man free he could not be controlled,
And all compliance would be his caprice.
But since he is the tyrant-motive’s slave,
The law to govern motive only seeks
And builds its sanction on the base of pain,
As motive strongest in the human heart.
It only falls below perfection’s height,
Because there are exceptions to the rule;
When hate and passion, lust and greed of gold,
Prove stronger than the fear of distant pain.
And could the law know fully every heart,
And vary sanction, there would be no crime.

But law itself, and the obeying world,
Are proofs against the grosser form of Fate:
That all is preordained, nor can be changed.
All human life is vacillating life;
We make our plans each day, then alter them.
We form resolves one hour that break the next,
And no one dares assert that he will act,
Upon the morrow, in a certain way;
But cries, it all depends on circumstance.
And this is strange, that while we cannot change
Our lives one tittle by our own free will,
We help, each day, to change our neighbor’s course;
And he assists the motives changing ours.
For all relations to our fellow-men,
Are powers that form our lives, in spite of us.
But we may change our motives, often do,
By changing place, or circumstance of life,
By hearing, reading, or reflective thought;
Yet are these very things from motives done,
And motives mocking all our vain commands.
One motive made the object of an act,
Another rises subject of the act;
And to the final motive we can never reach.

The world’s a self-adjusting, vast machine,
Whose human comparts cannot guide themselves;
And each is but a puppet to the whole,
Yet adds its mite towards its government;
Here, in this motive circle, lies all Fate.
Our fellow-men with motives furnish us,
While we contribute to their motive fund.
The real power, hidden deep within,
Escapes the eye of careless consciousness;
Who proudly tells us we are action’s cause.
Upon this error men, mistaken, raise
The edifice of law in all its forms;
That yet performs its varied functions well,
Because it offers motives that restrain,
Till stronger overcome, and crime ensues.
The motive gibbet lifts its warning arms;
The pillory gapes its scolloped lips for necks;
The lash grows stiff with blood and shreds of flesh;
The treadmill yields beneath the wearied feet;
And Sabbath after Sabbath preachers tell
Of judgment, and of awful Hell, and Heaven;
All these, to stronger make, than lust of sin.
And yet, to lead my reasoning to its end,
I find a chaos of absurdity.
If I am by an unruled motive driven,
Why act at all? Why passive not recline
Upon the lap of destiny, and wait her arms?
Why struggle to acquire means of life,
When Fate must fill our mouths or let us die?
Why go not naked forth into the world,
And trust to Fate for clothes? Why spring aside
From falling weight, or flee a burning house,
Or fight with instinct strength the clasp of waves?
Because we cannot help it; every act
Behind it has a motive, whose command
We, willing or unwilling, must obey.

Law governs motives, motives create law;
Between the reflex action man is placed,
The helpless shuttlecock of unjust Fate!
Now passive driven to commit a crime,
Then by the driver laid upon the rack;
A Zeno’s slave, compelled by Fate to steal,
And then compelled by Fate to bear the lash!

What gross injustice is the rule of life!
A sentient being made without a will,
And placed a cat’s-paw in the hands of Fate,
Who rakes the moral embers for a sin,
That, found, must burn the helpless one alone.
All right and wrong, and whate’er makes man man,
Are gone, and language is half obsolete;
No need of words to tell of moral worth
Existing not, nor e’en conceivable;
No words of blame or commendation, given
According to the intention of a deed;
No words of cheer or comfort, to incite,
For man must act without our useless tongues;
No words of prayer, if Fate supplies our wants;
No words of prayer, if Fate locks up her store;
No words of love, for fondest love were loathed
If fanned by Fate to flame. No words of hate,
For all forgive a wrong when helpless done;
The buds that bloom upon the desert heart
Lose all their sweetness when they’re forced to grow;
All pleasure’s marred because it is not earned,
And pain more painful since ’tis undeserved.

Man falling from his high estate, becomes
A brute with keener sensibilities;
Endowed with mind, upon whose plastic face
Fate writes its batch of lies; poor man believes,
And prates of moral agency, and cants
Of good _he_ does, and evil that _he_ shuns.
With blind content, he rests in false belief,
And happy thus escapes the mental rack--
The consciousness of what he really is.

And yet why false belief? The world believes,
And acting, moves in general harmony;
Could harmony from such an error flow?
Would all believe, would not some one
Have doubted by his works as well as faith?
The veriest skeptic walks the earth to-day,
As if he held the seal of freest will,
And shapes its course, and judges all mankind
By freedom’s rule.
Then may not that be true
Which most believe, and those who doubt profess
In every act; as that which few believe
And to which none conform?
Two paths I see,
One marked Free-Will, the other Fate. The first,
Extending far as human thought can reach,
Through lovely meads with sweetest flowers, and fruits
Of actions clearly shown as right and wrong,
Because of choice ’twixt the two; of laws
With sanction suiting agents who are free;
Of courts acquitting the insane of crime,
Of crime made crime, alone, when done as crime,
Of judgment passed by public sentiment
On action in the ratio of liberty.
Delightful view; but seek an entrance there--
The towering bars of unruled motive stand
Before the path, and none can overleap.

The field of Fate lies open; nothing bars
Our progress there. A thousand different ways
The path diverges. Every by-path leads
To some foul pit or bottomless abyss.
Along each side are strewed the whitening bones
Of venturous pilgrims, lost amid its snares,
Some broken on the rocks of gross decree,
Who hold an unchanged destiny from birth;
Who will not take a medicine if sick,
Who cant of “To be, will be,” and the time
Unalterably set to each man’s life.
Some stranded on the finer form of Fate,
Who say it works by means. Hence they believe
In using all preventives to disease,
In going boating in a rubber belt,
In placing Franklin rods upon a house,
In preaching, and in praying men repent.
These, when one dies, cry out, “It was his time.”
Or if he should recover, “It was not.”
Their fate is always ex post facto fate,
And knowing not the future, they abide
The issue of events, and then confirm
Their dogged dogmas.
Still another class,
Though fewer far in numbers, perish here.
These are the sophists; men who deeply dive
Beneath the surface of effect, and trace
Our actions to their source. They find that man,
Made in the glorious image of his God,
Is not an independent cause, but works
From motive causes out of his control.
They find that every mental act must flow
From outside source, then fearlessly ascend
The chain of being to a height divine,
And dare to fetter the Eternal mind,
And throw their bonds around Omnipotence.
As well a spider in an eagle’s nest
Might, from his hidden web among the twigs,
Attempt to throw his little gluey thread
Around the mottled wing, whose muscled strength
Beats hurried vacuums in the ocean’s spray,
Or circling upward, parts the thunder-cloud,
And bursts above; and shaking off the mists,
With rigid feathers bright as burnished steel,
Floats proudly through the tranquil air.
Which realm
Shall now be mine, Free-Will or Fate? The one
Stands open wide, but all in ruin ends;
The other, fair if once within the pale;
But how to scale the barriers none can tell.
Bah! all is doubt. I’ll leave the mystic paths
Where, on each side, are ranged the phantom shapes
Of disputants, alive and dead, who fight,
With foolish zeal, o’er myths intangible;
When each one cries “Eureka!” for his creed.
That scarcely lives a day, then yields its place.
A Roman ’gainst a Roman, Greek to Greek,
A zealous Omar with an Ali paired;
A saintly Pharisee in hot dispute
With Sadducees. Along th’ illustrious rows
Of lesser lights, who advocate the creeds
Of their respective masters, we descend
To later days and see Titanic minds
Exert their giant strength to reach the truth,
And, baffled, fall. Locke, ever elsewhere clear,
Here mystified Spinoza’s dizzy wing
O’erweighted by his strange “imperium;”
Hobbes, with his new intrinsic liberty;
And Belsham’s quaint reduction too absurd;
“Sufficient reason,” reared in Leibnitz’s strength;
Reid, Collins, Edwards, Tappan, Priestley, Clarke,
All push each other from the door of Truth.

None ever have, nor ever will, on earth,
Reach truth of theory concerning Fate.
It stands as whole from every touch of man
As ocean’s broad blue scroll, whose rubber waves
Erase the furrows of the plowing keels.

Then, careless whether man be king or slave,
I’ll take his actions, whether free or not,
And trace them to their sources. Deep the dive,
But, throwing off the buoys of Charity
And Faith, and all the prejudice of life,
I grasp the lead of Doubt, and downward sink
Into the cesspool of the human heart,
To find the fount, that to the surface casts
A thousand bubbles of such varied hues:
The pale white bubble of hypocrisy,
The murky bubble of revenge and hate,
The frail gilt bubble of ambition’s hope,
The rainbow bubble of sweet love in youth,
The dull slime bubble of a sensual lust,
The crystal bubble of true charity!
Instead of analyzing every fact
Of moral nature, searching for its source,
I’ll name a source most probable, and try
The facts upon it; if they fit, confirm,
If not, reject. With Hobbes and Paley then
I join; and here avow that all mankind
Have but one source of action--Love of self--
Yet not self-love as understands the world,
For that’s a name for error shown by few;
But natural instinct that impels all men
To give self pleasure, and to save it pain;
For pain and pleasure are Life’s only modes--
No neutral state--we suffer, or enjoy;
And every action’s linked with one of these.
We cannot act without a consciousness,
A consciousness of pleasure or of pain,
The very automatic workings of our frames
Are pleasures, unmarked from their constancy;
But if impeded, they produce a pain.
This instinct, teaching us to pleasure seek,
And pain avoid, none ever disobey;
For be their conduct what it may, a crime
Or virtue, greed or pure benevolence,
To find the greatest pleasure is their aim.
Nay, start not, critic, but attend the proofs.
A man exists within himself alone,
Himself, or he would lose identity.
To him the world exists but by effects
Upon himself. His actions toward it then
Bear reference to himself. He cannot act
Without affecting self. His nature’s law
Demands that self be dealt with pleasantly.

There is no pain or pleasure in the world,
But as he feels th’ reality in self,
Or fancies it by signs in other men.
This fancied pain is never _real_ pain,
But yields a _real_ reflex. Others’ pain
Is never pain to us, unless we know
It does exist. Within a hundred yards
A neighbor dies, in agony intense,
And yet we feel no slightest trace of pain,
Unless informed thereof. ’Tis only when we know,
And therefore are affected, that we feel.

The modes of pain and pleasure are then two,
A real and a fancied one. The first acute,
In ratio of our sensibilities;
The last in ratio of our image-power.
These gifts in different men unequal are,
And hence life’s varied phases. One may deem
A real pain far greater than a pain
In fancy formed, from others’ sufferings;
He eats alone, and drives the starving off.
Another’s fancy paints more vividly,
And he endures keen hunger to supply
The poor with food. And so of pleasure too,--
And this moves all to shun the greatest pain,
And find the greatest pleasure.
Different minds,
And each at different times of life, possess
A different standard of this highest good.
The swaddled infant wails for its own food,
Because its highest pleasure is alone in sense;
The child will from its playmate hide a cake
Until it learns that praise for sharing it
Gives greater pleasure than the sweetened taste;
One boy at school proves insubordinate,
His schoolmates’ praise he deems his highest good;
Another studies well, because he values more
A parent’s smile. The murderer with his knife,
The maiden praying in her purity,
The miser dying over hoards of gold,
The widow casting thither her two mites,
A white-veil bending o’er the dying couch,
A stained beauty floating through the waltz,
The preacher’s zeal, the gambler’s eager zest;
All have one motive, greatest good to self!

The tender stop their ears, and cry aloud:
“What! do you dare assert the gambler seeks
With hellish zeal the faintest shade of good?
That he is holy as the Man of God?”
By no means, yet he seeks his good the same.
Not good as you’ve been taught to apprehend,
But good, the greatest to his frame of mind.
Do not exclaim that good is always good,
And never differs from itself. Anon
We’ll speak of abstract truths, if such there be
That good and pleasure are synonymous
At times of action, is most surely plain;
For pleasure’s but the consciousness of good,
Or satisfaction of our tendencies.
If all the gambler’s soul is bent on gain,
Then at the moment gain is greatest good;
But should you reason with him, and explain
Another life, and make it really seem
To him the best, he straight would change his course.

“But,” cries my friend, “the preacher, if he’s true,
Must labor, not for self, but others’ good;
And in proportion as the self’s forgot,
And others cared for, does his conduct rise.”

But he can not, if conscious, forget self,
For everything he does is felt within;
But deeds for others’ good a pleasure give;
If done in pain to self, the pleasure’s more.
To gain the pleasure, self is put to pain,
Just as a vesication brings relief.
If he refused to undergo the pain
Remorse would double it.
Among his flock
Some one is sick; to visit him is right,
And done, affords a pleasure. Sweeter far
That pleasure, if he walks through snow and ice,
At duty’s call!

Sublime self-sacrifice,
Of which men prate, is nothing more nor less
Than base self-worship. Little pain endured
T’ avoid a great; a smaller pleasure lost
To gain a larger!

All the preacher’s words,
That burn or die upon the stolid ear,
Are spoken from this motive, good to self.
You stare; but it is true. Why does he preach?
To save men’s souls?--Why does he try to save?
Because he loves his fellow-men? Not so.
His love for them but to the pleasure adds,
Which duty done confers; but all his work
Must be with reference to himself alone,
Though cunning self the real motive hides,
And leaves his broad philanthropy and love
To claim the merit. Let a score of men,
The blackest sinners, die. He knows it not,
And feels no pang; but if he is informed,
He suffers reflex pain. And if his charge,
Remorseful tortures for unfaithfulness.
And only is the state of souls to him
Of interest, as they are known. When known,
It is a source of pleasure or of pain
Which all his labor is to gain or shun.

“This difference then,” says one, “between men’s lives;
Some live for present, some for future good.
The sensual care for self on earth alone,
The mystic cares for self beyond the grave.”

Both love a present self, in present time.
They differ in their notions of its good.
The stern ascetic, with his shirt of hair,
His bleeding penitential knees, his fasts
To almost death, his soul-exhausting prayers,
Is seeking, cries the world, good after death.
And yet his course of life is that alone
Which could yield pleasure in his state of mind.
He suffers, it is true, but hope of Heaven
Thus rendered sure, as much a present good
Is, as the food that feasts the epicure.
The contemplation of his future home,
Which he is thus securing, is a balm
That heals his stripes, and sweetens all their pain.
The penance blows upon his blood-wealed breast
Are bliss compared to lashes of remorse.
So for the greater good, the hope of Heaven,
He undergoes “the trivial pain of flesh.”
The epicure cares not a fig for Heaven,
But finds his greatest good in pleasing sense.
And so the man who gives his wealth away
Is just as selfish as the money-slave
Who grinds out life amid his dusty bags.
They both seek happiness with equal zest:
The one finds pleasure in the many thanks
Of those receiving, or the public’s praise,
Or if concealed, in consciousness of right;
The other in the consciousness of wealth.

If all men act from motives just the same,
Where is the right and wrong? In the effect?
The quality of actions must be judged
From their intent, and not their consequence.
If two men matches light for their cigars,
And from one careless dropped, a house is burned,
Is he that dropped it guiltier of crime
Than he whose match went out? Most surely no!
Then is the miser blameless, though he turn
The helpless orphan freezing from his door;
And Dives should not be commended more,
Though all his goods to feed the poor he gives.

How then shall we determine quality
Of actions, when their sources are the same,
And their effects possess no quality?
Two dead men lie in blood beside the way,
The one shot by a friend, an accident;
The other murdered for his gold. ’Tis plain
No wrong lies in th’ effects, for both are ’like;
And of the agents, he of accident
Had no intent, and therefore did no wrong.
The other killed to satisfy the self,
A motive founding all the Christian work,
And right if that is right. The wrong
Then lies between the motive and effect,
And must exist in the effecting means.
Yet how within the means is wrong proved wrong?
Jouffroy would say, because a disregard
Of others’ rights; for here he places good,
When classifying Nature’s moral facts.
He makes the child first serve flesh self,
Then moral self, and last to others’ good
Ascend, and general order. What a myth!
As if man thought of others, save effect
From them upon himself. But order gives
A greater good to self; therefore he joins
His strength to others, creates laws that bind
Himself and them, and produce harmony.
He thus surrenders minor good of self,
To gain a greater. This is all the need
He has of order, though Jouffroy asserts
That order universal is the Good.
Yet still he says that private good of each
Is but a fragment of the absolute,
And that regard for every being’s rights
Is binding as the universal law!

Regard for others’ rights indeed, when men
Unharmed agree to hang a man for crime!
Not for the crime--that’s past; but to prevent
A second crime, which crime alone exists
In apprehensive fancy. Thus for wrong
That’s but forethought, they do a real wrong.
To save their rights from harm they fear may come.
They strip a fellow-man of actual right,
And highest, right of life; then dare to call
Their action pure, divinely just, and good,
And all the farce of empty names.
They make
Of gross injustice individual,
A flimsy justice, for mankind at large,
And cry, Let it be done, though Heaven fall!
As if a whole could differ from its parts,
Or right be made from wrong. Yet some may say
That one is sacrificed for many’s good,
Or hung that many may avoid his fate;
And that his crime deserved what he received.

But law must value every man alike,
And cannot save one man, or thousand men,
From future evil, only possible,
By greatest evil to another man,
In its own view of justice. Nor can crime
Meet punishment, at mortal hands, by right,
For murder’s murder, done by one or twelve,
And legal murder’s done in colder blood,
Whose stains are chalked by vain authority.
Authority! the child of numbers and self-love!
Regard for rights of things, indeed, when beasts
And birds must yield their right of life that man
May please his right of taste. When, during Lent,
The holy-days of fasting and of prayer,
The scaly victims crowd the Bishop’s board,
Their flesh unfleshed by Conscience’ pliant rule,
Our palates must be for a moment pleased,
Though costing something agonies of death;
And worse than robbers, what we cannot give,
We dare to take.
They have no souls, say you?
Nor after death exist?
That nothing’s lost,
Philosophy maintains as axiom truth.
An object disappears, but somewhere lives
In other form. The water-pool to mist
Is changed, the powder into flame and smoke.
My pointer dies, his body, decomposed,
The air, the soil, and vegetation feeds;
Yet still exists, although disintegrate.
For there was something, while the pointer lived,
That was not body, but that governed it,
A spirit, essence, call it what you will,
A something seen but through phenomena,
And by them proved most clearly to exist.
A something, not the feet that made them run,
A something, not the eyes, but knew they saw,
A something, without which the eyes could see
As much as glasses can without the eye,
The something, “Carlo” named, that knew the name.
The pointer dies, and we dissect the flesh.
All there, none missing, to the tiniest nerve;
Yet something’s gone, the more important part,
And can you say that it has ceased to be,
When th’ flesh, inferior to it, still exists?
The spirit, if existent, must be whole,
Nor can be parted till material proven.
That Carlo lives, seems plain as I shall live;
He lived for self, and so did I; we fare
Alike in after-life, we differ here
In consciousness of immortality.
But I digress.
Where is the right and wrong?
This is the Gordian knot no sword can cut,
All sages of the world, with wisdom-teeth,
Have gnawed this file without the least effect.
The thousand savants of old Greece and Rome
Proclaimed a thousand theories of good,
That each, successive, proud devoid of truth.
A myriad moderns have advanced their views,
Each gained a few disciples, who avowed their truth,
And each, by some one else, been proven wrong.
A Bentham marches out utility,
A moral test from benefit or harm.
As if the good depended on effect,
And good would not be good, though universe
In all its phases found no use! And Price
Parades his “reason,” with its simple good;
Who’d rather give the question up, than err,
And so declares it cannot be defined.
Then Wollaston declares that good is truth,
Which no one doubts, far as it goes; it goes
Toward good, as far as truth, its attribute;
Beyond, it cannot reach. And Montesquieu
And Clarke, relation’s order preach; a rule
That makes the growing grain, or falling shower,
A moral agent, capable of good.
Then Wolf and Malebranche perfection see,
And therefore good, in God; but their sight fails,
And God may mirror good, but man’s weak eyes
Ne’er see it. Adam Smith, with “sentiment”
Proceeds to dress a thought, and call it, good;
And makes the abstract of a Universe
Arise from puling human sympathy.
The largest concourse follow Hutcheson,
Although the greater part ne’er heard of him.
The world at large believes in moral sense;
They call it conscience! Oh the precious word!
Though stretched and warped, they almost deify,
And term it man’s tribunal in his breast,
Where he may judge his actions, right or wrong.
What nonsense! Conscience is but consciousness
Of soul, and idea of its good. We form
This idea from regard of fellow-men,
Association, and from thought. We find
Sometimes the good of soul conflicts with flesh,
And when we know the soul above the flesh,
We yield to that the preference. Hence arise
The foolish notions of self disregard.
The savage does not know he has a soul,
And therefore has no conscience. He can steal
Without remorse. But when he learns of soul,
He finds it has a good, and by this test
Tries moral actions, are they good for soul?
And this is conscience.
Yet is conscience changed
By circumstance. The Hindoo mother tears
The helpless infant from her trickling breast,
To feed the crocodile, and save her soul;
She’s happier in its conscience-murdered wail
Than in its gleeful prattle on her knee.
And daily we see one commit a deed
Without a pang, another dare not do.
If conscience may be warped but one degree
By plain Sorites, it may be reversed,
And only prove an interested thought.

To abstract good no man has found the key,
Though in the various forms of concrete good
We see the similars, and from these frame
A good that serves the purposes of life.
We pass it as we do the concept, “Man,”
But never ope to count the attributes.
Our purest right is but approximate
To this vague abstract idea, how obtained,
We know not. Plato says ’tis memory
Of previous life. Perhaps! ’Tis very dim
In this; and yet it rocks the cradle world
As strongly as the baby man can bear
And so of truth, or aught abstract, we know
Of such existence somewhere, that is all.
“But we,” cries one, “do hold some abstract truth,
In perfect form. The truth of science’ laws,
The truths of numbers, each are perfect truths.”
The truths of science are hypotheses,
And only true as far as they explain.
But perfect truth must save all facts,
That ever rose or possibly can rise.
“The priest of Nature” thought he held the truth
When throughout space he tracked the motes of light,
And ground the sunbeams into dazzling dust.
Our quivering waves through subtle ether flash,
And drown Sir Isaac’s atoms in a flood
Of glorious truth; till some new fact shall rise
To give our truth the lie, and cause a change
Of theory.
Our numbers no truth have,
Or but a shadow, cast on Earth by truth
Existent in some unknown world. We make
Our little numbers fit the shadow’s line
As best they can, and boast eternal truth!
Yet take a simple form of numbers, “two,”
We cannot have a perfect thought of this,
Because the mind directly asks, two what?
’Tis not enough chameleon to feed
On empty air. Two units, we reply
Then what is meant by unity? An “One,”--
The mind can only cognize o-n-e,
Which makes three units and not one.
The mind
Must have a concrete object to adjust
The abstract on, before it comprehends.
But two concretes are never two, because
They never can be proved exactly ’like.
To illustrate: suppose two ivory balls,
Of finest mold, and equal weight, precise
As hair-hung scales, arranged most delicate,
Can prove; yet they can not be shown
To differ, not the trillionth of a grain;
Or if they could, they may in density
Be unlike; then to equal weight, one must
Be larger by the trillionth of an inch.
Even if alike in density and weight,
No one will dare assert that they possess
A perfect similarity in all.
The abstract two is twice as much as one,
But our two balls unlike, perforce must be
Greater or less than two of either one;
But two of one, the same can never be
On poor, imperfect Earth. Thus all our twos
Fall, in some measure, short of concept two.
And if we paint the concept to the eye,
The figure 2 of finest stereotype,
Beneath the microscope imperfect shows.
And so our perfect numbers, wisdom’s boast,
Are faint, uncertain shadows in the mind,
That we can never picture to the eye,
Nor truthfully apply to anything.
We use a ragged, ill-drawn substitute,
That answers all the purposes of life.
The truths of mathematics, so sublime,
Are never true to us, concretely known;
And in the abstract so concealed are they,
No man can swear he has their perfect form.
We can’t conceive a line without some breadth--
The perfect line possesses length alone;
Earth never saw a pure right-angle drawn,
Pythag’ras cannot prove his theorem,
The finest quadrant is but nearest truth,
The closest measures but approximate,
And all from Sanconiathon to Pierce,
With grandest soaring into Number’s realms,
Have only fluttered feebly o’er the ground,
Their heaven-strong wings by feebling matter tied.

Man is a pris’ner, but the prison walls
Are very vast; so vast the universe
Lies, like a mote, within their mighty scope.
Most are content to grovel on the earth,
Some rise a little way, and sink again;
And some, on noble wing, soar to the bounds,
And eager beat the bars. Beyond these walls
The abstract lies, and oft the straggling rays,
Through crevices and chinks, stray to our jail;
And these we fondly hug as truth.
Poor man!
The glimpses of the great Beyond have roused,
For centuries, his curious soul to flight.
With eagle eye fixed on the distant goal,
He cleaves his way, till dashed against the walls;
Some fall with bruiséd wing again to Earth,
And some cling bravely there, so eager they
To reach the untouched prize, and so intent
Their gaze upon its light, they notice not
The bounds, till Hamilton, with wary eye,
Discovers the Eternal bounding line,
And sadly shows its hopeless fixity.