Chapter XIII: Letter I: From this Letter all the faults and excellencies of Junius (2)

When a man is attempting to describe another person's character, he may be right or he may be wrong; but in one thing he will always succeed, that is, in describing himself. If, for example, he expresses simple approbation, he praises from a consciousness of possessing similar qualities;--if he approves with admiration, it is from a consciousness of deficiency. A. "Ay! he is a sober man." B. "Ah! Sir, what a blessing is sobriety!" Here A. is a man conscious of sobriety, who egotizes in 'tuism';--B. is one who, feeling the ill effects of a contrary habit, contemplates sobriety with blameless envy. Again:--A. "Yes, he is a warm man, a moneyed fellow; you may rely upon him." B. "Yes, yes, Sir, no wonder! he has the blessing of being well in the world." This reflection might be introduced in defence of plaintive egotism, and by way of preface to an examination of all the charges against it, and from what feelings they proceed. 1800.[1]

Contempt is egotism in ill humour. Appetite without moral affection, social sympathy, and even without passion and imagination--(in plain English, mere lust,)--is the basest form of egotism,--and being 'infra' human, or below humanity, should be pronounced with the harsh breathing, as 'he-goat-ism'. 1820.

[Footnote 1: From Mr. Gulch's commonplace book. Ed]

CAP OF LIBERTY.

Those who hoped proudly of human nature, and admitted no distinction between Christians and Frenchmen, regarded the first constitution as a colossal statue of Corinthian brass, formed by the fusion and commixture of all metals in the conflagration of the state. But there is a common fungus, which so exactly represents the pole and cap of liberty, that it seems offered by nature herself as the appropriate emblem of Gallic republicanism,--mushroom patriots, with a mushroom cap of liberty.

BULLS.

'Novi ego aliquem qui dormitabundus aliquando pulsari horam quartam
audiverit, et sic numeravit, una, una, una, una; ac tum præ rei
absurditate, quam anima concipiebat, exclamavit, Næ! delirat
horologium! Quater pulsavit horam unam'.

I knew a person, who, during imperfect sleep, or dozing, as we say, listened to the clock as it was striking four, and as it struck, he counted the four, one, one, one, one; and then exclaimed, "Why, the clock is out of its wits; it has struck one four times over!"

This is a good exemplification of the nature of 'Bulls', which will be found always to contain in them a confusion of what the schoolmen would have called--objectivity with subjectivity;--in plain English, the impression of a thing as it exists in itself, and extrinsically, with the image which the mind abstracts from the impression. Thus, number, or the total of a series, is a generalization of the mind, an 'ens rationis' not an 'ens reale'. I have read many attempts at a definition of a 'Bull', and lately in the Edinburgh Review; but it then appeared to me that the definers had fallen into the same fault with Miss Edgeworth, in her delightful essay on 'Bulls', and given the definition of the genus, 'Blunder', for that of the particular species. I will venture, therefore, to propose the following: a 'Bull' consists in a mental juxta-position of incongruous images or thoughts with the sensation, but without the sense, of connection. The psychological conditions of the possibility of a 'Bull', it would not be difficult to determine; but it would require a larger space than can be afforded here, at least more attention than my readers would be likely to afford.

There is a sort of spurious 'Bull' which consists wholly in mistake of language, and which the closest thinker may make, if speaking in a language of which he is not master.

WISE IGNORANCE.

It is impossible to become either an eminently great, or truly pious man, without the courage to remain ignorant of many things. This important truth is most happily expressed by the elder Scaliger in prose, and by the younger in verse; the latter extract has an additional claim from the exquisite terseness of its diction, and the purity of its Latinity. I particularly recommend its perusal to the commentators on the Apocalypse.

'Quare ulterior disquisitio morosi atque satagentis animi est; humanae
enim sapientiae pars est, quaedam aequo animo nescire velle'.

J. C, Scalig. Ex. 307. s. 29.

'Ne curiosus quaere causas omnium,
Quaecunque libris vis prophetarum indidit,
Afflata caelo, plena veraci Deo;
Nec operta sacri supparo silentii
Irrumpere aude; sed prudenter praeteri!
Nescire velle quae magister optimus
Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est'.

Josep. Scalig.

ROUGE.

Triumphant generals in Rome wore rouge. The ladies of France, and their fair sisters and imitators in Britain, conceive themselves always in the chair of triumph, and of course entitled to the same distinction. The custom originated, perhaps, in the humility of the conquerors that they might seem to blush continually at their own praises. Mr. Gilpin frequently speaks of a "picturesque eye:" with something less of solecism, I may affirm that our fair ever blushing triumphants have secured to themselves the charm of picturesque cheeks, every face being its own portrait.

[Greek: Epea pteroenta.] HASTY WORDS.

I crave mercy (at least of my contemporaries: for if these Omniana should outlive the present generation, the opinion will not need it) but I could not help writing in the blank page of a very celebrated work [1] the following passage from Picus Mirandula:-

'Movent mihi stomachum grammatistae quidam, qui cum duas tenuerint
vocabulorum origines, ita se ostentant, ita venditant, ita
circumferunt jactabundi, ut prae ipsis pro nihilo habendos philosophos
arbitrentur'. Epist. ad Hermol. Barb.

[Footnote 1: Diversions of Purley. Ed.]

MOTIVES AND IMPULSES.

It is a matter of infinite difficulty, but fortunately of comparative indifference to determine what a man's motive may have been for this or that particular action. Rather seek to learn what his objects in general are. What does he habitually wish, habitually pursue? and thence deduce his impulses which are commonly the true efficient causes of men's conduct; and without which the motive itself would not have become a motive. Let a haunch of venison represent the motive, and the keen appetite of health, and exercise the impulse: then place the same or some more favourite dish before the same man, sick, dyspeptic, and stomach-worn, and we may then weigh the comparative influences of motives and impulses. Without the perception of this truth, it is impossible to understand the character of lago, who is represented as now assigning one, and then another, and again a third motive for his conduct, all alike the mere fictions of his own restless nature, distempered by a keen sense of his intellectual superiority, and haunted by the love of exerting power on those especially who are his superiors in practical and moral excellence. Yet how many among our modern critics have attributed to the profound author this the appropriate inconsistency of the character itself.

A second illustration:--Did Curio, the 'quondam' patriot, reformer, and semi-revolutionist, abjure his opinion, and yell the foremost in the hunt of persecution against his old friends and fellow-philosophists, with a cold clear predetermination, formed at one moment, of making £5000 a year by his apostacy?--I neither know nor care. Probably not. But this I know, that to be thought a man of consequence by his contemporaries, to be admitted into the society of his superiors in artificial rank, to excite the admiration of lords, to live in splendour and sensual luxury, have been the objects of his habitual wishes. A flash of lightning has turned at once the polarity of the compass needle: and so, perhaps, now and then, but as rarely, a violent motive may revolutionize a man's opinions and professions. But more frequently his honesty dies away imperceptibly from evening into twilight, and from twilight into utter darkness. He turns hypocrite so gradually, and by such tiny atoms of motion, that by the time he has arrived at a given point, he forgets his own hypocrisy in the imperceptible degrees of his conversion. The difference between such a man and a bolder liar, is merely that between the hour hand, and that which tells the seconds, on a watch. Of the former you can see only the past motion; of the latter both the past motion and the present moving. Yet there is, perhaps, more hope of the latter rogue: for he has lied to mankind only and not to himself--the former lies to his own heart, as well as to the public.

INWARD BLINDNESS.

Talk to a blind man--he knows he wants the sense of sight, and willingly makes the proper allowances. But there are certain internal senses, which a man may want, and yet be wholly ignorant that he wants them. It is most unpleasant to converse with such persons on subjects of taste, philosophy, or religion. Of course there is no reasoning with them: for they do not possess the facts, on which the reasoning must be grounded. Nothing is possible, but a naked dissent, which implies a sort of unsocial contempt; or, what a man of kind dispositions is very likely to fall into, a heartless tacit acquiescence, which borders too nearly on duplicity.

THE VICES OF SLAVES NO EXCUSE FOR SLAVERY.

It often happens, that the slave himself has neither the power nor the wish to be free. He is then brutified; but this apathy is the dire effect of slavery, and so far from being a justifying cause, that it contains the grounds of its bitterest condemnation. The Carlovingian race bred up the Merovingi as beasts; and then assigned their unworthiness as the satisfactory reason for their dethronement. Alas! the human being is more easily weaned from the habit of commanding than from that of abject obedience. The slave loses his soul when he loses his master; even as the dog that has lost himself in the street, howls and whines till he has found the house again, where he had been kicked and cudgelled, and half starved to boot. As we, however, or our ancestors must have inoculated our fellow-creature with this wasting disease of the soul, it becomes our duty to cure him; and though we cannot immediately make him free, yet we can, and ought to, put him in the way of becoming so at some future time, if not in his own person, yet in that of his children. The French, you will say, are not capable of freedom. Grant this;--but does this fact justify the ungrateful traitor, whose every measure has been to make them still more incapable of it?

CIRCULATION OF THE BLOOD.

The ancients attributed to the blood the same motion of ascent and descent which really takes place in the sap of trees. Servetus discovered the minor circulation from the heart to the lungs. Do not the following passages of Giordano Bruno (published in 1591) seem to imply more? I put the question, 'pauperis forma', with unfeigned diffidence.

'"De Immenso et Innumerabili,"' lib. vi. cap. 8.

'Ut in nostro corpore sanguis per totum circumcursat et recursat, sic
in toto mundo, astro, tellure.

Quare non aliter quam nostro in corpore sanguis Hinc meat, hinc
remeat, neque ad inferiora fluit vi Majore, ad supera a pedibus quam
deinde recedat:--'

and still more plainly, in the ninth chapter of the same book,

'Quid esset Quodam ni gyro naturae cuncta redirent Ortus ad proprios
rursum; si sorbeat omnes Pontus aquas, totum non restituatque perenni
Ordine; qua possit rerum consistere vita? Tanquam si totus concurrat
sanguis in unam, In qua consistat, partem, nec prima revisat Ordia, et
antiquos cursus non inde resumat.'

It is affirmed in the "Supplement to the Scotch Encyclopædia Britannica," that Des Cartes was the first who in defiance of Aristotle and the Schools, attributed infinity to the universe. The very title of Bruno's poem proves, that this honour belongs to him.

Feyjoo lays claim to a knowledge of the circulation of the blood for Francisco de la Reyna, a farrier, who published a work upon his own art at Burgos, in 1564. The passage which he quotes is perfectly clear.

'Por manera, que la sangre anda en torno, y en rueda por todos los
miembros, excluye toda duda.'

Whether Reyna himself claimed any discovery, Feyjoo does not mention;--but, these words seem to refer to some preceding demonstration of the fact. I am inclined to think that this, like many other things, was known before it was discovered; just as the preventive powers of the vaccine disease, the existence of adipocire in graves, and certain principles in grammar and in population, upon which bulky books have been written and great reputations raised in our days.

PERITURAE PARCERE CHARTAE.

What scholar but must at times have a feeling of splenetic regret, when he looks at the list of novels, in two, three, or four volumes each, published monthly by Messrs. Lane, &c. and then reflects that there are valuable works of Cudworth, prepared by himself for the press, yet still unpublished by the University which possesses them, and which ought to glory in the name of their great author! and that there is extant in manuscript a folio volume of unprinted sermons by Jeremy Taylor. Surely, surely, the patronage of our many literary societies might be employed more beneficially to the literature and to the actual 'literati' of the country, if they would publish the valuable manuscripts that lurk in our different public libraries, and make it worth the while of men of learning to correct and annotate the copies, instead of----, but it is treading on hot embers!

TO HAVE AND TO BE.

The distinction is marked in a beautiful sentiment of a German poet: Hast thou any thing? share it with me and I will pay thee the worth of it. Art thou any thing? O then let us exchange souls!

The following is offered as a mere playful illustration:

"Women have no souls," says prophet Mahomet.

Nay, dearest Anna! why so grave?
I said you had no soul,'tis true:
For what you are, you cannot have--
'Tis I, that have one, since I first had you.

PARTY PASSION.

"Well, Sir!" exclaimed a lady, the vehement and impassionate partizan of Mr. Wilkes, in the day of his glory, and during the broad blaze of his patriotism, "Well, Sir! and will you dare deny that Mr. Wilkes is a great man, and an eloquent man?"--"Oh! by no means, Madam! I have not a doubt respecting Mr. Wilkes's talents!"--"Well, but, Sir! and is he not a fine man, too, and a handsome man?"--"Why, Madam! he squints, doesn't he?"--"Squints! yes to be sure he does, Sir! but not a bit more than a gentleman and a man of sense ought to squint!"

GOODNESS OF HEART INDISPENSABLE TO A MAN OF GENIUS.

'If men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and function of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility of any man's being the good poet without being first a good man. (Dedication to 'the Fox').'

Ben Jonson has borrowed this just and noble sentiment from Strabo.

[Greek (transliterated): 'h de (haretae) poiaetou sunezeuktai tae tou
anthropou kai ouch oionte agathhon genesthai, poiaetaen, mae proteron
genaethenta andra agathon.]
( Lib. I. p. 33. folio.)

MILTON AND BEN JONSON.

Those who have more faith in parallelism than myself, may trace Satan's address to the sun in 'Paradise Lost' to the first lines of Ben Jonson's Poetaster:

"Light! I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing thy golden
splendour pitchy darkness!"

But even if Milton had the above in his mind, his own verses would be more fitly entitled an apotheosis of Jonson's lines than an imitation.

STATISTICS.

We all remember Burke's curious assertion that there were 80,000 incorrigible jacobins in England. Mr. Colquhoun is equally precise in the number of beggars, prostitutes, and thieves in the City of London. Mercetinus, who wrote under Lewis XV. seems to have afforded the precedent; he assures his readers, that by an accurate calculation there were 50,000 incorrigible atheists in the City of Paris! Atheism then may have been a co-cause of the French revolution; but it should not be burthened on it, as its monster-child.

MAGNANIMITY.

The following ode was written by Giordano Bruno, under prospect of that martyrdom which he soon after suffered at Rome, for atheism: that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and enlightened piety, which was of course unintelligible to bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object which nature affords to our contemplation, these lines which portray the human mind under the action of its most elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise of sublimity. The work from which they are extracted is exceedingly rare (as are, indeed, all the works of the Nolan philosopher), and I have never seen them quoted:--

'Daedaleas vacuis plumas nectere humeris
Concupiant alii; aut vi suspendi nubium
Alis, ventorumve appetant remigium;
Aut orbitae flammantis raptari alveo;
Bellerophontisve alitem

Nos vero illo donati sumus genio,
Ut fatum intrepedi objectasque umbras cernimus,
Ne caeci ad lumen solis, ad perspicuas
Naturae voces surdi, ad Divum munera
Ingrato adsimus pectore.

Non curamus stultorum quid opinio
De nobis ferat, aut queis dignetur sedibus.
Alis ascendimus sursum melioribus!
Quid nubes ultra, ventorum ultra est semita,
Vidimus, quantum satis est.

Illuc conscendent plurimi, nobis ducibus,
Per scalam proprio erectam et firmam in pectore,
Quam Deus, et vegeti sors dabit ingeni;
Non manes, pluma, ignis, ventus, nubes, spiritus,
Divinantum phantasmata.

Non sensus vegetans, non me ratio arguet,
Non indoles exculti clara ingenii;
Sed perfidi sycophantae supercilium
Absque lance, statera, trutina, oculo,
Miraculum armati segete.

Versificantis grammatistae encomium,
Buglossae Graecissantum, et epistolia
Lectorem libri salutantum a limine,
Latrantum adversum Zoilos, Momos, mastiges,
Hinc absint testimonia!

Procedat nudus, quern non ornant nubila,
Sol! Non conveniunt quadrupedum phalerae
Humano dorso! Porra veri species
Quaesita, inventa, et patefacta me efferat!
Etsi nullus intelligat,
Si cum natura sapio, et sub numine,
Id vere plus quam satis est.'

The conclusion alludes to a charge of impenetrable obscurity, in which Bruno shares one and the same fate with Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and in truth with every great discoverer and benefactor of the human race; excepting only when the discoveries have been capable of being rendered palpable to the outward senses, and have therefore come under the cognizance of our "sober judicious critics," the men of "sound common sense;" that is, of those snails in intellect, who wear their eyes at the tips of their feelers, and cannot even see unless they at the same time touch. When these finger-philosophers affirm that Plato, Bruno, &c. must have been "out of their senses," the just and proper retort is,--"Gentlemen! it is still worse with you! you have lost your reason!"

By the by, Addison in the Spectator has grossly misrepresented the design and tendency of Bruno's 'Bestia Triomphante'; the object of which was to show of all the theologies and theogonies which have been conceived for the mere purpose of solving problems in the material universe, that as they originate in fancy, so they all end in delusion, and act to the hindrance or prevention of sound knowledge and actual discovery. But the principal and most important truth taught in this allegory is, that in the concerns of morality all pretended knowledge of the will of Heaven which is not revealed to man through his conscience; that all commands which do not consist in the unconditional obedience of the will to the pure reason, without tampering with consequences (which are in God's power, not in ours); in short, that all motives of hope and fear from invisible powers, which are not immediately derived from, and absolutely coincident with, the reverence due to the supreme reason of the universe, are all alike dangerous superstitions. The worship founded on them, whether offered by the Catholic to St. Francis, or by the poor African to his Fetish differ in form only, not in substance. Herein Bruno speaks not only as a philosopher, but as an enlightened Christian;--the Evangelists and Apostles every where representing their moral precepts not as doctrines then first revealed, but as truths implanted in the hearts of men, which their vices only could have obscured.

NEGROS AND NARCISSUSES.

There are certain tribes of Negros who take for the deity of the day the first thing they see or meet with in the morning. Many of our fine ladies, and some of our very fine gentlemen, are followers of the same sect; though by aid of the looking-glass they secure a constancy as to the object of their devotion.

AN ANECDOTE.

We here in England received a very high character of Lord ---- during his stay abroad. "Not unlikely, Sir," replied the traveller; "a dead dog at a distance is said to smell like musk."

THE PHAROS AT ALEXANDRIA.

Certain full and highly-wrought dissuasives from sensual indulgencies, in the works of theologians as well as of satirists and story-writers, may, not unaptly, remind one of the Pharos; the many lights of which appeared at a distance as one, and this as a polar star, so as more often to occasion wrecks than prevent them.

At the base of the Pharos the name of the reigning monarch was engraved, on a composition, which the artist well knew would last no longer than the king's life. Under this, and cut deep in the marble itself, was his own name and dedication: "Sostratos of Gyndos, son of Dexiteles to the Gods, protectors of sailors!"--So will it be with the 'Georgium Sidus' the 'Ferdinandia', &c. &c.--Flattery's plaister of Paris will crumble away, and under it we shall read the names of Herschel, Piozzi, and their compeers.

SENSE AND COMMON SENSE.

I have noticed two main evils in philosophizing. The first is, the absurdity of demanding proof for the very facts which constitute the nature of him who demands it,--a proof for those primary and unceasing revelations of self-consciousness, which every possible proof must pre-suppose; reasoning, for instance, 'pro' and 'con', concerning the existence of the power of reasoning. Other truths may be ascertained; but these are certainty itself (all at least which we mean by the word), and are the measure of every thing else which we deem certain. The second evil is, that of mistaking for such facts mere general prejudices, and those opinions that, having been habitually taken for granted, are dignified with the name of common sense. Of these, the first is the more injurious to the reputation, the latter more detrimental to the progress of philosophy. In the affairs of common life we very properly appeal to common sense; but it is absurd to reject the results of the microscope from the negative testimony of the naked eye. Knives are sufficient for the table and the market;--but for the purposes of science we must dissect with the lancet.

As an instance of the latter evil, take that truly powerful and active intellect, Sir Thomas Brown, who, though he had written a large volume in detection of vulgar errors, yet peremptorily pronounces the motion of the earth round the sun, and consequently the whole of the Copernican system unworthy of any serious confutation, as being manifestly repugnant to common sense; which said common sense, like a miller's scales, used to weigh gold or gasses, may, and often does, become very gross, though unfortunately not very uncommon, nonsense. And as for the former, which may be called 'Logica Praepostera', I have read in metaphysical essays of no small fame, arguments drawn 'ab extra' in proof and disproof of personal identity, which, ingenious as they may be, were clearly anticipated by the little old woman's appeal to her little dog, for the solution of the very same doubts, occasioned by her petticoats having been cut round about:--

If it is not me, he'll bark and he'll rail, But if I be I, he'll wag
his little tail.

TOLERATION.

I dare confess that Mr. Locke's treatise on Toleration appeared to me far from being a full and satisfactory answer to the subtle and oft-times plausible arguments of Bellarmin, and other Romanists. On the whole, I was more pleased with the celebrated W. Penn's tracts on the same subject. The following extract from his excellent letter to the king of Poland appeals to the heart rather than to the head, to the Christian rather than to the philosopher; and, besides, overlooks the ostensible object of religious penalties, which is not so much to convert the heretic, as to prevent the spread of heresy. The thoughts, however, are so just in themselves, and expressed with so much life and simplicity, that it well deserves a place in these Omniana:--

Now, O Prince! give a poor Christian leave to expostulate with thee.
Did Christ Jesus or his holy followers endeavour, by precept or
example, to set up their religion with a carnal sword? Called he any
troops of men or angels to defend him? Did he encourage Peter to
dispute his right with the sword? But did he not say, 'Put it up'? Or
did he countenance his over-zealous disciples, when they would have
had fire from heaven to destroy those that were not of their mind? No!
But did not Christ rebuke them, saying, 'Ye know not what spirit ye
are of?' And if it was neither Christ's spirit, nor their own spirit
that would have fire from heaven--Oh! what is that spirit that would
kindle fire on earth to destroy such as peaceably dissent upon the
account of conscience!

O King! when did the true religion persecute? When did the true church
offer violence for religion? Were not her weapons prayers, tears, and
patience? did not Jesus conquer by these weapons, and vanquish cruelty
by suffering? can clubs, and staves, and swords, and prisons, and
banishments reach the soul, convert the heart, or convince the
understanding of man? When did violence ever make a true convert, or
bodily punishment, a sincere Christian? This maketh void the end of
Christ's coming. Yea, it robbeth God's spirit of its office, which is
to convince the world. That is the sword by which the ancient
Christians overcame.

The theory of persecution seems to rest on the following assumptions. 1. A duty implies a right. We have a right to do whatever it is our duty to do. 2. It is the duty and consequently the right of the supreme power in a state to promote the greatest possible sum of well-being in that state. 3. This is impossible without morality. 4. But morality can neither be produced or preserved in a people at large without true religion. 5. Relative to the duties of the legislature or governors, that is the true religion which they conscientiously believe to be so. 6. As there can be but one true religion, at the same time, this one it is their duty and right to authorize and protect. 7. But the established religion cannot be protected and secured except by the imposition of restraints or the influence of penalties on those, who profess and propagate hostility to it. 8. True religion, consisting of precepts, counsels, commandments, doctrines, and historical narratives, cannot be effectually proved or defended, but by a comprehensive view of the whole as a system. Now this cannot be hoped for from the mass of mankind. But it may be attacked, and the faith of ignorant men subverted by particular objections, by the statement of difficulties without any counter-statement of the greater difficulties which would result from the rejection of the former, and by all the other stratagems used in the desultory warfare of sectaries and infidels. This is, however, manifestly dishonest and dangerous, and there must exist, therefore, a power in the state to prevent, suppress, and punish it. 9. The advocates of toleration have never been able to agree among themselves concerning the limits to their own claims; have never established any clear rules, as to what shall and what shall not be admitted under the name of religion and conscience. Treason and the grossest indecencies not only may be, but have been, called by these names: as among the earlier Anabaptists. 10. And last, it is a 'petitio principii', or begging the question, to take for granted that a state has no power except in case of overt acts. It is its duty to prevent a present evil, as much at least as to punish the perpetrators of it. Besides, preaching and publishing are overt acts. Nor has it yet been proved, though often asserted, that a Christian sovereign has nothing to do with the eternal happiness or misery of the fellow creatures entrusted to his charge.

HINT FOR A NEW SPECIES OF HISTORY.

"The very knowledge of the opinions and customs of so considerable a
part of mankind as the Jews now are, and especially have been
heretofore, is valuable both for pleasure and use. It is a very good
piece of history, and that of the best kind, namely, of human nature,
and of that part of it which is most different from us, and commonly
the least known to us. And, indeed, the principal advantage which is
to be made by the wiser sort of men of most writings, is rather to see
what men think and are, than to be informed of the natures and truth
of things; to observe what thoughts and passions have occupied men's
minds, what opinions and manners they are of. In this view it becomes
of no mean importance to notice and record the strangest ignorance,
the most putid fables, impertinent, trifling, ridiculous disputes, and
more ridiculous pugnacity in the defence and retention of the subjects
disputed."
(Publisher's preface to the reader in Lightfoot's 'Works', vol. i.)

In the thick volume of title pages and chapters of contents (composed) of large and small works correspondent to each (proposed) by a certain 'omni'-pregnant, 'nihili'-parturient genius of my acquaintance, not the least promising is,--"A History of the morals and (as connected therewith) of the manners of the English Nation from the Conquest to the present time." From the chapter of contents it appears, that my friend is a steady believer in the uninterrupted progression of his fellow countrymen; that there has been a constant growth of wealth and well-being among us, and with these an increase of knowledge, and with increasing knowledge an increase and diffusion of practical goodness. The degrees of acceleration, indeed, have been different at different periods. The moral being has sometimes crawled, sometimes strolled, sometimes walked, sometimes run; but it has at all times been moving onward. If in any one point it has gone backward, it has been only in order to leap forward in some other. The work was to commence with a numeration table, or catalogue, of those virtues or qualities which make a man happy in himself, and which conduce to the happiness of those about him, in a greater or lesser sphere of agency. The degree and the frequency in which each of these virtues manifested themselves, in the successive reigns from William the Conqueror inclusively, were to be illustrated by apposite quotations from the works of contemporary writers, not only of historians and chroniclers, but of the poets, romance writers, and theologians, not omitting the correspondence between literary men, the laws and regulations, civil and ecclesiastical, and whatever records the industry of antiquarians has brought to light in their provincial, municipal, and monastic histories:--tall tomes and huge! undegenerate sons of Anak, which look down from a dizzy height on the dwarfish progeny of contemporary wit, and can find no associates in size at a less distance than two centuries; and in arranging which the puzzled librarian must commit an anachronism in order to avoid an anatopism.

Such of these illustrations as most amused or impressed me, when I heard them (for alas! even his very title pages and contents my friend composes only in air!) I shall probably attempt to preserve in different parts of these 'Omniana'. At present I shall cite one article only which I found wafered on a blank leaf of his memorandum book, superscribed: "Flattering news for 'Anno Domini' 2000, whenever it shall institute a comparison between itself and the 17th and 18th centuries." It consists of an extract, say rather, an exsection from the Kingston Mercantile Advertiser, from Saturday, August the 15th, to Tuesday, August 18th, 1801. This paper which contained at least twenty more advertisements of the very same kind, was found by accident among the wrapping-papers in the trunk of an officer just returned from the West India station. They stand here exactly as in the original, from which they are reprinted:--

Kingston, July 30, 1801.

Ran away, about three weeks ago, from a penn near Halfway Tree, a
negro wench, named Nancy, of the Chamba country, strong made, an ulcer
on her left leg, marked D. C. diamond between. She is supposed to be
harboured by her husband, Dublin, who has the direction of a wherry
working between this town and Port Royal, and is the property of Mr.
Fishley, of that place; the said negro man having concealed a boy in
his wherry before. Half a joe will be paid to any person apprehending
the above described wench, and delivering to Mr. Archibald M' Lea,
East end; and if found secreted by any person, the law will be put in
force.

Kingston, August 13, 1801.

Strayed on Monday evening last, a negro boy of the Moco country, named
Joe, the property of Mr. Thomas Williams, planter, in St. John's, who
had sent him to town under the charge of a negro man, with a cart for
provisions. The said boy is, perhaps, from 15 to 18 years of age,
about twelve months in the country, no mark, speaks little English,
but can tell his owner's name; had on a long Oznaburg frock. It is
supposed he might have gone out to vend some pears and lemon-grass,
and have lost himself in the street. One pistole will be paid to any
person apprehending and bringing him to this office.

Kingston, July 1, 1801.

Forty Shillings Reward.

Strayed on Friday evening last, (and was seen going up West Street the
following morning), a small bay HORSE, the left ear lapped, flat rump,
much scored from the saddle on his back, and marked on the near side
F. M. with a diamond between. Whoever will take up the said horse, and
deliver him to W. Balantine, butcher, back of West Street, will
receive the above reward.

Kingston, July 4, 1801.

Strayed on Sunday morning last, from the subscriber's house, in East
Street, a bright dun He-Mule, the mane lately cropped, a large chafe
slightly skinned over on the near buttock, and otherwise chafed from
the action of the harness in his recent breaking. Half a joe will be
paid to any person taking up and bringing this mule to the
subscriber's house, or to the Store in Harbour Street. JOHN WALSH.

Kingston, July 2, 1801.

Ten pounds Reward,

Ran away

About two years ago from the subscriber, a Negro woman named

DORAH,

purchased from Alexander M'Kean, Esq. She is about 20 years of age,
and 5 feet 6 or 7 inches high; has a mark on one of her shoulders,
about the size of a quarter dollar, occasioned, she says, by the yaws;
of a coal black complexion, very artful, and most probably passes
about the country with false papers and under another name; if that is
not the case, it must be presumed she is harboured about Green pond,
where she has a mother and other connexions.

What a history! horses and negros! negros and horses! It makes me tremble at my own nature. Surely, every religious and conscientious Briton is equally a debtor in gratitude to Thomas Clarkson and his fellow labourers with every African: for on the soul of every individual among us did a portion of guilt rest, as long as the Slave Trade remained legal.

A few years back the public was satiated with accounts of the happy condition of the slaves in our colonies, and the great encouragements and facilities afforded to such of them, as by industry and foresight laboured to better their situation. With what truth this is stated as the general tone of feeling among our planters, and their agents, may be conjectured from the following sentences, which made part of what in England we call the leading paragraph of the same newspaper:--

Strange as it may appear, we are assured as a fact, that a number of
slaves in this town have purchased lots of land, and are absolutely in
possession of the fee simple of lands and tenements. Neither is it
uncommon for the men slaves to purchase or manumize their wives, and
'vice versa', the wives their husbands. To account for this, we need
only look to the depredations daily committed, and the impositions
practised to the distress of the community and ruin of the fair
trader. Negro yards too, under such direction, will necessarily prove
the asylum of runaways from the country.

TEXT SPARRING.

When I hear (as who now can travel twenty miles in a stage coach without the probability of hearing) an ignorant religionist quote an unconnected sentence of half a dozen words from any part of the Old or New Testament, and resting on the literal sense of these words the eternal misery of all who reject, nay, even of all those countless myriads, who have never had the opportunity of accepting this, and sundry other articles of faith conjured up by the same textual magic; I ask myself what idea these persons form of the Bible, that they should use it in a way in which they themselves use no other book? They deem the whole written by inspiration. Well! but is the very essence of rational discourse, that is, connection and dependency done away, because the discourse is infallibly rational? The mysteries, which these spiritual lynxes detect in the simplest texts, remind me of the 500 nondescripts, each as large as his own black cat, which Dr. Katterfelto, by aid of his solar microscope, discovered in a drop of transparent water.

But to a contemporary who has not thrown his lot in the same helmet with them, these fanatics think it a crime to listen. Let them then, or far rather, let those who are in danger of infection from them, attend to the golden aphorisms of the old and orthodox divines. "Sentences in scripture (says Dr. Donne) like hairs in horses' tails, concur in one root of beauty and strength; but being plucked out, one by one, serve only for springes and snares."

The second I transcribe from the preface to Lightfoot's works. "Inspired writings are an inestimable treasure to mankind; for so many sentences, so many truths. But then the true sense of them must be known: otherwise, so many sentences, so many authorized falsehoods."

PELAGIANISM.

Our modern latitudinarians will find it difficult to suppose, that anything could have been said in the defence of Pelagianism equally absurd with the facts and arguments which have been adduced in favour of original sin, (sin being taken as guilt; that is, observes a Socinian wit, the crime of being born). But in the comment of Rabbi Akibah on Ecclesiastes xii. 1. we have a story of a mother, who must have been a most determined believer in the uninheritability of sin. For having a sickly and deformed child, and resolved that it should not be thought to have been punished for any fault of its parents or ancestors, and yet having nothing else for which to blame the child, she seriously and earnestly accused it before the judge of having kicked her unmercifully during her pregnancy.

I am firmly persuaded that no doctrine was ever widely diffused among various nations through successive ages and under different religions, (such as is the doctrine of original sin, and redemption, those fundamental articles of every known religion professing to be revealed,) which is not founded either in the nature of things or in the necessities of our nature. In the language of the schools, it carries with it presumptive evidence that it is either objectively or subjectively true. And the more strange and contradictory such a doctrine may appear to the understanding, or discursive faculty, the stronger is the presumption in its favour. For whatever satirists may say, and sciolists imagine, the human mind has no predilection for absurdity. I do not, however, mean that such a doctrine shall be always the best possible representation of the truth on which it is founded; for the same body casts strangely different shadows in different places, and different degrees of light, but that it always does shadow out some such truth, and derive its influence over our faith from our obscure perception of that truth. Yea, even where the person himself attributes his belief of it to the miracles, with which it was announced by the founder of his religion.

THE SOUL AND ITS ORGANS OF SENSE.

It is a strong presumptive proof against materialism, that there does not exist a language on earth, from the rudest to the most refined, in which a materialist can talk for five minutes together, without involving some contradiction in terms to his own system. 'Objection'. Will not this apply equally to the astronomer? Newton, no doubt, talked of the sun's rising and setting, just like other men. What should we think of the coxcomb who should have objected to him, that he contradicted his own system? 'Answer'--No! it does not apply equally; say rather, it is utterly inapplicable to the astronomer and natural philosopher. For his philosophic, and his ordinary language speak of two quite different things, both of which are equally true. In his ordinary language he refers to a fact of appearance, to a phenomenon common and necessary to all persons in a given situation; in his scientific language he determines that one position or figure, which being supposed, the appearance in question would be the necessary result, and all appearances in all situations maybe demonstrably foretold. Let a body be suspended in the air, and strongly illuminated. What figure is here? A triangle. But what here? A trapezium;--and so on. The same question put to twenty men, in twenty different positions and distances, would receive twenty different answers: each would be a true answer. But what is that one figure which, being so placed, all these facts of appearance must result according to the law of perspective?--Ay! this is a different question, this is a new subject. The words which answer this would be absurd if used in reply to the former. [1]

Thus, the language of the scripture on natural objects is as strictly philosophical as that of the Newtonian system. Perhaps more so. For it is not only equally true, but it is universal among mankind, and unchangeable. It describes facts of appearance. And what other language would have been consistent with the divine wisdom? The inspired writers must have borrowed their terminology, either from the crude and mistaken philosophy of their own times, and so have sanctified and perpetuated falsehood, unintelligible meantime to all but one in ten thousand; or they must have anticipated the terminology of the true system, without any revelation of the system itself, and so have become unintelligible to all men; or lastly, they must have revealed the system itself, and thus have left nothing for the exercise, developement, or reward of the human understanding, instead of teaching that moral knowledge, and enforcing those social and civic virtues, out of which the arts and sciences will spring up in due time and of their own accord. But nothing of this applies to the materialist; he refers to the very same facts, of which the common language of mankind speaks: and these too are facts that have their sole and entire being in our own consciousness; facts, as to which 'esse' and 'conscire' are identical. Now, whatever is common to all languages, in all climates, at all times, and in all stages of civilization, must be the exponent and consequent of the common consciousness of man as man. Whatever contradicts this universal language, therefore, contradicts the universal consciousness, and the facts in question subsisting exclusively in consciousness, whatever contradicts the consciousness contradicts the fact.

I have been seduced into a dry discussion where I had intended only a few amusing facts, in proof, that the mind makes the sense far more than the senses make the mind. If I have life, and health, and leisure, I purpose to compile from the works, memoirs, and transactions of the different philosophical societies in Europe, from magazines, and the rich store of medical and psychological publications, furnished by the English, French, and German press, all the essays and cases that relate to the human faculties under unusual circumstances, (for pathology is the crucible of physiology), excluding such only as are not intelligible without the symbols or terminology of science. These I would arrange under the different senses and powers: as the eye, the ear, the touch, &c.; the imitative power, voluntary and automatic; the imagination, or shaping and modifying power; the fancy or the aggregative and associative power; the understanding, or the regulative, substantiating, and realizing power; the speculative reason, 'vis theoretica et scientifica', or the power, by which we produce, or aim to produce, unity, necessity, and a universality in all our knowledge by means of principles, [2]'a priori'; the will or practical reason; the faculty of choice, ('Willkühr'), and (distinct both from the moral will, and the choice), the sensation of volition which I have found reason to include under the head of single and double touch.

Thence I propose to make a new arrangement of madness, whether as defect, or as excess, of any of these senses or faculties; and thus by appropriate cases to shew the difference between;-- 1. a man having lost his reason but not his senses or understanding--that is, when he sees things as other men see them,--adapts means to ends as other men would adapt them, and not seldom, with more sagacity,--but his final end is altogether irrational: 2. his having lost his wits, that is, his understanding or judicial power; but not his reason or the use of his senses,--(such was Don Quixote; and, therefore, we love and reverence him, while we despise Hudibras): 3. his being out of his senses, as in the case of a hypochondriac, to whom his limbs appear to be of glass, although all his conduct is both rational, or moral, and prudent: 4. Or the case may be a combination of all three, though I doubt the existence of such a case, or of any two of them: 5. And lastly, it may be merely such an excess of sensation, as overpowers and suspends all, which is frenzy or raving madness.

A diseased state of an organ of sense, or of the inner organs connected with it, will perpetually tamper with the understanding, and unless there be an energetic and watchful counter-action of the judgment (of which I have known more than one instance, in which the comparing and reflecting judgment has obstinately, though painfully, rejected the full testimony of the senses,) will finally overpower it. But when the organ is obliterated, or totally suspended, then the mind applies some other organ to a double use. Passing through Temple Sowerby, in Westmorland, some ten years back, I was shewn a man perfectly blind; and blind from his infancy. Fowell was his name. This man's chief amusement was fishing on the wild and uneven banks of the River Eden, and up the different streams and tarns among the mountains. He had an intimate friend, likewise stone blind, a dexterous card player, who knows every gate and stile far and near throughout the country. These two often coursed together, and the people here, as every where, fond of the marvellous, affirm that they were the best beaters up of game in the whole country. The every way amiable and estimable John Gough of Kendal is not only an excellent mathematician, but an infallible botanist and zoologist. He has frequently at the first feel corrected the mistakes of the most experienced sportsman with regard to the birds or vermin which they had killed, when it chanced to be a variety or rare species so completely resembling the common one, that it required great steadiness of observation to detect the difference, even after it had been pointed out. As to plants and flowers, the rapidity of his touch appears fully equal to that of sight; and the accuracy greater. Good heavens! it needs only to look at him! Why his face sees all over! It is all one eye! I almost envied him; for the purity and excellence of his own nature, never broken in upon by those evil looks, (or features, which are looks become fixtures), with which low cunning, habitual cupidity, presumptuous sciolism, and heart-hardening vanity, coarsen the human face,--it is the mere stamp, the undisturbed 'ectypon' of his own soul! Add to this that he is a Quaker, with all the blest negatives, without any of the silly and factious positives, of that sect, which, with all its bogs and hollows, is still the prime sun-shine spot of Christendom in the eye of the true philosopher. When I was in Germany in the year 1798, I read at Hanover, and met with two respectable persons, one a clergyman, the other a physician, who confirmed to me, the account of the upper-stall master at Hanover, written by himself, and countersigned by all his medical attendants. As far as I recollect, he had fallen from his horse on his head, and in consequence of the blow lost both his sight and hearing for nearly three years, and continued for the greater part of this period in a state of nervous fever. His understanding, however, remained unimpaired and unaffected, and his entire consciousness, as to outward impressions, being confined to the sense of touch, he at length became capable of reading any book (if printed, as most German books are, on coarse paper) with his fingers, in much the same manner in which the 'piano-forte' is played, and latterly with an almost incredible rapidity. Likewise by placing his hand with the fingers all extended, at a small distance from the lips of any person that spoke slowly and distinctly to him, he learned to recognize each letter by its different effects on his nerves, and thus spelt the words as they were uttered. It was particularly noticed both by himself from his sensations, and by his medical attendants from observation, that the letter R, if pronounced full and strong, and recurring once or more in the same word, produced a small spasm, or twitch in his hand and fingers. At the end of three years he recovered both his health and senses, and with the necessity soon lost the power, which he had thus acquired.

[Footnote 1: See Church and State. Appendix, p. 231. Ed.]

[Footnote 2: This phrase, 'a priori', is, in common, most grossly misunderstood, and an absurdity burthened on it which it does not deserve. By knowledge 'a priori', we do not mean that we can know any thing previously to experience, which would be a contradiction in terms; but having once known it by occasion of experience (that is, something acting upon us from without) we then know, that it must have pre-existed, or the experience itself would have been impossible. By experience only I know, that I have eyes; but then my reason convinces me, that I must have had eyes in order to the experience.]

SIR GEORGE ETHEREGE, ETC.

Often and often had I read Gay's 'Beggar's Opera', and always delighted with its poignant wit and original satire, and if not without noticing its immorality, yet without any offence from it. Some years ago, I for the first time saw it represented in one of the London theatres; and such were the horror and disgust with which it impressed me, so grossly did it outrage all the best feelings of my nature, that even the angelic voice, and perfect science of Mrs. Billington, lost half their charms, or rather increased my aversion to the piece by an additional sense of incongruity. Then I learned the immense difference between reading and seeing a play;--and no wonder, indeed; for who has not passed over with his eye a hundred passages without offence, which he yet could not have even read aloud, or have heard so read by another person, without an inward struggle?--In mere passive silent reading the thoughts remain mere thoughts, and these too not our own,--phantoms with no attribute of place, no sense of appropriation, that flit over the consciousness as shadows over the grass or young corn in an April day. But even the sound of our own or another's voice takes them out of that lifeless, twilight, realm of thought, which is the confine, the 'intermundium', as it were, of existence and non-existence. Merely that the thoughts have become audible by blending with them a sense of outness gives them a sort of reality. What then,--when by every contrivance of scenery, appropriate dresses, according and auxiliary looks and gestures, and the variety of persons on the stage, realities are employed to carry the imitation of reality as near as possible to perfect delusion?