Ml 6 3 -^H^ 7^n" BRARY IVaSlTY OP AUFORNIA ■ MOEALISM AND CHRISTIANITY; OK Man'B (Bxptxkmt anh ^tBt\n^< IN THREE LECTURES, HENRY JAMES NEW-YORK: J. S. REDFIELD. 1850, lOAN STACIt Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, BT J. S. REDFIELD, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New- York. 31=ii:L3 ADVERTISEMENT, The first of the three following Lectures, after its delivery in New- York, was put in its present form for publication in the " Massa- chusetts Quarterly Review," whence it is now re-published with a few verbal emenda- tions. The second Lecture was read Nov. 1, 1849, before the Town and Country Club, Boston, and is here slightly enlarged. The third Lecture was read, and subsequently re- peated at the request of several gentlemen , in New- York during the month of December, 1849. It has been greatly enlarged for pub- lication. The topics are perhaps somewhat difficult from their novelty, and if therefore the writer should appear to have treated them in- adequately, he doubts not that the generous reader will allow this circumstance its due force in mitigation of judgment. 095 CONTENTS Page. LECTURE I. 5 A Scientific Statement of the Christian Doc- trine OF THE Lord, or Divine Man. LECTURE IL 39 Socialism and Civilization in Relation to the Development of the Individual Life. LECTURE IIL 97 Morality and the Perfect Life, A SCIENTIFIC STATEMENT DOCTRINE OF THE LORD. The Christian doctrine of the Lord, or Divine Man, rests upon this fundamental axiom, t4iat God alone is being, or life i n Himself, Man is notbeinty, but onl}'^ a subj ect of beinty, only a form or image ofbeing^. His being is not absolute, but pheno- menal, as conditioned in space and time. But God's being is utterly unconditioned either in space or time. It is infinite, not as comprehending all space, but as utterly excluding the bare conception of space ; and eternal, not as comprehending all time, but as utterly excluding the bare conception of time. He is not a subject of being, but being itself, and therefore the sole being. Consistently with this fundamental axiom, we are bound to deny that the creature of God has any being or substance in himself. The substantial being or life of every creature is God, w^hile the creature is but a form or image of God. The crea- 6 THE DIVINE MAN. ture is not another being than God, nor yet is he an identical being with God ; because the creature is not being at all, but only a shadow or reflection of being. You would not call the shadow of the tree on the ground another substance than the tree itself, nor yet the same substance, for the reason that the shadow is not any substance at all, but merely the image of a substance. So man, the shadow or image of God, is neither a different being from God, nor yet an identical being, because he is not any being whatever, but only the reflection of being. Thus God's creature is without any being or sub- stance in himself, his selfhood being nothing more than an image or reflection of the only and univer- sal being, which is God. The internal of every man is God. The external, or that which defines the man, defines his self-consciousness, is only a shadow or reflection of this internal. These things being granted, which they must be as it seems to the writer, unless one prefers to deny the fact of creation, it follows from them that the universe of creation is a vast theatre of i magery or c orrespondence . If God be the sole and therefore universal being, his universal creature can be no- thing more and nothing less than His image or sha- dow. And if the creature be only the image or THE DIVINE MAN. 7 shadow of God, then creation itself is not the origi- nation of any new being or substance on the part of God, but only the revelation or imaging forth of a being which is eternal and unchangeable. Thus in the light of the principles here stated, the created universe resolves itself both in whole and in part into an imagery or correspondence of God, and the universal science consequently, or the science of sciences, becomes the science of correspondence. If now all this be true, if it be true that crea- tion can be nothing more and nothing less than the revealinGf or imao:inGf forth of God, then some mo- mentous results immediately ensue to our theology and philosophy. Primarily it results that the true creature of God is not finite, cannot be compre- hended within the laws of space and time. For as the creature is only an image or reflection of God, and as God being eternal and infinite is utterly ig- norant both of time and space, so His true creature cannot be finited by these conditions. Thus the life of nature, or that life which lies within the laws of space and time, does not image God. The only life which does image Him consequently is one that transcends these laws, being a spiritual life, and this life belongs exclusively to man. But in order to justify this affirmation, it is neces- 8 THE DIVINE MAN. sary to state what we mean by spirit as distin- guished from sensible nature. In speaking of the spirit of a thing in contradistinction to the sensible thing itself, nothing else is meant than its distinct- ive genius, or faculty of operation. For example, the horse is an outward form discernible by my senses from all other natural forms. But there is something more in the horse than meets my eye, namely, a certain faculty or capacity of use, which constitutes his distinctive spirit or genius, and is cognizable only by the eye of my understanding. Thus what is spiritual about the horse is what lies within his material form, and constitutes his power or faculty of use. This faculty is different in the horse from what it is in every other animal, the cow, the sheep, the ox, the lion, the elephant, etc. Take another example from the sphere of the arts. My hat is an artificial form sensibly distinct from all other forms. But this outward or sensible form of the hat does not exist by itself. It embodies a certain use or function, namely the protection of my head, which use or function constitutes its spirit. In short the spirit of a thing is the end or use for which it exists. Thus you may take the whole range either of nature or the arts, and you will find everything existing for a certain use beyond itself, THE DIVINE MAN. » which use is the spiritual ground or justification of its existence. Nature is properly nothing more than the robe or garment of spirit. It is only the taber- nacle or house of spirit, only the subservient instru- ment or means by which spirit subsists and be- comes conscious. Every thing in nature, without any the most insignificant exception, embodies an internal use or capacity of operation, which consti- tutes its peculiar spirit. Deprive it of this internal use or capacity, not only actually or for a limited lime, but potentially or for ever, and you deprive it of life. Exhaust the power of the horse to bear a burden and draw a load, of the cow to produce milk, of the sheep to produce wool, of the tree to produce fruit or seed, and you at the same time consign them all to death. For death, or the departure of the spirit from the body, means in every case the ces- sation of the subject's capacity of use. Thus na- ture in all its departments is merely the vehicle or minister of spirit. Its true sphere is that of entire subjection to spirit, and never since the world began has an instance occurred of its failing to exhibit the most complete acquiescence in this subjection. But if this spiritual force reside in Nature, what hinders any natural form being a true revelation or image of God ? If, for example, the horse possess a 10 THE DIVINE MAN. spiritual substratum, why does not the horse image God ? The reason is obvious. The spirit of the horse is not his own spirit. He is entirely uncon- scious of it. He performs incessant uses to man, but does not perform them of himself. His end is external to himself. The object of his actions does not fall within his own subjectivity. The spirit of universal nature is a spirit of subjection to some ex- ternal power. It never manifests itself spontane- ously, but always in obeisance to some outward constraint. Thus the horse does not spontaneously place himself in the harness. The cow does not come to your dairy, to make a spontaneous surren- der of her milk. The sheep feels no spontaneous impulsion to deposit his fleece at your door. Nor does the tree inwardly shake itself in order to sup- ply you with apples. In short there is no such thing as a spiritual horse — cow — sheep — or apple tree. Sic vos non vobls nidificatis aves, Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves, Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes, Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves. No, all these performances are for the benefit of man. The whole realm of nature is destitute of a spiritual consciousness, of such a consciousness as THE DIVINE MAN. 11 elevates any of its forms to the dignity of a person. No animal is conscious of a selfhood distinct from its outward or natural limitations. No animal is capable of suicide, or the renunciation of its outer life, on the ground of its no longer fulfilling the as- piration of its inner life. Thus nature is destitute of any proper personality. The only personality it recognizes is man. To him all its uses tend. Him all its powers obey. To his endowment and supre- macy it willingly surrenders itself, and finds life in the surrender. Take away man accordingly, and nature remains a clod, utterly spiritless — imper- sonal — dead. Thus nature does not image or reveal God. For God's activity is not imposed. It is spontaneous, or self-generated. It flows from Himself exclusive- ly, and ignores all outward motive. Hence God's true creature or image is bound above all things to exhibit that power of self-derived or spontaneous action which constitutes our idea of the divine per- sonahty. Accordingly it is man alone who fulfills this re- quisition. Man- alone possesses personality, or the power of self-derived action. Personality, the quality of being a person, means simply the power of self-derived or supernatural action, the power of 12 THE DIVINE MAN. originating one's own action, or, what is the same thing, of acting according to one's own sovereign pleasure. It means a power of acting unlimited by any thing but the will of the subject. Thus, in as- cribing personality to God, we do not mean to assert for him certain bodily limitations palpable to sense, which would be absurd ; we mean merely to assert His self-sufficiency or infinitude — His power to act according to his own sovereign pleasure. We mean, in plain English, to assert that He is the ex- clusive source of His own actions. So also, in as- cribing personality to man and denying it to the horse, we mean to assert that man possesses the power of supernatural or infinite action, the power of acting independently of all natural constraint, and according to his own individual or private attract- tion, while the horse has not this power. Man's action, when it is truly personal, has its source in himself, in his own private tastes or attractions, as f contra-distinguished on the one hand from his phy- sical necessities, and on the other from his social ^obligations ; therefore we affirm man's personality, or his absolute property in his actions. Nature's action has not its source in any interior self, but in some outward and constraining power ; therefore we deny nature any personahty, any absolute pro- THE DIVINE MAN. 13 perty iii- its actions. Wlien the fire burns my incautious finger, I do not blame the fire, and why? Because I feel that the fire acts in strict obedience to its nature, which is that of subjection to me, and that I alone have been in fault, therefore, for re- versing this relation and foolishly subjecting myself to it. But now, if personality impl}^ the power of self- derived or spontaneous action, then it is manifest that this power supposes in the subject a composite self-hood. It supposes its subject to possess an in- ternal or spiritual self as the end or object of the ac- tion, and an external or natural self as its means or instrument. For clearly, when you attribute any action to me personally, or affirm my exclusive pro- perty in it, you do not mean to affirm that it was prompted by my nature, that nature which is com- mon to me and all other men, but by my private taste or inclination. You hold that I have some in- ternal end, some private object to gratify by it, and thereupon you declare the action mine. I repeat, then, that personality, or the power of self-derived action, supposes a dual or composite selfhood in the ^ 4^ subject, a selfhood composed of two elements, one /^, internal, spiritual, or private, the other external, >^ natural, or public. 14 THE DIVINE MAN. But this is not all. Personality, or the power of self-derived action, not only supposes this com- posite selfhood in the subject, not only supposes him to possess an internal self, and an external self, but it also supposes that these two shall be perfect- ly united in every action which is properly called his. For example, I perform a certain action which you pronounce mine, on the ground of its having visibly proceeded from my hand. Now I say, this is not sufficient to prove the action absolutely mine. In order to prove it absolutely mine, you must not only show that it was done by my hand or my ex- ternal self, but also that this external self did not at the time dominate or overrule my internal self. If the two elements of my personality were not per- fectly united, perfectly concurrent, in the action ; if the internal self were overruled by the external, or vice versa ; then the action is not truly mine, is not a legitimate progeny of my will and understanding, but a bastard or Jilius nullius, abhorred of God and man. Let me precisely illustrate my meaning by a case in point. A certain man is murdered by me. You witness the deed and denounce me as the murderer. On my trial it is proved that the deceased stood in the way of a certain inheritance coming to me ; THE DIVINE MAN. 15 that I had exhibited various marks of vexation at this circumstance, and had been heard to wish him out of the way, and even threaten to remove him myself. Your direct testimon}'-, backed by such evidence as to m}' state of mind with regard to the deceased, leaves no doubt as to my actual guilt. I am accordingly convicted and hanged. For all that the community wants to know is, which of its mem- bers actually committed the deed, that knowing this they may proceed to avenge it. The care of the state extends only to the outward or public life of its members, not to their inner or private inter- ests. In making inquisition into the murder, it has no desire to decide as to my interior or spiritual con- dition ; this it leaves to God, who sees the heart. It only seeks to know the actual perpetrator, that it may not punish the innocent for the guilty. Thus, in pronouncing the murderous deed mine, it does not mean to say that it pertains to me spiritually, but only outwardly or visibly; pertains to me, A. B., as outwardly distinguished from C. D., E. F., and the rest. To outward view, then, or in man's sight, the action is doubtless mine, and I submit my body to man's law. But now, admitting the deed to be thus far mine, admitting that I actually slew the man, and am therefore responsible to the 16 THE DIVINE MAN. extent of my natural life ; is this deed necessarily mine to inward view also, or in God's sight? I unhesitatingly say, No, and for this reason, that my internal or spiritual self and my external or na- tural self, did not really wiite in it, but the former was overruled by the latter ? How " overruled ?" I will show you. Suppose me very much to dislike living in Ger- many, or any other of the old European states. The language, the manners, and the customs of the country, are all foreign to my habit, and I do not spontaneously make my abode in it. But I am poor, with very few resources against natural want, and I hear of a fortune being left me in Germany, on condition of my going there to reside. I accord- ingly go. Now in this case my private or spiritual repugnance to this step was overruled by my natu- ral necessities. If I had enjoyed an ample supply of these necessities, I should not have gone. My spiritual aversion to the step would not have allow- ed it. But I was absolutely destitute of provision for my natural wants, save at the expense of abject toil, which a man hates, and it was this outward or natural destitution, which constrained my spirit in- to obedience. Thus my spirit was overruled or do- minated by my flesh, and the result consequently THE DIVINE MAN. 17 is that though to outward appearance or in man's sight I am in Germany, yet in reality or in God's sight I am still in America — that though my body is in Germany, my spirit is a thousand leagues away. This example illustrates what I mean by " over- ruling " in the case of the murder. I say that the action in this case, though apparently mine or mine in man's sight, as having been performed by my hand, was yet not really or spiritually mine, was not mine in God's sight, because in doing it my spirit was ov'crruled b}'- my nature, and did not yield a spontaneous concurrence. I desired a cer- tain inheritance capable of relieving me from press- ing natural w^ant. The longer 1 felt the want, the more urgent grew my desire for that which would relieve it, until at last it overcame my internal or spiritual repugnance to murder so far as to allow me to slay him, who alone stood in the way of its gra- tification, lam not attempting to palliate the enor- mity of the act. It is perfectly detestable in itself, and will alwa3^s be so. I merely deny that my spirit and my flesh were one in it, which unity is neces- sary in every act that is spiritually mine. I merely assert that my spirit was overruled by my flesh to do this evil thing. The flesh gathering potency from want, from actual destitution, overruled or con- 18 THE DIVINE MAN. Strained the spirit to its ends, and the action conse- quently, instead of being really or spiritually mine, is referable exclusively to what the theologians call a depraved nature, meaning thereby a nature dis- united or inharmonic with spirit. The universal heart of man ratifies this judgment, or acquits me spiritually of the deed, when it commends me to the mercy of God. You have forfeited man's mercy, say they ; betake yourself, therefore, to that of God, which is infinite, or open to all degrees of de- filement. No one dares forbid me, all red as I am with my brother's blood, from hoping in God. This is a fact full of meaning. The meaning of it is that we do not believe any man to be evil at bottom or in his in- most heart, but only from a lack of outward freedom. The meaning of it is that we consider none of our judgments final, since they extend only to appear- ances, but look to have them overruled and correct- ed by Him who sees the inmost heart, and judges therefore according to the reality. A divine instinct, in truth, in every soul of man, continually derides all our criminality as transient or unreal, so that no criminal ever shows himself so black as to make us feel that he is beyond God's power to bless. No s^jrnan does evil save from the stress of nature or so- THE DIVINE MAN. 19 ciety, save from a false position with respect to his own body or to his fellow-man. Accordingly we never hesitate to consign the worst of criminals to the boundless clemency of God. If we really be- lieved the man to be bad in himself, bad independ- ently of his physical and social conditions, we should never dare send him to God. We should do all in our power to hide him from God, as from a devour- ing pestilence. Here let us pause a moment to survey the ground we have traversed. We have seen that creation is but the revelation or imaging forth of the divine per- sonality. We have consequently seen that nature is incompetent to this revelation, because nature is destitute of personality, destitute of power to origi- nate its own action. And finally we have seen that man is the only competent revelation or image of God, because man alone possesses personality. So far we have attained. But now, from the definition given of personality,^ it is manifest that it is to be ascribed to man only in 1 his veryjnmostjor highest development, and not atj all in his physical or social relations. For person- ality, when applied to any subject, affirms the sub- ject's infinitude or perfection, affirms, in other 20 THE DIVINE MAN. words, the subject's entire sufficiency unto himself; It affirms his self-sufficiency or perfection, because it implies the power of originating his own action. He who has power to originate his own action is sufficient unto himself, and to be sufficient unto oneself is to be infinite or perfect. Infinitude or perfection means self-sufficiency. I admit the words are often used by rote, or without any defi- nite intention. But whenever they are used intel- ligently, they are designed to express the subject's self-sufficiency. We can form no conception of the divine infinitude or perfection other than is express- ed by saying that He is sufficient unto Himself And if we further ask ourselves what we mean by His being sufficient unto Himself, we reply instinct- ively that we mean to express His power to origi- nate his own action. This power, which is inherent in God, is the basis of His personality or character, is that thing, without which to our conception He would not be God, that is, would not be infinite or perfect. Had He not this power He would be finite or imperfect. His power, like that of nature, would be limited by something external to Himself. If, therefore, personality, when applied to any subject, expresses his infinitude or perfection, ex- presses his self-sufficiency, it is manifest as was said before, that it cannot be applied to maa- in THE DIVINE MAN. 21 every aspect of his subjectivity, namely, as a sul> ject either of nature or of his fellow-man, but only in his very highest aspect, which is that of a divine subject. For man's highest or inmost subjection is a subjection to God, which lifts him entirely beyond the sphere of necessity or duty, and indeed enables him, if need be, to lay off the bodily life and the friendship of men as easily as belays off his garments at night. This subjection of man to God is involved in the very relation of Creator and creature. For the Creator being essential life, life in itself, 'cannot communicate life, save b}'' communicating Himself to the creature. And He cannot communicate Him- self, save in so far as the creature be made recep- tive, which receptivity becomes effected by means of the creature's natural and moral experience, the issue of which is to exalt him above nature and above society, endowing him with the lordship or supremacy of the external universe. Man's natural activity degrades or obscures his personality. It is not spontaneous — does not originate in his internal self, but in a mere necessity of his nature common to all its partakers. Instead of expressing his dis- tinctive personality, therefore, it expresses a com- mon property of all men. Regarded as a subject of nature, therefore, man lacks personality, lacks at least all such personality as reflects the divine. /Zt/y*.-*/*^ - ilA^^A'w*.**^*''*^ 22 THPJ DIVINE MAN. His moral subjectivity presents a similar fatal de- fect. Morality covers my relations to society or my fellow-man. Thus, as my natural action is condi- tioned upon a law of necessity, or of subjection to nature, so my moral action is conditioned upon a law of duty, or of subjection to my fellow-man. I act morally only in so far as I act under obligation to others, being morally good when I practically ac- knowledge, and morally evil when I practically (deny, this obhgation. Thus morality displays me ! in subjection not to God, but to society or my fel- / low-man, and thus equally with nature denies me proper personality. For personality implies the subject's absolute property in his action, which pro- perty is impossible unless the subject constitute also the object of the action, or, in other words, unless the object of the action fall mthin, be internal to, the subject's self, and this condition is violated when I act not to please m3'self, but to please my fellow- man. Hence neither man's natural nor his moral action confers a divine or perfect personality on him. The former does not, because it displays him in sub- jection to nature. The latter does not, because it displays him in subjection to his fellow-man. Both the moral and natural man are imperfect. Both fail to exhibit that balanced or self-centred action, THE DIVINE MAN. 23 which is the exclusive basis of personahty, and both alike consequently fail to express the divine man, or accomplish the divine image in humanity. But here it may be asked whether benevolence does not confer personality. Decidedly not, for the reason that benevolent action is not spontaneous but purely sympathetic. Personal action — all ac- tion which warrants the ascription of personality to the subject — is of necessity spontaneous, or inward- ly begotten. I say of necessity, because action which is outwardly begotten, or originates in some- thing foreign to the subject, does not pertain to him absolutely but only partially, pertains to him only as he stands involved in nature or society. Now sympathetic action evidently falls under this latter category, being begotten not from within but from without the subject's self, as the etymology of the word indicates. It supposes a want on the part of somebody not the subject, disposing the latter to re- lieve it. If, therefore, you take away suffering from all others, you take from the benevolent subject all power of action. And surely no one will consider that as a divine or perfect personality, whose power of action is controlled by circumstances fo- reign to itself. Thus the fundamental requisite of personality, 24 THE DIVINE MAN. namely, that it attest the subject's self-sufficiency or perfection b}^ exhibiting in him the power of self-derived action, is necessarily made void in all purely benevolent action. And the inevitable con- clusion therefore is, that the benevolent man, as such, does not possess true personality, or is in- competent to image God. Who, then, is the true divine man ? Who of all mankind possesses personality, and thus constitutes the image of God in creation? Evidently it must be some one who unites in himself, or harmonizes, all these finite or imperfect men. For the divine man does not exclude the natural man, nor the mo- ral man, nor the sympathetic man, nor any other phasis of humanity. These are all constituent ele- ments of the human nature, and the perfect man is bound not to exclude but accept them, blending and reconciling all in his own infinite manhood, in his own unitary self. These men are the geometric Stones of the divine edifice of humanity ; they are by no means the edifice itself, but its indispensable material, and he therefore who should attempt to construct the edifice to their exclusion, would ne- cessarily have his work about his ears. Who, then, is the perfect or divine man, the man who actually reconciles in himself all the conflicting THE DIVINE MAN. 25 elements of humanity ? Is any such man actually extant? If so, where shall we find him? We find him in the aesthetic man, or Artist. But now observe that when I speak of the aesthetic man or Artist, I do not mean the man of any specific function, as the poet, painter, or musician. I mean the man of whatsoever function, who in fulfilling it obeys his own inspiration or taste, uncontrolled ei- ther by his physical necessities or his social obliga- tions. He alone is the Artist, 'whatever be his ma- nifest vocation, whose action obeys his own internal taste or attraction, uncontrolled either by necessity or duty. The action may perfectly consist both wdth necessity and duty ; that is to say, it may practically promote both his physical and social welfare ; but these must not be its animating prin- ciples, or he sinks at once from the Artist into the artisan. The artisan seeks to gain a livelihood or secure an honorable name. He works for bread, or for fame, or for both together. The Artist abhors these ends, and works only to show forth that im- mortal beauty whose presence constitutes his inmost soul. He is vowed to Beauty as the bride is vowed to the husband, and beauty reveals herself to him only as he is true to his inmost soul, only as he obeys his spontaneous taste or attraction. 26 THE DIVINE MAN. The reason accordingly why the painter, the poet, the musician, and so forth, have so long mo- nopolized the name of Artist, is, not because Art is identical with these forms of action, for it is iden- .tical with no specific forms, but simply because the poet, painter, and so forth, more than any other men, have thrown off the tyranny of nature and custom, and followed the inspirations of genius, the inspirations of beauty, in their own souls. These men to some extent have sunk the service of nature and society in the obedience of their own private attractions. They have merged the search of the good and the true in that of the beautiful, and have consequently announced a divinity as yet unan- nounced either in nature or society. To the ex- tent of their consecration, they are priests after the order of Melchisedec, that is to say, a priesthood, which, not being made after the law of a carnal commandment, shall never pass away. And they are kings, who reign by a direct unction from the Highest. But the priest is not the altar, but the servant of the altar; and the king is not the Highest, but the servant of the Highest. So painting, poetr^^ is not Art, but the servant and representative of Art. Art is divine, universal, infinite. It therefore exacts to itself infinite forms or manifestations, here THE DIVINE MAN. 27 in the painter, there in the actor ; here in the musi- cian, there in the machinist; here in the architect, there in the dancer ; here in the poet, there in the costumer. We do not therefore call the painter or poet. Artist, because painting or poetry is a whit more essential to Art than ditching is, but simply because the painter and poet have more frequently exhibited the hfe of Art by means of a hearty in- subjection to nature and convention. When, therefore, I call the divine man, or God's image in creation, by the name of Artist, the reader will not suppose me to mean the poet, painter, or any other special form of man. On the contrary, he will suppose me to mean that infinite and spi- ritual man whom all these finite functionaries repre- sent indeed, but whom none of them constitutes, namel3%the man who in every visible form of action acts always from his inmost self, or from attraction, and not from necessity or duty. I mean the man who is a law unto himself, and ignores all outward al- legiance, whether to nature or society. This man may indeed have no technical vocation whatever, such as poet, painter, and the like, and yet he will be none the less sure to announce himself. The humblest theatre of action furnishes him a platform. I pay m}^ waiter so much a day for putting my din- 28 THE DIVINE MAX. ner on the table. But he performs his function in a way so entirely sul generis, with so exquisite an attention to beauty in all the details of the service, with so symmetrical an arrangement of the dishes, and so even an adjustment of every thing to its own place, and to the hand that needs it, as to shed an almost epic dignity upon the repast, and convert one's habitual " grace before meat" into a sponta- neous tribute, instinct with a divine recognition. The charm in this case is not that the dinner is all before me, where the man is bound by his wa- ges to place it. This every waiter I have had has done just as punctually as this man. No, it is ex- clusively the way in which it is set before me, a \vay altogether peculiar to this man, which attests that in doing it he is not thinking cither of earning his wages, or doing his duty towards me, but only of satisfying his own conception of beauty with the resources before him. The consequence is that the pecuniary relation between us merges in a higher one. He is no longer the menial, but my equal or superior, so that I have felt, when entertaining doc- tors of divinity and law, and discoursing about di- vine mysteries, that a living epistle was circulating behind our backs, and quietly ministering to our wants, far more apocalyptic to an enlightened eye than any yet contained in books. THE DIVINE MAN. 29 The reader may deem the illustration beneath the dignity of the subject. The more the pity for him in that case, since it is evident ibat his eyes have been fixed upon the shov^^s of things, rather than upon the enduring substance. It is not indeed a dignified thing to wait upon tables. There is no dignity in any labor which is constrained by one's necessities. But still no function exists so abject or servile as utterly to quench the divine or personal element in it. It will make itself manifest in all of them, endowing them all with an immortal grace, and redeeming the subject from the dominion of mere nature and custom. But whether the illustrnlion be mean or not, it is fully to the point. The divine hfe in every man, the life which is the direct inspiration of God, and therefore exactly images God, consists in the obe- dience of one's own taste or attraction, where one's taste or attraction is uncontrolled by necessity or duty, by nature or societ}^ I know that this defi- nition will not commend itself to the inattentive reader. But let me leave my meaning fully ex- pressed. I say, then, that I act divinely, or that my action is perfect, only when I follow my own taste or attraction, uncontrolled either by my natural wants or my obligations to other men. I do not 30 THE DIVINE MAN. mean that I act divinely when I follow my attrac- tions to the denial of my physical wants and my social obligations ; but only in independence of them. If these things control my action, it will not be divine. For example, I have what is ordinarily called a great love of luxury. That is, I have a sponta- neous desire after all manner of exquisite accom- modation for my body. 1 desire a commodious and beautiful house, graceful and expressive fur- niture, carriages and horses, and all the other ap- pliances of easy living. But I lack the actual pos- session of all these things. I am utterly destitute of means to procure them. Yet my inextinguish- able love for them prompts me incessantly to action. Now you perceive that my action in this case, being shaped or controlled by my want of all these things, cannot be free or spontaneous, cannot be divine as expressing myself alone. It will in fact be tho- roughly servile. It will be abject toil instead of free action. Tliat is, I shall probably begin by some low manual occupation, such as sawing wood or porterage. I shall diligently hoard every penny accruing from my occupation not necessary to my subsistence, that I may in time arise to a more commanding vocation, in which I may realize larger THE DIVINE MAN. Si gains, and so on until 1 shall have at length attained my wishes, and achieved the necessary basis of my personality. This action, then, is completely un- divine ; it does not originate in myself as disen- gaged from nature and my fellow-man, but in my- self as still involved in subjection to them, and burn- ing to become free. So long as this condition of bondage lasts, you may be sure that my action will be the action of a slave, and that the deference I pay to morality will be purely prudential. If the great end, which is my personal emancipation, can be better secured by strict attention to its maxims, of course I shall observe them. But if not, I shall be likely to use meum and tuum quite indiffer- ently, feeling, as the children of Israel felt on the eve of their emancipation from Egypt, that the spoils of the oppressor are divinely due to the oppressed. But now, on the other hand, suppose my emanci- pation accomplished ; suppose me in possession of all natural good, and of all social privileges ; sup- pose, in a word, that I am no longer in bondage to nature or society, having secured ample wealth and reputation, and become free, therefore, to act ac- cording to my own sovereign taste ; then you per- ceive, at a glance, that this love of luxury in my bosom, instead of leading me merely to the accu- 32 THE DIVINE MAK. raulation of wealth, would prompt me exclusively to creative action, or a mode of action which would enrich the community as much ' as myself. For, having now all that nature and society yielded for the satisfaction of this love, the love would not there- upon become extinct or satiated ; on the contrary, it would burn all the brighter for the nourishment it had received, and impel me, therefore, to new and untried methods of gratifying il. Thus, in- stead of a mere absorbent or consumer, which my natural and social destitution rendered me, I should now become an actual producer of new wealth ; a producer, too, whose power would be as infinite as the love which inspired it was infinite, being de- rived from the infinite God Himself. A man, then, does not truly act at all, does not act in any such sense that the action may be pro- nounced absolutely his, so long as his personality remains undeveloped ; so long as he remains in bondage to nature or society. Before he can truly act or show forth the divine power within him, he must be in a condition of perfect outward freedom, of perfect insubjection to nature and society ; all his natural wants must be supplied, and all social ad- vantages must be open to him. Until these things are achieved his action must be more or less imper- THE DIVINE MAN. 33 feet and base. You may, indeed, frighten him into some show of decorum, by representations of God as an infallible policeman intent always on evil- doers, but success in this way is very partial. The ^ church itself, in fact, which authorizes these repre- sentations, incessantly defeats their force by its doc- trine of absolution, or its proclamation of mercy to , the most successful villany, if only repentant at the last gasp. Not only the church, but the whole cur- rent of vital action defeats these safeguards. Thus our entire system of trade, as based upon what is called ** unlimited competition," is a system o£ ra- pacity and robbery. A successful merchant like Mr. A. or B., is established only on the ruins of a thousand unsuccessful ones. Mr. A. or B. is not to be blamed individually. His heart is destitute of the least ill-will towards the men whom, perhaps, he has never seen, but whom he is yet systemati- cally strangling. He acts in the very best manner society allows to one of his temper or genius. He feels an unmistakably divine aspiration after unlim- ited power ; a power, that is, which shall be unlim- ited by any outward impediment, being limited only by his own interior taste or attraction. He will seek the gratification of this instinct by any means the constitution of society ordains; thus, by the 34 THE DIVINE MAN. Utter destruction of every rival merchant, if society allows it. So much for Mr. A. or B. regarded as in subjec- tion to nature and society, or as still seeking a field for his personality. But this is not the final and di- vine Mr. A. or B. The final and divine Mr. A. or B. will have subjected both nature and society to himself, and will then exhibit, by virtue of that very force in him, which is now so destructively opera- tive, a personality of unmixed benignity to every one. The voice of God, as declared in his present in- stincts after unlimited power, bids him, as it bade the Israelites of old, to spoil the oppressor, to cleave down every thing that stands in the way of his in- heritance : suppose him once estabhshed in that good land which flows with milk and honey, and which God has surely promised him, and you will Immediately find the same instinct manifested in measureless and universal benediction. The Artist, then, is the Divine Man, — the only adequate image of God in nature, — because he alone acts of himself, or finds the object of his action al- ways within his own subjectivity. He is that true creature and son of God, whom God pronounces very good, and endows with the lordship of the whole earth. It would not be difficult, in the wri- THE DIVINE MAN. 35 ters's estimation, to show the reason why the evo- lution of this nian has required the whole past phy- sical and moral experience of the race, nor yet to show how perfectly he justifies all the historic fea- tures of Christianity, standing symbolized under every fact recorded in the four gospels concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. In some other place, or at least on some future occasion, the writer will un* dertake these tasks. SOCIALISM AND CIVILIZATION, IN KELATION TO THE DEVEL0P3IENT OF THE INDIVIDU A L LIFE 3« LECTURE Gentlemen : I propose to discuss the relative bearing of Social- ism and Civilization on human destiny, or the deve- lopment of the individual life. By Socialism, I mean not any special system of social organization, like that of Fourier, Owen, or St. Simon, but what is common to all these systems, namely, the idea of a perfect fellowship or society among men. And by Civilization, of course, I mean the present political constitution of the nations. Between the fundamental idea of Sociahsm, which affirms the possibility of a perfect life on earth, or the insubjection of man both to nature and his fel- low-man, and the fundamental idea of Civihzation, which affirms the perpetual imperfection of human life, or the permanent subjection of man to nature and society, a great discrepancy exists; and I hope to interest my nudiencein a brief examination of its 40 SOCIALISM A^D features. I am sure you cannot bestow your sponta- neous attention upon the subject without the great- est advantage. The differences of detail which characterize the systems of St. Simon, Owen, Fourier, and other so- cietary reformers, are of very httle present account to us. What is of great present account is the signal agreement of these men in point of princi- ple. They agree in holding our present social con- dition to be not only vicious, which every one will admit, but also stupid, which is not so universally obvious. They declare that it is entirely competent to us at any time to organize relations of profound and enduring harmony among men, and thus to banish crime, vice, and suffering from the earth ; and that nothing but an ignorance of the true prin- ciples of human nature stands between us and this most desirable consummation. Crime, vice and suffering, they allege, are not essential to human society, but are merely incidental to its infancy or nonage, and are sure to disappear before the ad- vancing wisdom of its majority. Thus the socialist maintains the inherent righteousness of humanity, and resolves all its disorders into imperfect science. Here, then, we have the fundamental difference between Socialism and Civilization. The socialist CIVILIZATION. 41 affirms the inherent righteousness of humanity, af- firms that man is sufficient unto himself, and needs no outward ordinances for his guidance, save du- ring his minority. The conservative, on the other hand, or the advocate of the present, affirms the in- herent depravity of man, affirms that he is insuffi- cient unto himself, and requires the dominion of tu- tors and governors all his appointed days upon the earth. This accordingly is the quarrel which has first to be settled — the quarrel between Socialism and Civilization, before men will care in an}^ con- siderable numbers to balance the claims of rival so- cialists. Let it first of all be made plain to us that Socialism is true in idea, is true as against Civiliza- tion ; then we shall willingly enough discuss the relative superiority of St. Simon to Owen, or of Fourier to both. How then shall this grand preliminary quarrel be settled ? Of course, historically or actualty, it will be settled only by the march of events. But how shall it be settled meanwhile, intellectually, or to 3^our and my individual satisfaction ? Each of us, doubtless, will judge it in the light of his own ideas and aspirations. If, for example, So- cialism appear to promise better things than Civili- zation to the highest life of man, we cannot fail, ot 42 SOCIALISM AND course, to bid it God-speed, and predict its speedy triumph. If the reverse judgment should ensue, we shall, equally of course, execrate it, and leave it to the contempt of mankind. Now it is of no con- sequence to my hearer to be apprized of my private attitude with respect to this controversy. Yet his own decision may be helped one way or the other, either for Socialism or against it, by a fair scrutiny of the grounds on which any intelligent person has already come to a conclusion. Accordingly, I will not hesitate frankly to declare the method of my own understanding in dealing with this contro- versy. Our design being then to try Socialism and Civili- zation by the bearing they respectively exert upon the destiny of man, or his highest life, let me first of all declare my conception of that destiny. Man's destiny is, to become sufficient unto him- self, or what is the same thing, to become both the object and subject of his own action. This is his destiny or perfect life, because it exactly images the divine life. We call God perfect or infinite, because He is sufficient unto Himself. And we call Him sufficient unto Himself, because His power is unlimited by any thing external to Him, or what is the same thinor, because the object of His action falls CIVILIZATION. 43 in every case within His own subjectivity. The per- fection of action consists in the internality of the ob- ject to the subject. Every action is genuine or per- fect which expresses this internaUty, which ex- presses the inward taste or personality of the sub- ject. And every action is spurious or imperfect which expresses the externahty of the object to the subject, which exhibits the subject obeying some outward motive, either of natural desire or social obligation. Now inasmuch as God creates or gives being to all things, inasmuch as the universe has its total being in Him, his action knows no external object or end. As nothing exists out of Him, He cannot act from any outward motive or impulsion, but only from an inward joy or delight ; and to act purely from an inward joy or delight, is to be suffi- cient unto one's self, and consequently infinite or perfect. Such being the perfection of the Creator, it fol- lows that the destiny of the creature, or his highest, his perfect, his infinite life, lies in his becoming the conscious source of his own action, in his becoming not merely the subject, but also the exclusive object of his own activity, in his becoming, in other words, like God, sufficient unto himself. You perceive that the very fact of his creatureship necessitates )r 44 SOCIALISM AND this destiny. To be a creature of God, is simply and in its largest statement, to reflect or image God, and man cannot reflect or image God, that is to say, cannot become a true creature of God, save in so far as he becomes the actual unity of internal and external, or of object and subject. God is the absolute unity of object and subject, or internal and external, because He alone has being, and there- fore excludes all limitation, or definition. To be- come God's image therefore, man must become the actual unity of internal and external, or object and subject. He must be himself the unity of these two elements, must be himself the sole object, as well as the sole subject of all his activity. Thus the inten- sest individuality, an individuality amounting in every case to what we now call genius, is the birth- right of man. He dishonors, he disavows his divine source until this birthright be universally vindicated. The vindication of it is in fact the very staple of hu- man history, the very stuflfoutof which the whole vast fabric has been woven. For man has been vicious, that is, has warred with nature, only be- cause nature unjustly claims his allegiance. And he has been criminal, that is, has warred with so- ciety, only because society holds him in unrighteous subjection. CIVILIZATION. 45 The divinely-imposed destiny of man then, the destiny imposed hy the very fact of his creatureship, involves his complete dominion both of nature and society. If man be the creature of God, then as God is infinite or perfect, or what is the same thing, as His power is unlimited by any thing external to Him, is unlimited by any thing but His own sove- reign pleasure, so consequently man, His creature, is bound to exhibit the same infinitude or perfec- tion, and achieve an equally universal dominion. He is pledged by the fact of his creatureship to exert a power unlimited by any thing external to him, by any thing but his own sovereign pleasure, and consequently, he is pledged to achieve the per- fect empire both of nature and society. You can- not reflect for a moment on this fact of his creature- ship, on the fact that God is the all of his life, without acknowledging that the power of man is at bottom the power of God; without acknowledging in fact, that the substantial force or selfhood in every man is God. Hence you conclude that man is bound by an irrepressible divine instinct, that he is in truth divinely impelled|to aspire after a com- plete conquest both of nature and society. They must both confess his lordship, must both render him^ perfect homage and furtherance, or suffer the 46 SOCIALISM AND chastisement of disobedience. Accordingly, so long as the subjugation of the physical and moral uni- verse to the individual life is actually incomplete, and man's dignity as man consequently in abey- ance, you find him asserting his rightful supremacy to both, if not in a normal and permanent way, why then by the ephemeral and loathsome methods of vice and crime. For vice is nothing else than man's instinctive revulsion against the dominion of his own body : rather than endure that dominion he destroys the body. And crime is nothing more than his instinctive revulsion against the dominion of society : rather than endure that dominion, he re- nounces, he destroys society. Philosophically re- garded, vice and crime are simply negative asser- tions of man's sovereign individuality, of his divinely communicated and indefeasible responsibility to him- self alone. They are the despised and disregarded prophets — prophets drunk with the wisdom of God, and therefore themselves, like all prophets, unen- riched by it — of the ultimate dignity of the indivi- dual life, a dignity which shall be established upon the unlimited submission, and nurtured by the ex- haustless bounty, both of nature and society. But you will say, how is this possible? How shall the individual life become thus eminent over nature CIVILIZATION. 47 and society, without greater qualification than it now possesses ? Look at Lord on the other side of the water ; look at Bishop on this side. Both of these men have come into exalted place, into positions of wealth and social eminence, and you instantly perceive each to be an enthroned vanity, an enthroned flatulence, worthless because sycophantic to the governing class ; worse than worthless to the subject class, because supported by them. What shall hinder you and me and every one from the conspicuous imbecility of these men? The inquirer errs by confounding things different. He confounds our natural and finite individuality with our spiritual or infinite one, which is a great oversight. The temporal and spiritual lordships he adduces are types or shadows — not substantial things, and now that the day has come for the sub- stantial things themselves to claim inauguration in men's respect, the old worn-out types avouch their intrinsic stupidity by disputing ground with them. As well might the finger-post claim to be the city toward which it points, as these puny emblems claim to be the divine realities they barely indicate. I, on the contrary, am speaking altogether of the Divine Man, the legitimate Lord of heaven and earth, the 48 SOCIALISM AND man whom both Church and State, both priest and king, merely typify, and the shock of whose oncoming feet consequently now rocks every throne and altar in Christendom to their base, causing, in fact, the whole christian orb to reel to and fro like a drunken man. Let us consider the constitution of this man. Let us, in other words, consider the precise nature of our true or God-given individuality. Our true individuality is our faculty of action, our power to do. By so much as I am able to do or produce, am I myself. A man is that which he does, neither more nor less. What I do, that I am. I possess both passion and intelligence, but neither of these things characterize me; they characterize all men, characterize my nature. What charac- terizes me, what gives me individuaUty, or distinct- ive genius, is my action. Thus all character is grounded in action ; all being grounded in doing ; all cause grounded in effect. This constitutes, ac- cording to Svvedenborg, the glory of Deity, that He has no love nor wisdom apart from His power, nei- ther esse nor existere apart from pi'ocedQre. In other words, God's passion and intelligence, so to speak, subsist only in His action. In a briefer word still, God is essentially active. But now observe : although action furnishes the CIVILIZATION. 49 sole ground and measure of being, although, in other words, man's true selfhood consists in his facult}' of action, yet we must carefully discriminate the kind of action which constitutes that true or divine selfhoo d. Our highest mode of action is aes- thetic. Oar proper individuality consequently, our inmost and God-given genius, respires exclusively the atmosphere of Art, and the Artist accordingly stands forth as the sole and plenary Divine Man. All action properly so called, all action which really individualizes us, is essentially aesthetic. Not our physical and moral ac^on, or what we do from the constraint of necessity and duty, but only our aes- thetic action, or what we do from taste, from spon- taneity, expresses our true or inmost personality. Both our physical and moral action is obligatory, denying us that freedom we have in God. They are both enforced by penalties, and clearly a man needs no penalties to enforce his doing what he does of himself, or spontaneously. Whatever ac- tion is enforced by the alternative of suffering, con- fesses itself by that fact to be inappropriate to the subject, to be a sheer imposition either of his phy- sical or social relations. The action which is ap- propriate to him, which expresses his proper or God-given genius, he does of himself, does sponta- 50 SOCIALISM AND /^V neously and without the urgency of any external motive. Accordingly both our physical and moral activity fall under this condemnation. They neither of them express, are neither of them appropriate to, our divine or perfect individuality. They both ex- press our infirm or finite individuality, that which we derive from our relations to our own body and our fellow man. I must obey my 'natural necessi- ties and my social obligations, or suffer in the one case physical, in the other moral, death. Hence I am quoad my natural and social selfhood in inces- sant bondage to the fear of death. And you know that our true or inmost individuality, that which we derive from God, is incapable of death, is immortal. It is the doom of the natural and moral man to perish ; the internal or divine man survives their de- cay. Their decay constitutes for him in fact an in- cident of progress, a condition of greater enfran- chisement. I say that death is the doom of the natural and moral man. What I mean by this is, that neither the natural nor the moral law is the law of life. Let me seriously attempt to fulfil either of these laws, and I sink into instant death. It is the peculiarity of either law to deride all direct obedience, and accept ^...VH,^.'.^-:^ L. ^U.^ e^^^X^ <^0li^ • CIVILIZATION. 51 fulfilment at the hands of those only who are per- fectly indifferent to it. Neither of them was in- tended to confer life upon man, but merely to cele- brate and adorn a life flowing from an infinite source. Tlius let me set myself perfectly to fulfil the law of nature, say, for example, to achieve per- fect health of body, and I not only on the instant become the abject slave of my body, but kind na- ture herself, as if to scourge me out of such slavery, lets loose her whole artillery of destruction to lay me low in the dust — her winter's cold, her summer's heat, her myriad lurking miasms and pestilences. The only man whom nature respects, though she has at present a very imperfect respect for any man, the only man whom she feeds with her choicest juices and aromas, is the man who cares not a jot about her, and snaps his fingers equally at her curse and blessing. So also let me devote myself, with a view to life, to the fulfilling of the moral law, or the complete discharge of my obligations to my fel- low-man, and instead of the life I covet, ten thou- sand deaths instantly open their mouths to sting me into despair and madness. The letter of the law appears brief and easy, but the moment I Indulge the fatal anxiety, have I fulfilled it? I begin to ap- prehend its infinite spirit, the spirit of benevolence *^ SOCIALISM AND or charity, which prompts such an utter crucifixion of selfishness — such an incessant and immaculate deference to the will and even the whimsy of ano- ther, that I am worried and fretted into my grave, before I have really entered on m}^ obedience — and the law which I fondly deemed to intend me life, turns out a minister of utter death. The truth is, society like nature secretly despi- ses the slave and reverences the freeman — despises the man who lives upon her favor, and worships him who tramples that favor under foot. Since the world has stood, no man of genius, no man of gen- uine inward force has ever announced himself, with- out society, in the long run, forgiving and justifying his most flagrant contempt of her authority. The grandest genius yet revealed on earth, a man with whose awful freedom the timid and servile genius of other men compares, as the bounded current of a \ river compares with the measureless expanse of i ocean, defied to the last extremity the most sensi- tive, the most exacting and the most conceited so- ciety the world has ever known, and wnth what re- suit? He never succumbed to it for one moment, from his cradle to his grave, never did and never I said a thing that did not provoke its unmeasured J hate, yet what has been the consequence ? No one CIVILIZATION. 58 like him was ever found to have uttered the univer- sal heart of man ; he has been deified by the instinct of the most enlightened ages; churches, kingdoms, empires, worlds have baptized themselves in his name ; pompous rituals hourly declare his praise ; every one who stood in the most transient relation to him has been canonized ; even the mother he dis- claimed and the disciple he rebuked have been ex- alted into the matronage and patronage of heaven ; the very instrument of his death has become sym- bolical of everlasting life ; and all this, while as yet men have only known the meagerest and most falla- cious surface of his sweetness, or while the actual truth of the case has appealed only to the blindness of instinct in them, utterly denying the confirmation of reason. But the proposition needs no argument. A refer- ence to our daily practical experience proves that we never confound a man's true individuality with his physical and social conditions. We never as- cribe genius, character, divinity, to a man on the strength of his physical or moral excellence. We deem him indebted for the former to the bounty of nature, for the latter to the grace of God. We do not conceive of either as reflecting the slightest credit upon the man himself, as in the shghtest de- ^ ^ 4 54 SOCIALISM AND gree appropriate to himself. They are appropriate to man universally, and in this point of view we do them honor. We feel that no one has any special title to these things, and that their possession there- fore is a matter of pure accident. No one suspects Cleopatra of possessing any private property in her beauty, nor Dr. Channing any private property in his virtue. Should such a suspicion get authenti- cated, we should instantly declare these persons enemies rather than ornaments of our common life, because they took away or sequestered so much of what should be a common possession. A beautiful physique and a beautiful morale are both alike a gift and not an achievement. They flow from a fortu- nate natural or a fortunate spiritual parentage, and are utterly irrelevant to the true or divine individu- ality of the subject. Genius, which is the divine pre- sence in man, visits alike the beautiful and those who are destitute of beauty, and it consecrates the annals of virtue not a whit more profusely than it does those of crime. No, we gladly recognise and honor both beauty and virtue, but we forbid the subject to claim the least property in either. On the contrary, when the handsome man begins to esteem himself for his beauty, and the upright man to prize his virtue, the CIVILIZATION. 55 company of plain people and sinners becomes in- stantly sweet and refreshing. The truth is, every man in the exact ratio of his manhood is ashamed both of his beauty and his virtue, feeling himself to be so wholly unimplicated in either, feeling him- self really in debt to a partial nature for the one, and a happy spiritual chance for the other. And no true man loves to be a debtor, loves in fact to be either debtor or creditor. Can any thing be so disastrous to all manhood as foppery, or pride in one's physical individuality ? Yes, Pharisaism, or spiritual foppery, which signifies a pride in one's moral individuality. This is even more disastrous. But if the physical and moral hfe — the life of nature and the life of so- ciety, were the true divine life in man, then it were right for us to magnify our physical and moral attributes and make them public. Wherefore I repeat that it is an infallible in- stinct of the strong man to conceal his strength, and of the virtuous man to renounce his virtue. Nature bids the one take no pride in his strength, the other to take no pride in his uprightness, under penalty of proving a nuisance. They are valuable possessions of man, but they constitute no true manhood. They are ornaments to be worn upon occasion, but should never be paraded. The 56 SOCIALISM AND jewels of a beautiful woman do not pretend to im- part beauty, but only to signalize or celebrate it. When worn for their own sake, or worn by other than beautiful per*3ons, they are designed merely as a tacit apology for the absence of beauty, as a sort of death's head or hatchment to indicate where beauty ought to be, but alas is not. For nature owes a form of immaculate grace and vigor to her sovereign lord, and the personal ornaments, which we his present deputies and representatives wear, may be viewed accordingly as so many evidences of nature's obligation, and so many pledges of its ulti- mate discharge. In the same manner, all relatively great physical and moral superiority should be re- garded by the subject as insignia of an infirm and beggarly individuality, and should always be exert- ed under an inward protest. For why should man, the heir of infinitude, envy the horse his strength, the angel his goodness ? Leave the horse his dis- tinction, leave the angel his. God will not always leave His child mendicant upon the heavens above and the earth beneath, but will fast reduce both of these into the joyful service of his great supremacy. \ Behold then the fact : all our individually-cha- racteristic action is aesthetic, or expresses our in- ward taste. I have no property in any action, no CIVILIZATION. 57 action truly represents and belongs to me, unless the object of it be within me, unless it reflect my pri- vate or distinctive genius, unless, in short, it be creative and embody some idea. Hence we have an infallible test of our true or God-given individ- uality. For individuality, character, being, pro- prium, selfhood, personality, whatever you please to call the inmost vital fact in man, stands in action. Thus our true individuality is neither physical nor moral. It is purely aesthetic. It stands in our rela- tion neither to nature nor to our fellow-man, but exclusively to God, who is our inmost life. He alone is truly self-pronounced — he alone divinely vivified — who acts neither from physical nor social control — neither from necessity nor duty — but pure- ly from delight or attraction, and this emphatically is the Artist. He alone acts from inspiration, or from within outwards. The natural man obeys the law of his finite body. The moral man obeys the law of his finite fellow, the law of society. But the Ar- tist — and when I use the word Artist, I do not mean any special functionary, as the poet, painter, or mu- sician ; I mean the man of whatsoever function, from king to cobbler, who follows his function from taste and not from necessity nor duty, who culti- vates it not with a view merely to a livelihood or to 68 SOCIALISM AND fame, but purely because he loves it and finds it its own exceeding great reward — but the Artist, or Di- vine Man obeys the infinite law of God as manifest- ed in the inspirations of his own soul. He alone ac- cordingly attracts the unbribed homage of mankind . All men of every religion and complexion unite to do him honor. He breaks down every middle wall of partition which ignorance and superstition have erected between Jew and Gentile, saint and sinner, and makes of the twain one new man. Hence the Artist claims to be the reconciling or uniting term between God and man, the spiritual or infinite re- ality symbolized by the literal or finite God-man, the wholly incontestible son of God, the heir of all divine power majesty and glory, by whom alone God estimates the world. But if this be so, then it will be perceived that the question put to me may be very easily answer- ed. That is to say, it will be seen that the emi- nence which I claim for the individual, is not that mere usurped or conventional eminence exhibited by Lord This and Bishop That, and based upon their subservience to sundry poHtical and ecclesias- tical interests, but an eminence which springs out of the real divine worth of every individual, out of God's most vital presence and force within him, and CIVILIZATION. 5^ which is cordially ratified therefore by nature and society. For the Artist, the man of genius, the man of ideas, is not elected supreme ; he is born so. He is not obliged to canvass for votes. He only needs to reveal himself to command all votes, because he is utterly without a competitor. For the Artist is not good by comparison merely, or the an- tagonism of meaner men. He is positively good, good by absolute or original worth, good like God, good in himself, and therefore universally good. He daily enriches nature and society with new ac- quisitions of beauty. For the bread and the wine — for the material and spiritual nourishment they af- ford him, he returns to their own bosoms good measure, heaped up, pressed down, and running over, for he mediates between them and God, bring- ing down and making visible to them the infinite splendor of Deity, while, at the same time, devel- oping their own answering fecundity, harmony, beauty and joy. Such being our conception of human destiny, of man's perfect life, I think you will decide that So- cialism exhibits a far more benignant aspect to- wards it than civihzation does. For the great ob- stacle at present to the divine life in man is the do- mination of society, is the preponderance of the 6(1 SOCIALISM AND moral or social elenient over the cesthetic or indi- vidual one in human affairs. The sentiment of re- sponsibility '^grinds human life into the dust. It crushes the divine aroma or spirit out of it, thus de- stroying the whole grace of the fashion of it. It is very important that I be under innocent relations to my own body and to my fellow-man ; it is very im- portant that these relations be full of peace and amity ; but it is of an altogether infinite impor- tance to me that I experience right relations to God or my inmost life. Indeed the former relations de- rive all their worth from the latter. If it were not that I am inwardly one with God, that I am destined to the inheritance of His infinitude or perfection, and consequently to a life of universal benignity, it would be of no moment what relations I sustained either to nature or my fellow-man. It would be of no moment beyond the immediate satisfaction of my appetites, whether the relation were one of concord or discord. But since on the one hand I am des- tined, by the very fact of my creatureship, to an ac- tual fellowship of the divine perfection, and since, on the other hand, all perfection implies the actual unity of object and subject — of substance and form — of internal and external — so consequently it is of vital interest to me, that my external relations, CIVILIZATION. 61 which are my relations to nature and man, accu- rately reflect my internal ones, which are my rela- tions to God, and present a precisely commensu- rate unity with them. But if this be so, if the worth of my outward ties flow down from the superior worth of my inward ones, then it is at once obvious to you that these latter ties are of primary impor- tance, and should never be controlled by the former. If the main fact of my life be my unity with God, and the* secondary or derivative fact be my unity with nature and man, then clearly this subordinate interest should not dominate or exclude the essential one. This is plain. But now how stands the fact ? I have no hesitation in affirming, that the fact is exactly counter to the truth. I have no hesitation in affirming, that society, as at present, or rather as heretofore, constituted, arrays the lower interest in conflict with the higher, and debases man into ab- ject slavery to itself. Society affords no succor to the divine life in man. Any culture we can give to that life, is owing not to society, but to our fortunate independence of it. For the in- cessant action of societ}*^ is to shut up all my time and thought to the interests of my mere visible ex- istence, to the necessity of providing subsistence, education, and social respect for myself and my 4* 62 SOCIALISM AND children. T and avoid all the mother condemns ! Yet how "^ beautiful he becomes, when he ever and anon \^ flashes forth some spontaneous grace, some self- ^ V prompted courtesy ! ^^ Why is it esteemed disgraceful for the mature ^ man to consult his natural father and mother in ^ ^ every enterprise, and be led by their advice ? The cause of this judgment is spiritual, and lies in the 92 SOCIALISM AND truth that man is destined by the fact of his divine genesis to self-sufficiency, to self-government, that he is destined to find all guidance within him and none whatever without him, and that he cannot persist accordingly in the infantile habit of seeking help beyond himself without flagrant detriment to his manhood, to his destiny. All our natural and social phenomena, in fact, are symbolic, and have no worth apart from the spiritual verities they em- balm and typify. To conclude. Socialism promises to make God's great life in man possible, promises to make all our relations so just, so beautiful and helpful, that we shall be no longer conscious of finiteness, of imper- fection, but only of life and power utterly infinite. I am not able to satisfy any one's reasonable curi- osity on this subject. Every one who trusts in a living and therefore active God, in that God who is quite as active and original in our day as He was six thousand years ago, in short every one whose hope for humanity is alert, behooves to acquaint himself forthwith with the marvellous literature of Sociafism, above all with the writings of Charles Fourier. You will doubdess find in Fourier things of an apostolic hardness to the understanding ; you will find many things to startle, many things per- CIVILIZATION. 93 haps to disgust you ; but you will find vastly more both in the way of criticism and of constructive science to satisfy and invigorate j^our understand- ing, while such glimpses will open on every hand of God's ravishing harmonies yet to ensue on earth, that your imagination will fairly ache with content- ment, and plead to be let off. These are what you will find in Fourier, pro- vided you have no secret interest dogging your can- dor and watching to betray it. Let me also tell you what you will not find there. You will find no such defaming thought of God as makes His glory to depend upon the antagonism of His crea- ture's shame. You will find no allegation of an es- sential and eternal contrariety between man and his creative source. Whatever be Fourier's er- rors and faults, this crowning and bottomless in- famy by no means attaches to him. On the con- trary, if the highest homage paid to Deity be that of the understanding, then Fourier's piety may safe- ly claim pre-eminence. For it was not a tradition- al piety, that piety of habit which keeps our churches open — and cheerless ; nor was it a selfish piety, the piety which springs from jail-bird con- ceptions of Deity, and paints him as a colossal spider bestriding the web of destiny and victimizing 94 SOCIALISM AND CIVILIZATION. with fell alacrity every heedless human fly that gets entangled in it ; but a piety as broad as human science, co-extensive in fact with the sphere of his senses, for its prayers were the passions or wants of the universal human heart, its praises the laws or methods of the human understanding, and its deeds the innumerable forms of spontaneous human action, MORALITY AND THE PERFECT LIFE. LECTURE. Gentlemen: — The subject of the present Lecture, is the rela- tion between man's moral experience and his expe- rience of the divine or perfect life. Two doctrines exist in the world, that of Moralism, which affirms man's rightful subjection to nature and society ; and that of the Christ, or Divine Man, which affirms man's rightful subjection only to God ; and these two are so contrary one to the other as to fill the whole earth with the dust and the noise of their con- tention. Let us enquire to which of them the even- tual triumph is due. In the four gospels, Christianity or the doctrine of a Divine Natural Humanity, is set forth under a double aspect, a literal and a spiritual one. The 98 MORALITY AND Christ, or Divine Man, claims for himself a double advent, one fleshly and humble, arising from the op- position of nature and society, the other spiritual and glorious, arising from the consent of nature and society. Not only does the Christ challenge to him- self this double advent, but he invariably makes the humble one necessary to the glorious one, makes the one an inseparable basis or condition of the other. If we ask the philosophy of this connection, if we ask the reason why God cannot perfectly reveal Himself in humanity, without first revealing Him- self imperfectly ; why He cannot reveal Himself in a manner to engage the cordial acknowledgment of society, without first revealing Himself in a manner to provoke its contempt and denial ; we shall find ourselves instantly referred to the end or object which God proposes in creation. Of course, when I speak of God as proposing an end to Him- self, or as capable of reflective action, you will grant me indulgence, knowing that this is a mere logical necessit}'-, a necessity arising out of the infirmity of our thought, and that I do not mean seriously to as- cribe conditions of space and time to the divine ac- tion. The end then which God proposes in creation, is THE PERFECT LIFE. 9*9 the communication of Himself to the creature. This follows from the fact that God is life or being itself. He does not possess being or life. He is it. He constitutes it. Consequently in giving being or life to the creature, he gives Himself to the creature. God, says Swedenborg, would dwell in the creature as in Himself. That is to say, He would be in the creature his very inmost and vital self, endowing him with a sweetness of affec- tion, with a reach of intellect, and a power of ac- tion so spontaneous and infinite as to yield every- where and always the lavish demonstration of His presence. You cannot conceive this point too strictly, for it is the very corner-stone of a scientific cosmology. Let me therefore repeat it. Because God is Life itself, life in its essence. He cannot impart life save by imparting Himself He cannot impart it by transferring it, according to the vulgar conception, from Himself to another, because, inasmuch as He is life, inasmuch as He constitutes it, this would be to transfer Himself from Himself, or divide Him- self, which is absurd. Creation consequently does not imply a transfer of life from God Himself to an- other; it implies the communication of His integral or infinite self to another. 100 MORALITY AND But now you will admit that I cannot enjoy tbis divine communication save in so far as I am pre- pared for it. I must be a vessel, a form, a subject, receptive of God, before He can communicate Him- self to me. If I were destitute of this previous sub- jectivity, you could not properly say that God com- municated Himself to me ; you could only say that He transformed or transmuted Himself into me, thus merging the Creator in the creature, and so falsifying both. I must then be a vessel, a house, a tabernacle, a temple, in short a form, into which God may come and abide ; thus and not otherwise may He be truly said to communicate Himself to me. But if this be so, if the divine communication to the creature be contingent upon the latter's capacity of reception, then manifestly the process of creation involves or necessitates a two-fold consciousness on the part of the creature ; first a finite or imperfect consciousness, or a consciousness of a selfhood dis- tinct from God ; and second, an infinite or perfect consciousness, a consciousness of a selfhood united with God. The end of God in my creation is to im- part Himself to me, to make Himself over to me with all His infinite resources of love, wisdom, and power. But in order to this end I must first exist, THE PERFECT LIFE. 101 must first have a quasi selfhood, a conditional or finite existence, by the medium of which I may be- come introduced, as it were, to my divine bride- groom, and give myself away in an eternal espou- sals. Now a finite or conditional existence is the result of a balance or equilibrium between two opposite forces. All finite experience is generated of op- position. The orbit or individuality of the earth, for example, results from a perfect balance of the re- pellent and attractive influences of the sun, a per- fect equilibrium of its centrifugal and centripetal motions. Destroy either of these motions, and the earth becomes, in the one case, dissipated in space-, in the other re-absorbed in the sun. Precisely simi- lar is the genesis of man's finite experience. He becomes self-conscious, self-defined, by the expe- rience of two opposite laws or principles inciting his activity, which laws or principles are variously named, the o.ic external the other internal, the one public the other private, the one evil the other good, the one infernal the other celestial. ■ The first of these principles is self-love. It an- swers to the projectile or centrifugal force of nature, and appears to bear the creature away from hu- manity, away from the centre of human life and G 102 MORALITY AND energy ; the relation of the race towards him being one meanwhile of repulsion. The second law or force bears the name of charity or benevolence. It answers to the centripetal force of nature, and ap- pears to bring the creature back again to the heart of humanity, the relation of the race towards him being now one of attraction, and this attraction is so potent that if it were not for the counterbalance aforesaid, the creature would lose his self-conscious- ness, and become swallowed up in the race, to the complete frustration of creation. The operation of either law unchecked by the other, would be fatal to the finite consciousness : for the former would affirm the individual to the denial of the universal, while the latter would affirm the universal to the denial of the individual, and these being correlative, the denial of one is a virtual denial of both. Man's finite selfhood or experience then de- mands for its perfect development an exact balance or equilibrium of these two loves, self-love and bro- therly love, or charity. As the orbit or individual- ity of any planet reflects the perfect balance of its centrifugal and centripetal tendencies, so the or- bitual or normal life of man reflects the perfect bal- ance of his internal and external self, of charity and self-love, of good and evil, of heaven and hell. THE PERFECT LIFE. 103 How then does this finite and preliminary expe- rience of mine become elaborated ? What consti- tutes its apparatus? Nature and society. My experience of the natural and the moral life is what gives me a finite consciousness, a consciousness of a selfhood distinct from every other self. My re- lations to nature incessantly inspire the sentiment of self-love. My relations to society, or to my fel- low man, as incessantly inspire the counter senti- ment of charity or brotherly-love. Nature subjects me to the operation of self-love by the various stimu- lants it offers to my senses, leading me to seek their continual and highest possible gratification. Society, or the fellowship of my kind, subjects me to the equal operation of charity or neighborly love, by the various incitements it offers to my affections, leading me to seek their continual and highest pos- sible gratification. My normal state or condition is that which exactly harmonizes or equilibrates these two forces. In the exact ratio of the prepon- derance of either force over the other, my condi- tion becomes morbid, and my action vicious. I say that the normal state of man exacts the perfectly balanced or harmonic operation of these principles, because man's perfection as the crea- ture of God requires that he act of himself, or freely 104 MORALITY AND and without any impediment ah extra, God the creator is infinite or perfect, being sufficient unto Himself. And He is sufficient unto Himself, only because His action is self-generated, or obeys no outward end. This being the case with the crea- tor, and the creature being necessarily only His image or reflection, it follows that the creature must exhibit a like infinitude or perfection. It follows that he also must be sufficient unto himself, or ex- hibit a purely self-derived activity, an activity which denies any outward motive or impulsion. And the creature cannot exhibit this perfection, this self- sufficiency, so long as either nature or society do- minates him, so long as either force exerts a com- manding influence upon his activity. Whenever this phenomenon occurs consequently, he manifests a diseased or abnormal life, his action being per- verted and inhuman. How then practically, or in point of fact, does this abnormal life of man come about? How does it happen that man, the creature of God, and there- fore essentially or inwardly perfect, comes to expe- rience the discordant operation of these laws and to exhibit a consequently infirm activity ? The explanation of this phenomenon lies in the fact that man's perfect or infinite selfhood, that THE PERFECT LIFE. 105 which he derives from God, becomes evolved only by the gradual elimination or removal of his finite selfhood, that which he derives from nature and society. While this finite selfhood exists in full force, he remains unconscious of his true or infinite one ; and it is only as he puts the former away from him accordingly, only as he eliminates or puts it out of doors, making it rnerely formal and natural, that the latter flows in and becomes established. Now this process of eliminating the finite selfhood de- pends altogether upon our experience of its unfit- ness to satisfy our essential nature. The more vivid and intense the latter experience, the more thorough and consummate will be the consequent process of elimination. All this will become very plain to you after briefly considering the constitu- tion of our finite selfhood or experience. In the first place, Nature gives me a bodily indi- viduality, distinct from all other bodies. Then So- ciety guarantees me an exclusive property or self- hood in this body, gives me a title to its possession good against every other individual. If it were not for the phenomenon of society or fellowship among men, if men were simply gregarious like sheep, then with their tremendous individuality they would soon exterminate each other. First, the strong 106 MORALITY AND would exterminate the weak, then the more strong the less strong, until you would finally get down to the solitary strongest man, dismal denizen of the unpeopled planet. It is society then which de- velopes my selfhood or property in my natural body. How does it do this ? By various means. Primarily, by means of the family institution. The domestic guardianship pro- vided for me by society, ensures the care of my in- fant existence, and the supply of its most urgent wants. Secondly, by means of its municipal and politicar institutions, which afford me an ampler field of existence than the family supplies, and still further develope my instincts of action. Thirdly, by means of its institutes of education, which enlarge my knowledge of nature and man, and incite me to a proportionately enlarged activity. Thus you per- ceive that we derive from nature and society a self- hood intrinsically finite, finited successively by our relations to our own body or outlying nature, to our natural progenitors and the inmates of home, to our fellow-townsmen, to our fellow-countrymen, and to the men of other lands. Such is the constitution of the selfhood we de- rive from nature and society, inevitably finite or im- perfect. First of all it is limited to the body, or the THE PERFECT LIFE. 107 experience of the five senses, shut up as it were to a pin's point in space and time ; and when after- wards through the fostering care of society, it be- comes developed and enlarged, it still remains finite, still falls short of its rightful infinitude, of that infin- itude which belongs to it by virtue of its creation. For you will admit that society has hitherto done nothing to perfect man. Its institutions have in- deed marked an expanding consciousness within him, but the most advanced of them fail to give him perfect enfranchisement, fail to express that rela- tion of perfect unity which he is under to nature and his fellow-man, by virtue of his divine original or source. Let us, for a moment, recount the succes- sive steps of our social progress, and observe when we shall have reached the end, how inadequately society yet serves our true individuality. Society means fellowship, nothing more and no- thing less. A perfect or imperfect society conse- quently means a perfect or imperfect fellowship among men. But now you know that all true fel- lowship among men is spontaneous, that it has an inward or spiritual roo|, instead of an outward or material one. Men may indeed exhibit an apimrent fellowship with one another while striving to supply their common natural wants ; but this fellowship 108 MORALITY AND being outwardly generated or imposed, is only ap- parent. Each of the parties to it in truth is seeking only to help himself by the aid of the others, and consequently when this end is attained, their friend- ship is dissolved, and the parties know each other no longer. The present relation of master and ser- vant, of employer and laborer, or of two business partners, illustrates this spurious and evanescent fellowship. A true fellowship or society then among men has an internal ground or origin, springs from their spontaneous sympathies and attractions. Its foun- dation is the unity of human nature, a unity which exacts the utmost variety or distinction in the ele- ments composing it. Exactly in the degree in which these various elements become freely as- serted, will their unity be manifested, will human society become perfected. The case herein is precisely similar to a musical harmony. The har- mony is grand or complete just in the degree that its elemental notes are relatively various and dis- tinct. If the notes are all accordant with each other, the result is at best a simple melody. But if each note gives a distinct sound from every other, then the result is a grand and rapturous harmony that lifts the soul to God. So in human society, if THE PERFECT LIFE. 109 each member be similar in genius, in taste, in action to every other, we have at best a dismal monotony, a mere mush of mutual deference and apology. But if each is distinctively himself, or sharply indi- vidualized from every other, then we have a grand choral life hymning the infinitely various graces of the divine unity. Human society must, therefore, be a very gradual achievment. For the unity which binds man to the race is not an obvious fact, or a fact visible to the senses. It is a fact hidden in God. The fact which is visible to the senses, is the infinite variety of the race. Variety is the only visible form or revelation of unity. We never attain, accordingly, to the realization of unity, until we have first under- gone the experience of variety. Hence, before the race realizes its unity, the unity it has in God, it is bound to realize its variety, the variety it has in its own members. This being the case, our first social forms, the first institutions declarative of our social unity, are of necessity very narrow and imperfect, being based upon a narrow induction of particulars, upon a nar- row experience of variety. The distinction of the sexes is the first or most obvious feature of this variety, and furnishes accordingly the basis of our 6* 110 MORALITY AND unitary experience, the germ of our unitary con- sciousness. The marriage institution, declaring the union of one man with one woman, is the earliest social form or institution known to the race, and the rudiment of all the others. One man and one woman experience a passional sympathy with each other, which leads them into a complete union, leaving all other men and women out from it. The offspring of this union furnishes the material of the family institution, an institution which expresses the union of the children of one married pair, and ex- cludes from it the children of every other pair. These children in their turn each beget families, and the union of these families again gives rise to the tribal institution, the tribe being the union of all the famiUes descending from one original family. The tribal union again generates the town, or union of many tribes; and the town, in its turn, generates the nation^ or the union of many towns. Thus all these institutions beginning with marriage, or the union of one man and one woman, and ending with the nation, or the union of many towns, are merely so many enlarging expressions of human unity, de- veloped by our experience of variety. They are so many types or symbols of that internal and in- tegral unity which men have in their Creator ; and THE PERFECT LIFE. Ill they take place or result each in its turn from an increasing experience on the part of the race of the infinite variety which characterizes its members. Now you perceive from this rapid sketch that these various social forms or institutions serve but to finite man, serve but to limit and straiten his in- finite personality. While each of them, compared with its predecessor, is an enlarged type of human unity, they are yet all, when compared with that unity itself, most finite and inadequate. Thus, though the family institution expresses a larger unity than the marriage institution, being the union of many brothers and sisters instead of one man and one woman only, yet it is itself finite as limited to the issue of one pair. So the tribal union, though it is a larger type of unity than the family institu- tion, being the union o? many famihes, is yet finite as excluding all other tribes. And so forth till we get to the nation, which, while it is a more advanced type of unity than that afforded by the town or mu- nicipal institution, is yet itself finite as excluding all other nations. Thus all the social institutions which have yet arisen in the world, and which constitute the existing form or body of society, are, when compared with the great spiritual fact itself, finite or insufficient. They none of them e'xpress man's 112 MORALITY AND infinite or perfect unity with his fellow. They ex- press the partial, not the universal unity of the race. Thus, at best, they express the unity of the English- man with the English-man and Scotch-man or Irish- man ; but in so doing assert his disunion with the French-man and Spanish-man, and so far prove only a partial image of the truth as it is in God. And as these institutions are thus finite or im- perfect, so they engender in their subject a very finite or imperfect consciousness. They impress him with an extreme narrowness, a most incomplete individuality, an individuality which is not charged with the positive virtue of God, but is a mere sickly reflection of these domineering social relations. They teach him that the great end of his existence is to become a good husband, a good brother, a good neighbor and a good citizen. Consequently they propose a continually finite righteousness to him, and fill him with conceit in ths exact ratio of his attainments. But man being above all things the creature of God, feels the inward intimation and prophecy of a larger unity with his fellow than these institutions affirm or allow, even r perfect unity, which these institutions deny. The consequence is a conflict between man and existing institutions, between THE PERFECT LIFE. 113 humanity and society. Thus the marriage-subject, finding himself in spiritual relation or relations of affection with some other person than his legal partner, is led to violate the marriage obhgation. So the family-subject, finding himself in closer spiritual accord, in relations of superior friendship with other families than his own, is led practically to disesteem and transcend that tie. So, also, the citizen, coming into relations of greater amity and sympathy with other nations than his own, learns to renounce his national allegiance. Tn all these cases you perceive that the evil arises not from the spirit of humanity, but from the imperfection of the institutions which profess to embody that spirit. Man is spiritually larger than the institutions which pretend to contain him. He consequently over- flows their boundaries and exposes them to con- tempt. This is the true p hilosophy of crime. It arises from an antagonism between the spirit of humanit}^, or what is the same thing the divine spirit in man, and existing social institutions. Take away this antagonism and you immediately exhaust crime. Let society become perfectly expressive of humani- ty, let its institutions reflect the unity of the race, and instantly universal love would abound, and 114 MORALITY ANB what is better^ a love which would be without re- flective consciousness, without self-complacency, without a sense of merit. The divine spirit in every man incessantly urges his unity with nature and his fellow man, his unity with the universe. Thus, if you regard the child before he becomes morally sophisticate, or disci- plined by society, you perceive that he views all things and all persons as made for his delight, and puts forth his hand with a lordly disdain of every laborious distinction o^ meum and tmim. Now the child is but the prophecy of the man. His ignorant innocence only typifies that wiser innocence which shall endow and render beautiful the ripe divine manhood. Hence the Christ affirmed that we should enter the kingdom of heaven only by becom- ing as little children, that is, by putting away those vain subtikies of philosoph}^ which base our present diseased manhood, and subjecting ourselves with the candor of children to the infallible laws of God. But, however this may be, it is evident to you from the past rapid sketch, that society has thus far done nothing for the individual but to deepen or intensify his moral consciousness, that is, to bring him under law successivelv to his wife, his children, THE PERFECT LIFE. 115 his relatives, his neighbors, his fellow countrymen. The most it has done for him is to allow him a re- lative goodness, a goodness lying in his relations to other people. But clearly, man should be good by virtue of his creation, or his relation to the infinite God, should be good in himself, infinitely good. It is impossible either that God's creature should be evil in himself, or derive goodness from any other source than his creator. The former position ob- viously stultifies itself. And to suppose the crea- ture's goodness flowing from any other source than the creator, as from his relation to other creatures, is to make the original goodness, of which it is only an image, also flow not from God Himself, but from His relations to other beings. It is, in short, to make God's goodness contingent instead of posi- tive. Hence society has failed hitherto perfectly to subserve the interests of human individualit3^ It has given the individual expansion, but only in a downward or subversive direction, such an expan- sion as you give the prisoner, not by breaking his chains and bidding him be free, but by enlarging and multiplying the wards of his prison. Conse- quently you perceive what you have every a priori warrant to anticipate, that individual history has pre- 116 MORALITY AND sented little else hitherto than a warfare between nature and society, between self-love and charity. Nature and society having themselves no individu- ality are utterly godless, exhibit no faintest suspi- cion of man's vital source. Accordingly they sug- gest to him only an outward law of action, only an outward principle of development : the former, the law of self-love, the law of his relation to his own body; the latter the law of charity, the law of his relation to his fellow-man. Nature bids him reahze his infinitude, his perfection, by the service of his own body. Society bids him reahze it by the ser- vice of his fellow-man. Thus neither nature nor society conceives it to be already provided and se- cure in God, and only waiting the cessation of their strife to flow into his consciousness ; but regards it on the other hand as a thing to be assiduously coaxed out of their own costive and innutritions udders. The individual thus discipHned consequently, and feeling in every pulse of his soul the instinct of sovereignty, proceeds to realize it by these na- tural and moral methods. If he be of an external or sensuous genius, he pursues the former method, the method of pleasure, obeying the law of self- love. If he be of an inward and reflectiv^e temper, THE PERFECT LIFE. 117 he pursues the latter method, the method of duty, obeying the law of brotherly love. But the more diligently he prosecutes either pursuit, that of plea- sure or this of duty, the further he strays from his great quest and accumulates defeat. For his freedom is not his own laborious achievment, it is the cordial gift of God. It does not come to him in any outward way, from any service however zeal- ous either of necessity or duty. It comes to him in a purely inward and supersensuous way as a per- petual influx from God into his soul. While he seeks therefore to wring it out of the base reluctant bowels of nature and society, while he seeks, in short, anything with them but to compel them into the speediest and fullest possible imagery or reflec- tion of it, it perpetually baffles his grasp, and beats him to the dust in shame and despair. For suppose him to succeed never so well in ei- | ^ ther of these paths. Suppose him, for example, to /L:t, accumulate never so much of the bounties of nature. Then just in proportion to that accumulation will ^ be his care, his anxiety, his painful servitude. In- stead of realizing his freedom he loses it. He has less of it now than he had when he stood naked under God's sky, with nought to shield him from ; the giant sport of nature. For what he has gained 118 MORALITY AND will only stay gained on condition of his continually adding to it. Every day consumes it, and every day therefore puts forth new claims upon his relent- less toil. Thus having once entered upon this ser- vice, he finds no release till he has conquered all nature, made all her resources his own ; and this nature herself denies him force to do. Or suppose him to gain never so much of the es- teem of his fellow-man, and to abound in all manner of moral excellence. Now just in proportion to his abundance in this direction also, will be his care, his anxiety, his painful servitude. For moral good- ness does not stay of its own momentum. It stays '/^ only upon the condition of continual augmentation. ^'If I say *' I denied myself and was good yester- day ; to-day therefore I will take my ease and en- joy myself;" that yesterday's goodness instantly perishes, and I am obliged to begin clean anew. No, the more earnestly I strive to achieve moral goodness, to fulfil the law of brotherly love, the more I find incessantly to do, the less hope of release have I in time or eternity. For this law is spiritual, de- manding in the votary a mind of perfect equality with every other man, and therefore mortally in- imical to the aspirations of individual ambition. The only man who fulfils it, the only man who, in THE PERFECT LIFE. 119 fact, fulfils either law, the law of self-love or of neighborly love, the law of nature or of so- ciety, is the divine or perfect man, the man who asks nothing either of nature or of his fellow-man, because He already has all things in God, and whom therefore both nature and society hasten to glorify and adore. Now this experience on the part of man of the utter vanity of his pursuits, of the utter inability both of nature and society to satisfy his aspiration and give him peace with himself, although bitterly painful in its transit, has yet the most indispensable uses in convincing him of his essential infinitude, and leading him to disown and reject the finite self- hood. If it were not for the perpetual disappoint- ment he encounters in the pursuit both of pleasure and righteousness, he would sink into the abject tool or votary of nature and his fellow-man, and the immortal instinct he derives from God would expire consequently with the decay of nature and the dis- ruption of his social ties. But these disappoint- ments nurse his infinitude, conserve his immortahty. They guard the interests of his unconscious destiny, giving it an invincible development and relief. Re- fusing utterly to satisfy his instinct of sovereignty, ministering his most impassioned solicitations only the ashes of disease and death, they throw him in- 120 MORALITY AND cessantly and perforce upon his inward self, and teach him to ask life where alone it may be found without money and without price, in the divine and unfathomable depths of his own spontaneous na- ture. For here is the birth of Art, or the true divine life in man. Art is nothing else than the obedience of one's spontaneous tastes or attractions, uncon- trolled either by nature or society, by necessity or duty. And this obedience would be forever im- possible .to man, if nature or society gave him repose, if they met and appeased the cry of his soul for freedom. If nature perfectly satisfied me, if so- ciety perfectly justified me ; if my relations to the one brought me no consciousness of disease, and my relations to the other no consciousness of sin ; then I should be forever content to feed upon honey, and bask in the smile of my fellows, ignoring God, ignor- ing destiny. But as neither satisfies or justifies me, as my addiction to- nature or self-love convinces me only of disease and death, and my addiction to so- ciety or duty convinces me only of sin; so I am in- cessantly driven inwards upon myself, upon my own spontaneous tendencies and attractions, which are the throne of God's power and majesty, to rea- THE PERFECT LIFE. 121 lize an infinite righteousness, or a selfhood at per- fect harmony with man and nature. I have now shewn you what I engaged to shew you, namely, how the realization of man's destiny or perfection involved not only his experience of a finite selfhood, but also his gradual renunciation of it — his complete elimination of it or putting it out of doors, there to stand and wait upon his infinite one. Doubtless many questions occur to you hereupon, which I have not now the space andtimeto answer. Let us postpone these to future occasions, when the same impediments will not exist, and proceed now to the confirmation and illustration of what has been already said. It is clearly deducible then' from all I have said, that I hold morality to be a transient phenomenon of humanity, or to pertain only to man's immature experience, having not only no relevancy to him as the creature of God, but imposing a positive disabil- ity upon that relation. I beg that no one will be silly enough to charge me hereupon with maintain- ing that our consciousness of unity with God will involve a continued consciousness of hostile rela- tions with nature or man. On the contrary, I hold the activity of the latter consciousness to be altoge- ther contingent upon the dormancy of the former 122 MORALITY AND one, and that nothing accordingly is needed for the utter abolition of our present vicious relations with nature, and criminal relations with man, than the recognition of our unity with God. It is exclusively our infidelity towards God which leaves us under the tyranny of nature and society, and we have only to acknowledge the truth as to the former and high- er relation, to find this tyranny perfectly innocu- ous, to find it in fact transformed into a complete and measureless benediction. I know very well the prestige which surrounds existing institutions. I know the tremendous grasp which the existing form of society has upon our ima- gination and I should be utterly hopeless of every attempt to weaken it, did I not feel assured that the whole force of divine Providence, the total move- ment of human destiny, co-operated with such at- tempts. Its institutions are effete. The vigorous life which once gave them repute has departed. They no longer bless the subject. To be a good husband, a good brother, a good neighbor, a good citizen, is no longer a guarantee against starvation. For one that society feeds and clothes it sends ten thousand naked and empty away. For one it fills with the vapid froth of self-conceit, it fills ten thou- sand with an unappeasible consciousness of want THE PERFECT LIFE. 123 and sin. To save appearances it hastens indeed to trip up the heels of the burglar, and immure the petty thief in prison. But it organizes the systema- tic pillage of the stock exchange, and builds up the fortune of its rich men upon the actual murder of its poor. It proclaims from all its pulpits the undiminished terrors of the devil, and the lake of fire and brimstone, but with what effect? He to whom the tidings might be profitable, the selfish man, laughs with incredulity; and only they to whom they are wholly irrelevant, the tender-heart- ed woman and the man of gentle affections, drag out a life of miserable uncertainty, or else renounce ifc-ift vio l o nt dc B pat r. Will God endure this? *f~"ft.c^jC. Society w^as made for man, not man for society. It is the steward of God not His heir, and He holds it therefore to a rigid accountability. If it regards the interests of the heir in the first place according- ly, and its own interests in the second place, then He will bestow upon it abundant honor ; it shall re- flect in fact all the glory of the heir. But if it forget its intrinsic subordination or stewardship, and claim to be itself the heir, He will deprive it even of this reflected glory, and deliver it over to contempt and death. But this has been the capital mistake of society 124 MORALITY AND from the beginning. The heir has so long delayed his coming, that the steward has grown bold and come to look upon himself as the heir. So obdu- rate has this conviction waxed, that it apparendy requires every arrow in God's quiver to arouse him from his delusion. Nothing else explains the present stupidity of society under the desolating judgments which are visiting it. It seems to have utterly abjured that purely secondary or ministerial place to man which it occupies in the divine regard. It believes itself valued by God for its own sake, and not for its worth to the individual soul, that soul whose existence in nature would be impossible without it. It esteems itself a true divine end, and not merely a means to that end, and thus perpetu- ally antagonizes the Divine Humanity, the spirit of God in man, exerting an implacable tyranny over the individual life. But man cannot succumb to this tyranny. He may not be able to justify his resistance intellectual- ly, he may not be able to cast back the reproach of society into its own teeth, but he will not suffer it to compress his passions with impunity. They will burst forth upon occasion with destructive energy — an energy ivhose destructiveness however re- fers itself purely to that foregone compression — and as- THE PERFECT LIFE. 125 sert their divine and imperishable freedom, if not in a positive or orderly way, still in a manner to show the perfect impotence of society to subdue them. Talk as you will, society remains stupidly deaf. Taking her stand upon her existing institutions, she deals out her vindictive anathema upon every one who practically refuses to be contained in them. She never suspects that the cause of the disobedi- ence she encounters lies in these very institutions themselves, in their finiteness, in their refusal to ex- pand with the expansion of God's life in man. Be- cause they have been good in the past, because each in its turn was a larger t3^pe of human unity than its predecessor, society regards them also as final, or as constituting the substance of that unity. It is as though this temporary body of mine should assume to live after the spirit had departed from it, should presume upon my spirit's eternity be- cause of its use to that spirit in time. Doubtless my bod3^ has been helpful to my spirit, but there comes a period to this relation, a period when the body has attained its climax of experience, and no longer promotes but actually hinders the _growth of my spirit. For the service it has rendered me I no doubt owe it decent burial. But whether decent or 7 126 MORALITY AND indecent, burial is its infallible doom, burial out of human sight, and resolution into elemental nature. Exactly such is the fate of all our social institu- tions. None of them is adequate fully to express man's spiritual unity, since the only adequate ex- pression of that is the organization of the whole race in perfect fellowship, an organization not by human legislation, not by police, not by con- vention, but by God's legislation which is SCIENCE, and primarily by that method of science which has been termed the law of the series^ and ap- plied to the human passions. Our present institu- tions, at least all those which vitalize our morality blink this inward or spiritual unity of the race. They proceed upon a certain outward and natural unity, as that of persons born under one roof, or in one vicinage, or in one country. But they have no eye for that spiritual unity which disdains the limi- tations of space and time, and gives the whole race the continuity of a man, the integrity of God. Ac- cordingly, as this spiritual unity asserts itself more and more in human consciousness, it more and more disowns the old institutions, and craves forms pro- portionate to itself Thus you perceive that the march of the divine Providence in the earth incessantly demands the enlargement of existing institutions, their enlarge- THE PERFECT LIFE. 127 ment or their overthrow. If the estabHshed forms obstinately resist the new life, if they will not ex- pand with the expansion of the individual genius, it is manifest that they have survived their use, and only encumber the earth. I do not say that the di- vine life finds its normal or positive manifestation in methods of violence, for that life is essential peace and all its paths are those of pleasantness. But when society puts itself in antagonism with man, when it gathers itself up in its present embankments and refuses to enlarge itself to the dimensions of universal humanity, then the divine Providence must needs ally itself with those whom society thus drives to violence and turbulence. What God is bound to hate, what He is bound by His every per- fection to disallow, is the attempt of society to or- ganize permanent division among His children, those children whom He unites. Hence His earhest manifestations in nature must of necessity bear a hostile aspect towards society, or towards every institution which gives one class of men a perma- nent superiority over others. From this exposition you will have no diflSculty in perceiving why God's first revelation of Himself in humanity takes place under circumstances of humiliation, or provokes the contempt of the devout 128 MORALITY AND and polite world, of all the friends of the existing order. It is because it is necessarily hostile to that order, because God cannot affirm the insane pre- tension of society to the supremacy over man, but on the contrary would have it totally subordinate to him. If the divine man, the man of genius, the man of inward force, the man of ideas, in short the x\rtist, would succumb to society ; if he would say nothing and do nothing which society disallowed, nothing subversive of its customs and traditions; if he would utter no prophecies and confess no want of a superior righteousness to that which flowed from the obedi- ence of existing institutions ; then society would gladly honor him, and give him the pomp and glory of all the kingdoms of the world. But the Artist is unable to gratify society in this thing. He lives from God alone, from the inspira- tions of truth and beauty in his own soul, and he cannot acknowledge any law or institution which limits these. Hence in an immature or dissentient society his lot is to suffer outwardly, to be crucified in the flesh even while he is being glorified in the spirit, even in order to his being thus glorified. Ac- cordingly, if you will search history through, you will find the divine life asserting itself in man al- ways under social obstruction and contempt. No THE PERFECT LIFE. 129 man of ideas ever announced himself without arous- ing the fanatic jealousy of society, without its chief priests and rulers predicting disaster, and stirring up the populace to his destruction. But the divine life is never quenched. The very dungeon to which it is shut up becomes a radiant centre of energy to it, and the gallows only a more conspicu- ous witness of its immortality. Butyou need not career over the whole of history to learn these things. You are Christians from your youth up, instructed in the literal doctrine of the Christ from your mothers' breasts, and I am only setting before you the spirit of that doctrine as it glows and burns in the sacred letter. You know that it was just this conflict which was enacted be- tween the Jew and the Christ. Perhaps your teach- ers have failed to tell you that the Christ had never any quarrel with the individual as absolved from social unit}^ but only with society, only with the rulers of the nation in church and state. The individual who stood absolved from social unity, who was cast out for his un worthiness, had no word of condemnation from those guileless lips : publi- cans and sinners believed his quarrel just, and the common people, we are told, heard him gladly. But the un-common people, they who w€re iden- 130 MORALITY AND tified with the national honor, the scribe and Phari- see, and high priest and elder of the people, the person, in short, who prized his Judaism above his humanity, he it was with whom Christ's quarrel lay. The Jew took his stand upon the national righteous- ness, upon the ground of his national difference from other men, exhibited in his exemplary fulfil- ment of all the duties of his law, and on this ground challenged the divine acceptance and favor. You know that the Christ systematically gainsaid this pretension, that he refused to admit the slightest su- periority in the Jew over the Gentile, the saint over the sinner, that he consequently incurred the tem- pestuous scorn and enmity of the nation, but that he never ceased to denounce them as hypocrites and liars, children of the devil, whose damnation was irresistible and everlasting. You know that he proclaimed himself the friend of publicans and sinners, the herald of God not to the righteous but to sinners, the physician of the sick not of the well. You know that he denied the divine kingdom to be of this world, or to be modelled upon the fashion of any existing societ}'', a kingdom that is in which one should be exalted and another despised, one rich and another poor, one powerful another weak. In short you know that he represented the righteous- THE PERFECT LIFE. 131 ness of that kingdom as entirely superior to that of the Scribes and Pharisees, being a righteousness which should invest all its subjects equally, and obliterate every conventional difference of good and evil, by satisfying every soul with fatness. Now, my friends, these things have happened for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the world have truly come. Is any one here silly enough to believe that the Jew is one outwardly, or that the true Judaea with which the Christ contends, be- longs to a peculiar geographical latitude, and not to human nature ? If so, my friend, you have man- aged to preserve a very placid bosom in the midst of great disquiets. You have managed, in fact, to stagnate in the very heart of universal movement. But this is a rare case. To most men Judaea is a bosom experience. For my own part, I very much fear that I might not be able on the instant to define the exact geographical Judaea to you, yet I should have no suspicion of my particular exclusion from God's vital drama. But Judaea, which is ungeo- graphical, Judasa which is spiritual and represents ideas, this Judaea we all carry about with us in our souls, and daily reproduce in all the features of its deathless personality. I admit that the literal Judaea was once a great r 132 MOKALITV AND fact. I admit that it esteemed itself and aspired to be as no nation ever aspired to be, tlie chosen and appropriate inheritance of God. I admit that it came into collision with the literal Christ, or repre- sentative Divine Man, and that it was bound l)y every consideration of a puny patriotism, and every interest of a cruel morality, to put him to a bloody death. But now remember that after death there comes a resurrection. We may sa}^ indeed, that death is only in order to a resurrection, that it is merely a transition point between lower and higher, between less life and more life. For example, you put the seed in the ground : it dies, it rots, it disap- pears, but out of that death, that corruption, that disappearance springs a plant, a flower or fruit which shall fill the earth with plenty, with beauty, with joy. Thus the literal Christ has passed away : never again shall we behold him after the flesh or finitely. The literal Judsea has also tasted death : never- more shall its altars smoke, nor the sound of tabor and pipe enliven its streets. But both Judaea and the Christ have a spiritual resurrection or glorifica- tion: Judaea in the ideas and institutions of our modern civilization ; the Christ in all those instincts of freedom, in all those aspirations after peace, after hai'mony, after joy, after the unimpeded exercise of THE PERFECT LIFE. 133 one's faculties of action, which are subtly but irre- sistibly laying that civilization law. I have a perfect faith that Christianity had never such vitality on earth as now, that all those great events which occurred under Herod and Pontius Pilate were, in fact, only figurative of the transcen- dent realities in which we now live and act. The controversy of the Christ with the Jew, and his de- livery by the Jew into the hands of the Roman, only symbolize the present injustice which the interests of human individuality encounter at the hands of the Church, and the interested sycophancy of the latter towards the State, or secular power. One gets tired of witnessing the barren idolatry of Jesus, an idolatry which consists with the habitual profa- nation of every truth he uttered and put into life ; tired of hearing him called Lord ! Lord ! while as yet we obey every influence to which he gave his life a sacrifice. For my own part, I seek to know the Christ no more after the flesh, no more in his finite and perishable form. I seek to know him henceforth only in his second or infinite and univer- sal manifestation, as the power of God in every in- dividual soul. The sphere of God is the soul of uni- versal humanity, and His highest revelation is in the individual life. A perfect life, a life that is 7* 134 MORALITY AND whose every act and word are true to the sovereign soul within, will ever be the truest revelation of God, as it is the highest expression of Art. When Jesus Christ amidst the dripping scorn of all the devout minds of his nation, outspake the measureless kindness with which his heart was aglow towards the woman taken in adultery: when he confronted the dignitaries of his people, those who were esteemed by all his friends and neigh- bors as eminently the servants of God, and pro- nounced them mere actors or hypocrites, children of their father the devil : when he met the obtru- sive and self-complacent interference of his mother by the stern rebuke, " Woman, what have I to do with ilieeV when finally feeling in his deepest soul the shallowness and vanity of these merely natural ties, he said to those who told him that his mother and brethren stood without desiring to speak with him, that " he had no mother nor brethren but such as did the will of God :" he, in all these cases, only typified that supreme and beautiful life which is yet to reveal itself in every man. He indeed ex- hibited the divine or perfect man under humiliation, under the obscuration of warring circumstances. His life did not seem beautiful, because the common or established life was so false as to turn his into an THE PERFECT LIFE. 135 incessant protest, an incessant warfare. But it was at bottom the most beautiful and sovereign life ever exhibited on earth. He alone, of all the race of men, has dared to be exactly true to his own soul, or God within him. When I find it so hard for my- self to decline an invitation to some paltry tea-party, for fear of offending the customs of society ; when I feel it a severe trial to forego the empty and expen- sive mummery of mourning, lest some infinitesimal moralist be shocked *, when I hide my hands be- tween my knees at the opera lest Mrs. Grundy should discover their des.titution of an orthodox cov- ering ; when I huddle away my cards on a Sunday evening for fear of the neighboring clergyman com- ing in and finding me at whist with my children ; the contrast I am thus made aware of between him and me, leaves me little doubt of his divinity. He seems, indeed, the only man in history. All other men seem but lackeys. For the peculiarity of Christ's manhood, the very divinity of his manli- ness, was this, that he opposed the best virtue of his time, and finally fell a victim to it. Unlike the moralist he despised the cheap fame which flows from the condemnation of vice and crime. He had least of all men any relish for vice or crime ; but he never failed on any occasion to justify the criminal. lLH/i4j4 ^\m^CC^ ^ ^ ^ t/v-^v^^ . ^6 14 -7 a / I \ Q> h.^ .-^ 14 DAY USE HOME USE CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT MAIN LIBRARY This book is due on the last date stamped below. 1-month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405. 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk. Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date. ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL 7 DAYS AFTER DATE CHECKED OUT. uiiiiim ^ ^' 'L ^ . iNTERUaSAAS' 'jJ^i MAR31197r 1 -I ''"'''^r,n,; ,^^^ prp. r.m lm;n5'ft:^ LI (C LD21 — A-40m-8,'75 (S7737I.) Univt. U. C. BERKELEY LIBRARIES CDM7MS7EflT I ,; ' I li \i lie A.