THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. . (P Jt^^H^^-Xl^tW .•^^//*i-«M^-»^-r ^^t^i^t^t^^^ ^-^^ By C. graham, M.D., AUTHOB OF "man FROM HIS CRADLE TO HIS GRAVE," AND OF "THE TRUE SCIENCE OF MEDICINE." No creed is too absnrd for faith ; no doctrine too sanguinary and monstrous for human credulity. The lives of former generations and the condition of the present, I give as lessons to posterity. LOUISVILLE, KY.: PRINTED BY JOUN P. MORTON AND COMPANY. 18G9. 131 Q-yQ-t DEDICATION. This work I dedicate to the reader with the following requests : That he will look with an eye of sad regret and see where the Christian world is drifting. That he will have independence enough to' know that he has a mind of his own, by which he can judge as well of its own operations as others can judge for him. That he will throw perplexing and unmeaning words aside, as worthless in thought; for brutes, and the deaf and dumb, feel, think, and act promptly and correctly without words. That he will read the history of his race and see that there is, at this time, more than a thousand human victims daily immolated upon the altars of a dark and sanguinary superstition, prescribed by an inhuman and domineering priesthood. That he will seriously meditate upon the fact that more than two thousand years of preaching, and of teaching the nature of mind, its duty to its fellow-man, and its relation to its God, has only served to divide the human family and make the science of mind more laborious and incomprehensible than ever. That he will keep constantly in view the cause of every thought and act of his life, which will soon give him a perfect and practical knowledge of mind, a boon that no closet-book of assumed and artistic minds can possibly give him. That he will be watchful of the artifice of authors and teachers in quibbling out of the influence of motives in the production of will and action by afiBrming as Haven, the great text-book writer, does, that motives, though the reason and occasion of will and action, are not the cause. With your mind thus fortified, read on, and you will find all the laws of mind fully developed, illustrated, and demonstrated. i^'a nr <"b « r>i-^ TABLE OF OONTEISTTS. PAGE. 1. What is Will? 13 2. Axioms 101 3. What is Sensation? 123 4. What is an Idea? , 125 5. What is Perception? 131 6. What is Metaphysics? 134 7. What is Mystery? 137 8. What is Superstition? 142 9. What is a Faculty? 148 10. What is Conscience? 154 11. What is Mind? 158 12. What is Theology? 176 13. What is Instinct? 211 14. What is Fate? 221 15. What is Reason? 222 16. Appendix 242 PREFACE. My object in the following essays will be to show that we are creatures of education, and consequently should be charitable to each other, no two on earth having the same organization or being impressed with the same circumstances or objects, which make up, through life, our honest and unavoidable convictions. For the want of this knowledge, man has ever been the greatest enemy of mau. Yes, from the intolerance and inhumanity of man to man countless millions have bled and died. Look back through mouldering ages at the hills of slain and the rivers of blood caused by men's difference of opinion, and we must grant a wrong, a sad and grievous wrong, in the hearts of men. All histoi-y of our race will testify that not only the crusades, but that the persecutions, as well as the wars of nation against nation, liave arisen from a false view of religion. Yes, fanaticism, bigotry, and human idolatry have been at the bottom of it all. From the time Cain slew his brother Abel, from a difference of opinion (congcience), whose offering was most acceptable to the Lord, has this malicious and cruel conscience, doubtless planted by Satan himself, been busy in all the wars and persecutions of the world, each one feeling that his inward divinity justifies the murder of his brother and of his inward divinity. The slaughter of seventy-four thousand Protestants, men, women, and children, all between the hours of midnight and the rising of the sun, on the occasion of St. Bartholomew's feast in France, in the name of a sacred conscience and of God, with the two hundred broiled at the stake, and thousands otherwise put to deatli during one short reign in England alone, are l)ut as one grain of Band on tiie seashore, compared with the terrific jmkI tifndisli iniiicli of this divine ransrienri'^ wliicii swept with deso- lating might all over llie ("hiistian world. The foiirtul intensity of this wild fanaticism, urged on by the clergy of whatever denom- ination got the ufij)crhand, was such that sadness, sorrow, and 6 PREFACE. mourning was in every true Christian heart — the black banner of death was unfurled and spread upon the family altar, and their pious prayers to the God of mercy were watched and choked down till fearful became the name of religion itself. Were all the shocking atrocities committed by this (so-called) unerring conscience brought up in panoramic review before a feeling man, he would shudder at the sight, and doubt the infallibility of his own conscience. Yes, were all the gory locks, the mangled and charred bodies, to rise from their graves, the world would stand aghast. And now, marvel not at this, my reader, when you have seen before your own eyes, only a few years back, the bloody struggles and devastation in your own land, all undeniably from the same divine and unerring conscience, which tells all mankind what is right and what is wrong, according to the false teachings of our present schools. The northern people being taught a conscience that the domestic institutions of the South were a sin, and the southern people being conscious that their rights were invaded, their divine and unerring consciences brought them into deadly conflict. Feeling assured that all these sad and melancholy tragedies have sprung from the influ- ences of the pulpit and the teachings of our schools in false theology and mental philosophy, my aim will be to show the fact, and, as far as possible, correct the error; for just so long as we are taught that we have a sacred monitor or dictator within us which condemns the same in all others will we feel it our religious duty to punish each other. In preparing the mind of the reader for the better understanding of the subject under consideration, I shall have to crowd my preface with many original, vital, and leading principles by which all things are governed. God, in his wise and preconceived plans of creation, has left nothing to chance, but stamped everything with his undevi- ating laws, called certainty, force, or fate. There is nothing in his universe which can create itself, move itself, or, when moved, stop itself but by other forces, but all are dualistic and dynamic dependen- cies, no one atom acting upon itself, but acting upon every other atom. The heavenly bodies are kept in motion by dualism, or, in other- words, by centripetal and centrifugal power; while the uni- versal vegetable and animal kingdom has its laws of vitality, attraction, and repulsion, which makes everything what it is and nothing else. Though every pore of nature is thrift with organic life, there is nothing self-ci*eated ; but all is forced into existence by their antecedent archetypes, and pressed or forced forward by the PREFACE. 7 fixed (fatal) laws of organic life. The acorn brings an oak and the apple seed an apple tree, yet neither of them would be developed to a tree but by the force of circumstances. The egg doubtless comes to the world with a germ in it, yet no chicken would ever be quick- ened into life but by the forced laws of incubation. All beings are forced into existence and held in their alloted spheres by fixed laws that govern them — nothing self-created; nothing left to chance. Man, like all other things, has a forced existence. He comes into the world without his own knowledge or consent, is forced through life by laws irresistible, and, in like manner, is forced out of existence. To know the fact of his forced destiny is but to know that he would as quickly perish without support as fire would die out without fuel. The elements of food and the vitalizing powers, the modus operandi of which he has no knowledge and over which his will has no control, forces him forward. All the functions within are forced conditions by the laws of Conservative Wisdom. The stomach can not act or live upon itself, but acts upon the food which comes from without itself. The liver has no power over itself, but is destined to secrete bile from the blood, which is forced by the heart upon it and through it, while the hcar.t is forced to dilation and contraction by the stim- ulus of the blood, whose stimulating and vitalizing powers it receives from the oxygen of the lungs, which oxygen the lungs receive from the external atmosphere. Nothing self-existent; nothing self-sus- taining. All is cause and effect — dualixHc and mutual dependencies upon the First Great Cause. The blood, like the fertilizing waters of earth, which flow through their bidden channels to the great ocean, and are again taken up on the wings of the wind and wafted to the extremes of earth, is forced in one eternal round, to and from the heart in ceaseless currents, giving life and growth to every portion of the myriad functions of the moving miracle — man. Force motion, all perpetual motion, is the order of nature. If the air or waters become stagnant, they are sickly, and were motion to cease, universal death and destruction would be the result. Yet nothing is self-moved, but moved by an anfcccilent force, which alternately becomes cause and effect, ad infinilum. In addition to the dualistic order of nature, it seems that all things are antagonistic — as God and Devil, lieaven and litll, jKiiii and pleasure, light and darkness, heat and cold, attract iim and icimlHioii, good and evil, iiji and cluwn, l>ig and little, long and wlinrt, and so on throughout the whole range of nature — all wisely ordered to act in harmony, like our antagonistic niusclos, as flexors and cxtenHdr.H wilhoiit whii'h we could have nn loconiot ion. 8 PREFACE. Thus it will be seen that were we to search throughout the whole arcana of nature, there would be no exception found to the divine law of dualistic antagonism, nor can it be supposed that man, either in mind or body, constitutes any exception. If mind be not an inseparable part of the body in their sojourn in this world, I ask when and where did it come from? It is born with the body and developed and matured with the body, and all the investigations of the laws of life and of sound philosophy forbid the idea of God creating minds separately from the body, by myriads, and ingrafting them into the body at some unknown place and time, when the bodies are ready made for them. This now, as ridiculous as it may seem, is actually the doctrine of our modern schools, and it is, by the by, the professed faith of Brigham Young, who enjoins it upon the latter- day saints to bring forward as many bodies as possible as tenements for those lone and naked souls who are floating about in search of a home, and that have been heard to shriek in the wintry blast. History tells us that this question was settled by the learned prelates of the world, who decided that souls were made separate from the body, and also the time they entered the body. In solemn conclave at Sarbonne, in France, met these ecclesiastics, sapients, bishops, cardinals of divine authority, and determined that the soul entered the body at four and a half months after conception (the period of quickening), and as soon as possible thereafter should the mother be injected, per vagina, with holy water, as a baptism by the Holy Ghost, for should the child die after that period when the soul had taken up its residence in the body, born or not born, it would, without baptism, certainly go to hell for Adam's sin, and not from any sin these little creatures had committed of their own. How unphilosophic and unjust; for if souls are not propagated from Adam, in common with the body, why punish them for Adam's sin, when they are in no way akin to him, but made by God himself. And now, though more modern authors might eschew this celebrated edict, so-called by history, they teach, in reality, the same doctrine of a mind independ- ent of the body, with innate ideas and a divine conscience that tells us what is right and what is wrong. And now I make the following quotation as a fair specimen of the mental text-books in our schools : "There is born with us an original sin, and there is also in human nature a primitive faith, wliich precedes and transcends reason, and is in reality the self-development of Deity in our thoughts and discernment of truth: a spark of Deity himself, independent and apart from the body." Every mother, without the aid of metaphysics. PREFACE. a ■will contradict this mystic philosophy, for she knows her child is born a child, has childish ideas and childish ways, that every year adds to its ideas and ways, and that it knows nothing but what it gains by self observation or is instructed by others — nor does that divinity within tell the infant what is true or false, right or wrong. The universal verdict of mankind is against this doctrine, and our courts of justice forbid the testimony of infants, distrustful of their intuitive divinity. If asked the reason why men of otherwise en- larged minds and of world-wide fame should teach such folly, I would answer that they are mostly divines, like Bishop Berkley and Swedenborg, who feel that they are advancing their spiritual cause by excluding all influences of matter, and even matter itself (as Berkley did) from this world, and claiming God's constant presence and personal influence in every thought, word and deed, instead of working by wise and efficient laws, as I shall aim to show he does. If we came into the world with innate and unerring ideas, we should certainly recollect them, as our first impressions are the most lasting; and surely that divine and protecting spirit would not let us run into the fire and commit so many errors as we do in infancy. "Great wit and madness, sure, are close allied, And thin partitions do tbeir bounds divide." Those soaring divines scorn nature, and under a spiritual hallucina- tion fall into transcendental and elysian reveries, losing sight of earth and all earthly things. These facts found in the history of mental philosophy, I bring forward to induce the reader to think for himself and look within himself in order to know himself. My object in leading the reader through the kingdoms of earth and on to the celestial spheres, has been to show him that there is nothing in God's universe self-creJVted or self-moved, but that all is dualistic and dynamic, and dependent upon the first great and moving cause for their harmonious and eternal rounds; and thence to render it improbable that the human mind should have been left a vagrant to its own whims, subject to no law or divine rule of action. And, further, tliat as we have seen there is nothing in the universe which can act upon itself, is it probable that the mind can act upon itself and give itself its own thouglits, words and actions; for if so, the infant would bo intelligent, the blind man could see, the deaf man hear and know all about the external world :iiid the relation of things around him, simply by creating ideas and iutelligcnco within itself. 10 PREFACE. I shall aim at no artistic taste or manner of divisions, subdivi- sions, technical bewilderings and mystic refinings, but shall push my argument straight forward in a plain and familiar style that every reader may understand; and to rest the mind from a close and constant stress of thought, I will digress in examples, illustra- tions and consequences, and again and again return to the argument. As the subject before us is a diiScult and perplexing one, I shall often use the same terms, and as often duplicate aud recapitulate, in order to more fully elucidate the subject and fix it upon the mind. In condemning false writers and teachers, and particularly the leaders of religious parties, who I know have done infinite and grievous mischief to mankind, I hope not to be disrespectful, as no one can have a higher regard for religion and the teachers of a true and rational religion than myself, and my following essays are in- tended to teach them to throw aside all mystic mummery, and study well the natural laws of their Maker in their own minds, that all the isms, cisms, dogmatisms, church persecutions and wars may cease, and brotherly love and friendship may be restored to man on earth. My mode of instruction will be entirely new, while the great principles by which I hope to sustain my position are original and exclusively my 'own, no author, so far as I know, having ever dis- covered or made known the universal law and order of dualism by which all things are made, moved and sustained, nothing having the power of creating itself, moving itself, or sustaining itself. Detached parts may have been observed in regard to this fated law of all organic being, but it has never been applied in the investiga- tion of science; and just so with all other principles and discoverings that have been previously known but in part. Every old woman who had boiled a tea-kettle knew the force or power of steam, by seeing it lift the lid, but no one till the days of Fulton applied the principle to boats and navigation : everybody had seen lightning, and many suspected, yes, knew the analogy between it and electricity, but no one proved their identity till the days of Franklin; nor did any one ever apply or harness this wonderful principle and set it to carrying the mail but Morse. This dualistic law I shall apply to mind, and demonstrate that it has no more power to create itself or the ideas forced upon it, than a stone has to create and to move itself. I shall also show that the mind is an indivisible unit, with- out faculties (such as are ridiculously given it), and without power, except such as is given it by the force of objectivity and the unavoid- PREFACE. 11 able organism and condition of body — -just such power as water has to run down, when made to run down. The mind has the same power (a word without proper meaning) to receive ideas that the paper has to receive the sentiments written upon it, or the wax to be stamped with its endless ideas, fatally corresponding with the objects that impress those ideas; nor can the mind any more than the wax alter or annihilate these ideas. I shall strive to drive innate ideas, as witches have been done, from the world, and to show that this thing called divine conscience is a parasite — an effect — is not a i)rinciple — has no separate exist- ence from the prejudice and education of the mind; and though destructive to the lives and liberties of others, is the best excuse we can have for own conduct; so that the vicious acts of one intending a crime, to him it would be a crime, while to another the same act would be a virtue, if done with a virtuous intention. Saint Paul says, speaking of faith: "I know and am persuaded of the Lord Jesus that there is nothing unclean of itself, but to him that es- teemeth any thing to be unclean, to him it is unclean." That is, it is wrong for any man to violate his ownl sense of duty, it matters not how much it may differ from that of others. I have made but few quotations, and they from memory and a few scrap notes, having not a single book of any kind before me in my solitary retirement, my library being consumed by fire years ago, and never renewed; and I will here say to the mechanical and artistic critic that he must excuse my loose and incoherent style and literary defects, as I have not spent my time in the art of composition and the driveling conventionalties of man, but in the pursuit of nature and the laws by which we "live, move and have our being." My life lias been one of great hardships and hazards, as I wandered through the wide world. Besides, I write hurriedly, just as my ideas are brouglit by association. Nor have I copied or revised a single line of my first original draft, aiming not at show, but to make myself understood in the great principles I advocate and the position I aim to sustain. In closing my preface, I say to the reader that if he doubts the perfect originality of my views and illustrative mode of instruction throughout, all lie hns to do is to look over the index of any and all authors on mental science, and he will tind as much space taken up by classifications, divisions, subdivisions, apartments, departments, active and passive powers, with /rtrwi^ica innumerable, as is here taken up with the wliole science of mind, which I could, aside from explanations and illustrations, have con- 12 PREFACE. densed into a single short chapter — as the whole phenomena of mind is this — God has endowed us with sensibility, from which arise pleasure and pain, and consequently a desire or will to do or not to do! Thus is solved in a short sentence, the mighty question, the great enigma of psychology, soul, mind or intellect, all meaning the same thing. To excuse the repetitions and sameness of views which may be found under different heads, I will here say, it is the same subject by different names, the sameness in description is unavoidable; besides, I have not striven to avoid it, knowing that recapitulation fixes an abstract and perplexing study more fully on the mind. It must be recollected that I treat of mind as a unit, and though I may speak of its different modes of action by different names, it is all one and the same thing — like giving the character of an individual man under different names and titles. To make a big book on mind, it must be divided into many parts and each part treated of in artistic style, as separate faculties and powers, independent of each other and of the mind itself. THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. "WILL, Much has been said and written for past ages in regard to the human Tvill. The question has been, whether the will acts under the influence of motives, or, in other words, the promptings of an object presented to- the mind for its choice ; or whether it has a self-creating and con- trolling power to act upon an object without any causal influence of that object. Various definitions have been given to the word volition, but no agreement has been settled upon by authors. My position is, that it is simply the choice of one thing rather than another, for we can not choose a thing contrary to our will, nor will a thing contrary to our choice. In this I am backed by the authority of Locke, who sustains the same view here laid down. I will say to the reader, in the beginning, that he must have constantly in view the simple fact that will is nothin In III. 54 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. Fatality instructs us tliat wo have no will to s^^cak an unknown language, yet this very fatality gives us the will to learn it; and though we have no will to cure the fever, a knowledge of the fact gives us a will to avoid the ma- larious region that would cause the fever. Fatality farther instructs us in morals, that we have no will to save ourselves from condemnation for sin ; but a knowledge of this fact gives us a will to avoid sin : know- ing that no will we can create of our own can save us from the gallows, gives us a will to abstain from crime; and thus it must appear to the most common reader, that the doctrine of fatality is the only immutable basis upon which to found a rational education ; and farther, if events could be brought about without a fixed and known law of God by the self-created will of man, all knowledge of the future, both by God and man, would be destroyed. Arro- gant and impious then must be the man who aims by a self-created power to resist the laws of his own constitution, and subvert the mandates of Heaven, The jDrescience or foreknowledge of God would be impossible, if there were other gods or men who could by their own wills change the result or destiny of things. The future with God is the same as the past with men, and as what is past is certain and unalterable, that which is to come is just as certain and unalterable with God. Now, it will be easily seen, that had God left it to the whims of men's wills to do or not do, independent of fixed and fatal laws of his own, by which he can judge that his future knowledge must be uncertain, for how could he be certain of an event that is uncertain, or to know a thing to be that may or may not be. Observing, then, as we must, that God's perfect fore- knowledge of events and free-wills, whims, or accidents are incompatible, and that the doctrine of necessity is thereb}' established, some have denied to God liis power WILL. - 55 of prescience. This power, however, can not thus be got rid of, particularly by Christians, for it is recorded in his book of revelation that he did predict the action of men, and thej' came to pass to the letter. In short, all the prophecies were founded upon Grod's foreknowledge, from which it must ajipear obvious to every man, that, if the events and persons spoken of, had had a will of their own, independent of God's will, or known knowledge, and could act from moment to moment even against all tempta- tions, causes, or motives, God could not, by any possibility, have known their deeds, where they might have seen proper to act differentl}". Stand here for a time unsan- daled, for you are upon holy ground, and think seriously of what 3'ou read. We can, with our limited knowledge, anticipate the conduct of men, and did we know them perfectly, we could present a motive or lay a bait for every act of life. For instance, we know that a miser will prefer two dollars to one, and that a man who has a strong propensity for drink will take it when the tempta- tion is set before him, j^rovided there be no intervening temptations to draw his mind in a different direction. All other events of life are equally certain, when understood, and why, then, say that we are not actuated by motives and by laws, just as obvious and sure, as the material bodies. I will farther show that will is an effect, as has been often asserted, and how it is created or produced. One man calls another a liar, it creates a will to strike, but a fear of consequences or a regard for moral duty may be the stronger motive, and create a will not to strike. A large sum of money, without fear of detection, may create a will to steal, but if a high sense of honor or moral tcr])iliide, from an early and well grounded instruction in religion, crimes in ;ih his sironger niolivc, tiie theft will not be committed, i^iquor creates a will in a savage to fighl, and a kind Avord and eertain beiielil to 56 THE TRUE THILOSOPHY OP MIND. that savage gets up a counter will. The inhalation of the exhilarating gas may engender various wills, and reveal to view the peculiar idiosyncrasy of the individual : one will dance, and another dash at the audience for a fight, a third will debate most furiously, while a fourth will sit silently and weep : showing beautifully and clearly that will or desire is nothing more than an impression made upon our sensitive being. This subject is to me so simple and so clear, that additional illustrations seem really to be a loss of time. This doctrine of necessity must show to every reader the necessity of an early and dee^ily grounded instruction in religious and moral principles, it being as fatally cei'tain that a man of early vicious habits and strong passions will yield to temptations, as one whose passions have been early subdued, and mind elevated to more noble aspirations, will have a strong enough will to resist them. Some authors, seeing the power of motives over the will, have granted that the strongest motive or temptation offered to the mind will move it, as certainly as that the strongest body in motion will overcome the weaker, or that the whole is greater than a part. This every honest man of clear mind, like Hamilton, is forced to allow ; but some, like Sir William, fearing that bugbear cry of fatal- ism and infidelity, shift off under the cover of conscience — ■ a lying witness. Fashions in education are like fashions in dress, as well as in all other things. A new cut may at first be uncomely, and even forbidding and ridiculous ; but soon, from its association with greatness and refine- ment, becomes beautiful and irresistible over the will, and the reader who can not see from this single example the sovereign power of circumstances over the production of thought and action in the human family, must be blind, indeed, to the influences of his own mind. Conscience or opinion (which in realitj^ are the same WILL. . 57 thing) are like will — not an original faculty or power, as is falsely taught in all the books on these subjects ; but they are effects or results, and formed and changed about by the circumstances that create them. For instance, how are the consciences of judges and juries formed in giving their decision in cases involving life, liberty, and joroperty ? They have no legal or just opinion, and consequently no will to act till the case is heard. If the testimony be plain and positive, the conscience is clear, and the will quick and strong in its decision. Here is a simple case that will apply to every opinion and act of human life, and shows, beyond contradiction, that we are governed by opinion, and that that opinion — the father of the will to act — is itself dependent upon circumstances ; and farther- more, that those circumstances are themselves dependent upon their antecedents or appropriate causes, and so on ad infinitum; and hence, as Hamilton says, it is impos- sible to find a beginning — one event succeeding another, and the causes of will being as interminable as the sweep of time itself. It is remarkable that Hamilton and other intellectual writers, men of great minds in little things, should not know that the beginning is in God, whose creative wisdom has called all things into existence, and who gave life, laws, and motion to the aggregated uni- verse, and that all was constituted to act in harmony and with undeviating fate. In speaking of the causes of volition. Dr. Edwards says : " If the mind causes its own volitions, it can only do it by a causal act, and that causative act is itself a volition, and requires another causative act to pro- duce it, and so on ad infi.nitnm, thus involving us in the infinite series." Hamilton recognizes this as a legitimate argument, and hence, he affirms, that, as we can see no beginning of self-caused or free volitions, they are inconceivable — yes, impossible. But aside from all great 58 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. * names, with their abstract and equivocal doctrines, I here give my own views as plain and undeniable facts : First, that all events and all productions are alternately cause and effect — as the reproduction of man from Adam down, nothing standing as an independent and universal cause, save God alone ; secondly, that every effect must have its cause ; thii'dly, that every cause must act to pro- duce its effect ; fourthly, that there is nothing self-created or self-made, but everything is moved by other forces, otherwise we could have the perpetual motion, by a self- moving power, a thing I have elsewhere demonstrated to be impossible, the fatal and inflexible law of dualism foi-bidding it. And now, from these great and universal principles, decreed by the Maker of all things, we must infer that the mind can not create itself, or act upon itself to create ideas and volitions within itself, but is dependent upon other objects that operate upon it — the causal j)ower of dualism,. Haven calls the doctrine of Edwards and Ham- ilton the dictum necessitatis, which subjects the mind to the causal law of all other things, and tauntingly says, " The mind thinks, and has it to think before it thinks any more than to have a motive to act before it acts?" Now, this, though plausible in words, is obviously false in principle and in the nature of things ; for, though the mind does not have to think before it can think, it can not think without having an object of thought, any more than it can choose without an object of choice, or will without a motive to will. As I constantly repeat, the great error of this author, like all free-will writers, is in dividing the mind, an indivisible thing, into many parts, powers and faculties, and making them so independent that Dr. Alexander says, in his book on Moral Science, that the soul is not responsible for the acts of the will, nor can vicious qualities of the soul vitiate its essence; as WILL. 59 though the soul was not like everything else — made what it is by its parts and properties. This constantly deceives and misleads the reader, and indeed, both writers and teachers of metaphysics ; so much so that Haven saj^s the mind, by aid of its faculty, will, can create its own wills, motives, thoughts, and acts, as though the Aviil was not the mind and the mind the will, which is the same as to say, that the will can create its will, or the mind can create its mind. Will, like faculty, is a word of false sound; for What is it, I ask again and again, but the simple bent or inclination of the mind itself, and what is the bent or inclination of the mind itself but the turning of the mind itself to the objects of its desire or aversion? The mind that laughs one minute and crys the next is identically the same mind, governed, not by extra wills and faculties, but simply by the objects presented to the mind, over which none of these creative wills or faculties have any control. The needle turns to the magnet, its causative object, just as the mind turns to its creative or causative objects, and one has just as many faculties and wills as the other. There is nothing in the whole science of the mind but sensations of pleasure and pain, and consequently, desire or aversion to do or not do, just as such pleasures and pains may incline this feeling thing we call mind. If Buttering pain from thirst and we see a cooling spring, the mind, without the aid of faculties, at once carries the body to it. Charming music, through tlic ear, leads us to enjoy it, while, on the other hand, if we see or hear something frightful and dangerous, we at once, without the advice of faculties, escape it. Thus is solved the mighty enigma of mind and the great science of psycholog3^ I have no objection to the mighty array of liK-nltics, wills, volitions, ami powers necessary for mailing n|) l»ig and mystic books, and livings for thousands oi" teachers; if such book-makers and teachers should Idl 60 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND. the student they are mere high sounding nothings introduced to fill up and give the appearance of much learning. And now, I ask the reader to see Haven, the great text-book maker, where, under the head of a con- trary choice, he creates a faculty, sticks it into the mind, and makes it so paramount to the mind with all the other faculties, as to choose, will, and act, contrary to the choice, desire, and determination of the mind itself. I say, see Haven, and read and think for yourself. He repeatedly says, We can voluntarily do what we do not want to do, and moreover, that we can feel differently from what we do feel, as well as think and believe differently from what we are inclined to do. Such a faculty I should like very much to have, as it could make pleasure oiit of pain, mitigate all sorrows and afflictions, and feel that we are rich when we are poor. Yes, I now ask such writers whether this thing they call will, has any actual existence separate and apart from the causal object, and if so, when and how did it come into existence? The idea of its designing itself and bringing itself into existence before it had an existence, is too absurd and impossible to entertain, so that it must have a cause aside from itself, which I hold to be the causal object such will desires to obtain. Should the alternative be assumed, that the will is no separate or independent thing, but is in reality nothing but the mind itself, which creates its own wills, we are thrown right back into the absurdity we aim to escape, of self-creation, as it would be just as easy for the will to create itself and its objects of will, as for the mind to create itself and its objects of choice. The mind, with all the fac- ulties and powers we falsely give it, can of itself create noth- ing, any more than the mother alone can create her offsjjring or product. I say, and say again, will is an effect, a product of the subject mind and the motive object, neither alone being able to create themselves, but are results, the pro- WILL. 61 duct of God's decreed law of dualism. But to be done with this view of the subject, (foi' I am weary with prov- ing a self-evident proposition,) I will once more ask the reader, if invited to a party which he attended, whether the will created the party, or the party and his invitation to it created the will which took him to the party? But now vary the question, as free-willers would do, and affirm, you did as you pleased? 1 again ask, was it not the party that gave you the pleasure to do as you pleased? so, vary the question as you may, it terminates in the self-evident fact, that motives are inevitably and invariably the cause of will. My natural turn of mind led me, in early life, to moral- ize upon all events, and caused a pleasure (no self-creation, take notice) in me to do just as I pleased, which was to read everything I could find ui^on the subject of the mind. AYith this foundation I commenced my practical study of mind, and having for more than fifty years mixed with all nations and languages of the human family, from the native Indian up, or rather, down, to the snobs, parvenus, and paragons — the fashionable folly of our race — have sought to find where happiness dwells. Whether Diogenes, Alexander, Cicsar, or Napoleon lived and died the rational and happy life, is a question of doubt. It is at once seen that the will or conviction of mind to decide any case is not a self-created, fortuitous, or contin- gent nature, but is dependent upon the testifying facts that make the case what it is, or upon impulses arising from love or hatred to jjcrsons or objects, which loves or hatreds also had their foundation in the nature of things. It appears to me to require but little expansion of mind to see this relation of causal dependencies, or (lu! inimii- table and indissoluble connection of cause and ellect, and that the investigation of wiiidi must as necessarily lead 62 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND. US iii^wards and onwards to the First G-reat Cause, as the rounds of a hidder lead us upwards, or the tracing back the causality of man from son to father will, through the series of generations, lead us back to Adam, the first man, from the hand of God himself. Nothing stands alone, or has a self and independent existence, but all things bear a kindred and causal relation, in time, space, and nature, and is doomed to incessant and eternal succession. There is no first beginning, no last end, but in God. The mirror has no power to create pictures, but can reflect the impression made upon it, nor has the daguerre- otype-plate power to alter or obliterate, except by time, as the fading of memory from the tablets of the mind. The wax, in like manner, is suscejJtible often thousand stamps or impressions, but has no will to resist or change them. And so it is, likewise, with a blank paper, like the child's mind at birth — without a scratch or character of any kind wpon it — but languages and whole books of science may by-and-by be written upon it; nor has it any more power than the mirror to speak a language that has not been taught it, or change the nature of things that are im- pressed upon it. The materials in the mind received through our senses may, like the materials in the kalei- doscope, be turned about, exhibiting endless forms — as in case of imagination, and dreams by internal and functional excitations or emotions, and we may even become furious madmen by disease ; but in all these cases the will can do no more than the mirror. The will, I have said, is nothing more than the result — the reflection of our sensations and thoughts — and the mad- man's will is just as much the result of his unavoidable feelings and thoughts as the man better balanced. And, if there be an unerring conscience and will independent of circumstances, why ever act amiss, as we often do, gi-eatly to our own disadvantage — as in our contracts WILL. 63 and other acts of life. As before stated, if cold, we approach a fire, because the sensation in this case is pleasurable ; but if it burns us, we have an instantaneous and strong will to withdraw from it, because the sensa- tion is painful. These are plain and simple facts, and apply to every act of life. If we could perform an act without a motive or cause, then we should have events or effects without causes ; and if this be so, which is impossible, then man can not be free. Every act of life proceeds from desire, and desire indicates an object desired; which object the will did not create, and conse- quently is not free. We hunger, and desire food; thirst, and desire water; are in love, and desire the object; hate, and avoid the object; and just so it is with every other act of life, called free-willing. The mind, as previously stated, is a unit, simply with the sensation of pleasure or pain, as external agencies may impress it, so that all resolves itself into desires and gi-atifications. God himself is under the necessity of acting according to the nature of things, as acknowledged by Clark, Chalmers, Dewey, Scott, Dick, Butler, and other able divines. For instance, God's will is not self-created, nor inconsistent w'ith the nature of things eternal, but is the result of immutable wisdom and infinite goodness, and comprehension of what is right and best; and truth, honor, and justice being uncreated, underived, immutable, and eternal, God can not act contrary to the nature of these indcipend- ent entities and paramount motives; for that would be acting ignorantly, untruthfully, dishonorably, and unjust- ly, which would make him neutralize his own attributes and sink beneath the dignity and honor of a God. So tliut in accordance will) his own nature and Uu- laws he has stamped u])on all things, he is under the moral neces- sity of acting with an undeviating rectitude *^1' pur])080. 64 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. These are august realities and sacred principles, grounded in the constitution and nature of things, that can not be denied by Christian nor by Deist. Haven says upon this subject, in treating of taste: "The beautiful, the true, the good exist as simple, absolute, eternal principles. They are in the Divine mind; they are in his works. In a sense, they are independent of Deity. He does not create them. He can not reverse them, or change their nature. He works according to them. They are not created by, but only manifested in what God does." Grod's laws, then, are not right simply because of his authority, or his having willed them, for he willed them not from any arbitrary feeling, but because they were in themselves independently and eternally right. We do not, then, derive morality from the mere dictates or commands of the law ; but from a higher and anterior source, from which all law, if just, both human and divine, must be derived. After having shown, then, that God himself had a foundation and reason for all he did, shall we assign to man a power to originate things from nothing, and to possess a will that is governed by no law or rule of action? — a broken link in the great chain of causality, and without the pale of God's government; a thingless thing, and an efficient nothing and effectual no-cause, that can act without a motive, choose without a choice, and decide without a difference ; and, above all, that can create and annihilate itself at pleasure. If will be the result of our judgment, it is not free ; and if determined by reason, or the dictates of conscience, it is equally a result, and not an efficient and independent entity. We have farther seen, as in the decision of judges, juries, and in all other cases, that our reasonings, judgments, and convictions of right and wrong are dependent ujion the facts of the case, or in the nature of things, so that it WILL. 65 must be seen that neither the will nor the foundations of will are free — all dependent upon antecedent circum- stances, and consequently under the laws of causality, or, in other words, necessity. Even after all the testimony has been heard and a judgment formed, a speech will change that judgment, and, consequently, the conscien- tious decision of a jury. Where, then, is this innate and immutable, immaculate and divine conscience thus warped and driven before the breath of eloquence as a feather before the storm ? In short, if we had that infal- lible monitor, maintained by model copyists, we could as well decide without law and testimony as with them. I at this moment think of a case which of itself is sufficient to decide the question whether we have a will that can, under any circumstances, come to our aid, or decide anything without the causes or objects that create that will. Sujjpose, for instance, we come to the forks of a road of equal size (as I have often done), and no finger- board to decide or beget this wonderful will, so independ- ent of all causes. We have no will with us, nor can we summon it to our aid, but let a man come along and say this is the right road, and then does this paradcful and no-caused will rise up and claim the honors of an infal- lible guide. If w'e will disregard the abstract and inexplicable rcfinings to be found in the innumerable and perplexing books upon metaphysics, and apply the mind itself to the practical purposes of life, we shall find no difficulty in iinderstanding all the laws of mentality; which arc so few and simple that a child, as before said, may master them in a short time, and that, too, by the most pleasing exercise of its own mind. But the schools now destroy the mind hy stuj)ifying it willi mcmoi'izing abstract and technical nonsensu, instead oC ciihirging, elevating, and enlightening i( by familial' conversations and lectures on GO THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND. science, and upon those laws of our nature by which we are to be made healthful, prosperous, and happy. Our youths are not now taught to get rid of local, petty, and personal prejudices, and to believe in one God, one church, and one brotherhood ; but are early stultified and blinded to truth and justice by idolatrous isms, schisms, and dogmatisms, that sear the heart and vitiate the soul, thus engendering fiendish and implacable par- ties, who in religion drag each other to the stake, and, in violation of the laws of both Clod and man, assume the authority of God's partial favoritism and aj:) proba- tion, get uj) bloody wars, and subvert governments, thus making man the greatest enemy of man. But to return from those reflections upon the results of education to the argument. It is admitted by many free-will writers, that where the mind is under a prepon- derating influence, that it has no power itself to change itself and make a choice contrary to its own choice — which in reality is as impossible as to be and not to be at the same time: but, say those authors, throwing off part of their absurdities, there are conditions of mind, as in a state of perfect equilibrium, where things are equal, and there is no choice, then can this will come forward and make a choice. In j^roof of this, they oifer a case that has figured through their numerous and bewildering volumes for centuries past. It is simply the old stone balancing the grain, and they have not yet seen how to do without it. This celebrated and most notorious case is the offering of the choice of two guineas to a beggar or miser, wherein it is contended there can be no difference in the thing chosen to create a choice. Now, the choice being made, as they think, without a difference, they thus exultingly affirm it to have been done without a motive or preference in the thing itself: therefore, the will is free to act or choose without a choice ■WILL. 67 or distinction in the thing chosen ; which is an absurd mistake, for it must be seen by the most common reader that indifference and .choice are wholly incompatible; and, moreover, that the question, when properly under- stood, and as acted upon is simply this : a guinea or no guinea? for the beggar or miser sees at once that, if he makes no choice, he gets no guinea, and as there is no dif- ference, it makes no difference which. This case, well known to every man who has studied psychology, actu- ally proves the reverse of what it is intended to do, to-wit — that will acts upon the motive for action, or, in other words, according to the motivity of things, and the immutable laws inherent therein. This proposition of a balanced or equipoised will of the two equal guineas reminds me of the Greek's jack that starved to death between two hay-stacks, because his mind was thus equal and he could go to neither. Such propositions have a seeming something in them that might perplex the pupil or common reader; but it is like the question, whether, if one stove saves half the fuel, two, hj the rule of three, may not save all? These are abstruse and ingenious subtilities, it is true, but profitable only to mechanical teachers, and stupid book-makers. Bring such mj'stic and misguided teachers to the light of nature, and they are as blind and dumb as owls and bats. I have seen unthinking persons perplexed to account for what becomes of all the old moons when the new ones appear; a problem of equal weight with the guinea question, and many others that support the schools, and make big books so vague, tangled, and mystic as to be as inde- terminable as the tenets of witchcraft itself^ — but a sliort time since so gravely and grievously mainliiiiMMl li\ l;i\v. It is !i very coiiinion rcinarlc by IVi-e-wilkM'H : Well, J would not suffer such and such thoughts to come into my mind. I would ciisl llirni ofl'; wIm ii as casiU- wmild if 68 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND. bo for the leopard to change his spots as wo to cast off our nature and its thoughts. Why not cast off all disease and mental affliction, and these wandering thoughts that keep us tossing all night upon our sleep- less beds ? Say to the mother : cast off all affection and distress for your dying babe, and she will say in her heart, you are an unfeeling fool ; and so may we say to all supei"ficial thinkers, and false teachers, who are wholly ignorant of nature and of their own constitutions. I do sincerely pity the youths of our country who have to undergo the drudging and dwarfing influences of our present schools. It is memory, memory of arbitrary nothings, till the mind is actually incapacitated for those enlarged and ennobling thoughts of God and of his mighty works, which alone can make us wise and good. If we had schools freed from the galling yoke of the dark ages, and teachers that would lead their pupils out into the groves, and before the unfolded book of nature, their bodies would be strengthened, and their minds stored with wisdom from the God of reason. If the books studied in the schools be worth anything, they are founded upon nature and the eternal fitness of things, and as the mind, which we carry with us by day and by night, is the substratum of all knowledge, why not apply it to nature itself, and instead of a coj^y of ten thousand copies that may have been corrupted by ignorance or design. To show the natural propensity of the mind for new and novel things, I make the follow- ing quotation : " In the pleased infant see its power spread, When first the coral fills his little hand ; Throned in his mother's lap, it dries each tear, As her sweet legend falls upon his ear ; Next it assails liini in his top's strange hum, Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum; Each gilded toy that doting love hcstows. He longs to break, and every spring expose." WILL. G9 Lead the little child out into the flowery meadows and along the purling streams, and his desire for nature will induce him to throw aside his artificial toys, and oh ! Avith what delight will he paddle in the water, and play with the pebbles. As the larks skim the air before him, and light with their soft, shrill notes upon the tops of the waving weeds, he with extended arms strug- gles after them, and by his joy-lit countenance and ecstatic manner, speaks in the language of nature : " Oh ! see, see !" Soon a child becomes an ardent florist, and while yet young, might become scientific without ever looking into a book, and without the aid of the degrading lash and stupefying drudgery of our common- place and routine schools. A lisping child may be led onwards and uj^wards in the laws of its Creator with as much delight as it is known to take in exciting narra- tives, ghost stories, and things new to the mind. And should it be, that by casting off the stale and mechanical details of dead languages and other dwarfing studies, we too early learn all that is to be learned in this world, (as such teachers say), we can direct the mind of the pupil from the dazzling streams and verdant fields of earth to the gorgeous and glorious universe Avhere clustering worlds in heavenly harmony roll their bidden and eternal rounds. Here may science exhaust her every rule, and imagination roam in these untrodden fields of endless space and ceaseless time. But I wouhl say to these nut-shell teachers, who grovelingly, yet gravely, maintain that the human cranium, contracted as it is, may, by the innumerable a])artments and departments they have so liberally assigned to it, have ample room for all the arbitrary and unmeaning trash they have doggedly • li-illed and crammed into the brain, and yet have room for everything that is to be learned in this world. That this assertion will sttmd as a glaring and grievous eri-or, 7 70 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND, till we shall have learned the laws of life and enough of our own constitutions to rid them of all disease and bodily afflictions, and leave old age as the only outlet of life, and till the statesman and divine shall have learned enough of their own minds to live at peace with them- selves, and to unite the human family in one harmonious brotherhood, that wars may cease and murders and misdemeanors be unknown. To relieve the reader's mind from a constant stress upon abstract thoughts, I will as briefly as possible contrast the book of nature with the petty driveling staid and stale arts of man, found in the j)aper books of our drudging schools. Thus the reader will have seen what he has yet to learn, and that we are at this moment living in gross ignorance of the wonders of the world and of the unnumbered and undiscovered elements and laws around us, equal to astronomy, railroads, and telegraphs, which has taken us thousands of years to discover. And why is this so, other than that our lives are taken up with languages, logic, rhetoric, and other such pedantic trifles that have never discovered or invented anything, not even a plow or a harrow, and in the nature of things, never can. Think, I beg you, why it is that men living two thousand years ago were more original, profound and eloquent in thought than any of the present age ? the answer to which is that their thoughts through life were devoted to the laws of science and the voice of nature. No orator has ever equaled Demosthenes. Euclid, who lived near three hundred years before Christ, still stands- far ahead of all the mathematicians who have ever lived, ^sop, though a slave, has never been equaled. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are still the masters of philosophy, while Homer is justly adored as the divine father of poetry ; and though Milton has gained an immortality in his " War of God with Satan " WILL. 71 by stealing from Homer's " War of the Gods," he is but a feeble imitator. Shakespeare, the only modern child of nature, and the glory of England, is entitled to a rank with the sages of antiquity. Those truly great men retreated from the j)etty scenes of society and sought wisdom in caverns, forests, and in the sacred fanes of natui-e ; and I must say that my thoughts have been greatly more enlai'ged and elevated amidst the voiceless wilds and slumbex-ous solitudes of gray old forests, than in the busy marts of men ; and who is it, when standing as I have done, upon the watch-towers of creation, and viewing the ramparts of eternal ages just as they were reared by the hand of Almighty Power, will not have sublime ideas and solemn thoughts ? Here, and not in the man-made church, w^ill you meditate with awe and admiration, and feel that you are in the presence of the great Jehovah himself Amidst old decay and ruin wide you see marine organic beings sleeping in their rocky tombs of unknown ages, yet tell you of a former and ruined world, which leads you back through the dark and lengthened vista of time into past eternity ! But we must cut short these thoughts, solemn and sublime thoughts, created by the objects of nature, and return to the argument, my only object being to contrast the study of nature and the works of God with the puerile Avorks and machinations of little man and their dis- gusting vanity. And now, though this might seem to the reader to be a digression, I could use no argument to more fully convince him of the power of circumstances over the mind, and to show how the mind, as I have been throughout striving to do, may be stultified and degraded by petty and puerile studies, or ennobled,- expanded and elevated by the meditation of nature — God's own im- mutable and eternal laws of science. The illustrated book of nature speaking in the un- 72 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. mistakable lang;iage of God, is ever open before us, and the interminable chain that binds the physical, intellec- tual and moral world is to be examined, link by link, while but few rounds of the ladder of truth that reaches from earth to heaven have as yet been ascended. The whole phenomena of nature are presented to our view and her classification is simple, her nomenclature perfect. As the light of heaven is adapted with kindness to every eye, so is the language of nature to every tongue and capacity on earth. The outer eye requires no arbitrary learning, nor does the inner eye of the mind ; it is but to open either and see for ourselves. The great enigma of the universe is yet to be solved, and we have, if untram- melled, the capacity ample for the task. From the grand and colossal exhibitions of nature, we infer boundless power and infinite wisdom, and from the exquisite de- signs and adaptation of means to ends, we infer a Designer. Through immensity, we launch into eternity, and in endless variety we find an eternal unity. Trans- cendent beauty, order and harmony fill all the depart- ments of God's vast domains, while vitality and thrift 8j)ring from every pore of nature. Search from old ocean's oozy bed to the concave heavens that span the whirling globe, and from the hidden caverns of earth to the star-lit skies, and all is filled with life and activity. The glowing heavens are replete with light, and the laws that rule the celestial orbs, while the waters beneath, team with organic being. Plenitude and power are seen everywhere, and the unmistaken presence of the great Jehovah is made manifest to the most common observer. God's own hand-writing is seen upon the face of nature, leaving no room for subtle follies or verbal quibblings. No Mc, hcec, hoes, or further struggle between the rule of truth and the errors of education. Those glittering- diadems that stud the mighty dome of heaven, and the WILL. 73 green earth, with its rolling rivers, its waving forests and blooming lawns, are all sweet expositors of their Maker's greatness and goodness. "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament showeth forth his handiwork ; day unto day nttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge." The heart is no longer chilled by the stern and wi-inkled brow of the technical pedagogue, but bounds Avith exulting rapture, while the emancipated soul bathing in the pure and sparkling fountains of nature, rises with renewed strength, like the noble eagle from his dirty cage, and soars high in heaven's unfathomable blue. 'No odious selfishness or fraudulent creeds can be found in God's natural revelation. Xo theological chimeras or sordid mummeries of a knavish priesthood are there to be found. No confused relations of vague and compli- cated abstractions, conventionalities or factitious entities, no cheerless mystery or desponding gloom, but all is held out in bold and bright relief to the glowing light of day. There are " tongues ill trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everytliing." I have thus briefly striven to show the reader what we have yet to learn, and to restore the book of nature to the church of God, which book, in the dark ages, being pro- nounced hetei'odox with the artistic canons of theological philosophy, was thrown out, and an absurd and suicidal system of mystic philosophy ordained in its place. Of all the delusions this was the most unfoi-tunate. It dethroned God, degraded the human mind, and dishonored religion, and after the vast expenditure of mind and money, during a lapse of eighteen hundred and sixty-eight years, the religious world is left in doubt and distraction. There are but few who can account for their own actions; yet strange, yes, truly strange, that any man of sound mind, seeing that his own actions are always 74 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. directed to some end, should not know that that end was tlie cause of such action instead of refei'ring it to casual- ties that have neither motives nor ends for action. The whole deception of this long j)erplexed question is in feeling the undeniable fact that we do as we are inclined, desire, or please, but search no farther to see why we do as we desire or please, or what it is that begets that desire. As we desire to exist and feel that we do exist, were it not from palpable contradictions we should certainly imagine that our desire begot our existence, simjjly because we desire to exist and do exist, just as we desire to act and do act. It is this delusive feeling that begot and sustained the doctrine of witchcraft, and the power of spells. Desir- ing an event and finding it follow, will naturally beget a belief that the desire was the cause of such event. The daughter of the Governor of Massachusetts, as recorded in history, wished that the arm of a certain young lady might be shriveled, and that her tongue might be palsied, and such coming true, she confessed before the court, and had her own tongue bored, the least punishment then inflicted for witchcraft. Hundreds have confessed their guilt before the courts of England and sutfered the dreadful ordeals of fire and water, showing how necessary it is to guard against our false and imaginative feelings. Amongst the last pi'ominent cases brought before the Court of England was one of a poor old woman, who was formally arraigned before Lord Mansfield, and though the facts were plainly proven by the most respectable wit- nesses, that she had been seen riding through the air ujjon a broomstick, he humanely let her off, by granting that the respectability of the witnesses proved the fact beyond contradiction, yet that there was no law to prevent any one who might see proper, to ride through the air upon a broomstick. This case may be found among many others WILL. 75 of similar character, amongst the records of the courts of Great Britain. Martin Luther, though a man of strong mind, was so ruled by superstition as to say to the churches, I would have no compassion upon these witches, but would burn them all ; and history tells us that thousands were annu- ally burned throughout Europe for witchci-aft. As I again and again rej)eat it, motive begets will, and will begets action, and this, in reality, simple and short as it is, is the sum total of a question, upon which thou- sands'^of books have been written. The reader must here take a particular notice of these connections, and by practicing his own mind, will discover the fact that such is the established relation between desire and deed, or will and action, that the moment we desire to act, the nerve of connection with the part conveys the power to the muscle. If a sensitive and high-toned man be called a liar and a coward, the will to strike is at once excited, the spark is put to the powder, and as quick as a flash it passes from the pan to the rifle barrel to send the ball ; does the nerv- ous fluid fly from the brain to .the arm? "We will or desire to walk, and the legs are put in motion, one moving alter- nately before the other — the mind now commands the legs to stop, and more certainly than a master commands a servant, do they obey and stop. To witness with what marvelous fikill the great De- signer has established will and action, exercise your mind upon the various muscles of your body. Will to flex or extend any one finger fixed upon, and it is instantly done, showing incontestably a mental control over our locomo- tive and procuratory muscles. God, however, has wisely severed the action of the heart, and all our vital organs from any tamperings of the will, and endowed them with separate and more inherent energies. Here is actually a universe of dynamic and normal forces, with vitalizing 76 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND. and renewing powei's of which wo iire wholly uncon- scious, and through whose dominions our intellectual and telegraphic messengers pass ft-om our censorhim communi, or head office, to their destined points of execution with- out interruption. From this short excursion after collat- eral and amusing facts, we will return to the argument. We have seen that motives have a full control over our desires or will, and that will has a like control over our voluntary or motive muscles, and analytically or synthet- ically, there is nothing more to be found in this mighty question about the nature of volition. Let us try the power of motives a little farther, and test whether our assertions be connect. Suppose yourself sitting in a house, and it takes fire, and the flames envelope you, would it not prove an amj^le motive or a sufficient power to put your legs in motion to escape. I hardly think you will deny it, and if not, the question is at an end. You may answer, yes, it certainly was a sufficient cause, but I was at liberty to stay and perish in the flames, for many a martyr has gone to the stake voluntarily and been burnt. True, but these are cases full in hand to prove the power of motive and the doctrine of necessity. You could have been consumed, had you seen proper, but it is certain you did not see proper, and now we turn the key that shows the mighty secret. It is, why did you not stay and be consumed? and as an honest man you answer, because there was no motive to do so. No motive — true — true — yes, true as that there is a God in heaven, and that he has established his laws, mentally and physically, upon fixed and immutable principles, that cannot be subverted by casualties or the whims of man. It was as impossible for you to stay without a motive, as to fly without wings, the stronger motive as certainly controlling your will, as the heavier body will turn the scale. The weight in your case was in the scale of self-preservation, and it turned WILL. 77 you out of the house and saved your life. But you say, many a martyr lias gone voluntarily to the stake to be burned, which is true, and many a man has walked volun- tarily to the gallows to be hanged, not that he preferred death to life, but there being no escaj)e, the stronger mo- tive, to die like a hero rather than be dragged up and hung like a dog, prevailed. The man who goes to the stake might escape, but he goes there selfishly, and under the same motive that induces a miser to exchange one dollar for two. The martyr simply exchanges temjioral torment for eternal hajDpiness, and instead of getting two for one, as in the case of the miser, he expects a hun- dred-fold. Perjury to a false faith might release him to a life of disrespect and self-reproach, and at last sink him down to the undying torments of hell ; all of Avhich cal- culations come in as motives to sustain him in his trying but momentary struggles. I could not select a stronger case to show the power of motives, and howlhe stronger motive will always prevail even unto death. Thousands upon thousands of the superstitious have starved and maimed themselves to death under the powerful motive of rapturous and eternal joys. The man who commits suicide, has an overwhelming motive to get rid of some agonizing distress and hopeless despair. The poor drunk- ard, whose gastric and nervous influences are aggravated to an insufferable extent, might seem to act upon reverse principles in seeking temporary relief to the hazard of permanent disgrace, want, and squalid misery; and yet, his motive acts are perfectly legitimate. He bears with the urging wants and with his sinking spirits, till his feelings are overwhelmed by a depressing melancholy that obscures the future. Besides, a pride and self-vanity, which blinds us from seeing ourselves as others see us, and tlien that blessed hope, delusive as it may l)e, tliat biioyM IIS ii|i (hroiiirh life, rttnics in ;ind siishiins him with 78 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND." ji belief that ho will not go like others, and bj^ relieving his agonies for a moment, ho will not lose the resolution that is ultimately to reform him. Under a clear sky, however, he sees himself mirrored as ho is, when he shud- ders and shrinks with horror from the sight, and then it is that he takes Bible-oaths and temperance pledges ; but soon again, dark clouds overhang his ill-fated star, inward storms arise, and our jjooi"; frail, and afflicted brother, feeling what we can not — the irrepressible mon- ster gnawing at his heart's strings — yields his every earthly prospect and becomes a raving maniac, or a mournful melancholy seizes upon him and depresses him down to hopeless despair. He, under these circumstances, takes palliating draughts, just as one suffering under an excruciating and incurable malady is prone to do. Here is a case that shows the necessity of an early and well- grounded education in sober and steady habits, and in a knowledge of our constitution of mind and body, and the laws of nature under which we "live, move and have our being." If, instead of spending our lives in the study of dead languages and clogging our brains with a chaotic mass of other such trifles, we were put to early training in the active and efiicient laws of nature that hourly act upon our sensibilities for weal or for woe, education, instead of being pedantic and degrading to humanity, would become elevating and ennobling. And thus, in- stead of making an arrogant and supercilious disjDlay of a vacillating and artistic nonsense, we should be well grounded and wise in the immutable and eternal laws of our Creator. Were this the case, and nine-tenths of our canting demagogues (who are more corrupt and wily than the devil himself in sowing the seeds of Jacobinical corruption and dissipation) made inmates of our peniten- tiaries, there would yet be some hope of reform from the threatened destiny of man, and the pending dissolution of this happy government. WILL. 79 In recurring to the more powerful j^assions and emo- tions of soul that absorb every other feeling, and that often lead us as blind cajitives to disgrace and misery, I will mention a clergyman of my acquaintance, who, having no resolution to restrain his amative projjensities, and believing that even concupiscence was a sin, his motive for honor, virtue and religion was so powerful as to induce him to take the knife and emasculate himself. Poor, silly man! who might as well have considered hunger a crime and cut out his stomach, cursing God for giving us those vulgar jDassions and brutal propensities, with which he might have made some woman as haj)py as was Sarah, the wife of Abraham and mother of Isaac, in compliance with the decreed laws of procreation, planted in our very constitutions by God himself St. Paul was thus much troubled with a member of his body, which he called a thorn in his flesh ; but did not aim to destroy that nature which God gave him for the best of puriDoscs. Under an all-absorbing passion for revenge, men often take life, and then, under a change of feeling equally uncontrollable, they destroy themselves; a horrid act which no one would commit had he power to feel or do otherwise, for he could not desire death but as a dreadful alternative from greater evils. A very common argument in favor of free-will is this — if persons can not control their will, why should every- body think so, and blame them for their acts. The only answer to this seeming something is, that the error lies in our own selfish sensations; so much so, that we hate everything which gives us pain, or that is even unpleas- ant to our sight, and hence it is that we kill snakes, that are not accountable for their nature, and hate and punish many a poor creature because uncomely to oui- sight, or run cou)itei" to our feelings juid interest. Anylhing lli;il nbsti'iicls oiii- view In liap|)ineHS, or 80 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. excites painful sensation, is at once liated, and hence the unreasonable jirejudice against the innocent vessel out of which we have taken medicine when sick, and the una- voidable disgust at serving of soup in a night-vessel, though equally as clean and as pure as a china tureen. We will by-and-by hate the approach and looks of the friend who tells us of our faults or brings us bad news, while we love flattery and pleasing intelligence. We can not avoid hating the looks of a man scabbed all over with small-pox, or leprosy, or any deformity, though such unfortunate person can not hel^D it; and so with every object of life — our fancies, our loves and hatreds not necessarily being founded, in justice but in our own feelings that arise from our individual and varied organ- izations, sensations and aptitudes to impressions made by the objects of sense, or arising from our emotions within. Were love and hatred bestowed ui)on merit, we should have more happy matches, and men of moral worth would fill the offices of government, instead of canting demagogues, who cater to the lowest and grossest prejudices of the masses, who are led astray by those very feelings that I am combating. Hasty and inconsiderate persons will take up and break an innocent stone against which they have stumped their toe, and the poor and undefending brute is unmercifully beaten because unable to bear the burden imposed upon him ; but this prejudice of ours is no proof of a just foundation in the nature of things. One who flatters us or contributes to our pros- perity is loved ; but let him become a competitor and adversary, and he is at once hated, though honorable and beloved by others. It is a common expression, I hate such a person (or an object) — not from any merit or demerit, or willful act, but simply because such are our feelinffs and hatreds to all who do not act in accordance with our wishes. Let any man try wlicthcr he can keep WILL. 81 his own temper in riding a blind or stumbling horse, where it is obvious the animal can not help it, and he will find that his flash of passion and the application of his lash to an unavoidable act was actually simultaneous with the inoffensive offense, and before he had time to think or reason upon the injustice of his own conduct — showing that«unavoidable things, as well as avoidable, when they inflict pain upon us, get up at once a feeling of resistance ; and, on the contrary, when they give us pleasure, we desire to embrace them. So that we will see from the ever-varying counter-currents and emotions of our own minds, that we should be cautious how we inflict cruelty upon our fellows ; for it is impossible, in the nature of things they should feel and think with ourselves, or act to please us. The impartial observance of such facts, then, as I have related, must clearly convince us that, though God has endowed us with watchful feelings of self-preservation, and a hatred of everything that runs counter to our interests, it requires close guarding not to become the instruments of great injustice, and the destroyers of others' rights. He has also given us fire and water as blessings, when properly used ; yet, if not strictly guarded, they may become elements of destruc- tion. It must appear, then, to the observing reader, that we arc governed by circumstances, and, farther, that we arc made to differ as much in mind as we do in body, in constitution, in temperament, in health, and in the vari- ous vicissitudes of fortune and afflictions of life — all which tend, unavoidably, to form the character of man. Our feelings, thoughts, and emotions of soul are as diversified as the objects that surround us : every new scene in nature, and all the changing events of life, develop in the human mind their appropriate feelings ami affections. The fondest love and the fcllest hate may, alternately, possess the same soul ; while the most 82 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND. malignant revenge may be quickly folloAved by remorse, humility, repentance, and forgiveness. How, then, in the face of all these facts, can any author maintain that we are not fatally influenced by circumstances, but that we have a divine, instinctive, and unerring conscience as a guide, and a will to exe- cute, that is above circumstances, and wliich can bring the thoughts and movements of all men under one unde- viating rule and standard of action? We hear such men constantly saying, Well, I would not let such and such feelings trouble me. The mother is told to dry up her tears, and to consider the loss of her child a blessing. The lover is a fool for entertaining such frivolous and childish passions ; and the man who has lost his all on earth is weak to permit a regret to enter his mind. Such advisers are doubtless honest enough in their soothing injunctions, but they certainly fly directly in the face of both God and man, in attempting to subvert the estab- lished and undeviating laws of mentality, that can no more be severed from the circumstances that beget them than effects can from the causes which produce them. Just as rational would it be to say to a man whose hand is in the fire, Why, my dear sir, I would not allow the idea of pain to enter my head, but sum up resolution, and consider the feeling pleasurable; or to admonish a hungry man not to allow so vulgar a thing as the stomach to control his feelings. But, to the point ; you will still affirm that you can do as you please, and so I say ; and, farther, that you can not, to save your life, do otherwise than as you please ; for then, indeed, could you will to be free to act contrary to your will, or, in other words, to all the motives and feelings that beget will. To say that you can do as you please, is exactly the same as to say you can be pleased with what you are pleased, will as you will, and do as WILL. 83 you do. This is cei'tainly talking nonsense, and saying nothing in favor of free-will, or will got up without a cause or motive to act contrary to what Ave please. Pause and think this over and over, till, by-and-by, you will see clear enough, that there is no voluntary act of life without a desire to act ; and, farther, that desire can not exist without an antecedent, or object of desire ; and again, that the mind can no more alter the nature of that motive or object of desire, or avoid its impression, than it can alter the nature of a red-hot iron apj^lied to the surface, or avoid the j^ain resulting therefrom. But we constantly feel that we can do as we desire, upon the application of the object of desire, just as we can feel as we do feel upon the application of the red-hot iron ; they both being results, and as unavoidable as the impression of light when it flashes upon the open eye. How the will can be both the determiner and deter- mined, I can not conceive. Again, for the will to change itself from itself, and make itself what by nature itself is not, is equally difficult. And again, for the will to rise without an object and fit itself to an object without any necessary connection or causal dependence upon that object, is, if possible, still more absurd. The Avill to change itself from itself, must make a change in itself, and con.sequently leave itself not itself So we see, that, by the mutation of self-wills, would the identity of mind soon be destroyed; as, for a thing to change from what it was, is to be no longer the same that it was. How a will can will a will into existence for a particular pur])osc, without a purpose or motive to will, is again wholly incomprehensible. If the will be determined to a certain purpose, it must be by something that determines it to that purpose, which determiner is assuredly the motive to action, and nothing else. Tiierc can be no voluntary action without a will to act. and no will to act witlioiit a 84 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. choice or object of action. So that it must be found that the object is the foundation both of will and action. There being a preference in every active mind, that preference is the cause of action ; otherwise we must prefer nothing to nothing, and as such preference exists in the quality and nature of things themselves, the will has no indepen- dent or self-creating powers ; that which fixed and deter- mined the mind, being just as independent of the mind as the medicine which acts upon the body is independent of the body. When tartar assails the stomach, the stom- ach could say, I can puke just as I please, or do puke, and the bowels could say the same under the motive influence of calomel. To say that a man can will as he wills, or choose as he chooses, or that he can follow his own incli- nations, is the same as to say that a man can grow as he grows, die as he dies, or that water can run the way that it does run or is inclined to run. And to say that a man can act contrary to his prevailing inclinations, is to say that we can choose contrary to our choice, or prefer contrary to our choice, or prefer contrary to our preference, or that a thing can be different from what by nature it is. The mind has no more power to cause itself to prefer contrary to its preference, or to prefer and not to prefer at the same time, than it has to cure a fever, or mend a broken leg, or to be and not to be at the same time. He simply has power to do as he wills, but has no power over his will to do what he does not wish or will to do. According to the free-will doctrine, the good will, in order to get rid of the ill-chosen will, determines without a motive or choice to get up a will without a choice, or to annihilate itself till it can consult with itself upon the best choice. They talk about one will suspending another will, but this again must be found grossly absurd. Suspension and action being as incompatible as motion and rest, for in that suspension there can bo no change of will, and WILL. 85 change and action being the same, there can be no action, good or bad, attending a suspension of will. Now, as it has been shown that all wills spring froni motive or de- sign, these motives or objects of design exist without and independent of the will, or the will before it can will must will to give itself a motive to will — which power must be a creative power — no such motive or object having existed previous to such will. And thus it is seen that these free wills are free gods, without God's government and beyond the sphere of his causal dependencies — that they are governed by no fixed law or rule of action, and, what is more startling still, that they give the lie to God's re- vealed word, that he is the Author of all things, and the Lawgiver and Euler over all things by fixed and undevi- ating principles. Thus we find that the doctrine of free- will is encumbered with a thousand vague and self- contradictory assumptions, quibbles, and shallow shifts, at war with nature, while that of necessity, being founded upon the immutable and eternal laws of causality, is as truthful, simple, and comprehensible as nature itself, being nothing more in reality than a conformity to the universal aptitude, fitness, and causal dependencies of all things as founded and fixed by the hand of Almighty God himself. A few illustrations will show how simple it is to have our wills excited by the things we will to do. Suppose yourself lost in the wild woods, as I have been, and wiien shivering, hungry, and half frozen, you see your camp- fire, friends, and food at hand, O, what delight at once fills the mind and gives it a pleasure and power to go to it, or rather, it causes or pleases the mind to do just as it pleases. Here, now, (as I often rej)eat it in different forms) is a case which will fit every other act of life, and as an honest man, I ask you what it was but the fire and the pleasures attending it which took you to the fire? Haven would answer, it was not the fire nor the motive of pleasure. 86 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND. but the mind which took you to it — a petty quibble un- worthy the name of philosopliy, and wliich only returns the question to us in a different form — what was it that caused the mind to be pleased to take you to it? The mind of itself, with all its powerful wills and faculties falsely given it, could give itself no such comfort as the cami:)-fire did; but now mark it, the light flashed upon it and made it pleased to do as it pleased. Suppose a desire or will comes up in the mind, from some prevailing cause, to go and see a neighbor, how quickly will the legs be put in motion to do so; but if told by the way that the friend is not at home, which fact the will has nothing to do with, yet this fact at once creates a will for a counter-movement; and just so with all the acting, counter-acting, and checkered movements of life; the nature, or quality, or inducement of the thing presented for choice being the cause of will or motive of choice, having neither room nor apology for self-created wills, independent of, and holding no necessary connec- tion with, the properties and nature of the things them- selves. This is all natural and easy, while the idea of the will creating the quality sought by the will, and then creating another will to obtain that quality, as free-willers would say, is complicated and unnatural. In farther illustration of how wills are gotten up, I say to a man : Sir, you are not free to get uj) and walk ; this at once creates an ambition, will, or desire to walk, and he does so, falsely feeling that the will was gotten up by him- self, when, in reality, that will was the necessary result of my banter; for no such will would ever have existed, or such movement have taken j)lace but for that banter. The very expression of a man, that he is ft-ee and can do as he pleases, at once betrays the fact that he is already pos- sessed with a feeling, inclination and ambition to do so, which feeling, inclination, and ambition are not inherent WILL, 87 qualities, or veritable things in the mind, but mere con- ditions or modes of mind, produced by the inherent quality or nature of things that operate upon the mind. The mind of a man may be in a perfectly pacific mode or condition, and he is called a liar and thief, and the mind is at once agitated and belligerent in its feeling, not from anything internal or from nothing (take notice) but from the words spoken. Here were no self-creations of words or thoughts ; but you will say, now is the time to show that a man can do as he pleases, strike or not strike in revenge, and I will agree with you that he can, as he may please, strike or not strike ; but his being pleased to act or not act, is to be the result of agencies, over which he has no more control than he had over the words which excited him. If by constitution he be apathetic and cowardly, or if by education he is in principle opposed to vulgar conflicts, he will not resist ; but if on the contrary, he, by his unavoidable nature, has an irritable temper - ment, and has by his education a different view of what constitutes honor, and obtaining chivalrous cast in society, he will certainly, if not a coward, strike. All the tempta- tions, passions, and emotions of soul, are alike governed by their exciting causes. The best tobacco in the world offers no temptation to me; where, then, is the virtue in me for avoiding both it and spirits, for which I have as little desii-e. These are, however, irresistible temptations to others, when no counteracting inclination prevails. I can not help, from my nature, but dislike both whisky and tobacco, while others can not, from their nature, avoid liking both. It will be seen that the mind is governed in the exercise of faith by abstract things, just as our desires are by concrete things; and it also must appear, upon investigation, that tliero is neither merit nor demerit in faitli ; for where is the merit in l)elicving that which 88 THE TRUE PHILOSOPHY OP MIND. WO can not hclj) but believe ? and where the demerit in disbelieving that which it is impossible to believe ? For instance, that two and two make four, carries a con vie. tion to the mind that can not be resisted, while the assertion that two and two make six, conveys as irresistible a disbelief; and these simple facts and illus- trations show the principles upon which all faith is founded. There is every degree of natural organization and temperament ; every degree of education and of maturity and experience in life ; every degree of circum- stances that hourly imj)ress us ; and there are endless vicissitudes of fortune and affliction moulding us to the necessity of the case. Sore afflictions beget sadness, sorrow and sighing, while the flush of fortune and buoyancy of health produce mirth and laughter, and these vacillations of soul are the necessary results or effects of their aj)propriate causes. The Protestant and the Catholic who go to the stake, and the Hindoo who is crushed under the wheels of Juggernaut, are governed alike by their unavoidable faith, and each are entitled to equal merit, if merit attaches to that which it is not in our jjower to resist ; so that the man who believes either in religion or in the common affairs of life, is upon a footing with him who unavoidably disbelieves. Now, though a man can not help his belief, we hate him for it, and even j)ut him to death, because his unavoidable faith runs counter to our unavoidable faith, and lessens our interests and prospects of happiness, here and hereafter. We hate a disagreeable sound, and things that are unpleasant to sight, smell, taste and touch ; and even hate a man because he is homely, or loathsomely ugly, while we love those that are beautiful and charming, though we know they cannot help their nature, and that they have neither merit nor demerit in them. These illustrations I introduce to explain WILL. 89 the constant question asked — why are people punished ? and everybody think they ought to be punished if they could help the belief, or faith, for which they are pun- ished. Though it is impossible that God, without violating his attributes of love and mercy, can punish us for an honest belief, yet it is necessary that man should punish man with a view of reform in himself or examj)le to society, or confine him to avoid evil to others ; just as we will kill a snake, shoot a mad dog, or confine a madman, though all of them act under their unavoid- able nature, and the injurious power of circumstances. Punishments and examples have their necessary influ- ences upon us to do good as well as evil, and hence the consistency of punishment under the law of necessity. The most honorable and best regulated nation in the world is in South America, they having but four laws — no murderers, no thieves, no liars, and no idlers-; all put to death', thus begetting such a terror to evil doers that evil is almost unknown ; and no taxation to support a vast army of judges, lawyers, and other parasites who live upon our substance. A man who knows he will be punished for certain acts will be necessarily impressed with the fact and the fear which counteracts the tempta- tion to indulge. Knowing, for instance, the fatal fact that fire will burn and water drown, will deter us from running into them ; so that it will be seen, as before exemplified, in the early part of this article, it is the doctrine of an early and well-grounded education in whatever direction we wish the youth to be guided j for be as.sured that education has as powerful a govern- ment over the youthful mind as the rein has over the guidance of the horse. The Hindoo widow mounts the fuiiei'al pihi, and is consumed with the dead body of her husband, while tlie Cliristiun wi