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FRIEND OF PROGRESS.
Vol. 1.]
New York, July, 1865.
Frances Power Gobbe.
BY T. W. HIGGINSON.
[No. 9.
and one often observes it while traveling, in
the hands of young gentlemen of serious
aspect, and young ladies of no particular
aspect at all. It sometimes suggests curiosity
as to the precise shape in which these scat
tered rays are transmitted through these vari
ous private prisms.
The new volume on “Religious Duty”*
appears to be an earlier work than ‘ ‘ Broken
Lights,” and in some respects more extended.
Her subject she defines as “comprehending
the actions and sentiments due by man imme
diately to his Maker.” She treats of Reli
gious Offenses, which comprise Blasphemy,
Apostacy, Hypocrisy, Perjury, Sacrilege, Per
secution, Atheism, Pantheism, Polytheism,
Idolatry, and Demonolatry. Then of Religious
Faults, including Thanklessness, Irreverence,
Prayerlessness, Impenitence, Skepticism, and
Worldliness. Then of Religious Obligations,
classed as Thankgiving, Adoration, Prayer,
Repentance, Faith, and Self-consecration.
The mere list of these subdivisions implies a
good deal of thoroughness, and, perhaps, a lit
tle over-minuteness of systematization.
There is no want of courage in the book,
and the writer adheres most faithfully to her
position of “Absolute Religion.” On the
appearance of a new edition of Longfellow’s
and Johnson’s “Book of Hymns,” now called
“Hymns of the Spirit,” an enthusiastic admi
rer wrote: “The book is theologically pure.
The name of Christ does not appear in it;”
meaning that the hymns recognized Jesus only
in a human character, and by a human appel
lation. Tried by this rather novel test of
If Miss Cobbe had the good fortune to write
in an attractive style, she would achieve for
herself a leading position in the most ad
vanced Beligious literature. No one else
shows so strong a desire to develop Theism
into a system, without reference to Jewish and
Christian traditions, and to fit it out with the
requisite ethical adaptations. She is also
very sincere and single-minded, free from
cant and rant, and shows much reading in
the most desirable directions. But her style
is apt to be bare and tame, without having the
sort of crisp dry clearness which sometimes
lends attraction to theological books else un
readable; as is the case, for instance, with
Beecher’s “Conflict of Ages,” and Norton’s
‘ ‘ Genuineness of the Gospels. ” Hers is rather
the style of average Unitarian discourses; a
style unexceptionable, but without freshness,
saliency, or relief, and hence rather unat
tractive.
She has been heretofore known in this coun
try as the author of “ Intuitive Morals,” and
the English editor of Theodore Parker’s works.
This is good ground for reputation. The first
part of her first book was certainly remarka
ble, though the second part by no means
equaled it; and her edition of Theodore Par
ker puts his American literary executors to
shame. But she is rapidly becoming still
better known through her own contributions
to theology. “Broken Lights” has already
been frankly criticised in these pages. It is
*“ Religious Duty, by Frances Power Cobbe.’>
apparently obtaining quite a wide circulation, Boston: 5V. V. Spencer. 12mo. pp. viii, 326. $1.75.
Entered according to Act of Congress by C. M. Plumb & Co., in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the
United States, for the Southern District of New York.
�258
The inend of Progress.
orthodox}', Miss Cobbe’s last work is theologi out of the true church invisible those wbo<
cally pure also. It is not professedly a trea found themselves in this position.—In aU
tise on Christian Duty, but on Religious Duty. these respects the canons laid down by Miss
And though the writer suggests a latent con Cobbe are a step downward from his position,
fusion in her title by admitting that all duty is and are directly in the spirit of sectarianism.
religious; still this objection would not have
This can be readily shown by quoting her
been averted, and many others would have own language; the italics not being, however,
been introduced, by using the word “Chris her own.
tian.” That is a word which no disciple of
“Nevertheless, the unspeakable blessing
Miss Cobbe’s can use without embarrassment, and honor of communion offered to us by
because, by the whole theory of Theism, the God in prayer renders our rejection of them a
world is destined to outgrow all personal religious fault, tantamount to a general delin
quency in all religious duty. He who cares
names. If by “Christian” one means to des not to obtain the aid of God’s grace, or feel
ignate simply what is pure, right, noble, man the joy of His presence, is manifestly in a
ly,—then these last are the clearer and better condition wherein the religious part of his
words. If it means anything more or less nature must be dormant. Such sentiments
as remain to him can scarcely possess eth
than these, it is not desirable at all. Chris ical merit, inasmuch as they must be
tian virtue is simply virtue, Christian morals merely the residue of those natural instincts,
simply morals. Why complicate the phrases which, if duly cherished, must have led him to
by the addition of an adjective, which only prayer. The occasional God-ward impulses
which show themselves in all men, so far from
confuses their meaning, because it must itself constituting the fulfillment of this obligation,
be interpreted,—and however interpreted, is no form the very ground of their guilt when left
barren. Without such religious sentiments,
improvement on the simpler word ?
man could have no religious duty at all.
It is saying much for Miss Cobbe, to say that Possessed of them, he is bound to cultivate
she has kept resolutely clear of all this. In and display them in all the forms of direct
this respect her position is more unequivocal and indirect worship. ” (p. 94.)
than that of Theodore Parker, who clung to the
She afterwards, in a vague way, limits these
word “Christian”—as, indeed, he was rath remarks to those who believe that “prayer for
er attached to the word “ Unitarian.”
spiritual good receives a real answer from
When it came to a definition of Absolute God.” “It is possible for religious minds at
Religion, however, his was certainly the more an early stage to make mistakes for a time
comprehensive. His definition was simply, on this matter,” &c. (p. 95.) But the fact
“Faith in God, and love to man.” Hers seems never to have dawned upon her mind,
appears to be: “ Good morals, plus the habit that there are multitudes of earnest persons
of conscious personal prayer.”
in all stages of culture, and of all grades of
It is at this point that she and her immediate moral excellence, to whom conscious praye r
teacher diverge; not at belief in prayer, but has been for years a rare and occasional im
at its recognition as the ground of spiritual de pulse only, and perhaps not even that;—to
marcation and classification. Theodore Parker whom, at any rate, it is no part of their regu
believed in prayer intensely, and loved it lar plan of life.
intensely. He would have liked every public
Can any observing person doubt that the
lecture to be preceded or followed by it. His external practices of prayer are rapidly di
volume of prayers is, on the whole, the most minishing in our community, like all other
characteristic work he has left behind, and may external religious forms,—like baptism, and
live the longest. While reproached—even by the communion service, and church-member
men so liberal as Beecher,—with a deficiency ship ? It is impossible to deny that this tend
of religious sentiment, he was yet the only ency often coexists with increased moral
minister to whom it had occurred to address earnestness, and with higher and higher ideas
the Deity as both Father and Mother. Yet, of the Universe. It is not now needful to
for all this, he never once suggested that maintain or defend this position; only to
conscious personal prayer was essential to state it. But Miss Cobbe finds nothing to do
the highest spiritual attitude. He recognized with any such tendency, except to exclude it
with charity the scruples which prevented from her imaginary synagogue.
some, and the instinctive disinclination which
Yet after all, it is to be noticed, that,
withheld others, from taking part in it. He when this author comes to her highest state
never proposed, directly or indirectly, to read ment of possible prayer, she comes round to.
�Frances Power Coble.
an assertion which many of these excluded
ones might claim to make for themselves.
“I shall speak of that indirect worship
wherein it is to be hoped all life at last may
merge for us—wherein not only we shall
know that ‘laborare est orare,'1 but all feel
ing shall be holy feeling, all thought shall be
pure, loving, resigned, adoring thought; so
that at every moment of existence we shall
1 gloriiy God in our bodies, and in our spirits,
which are God’s.’” Then she quotes the fa
mous passage from Coleridge, which has been
the comfort of so many:
“ Ere on my bed my limbs I lay
It hath not been my use to pray
With moving lips or bended knees ;
But silently, by slow degrees,
My . pirit I to love compose,
In. humble trust mine eyelids close,
With reverential resignation;
No wish conceived, no thought expressed.
Only a. sense of supplication—
A sense o’er all my soul impressed,
That I am weak, yet not unblest,
Since in me, round me, everywhere,
Eternal strength and wisdom are.”
Yet will Miss Cobbe venture to say, that
those whose conceptions of Deity are so inef
fable and sublime, and their recognition of
his laws so complete, that specific or uttered
prayer seems to them an impertinence, may
not be as far advanced toward this higher
state as herself, or as any representative of
that type of moral progress which she de
scribes ?
Theodore Parker, her especial teacher,
never seemed so noble, because never so
humble, as when he acknowledged his own
obligations, and admitted his own inferiority,
to his especial teacher, Emerson. Yet how
far is Emerson, who can calmly speak of the
progress of humanity as tending to ‘ ‘ sweep
out of men’s minds all vestige of theisms”—
how far is he from Miss Cobbe’s type of reli
gion, or even of morality;—how near to her
type of “guilt!”
Something of the same narrowness is shown
in her, hearty denunciations of that “cold
pseudo philosophy ” which substitutes for the
endearing word “God,” the more distant
phrases of “the Deity,” “the Supreme Be
ing,” “the Almighty.” She seems utterly
unable to conceive of that mood of intense
reverence, when one instinctively seeks the
loftiest words, though they be the remotest,
and where any word at all seems almost a
profanation. Saadi says, ’ ‘ Who knows God,
is silent.” When, in that grand passage of
Faust, the philosopher utterly refuses to give
259
a name to the Unknown— Name 1st Schall
und Rauch, umnebelndHimmelsglutli)—even
the innocent little Margaret answers that it is
all very fine and good, and that the priest says
nearly the same, only with words a little dif
ferent; but to Miss Cobbe it seems all very
improper. Although she elsewhere admits
that Pantheism and Anthropomorphism are
only the two opposing tendencies of that
ever-swinging pendulum, the human soul,
yet she seems unconscious how closely her
own temperament holds her to the latter side.
She has never discovered that, in all ages,
man’s sublimest reveries are most Pantheistic,
while it is his daily needs and instincts that
bring him back to a personal God.
Apart from these limitations of tempera
ment, her discussion of the subject of Prayer
is interesting and valuable, whatever one may
think of her conclusions. More than a third
of the volume is given, under different titles,
to this theme. She even believes in prayer
for our departed friends, and enters on a long
argument to show its propriety. (Pp. 200-5.)
She demands more family prayers, and more
stated private prayers. “ Suppose that in
stead of confining our grace to one meal in
the day, we were each to say, in our own
hearts, a little grace after every successive
occupation.” (p. 134.)
Though she here says, “in our liearts,”
she yet implies something more explicit, in
this multiplication of observances. She insists
upon the form, and does not shrink from put
ting her demand in the most matter-oi-fact
way. For she says, on the same page: “ We
should show gratitude by actually expressing
our thanks in the words which would sponta
neously issue from our lips were our hearts
truly kindled." Yet this seems very incon
sistent with the position taken by her in re
gard to attendance on public worship. “As
for the attendance at worship, &c., ‘for ex
ample’s sake,’ it is marvelous how any hu
man creatures have ever had the presumption
to entertain such an idea. Let any sane man
consider what he does when he enters a
church, and ask himself how his “exemplary”
behavior therein must appear to God, and I
cannot but suppose he will be sufficiently
shocked to abandon such attempts for the
future. For either he must intend really to
worship, to thank, adore and pray to the great
Lord of all, or he must intend to make an
outward show of so doing without any uplift
ing of soul. The latter conduct is grossly in-
�260
The Friend of Progress.
suiting to the God who watches him,” &c. &c.
When she comes to points involving sim(pp. 33-4.)
ply moral courage, however, how fine and
But if the author herself advises her readers discriminating are her statements! The fol
to show gratitude by formally employing lowing, for instance, is admirable, and much
words which ought to come spontaneously, needed just at present.
but do not, —it is certainly a venial step farther
“Few of us have not much to repent in the
to employ the same words, for the benefit way of unworthy silences on our true faith;
of others, under similar circumstances. The silences, which, if caused by tenderness, were
truth is, that great danger waits, for most weak,—if by any fear, cowardly and base.
Vast numbers of free-thinkers, especially, and
temperaments, upon any merely ritual observ above all the elder Deists, seem actually to
ance. Jean Paul goes so far as to declare, have accepted their antagonists’ view of their
in his Levana, that “a grace before meat own creed, and to consider that the next best
thing to not knowing a truth was the not
must make every child deceitful.”
spreading it. Others, like Sterling, say that
This may be too strongly stated; and the as they are not professional teachers of Reli
whole theme requires the greatest delicacy of gion, they may teach (even their own
treatment, not so much for the sake of public children!) the opposite errors! It is marvel
ous that men do not see the turpitude, reli
opinion, as for the sake of truth and the affec gious, personal and social, involved in such
tions. But I am firm in the belief that the conduct. For ourselves, a life in which the
t endency of the age is to the disuse of all family inward and the outward are in harmony is
devotions, and that this disuse proceeds from absolutely needful to all moral health and
progress; and that the stunted religious
the correct conviction, that such observances growth of many free-thinkers may be attrib
very soon become formal and unprofitable, to utable to this inward rottenness, no one who
knows his own nature can doubt.” (pp. 28-9.)
nine persons out of ten.
These various defects are pointed out, be
As frankly and clearly does she deal with a
cause they constitute the only drawbacks form of hypocrisy seldom noticed, and so
upon a strong and noble book;—a book which abundant that it penetrates almost all public
will be read with deep interest by all who agree religious services—the hypocrisy of represent
with the author’s general attitude. No one ing ourselves as worse than we really are.
has given abler and clearer statements of the ‘ ‘ If we desire to grow better than we are, we
sufficiency of Natural Religion, or stated must, in the first place, be openly what we
more forcibly its independence of all tra are. We must live out our own life of duty
dition or historic narrative. She believes faithfully, uprightly, humbly, never trying to
in it too thoroughly to need the aid of any conceal our faults and making no prudery
buttresses so unsubstantial. He whose most about such poor withered charms as our vir
vital opinions have for their corner-stone a Mir tues ever possess. The life of virtue is before all
aculous Conception or a Resurrection, holds things a life of simplicity. The man who pro
his faith and hope at the mercy of the latest fesses selfish, worldly motives, when he is con
critic or translator. He who rests his convic scious of better ones, who jests about lax and
tions on eternal principles can let the waves vicious habits when his own are pure, runs
of criticism ebb and flow, he remaining un most imminent risk of very shortly adoptingtouched. Not bound to the petty details of those motives in earnest, and falling actually
any single form of creed or worship, he is in into those evil habits.” (p. 35.)
sympathy with the pure and noble of all ages.
In using one disparaging phrase above,
It is thus that the writer of Religious Duty is she perhaps crosses the border of the very
strong; and she is only weak where she shrinks offense she censures, of undue self-disparage
from the consequences of her own principles, ment. But it is an offense she seldom
and thinks it necessary to disavow the fellow commits; she is a strong, sincere, and noble
ship of those who only vary from her in tem woman; she is free from almost all the em
perament or training,—not in sincerity, nor barrassments of the sects; and every one whoeven in the essential points of belief. There is aiming at such freedom should read every
is certainly a distinguishable difference be word she writes.
tween the spiritual attitude of Parker and
Emerson: but after all there is something
—He that giveth love receiveth love, which
rather strange in the position of a woman who is his return and reward for giving. He must
edits the one writer, and utterly repudiates the ever receive more than he giveth, for his ca
other
I pability progresses.
�Womanhood.
OB,
Madelon’s
Soliloquy.
BY LIZZIE DOTEN.
0 wondrous gift of womanhood ! how frail,
And yet how strong ! How simple, yet how wise!
How full of subtle mysteries thou art!
The heights of glory and the depths of shame,
Transcendent bliss and agonies of pain,
Beauty and terror, Life and Death through love,
Are all combined and manifest in thee.
Through thy divinest gift of motherhood,
Immortal souls are debtors unto thee;
For all the elements of mortal mold,
By which the soul becomes incorporate,
And finds admission to this natural world,
Take form and shape, through subtlest chem
istry
And brooding life, in thee.
Lo, here I stand,
A woman! Would to God that I could know
The scope and meaning of that potent word,
With its divine intent; that I might say
To men and manners, habits, customs, laws—
Stand back ! I am a woman! and I claim
Freedom from everything that doth impose
Restraint upon my proper womanhood.
I do appeal from comm n usage: dare
The venom and vitupei us speech of tongues
That only know to slan! er. I conform
No longer to the false ilea which makes
Me but the adjunct of man’s social life—
His puppet, plaything, servile tool, or worse
Than these—the slave of his base pleasure.
The bonds I rive—the silken, tinsel gyves,
Which Fashion round her votaries weaves.
I walk
With fearless freedom in my quest for truth,
And quips of caitiffs—scorn of meddling shrews,
Or prudent warnings from the worldly wise,
Shall not restrain me from my high intent.
Manis not woman—woman is not man;
Yet is.it for his weal and mine, that I,
And all who bear the sacred name of woman,
Should strive to reach that social altitude,
Where, with the difference of our gifts con
fessed,
We stand as equals, side by side with man.
Why do I stay to question ? even now
The die is cast. Already on my heart
The world’s harsh judgment, like a vulture sits,
With beak and talons dripping blood. The
Truth
Leaps up like fire to my unwilling lips.
Impelled by mine own sacred womanhood,
I speak what timorous souls refuse to hear.
Already have I met the social ban—
Have dared to think, and speak as I have
thought;
Have shocked false delicacy—wounded pride—
Called things by their right names, and much
disturbed
Those souls who have the world’s morality
In charge, and whose extravagant pretense
To virtue is their greatest vice.
261
Alas!
God pity me ! for every word I speak,
Though sanctioned by eternal Truth, is born
Of untold anguish in my woman’s heart.
And well I know that each unwelcome truth
That issues from my lips, serves as a cloud,
To shut love’s sunshine from my shivering
heart.
A woman, walking unaccustomed ways,
And using most unusual forms of speech,
And seeing what the world would least have
seen,
And telling what the wo id would least have
known,
Performs a thankless service, and doth gain
But little vantage. By the common rule,
A woman should have pulp instead of brains—
Should have no thew or sinew to her thought,
Or weight and meaning in her speech, lest she
Offend the sensibilities of love.
Yet have I not the freedom of a choice;
The Fates, which consummate Eternal Will,
Constrain me. I am made a sacrifice
To powers unseen, like sad Polyxena,
Who fell a victim to Achilles’ ghost;
Or like Cassandra—favored of the gods,
Though filled with the celestial fire, I breathe
My prophecies to unbelieving ears.
Men say I have a devil! Pious men !
Who measure others’ morals by their own;
And saying thus, they stop their jealous ears,
Like those, who, with Ulysses, thus escaped
The soft enchantments of the syren isle.
Oh strange infirmity of faith ! Hath Truth,
Then, lost the pith and marrow of its life,
That I, a feeble woman, can prevail
In aught against it ? If so, let it fall!
For it is dead. The living Truth must stand.
God help me ! I must speak ! not for myself,
But for the sorrowing sisterhood of woman—
The doves by vultures torn—the bleeding
lambs—
The timorous deer pursued by cruel hounds;
And with all these, a painted, reckless throng,
Full of rude jests and wanton flouts and flings,
Tricked out in flaunting silks and tinsel gauds,
From whom the high estate and potent charm
Of womanhood hath long since lapsed away.
Yet, as a woman, I am bound to such,
And they, in turn, have part and lot in me.
Oh fallen sisterhood! your woes and wrongs
Knock with a piteous pleading at my heart,
And in the sacred name of womanhood,
The hand of sympathy I will extend,
And greet each as a sister and a friend.
Woman weak ! in virtue frail!
On whose cheek the rose is pale,
From whose eye the light hath fled,
In whose heart all hope is dead—
What have I to boast o’er thee ?
Come ! and find a friend in me.
While we share the name of woman,
We have sympathies in common.
Do you shrink and turn away—
Warning me what man will say ?
I have known the world too long,
Not to hold my purpose strong;
�262
The Triend of Progress.
Pious knave and dainty dame,
Loud may cry, “ For sliarne ! for shame!”
But I’ve learned that great professions,
Often hide most foul transgressions.
All my nerves, like tempered steel,
Life’s magnetic changes feel;
All the streams of human woe
Through myVbeing’s channels flow;
Every sorrow, every smart,
Is repeated in my heart;
Therefore, let us walk together—
Friends in fair and foulest weather.
Though a woman, yet will I
Scorn, and shame, and wrong defy;
I will dare the world’s disgrace,
Till I find my proper place,
And will lend a hand to all
Who may by the wayside fall.
Souls that act with brave decision
Need not fear the world’s derision.
/
Be I lioness or lamb,
God hath made me what I am.
Whatsoe’er my gift may be,
It is all in all to me;
And in doing what I cun,
I shall serve both God and man.
Therefore, with my best endeavor,
I shall struggle upward ever.
“Woman and her Era”
versus
“A PLEA FOR THE MASCULINE.”
BY J. V. V. R.
The first article of the second number of the
Friend of Progress, “A Plea for the Mascu
line”—so courteous in its tone, so candid in
its statement of principles, and so logical in
its method—would doubtless have been an
swered.by the author of “Woman and her
Era,” had she been spared to the world and
restored to health. As it is, a thorough
believer in the doctrine of the superiority of
woman may be excused for taking her place
here, though it would be impossible even in
this to fill the hiatus left by her untimely
departure.
It is fortunate for the present discussion
that the parties are agreed, or nearly so, as
to the premises. The “Plea” not only ac
knowledges, but takes as the basis of its
‘ ‘ argument demonstrating the equality of the
sexes,’’the positions from which Mrs. Farnham
deduces the inequality of the sexes, and the
superior excellence on woman’s side. Its
grand truth, the general of all its particulars,
on which it hangs its entire argument, is,
“that Quantity is masculine—Quality femi
nine.” Now, it is an instinctive feeling, and
a first thought of the unsophisticated mind,
that quality, other things being equal, is the
standard of value, and that quantity, in itself,
is of no value whatever, but positive trash and
incumbrance. According to this, the more
there is of a mere man the worse it is for
him, as in the case of several famous scourges
of mankind who had the epithet “Great” at
tached to their names. But the more there is
of a pure woman, the better it is for her, be
cause she has the qualities of mind and heart
that make her valuable, a ‘ recious treasure
p
to her family and the world.
The question is, which excels, quality or
quantity? and the answer is, that quality is
synonymous with excellence, and that quan
tity in itself has no excellence at all. We
estimate the value of metals, stones, fruits,
animals, and human beings, by their quality,
the source of their qualifications for any
use whatever—and the lack of this makes
dross, dirt, trash, garbage, nuisance, all in
the degree of the quantity, growth, and accre
tion, which Mr. Dickerson states to be mascu
line. By “quality,” of course he means
“good quality,” fineness and exquisiteness of
organization, and purity and delicacy of soul,
and by “quantity,” of course he means a
“good deal,” which does not mean good at
all, but simply very much. Now, which is
superior, that to which we can attach a moral
attribute, some sort of merit, qualifications of
some sort, or that to which we can attach
none? Mr. Dickerson says that the two are
equal. He says, “ Woman is better than
man. She stands a mediator between him
and the positively pure, spiritual, lovely, of
the universe.” On the other side he says
merely, “Man is more than woman. He
stands a mediator between her and the abso
lutely grand, magnificent, sublime, of the
universe.” And yet he asserts the equality of
the sexes, as if better were not superior to
more—a diamond to a boulder, a strawberry
to a pumpkin, a man to an elephant, and a
woman to a man 1 The value of quantity
depends entirely on quality, but the value of
quality does not depend on quantity; it is
only increased by it. So the value of the
masculine depends entirely on the feminine;
but the value of the feminine does not depend
on the masculine—it is only increased by it.
Woman inspires man, is the motive of his
action, and man is subservient to woman, is
the instrument of her action.
�“ Woman and her Era ” versus “A Plea for the Masculine?
Quality is primarily spiritual, pertaining to
the soul, and to the essence, nature, or prin
ciple of things. Quantity is primarily a prop
erty of matter, of that which is formed of
particles and is capable of accretion and
growth. To maintain that quality is not su
perior to quantity, is to maintain that the
soul is not superior to the body, and that
God is not superior to the material universe.
Infinity, as we view it, is not an attribute of
quantity, either great or small, as Mr. D. sup
poses : it is an attribute of Quality, to which
no limitation can be assigned. Infinite Per
fection, Infinite Goodness, not infinite size or
quantity! The source, the Fountain of all
things, is the 1 ‘ center, ” not the ‘1 circumfer
ence:” it is with the “feminine,” not with the
“masculine,” which are respectively “cen
ter” and “circumference,” according to both
Mrs. F. and her critic. The center is superior
to the circumference, the cause is superior to
the effect, the angelic heaven is superior to
the stellar heaven, the soul is superior to the
body, the jewel is superior to the casket, the
internal is superior to the external, woman is
superior to man. All these exterior things
are for the sake of these interior things, and
their subserviency marks their inferiority, and
at the same time the honor bestowed upon
them.
Take the advocate of equality at his word,
that “woman is better than man,” and that
“man is more than woman
is not the
moral and spiritual nature, of which better is
predicable, superior to the carnal nature and
to knowledge, of which more is predicable?
Who does not place goodness above great
ness, “Aristides the Just’’above “Alexander
the Great ” ? Goodness includes all true great
ness, but greatness does not include all true
goodness. The cause includes the effect,
which is but its unfolding; the Divine is the
Being whose name is “Love,” “Life,”
“ Goodness,” all attributes of the feminine,
‘ ‘ in whom we live and move and have our
being.” The aspiration fortrue greatness, is
for goodness first, as its essential—its lan
guage is, “Great, not like Caasar, stained
with blood, but only great as I am good.”
The “widow’s mite" was “more" than all
the “rich men, of their abundance, threw
into the treasury ”—greater in the purity, the
genuineness of the charity, and greater in its
results. The sex that is better, is also greater,
in the sense of multum in parvo and of “that
life being long which answers life’s great
263
end,” than the sex whose characteristic is
quantity.
The writer of the “Plea for the Masculine,”
assigns “development” to woman, and
“growth” to man, defining development to
be “the unfolding of that which is,” and
growth to be “ the adding to that which is,”
and he says they are equal. Let us see.
Development, “the unfolding of that which
is,” is predicable of the Divine operation in
the work of creation, because the soul of all
things is a unit, and all things are the un
folding and manifestation of Itself'. Growth,
“addition to that which is,” is predicable of
matter, of material particles; but it is so only
in subserviency to development, to the action
of the unfolding life in the growth of the or
ganisms of plants and animals. Growth has
been the grand idea during man’s reign, ex
tending itself to education and the mind.
Woman’s era is ushered in with the idea of
Development, as the true method and sum of
education, and of everything natural and
artistic.
Development belongs to woman as a teacher
and a pupil, and it will produce in the world
a predominance of Quality over Quantity, of
the Feminine over the Masculine; and for
all that none the less, but all the more, of
quantity, though in numbers rather than in
bulk. It is often and well said of woman,
that “the most precious things are done up
in small packages,” and these are greater in
their developments than the largest growths.
There is one point in the argument for
“equality,” to which the view of its author
claims special attention, viz. : an asserted
necessity to the indissoluble marriage rela
tion. It says, “Prove the inequality of the
sexes, and you have proven the impossibility
of true eternal marriages.” Now, “even the
gods will not fight against necessity;” and if
“equality of the sexes” is absolutely indis
pensable to the conjugal—which itself is a
moral necessity beyond the ability of the free
will to resist—any attempt at a counter argu
ment might as well be resigned at once. But
there is an “if" in the case that “alters the
case”—that makes it questionable. The mas
culine has somehow got along in the marriage
relation, and in the happiest manner, accord
ing to its way of thinking, under the reign of
the idea of its own superiority. It has not
seen anything incompatible with a conjunc
tion performed by God and indissoluble by
man in the obligation of woman to “love,
�264
,
!
I
The Friend of Progress.
honor, and obey, and of man to merely hardly be said to equal his spiritual mother
“love and cherish.” Suppose the conjugal re- and the artist whose work he is.
lation should express itself in the instinct of
Here we might drop the argument, only
the woman to love, and of the man to love and that the article we have undertaken to an
honor? it is precisely what exists in the lover swer, pledges the author not to be con
relation before and during betrothal, and to vinced “until the following questions are
the extent of the period called the “honey settled in the negative: (1.) Is not the in
moon,” ere the theory of the opposite has finitude of Deity—his perfect amount—as
made the man tyrannical and the woman ser godlike as the unfathomableness of his nature
vile. And this lover-relation is the foretaste —his perfect state?” We have already seen
on earth of the “eternal marriage,” to which, that infinitude is not an attribute of quantity,
Mr. Dickerson asserts, the equality of the or of the measurable—it is rather an attribute
sexes is absolutely necessary. The language of the immeasurable, the “unfathomable,”
of the point in question is, “Prove the ine the character, the infinite perfection of Deity.
quality of the sexes, *
* and you have As to a “perfect state,” we can form some
shattered the very foundation upon which conception of it; but a “perfect amount,”
such [eternal] marriages can rest, viz.: mu what is it? Perfection pertains to quality—
tual conscioitsness of mutual worth. Mutual not to quantity. Both Infinity and Per
worth demands equal (not similar) attain fection, therefore, are archetypes of the femi
ments; therefore an equal grade of pro nine—not of the masculine.
gression.” By “mutual worth,” I suppose is
(2.) “Is not the aspiration toward this
meant mutual love, for it is the quality of the perfect magnitude as godlike as is the aspira
love that makes the worth of each to the tion toward the perfect state?” No ; better
other, and that is at the same time mutual. be good than great. “Be ye holy, for I am
But I do not see why there cannot be ‘ ‘ mu holy.” We aspire toward the “Divine liketual consciousness of mutual worth, ” in this ness”—not toward the Divine magnitude.
or in any other sense, without equal worth. This is an object of ambition, and makes men
The logical sequence does not appear. It tyrants, as the other makes them philanthro
seems to me a mere assumption to say that pists.
the worths must be equal in the conjugal rela
(3.) “Is not the acquisitiveness—the out
tion any more than in the relation between ward tendency and action of the masculine—
the Divine and the human, which is eternal as as noble, as truly in harmony with the Divine
well as that, and conjugal as well as that. design, as is the spiritualization—the inward
“Christ and his Bride” are the incarnate Di tendency, the concentrated action of the
vine Wisdom and Love. “ Heaven on earth” feminine?” “Acquisitiveness” as noble as
is Earth and Heaven united in wedlock. The “spiritualizationI” does any one need be told
parental and filial relation, too, is eternal, that it is not? It is “as truly in harmony7
and it is not that of equals. The relation of with the Divine design,” and so an oyster is
the Divine to the human is both parental and as truly in harmony with the Divine design
conjugal, and that of woman to man is so. as a man; but that does not make them
Woman’s pure love regenerates man’s sensual equal.
love—makes it pure, by making it subservient
(4. “ Is comprehension—the power to em
to her own. In comparing the sexes, Mrs. F. brace and contain—of less importance than
has compared the natural woman with the insight, the power to pierce and penetrate?”
natural man—not with the regenerate man. The embraced and contained is the precious
The failure to recognize this has caused the treasure; the pierced and penetrated is the
Atlantic Monthly to say that Mrs. F.’s men, mere receptacle, the husk, the shell, the out
with whom she compares her ideal woman, are side of things. Give me “ insight ” into the
all “scoundrels,” and it has led the author of penetralia of Nature, entrance to the interior
the “Plea for the Masculine ” to say that Mrs. of her temple, rather than comprehension of
F.’s book exposes masculine perversions, the outside, if I am to have but one. The
and well nigh ignores masculine excellence.” “holy of holies” is of more “importance,” of
The natural man, against the natural wo- diviner import and significance, than the
■ man, she has “weighed in the balance, and “outer court ” and the “profane place.”
found wanting.” And the regenerate man,
(5.) “ Does not the far-reaching, abundant
influenced, inspired, purified by her, can affection of the masculine, balance the con
�^Monopoly in Religion.
centrated devotedness of the feminine ?” For
example, the diluted, diffused, wAe-spread,
thin, shallow, superficial, surface love that is
natural to man—“wandering like the fool’s
eyes to the end of the earth, ” and tending ever
to licentiousness and adulteration—compared
with the concentrated, faithful, devoted, pure
love that is natural to woman ? No, it does
not balance. We value love according to its
quality, its purity, its genuineness, its refine
ment, its tenderness, its devotion, its unself
ishness, its spirituality, its blessedness: not
according to its quantity, which, if that is the
object, is increased by dilution and adultera
tion. The difference between woman’s and
man’s love is as the difference between the
choice and genuine article that is offered as a
free gift and token of affection, and the spuri
ous article, the shoddy, that is manufactured
by the wholesale for money.
(6.) “ Has the masculine aspiration to be
come and do more, a lesser claim upon our
reverence than has the aspiration of the femi
nine to become and do better ?” The good
are the revered—not the great. The “better”
the more revered, and the “ more ” the more
despised, if the person be not good. I would
rather be called “the best, littlest,” than
“the greatest, meanest of mankind.”
(7.) “And finally, is not the Divine Pres
ence of the Infinite as perfectly expressed in
the grand, stately, majestic appearance of the
true man, as is the Divine Presence of the
All-Pure expressed in the lovely, exquisite,
symmetrical appearance of the true woman?”
Well, suppose it were—which is the highest
attribute of the Divine—Purity or Infinity?
Holiness or Omnipresence ? But the only in
finity belonging to extension is that of infinite
space, which is nothing. The Infinity of
Deity is that implied in Infinite Perfec
tion, the object of love rather than of won
der. The difference between the objects of
love and wonder is precisely the difference
between the modest loveliness of woman and
the proud stateliness of man. Our exaltation
of woman to her true position does not de
grade, but elevates ourselves.
“He that
exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that
humbleth himself shall be exalted.” This
places the “true man” in a higher posi
tion, and the “true woman” in the highest.
265
Monopoly in Religion.
BY O. B. FROTHINGHAM.
John, the disciple, said one day: “Master,
we saw one casting out devils in thy name,
and we forbade him, because he followed not
with us.” Jesus replied: “Forbid him not;
for he that is not against us is for us.”
Wnat sort of man this was who was casting
out devils in the charmed name of Jesus, we
can only guess. He was probably some Jew
who thought that name a good one to conjure
by, and who used it without thinking it neces
sary to call himself a disciple. Or he might
have been a pagan; worse still, a Samaritan,
who, observing what wonders were wrought
by the name, ventured to use jt in his exor
cism. Some unbeliever it was, at all events,
who only cared for Christ’s name because it
gave him good help in his calling as physician
for the more mysterious diseases which, as
they were attributed to demonic possession,
were supposed to be curable by magical or
superhuman aid. Whoever the man was, and
whatever his motive may have been, so much
is clear: he did cast out spirits. That the
disciples confessed. They did not say the
man was trying to cast out spirits, or pre
tending to cast out spirits; but he was actual
ly casting them out; he was doing it success
fully. Nay, more than this: he was doing it
by the same holy agency which they used
themselves. He was confessing the very
Master whom they followed. Had they been
reasonable men they would have been greatly
delighted that men outside of their own little
persecuted body were doing their work, re
lieving them of part of their responsibility,
and proving that more agencies than they
could employ were on foot in the same cause.
They would be glad that the immense labor
of casting out demons was not committed
solely to them, but was intrusted to such a
variety of people, that its accomplishment
was made far more certain.
But these early disciples were not above
claiming a monopoly of this divine business,
though the stock was then exceedingly low,
and the dividends very uncertain and remote.
Nobody should cast out devils unless he held
to them, and belonged to their company.
They were the exclusive holders of that privi
lege, and were ready to prosecute any who
—Judgment dwelleth in man, and Respon infringed their patent. The thing must be
sibility sitteth by its side.
done by their allowance, in their way, and
�266
The Friend of Progress.
under their patronage. There might be fewer
devils cast out—that was not the point. The
business was a private one of theirs, and they
were jealous of it. Though all the devils
remained in possession, opposition in casting
them out must be stopped.
The Master’s reply to this petty jealousy
was, as usual, magnanimous. No matter
whether he is of our party or not. If he does
our work he is our friend. The main thing is
to get the devils cast out. If they do that, I
am satisfied. They may be Jews, Pagans,
Samaritans, heathen of any sort—if they suc
ceed in casting out devils, they are of our
party.
Thus, in the very life-time of the Master,
and in the very circle of his immediate friends,
began that struggle between partisanship and
charity, which has raged ever since that early
day, and which now tears apart the Christian
world. Can Christian work be monopolized?
That is the question. Can such a thing be
admitted as proprietorship in the humane and
universal? Shall ownership in truth and
charity—in moral and spiritual elemnts—be
allowed ? Is any company large enough, or
strong enough, or wise enough, or honest
enough, to take out a patent for the enlight
enment and inspiration of mankind? The
human passion for proprietorship is some
thing prodigious. It is enormous. It stops
at nothing. It ranges from earth to heaven,
from dirt to Deity. Man makes everything
his own. He would set on everything his
private seal, and make it sacred as property.
Houses and lands, personal estate, wardrobe,
horses, furniture, plate, merchandise, are not
the only things that bear the charmed name
of possessions.
The phrase, my servant,
my porter, my clerk, my friend, my child, my
husband or wife, is almost as familiar as the
phrase, my carriage, or my house; and it is
used in much the same absolute spirit.
“I would not take five thousand dollars for
that little protege' of mine,” said a friend
unwittingly to me. Love is full of private
jealousies. It cannot bear that others, not
even that humanity, not even that God, should
have any part in its beloved. It is resentful
that the interests of the race should appropri
ate the thoughts or affections of its darling.
When the dear God takes to his bosom, child
or friend, we complain that he has robbed us |
of what belonged to us as a piece of private
property.
The passion for proprietorship does not
stop with persons. It lays hold on ideas;
hangsits livery on universal truths; sets its
private stamp on the Infinite. How constant
ly we hear of “my” philosophy, “my”
creed, “ my ” system, “ my ” truth ! A man
is supposed to have reached the hight of
spiritual experiences when he can say, “my”
God. The Jews had a notion of God, which
they said was peculiar to themselves—nobody
else had it; nobody else should have it,
unless he joined them, and became a Jew.
It was their monopoly; they had a patent for
it, and jealously guarded their right, for it
secured to them the key to the kingdom.
They took great pains to keep it distinct
from every other idea of God that prevailed
in the world. They would not carry it or send
it anywhere. Whoever wanted it must come
to them and get it. Now one would say that
this niggardliness of theirs proved them unre
ligious; proved that they had no worthy idea
of God at all. No! it gains them the repu
tation of being the most religious nation on
the face of the earth. If, instead of saying
“our” God—the God of the Hebrews—the
God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—they had
said simply, ‘ ‘ God the Infinite and Eternal ”—
“all men’s God”—they would have been
reckoned little better than pagans. If, instead
of saying, “Come to us, all ye people, and we
will give you God, for we alone have him,”
they had said, “In every nation he that feareth and worketh righteousness is accepted, ”
it would have been said that they cared
no more about God than so many heathen.
To say my God—our God—is the special
mark of the saint. To say ‘1 all men’s God ”
is equivalent to saying “no. God.” When a
man can feel that he has secured a personal
or family interest in Deity—when he lias suc
ceeded in elbowing his way through the
vulgar crowd into the Divine Presence, and,
catching his eye, has extorted from him a
promise of future favor, he is said to be con
verted. The man with a new heart has ever
a long list of special providences wrought in
his behalf. It is his privilege to have a God
who singles him out from the rest of mankind,
and makes his private affairs a concern of his.
Only the unsanctified disavow this sort of pro
prietorship in Deity, contend that he rules the
world by general laws—loving no one in par
ticular—and speak of him as the Absolute,
the Infinite, the Eternal.
It follows, naturally enough, that this pri
vate possession is held in very high esteem.
�Monopoly in Religion.
267
My things are better than yours. There is no ity is the only authority conferred by the
o
house that I like so well as my own. There Spirit; my priesthood is the only priesthood
■e
is no horse like my horse. My child is a won that has the true ordination;—when a sect
ider. My friend is peerless. The circle I says: You must shout my shibboleth, or you
belong to is the choice circle. The family will be damned; you must work my organizay
from which I sprung ranks with the very first tion, or you can do nothing; this way of mine
st
for antiquity and honorableness of descent. is the only way; I have the charmed formula;
:.
There is no blood purer than the blood in my these men outside are Infidels; they are doing
y
veins. Aristocrats are we .all, somewhere. harm; their influence is bad; God does not
!.
My town ranks the country—my country is favor people who deny these doctrines which
s
the chosen’ spot of the earth. This little we hold, and neglect those practices which
e
infirmity of private conceit in ordinary life we follow; when a doctor of divinity says in a
e
and in small matters, we pass by with a lecture: “If a man believes the creed, he has
smile; but in graver matters it becomes seri.- a faith ; if he denies it, he has a philosophy,
ous. When Religion thus overworks the per and Anti-Christ is a philosopher ;” it is time to
sonal pronoun—when Religion emphasizes say that the divine grace has not made itself
s
the I, the me, the our, the us—when Religion over to any denomination or party ; that for
i
lets its sunshine and its rain fall upon this seed the matter of need, God needs none of us.
1
of individuality, till from it there shall spring
5
The idea that this little clique of theologia tree whose top touches the heaven—when ans, who cannot even define their own terms,
i
Religion makes this me a mountain whose should pretend to hold so much as a small
3
summit overtops the country round, and ac latch-key to a back door unto the kingdom of
commodates the court of Jupiter and all the use and beauty ! The idea that this church,
ì
Gods—when Religion gives its divine sanc whose history is stained with blood, should
tion to this idea of ownership, and allows a pretend that only she can make men white !
i
man to think that his opinion is the final This, too, in a world which has seen churches
1
truth; that his way of saving men is the only rise and fall like waves, under the blowing of the
7
way by which men can be saved; that his invisible Spirit ! This in a world which has
J
church is the providential institution, outsidej seen systems chase each other across the sky
of which is no salvation—it is time to look; of thought like clouds! This in a world
about and ask what it means. Some fieldsj which has seen vast institutions dry up like
certainly must be rescued from this exorbitant mist in the dawn! This in a world where
;
claim of proprietorship. When the Reformer• mighty results are brought about by trifling
says to his fellow-men, “You who wish to aidI causes, which no man could see a moment in
men to throw off this great burden of abuse, advance, and where the most tremendous
to deliver Jhemselves from this particular■ efforts of organized man have so often failed
oppression, to emancipate themselves from. to accomplish anything! This in a world
this special sin, must come into my party, where a thousand agencies cross and recross
take my oath, adopt my tenets, use my spe one another, doing the perfect will from
cific; we shall count you against us unless moment to moment !
you join our society, and wear our badge;
It is said, I know, that this feeling of private *
for nobody can do this thing but we; wheu ownership is the only guaranty that people
the Temperance reformer, for instance, brings will take an interest in the work they are set
out his pledge of total abstinence, and bids to do. Men care tor their own ; and as their
you sign and circulate it, as the only means own, will work for it, save for it, live and die
of stopping the curse of intemperance, and for it ; while for that which is not their own,
on penalty of being reckoned an enemy of the they will lift no finger and give no dollar.
inebriate if you decline; when he says: All The selfish feeling of proprietorship keeps the
other devices are worse than useless; every world a going; just as water, till it is forced
other doctrine than this of mine is damning; to flow between banks, spreads out into a
every other society than this of mine is a pre marsh, overflows valuable territory, rots the
tense ; it is time to declare that there is work land and the trees, gives play-ground to slimy
so broad and radical that it needs all earnest snakes and frogs, and keeps the country
men to do it. When a church says: In my about well supplied with fevers for grave
communion alone is salvation; my sacraments : yards; so men and women become—we are
are the only genuine sacraments; my author- i told—shallow and stagnant and pestilential,
�268
The Friend of Progress.
till you set them at work for their own pri
vate interest. It is of no use to talk of
humanity and justice and the welfare of the
race. People are kind to themselves and to
those who belong to them, and to no others.
Public buildings may burn, but each individual
takes care that his house does not take fire.
The mother no doubt is very fond and foolish
and tiresome, and kindless, who thinks that
never a sweet babe was born till her darling
came into the world; but unless she did think
so, she would not nurse the baby, and carry
it through all the perils of infancy. Who
would do for another’s child from sentiments
of humanity, for heaven’s sake or for God’s
sake, what she does for her own child, for her
own sake ? The sentiment of ownership is,
we are assured, the main-spring of life. To
turn the wheel of existence, love must be set
running through a sluice-way. The coldhearted man provides bountifully for his own
family; watches jealously over his daughters;
educates carefully his sons; spares no pains
and no cost for health, instruction, culture;
spends his life, in fact, in the effort to train
this little plant of his so that it shall bear
beautiful blossoms and rich fruit—all the
while priding himself supremely on its thrifti
ness and beauty. He is improving his own
property, and increasing his own possessions.
You do not find him doing that, or anything
like it, for those who are not his own; but
he keeps his little garden-plot weeded. The
patriot will fight for his country and her insti
tutions, whatever they may be, and will send
his sons to fight and bleed for them too;
exulting in their glorious death when they go
down into premature graves. There is no
devotion like his. Poets make it the theme
of their song; orators make it the source of
their inspiration; historians use it as the best
material for the holy traditions that bind the
generations of national existence together,
and warm up a people’s heart with grand
memories of valor and sacrifice. The man
without a country—rather the man whose
country is the world—the man who can claim
one country as being his own as much as
another—the man who, instead of being rooted
to a little island, has the freedom of the
globe—whose countrymen are all mankind—
never does anything like this. He will not
fight for a flag; he will not engage in a
national struggle; he will not sing patriotic
songs, or lay down his life that a people may
be tree; because no people is his people, no
songs are his songs, no nation is his nation,
and no flag is his flag. He has nothing spe
cially at stake. His pride is not enlisted;
his self-love is not appealed to; his vanity is
not excited; and so for him all causes are
indifferent; all revolutions alike interesting
or uninteresting; all struggles equally mo
mentous or idle; all flags but silken symbols
of nationalities'in which he has no special
concern; and the convulsions of states are
but so many social movements of which he is
a curious spectator. The largest expense in
the grand patriotic demonstration of February
22 was incurred by the people whp wanted to
display their sign-boards.
The man who cares nothing for the social
ties that link men together, upon whose ear
the words “human brotherhood” come with
an unmeaning sound, who has no conception
of a unity as existing between himself and his
fellow-men, and will consequently do nothing
to promote that unity, may become intensely
interested in his church, because it is his
church—the church of which he is a pillar
and in which he is a proprietor—and in the
act of building up that by enlarging its mem
bership, filling its meetings, augmenting its
sociability, enriching its communion and ves
per services, adorning and beautifying its
sanctuary, he will help make a bond of unity
felt among a number of his fellow-beings; he
may create a limited brotherhood of human
souls, and may build a sheepfold or a home
where the imperiled may find shelter and the
outcast may find rest. All the time it is his
church, his church, that is uppermost in his
thoughts; but it cannot be his church without
being also the church of many human souls
besides himself.
Or take another illustration. There was a
meeting at the Academy in behalf of the sol
diers—called by the officers and friends of the
Christian Commission. There was nothing
remarkable in the published list of speakers,
or in anything else, to attract a crowd. But
the crowd was there—immense, crushing.
Interest rose to the pitch of excitement. The
appeals of the orators roused the audience to
enthusiasm, and when the collection was
taken up, people, instead of following the
usual custom—of searching for a small piece
of currency among the bills—poured out the
entire contents of their purses; nay, took
the rings from their fingers, the chains from
their necks, the bracelets from their arms,
the watches from their pockets, and flung
�Monopoly in Religion.
them promiscuously into the pile of trea
sure.
■What prompted this extraordinary generos
ity ? A feeling of humanity ? Sympathy with
suffering ? A conviction of the soldiers’ needs ?
Why, those needs had been presented to them
hy the Sanitary Commission for four years.
For four years eloquent speakers had been
arguing, exhorting, appeali^, praying for
money for these very soldiers, from these very
people. But they did not touch this sensitive
sectarian sentiment. They did not ventilate
the personal pronoun. They did not say,
“we, we,” but only “they, they.” They did
not forbid those that followed not with them.
‘ ‘ Cast out the devils, ” they said, 1 ‘ and we are
satisfied.” But the devils were not cast out.
Now comes a body that adopts the narrow
sectarian policy, holds out hope of sectarian
aggrandizement, pricks the spirit of sectarian
vanity and conceit, and jealously shouts,
“we, we ”—our denomination—owr church—
and the charity sprouts up like coal oil in
Pennsylvania.
What will not men do for the sake of their
own souls, who will do nothing for the sake
of the bodies and souls of all Christendom 1
Speak to them of justice, of humanity, of the
claims of a common kindred in God, of the
poor man’s need, the sick man’s misery, the
stupid man’s ignorance, the weak man’s vice,
the wicked man’s turpitude and sin, and they
are as immovable as rocks. Frighten them a
little about the safety of their private souls,
and there is no end to their charity. Make
alms-giving a private business, the chief pro
fits whereof are to accrue to themselves—gua
rantee to them a special interest in the kingdom
of heaven—and you rouse them to such effort as
will make a desert blossom. The premium
on private seats in heaven built the Church of
St. Peter.
Seeing all this, people argue that monopoly
in religion is a good thing; that narrowness
in church life is a good thing; that sectarian
ism is a good thing; that every kind of pious
partisanship is a good thing; that the constant
over-working of the personal pronoun “I,”
1 ‘ we, ” ‘ ‘ ours, ” “ us, ” is a good thing. Is it ?
Was that rebuke of John well bestowed ? Is it
well to say to people: Cultivate your exclusive
ness, if it is only in exclusiveness and through
exclusiveness that you will work—insist that no
man shall cast out devils at all unless he will
cast them out in your way—is it well to say
this?
269
•
Remembering who it was that rebuked this
disposition when it first showed itself among
his own disciples, let us consider this point.
Granted that men work more intensely
when they work for their own denomination,
church, party, organization, sect, corporate
interest—granting that the effort to monopo
lize power, authority, privilege, prestige,
to triumph over rivals, to get patronage away
from competitors, is the mainspring of all
intensity of labor—the question still remains:
Is the work done, the work required ? Are
the demons cast out ? Are none but demons
cast out? When the zealous John forbade
the casting out of devils by that outsider,
because he did not join his company, was
he not thinking a little more of his com
pany than he was of the dispossession of the
demons? And was he not more interested
in the gathering in of followers than he was
in the driving out of devils ? And presently,
when Paul came along and proposed to cast
out heathen demons, on another plan, did not
this same John think that the integrity and
compactness and orthodox consistency of the
Jerusalem church would more than compen
sate for the weeding of the Lord’s garden?
Did he not vote that Paul was little better
than a demon himself, because he divided the
company and drew some away ?
The close churchman, the narrow sectary,
the exclusive partisan, becomes so absorbed
in his church, his sect, his party, that he for
gets there are any demons to be cast out.
He may give, work, toil, spend, apparently
for objects outside; but it is always for objects
inside. He bestows only on himself. He
flings the gold away from him with most
impetuous and lavish hand; but flings it in
such a way, that, like the Indian boomerang,
it comes directly back to his own hand.
Partisanship in morals and religion strength
ens nothing but itself. It is very doubtful if
mankind are any better for it. It is true, no
doubt, that, to a certain extent, the poor are
aided, the hungry are fed, the naked are
clothed; but this is done indirectly, inciden
tally, as a means to an end, and in a spirit
that makes the utility of it very questionable;
for with every gift of clothing or money goes
something of the Phariseeism that bestows it.
The Christian Commission will, of course,
render much assistance to the soldiers in camp
and hospital; but with every package of sup
plies will go a package of tracts; every bun
dle of clothing will contain just so many suits
�270
The Friend of Progress.
of sectarian livery; every bottle of medicine
will be folded in wrappers indicating the spir
itual drug-gist it came from, and soliciting
patronage for the firm; every pair of shoes
will suggest to the sore-footed recipient the
strait and narrow way of orthodoxy, by which
alone he can find the kingdom of heaven; and
every blanket, as it is put on, will remind the
shivering man of certain filthy rags of infidel
ity, which must be put off. The temporal
estate of some denomination is the thing to
be improved, after all. The soldiers must
follow after us. I make bold to say, for my
own part, that the good done to the soldiers is
slight, as compared with the evil done to the
cause of religion. It would be better, in my
judgment, every way, that the soldiers should
have nothing beyond what the government
can furnish them with, than that this enor
mous vice of sectarianism should grow. It
were better that the demon of cold and hun
ger and pain should not be expelled, than
that the far more terrible demon of religious
partisanship should take possession. If we
could break down the principle of monopoly
in faith, we could richly afford to let the world
take its chance with its physical and social
ills.
It will have to take its chance with these at
any rate. What does the costly religion of
New York, supported by these most munifi
cent sectarians, do toward diminishing the
burden of excessive taxation, lessening the
fearful rate of mortality among the poorer
classes of citizens, stopping the gaping sources
of disease that belch out streams of poisoned
air in every foul street, providing that the
children should be saved from the wholesale
murder to which they are exposed through
the neglect of Street Commissioners, or saving
the poor from the outrageous and merciless
spoliations of their rulers ? We New Yorkers
live daily on the very brink of destruction.
All the demons are let loose upon us: foul
odors, dirt, putrefaction, the elements of every
conceivable disease, beggary, thievery, vice
in every variety; and the Citizen’s Associa
tion cannot find ten good men to undertake
its gigantic sanitary work. The organiza
tions that represent the law and will of God
are busy filling their quotas for the ranks of
saints in the world to come.
A sure way, perhaps, of effecting the sani
tary reform of the city, would be to fire some
body of sectaries with the idea that it would
redound greatly to its religious reputation
and its denominational power, to redeem the
city from its filth. Let there be a rivalry
started among the churches as to which should,
glean the richest harvest of converts from the
poor who were saved from pestilence and the
rich who were saved from pillage—let some
“ Christian Association ” be induced to under
take the work of cleaning our augean stables
for the “lovt^of souls,” and in a very few
weeks our city would rival Paris in the exqui
site cleanliness of its streets, the complete
ness of its sewerage, the admirable ventilation
of its dwellings, the absolute abatement of all
its nuisances, and the beauty of its municipal
appointments. The demons of the earth
would be expelled, but in their place we should
have demons of the air; an atmosphere filled
with controversial and theological dust; heaps
of evangelical tracts; a police watch set at
the avenues of thought. When the unclean
spirit had gone out, into the swept and gar
nished city would come seven other spirits
more wicked than he, and the last state of
that man might be worse than the first.
For this disposition, illustrated by John,
conjures up more d mons than it lays. Nay,
it leaves the real demons in full possession,
and goes to work to expel as demons what
there is ground for believing are no demons
at all, but the saving spirits of the earth.
The test of any faith is that it casts out
demons; but the people who say that none
but they have authority or power to cast out
demons, simply assail as demons all who try
to cast out demons in a different way from
theirs. Every sect is demonic in the eyes of
every other sect. The list of the arch-fiends
whom Christendom has tried to cast out is
rather remarkable. St. Paul heads it. At
long intervals follow Huss, Jerome, Savona
rola, Luther, Servetus, Latimer, Ridley, Chan
ning, Parker—all men who fought real devils
to some purpose. Church does its best to
exorcise church, denomination to dispossess
denomination, party to put party under the
ban; while ignorance, want, suffering, sor
row, limitation, imbecility, sit moping and
gibbering on the hearts of human kind.
The Pope of Rome, in whose holy city
800,000 francs are annually spent in masses,
while 214,000 suffice for public instruction,
issues his manifesto, in which he pronounces
accurst and summons the faithful to expel
some half hundred or more of spirits which
we in America are accustomed to consider
the very guardian angels of our social estate.
�Monopoly in Religion.
But you will find that the different parties in
Christendom have their devils too, in whose
expulsion they are as much interested as he
is in his; and of those devils he is reckoned
the chief.
The test of a faith is its power to cast out
demons. But who shall tell us what the
demons are? It is very easy to say, Cast
out devils; but thus far it has resulted in
Christians trying to cast out one another, and
letting the devils remain in possession.
Who shall tell us what the devils are? 0
friends! we cannot know what they are, till
we are delivered from the prince of them,
which is the spirit of Phariseeism, and exclu
siveness, and monopoly. We canno’t know
what they are, until we come out of our sec
tarian corners and ecclesiastical closets,
where we have been so long barricaded, and
standing in the open plains of humanity, ask
ourselves what it is that injures Man; what
'Curses society at large; what depraves and
eradicates human nature; not what weakens
our party, shakes our organization, enfeebles
the influence of our church. When we can
forget the personal pronoun entirely—forget
that we have an establishment to build up—
forget that we have a denomination to sustain
—forget that we have a church to fill—forget
that we have a private spiritual interest to
serve—forget that we have a system to defend
and promulgate—and only remember* that
God has a truth to serve—then, and not till
then, shall we know what the demons are
that we are called to cast out. Then we may
discover, possibly, that the first demon is the
spirit which we have been all along cherishing
as angel: the hunger for personal or partisan
appropriation—the rage for spoils in the
heavenly kingdom. The faith that makes
men large and liberal—call itself what it may
—is the true faith. The faith that delivers men
from their limitations, stirs them from their
stupor, makes them ashamed of their igno
rance, puts down unwarranted authority,
expels from their bosoms the fear of God,
exorcises the spirit of distrust and timidity,
of doubt respecting themselves and the world
they live in—the faith that gives them confi
dence in their power to find the truth, and in
the power of natural and providential agencies
to get them out of their misery—no matter
what ugly name it may happen to bear—is
good faith. Call it orthodoxy, heterodoxy,
heresy, infidelity, secularism, pantheism, or
whatever else is most obnoxious in title—if it
271
casts out the demons of ignorance, lethargy,
stupor, blindness, and servility of mind—if it
expels the spirit of tame acquiescence and
dumb submission to want and misery—if it
drives out cowardice and credulity and super
stition—if it is a spirit of liberation, it is good.
It may not be for our church—it cannot be
against our influence.
Jesus said bitterly one day: “A man’s foes
are they of his own household.” Indeed they
are. The foes of a man are they that bar his
way out into generous relations with his fellow
creatures and his God—bosom foes all—
demons of the threshold: domestic luxury,
personal exclusiveness, family pride, social
contempt, sectarian zeal, church foppery.
God help us to put these things away. God
help us to love truth more than opinion,
society more than sect, the community more
than the church, him more than ourselves.
Then we shall find ourselves in possession of
the charm that casts out every demon.
When will men understand that they are
powerful only when they serve the truth—that
they must always be weak when they patronize
it ? When will men understand that they gain
nothing by appropriating ideas to themselves,
and insisting on their monopoly being re
spected? Just as all our back yards—now so
dark and moldy and grassless and forlorn—
would each and all be green and blooming if
we would pull down the high fences that shut
out light and air, and in place of them put up
open inclosures of iron-work, through which
the breeze would circulate—so each one of
our opinions and credences would gain in
vitality if the sectarian barricade were removed
and the common air of heavenly truth allowed
to sweep over and freshen the whole. In God
we cannot lose ourselves—we always find our
selves. We lose ourselves out o’f him. The
universal never drowns us—it saves us from
drowning. The very largest charity, while it
seems likely to let the man ran out and be
drained off, serves to let the great spirit run
in and fill him up frill. Do you lose your
breath when you open your windows to the
air of heaven ?
Every great example takes hold of us with
the authority of a miracle, and says to us,
If ye had but faith, ye should also be able to
do the things which I do.—Jacobi.
It is impossble to be a hero in anything,
unless one is first a hero in faith.—id.
�272
The Friend of Progress.
The Friend of Progress.
C. M. Plumb & Co., Publishers.
NEW YORK, JULY, 1865.
Mr. Towne’s Survey of Mr. Beecher’s Beliefs
and Opinions will be resumed in our next
number, and probably be completed in the
number following. The contribution for this
month is unavoidably delayed.
The Psychometrical Delineation of the
Character of Abraham Lincoln, to be found
upon another page, is published not so much
for the purpose of adding another to the
many individual opinions of our late Presi
dent, as for the sake of the peculiar method
of the examination, and its striking harmony
with the character revealed to the nation in
the career of Mr. Lincoln, since 1861, when
the examination was made and first pub
lished.
The Truth in Error.
That the human mind is naturally truthful,
is no less evident from the efforts of liars than
from the credulity of the honest. Were we as
enamored of the face of falsehood as of that
of truth, the task of the hypocrite would be
needless, as a lie might flaunt its own colors
without disparagement. Counterfeits are only
profitable where a sound currency is their
basis.
We ought then to expect a show of truth in
all the professions of men, and where a doc
trine has been passed down from age to age,
till it has become the spiritual and mental life
of thousands, we should look for a reality of
truth, as well as the specious appearance of
it in that life-creed. Where men are persist
ent in their exercise of gnawing theological
husks, it is safe to conclude that some kernel
enlivens their dry fodder, or that they have
power to assimilate even husks, and derive
from them a little spiritual nutriment.
Often we have only to translate the idea
from the cant of the conventicle into the lan
guage of common sense, to get a very appre
ciable fact out of a very abominable dogma.
A kernel of good sense may be wrapped up
for a thousand years in the unsavory mummy
foldings of a creed, and yet retain vitality
enough to germinate under the free air and
sunshine, in the natural soil of unsanctified’
thought. Thus the doctrine of total depravity,
the existence of which in the mind of any
sane man is the nearest approach to its de
monstration that so gross a doctrine is capable
of, has in its loathsome wrappings a little
mummy wheat which does not refuse to vege
tate when carefully separated from its dismal
surroundings, and nursed by a purely human
philosophy. The venerable Assembly of
Westminster Divines put forth the conclusion,
pithily summed up in that juvenile distich:
•
“In Adam’s fall
We sinned all,”
and backed it up by certain hideous commen
taries and consequences, in which their disci
ples discovered that hell, already well “paved
with good intentions,” was paved anew
“with infantsnot a span long,” McAdmalzed
with these little offshoots of Adam’s depravity!
Now just as this double outrage upon God
and Man is getting to smell too decidedly of
the very ancient sarcophagus from which it
was exhumed, while the very divines are
making a bonfire of the bituminous rags and
dusty hide of the old mummy, a vital fact
drops out of the old cerements, and takes
root in the mind—the fact that certain tenden
cies are hereditary, that men do partake, not
of the flaws only, but of the virtues and talents
ot their ancestors.
Some time since men learned, on the purely
animal plane of philosophy, that horses,
cows, and sheep owe much to parentage; and
vast sums of money and no little care have
been bestowed on the physical perfection of
the lower races, with very marked advantages.
Of course it would be very distasteful to apply
the principles of good sense to the perfection
of the animal man, for a tender regard to>
delicacy and propriety seem to require that
man-culture should be suffered to go on at
haphazard, in transgression of all laws that
happen to lie across the path of a blind pas
sion, or a dazzled fancy, and let God take
care of the cripples and monsters that are
bred of such folly. But with all deference to
the squeamishness of the very delicate, it may
be suggested that a better “improvement”
might have been drawn from the venerable'
text of transmitted depravity.
The one grand fact long buried in the mon
strous creed, has not yet been sown widely
enough to effect the race; nor will it, till men
learn to pluck the pearl of truth out bf the
�Education.
muck-heap, instead of scratching there for
worms, like the foolish cock in the fable. If
the good God would speak to us audibly, as he
does in every fact of his providence, or in
other words, if we would listen to the true
teachings of Nature, our human homes would
cease to be mere nurseries of blights and
abortions, and our youth no longer marrying
the sons and daughters of Cain, instead of
those of Enos, men and women would be so
well bom the first time, they would not need
to be born again.
B.
Education.
Every child must receive an education, and
that education must consist of a double train
ing—a training of the mind and a training of
the body to invigorate the mind.
Moreover, education must be of such a na
ture that, first, every child shall learn to
think for itself, independently of master and
authority; second, it shall be furnished with
a knowledge of things rather than words; and
third, the mode of teaching shall be such, and
the nature of the things taught of such a real,
practical character, that the moral and reli
gious instincts shall receive at every instant
increase of strength and gratification.
1. To teach a child unselfishness and con
sideration for others, the teacher must begin
by setting an example of unselfishness in not
forcing upon the pupil his own opinions, com
ments, or interpretations, or that of any
authority, however much venerated of old,
when those opinions do not at once coincide
with the receptive mind. No matter how
quaint, crooked, irreligious or dreadful, the
objections of the child to old traditions, socalled beliefs, and fables, may be, a respect
for the mind working within, and common
sense, should teach us not violently to enforce
our ideas upon it. That violence, even if it
were in favor of the most evident truth, de
moralizes the child, and renders it incapable,
in general, of arriving by its own original ef
forts at the truth thus forced upon it. It will
learn to hate the truth, and the creature thus
trained will only become as a man, a hypo
crite, a mocker in his heart, and a constitu
tional liar.
As religion is the embodiment of truth
itself, the enforcement of what is to the mind
an untruth, a fable, a contradiction, an im
piety—however lovely and divine your own
thought and long habit may have made it—is
273
the first corroding agent, the world’s ignorant
and selfish want of consideration for others,
imposes on the child. The mind ready and
fresh for truth receives in this way its first
degradation. The ignorant ask for submis
sion merely; instead of seeking to give that
Light, which must be free to be true.
In the old time, history was an exaggera
tion; religion, fairy tales; literature, in
ventions; poetry, extravagance; science and
medicine, quackery; law, the whim and bru
tality of the judge. Through this Slough of
Despond the human mind had to march. From
infancy to old age, violence was done to it; so
that the child was almost invariably a preco
cious enemy of every truth and of every good
impulse—an embodiment of hypocrisy of con
duct, violence in action, and submission to
authority from abject fear. The physiogno
mist traces still on the countenances of almost
all, that inexpressible want of manly expres
sion, which, like the word Mystery on the
forehead of the Beast, has been written on
the face by this chaos of contradictions, su
perstitions, and violations of the moral right
to free thought.
To systematically destroy the originality of
the pupil’s mind, is the wanton act of the
barbarous and unintelligent teacher. The
selfish man is unwilling that the scholar
should deviate from the methods and ideas
which have dwarfed himself. He strives,
therefore, to maintain his own authority, and
uses the authority of the ignorant past as a
means to this end.
Take the artist’s studio as an example. An
exaggerated veneration is created for the
Michael Angelos and Raphaels of art. This ven
eration is due not merely to the actual talents
of those artists, but more to the fact of the in
cessant repetition of the same praises—praises
given and yielded to by the worshipers
without a thought of investigating the sub
ject for themselves. The teacher insists, and
denounces any doubt or question with indig
nation ! Had the pupil been allowed to ex
amine and criticise for himself, hewoukl have
discovered in all authorities defects and in
feriorities. But under the influence of master
and the jeers of his fellow-students, the
youthful aspirant gives his whole soul to the
adoration of the mannerisms and faults of the
artist-saints, and losing by degrees bis own
natural originality, becomes a mere imitator
or painter-ape.
We want to study the works of others by an
�274
The Friend of Progress.
incessant examination or criticism of them—
thus using them as a stepping-stone, and not
a stumbling-block, to our own improvement
and progress.
2. Things are better than words. When
we know wliat a thing is, then the words of
the book are full of meaning and information
as to its nature, its habits, its history, &c., &c.
What is h-o-m-e as letters put together as a
word, to a child, which has had no means of
associating the sound of the word or the
combination of the letters, with the family
circle and living-place ? What is g-l-a-s-s, as a
combination of letters to form a word without
a view of the object? When transparent?
when opaque ? How brittle ? Can it compre
hend ? Does it know how it is made ? Then
bring the materials, and make it, so that as
this and other objects are presented in their
reality and demonstrated in their various
combinations, the child may insensibly learn
the elements of chemistry and other sciences
and arts.
There are a thousand facts of creation
which children ought to know before they are
out of childhood, which most men know
nothing about, so wretched is our training.
The child-mind is an inexhaustible source
of curiosity, and every fact which it re
ceives becomes so completely a part ol
itself, that the future man is the work
ing product of this constructed mental ma
chine. It will know—it puts endless ques
tions—it asks the meaning of every word it
sees or hears, and wants to see and handle
and manipulate every (to it; unknown ob
ject—to search out its cause—to investigate
its character and nature—ascertain and apply
its uses. Education, then, must be a mass of
mentally digested things and facts, about
which there can be no mystification—no de
ception—no lie.
When the things are known and the facts
are ascertained, words are easily found for
every species of demonstration. That is an
art of itself—the word art—but secondary, not
as heretofore, the first point of education.
The pressure of word-teaching upon the
brain has been such that millions of educated
children have had nearly all incipient talent
crushed out of them. Mere book-learning,
stale, dry, and unprofitable word-gabble, has
been the vampire of our school-system. While
things seen and felt leave an indelible impress,
the vague word-description of the unseen and
unknown thing leaves confusion and suggests
absurdities. The unhealthy, crazy conceits,
attachments to old errors, credulity about
what is clearly false, and blindness to the
practical evidences of the senses, is one form
of word-education. The mind dwells and
lingers in an evil-disposed chaos ol contra
dictory, artificial, and arbitrary thoughts.
3. A perfect disorder of intellect is the
growth of our chaotic system of education.
It is the intellectual man that is generally the
most prejudiced and the most blind to simple
and positive truths and facts. And as all he
has learnt has been forced upon him under
the influence of flattery—the teacher of the
false instinctively knows the repulsiveness
of the absurdities he is impressing, and so
uses evil’s last resource—he, (the intellectual
victim,) under the belief thus adroitly imposed
upon him, hates what is new, rejects discovepies and denies facts, because they open up to
him the falsities of his labors and credulities,
and shock his selfishness by threatening to
diminish the profits of the business or pro
fession to which he has been ignorantly har
nessed.
The struggle of the intellect of the nineteenth
century is to get rid of that intellectual blind
ness, which has stayed the progress of mind
in all past times. A blindness which is the
fruit of the imposture of words and phrases—of
their incomplete, uncomprehended, miscon
strued meaning—of their wrongly interpreted,
translated, and misprinted passages—of num
berless interpolations, pious frauds, and rav
ings of iusane persons, passing among the
vulgar of the time for holy men and women—
of excessive admiration for certain authors and
authorities—[Shakespeare for example, the
most obscure passages in which, arising
probably from errors of the printer, are
oftenest admired]—of rapt enthusiasm for
legal quibbles, medical quackeries, pious
fables, and scientific absurdities. These stum
bling-blocks to truth, men are now struggling
to remove; but it cannot be thoroughly done,
except by a change of our system of educa
tion from the too exclusive study of words, to
a more thorough study of things, beginning
at the earliest age.
When we reflect that the greatest intellects
of the past have, with few exceptions, been
dupes of the most irrational superstitions
and scientific falsities, and that great and
simple truths almost invariably have come
from men who had no classical or scientific
education, and add to these facts our own
�experience that simple and positive truths are
almost always accepted and comprehended
intuitively by simple-minded persons and the
young, we shall at once see with what care
and suspicion we should receive the “wis
dom” of the past.
Self-made men—intellectually speaking—
are generally modest in proportion to the
greatness and earnestness of the truth that is
in them. College-made men are almost inva
riably conceited, even, when they have some
intellectual ability. This fault arises from the
mode of teaching. Instead of the “moral and
religious instincts receiving at every instant
increase of strength and gratification, ” their
literary education is held upto them constantly
as a subject of pride in contradistinction to the
ignorance of the people; and this pride runs
through all the professions, with this addition
to the religious, that it is inculcated in all
persons, high and low, rich and poor—by the
sects as one against the other—and is thus
made the great backbone of all the falsities,
as it is of all the vices and crimes of society.
Hence a simple truth, spoken at the be
ginning of the first century, was just as repul
sive to the educated man of that day, as it is
now in the nineteenth century. It was to
the simple and ignorant in a literary point
of view, that the truth was addressed, in de
spair of convincing the irrational acuteness
of the pocket-interested of the age. This ir
rational acuteness pretends to demonstrate
logically the truth of fables that are scientific
absurdities ; and is just a part of that system
of unreasoning to sustain falsehoods, super
stitions, and interested fictions, which have so
long characterized the schools.
To moralize education, then, we must
make it general, and direct it out of the mire
of mere word-study, into that of the demon
stration of the realities and wonders of the
creation. The pride of sect—that curse and
degradation of humanity for the support of
idlers—must be broken up ; and that can only
be by making truth free to all—for the truth
shall make all free.
From the earliest infancy the child is
dragged to the Sunday-school to learn words
of self-esteem and mystification ; and to the
church to hear these commented and dogma
tized upon and sustained, as proved, by quo
tations, questionable extracts, and fabled
sayings and doings of beings who have or
have not existed. All is in the vague. He is
told every day, every hour, that his sect is
better than others—consequently that he—
however ignorant, or unworthy—is better
than others! This great crime is the begin
ning of his degradation as a man—he is
practically lowered to the grade of the ani
mal, the criminal—and his actions towards
his brethren subsequently, show by their vio
lence of word and deed the effect of the
training.
But when you take the child, and putting
aside the love of slander and hatred incul
cated by the old system, simply teach him the
great truths found in the wonders of God’s
creation, there is no room for selfish feelings,
but ample space for admiration, and enthusi
asm, and love of the Creator and all that he
has made. The children of the common Fa
ther learn instinctively that all are brothers.
The intellect develops without effort, and the
moral feelings are kept in healthy activity.
The mind exclusively occupied in acquiring
new scientific facts, finds no time for mere
lancies, theories and superstitions. It builds
not on sand, but on rock. Fairy tales, novels,
fables, and barefaced assertions will lose
their influence—compromises with evils, with
injustice in the guise of law, with quackery in
the guise of medicine, with superstition in the
guise of religion, with assertions in the guise
of science, will end. And with the progress
of a purified intellect may we expect a more
correct appreciation of the laws which should
govern society, and such an application of
them as will obliterate in time those social
evils which have so iong disgraced humanitvA."
BY CORA L. V. H ATC H .
Youngest, rarest household treasure;
Source of constant care and pleasure;
Bud of promise; gem of beauty;
Idol of home’s love and duty—
Babe Mabel!
Eyes as blue as mirrored ether;
Earth and heaven blent together;
Roses, girt with lily’s blossom,
Paling upon neck and bosom—
Fair Mabel!
Form of shape and mold most, human,
Fittest for a future woman;
Sweet caprices; frowning, smiling,
Baby anger; now beguiling—
Sweet Mabel!
Eager face and lips upturning;
Proffered kisses often spurning;
Giving love when none are wooing;
Busy ever with undoing—
Witch Mabel I
Body poised, its balance trying;
Arms outstretched, like wings, for flying;
Little feet, uncertain, straying,
Life’s first journey just essaying—
Brave Mabel!
Longer journeys are before thee;
May as loving ones bend o’er thee;
And, when sterner tasks are calling,
May Heaven’s arms shield thee from falling,.
Bear Mabel!
�The Triend of Progress.
^Relations of the Indians and the
General Government.
BY CAPTAIN R. J. HINTON, U. S. C. T.
The last Congress took steps towards a
thorough investigation of the present position
and relation of the Indians to the General
Government, by the appointment of a Con
gressional Commission to visit the tribes, and
make such investigations as the subject de
manded. It also considered, though it did
not pass, a bill securing a territorial civil or
ganization for the Indian territory, south of
Kansas. Senator Doolittle, of Wisconsin, one
of the ablest and most humane members of
the U. S. Senate, is at the head of the Investi
gating Commission, and this with the presence
of the Hon. James Harlan, of Iowa, in the
Secretaryship of the Interior, are evidences
that a wiser and more equitable adjustment of
the status of the American Indian is about to
take place.
When it shall be generally known that
during the progress of the great rebellion, we
have maintained an army against Indians,
larger than the entire regular army was be
fore the rebellion; when we remember that we
have had two outbreaks of a most disastrous
character; that of Minnesota in 1862, and
that on the overland and Santa Fe Mail
Roads and the settlements contiguous thereto,
with the murder of several hundred unpro
tected settlers, the interruption of our interoceanic lines of travel, and the robbery and
destruction of at least five millions dollars of
goods and stock, it will be granted that the
necessity for a thorough overhauling of our
Indian policy is most imperative. We have
maintained and now have in the field about
fifteen thousand men altogether, employed in
looking after the Indians. General Dodge,
commanding in Kansas, has two expeditions
in the field, and with the troops guarding the
great routes, must have at least six thousand
men in this service. General Curtis, com
manding the North-West Department, has
about five thousand, half of whom are in the
field, the remainder holding the frontier
posts, and forts on the upper Missouri. Gen.
Conner has at least a brigade in Utah, mainly
employed in checking Indian depredations.
The Department of the Pacific has considera
ble expeditions in the Humboldt region, in
Washington, and a large force in Arizona.
At no time in the history of the Govern
ment has the necessity been so apparent, of
devising some plan of dealing with the Abo
riginal tribes under our control, alike humane
towards them, just to our own citizens, and
comprehensive enough to meet the expansion
and true growth of the country. The rebellion
has broken many idols. It has made the
nation conquer its prejudices. War is the
sternest of logicians. The premises once ac
cepted, its conclusions cannot be contro
verted. One lesson it practically enforces,
and that is the duty which devolves upon
power, to aid the weak and defend the op
pressed. The present struggle affords mani
fold occasions to the statesman to lay broad
the foundations of equitable administration.
It compels our executive and legislative in
cumbents to recognize that America means
Man, not Caste, and that Democracy repre
sents the race, and not condition.
In this spirit we would deal with the
question under discussion. The public mind,
even yet in these days of crowding events,
retains the terrible recollections of the Minnesota massacres. On the other hand, while
we remember with loathing the race that
committed such deeds, we also have brought
to us, as a companion, yet diverse picture, the
story of the endurances, suffering, valor and
sacrifices—deeds done in behalf of the Union
by loyal Indians, on our south-western
frontier.
The amazing discoveries of the precious
metals in our continental mountain-ranges,
and consequent rapid development in popu
lation and wealth of the territories newly
formed there, demand also the adoption of a
just and comprehensive policy for the present
and prospective government of the Indian
tribes, who roam the Sierras Madre and Ne
vada and their connecting mountain chains.
Whatever policy is proposed, or whatever
measures be adopted, there should be a care
ful avoidance on the one hand of the senti
mentalism which has often characterized
discussions of this subject, and on the other,
of the crushing-out spirit of the practical
West. The romance which attaches itself in
the minds of many with relation to the In
dian character, fades rapidly into a very
sensible disgust, wherever we are brought
into contact with the tribes scattered through
out oui’ broad domain. This disgust is hightened most sensibly by the fact, that in the
new States and- Territories, Indian Reserva
tions are the choicest lands as to situation
�Relations of the Indians and the General Government.
and quality. This excites the white settler’s
cupidity and consequent animosity. The fact
may be cause for regret; but it is true.
Human nature is imperfect, and must be
dealt with as such. It cannot be questioned
that the policy of treating with the tribes as
dependent nationalities, is a mistaken one.
They have none of the elements—are within
the limits of the Union, and under its authori
ty. The land belongs by the highest law to
those who subdue it to the uses of civiliza
tion. It cannot be surrendered to or con
trolled by an idle race, marked by a savage
individuality which renders it difficult for
them to devote themselves to industrial pur
poses. Indeed, though the theory has been
that the original ownership of the land lies in
the Aboriginal tribes, and treaties are con
tinually made with them, yet the fact is that
the Government has always compelled the
removal of the Indians, when the necessities of
advancing settlements required them for the
use of the husbandman.
The entire system now pursued by the
Government toward the Indian, is wrong,
both to them and the white citizens. The
placing of the various tribes on reservations
scattered wide apart throughout our Western
States, is calculated only to increase the num
ber of well-paid officials, and to deteriorate,
debauch, and ultimately to exterminate by
drunkenness and disease, the tribes so located.
The policy of appointing tribal agents tends
only to enrich a large number of politicians
and hangers-on, whom the various Senators
and Representatives take this method of pen
sioning upon the national treasury in consid
eration of party or personal services. We
assert from an extended knowledge of the
class of men appointed to fill the various In
dian Agencies, Superintendencies, etc., that
considerations of fitness—such as knowledge
of the Indian character, a desire to benefit
them, acquaintance with agriculture or other
arts of civilization, are among the very last
things that seem to have entered the minds
of the appointing power. The Indian Bureau,
as at present managed, is necessarily but a
huge machine for enriching a lot of offi
cials, who desire to make the most of the four
years’ lease of power. The only other effect
of the existing agencies is to persistently de
stroy the confidence of the Indians in the
Government, to render our frontiers liable to
such scenes as have occurred in Minnesota
and upon the overland-routes, whenever the
HI
embarrassments of the nation or the despera
tion of the savages may afford an opportunity
or pretext, and to continually embitter the
pioneer population of the West against the
unfortunate red men.
The other and collateral portion of the
present policy, is the payment to Indian tribes
of large sums of money in the form of annui
ties—these payments being with the permit
ting of authorized traders among the different
tribes, who generally manage, with the pe
culiar faculty which belongs to all connected
with the Indians, to enrich themselves at the
expense of their customers. By arrangements
made with agents, the Indians are permitted
to run into debt at the stores, and when the
payments are made by the Government, but a
small portion of the annuities reach the pock
ets ofthose for whom they are intended. Ex
amination of the accounts of a trader to any
tribe will disclose how enormous are the
profits of the traffic, and how large a portion
thereof is for articles which are of no practi
cal benefit. Paint, beads, paltry and gaudy
articles of dress, constitute the largest items
in the bills incurred by the Indians at their
trading-posts. The fiction is that agents
have nothing to do with traders. The truth,
however, is that they obtain a large percent
age of these profits. It can be readily seen
how such temptations tend to illegitimate ar
rangements. On this subject we find the fol
lowing well-considered suggestions of Judge
Usher, in a late report. They deserve con
sideration and contain the germ of the true
Indian policy which should be pursued by the
National Government: “lam iully convinced
that many serious difficulties grow out of the
practice of permitting traders to sell goods
and other property to the Indians on credit.
The profits which are made by the traders,
might be used for the Indians. It seems to
me expedient for Congress to provide by law,
for the purchase of such goods, agricultural
implements, stock, and such other articles as
the Indians need, to be paid for from the
sums provided by treaties to be paid to the
Indians. These should be placed in charge
of a store-keeper under the control of the
agent, and should be delivered to the Indians
as their necessities may require, charging
them only the cost and transportation. All
contracts with them should be prohibited, and
all promises or obligations made by them be
declared void. A radical change in the mode
of treatment of the Indians, should, in my
�The Friend of Progress.
judgment, be adopted. Instead of being
treated as independent nations, they should
be regarded as wards of the Government, en
titled to its fostering care and protection.
Suitable districts of country should be assign
ed to them for their homes, and the Govern
ment should supply them, through its own
agents, with such articles as they use, until
they can be instructed to earn their subsist
ence by their labor.”
Mr. Usher has struck the key-note of the
whole question, in the expression that the
Indians should be regarded “as wards of the
Government, entitled to its fostering care and
protection.” The same principle has forced
itself upon our attention in the necessities at
tending the condition of the freed people of
the South. It grows out of the demands of
a Christian civilization which compels a re
cognition of the duty incumbent upon power,
wealth, culture, to protect the weak and lift
up the ignorant to higher planes of progress.
Neither the Negro or the Indian can develop
in isolation. Both are eminently gregarious,
though differing widely in the manifestations
thereof. Hence the futility of endeavoring to
save and elevate the Indians by the present
system, apart from just objections to it, found
ed on the opportunities for plunder on the
part of those connected with them. The
most feasible and practicable plan for the
protection and advancement of both Indians
and whites, seems to be found in the Territo
rial system hinted at by Secretary Usher,
more elaborately stated by Senator Pomeroy,
of Kansas, in a paper laid before the Indian
Bureau, and published in Mr. Commissioner
Dole’s report for 1862, which plan has been
broached to the loyal Indians of the Territory
west of Arkansas. This plan had reference
mainly to the semi-civilized tribes living on
reservations in the State of Kansas, and con
templated their removal to the Territory oc
cupied by the Cherokees, Choctaws, Creeks,
Chickasaws, and Seminóles. We propose to
elaborate this same plan and show its appli
cation to a settlement of the entire question
under discussion.
To do this properly, some statements should
be given as to the numbers, condition, pro
gress, locations of the Indian tribes within the
United States. From the preliminary report
of the Eighth Census, we copy the following
table of the Indian population, retaining their
tribal character and not enumerated in the
Census:
West of Arkansas,.. G5,680
California,............... 13,540
Georgia,....................... 377
Indiana,...................... 384
Kansas...................... 8,189
Michigan,................. 7,777
Minnesota............... 17,900
Mississippi,................ 900
New York,................ 3,785
North Carolina......... 1,499
I Oregon,..................... 7,000
Tennessee,................ 181
Wisconsin,................ 2,833
Colorado Ter.,......... 6,000
Dacotah Ter.,......... 39.664
Nebraska Ter.,......... 3,072
N evada Ter............... 7,550
New Mexico Ter., . .55,100
Utah Ter.,.............. 20,000
Washington Ter.,.. 31,000
I
i
I
I
294,431
Governor Evans, of Colorado, states in his
first Report to the Indian Bureau, that the
Utahs, Kiowas, and Comanches number
10,000, and range in the western part of that
Territory. Large bands of the Kiowas and
Comanches roam through portions of Colora
do, New Mexico, and the Indian Territory.
All of these tribes are wild and warlike.
Since the spring of 1864 they have been in
constant hostility. The long continued inter
ruption of the Overland Mail and Telegraph,
with robberies and murders committed upon
the frontier settlements of Kansas, Nebraska,
and Colorado, during the last ten months,
point conclusively to the necessity of com
ing to some permanent, just understanding
with these tribes, and all similar ones; or, if
that be not possible, then to a war so com
plete, thorough, and energetic as shall once
for all break down and destroy the warlike
marauds of the plains. We are also urged to
the adoption of a correct policy towards
tribes that have not yet made treaties, by the
rapid growth of our empire in the direction of
their haunts, and consequent necessity of
providing equitably for their wants. In addi
tion to those enumerated in the foregoing
table, tribes which bear relation to the Gen
eral Government of a more or less distinct
character, there are probably not less than
one hundred and fifty thousand belonging to
tribes which have not yet acknowledged our
rule while living within our Territory, and who
are more or less in hostility to our people.
We believe that we under- rather than over
estimate the number.
A glance at the map, and at the location
of the principal bodies of Indians, will readily
show that any territorial system which will
cover the whole case, must involve at least
the location of four districts, of suitable extent
and character to support the entire Indian
population within the territorial area of the
Union. The most prominent, because, from
the circumstances attending its past and
present history, the most accessible and suita
ble, is the region known as the Indian Terri
tory, bounded on the North by Kansas, South.
�delations of the Indians and the General Government.
279
by Texas, East by Arkansas and a small strip the Federal authority in Florida, Hal-us-tus■of South-West Missouri, and West by New tenug-gee, was the leader of his people in the
Mexico. It contains an area of 74,127 square battles they fought in common with Creeks
miles, or 47,441,480 acres, being in length and Cherokees, against their rebel brethren
east and west, 320, and breadth, North and in November and December, 1861, and since
South, 220 miles. It has a delightful climate as members of the Indian Brigade of the
in the same zone as Mississippi, Alabama, Army of the Frontier, under Major General
and the Carolinas, producing in abundance Blunt. Captain Billy Bowlegs is in command
the cereals of the temperate and the products of the Seminole company, in the Federal
of semi-tropical States, and having a virgin service. He is a nephew of the chief who
soil of inexhaustible fertility, it offers a tempt resisted so long in Florida. They number
ing field to the labor of the emigrant. The 2,226 persons. The Choctaws are disloyal,
eastern portion is well watered, and wooded being intensely pro-slavery. They numbered
by the Arkansas, Canadian, and Red River, 18,000, and owned 2,297 slaves. They are
and such streams as the Neosho, Grand, well educated, and supported, before the war,
Illinoise, Elk, Verdigris, Spring, and other the largest number of schools. The Chickaminor water-courses. The whole country is saws form part of the Choctaw Nation. They
admirably adapted to the raising of stock. number 5,000.
This is true of the western portion, the vast
The rebellion has materially changed this.
prairies of which will afford a congenial occu Slavery is dead among these tribes, and this
pation for the Indian, in the care of the herds removes one obstacle to an equitable re
and flocks which will one day cover the buf adjustment. They numbered 60,000 of the
falo range.
65,000 Indians living in this Territory. The
The fact of the settlement of the eastern negroes, slaves and free, 7,773, and the
portion of this territory by the well civilized whites 1,988. This, according to the census
tribes that now inhabit it, and the necessity of 1860. The mortality has been terrible
for new treaties with them, owing to the since. The casualties of war, and the rava
changes produced by the rebellion, points to ges of famine and disease, must have reduced
this territory as the mostiavorable district for them at least 20,000. The present population
may, therefore, be set down as about 55,000,
liberally carrying out a new policy.
The five principal tribes, Cherokees, Creeks. all told, including those in the Federal and
Choctaws, Chickaaaws, and Seminoles, were, Rebel service.
at the commencement of the war, among the
In this Territory we propose that the Gov
wealthiest communities in the continent. ernment shall offer homes to all of the semi
They were large farmers, slave-owners, and civilized tribes of Kansas, Southern Nebraska,
stock-raisers. The Cherokees were the own Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and
ers of 2,504 slaves. Their personal wealth perhaps Minnesota. The tribes who come
was very large. The war has changed the under the designation of civilized, will number
character of affairs and reduced them to pov about 30,000, and be possessed of considera
erty. The loyal Cherokees exhibit a com ble wealth and intelligence. The alternative
mendable spirit of adaptation to their new may be presented to the more advanced of
surroundings. They have abolished slavery, them, who yet preserve a distinctive charac
making colored natives of the Territory citi ter, of abandoning the tribal form, national
zens. disfranchised the rebels, and otherwise annuities, and taking their present reserva
legislated in that direction. They express tions in severality, and thereby becoming
themselves willing to make arrangements for citizens of the United States. Those who do
the settlement of other Indians in their midst. not choose to accept this, and are desirous
The Creeks are an important tribe. The of preserving their semi-national existence,
loyal members of this tribe, comprising a can be removed to the Indian Territory, and
large majority, have abolished slavery, accord located on new homes, where the necessary
citizenship to the negroes and whites in their steps should be taken to provide for them
midst, donate lands to the freed people, and until their industry returns support. Such a
on equitable terms cede to the Government Territory and population, wisely managed
lands for the settlement of their tribes.
and generously provided for, would in a very
The Seminoles are a small and intensely few years be a self-supporting community,
loyal people. One of the last chiefs to resist affording the nation the satisfaction of seeing
�280
The Friend of Progress.
the Aboriginal race preserved and made of
value to themselves as well as to the country.
Might we not well hope, if a wise policy was
pursued, to see it asking admission a few
years hence as a Free State into the Union?
In the meantime a delegate might be allowed
them in Congress. The Fosses, Christy,
Dowing, and other chiefs of the civilized In
dians, are able and educated men. Objections
may be urged to this plan, of expense in
removal, necessity of a large military force to
preserve order, and similar arguments. We
reply, that the economy in the Indian admin
istration here would in a short period more
than compensate for the expense incurred by
removal, provided that in all future arrange
ments, the system of trading, of paying annui
ties, and of tribal agents now in vogue, be
entirely abolished. Experience has proved
the capacity of these loyal Indians to act as
soldiers, and to defend their own homes and
interests. There are three regiments of
mounted infantry (Indians') in the United
States service jn that Territory. These In
dians can be intrusted with their own police.
They should, when practicable, be intrusted
with such duty, if only for the purpose of edu
cating them up to the full requirements of
citizenship. Thus much by way of suggestion
in relation to the Indian Territory.
For the tribes located and roaming in
Northern Nebraska, Idaho, Dakota, Minneso
ta, and the Lake Superior region, a Territory
should be organized in some portion of the
North-West. A portion of Dakota could be
wisely selected. It will not do to locate it
too near the mountains, as the continued gold
discoveries attract emigrants hitherward, and
will necessarily disturb the Indians. Such
a district must be chosen with a view to a cer
tain accessibility in supplying the military
force that will be required among them for
some years. It should be adapted to agri
cultural and grazing purposes, and be sup
plied with fuel and water.
Gen. Pope, when in command of the NorthWest, suggested the territory north and east
of the Upper Missouri, and west of the James
River. The country around Lake Mini Wakan,
and at the head of the Plateaus De Coteau,
Du Missouri, and Du Coteau Du Sioux, is an
admirable location, and his policy has been
to establish a chain of posts from the Red
River in Minnesota, to the Missouri, and up
to the confluence of the Yellowstone, and
gradually drive in the hostile Sioux, placing
a cordon around to retain them there. He
succeeded to a considerable extent, and if his
policy be pursued fully, it will work well.
With the wants of the Indians properly
supplied, and a judicious selection of officers
over them, this population, now the source of
uneasiness, may be made valuable and selfsustaining. In this relation it would be wise
to select agents from among educated half
breeds and missionaries, men whose identifi
cation with and knowledge of the race, will en
able them to deal understanding^ and justly.
There is now left to care for, the tribes
within the Pacific States and Territories, and
among the mining region of the Sierra Madre
or Rocky Mountains. For a large portion of
those in Colorado, suitable homes can be
found in the western portion of the Indian
Territory. For tribes to whom that country
might not be adapted, a portion of Utah
might be obtained. Here the mountain tribes
of Colorado, Utah, and Nevada might be
gathered and controlled. In New Mexico the
condition of the tribes at all tamable, the ex
istence of the Puebla Indians offers a success
ful result for the guidance of new experiments.
We have not the details of their life and pro
gress, though we know generally of their
industry and good order. To the devoted
priests of the Catholic church belongs the
honor of civilizing these people. They have
always been successful, and it would pay the
Government to support missionaries of that
faith among the red men of the west. There
are tribes in New Mexico and Arizona, who
seem determined to die in their independence,
rather than submit to civilization or the en
croachments of the w’hite man. Such are the.
Navajoes and Appaches. These must submit,
if not to peace, then to be crushed. The
present amazing gold discoveries in these
Territories demands this. Civilization needs
wealth to aid its forward march.
Gen. Carleton, commanding in New Mexico,
has succeeded in effectually subduing the
Navajoes. This is the first time for one hun
dred and fifty years, that anything like peace
has been brought about. He is now en
gaged and has been for twelve months past
engaged in removing them from their moun
tain homes to the valley of the Bosque Redonds, where it is intended to locate all but
the Pueblas. For the Appaches of Arizona,
who, during two hundred years, have deso
lated this region, nothing short of remorseless
warfare will succeed.
�Each Fights for AU.
Is it best for humanity that the inexhausti
ble treasure hived by the centuries, and held
safely locked in the primal granite of the
mother-mountains as a sacred trust for the
era enterprising enough to demand their
hitherto unproductive riches, should be
snatched from us by a sentimental reverence
for the hypothetical rights of a dog-in-themanger people who can neither use nor de
velop such wealth themselves, nor will allow
any other people to do so ? Is the nation that
wrung free commerce from the Japanese,
likely to allow the uncultured Indians to
throw barriers in the way of its advancing
march? The question is an important one.
The onward progress of benign civilization
should not be stayed, while justice and mag
nanimity should always take part in the deci
sions of a great nation.
Upon the Pacific coast there is the same
need of a just Indian policy. In California
there are fifteen thousand of this race, who
have neither lands nor homes. They have not
even the poor satisfaction of a paltry reserva
tion. The Spaniard never recognized the
Indian land-title, and we, succeeding to his
sovereignty, have succeeded to his policy.
Something must be done for the Californian
Indians. Would it not be practicable to ob
tain sufficient territory, say in Washington, to
mass the tribes of California, Oregon, and the
territory named, carrying out the same gen
eral policy suggested herein for the manage
ment of the proposed Indian territory ?
The plan here suggested is the result of
careful thought, observation, and desire to
deal rightly by the Indians and our own
people. We are not wedded to it as a hobby,
but rather suggest it as a measure of practical
and beneficent policy. The great end and
aim of all efforts in this nation for the amelio
ration and advancement of any portion of the
population placed as are the Indians or ne
groes, must be to clear the path, aiding them
to reach the utilities of an industrial and
Christian Democracy, that thereby they may
become worthy of being an integral portion
of that nationality which, aiming to establish
in Government the ideal justice, will yet
prove practically that all men are endowed by
their Creator with the right to life, liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.
281
The sons of light in every age and zone,
Though on the cross, the gibbet, or the throne,
Now armed with love, the martyrs of a faith,
And now with steel, the anointed priests of
death,
Who shed the tyrant’s or their own best blood,
Stand rank to rank one serried brotherhood;
Moses who smote the Egyptian to the dust,
With him who died the Just for the unjust:
Deep-thoughted Plato with his mystic “ word,”
And fiery Cromwell armed with Gid eon’s sword,
Melancthon mild, with Luther roughly strong—
That storm-plowed crag with its lark’s nest
of song;
Fair tyrant-slayers, Jael and Corday,
With brave Grace Darling plucking ocean’s
prey
Out of his foaming jaws, and her, as brave,
That Nightingale whose music ’tis to save ;
AU free strong natures, beautiful and clear,
Who make earth better, and the heavens more
near,
Servants of God—the sacramental host
Who bear his banners down the invaded coast
Of flying darkness, form one dauntless corps,
To whom yon million worlds add countless
thousands more.
A thousand rivers swell the same free surge,
A hundred ways to one fair town converge,
An 4 rock, and tree, and treasures of the mine,
In one grand temple, one sweet home com
bine :
So meet all gifts in service of the One
Who rays them out as from a central sun.
He builds for all who builds by inward law,
For years unborn, and lands he never saw:
The smallest insect in the coral reef,
Unseen, unseeing, and of life so brief,
With pulpy arms too powerless to command
The ponderous motions of a grain of sand,
Weaving at once his vest and burial robe,
Lays the foundations of the solid globe ;
So true work grows and least at last is great,
And each serves All in one well-ordered state.
The sword Harmodius on the tyrant drew,
If justly drawn, struck well for me and you;
The song of Miriam, by the avenging sea,
Was sung for bondmen on the dark Santee ;
The people’s cry that crumbled the Bastile,
Was the old shout that made first darkness
reel.
When Spartan valor kept that narrow pass
Where Freedom fell with slain Leonidas,
Not Persia’s millions could subdue the braves,
Nor all the centuries trampling on their
graves:
They strike for Freedom in her every blow—
The soul is the most powerful of all poisons. Their deed sheds light on every dauntless
brow;
It is the most penetrating and diffusible stim Who dares to die to make a people free,
ulus.—Novalis.
Still guards unconquered his Thermopj las :
�282
The Friend of Progress.
Hope of the nations—heir of pure renown,
Though named Leonidas or Old John Brown !
A gallant spirit never breathed our air.
But left some touch of nobler being there ;
No heart of pity soothed a brother’s pain,
But sent some pulse to life’s remotest vein:
A soul of truth becomes a Name of power—
The saving watchword of a crisis’ hour:
Around great natures, with no trumpet-call,
The peoples rally, proud to fight and fall.
They choose their lords as doth the lioness,
Who wins the battle, wins their love’s caress.
What though, as round their rival chiefs they
crowd,
A hundred war-cries shake their streamers
proud,
Till all that clamor to pained ears might seem
The wild disorder of a frenzied dream ;
Ore spirit rears each burning Gonfalon,
And men are clanships because Man is one !
[From “Answers to Questions.”]
Psycliometrical Examination of
Abraham Lincoln.
BY
A. J.
DAVIS.
By particular request, a friend in Wash
ington furnished the President’s autograph
and a scrap of his hand-writing. By this
method a connection with the characteristics
of Mr. Lincoln was perfected, and the results
of the examination are herewith respectfully
submitted. I have no personal knowledge of
the mental peculiarities of the President.
What is here given, therefore, must stand or
fall, according to the facts in possession of
those who know him best. I shall welcome
the verdict of his most intimate friends; more
especially do I wait for proofs to be furnished
by him as President of the United States.
[The following was written soon after Mr.
Lincoln entered upon the duties of his office
in 1861.]
IMPRESSIONS ON VIEWING HIM OBJECTIVELY.
His physical system is muscularly, but not
vitally, powerful. It is unevenly developed
in the joints and sockets. He is not nervous,
elastic, or sensitive; and yet, with respect to
bodily endurance, he is remarkably easy,
steady, and unyielding. With care he can
resist the approach of disease in any form ex
cept in the loins and throat. His internal
organs are not large, but their functions are
steadily and fully performed. He is built to
sustain a prodigious quantity of either manual
or mental labor; but such labor, to be well
done, must be very carefully graduated by an
orderly division of days and hours. He must
not be hurried and urged beyond his natural
deliberateness. He is rapid only when under ;
the action of his own temperaments. All j
outward stimuli, in the shape of air, and
foods, and drinks, exert but little effect.
j
. In conversation, or when addressing a mul
titude, the same seli-steadiness is exhibited.
There is no dissimulation in his manners; no
attempt to stand straighter, to look hand
somer, to speak more eloquently, or to act
more gracefully, than when alone with a
friend or in the retirement of his family. He
is not impetuous in physical gesture, but em
phatic and strong, with an irregularity which
is almost eccentric and quite original.
He appears like a man not fond of parlor
life. Temporal comforts do not tempt him
from the rugged paths of duty. His features
are indicative of honor, sincerity, simplicity,
generosity, and good nature, with much of
the indomitable and unchangeable.
IMPRESSIONS ON VIEWING HIM SOCIALLY.
His domestic affections are temperate and
unwavering, but not powerful, and yet, at
home with his family, there is no man more
happy and contented. Children are interest
ing to him when they are playful. But his
tongue is the quickest to interest the young.
He appreciates the young mind, is attracted
by its simplicities, and is ever ready to hear or
relate a story. But this man is not over-much
wedded to locality. He is not a traveler by
nature, and yet a change of place is rather a
relief to, than a tax upon his feelings.
His private life is remarkable for artless
ness and uniform truthfulness. Warm and
confiding to his friends, and never embittered
toward his enemies, he smooths the path of
many in his vicinity. He is fond of praise,
but is likely to remain firm in friendship, un
der the lash of private disapprobation. He
is not hasty to demolish his opponent, even
when he has been sorely aggrieved by him,
but rather inclines to give his enemy another
conscious opportunity for reflection.
IMPRESSIONS ON VIEWING HIM INTELLECTUALLY.
There is a singular texture of brain for his
mind to act through. It is elastic only after
repeated exertions to bring it into action.
Then his intellectual organs act separately,
so to say, or one at a time—each, like an inde
pendent entity, doing its duty singly, and with
out consulting the feelings or inclinations of
its fellow-laborers. His understanding of a
matter is at first unsatisfactory to himself.
The facts, and fragments, and data of an
event or case first occupy all the spare rooms
in the department of bis intelligence. Things,
and persons, and places, and the acts of
agents in relation to them, cluster in chaotic
groups before his perceptions. He is, there
fore, not certain, at first, whether he sees
things in their proper places, and whether he
appreciates the full import and force of a
single fact; but, guided by a wholesome and
powerful love of accuracy, he persists in ob
serving, and arranging, and recombining the
items of a matter, untd, with an approbation
wholly internal, he fixes his opinions and
proceeds therefrom to act.
There is a critical and studied adhesion to
established rules of thought and reasoning.
He dreads an unauthorized digression from
the recognized powers in either law, politics,
�Psychometrical Examination of Abraham Lincoln.
or religion. And yet he pays deferential
respect to the deductions of no one mind in
any department of human interest. His per
ceptive powers are active, and readily dis
cover the errors and tricks of men, and are
equally quick to detect a ridiculous flaw in
an argument, or the most assailable point in
a general proposition. He will rely on his
own judgment, and is unwavering in attach
ment to his own conclusions.
There is nothing impetuous in the delibera
tions of such a mind. The lightning flash of !
genius, though it might reveal to his eyes the
inlinite unity of the universe, would not move
him. The range of real principles he must
infer from the position, magnitude, multipli
city, and force otfacts. He cannot penetrate
the surface by intuition, but must enter in at
the open door of events and data. Shelley’s
poetry could interest his mind rarely, but be
would glean much poetry from the sermons of
Dr. Channing. History would give much rest
to his intellect; but science, if it should smell of
mountains, and forests, and grand objects in
space, as geology and astronomy, would yield
the largest gratification. And yet this man’s
mind is never satisfied unless its deductions
are consistent with the major elements of hu
man nature.
IMPRESSIONS ON VIEWING HIM MORALLY.
By this I mean spiritually, or with reference
to the most interior and religious attributes
of his being. He is a man of talent and indus
try, but no genius, no man for the moment,
no ability to decide in advance of reflection
and analysis. The man of intuition is impoli
tic and revolutionary. Mr. Lincoln is no such
man. He is willing to accept a great responsi
bility, to act well his whole duty, and to leave
things as he found them. A new State and
the foundations of new Laws are the electrical
eliminations of genius. Strong minds are
certain to elaborate and administer the inspi
rations of genius, but such minds cannot elec
trify a country with the enunciation of any
very revolutionary law. No new truth ever
bubbles over the bowl of their lives. Mental
powers are unfertile, unless fed and fostered
by the endless fires of truth and justice.
Morally speaking, Mr. Lincoln is what the
religious world would call a “naturally good
man.” Whether sanctified by faith or not,
his “works” are distinguished by an ex
tremely sensitive regard to everybody’s rights
and everybody’s greatest welfare. Justice,
when tempered with a gentle paternal mercy,
is dear to him. He is, however, more benevo
lent than conservative, and more humanely
sympathetic than conscientious, and is there
fore liable to err and come short .under the
pressure of appeals from the unfortunate. In
all matters intrusted to his care and control,
he is self-sacrificing and faithful to the end,
with very much' beautiful self-forgetfulness
and straightforward integrity.
But there is a remarkable trait in this man’s
spirit, not often found among professed poli
ticians, and that is, a willingness to concede
that he does not know what will occur to
283
morrow. For this reason he is teachable, and
is most anxious to gain knowledge from
almost every imaginable source. How earn
estly and sincerely, how calmly and faithfully,
does Mr. Lincoln give audience, even to the
discourse of the least of his associates! The
modesty of his manner is an earnest of his
moral excellence. He cannot be certain that
his knowledge is up to the measure of to
morrow’s consequences; wherefore he, unlike
the conceited pettifogger and political mountebank, is open to more light and instruction.
I think he would be much rejoiced to learn
of the departed concerning the eternal to
morrow.
But shall we not also mention that this
man is a close-mouth ed-keeper of “ his own
counsels” ?* This trait is observable, even to
his most intimate friends, with whom he is
ever confiding. Whenever there is the least
obscurity, he hesitates, checks his impulses,
and looks steadily toward consequences. The
doctrine of Retribution, so far as be is indi
vidually concerned, would seem to have no
weight. He is above personal fear, and does
not court public favor or position: but the
question whether the results of a given course
will subserve the interests of mankind, is very
deliberately revolved by his moral faculties.
Cajoling demagogues cannot captivate this
man’s moral forces. He is silent, but firm,
amid cotton-lords and slave-dealing monopo
lies. He is fond of progressive civilization,
amid the strongholds of conservatism and
aristocracy, and'the God of his heart is for
lawful freedom and unitary strength. He
appreciates the loathsomeness of treason,
sees its deadly blight as it steals over the
minds of once faithful men, and yet enter
tains glorious hopes and undimmed faith in
the direction of freedom and peace.
IMPRESSIONS
ON VIEWING HIM INDIVIDUALLY.
Under this head I propose to give the sum
of Mr. Lincoln’s character in its relation to
the world. He is cordial, loves to entertain
friends, but is not fastidious in the matter of
selection; and is a devoted friend and brother
to all. But, intellectually and morally, he is
too cautious and too fearful of doing wrong,
to be party to any very original or revolu
tionary scheme. He will step slowly, and
firmly, and independently; but, in the mean
time, many things will come to light, and
events will transpire which will compel a
modification of procedure. Of enemies, Mr.
Lincoln will have but few. Of friends, among
all parties, as long as he lives, there will be a
great multitude. He is a true American citi
zen, and believes not in leading public senti
ment, but following it, guided only by the
Constitution and thelaws'of Congress.
While, he. listens deferentially to those
about him, including the constituents of his
Cabinet, he is not the man to be carried be
yond his own judgment. He will surely act
according to the orders of his individual reason
and will. It is folly to suppose that any diplo
matist or influential legislator can succeed
long in warping the judgment of this con
scientious man.
•
�284
The Triend of Progress.
Mr. Lincoln is a very prudential character,
and would not transcend the letter of the
law. Its letter and its spirit are inseparable
in his eyes. He is preeminently a man of
“peace,” and would not object to a “compro
mise,” if the people so declared their wishes;
but from him the world may never expect
such a proposition to emanate. There is,
however, some danger to be apprehended from
the exceedingly sympathetic, cautious, legal,
and economical suggestions of his peculiar
mental structure. The poet has very nearly
defined his conception of what should consti
tute the foundations and glory of our Govern
ment:
“----- Men, high-minded men,
With powers as far above the brutes endued,
In forest, brake, or den,
As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude—
Men who their duties know,
But know their rights, and knowing, dare main
tain,
Prevent the long aimed blow,
And crush the tyrant while they rend the
chain:
These constitute a State;
And sovereign Law, that State’s collected will,
O’er thrones and globes elate
Sits empress, crowning good, repressing ill.”
Let the country take counsel of its hopes,
and despair not, for there is a divinity, behind
the presidential mind, which will direct
heaven’s high purposes, and bring a better
day out of this black and awful night. Mr.
Lincoln will betray no trust, neither will he
shrink from still more pressing responsibili
ties; and the people would do well to share
the burthen of sympathy and care with which
he is oppressed.
BY PHCEBE CARY.
Alas, alas! how many sighs
Are breathed for his sad fate, who dies
With triumph dawning on his eyes.
Who sees amid their ranks go down,
Great men, that never won renown,
And martyrs, with no martyr’s crown ?
Unrecognized, a poet slips
Into death’s total, long eclipse,
With breaking heart, and wordless lips ;
And never any brother true,
Utters the praise that was his due—
“ This man was greater than ye knew!”
No maiden by his grave appears,*
Crying out in long after years,
“I would have loved him,” through her tears.
We weep for her, untimely dead,
Who should have pressed the marriage-bed—
Yet to death’s chamber went instead.
But who deplores the sadder fate
Of her who finds no mortal mate,
And lives and dies most desolate ?
Alas ! ’tis sorrowful to know
That she who finds least love below,
Finds least of pity for her woe.
Hard is her fate who feels life past,
Though loving hands still hold her fast,
And loving eyes watch to the last.
But she, whose lids no kisses prest,
Who crossed her own hands on her breast,
And went to her eternal rest;
She had so sad a lot below,
That her unutterable woe
Only the pitying God can know !
When little hands have dropped away
From the warm bosom where they lay,,
And the poor mother holds but clay :
What human lip that does not moan,
What heart that does not inly groan,
And make such suffering its own ?
Yet, sitting mute in their despair,
With their unnoticed griefs to bear,,
Are childless women everywhere ;
What thousands for the soldier weep,
From his first battle gone to sleep
That slumber which is true and deep.
Who never knew, nor understood,
That which is woman’s greatest good,
The sacredness of motherhood !
But who about his fate can tell,
Who struggled manfully and well;
Yet fainted on the march, and fell ?
But putting down their hopes and fears,.
Claiming no pity and no tears,
They live the measure of their years.
Or who above his rest makes moan,
Who dies in the sick tent alone—
“ Only a private, name unknown !”
They see age stealing on apace,
And put the gray hairs from their face,
No children’s fingers shall displace !
What tears down pity’s cheek have run
For poets singing in the sun,
Stopped suddenly, their song half done.
Though grief hath many a form and show,
I think that unloved women know
The very bottom of life’s woe !
But for the hosts of souls below,
Who to eternal silence go,
Hiding ttupr great unspoken woe :
And that the God, who pitying sees,
Hath yet a recompense for these,
Kept in the long eternities!
�The Inner Temple.
The Inner Temple.
BY
ESTELLE.
I have somewhere read, long ago, of a
heathen devotee, who had constructed, in a
corner of the temple where devotions were
Offered to the gods, a chamber, which was
kept sacred to his own use; no profaning foot
was allowed to enter there, no irreverent or
carious eye must gaze therein, lest some bab
bling lip may whisper the secrets of the con
secrated chamber—the Inner Temple belonged
wholly to himself and the gods he worshiped.
Deep in the corner of every human heart,
far hidden from every eye, is an Inner Temple,
consecrated to the uses of the individual
alone.
We all meet upon a visible plane—we live
our outward life of rejoicing, of sorrow, of
prosperity, of want—we call this one covetous,
that one a profligate, here is a moral hero,
there a bigot. They pass us on the street,
and sit at our table, labeled with the verdict
of their fellow men: avaricious, sycophantic,
generous, amiable. We stamp them compla
cently, and there is no appeal from our deci
sion. Human nature, we say, is as an open
book, that he who will may read.
We call ourselves students of human nature.
We penetrate the weaknesses of our fellow
mortal, and when we have discovered a great
flaw or weakness in his character, we rub our
hands with complacent, self-paid compliments for our own cleverness.
Atas for the student of human nature!
When we have read and combined all the fin
ger-boards of a man’s character, which Nature
has placed upon each of her children—when
opposing elements have been carefully bal
anced, predominant passions brought for
ward, all points summed up into an infallible
whole, what have we gained ? The vestibule
to the Inner Temple only—the door of the
secret chamber is closed, and the key is not
in our possession. We act our various roles
in life behind a mask, not bceause of will,
but of necessity.
Once in a life-time some one is found to
whom this Holy of Holies is revealed.
What bliss to wander hand in hand with
this kindred spirit, down the rough valleys,
and up the sunny slopes of this life, to lay
down the burden of mortality together, and
mingle in the glories of immortality, one
mind and one soul.
285
But though this inner life is, and must of
necessity be a sealed chapter to us, I often
amuse myself by speculating upon its nature,
as developed by outer indications.
I once saw a poor woman returning after a
day of hard labor to her miserable hovel,
stooping to pick a stunted, faded blossom, on
which the summer dust had gathered thickly,
and it pleased me to imagine that in the Inner
Temple rare flowers bloomed, and sweet birds
sang, and music and fragrance shed their soft
ening influence over her life of squalor, pov
erty, and wretchedness.
I have seen a friend sit at her piano when
twilight shadows were gathering in the room,
and let her fingers wander over the keys in a
sort of dreamy trance, wakening harmonies
that were never practiced under the eye of a
teacher, or learned from books; and I knew,
if she did not, that she was playing for the
spirit that dwelt in the Inner Temple.
Best gift of Nature when its outward mani
festations are harmony, charity^ kindness,
and love. How terrible when it becomes the
abode of demoniac passions—a secret cham
ber full of unclean images, where the imagi
nation delights to wander, groveling in gross
ness and sensuality of spirit, while the avenues
are kept pharisaically clean and pure for the
eyes of the world.
“ If I keep my thoughts to myself they can
do no harm, ” says the spiritual debauchee. A
little longer, and the screen of mortality is
laid aside, and he can behold the blackness of
ashes where the vestal flame should be burn
ing—the walls defaced with hideous images, a
temple where none but evil passions could
delight to dwell—images, which it will take
years of progress to erase. Every offense
against purity leaves a scar upon the soul.
Alas for those to whom the Inner Temple
is but the tomb of a dead or crucified love,
waiting the touch of the shining finger ef the
Angel of Death to roll the stone from the
mouth of the sepulcher, that this love may
rise transfigured and glorified, with wings
poised for the spheres of immortality.
“Your unvarying cheerfulness is unac
countable to me, ” said a friend to me one day.,
“ If I did not know you better I should say yon
were too frivolous to realize misfortune.”
“I dwell in my Inner Temple,” was the nnspoken reply, saddened by the thought that
this faithful friend of years, whose hand had
clasped ours in love a thousand times, knew
so little of that bright realm where fragrance,
�■286
The Friend of Progress.
and sunshine, and music, and all things beau
tiful, reign perpetually, and cast their shi
ning halo over the adversities of common
life—a splendor that turns its common dross
to precious gold.
Alas for those who sit together at the
hearth with clasped hands on winter nights,
and in the wailing wind without can hear no
undertone of harmony—who sit day after day
at the same table, who lie down at night, and
rise in the morning together, who walk side
by side through life, and ever strive vainly to
pierce the vail that separates their souls, gro
ping with baffled fingers for the entrance
to that spiritual chamber where where each
holds converse with his own imaginings.
Guard well the Inner Temple. Cleanse it
from envy, from impurity, from uncharitable
ness—so shall you be more prepared to enter
into that life where suffering is not, and sor
row cannot come.
sighted friends are not the most agreeable
persons to have relations with. To them the
object they are after, the evil to be remedied,
the patch of color or limb just before their
eyes, is the one only noble purpose of life.
All who do not run in their grooves are sav
agely denounced; all who, looking beyond, see
the soft landscape stretching away into a
beautiful perspective; all who see how the
Divine Artist has rounded out the statue of
life into complete and perfect proportions,
and therefore cannot give more attention than
properly due, to the apparent imperfection
of detail; these are denounced and derided
as wanting earnestness, and as unworthy
workers.
Let us not eschew earnestness. Let us be
zealous, but at the same time tone our judg
ments by that divine charity which recognizes
the finiteness of man, the imperfection of his
surroundings, and the controlling power of
circumstance. Fight we the evil with the
spirit of the Crusaders, but let it be the evil,
and not so much the individual doers thereof,
who, after all, are likewise its victims. H.
A Single String.
Some one says: “ The more music you can
make on one string the less it will cost you
to keep your fiddle strung.” The advice is
poor economy unless toe instrument be played
by a master hand. It takes a Paganini to
make harmony from a single string. The
richest lives are not found among the one-idea
men. When, however, the subtile keys of
melody or thought have been touched,
genuis can create from its single truth or
chord, that world of weird’suggestions and
correspondence, from which the rhythmical
harmonies are evolved. A single great idea.,
like the central chord in music, is a key by
which the possessor unravels the spiritual
universe, and enters into all mysteries.
Yet, let none believe that either life or mu
sic can be perfect upon the one-string theory.
Development is the distinctive mark of this
era. Harmony is the hope of the age. How
do we see men whose devotion to one thought,
one purpose,—whose resistance to one evil,
has completely obscured their vision in all
other directions. These are the genuine
fanatics; persons who get so near the object
aimed at, that they cannot see its relations to
the other parts of the universal whole. I have
seen a near-sighted man looking at a picture or
statue. Forced by his infirmity to get near the
object, it was utterly impossible for him to see
beyond that portion upon which his eyes rested.
Tiie tout ensemble is invisible to him, or only to
be absorbed by slow and painful efforts. Is not
this an example of the rigid, unbending pu
rist, the possessed one-ideaist. The near
sighted men, either in physical or mental life,
acquire a microscopic minuteness and accu
racy which in some degree makes up for their
deficiency of breadth and comprehensiveness
of vision. But in mental activities our near
BY LOUISE PALMER,
Her letter lies under my pillow—its words
burn heart and brain ;
Ten days ago their warming changed to the
smarting fire of pain:
“My lover dear,” she says, “Of strong men
prince and flower,
I hold my soul in patience up, and watch and
wait the hour
When past all shouting in the street to my list
ening ear shall come
The eager tread oi your manly feet in the
regiment marching home.
0 happiest girl in the warring land to reach
the day at length
When my hero’s arms shall shut me close in
the safety of their strength.”
Bitterest words to me who lie in the hospital
ward alone,
With a crippling wound in my leg, and my arm
forever gone!
She fills her heart with her lover’s praise in
dreams that never tire,
Nor knows he lies a shattered wreck—past
any heart’s desire.
Her own will fail when she comes to see—I
have no fear for her truth;
She will turn her pride to protection—her love
to sorrowing ruth.
For that you know, is a woman—forever patient
and true
In sacrifice to your need of her, while she needs
nothing of you:
That brings the question quick to heart with
subtlest rankle and sting,
What have I to give for her perfect youthmost sweet and precious thing 1
�Relinquish eel.
What but the burden of my loss to clog her
lightsome years—
My weakness where God meant support—a
cloud of cares and tears.
Yet every pulse of my broken life tremulous
yearns and stirs
To bind its pitiful weakness up with the joyous
strength of hers!
In passionate prime when I held you close in
the grace of a first caress,
And called you my Lizzie, my own for life, I
loved and wanted you less
Than now, as I lie all nerveless, spent, and wan
with the pallor of pain,
And no right arm to draw you close to my
longing heart again.
287
I To thick of the added care oi a wife, and beg
your kindly release.”
Such speech as this will kindle her pride and
the fire of her quick disdain
Will snap the bond her pity would bind like the
links of a daisy-chain.
The letter is ended and sped, and I think of it
day by day;
On its journey home, where I thought to be
taking my eager way,
Till it reaches the hand whose tender touch I
was hoping now to feel.
I think of her face as its impatient eyes the
letter’s sense reveal!
As quick along the rambling lines her kindling
glances scan,
I know I can hobble home on my crutch, and
She will not guess my heart’s best blood along
claim my promised wife—
the letters ran.
Creep into the arms of her pity and shelter
me there for life.
0 sweet and strong temptation! 0 precious I did not know that mortal days could float a
man so slow;
rest to win!
God help me rally what manhood’s left against Once cast aloose from love and hope on their
dull tide to flow!
the lovely sin!
Lord save me from the selfish deed of taking I feel the longing lack of her loss in every
leaden hour:
her life for mine ;
Let me give her freedom, the one good gift Yet keep like a fool her image at heart in its
place of ancient power.
left to my love divine.
I shall see not even her writing again on aught
Greater is he who conquers his soul, is the
—not the tiniest note,
praise of the holy page,
Save cold address on letters returned, that my
Than one that taketh the city strong in face of
lost right hand wrote.
the enemy’s rage.
Yet my pulse leaps up when the mail comes in,
I braced my spirit with half the strain for the
refusing to feel how vain
shock of bloody fray
The hope of precious missive sent from her
That it takes to scale the cruel hights of sac
firm white hand again.
rifice to day!
But at last my bitter strife prevails,- and my As I lie in silence alone, and close my eyes to
heart’s desire lies slain:
night,
Now the letter quick, lest the foe revive and I let the thought of her grow and fill my inward
make my victory vain.
sight,
Till I almost feel her smile the shadowy ward
Only the ink and paper, nurse—I will not tax
illume,
your hand:
And hear the float of her dress, and breathe its
My poor one left must begin to learn in place
vague perfume.
of the right to stand.
Why, my heart is as loth to coin the words as Kind Savior! whose tear is this that has fallen
my awkward hand to write !
on my face ?
Yet cold and hard I put them down, to lie at Whose these two hands that hold my one in
last in her sight.
clinging soft embrace ?
I know her too well to write the truth, to sound Whose voice can speak to me such words—too
her its wailing strain
sweet for truth their sounds ;
Of, “ My darling, I shut your sun from my life “My own ! do we love the dear Christ less for
and sit in the night of pain !
the mangling of his wounds 1”
The stalwart knight of your maiden choice went
down in battle’s rack,
Lizzie! my soul leaps out to light at the dayFailing forever out of the world—so take your
dawn of your eyes,
plighting back;
That I could not blind to my yearning love by
Nor cheat your heart a crippled wretch can for
any cold disguise.
its loss atone,
And waste upon his ailing life the sweetness of 0 quick to follow the shining steps of tbe
your own.”
Lord of woman born,
No words like these : but coldest talk of “cir Who came from the hights of Paradise to wed
cumstance, if foreseen
the church forlorn,
On the summer-day we made our troth, the And gave for it his priceless life in offering glad
vowing had never been.
and free,
The late battle disabled me somewhat, and on So out of the depths of her holy love she gives
the whole, I must cease
I
herself to me.
�288
The Friend of Progress.
Our Librarj/.
The Ideal Attained: Being the Story of Two
Steadfast Souls, and how they won their
Happiness and lost it not. By Eliza W.
Farnham. 1 volume. New York: 0. M.
Plumb & Co.
We give the title of Mrs. Farnham’s , volume
in full, because the first part of it conveys no
idea of its purport. It is a story of a man
and a woman, constructed after the author
ess’s ideal, who met on a sailing-vessel bound
for San Francisco; she on her way to an
uncle there; he yielding to an attraction
which had sprung up in his heart for her.
Other characters take part in the develop
ment of the story; but they serve merely as
foils to display these two. The incidents of
the plot are also arranged evidently with a
view of exhibiting these two personages in
the greatest variety of attitudes, both as indi
viduals and as related to each other. They
are brought intimately together—they are
kept sternly apart. They share in comforts and
in privations. They are subjected to rest and
to labor. They are tried by dependence and
by independence. They are alienated and
reconciled. Their minds meet on trivial sub
jects and on grave. The test of experience
brings out their weak and their strong points.
In the end, they are joined in a perfect union.
We infer from the Publishers’ Preface, that
this book was written a considerable time be
fore the last work, “Woman and her Era.”
Mrs. Farnham must, however, have had the
doctrine of that work matured in her mind
before she planned this. The two books are
complements of each other. “The Ideal
Attained ” is the illustration in the form of
experience of the theory maintained in “Wo
man and her Era.” It is the concrete of that
abstraction; or rather that gives the philoso
phy of the characters and relations depicted
in this. No reader of Mrs. Farnham’s last
book should fail to read the story before us;
and the reader of the story would do well to
turn over the chapters of that more elaborate
work. To many Mrs. Farnham’s theory of the
relation existing between man and woman,
and of their providential attitude in history,
seemed repulsive, owing, perhaps, to the ne
cessarily critical, analytical, and to some ex
tent, controversial character of the volumes in
which that theory was explained. But in this
vivid sketch of two lives, the relation between
the man and the woman is as natural and
sympathetic as one could wish. If Mrs.
Bromfield is a woman after Mrs. Farnham’s
own heart, and ‘ ‘ the Colonel ” is such a man
as her soul delights in, and their union the
legitimate and fair result of her premises, then
we say “ amen ” to her philosophy. For Mrs,
Bromfield is a woman who would adorn
the choicest circle—whom women would
admire—whom men would honor, accept,
and be only too glad to take to their
homes as wife, in the noblest sense of the
word. “The Colonel” is a man of a rare
stamp, whom women might be pardoned for
adoring, and whom men would applaud as a
model of manly virtues; and their union
comes as near what all good and cultivated
people would call a perfect marriage as this
earth gives an opportunity of seeing. The
characters are certainly idealized.
They
could hardly have been life-studies. If they
were, we envy the authoress her experience
in men and women. They are constructed,
we fancy—creations of her mind; but the
traits which her imagination supplies, be
long, without exception, to the pure manly
and womanly, and fill out, instead of distort
ing, the image of ordinary humanity.
The book is intensely earnest in its tone.
There is no trifling in its chapters. The
dramatis personae all have brains, and well do
they use them in discourse on grave themes.
Even the table-talk is significant. The
“asides” are momentous. We do not get
these people to the end of their voyage without
sailing over many seas of thought and sound
ing many deeps of reflection. To most people,
the reading of the book would be an educa
tion in liberal opinions, and a very pleasant
education too—for the course, though rigidly
exact, is so delicately conducted and so bril
liantly illustrated, that one is instructed while
seeming to be merely amused.
The literary execution of the volume
has much merit. The description of the
sea-voyage is full of alternate calm and
breeze. The life on the island might have
been painted from actual sketches taken on
the spot. The life in the young San Francisco
was, in truth, so painted, and we should not
know where, out of these pages, to find
another so faithful photograph of the woman
less, childless, chaotic, sandy town, as it was
in its early days. We feel as if we had been
there, and were glad we had got out of it.
“The Ideal Attained” will add greatly to
Mrs. Farnham’s literary reputation, as a suc
cessful attempt at the philosophical fiction:
the novel that holds an earnest, moral, social,
and even humane purpose, without losing the
fascinating excitements of the novel; the trea
tise on high themes of personal interest,
clothed in the rich garments of the novel, and
yet retaining the dignity of the treatise. The
story is good as a story; the moral is good as
a moral, and both moral and story are one.
We rather object to long letters at the
end of a tale. They look as if the author,
tired of his task, laid by his art, and supplied
the deficiency of his work by opening his files
of correspondence; and Mrs. Farnham’s epis
tolary style is not as graceful as her narra
tive: but the letters cannot be omitted by
the reader who wishes to understand the
story of the two lives, and the substance of them
will amply compensate for the form.
* *
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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Victorian Blogging
Description
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
Creator
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
Date
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2018
Publisher
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Original Format
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Pamphlet
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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The Friend of Progress. Vol. 1. No. 9, July 1865
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Conway, Moncure Daniel [1832-1907.]
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [New York]
Collation: [257]-288 p. ; 24 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Includes bibliographical references. Printed in double columns. _Louise Palmer -- a review of 'The Ideal Attained' by Eliza W. Farnham. The spiritualist and occult journal was previously named Herald of Progress and then Banner of Light before becoming Friend of Progress which became more explicitly devoted to reform.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1865
Identifier
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G5295
Subject
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Periodicals
Women's rights
Indigenous peoples
Rights
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (The Friend of Progress. Vol. 1. No. 9, July 1865), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
Format
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application/pdf
Type
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Women