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citude to avoid the use of our first personal pronoun more often has its source in conscious selfishness than in true self-oblivion. A quiet observer of human follies may often amuse or sadden his thoughts by detecting a perpetual feeling of purest egotism through a long masquerade of Disguises, the half of which, had old Proteus been master of as many, would have wearied out the patience of Menelaus. I say, the patience only: for it would ask more than the simplicity of Polypheme, with his one eye extinguished, to be deceived by so poor a repetition of Nobody. Yet I can with strictest truth assure my Readers that with a pleasure combined with a sense of weariness I see the nigh approach of that point of my labors, in which I can convey my opinions and the workings of my heart without reminding the Reader obtrusively of myself. But the frequency, with which I have spoken in my own person, recalls my apprehensions to the second danger, which it was my hope to guard against; the probable charge of ARROGANCE, or presumption, both for daring to dissent from the opinions of great authorities, and, in my following numbers perhaps, from the general opinion concerning the true value of certain authorities deemed great. The word, Presumption, I appropriate to the internal feeling, and Arrogance to the way and manner of outwardly expressing ourselves.

suffrage of their learned Contemporaries or immediate Predecessors. Locke was assailed with a full cry for his presumption in having deserted the philosophical system at that time generally received by the Universities of Europe; and of late years Dr. Priestley bestowed the epithets of arrogant and insolent on Reid, Beattie, &c., for, presuming to arraign certain opinions of Mr. Locke, himself repaid in kind by many of his own countrymen for his theological novelties. It will scarcely be affirmed, that these accusations were all of them just, or that any of them were fit or courteous. Must we therefore say, that in order to avow doubt or disbelief of a popular persuasion without arrogance, it is required that the dissentient should know himself to possess the genius, and foreknow that he should acquire the reputation, of Locke, Newton, Boyle, or even of a Reid or Beattie? But as this knowledge and prescience are impossible in the strict sense of the words, and could mean no more than a strong inward conviction, it is manifest that such a rule, if it were universally established, would encourage the presumptuous, and condemn modest and humble minds alone to silence. And as this silence could not acquit the individual's own mind of presumption, unless it were accompanied by conscious acquiescence; Modesty itself must become an inert quality, which even in private society never displays its charms more unequivocally than in its mode of reconciling moral deference with intellectual courage, and general diffidence with sincerity in the avowal of the particular conviction.

We must seek then elsewhere for the true marks, by which Presumption or Arrogance may be detected, and on which the charge may be grounded with little hazard of mistake or injustice. And as I confine my present observations to literature, I deem such criteria neither difficult to determine or to apply. The first mark, as it appears to me, is a frequent bare assertion of opinions not generally received, without condescending to prefix or annex the facts and reasons on which such opinions were formed; especially if this absence of logical courtesy is supplied by contemptuous or abusive treatment of such as happen to doubt of, or oppose, the decisive ipse dixi. But to assert, however nakedly, that a passage in a lewd novel, in which the Sacred Writings are denounced as more likely to pollute the young and innocent mind than a romance notorious for its indecency-to assert, I say, that such a passage argues equal impudence and ignorance in its author, at the time of writing and publishing it-this is not arrogance; although to a vast majority of the decent part of our countrymen it would be superfluous as a truism, if it were exclusively an author's business to convey or revive knowledge, and not sometimes his duty to awaken the indignation of his Reader by the expression of his own.

As no man can rightfully be condemned without reference to some definite law, by the knowledge of which he might have avoided the given fault, it is necessary so to define the constituent qualities and conditions of arrogance, that a reason may be assignable why we pronounce one man guilty and acquit another. For merely to call a person arrogant or most arrogant can convict no one of the vice except perhaps the accuser. I was once present, when a young man who had left his books and a glass of water to join a convivial party, each of whom had nearly finished his second bottle, was pronounced very drunk by the whole party-" he looked so strange and pale!" Many a man who has contrived to hide his ruling passion or predominant defect from himself, will betray the same to dispassionate observers, by his proneness on all occasions to suspect or accuse others of it. Now arrogance and Presumption, like all other moral qualities, must be shown by some act or conduct: and this too must be an act that implies, if not an immediate concurrence of the Will, yet some faulty constitution of the Moral Habits. For all criminality supposes its essentials to have been within the power of the Agent. Either therefore the facts adduced do of themselves convey the whole proof of the charge, and the question rests on the truth or accuracy with which they have been stated; or they acquire their character from the circumstances. I have looked into a ponderous Review of the Corpuscular Philosophy by a Sicilian Jesuit, in which the acrimonious A second species of this unamiable quality, which Father frequently expresses his doubt whether he has often been distinguished by the name of Warshould pronounce Boyle or Newton more impious burtonian arrogance, betrays itself, not as in the forthan presumptuous, or more presumptuous than impi-mer, by proud or petulant omission of proof or arguous. They had both attacked the reigning opinions ment, but by the habit of ascribing weakness of on most important subjects, opinions sanctioned by intellect, or want of taste and sensibility, or hardthe greatest names of antiquity, and by the generalness of heart, or corruption of moral principle, to all

the word. He has taken a thing before he had ac quired any right or title thereto.

If in addition to this unfitness which every man possesses the means of ascertaining, his aim should be to unsettle a general belief, closely connected with public and private quiet; and if his language and manner be avowedly calculated for the illiterate (and perhaps licentious) part of his countrymen; disgusting as his presumption must appear, it is yet lost or evanescent in the close neighborhood of his guilt. That Hobbes translated Homer in English verse and published his translation, furnishes no positive evidence of his self-conceit, though it im

who deny the truth of the doctrine, or the sufficiency of evidence, or the fairness of the reasoning adduced in its support. This is indeed not essentially different from the first, but assumes a separate character from its accompaniments: for though both the doctrine and its proofs may have been legitimately supplied by the understanding, yet the bitterness of personal crimination will resolve itself into naked assertion. We are, therefore, authorized by experience, and justified on the principle of self-defence and by the law of fair retaliation, in attributing it to a vicious temper, arrogant from irritability, or irritable from arrogance. This learned arrogance admits of many gradations, and is palliated or aggra-plies a great lack of self-knowledge and of acquaintvated, accordingly as the point in dispute has been more or less controverted, as the reasoning bears a greater or smaller proportion to the virulence of the personal detraction, and as the persons or parties, who are the objects of it, are more or less respected, more or less worthy of respect.*

ance with the nature of poetry. A strong wish often imposes itself on the mind for an actual pow er; the mistake is favored by the innocent pleasure derived from the exercise of versification, perhaps by the approbation of intimates; and the candidate asks from more impartial readers, that sentence, which Nature has not enabled him to anticipate. But when the philosopher of Malinsbury waged war with Wallis and the fundamental truths of pure geometry, every instance of his gross ignorance and utter misconception of the very elements of the science he proposed to confute, furnished an unanswerable fact in proof of his high presumption; and the confident and insulting language of the attack leaves the judicious reader in as little doubt of his gross arrogance. An illiterate mechanic, when mistaking some disturbance of his nerves for a miraculous call proceeds alone to convert a tribe of savages, whose language he can have no natural means of acquiring, may have been misled by impulses very different from those of high self-opinion; but the illiterate perpetrator of "the Age of Reason," must have had his very conscience stupified by the habitu

Lastly, it must be admitted as a just imputation of presumption when an individual obtrudes on the public eye, with all the high pretensions of originality, opinions and observations, in regard to which he must plead wilful ignorance in order to be acquitted of dishonest plagiarism. On the same seat must the writer be placed, who in a disquisition on any important subject proves, by falsehoods either of omission or of positive error, that he has neglected to possess himself, not only of the information requisite for this particular subject, but even of those acquirements, and that general knowledge, which could alone authorise him to commence a public instructor: this is an office which cannot be procured gratis. The industry, necessary for the due exercise of its functions, is its purchase-money; and the absence or insufficiency of the same is so far a species of dishonesty, and implies a presump-al intoxication of presumptuous arrogance, and his tion in the literal as well as in the ordinary sense of common-sense over-clouded by the vapors from his heart.

Had the author of the Divine Legation of Moses more skilfully appropriated his coarse eloquence of abuse, his customary assurance of the idiotcy, both in head and heart, of all his opponents; if he had employed those vigorous arguments of his own vehement humor in the defence of Truths acknowledged and reverenced by learned men in general; or if he had confined them to the names of Chubb, Wool ston, and other precursors of Mr. Thomas Paine; we should

perhaps still characterize his mode of controversy by its rude violence, but not so often have heard his name used, even by those who have never read his writings, as a proverbial expression of learned Arrogance. But when a novel and doubtful hypothesis of his own formation was the citadel to be defended, and his mephitic hand-grenados were thrown with the fury of a lawless despotism at the fair reputation of a Sykes and a Lardner, we not only confirm the verdict of his independent contemporaries, but cease to wonder, that

As long therefore as I obtrude no unsupported assertions on my Readers; and as long as I state my opinions and the evidence which induced or compel led me to adopt them, with calmness and that diffidence in myself, which is by no means incompatible with a firm belief in the justness of the opinions themselves; while I attack no man's private life from any cause, and detract from no man's honors in his public character, from the truth of his doctrines, or the merits of his compositions, without detailing all my reasons and resting the result solely on the arguments adduced; while I moreover explain fully the motives of duty, which influenced me in resolv arrogance should render man an object of contempt in many, ing to institute such investigation; while I confine all and of aversion in all instances, when it was capable of hur- asperity of censure, and all expressions of contempt, rying a Christian teacher of equal talents and learning into to gross violations of truth, honor, and decency, to a slanderous vulgarity, which escapes our disgust only when we see the writer's own reputation the sole victim. But the base corrupter and the detected slanderer; while throughout his great work, and the pamphlets in which he I write on no subject, which I have not studied with supported it, he always seems to write as if he had deemed my best attention, on no subject which my education it a duty of decorum to publish his fancies on the Mosaic and acquirements have incapacitated me from proLaw, as the Law itself was delivered, that is, "in thunders and lightnings;" or as if he had applied to his own book perly understanding; and above all, while I approve instead of the sacred mount, the menace-There shall not myself, alike in praise and in blame, in close reasona hand touch it but he shall surely be stoned or shot through.ing and in impassioned declamation, a steady FRIEND

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I HAVE said, that my very system compels me to make every fair appeal to the feelings, the imagination, and even the fancy. If these are to be withheld from the service of truth, virtue, and happiness, to what purpose were they given? in whose service are they retained? I have indeed considered the disproportion of human passions to their ordinary objects among the strongest internal evidences of our future destination, and the attempt to restore them to their rightful claimants, the most imperious duty and the noblest task of genius. The verbal enunciation of this master-truth could scarcely be new to me at any period of my life since earliest youth; but I well remember the particular time, when the words first became more than words to me, when they incorporated with a living conviction, and took their place among the realities of my being. On some wide common or open heath, peopled with Ant-hills, during some one of the grey-cloudy days of the late Autumn, many of my Readers may have noticed the effect of a sudden and momentary flash of sunshine on all the countless little animals within his view, aware too that the self-same influence was darted coinstantaneously over all their swarming cities as far as his eye could reach; may have observed, with what a kindly force the gleam stirs and quickens them all! and will have experienced no unpleasurable shock of feeling in seeing myriads of myriads of living and sentient beings united at the same moment in one gay sensation, one joyous activity! But awful indeed is the same appearance in a multitude of rational beings, our fellow-men, in whom too the effect is produced not so much by the external occasion as from the active quality of their own thoughts. I had walked from Gottingen in the year 1799, to witness the arrival of the Queen of Prussia, on her visit to the Baron Von Hartzberg's seat, five miles

from the University. The spacious outer court of the palace was crowded with men and women, a sea of heads, with a number of children rising out of it from their fathers' shoulders. After a buzz of two hours' expectation, the avant-courier rode at full speed into the Court. At the loud cracks of his long whip and the trampling of his horse's hoofs, the universal shock and thrill of emotion-I have not language to convey it-expressed as it was in such manifold looks, gestures, and attitudes, yet with one and the same feeling in the eyes of all! Recovering from the first inevitable contagion of sympathy, I involuntarily exclaimed, though in a language to myself alone intelligible, "O man! ever nobler than thy circumstances! Spread but the mist of obscure feeling over any form, and even a woman incapable of blessing or of injury to thee shall be welcomed with an intensity of emotion adequate to the reception of the Redeemer of the world!"

To a creature so highly, so fearfully gifted, who, alienated as he is by a sorcery scarcely less mysterious than the nature on which it is exercised, yet like the fabled son of Jove in the evil day of his sensual bewitchment, lifts the spindles and distaffs of Omphale with the arm of a giant, Truth is self-restoration: for that which is the correlative of Truth, the existence of absolute Life, is the only object which can attract towards it the whole depth and mass of his fluctuating Being, and alone therefore can unite Calmness with Elevation. But it must be Truth without alloy and unsophisticated. It is by the agency of indistinct conceptions, as the counterfeits of the Ideal and Transcendent, that evil and vanity exercise their tyranny on the feelings of man. The Powers of Darkness are politic if not wise; but surely nothing can be more irrational in the pretended children of Light, than to enlist themselves under the banners of Truth, and yet rest their hopes on an alliance with Delusion.

Among the numerous artifices, by which austere truths are to be softened down into palatable falsehoods, and Virtue and Vice, like the atoms of Epicurus, to receive that insensible clinamen which is to make them meet each other half way, I have an especial dislike to the expression, PIOUS FRAUDS. Piety indeed shrinks from the very phrase, as an attempt to mix poison with the cup of Blessing: while the expediency of the measures which this phrase was framed to recommend or palliate, appears more and more suspicious, as the range of our experience widens, and our acquaintance with the records of History becomes more extensive and accurate. One of the most seductive arguments of Infidelity grounds itself on the numerous passages in the works of the Christian Fathers, asserting the lawfulness of Deceit for a good purpose. That the Fathers held, almost without exception, "That wholly without breach of duty it is allowed to the Teachers and heads of the Christian Church to employ artifices, to intermix falsehoods with truths, and especially to deceive the enemies of the faith, provided only they hereby serve the interests of Truth and the advantage of man

kind,"* is the unwilling confession of RIBOF: (Program. de Oeconomia Patrum.) St. Jerom, as is shown by the citations of this learned Theologian, boldly attributes this management (falsitatem dispensativam) even to the Apostles themselves. But why speak I of the advantage given to the opponents of Christianity? Alas! to this doctrine chiefly, and to the practices derived from it, we must attribute the utter corruption of the Religion itself for so many ages, and even now over so large a portion of the civilized world. By a system of accommodating Truth to Falsehood, the Pastors of the Church gradually changed the life and light of the Gospel into the very superstitions which they were commissioned to disperse, and thus paganized Christianity in order to christen Paganism. At this very hour Europe groans and bleeds in consequence.

So much in proof and exemplification of the probable expediency of pious deception, as suggested by its known and recorded consequences. An honest man, however, possesses a clearer light than that of History. He knows, that by sacrificing the law of his reason to the maxim of pretended prudence, he purchases the sword with the loss of the arm that is to wield it. The duties which we owe to our own moral being, are the ground and condition of all other duties; and to set our nature at strife with itself for a good purpose, implies the same sort of prudence, as a priest of Diana would have manifested, who should have proposed to dig up the celebrated charcoal foundations of the mighty Temple of Ephesus, in order to furnish fuel for the burnt-offerings on its altars. Truth, Virtue and Happiness, may be distinguished from each other, but cannot be divided. They subsist by a mutual co-inherance, which gives a shadow of divinity even to our human nature. Will ye speak deceitfully for God?" is a searching question, which most affectingly represents the grief and impatience of an uncorrupted mind at perceiving a good cause defended by ill means: and assuredly if any temptation can provoke a well-regulated temper to intolerance, it is the shameless assertion, that Truth and Falsehood are indifferent in their own natures; that the former is as often injurious (and therefore criminal) and the latter on many occasions as beneficial (and consequently meritorious) as the former.

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I feel it incumbent on me, therefore, to place immediately before my Readers in the fullest and clear

*Integrum omnino Doctoribus eftatus Christiani Antistitibus esse, ut dolos versent, falsa veris intermiscant et imprimis religionis hostes fallant, dummodo veritatis commodis et utilitati inservant.-I trust, I need not add, that the imputation of such principles of action to the first inspired Propagators of Christianity, is founded on the gross misconstruction of those passages in the writings of St. Paul, in which the necessity of employing different arguments to men of different capacities and prejudices, is supposed and acceded to. In other words, St. Paul strove to speak intelligibly, willingly sacrificed indifferent things to matters of importance, and acted courteously as a man, in order to win attention as an Apostle. A traveller prefers for daily use the coin of the nation through which he is passing, to bullion or the mintage of his own country: and is this to justify a succeeding traveller in the use of counterfeit coin?

est light, the whole question of moral obligation respecting the communication of Truth, its extent and conditions. I would fain obviate all apprehensions either of my incaution on the one hand, or of any insincere reserve on the other, by proving that the more strictly we adhere to the Letter of the moral law in this respect, the more completely shall we reconcile the law with prudence; thus securing a purity in the principle without mischief from the practice. I would not, I could not dare, address my countrymen as a Friend, if I might not justify the assumption of that sacred title by more than mere veracity, by open-heartedness. Pleasure, most often delusive, may be born of delusion. Pleasure, herself a sorceress, may pitch her tents on enchanted ground. But Happiness (or, to use a far more accurate as well as more comprehensive term, solid WELL-BEING) can be built on Virtue alone, and must of necessity have Truth for its foundation. Add to the known fact that the meanest of men feels himself insulted by an unsuccessful attempt to deceive him; and hates and despises the man who had attempted it. What place then is left in the heart for Virtue to build on, if in any case we may dare prac tise on others what we should feel as a cruel and contemptuous wrong in our own persons? Every parent possesses the opportunity of observing, how deeply children resent the injury of a delusion; and if men laugh at the falsehoods that were imposed on themselves during their childhood, it is because they are not good and wise enough to contemplate the past in the present, and so to produce by a virtuous and thoughtful sensibility that continuity in their self-consciousness, which Nature has made the law of their animal life. Ingratitude, sensuality, and hardness of heart, all flow from this source. Men are ungrateful to others only when they have ceased to look back on their former selves with joy and tenderness. They exist in fragments. Annihilated as to the Past, they are dead to the Future, or seek for the proofs of it everywhere, only not (where alone they can be found) in themselves. A contemporary Poet has expressed and illustrated this sentiment with equal fineness of thought and tenderness of feeling:

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rain-bow in the sky?
So was it, when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So let it be, when I grow old,

Or let me die.

The Child is Father of the Man,
And I would wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
WORDSWORTH.

† I am informed, that these very lines have been cited, as a specimen of despicable puerility. So much the worse for the citer. Not willingly in his presence would I behold the sun setting behind our mountains, or listen to a tale of distress or virtue; I should be ashamed of the quiet tear on my own cheek. But let the dead bury the dead! The Poet sang for the Living. Of what value indeed, to a sane mind, are the likings or dislikings of one man, grounded on the mere assertions of another? Opinions formed from opinions--what are

The assertion, that truth is often no less dangerous than falsehood, sounds less offensively at the first hearing, only because it hides its deformity in an equivocation, or double meaning of the word truth. What may be rightly affirmed of truth, used as sy nonymous with verbal accuracy, is transferred to it in its higher sense of veracity. By verbal truth we

Alas! the pernicious influence of this lax morality extends from the nursery and the school to the cabinet and senate. It is a common weakness with men in power, who have used dissimulation successfully, to form a passion for the use of it, dupes to the love of duping! A pride is flattered by these lies. He who fancies that he must be perpetually stooping down to the prejudices of his fellow-creatures, is perpetually remind-mean no more than the correspondence of a given ing and re-assuring himself of his own vast superiority to them. But no real greatness can long co-exist with deceit. The whole faculties of man must be exerted in order to noble energies; and he who is not earnestly sincere lives in but half his being, self-mutilated, self-paralyzed.

The latter part of the proposition, which has drawn me into this discussion, that I mean in which the morality of intentional falsehood is asserted, may safely be trusted to the Reader's own moral sense. Is it a groundless apprehension, that the patrons and admirers of such publications may receive the punishment of their indiscretion in the conduct of their sons and daughters? The suspicion of methodism must be expected by every man of rank and fortune, who carries his examination respecting the books which are to lie on his breakfast-table, farther than to their freedom from gross verbal indecencies, and broad avowals of atheism in the title-page. For the existence of an intelligent first cause may be ridiculed in the notes of one poem, or placed doubtfully as one of two or three possible hypotheses, in the very opening of another poem, and both be considered as works of safe promiscuous reading "virginibus puerisque:" and this too by many a father of a family, who would hold himself culpable in permitting his child to form habits of familiar acquaintance with a person of loose habits, and think it even criminal to receive into his house a private tutor without a previous inquiry concerning his opinions and principles, as well as his manners and outward conduct. How little I am an enemy to free inquiry of the boldest kind, and where the authors have differed the most widely from my own convictions and the general faith of mankind, provided only, the enquiry be conducted with that seriousness, which naturally accompanies the love of truth, and that it is evidently intended for the perusal of those only, who may be presumed to be capable of weighing the arguments, I shall have abundant occasion of proving in the course of this work. Quin ipsa philosophia talibus e disputationibus non nisi beneficium recipit. Nam si vera proponit homo ingeniosus veritatisque amans, nova ad eam accessio fiet: sin falsa, refutatione eorum priores tanto magis stabilientur.* GALILEI Syst. Cosm. p. 42.

fact to given words. In moral truth, we involve likewise the intention of the speaker, that his words should correspond to his thoughts in the sense in which he expects them to be understood by others: and in this latter import we are always supposed to use the word, whenever we speak of truth absolutely, or as a possible subject of a moral merit or demerit. It is verbally true, that in the sacred Scriptures it is written: "As is the good, so is the sinner, and he that sweareth as he that feareth an oath. A man hath no better thing under the sun, than to eat, and to drink, and to be merry. For there is one event unto all: the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward." But he who should repeat these words, with this assurance, to an ignorant man in the hour of his temptation, lingering at the door of the alehouse, or hesitating as to the testimony required of him in the court of justice, would, spite of this verbal truth, be a liar, and the murderer of his brother's conscience. Veracity, therefore, not mere accuracy; to convey truth, not merely to say it; is the point of duty in dispute: and the only difficulty in the mind of an honest man arises from the doubt, whether more than veracity (i. e. the truth and nothing but the truth) is not demanded of him by the law of conscience; whether it does not exact simplicity; that is, the truth only, and the whole truth. If we can solve this dif ficulty, if we can determine the conditions under which the law of universal reason commands the communication of the truth independently of consequences altogether, we shall then be enabled to judge whether there is any such probability of evil conse quences from such communication, as can justify the assertion of its occasional criminality, as can perplex us in the conception, or disturb us in the performance, of our duty.

The conscience, or effective reason, commands the design of conveying an adequate notion of the thing spoken of, when this is practicable; but at all events a right notion, or none at all. A school-master is under the necessity of teaching a certain rule in simple arithmetic empirically, (do so and so, and the sum will always prove true) the necessary truth of the rule (i. e. that the rule having been adhered to, the sum must always prove true) requiring a know.

they, but clouds sailing under clouds which impress shadows ledge of the higher mathematics for its demonstraupon shadows?

Fungum pelle procul, jubeo! nam quid mihi fungo?
Conveniunt stomacho non minus ista suo.

tion. He, however, conveys a right notion, though he cannot convey the adequate one.

I was always pleased with the motto placed under the figure derive benefit from such discussions. For if a man of genius

of the Rosemary in old Herbals:

Sus, apage! Haud tibo spiro.

and a lover of Truth brings just positions before the Public, there is a fresh accession to the stock of Philosophic Insight; but if erroneous positions, the former Truths will by the con

*(Translation.)-Moreover, Philosophy itself cannot but futation be established so much the more firmly.

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