Part 2

But law itself, and the obeying world, Are proofs against the grosser form of Fate: That all is preordained, nor can be changed. All human life is vacillating life; We make our plans each day, then alter them. We form resolves one hour that break the next, And no one dares assert that he will act, Upon the morrow, in a certain way; But cries, it all depends on circumstance. And this is strange, that while we cannot change Our lives one tittle by our own free will, We help, each day, to change our neighbor’s course; And he assists the motives changing ours. For all relations to our fellow-men, Are powers that form our lives, in spite of us. But we may change our motives, often do, By changing place, or circumstance of life, By hearing, reading, or reflective thought; Yet are these very things from motives done, And motives mocking all our vain commands. One motive made the object of an act, Another rises subject of the act; And to the final motive we can never reach.

The world’s a self-adjusting, vast machine, Whose human comparts cannot guide themselves; And each is but a puppet to the whole, Yet adds its mite towards its government; Here, in this motive circle, lies all Fate. Our fellow-men with motives furnish us, While we contribute to their motive fund. The real power, hidden deep within, Escapes the eye of careless consciousness; Who proudly tells us we are action’s cause. Upon this error men, mistaken, raise The edifice of law in all its forms; That yet performs its varied functions well, Because it offers motives that restrain, Till stronger overcome, and crime ensues. The motive gibbet lifts its warning arms; The pillory gapes its scolloped lips for necks; The lash grows stiff with blood and shreds of flesh; The treadmill yields beneath the wearied feet; And Sabbath after Sabbath preachers tell Of judgment, and of awful Hell, and Heaven; All these, to stronger make, than lust of sin. And yet, to lead my reasoning to its end, I find a chaos of absurdity. If I am by an unruled motive driven, Why act at all? Why passive not recline Upon the lap of destiny, and wait her arms? Why struggle to acquire means of life, When Fate must fill our mouths or let us die? Why go not naked forth into the world, And trust to Fate for clothes? Why spring aside From falling weight, or flee a burning house, Or fight with instinct strength the clasp of waves? Because we cannot help it; every act Behind it has a motive, whose command We, willing or unwilling, must obey.

Law governs motives, motives create law; Between the reflex action man is placed, The helpless shuttlecock of unjust Fate! Now passive driven to commit a crime, Then by the driver laid upon the rack; A Zeno’s slave, compelled by Fate to steal, And then compelled by Fate to bear the lash!

What gross injustice is the rule of life! A sentient being made without a will, And placed a cat’s-paw in the hands of Fate, Who rakes the moral embers for a sin, That, found, must burn the helpless one alone. All right and wrong, and whate’er makes man man, Are gone, and language is half obsolete; No need of words to tell of moral worth Existing not, nor e’en conceivable; No words of blame or commendation, given According to the intention of a deed; No words of cheer or comfort, to incite, For man must act without our useless tongues; No words of prayer, if Fate supplies our wants; No words of prayer, if Fate locks up her store; No words of love, for fondest love were loathed If fanned by Fate to flame. No words of hate, For all forgive a wrong when helpless done; The buds that bloom upon the desert heart Lose all their sweetness when they’re forced to grow; All pleasure’s marred because it is not earned, And pain more painful since ’tis undeserved.

Man falling from his high estate, becomes A brute with keener sensibilities; Endowed with mind, upon whose plastic face Fate writes its batch of lies; poor man believes, And prates of moral agency, and cants Of good _he_ does, and evil that _he_ shuns. With blind content, he rests in false belief, And happy thus escapes the mental rack-- The consciousness of what he really is.

And yet why false belief? The world believes, And acting, moves in general harmony; Could harmony from such an error flow? Would all believe, would not some one Have doubted by his works as well as faith? The veriest skeptic walks the earth to-day, As if he held the seal of freest will, And shapes its course, and judges all mankind By freedom’s rule. Then may not that be true Which most believe, and those who doubt profess In every act; as that which few believe And to which none conform? Two paths I see, One marked Free-Will, the other Fate. The first, Extending far as human thought can reach, Through lovely meads with sweetest flowers, and fruits Of actions clearly shown as right and wrong, Because of choice ’twixt the two; of laws With sanction suiting agents who are free; Of courts acquitting the insane of crime, Of crime made crime, alone, when done as crime, Of judgment passed by public sentiment On action in the ratio of liberty. Delightful view; but seek an entrance there-- The towering bars of unruled motive stand Before the path, and none can overleap.

The field of Fate lies open; nothing bars Our progress there. A thousand different ways The path diverges. Every by-path leads To some foul pit or bottomless abyss. Along each side are strewed the whitening bones Of venturous pilgrims, lost amid its snares, Some broken on the rocks of gross decree, Who hold an unchanged destiny from birth; Who will not take a medicine if sick, Who cant of “To be, will be,” and the time Unalterably set to each man’s life. Some stranded on the finer form of Fate, Who say it works by means. Hence they believe In using all preventives to disease, In going boating in a rubber belt, In placing Franklin rods upon a house, In preaching, and in praying men repent. These, when one dies, cry out, “It was his time.” Or if he should recover, “It was not.” Their fate is always ex post facto fate, And knowing not the future, they abide The issue of events, and then confirm Their dogged dogmas. Still another class, Though fewer far in numbers, perish here. These are the sophists; men who deeply dive Beneath the surface of effect, and trace Our actions to their source. They find that man, Made in the glorious image of his God, Is not an independent cause, but works From motive causes out of his control. They find that every mental act must flow From outside source, then fearlessly ascend The chain of being to a height divine, And dare to fetter the Eternal mind, And throw their bonds around Omnipotence. As well a spider in an eagle’s nest Might, from his hidden web among the twigs, Attempt to throw his little gluey thread Around the mottled wing, whose muscled strength Beats hurried vacuums in the ocean’s spray, Or circling upward, parts the thunder-cloud, And bursts above; and shaking off the mists, With rigid feathers bright as burnished steel, Floats proudly through the tranquil air. Which realm Shall now be mine, Free-Will or Fate? The one Stands open wide, but all in ruin ends; The other, fair if once within the pale; But how to scale the barriers none can tell. Bah! all is doubt. I’ll leave the mystic paths Where, on each side, are ranged the phantom shapes Of disputants, alive and dead, who fight, With foolish zeal, o’er myths intangible; When each one cries “Eureka!” for his creed. That scarcely lives a day, then yields its place. A Roman ’gainst a Roman, Greek to Greek, A zealous Omar with an Ali paired; A saintly Pharisee in hot dispute With Sadducees. Along th’ illustrious rows Of lesser lights, who advocate the creeds Of their respective masters, we descend To later days and see Titanic minds Exert their giant strength to reach the truth, And, baffled, fall. Locke, ever elsewhere clear, Here mystified Spinoza’s dizzy wing O’erweighted by his strange “imperium;” Hobbes, with his new intrinsic liberty; And Belsham’s quaint reduction too absurd; “Sufficient reason,” reared in Leibnitz’s strength; Reid, Collins, Edwards, Tappan, Priestley, Clarke, All push each other from the door of Truth.

None ever have, nor ever will, on earth, Reach truth of theory concerning Fate. It stands as whole from every touch of man As ocean’s broad blue scroll, whose rubber waves Erase the furrows of the plowing keels.

Then, careless whether man be king or slave, I’ll take his actions, whether free or not, And trace them to their sources. Deep the dive, But, throwing off the buoys of Charity And Faith, and all the prejudice of life, I grasp the lead of Doubt, and downward sink Into the cesspool of the human heart, To find the fount, that to the surface casts A thousand bubbles of such varied hues: The pale white bubble of hypocrisy, The murky bubble of revenge and hate, The frail gilt bubble of ambition’s hope, The rainbow bubble of sweet love in youth, The dull slime bubble of a sensual lust, The crystal bubble of true charity! Instead of analyzing every fact Of moral nature, searching for its source, I’ll name a source most probable, and try The facts upon it; if they fit, confirm, If not, reject. With Hobbes and Paley then I join; and here avow that all mankind Have but one source of action--Love of self-- Yet not self-love as understands the world, For that’s a name for error shown by few; But natural instinct that impels all men To give self pleasure, and to save it pain; For pain and pleasure are Life’s only modes-- No neutral state--we suffer, or enjoy; And every action’s linked with one of these. We cannot act without a consciousness, A consciousness of pleasure or of pain, The very automatic workings of our frames Are pleasures, unmarked from their constancy; But if impeded, they produce a pain. This instinct, teaching us to pleasure seek, And pain avoid, none ever disobey; For be their conduct what it may, a crime Or virtue, greed or pure benevolence, To find the greatest pleasure is their aim. Nay, start not, critic, but attend the proofs. A man exists within himself alone, Himself, or he would lose identity. To him the world exists but by effects Upon himself. His actions toward it then Bear reference to himself. He cannot act Without affecting self. His nature’s law Demands that self be dealt with pleasantly.

There is no pain or pleasure in the world, But as he feels th’ reality in self, Or fancies it by signs in other men. This fancied pain is never _real_ pain, But yields a _real_ reflex. Others’ pain Is never pain to us, unless we know It does exist. Within a hundred yards A neighbor dies, in agony intense, And yet we feel no slightest trace of pain, Unless informed thereof. ’Tis only when we know, And therefore are affected, that we feel.

The modes of pain and pleasure are then two, A real and a fancied one. The first acute, In ratio of our sensibilities; The last in ratio of our image-power. These gifts in different men unequal are, And hence life’s varied phases. One may deem A real pain far greater than a pain In fancy formed, from others’ sufferings; He eats alone, and drives the starving off. Another’s fancy paints more vividly, And he endures keen hunger to supply The poor with food. And so of pleasure too,-- And this moves all to shun the greatest pain, And find the greatest pleasure. Different minds, And each at different times of life, possess A different standard of this highest good. The swaddled infant wails for its own food, Because its highest pleasure is alone in sense; The child will from its playmate hide a cake Until it learns that praise for sharing it Gives greater pleasure than the sweetened taste; One boy at school proves insubordinate, His schoolmates’ praise he deems his highest good; Another studies well, because he values more A parent’s smile. The murderer with his knife, The maiden praying in her purity, The miser dying over hoards of gold, The widow casting thither her two mites, A white-veil bending o’er the dying couch, A stained beauty floating through the waltz, The preacher’s zeal, the gambler’s eager zest; All have one motive, greatest good to self!

The tender stop their ears, and cry aloud: “What! do you dare assert the gambler seeks With hellish zeal the faintest shade of good? That he is holy as the Man of God?” By no means, yet he seeks his good the same. Not good as you’ve been taught to apprehend, But good, the greatest to his frame of mind. Do not exclaim that good is always good, And never differs from itself. Anon We’ll speak of abstract truths, if such there be That good and pleasure are synonymous At times of action, is most surely plain; For pleasure’s but the consciousness of good, Or satisfaction of our tendencies. If all the gambler’s soul is bent on gain, Then at the moment gain is greatest good; But should you reason with him, and explain Another life, and make it really seem To him the best, he straight would change his course.

“But,” cries my friend, “the preacher, if he’s true, Must labor, not for self, but others’ good; And in proportion as the self’s forgot, And others cared for, does his conduct rise.”

But he can not, if conscious, forget self, For everything he does is felt within; But deeds for others’ good a pleasure give; If done in pain to self, the pleasure’s more. To gain the pleasure, self is put to pain, Just as a vesication brings relief. If he refused to undergo the pain Remorse would double it. Among his flock Some one is sick; to visit him is right, And done, affords a pleasure. Sweeter far That pleasure, if he walks through snow and ice, At duty’s call!

Sublime self-sacrifice, Of which men prate, is nothing more nor less Than base self-worship. Little pain endured T’ avoid a great; a smaller pleasure lost To gain a larger!

All the preacher’s words, That burn or die upon the stolid ear, Are spoken from this motive, good to self. You stare; but it is true. Why does he preach? To save men’s souls?--Why does he try to save? Because he loves his fellow-men? Not so. His love for them but to the pleasure adds, Which duty done confers; but all his work Must be with reference to himself alone, Though cunning self the real motive hides, And leaves his broad philanthropy and love To claim the merit. Let a score of men, The blackest sinners, die. He knows it not, And feels no pang; but if he is informed, He suffers reflex pain. And if his charge, Remorseful tortures for unfaithfulness. And only is the state of souls to him Of interest, as they are known. When known, It is a source of pleasure or of pain Which all his labor is to gain or shun.

“This difference then,” says one, “between men’s lives; Some live for present, some for future good. The sensual care for self on earth alone, The mystic cares for self beyond the grave.”

Both love a present self, in present time. They differ in their notions of its good. The stern ascetic, with his shirt of hair, His bleeding penitential knees, his fasts To almost death, his soul-exhausting prayers, Is seeking, cries the world, good after death. And yet his course of life is that alone Which could yield pleasure in his state of mind. He suffers, it is true, but hope of Heaven Thus rendered sure, as much a present good Is, as the food that feasts the epicure. The contemplation of his future home, Which he is thus securing, is a balm That heals his stripes, and sweetens all their pain. The penance blows upon his blood-wealed breast Are bliss compared to lashes of remorse. So for the greater good, the hope of Heaven, He undergoes “the trivial pain of flesh.” The epicure cares not a fig for Heaven, But finds his greatest good in pleasing sense. And so the man who gives his wealth away Is just as selfish as the money-slave Who grinds out life amid his dusty bags. They both seek happiness with equal zest: The one finds pleasure in the many thanks Of those receiving, or the public’s praise, Or if concealed, in consciousness of right; The other in the consciousness of wealth.

If all men act from motives just the same, Where is the right and wrong? In the effect? The quality of actions must be judged From their intent, and not their consequence. If two men matches light for their cigars, And from one careless dropped, a house is burned, Is he that dropped it guiltier of crime Than he whose match went out? Most surely no! Then is the miser blameless, though he turn The helpless orphan freezing from his door; And Dives should not be commended more, Though all his goods to feed the poor he gives.

How then shall we determine quality Of actions, when their sources are the same, And their effects possess no quality? Two dead men lie in blood beside the way, The one shot by a friend, an accident; The other murdered for his gold. ’Tis plain No wrong lies in th’ effects, for both are ’like; And of the agents, he of accident Had no intent, and therefore did no wrong. The other killed to satisfy the self, A motive founding all the Christian work, And right if that is right. The wrong Then lies between the motive and effect, And must exist in the effecting means. Yet how within the means is wrong proved wrong? Jouffroy would say, because a disregard Of others’ rights; for here he places good, When classifying Nature’s moral facts. He makes the child first serve flesh self, Then moral self, and last to others’ good Ascend, and general order. What a myth! As if man thought of others, save effect From them upon himself. But order gives A greater good to self; therefore he joins His strength to others, creates laws that bind Himself and them, and produce harmony. He thus surrenders minor good of self, To gain a greater. This is all the need He has of order, though Jouffroy asserts That order universal is the Good. Yet still he says that private good of each Is but a fragment of the absolute, And that regard for every being’s rights Is binding as the universal law!

Regard for others’ rights indeed, when men Unharmed agree to hang a man for crime! Not for the crime--that’s past; but to prevent A second crime, which crime alone exists In apprehensive fancy. Thus for wrong That’s but forethought, they do a real wrong. To save their rights from harm they fear may come. They strip a fellow-man of actual right, And highest, right of life; then dare to call Their action pure, divinely just, and good, And all the farce of empty names. They make Of gross injustice individual, A flimsy justice, for mankind at large, And cry, Let it be done, though Heaven fall! As if a whole could differ from its parts, Or right be made from wrong. Yet some may say That one is sacrificed for many’s good, Or hung that many may avoid his fate; And that his crime deserved what he received.