Chapter 19

The indefiniteness of the potentiality of the human faculties, and the complexity which thus attends their relations, lead unavoidably to occasional error. If we consider for a moment that there are not less than thirty such faculties, that they are each given in different proportions to different persons, that each is at the same time endowed with a wide discretion as to the force and frequency of its action, and that our neighbours, the world, and our connexions with something beyond it, are all exercising an ever-varying influence over us, we cannot be surprised at the irregularities attending human conduct. It is simply the penalty paid for the superior endowment. It is here that the imperfection of our nature resides. Causality and conscientiousness are, it is true, guides over all; but even these are only faculties of the same indeterminate constitution as the rest, and partake accordingly of the same inequality of action. Man is therefore a piece of mechanism, which never can act so as to satisfy his own ideas of what he might be—for he can imagine a state of moral perfection, (as he can imagine a globe formed of diamonds, pearls, and rubies,) though his constitution forbids him to realize it. There ever will, in the best disposed and most disciplined minds, be occasional discrepancies between the amount of temptation and the power summoned for regulation or resistance, or between the stimulus and the mobility of the faculty; and hence those errors, and shortcomings, and excesses, without end, with which the good are constantly finding cause to charge themselves. There is at the same time even here a possibility of improvement. In infancy, the impulses are all of them irregular; a child is cruel, cunning, and false, under the slightest temptation, but in time learns to control these inclinations, and to be habitually humane, frank, and truthful. So is human society, in its earliest stages, sanguinary, aggressive, and deceitful, but in time becomes just, faithful, and benevolent. To such improvements there is a natural tendency which will operate in all fair circumstances, though it is not to be expected that irregular and undue impulses will ever be altogether banished from the system.

It may still be a puzzle to many, how beings should be born into the world whose organization is such that they unavoidably, even in a civilized country, become malefactors. Does God, it may be asked, make criminals? Does he fashion certain beings with a predestination to evil? He does not do so; and yet the criminal type of brain, as it is called, comes into existence in accordance with laws which the Deity has established. It is not, however, as the result of the first or general intention of those laws, but as an exception from their ordinary and proper action. The production of those evilly disposed beings is in this manner. The moral character of the progeny depends in a general way, (as does the physical character also,) upon conditions of the parents,—both general conditions, and conditions at the particular time of the commencement of the existence of the new being, and likewise external conditions affecting the fœtus through the mother. Now the amount of these conditions is indefinite. The faculties of the parents, as far as these are concerned, may have oscillated for the time towards the extreme of tensibility in one direction. The influences upon the fœtus may have also been of an extreme and unusual kind. Let us suppose that the conditions upon the whole have been favourable for the development, not of the higher, but of the lower sentiments, and of the propensities of the new being, the result will necessarily be a mean type of brain. Here, it will be observed, God no more decreed an immoral being, than he decreed an immoral paroxysm of the sentiments. Our perplexity is in considering the ill-disposed being by himself. He is only a part of a series of phenomena, traceable to a principle good in the main, but which admits of evil as an exception. We have seen that it is for wise ends that God leaves our moral faculties to an indefinite range of action; the general good results of this arrangement are obvious; but exceptions of evil are inseparable from such a system, and this is one of them. To come to particular illustration—when a people are oppressed, or kept in a state of slavery, they invariably contract habits of lying, for the purpose of deceiving and outwitting their superiors, falsehood being a refuge of the weak under difficulties. What is a habit in parents becomes an inherent quality in children. We are not, therefore, to be surprised when a traveller tells us that black children in the West Indies appear to lie by instinct, and never answer a white person truly even in the simplest matter. Here we have secretiveness roused in a people to a state of constant and exalted exercise; an over tendency of the nervous energy in that direction is the consequence, and a new organic condition is established. This tells upon the progeny, which comes into the world with secretiveness excessive in volume and activity. All other evil characteristics may be readily conceived as being implanted in a new generation in the same way. And sometimes not one, but several generations, may be concerned in bringing up the result to a pitch which produces crime. It is, however, to be observed, that the general tendency of things is to a limitation, not the extension of such abnormally constituted beings. The criminal brain finds itself in a social scene where all is against it. It may struggle on for a time, but the medium and superior natures are never long at a loss in getting the better of it. The disposal of such beings will always depend much on the moral state of a community, the degree in which just views prevail with regard to human nature, and the feelings which accident may have caused to predominate at a particular time. Where the mass was little enlightened or refined, and terrors for life or property were highly excited, malefactors have ever been treated severely. But when order is generally triumphant, and reason allowed sway, men begin to see the true case of criminals—namely, that while one large department are victims of erroneous social conditions, another are brought to error by tendencies which they are only unfortunate in having inherited from nature. Criminal jurisprudence then addresses itself less to the direct punishment than to the reformation and care-taking of those liable to its attention. And such a treatment of criminals, it may be farther remarked, so that it stop short of affording any encouragement to crime, (a point which experience will determine,) is evidently no more than justice, seeing how accidentally all forms of the moral constitution are distributed, and how thoroughly mutual obligation shines throughout the whole frame of society—the strong to help the weak, the good to redeem and restrain the bad.

The sum of all we have seen of the psychical constitution of man is, that its Almighty Author has destined it, like everything else, to be developed from inherent qualities, and to have a mode of action depending solely on its own organization. Thus the whole is complete on one principle. The masses of space are formed by law; law makes them in due time theatres of existence for plants and animals; sensation, disposition, intellect, are all in like manner developed and sustained in action by law. It is most interesting to observe into how small a field the whole of the mysteries of nature thus ultimately resolve themselves. The inorganic has one final comprehensive law, GRAVITATION. The organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law, and that is,—DEVELOPMENT. Nor may even these be after all twain, but only branches of one still more comprehensive law, the expression of that unity which man’s wit can scarcely separate from Deity itself.

PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF THE ANIMATED CREATION.

WE have now to inquire how this view of the constitution and origin of nature bears upon the condition of man upon the earth, and his relation to supra-mundane things.

That enjoyment is the proper attendant of animal existence is pressed upon us by all that we see and all we experience. Everywhere we perceive in the lower creatures, in their ordinary condition, symptoms of enjoyment. Their whole being is a system of needs, the supplying of which is gratification, and of faculties, the exercise of which is pleasurable. When we consult our own sensations, we find that, even in a sense of a healthy performance of all the functions of the animal economy, God has furnished us with an innocent and very high enjoyment. The mere quiet consciousness of a healthy play of the mental functions—a mind at ease with itself and all around it—is in like manner extremely agreeable. This negative class of enjoyments, it may be remarked, is likely to be even more extensively experienced by the lower animals than by man, at least in the proportion of their absolute endowments, as their mental and bodily functions are much less liable to derangement than ours. To find the world constituted on this principle is only what in reason we would expect. We cannot conceive that so vast a system could have been created for a contrary purpose. No averagely constituted human being would, in his own limited sphere of action, think of producing a similar system upon an opposite principle. But to form so vast a range of being, and to make being everywhere a source of gratification, is conformable to our ideas of a Creator in whom we are constantly discovering traits of a nature, of which our own is but a faint and far-cast shadow at the best.

It appears at first difficult to reconcile with this idea the many miseries which we see all sentient beings, ourselves included, occasionally enduring. How, the sage has asked in every age, should a Being so transcendently kind, have allowed of so large an admixture of evil in the condition of his creatures? Do we not at length find an answer to a certain extent satisfactory, in the view which has now been given of the constitution of nature? We there see the Deity operating in the most august of his works by fixed laws, an arrangement which, it is clear, only admits of the main and primary results being good, but disregards exceptions. Now the mechanical laws are so definite in their purposes, that no exceptions ever take place in that department; if there is a certain quantity of nebulous matter to be agglomerated and divided and set in motion as a planetary system, it will be so with hair’s-breadth accuracy, and cannot be otherwise. But the laws presiding over meteorology, life, and mind, are necessarily less definite, as they have to produce a great variety of mutually related results. Left to act independently of each other, each according to its separate commission, and each with a wide range of potentiality to be modified by associated conditions, they can only have effects generally beneficial: often there must be an interference of one law with another, often a law will chance to operate in excess, or upon a wrong object, and thus evil will be produced. Thus, winds are generally useful in many ways, and the sea is useful as a means of communication between one country and another; but the natural laws which produce winds are of indefinite range of action, and sometimes are unusually concentrated in space or in time, so as to produce storms and hurricanes, by which much damage is done; the sea may be by these causes violently agitated, so that many barks and many lives perish. Here, it is evident, the evil is only exceptive. Suppose, again, that a boy, in the course of the lively sports proper to his age, suffers a fall which injures his spine, and renders him a cripple for life. Two things have been concerned in the case: first, the love of violent exercise, and second, the law of gravitation. Both of these things are good in the main. In the rash enterprises and rough sports in which boys engage, they prepare their bodies and minds for the hard tasks of life. By gravitation, all moveable things, our own bodies included, are kept stable on the surface of the earth. But when it chances that the playful boy loses his hold (we shall say) of the branch of a tree, and has no solid support immediately below, the law of gravitation unrelentingly pulls him to the ground, and thus he is hurt. Now it was not a primary object of gravitation to injure boys; but gravitation could not but operate in the circumstances, its nature being to be universal and invariable. The evil is, therefore, only a casual exception from something in the main good.

The same explanation applies to even the most conspicuous of the evils which afflict society. War, it may be said, and said truly, is a tremendous example of evil, in the misery, hardship, waste of human life, and mis-spending of human energies, which it occasions. But what is it that produces war? Certain tendencies of human nature, as keen assertion of a supposed right, resentment of supposed injury, acquisitiveness, desire of admiration, combativeness, or mere love of excitement. All of these are tendencies which are every day, in a legitimate extent of action, producing great and indispensable benefits to us. Man would be a tame, indolent, unserviceable being without them, and his fate would be starvation. War, then, huge evil though it be, is, after all, but the exceptive case, a casual misdirection of properties and powers essentially good. God has given us the tendencies for a benevolent purpose. He has only not laid down any absolute obstruction to our misuse of them. That were an arrangement of a kind which he has nowhere made. But he has established many laws in our nature which tend to lessen the frequency and destructiveness of these abuses. Our reason comes to see that war is purely an evil, even to the conqueror. Benevolence interposes to make its ravages less mischievous to human comfort, and less destructive to human life. Men begin to find that their more active powers can be exercised with equal gratification on legitimate objects; for example, in overcoming the natural difficulties of their path through life, or in a generous spirit of emulation in a line of duty beneficial to themselves and their fellow-creatures. Thus, war at length shrinks into a comparatively narrow compass, though there certainly is no reason to suppose that it will be at any early period, if ever, altogether dispensed with, while man’s constitution remains as it is. In considering an evil of this kind, we must not limit our view to our own or any past time. Placed upon the earth with faculties prepared to act, but inexperienced, and with the more active propensities necessarily in great force to suit the condition of the globe, man was apt to misuse his powers much in this way at first, compared with what he is likely to do when he advances into a condition of civilization. In the scheme of providence, thousands of years of frequent warfare, all the so-called glories which fill history, may be only an exception to the general rule.

The sex passion in like manner leads to great evils; but the evils are only an exception from the vast mass of good connected with this affection. Providence has seen it necessary to make very ample provision for the preservation and utmost possible extension of all species. The aim seems to be to diffuse existence as widely as possible, to fill up every vacant piece of space with some sentient being to be a vehicle of enjoyment. Hence this passion is conferred in great force. But the relation between the number of beings, and the means of supporting them, is only on the footing of general law. There may be occasional discrepancies between the laws operating for the multiplication of individuals, and the laws operating to supply them with the means of subsistence, and evils will be endured in consequence, even in our own highly favoured species. But against all these evils, and against those numberless vexations which have arisen in all ages from the attachment of the sexes, place the vast amount of happiness which is derived from this source—the basis of the whole circle of the domestic affections, the sweetening principle of life, the prompter of all our most generous feelings, and even of our most virtuous resolves—and every ill that can be traced to it is but as dust in the balance. And here, also, we must be on our guard against judging from what we see in the world at a particular era. As reason and the higher sentiments of man’s nature increase in force, this passion is put under better regulation, so as to lessen many of the evils connected with it. The civilized man is more able to give it due control; his attachments are less the result of impulse; he studies more the weal of his partner and offspring. There are even some of the resentful feelings connected in early society with love, such as hatred of successful rivalry, and jealousy, which almost disappear in an advanced stage of civilization. The evils springing, in our own species at least, from this passion, may therefore be an exception mainly peculiar to a particular term of the world’s progress, and which may be expected to decrease greatly in amount.

With respect, again, to disease, so prolific a cause of suffering to man, the human constitution is merely a complicated but regular process in electro-chemistry, which goes on well, and is a source of continual gratification, so long as nothing occurs to interfere with it injuriously, but which is liable every moment to be deranged by various external agencies, when it becomes a source of pain, and, if the injury be severe, ceases to be capable of retaining life. It may be readily admitted that the evils experienced in this way are very great; but, after all, such experiences are no more than occasional, and not necessarily frequent—exceptions from a general rule of which the direct action is to confer happiness. The human constitution might have been made of a more hardy character; but we always see hardiness and insensibility go together, and it may be of course presumed that we only could have purchased this immunity from suffering at the expense of a large portion of that delicacy in which lie some of our most agreeable sensations. Or man’s faculties might have been restricted to definiteness of action, as is greatly the case with those of the lower animals, and thus we should have been equally safe from the aberrations which lead to disease; but in that event we should have been incapable of acting to so many different purposes as we are, and of the many high enjoyments which the varied action of our faculties places in our power: we should not, in short, have been human beings, but merely on a level with the inferior animals. Thus, it appears, that the very fineness of man’s constitution, that which places him in such a high relation to the mundane economy, and makes him the vehicle of so many exquisitely delightful sensations—it is this which makes him liable to the sufferings of disease. It might be said, on the other hand, that the noxiousness of the agencies producing disease might have been diminished or extinguished; but the probability is, that this could not have been done without such a derangement of the whole economy of nature as would have been attended with more serious evils. For example—a large class of diseases are the result of effluvia from decaying organic matter. This kind of matter is known to be extremely useful, when mixed with earth, in favouring the process of vegetation. Supposing the noxiousness to the human constitution done away with, might we not also lose that important quality which tends so largely to increase the food raised from the ground? Perhaps (as has been suggested) the noxiousness is even a matter of special design, to induce us to put away decaying organic substances into the earth, where they are calculated to be so useful. Now man has reason to enable him to see that such substances are beneficial under one arrangement, and noxious in the other. He is, as it were, commanded to take the right method in dealing with it. In point of fact, men do not always take this method, but allow accumulations of noxious matter to gather close about their dwellings, where they generate fevers and agues. But their doing so may be regarded as only a temporary exception from the operation of mental laws, the general tendency of which is to make men adopt the proper measures. And these measures will probably be in time universally adopted, so that one extensive class of diseases will be altogether or nearly abolished.