صور الصفحة
PDF
النشر الإلكتروني

LETTER
IX.

I have submitted the observations and facts in this letter to your attention, in order that by studying yourself, and the origin of the knowlege and ideas which you already possess, you may perceive, and personally feel and keep in mind the grand truth, that human nature is not a casual, an undesigned, or a common or necessary course of things, or could have arisen in that way; but that it is in all respects, as much intellectual as bodily, a special, a chosen, and an artificial mode of being, devised by its Creator to be so; and specifically formed and caused in every one, by a vast series and complication of specific agencies and causations, successively operating to produce the very compound and particular results, which appear in ourselves and in all. It is this perception and conviction, that we are such factitious results from such special provisions purposely devised, made and arranged, in order to cause us to be what we are, that will give us the more adequate and intimate sense of the creating mind and power of the Deity; which will most strongly lead the understanding to a due recognition of Him, and to an habitual adoration and attachment to Him as an indispensable REALITY; without which, such a world and such an order of beings as ours, could not have come into existence.

LETTER X.

CONSIDERATIONS ON THE PLAN AND APPOINTMENT OF THE
CREATOR AS TO THE DIVISION OF HUMAN KIND INTO TWO
SEXES-REVIEW OF THE DISTINCT NATURE AND QUALITIES
OF EACH.

MY DEAR SON,

X.

THUS far we have been surveying some of the great LETTER principles on which human nature has been constituted, and which have been found to have operated, steadily and efficaciously, to fulfil their Divine Author's intentions. None have failed: they are continuing to act now as freshly and as vigorously as ever, but with more abundant results, as the human mind improves from their agency, and as our enlarging population and activity, are diversifying and multiplying the objects and success of man's emulating and highly cultivated spirit. It is the operation of such principles which forms the real Sacred History of the World; for this, in its incidents, only elucidates the workings of the intellectual springs and freely-combined mechanism and established powers, by which human beings are actuated, and their transactions produced, and their improvements effectuated. But what we have been contemplating, is only a part of the great system of our terrestrial nature. Other interesting portions of the Divine plan remain to be considered, and one of the most important of these will be the subject of the present Letter.

It has been appointed from the origin of our race,

LETTER that it should be divided into two sexes of different

X.

temperament and character, with a corresponding distinction of powers and qualities in each. This has been made the law of the whole animated kingdom; but it is among humankind, that its moral and intellectual operations are most perspicuously displayed.

This also has been a deliberate choice, and not a necessity. Each individual, like each plant, might have produced its own successor; or if there were to be two such species of human beings, each sex might have evolved a descendant like itself. Males might have had a male ancestor alone, and females one of their own kind only. Deucalion and Pyrrha were fabled to have thus produced the new race of mankind from the pebbles, which they severally threw behind them.1

On this plan, there would have been two sets of human beings, as separate from each other as eagles and pheasants are; but this mode of origin would have soon sprung up into divergencies, the consequences of which we cannot calculate. One effect, however, we may say, would have ensued, that neither sex would have become what it now is. Each would have differed so much in habits, nurture and feelings, from what they now are, and from each other, that they might never have associated in sympathy, nor have long continued in amity together.

To prevent the disadvantageous result of such a division and distinctness of origin, it has been made an unaltering principle in the Divine creation of human nature, that all mankind shall be of one

'See Letter XVI. of this volume, note ".

X.

blood and of one descent, with perpetually attach- LETTER ing sympathies thence arising toward each other ; and therefore that both sexes shall be born from the same mother, and have the same father: altho such an appointment required a most peculiar and complicated contrivance and creative sagacity, in order to carry it into universal and unceasing effect, thro all the successions of the human duration.

[ocr errors]

Most special, indeed, must have been the devised provisions to ensure such a perpetuated result. For that it might never fail, it has also been necessary that the two sexes should be kept alive in equal number, and therefore be born so as to preserve this mutual proportion with each other, a circumstance which the Creator made more difficult to himself, by His laws of death, taking each away at all ages of their earthly existence, and by His assigning to them such different forms and offices of their bodily structure. It so happens in life, that from their more violent or consuming habits and occupations, the general mortality of males exceeds that of females. In order to prevent this consequence from altering their average equality, it became therefore expedient that rather more of the male sex should be born. By such an arrangement, the little inequalities of births and deaths would correct each other, and the balance be preserved between these two classes of the human population.

Now, on reference to the statistical tables of our own nation, and of Europe, on this subject, we find all these laws and provisions every where in effective

2 When St. Paul expressed this truth to the Areopagus of Athens (Acts xvii. 26), it must have surprised them as much as his declaration of the final resurrection, for it formed no part of the theories of any of the ancient philosophers, nor of the popular mythologies.

LETTER operation.

X.

In England and Wales, and in our smaller adjacent isles, the two sexes come into existence in nearly equal numbers, and with the difference in favor of the male sex.3 In France, and elsewhere, we observe the same result. The cal

culations of the proportions of births, in various countries, present average numbers to us that differ in each, because the ratio of the deaths have similar variations. For we find that more males die within any particular period, than females." Altho on

5

3 In the Population Abstract, ordered to be printed by The House of Commons in 1833, of the Parish Register Returns, digested and reduced into order with so much ability and correctness by Mr. Rickman, we have these authenticated facts on this subject :

:

In ENGLAND during ten years, from 1821 to 1830, there were baptized 1,832,721 males, and 1,758,663 females. Vol. iii. p. 412. In WALES during the same time, 83,949 males, and 76,666 females, p. 483. In the BRITISH ISLES of Guernsey, Jersey, and the adjacent ones, 15,096 males, and 14,409 females, p. 492.

Thus, in France during the fifteen years from 1817 to 1831, there were born 7,490,931 males, and 7,041,247 females. Ann. Long. for 1834. In Denmark in 1828, the boys born were 19,954, the girls 18,840. Bull. Univ. 1830, p. 248. In the Prussian Provinces on the Rhine, the proportions born in 1828 were 40,893 boys, and 38,348 girls. Ib. 435. At Brussels in 1833, the males born were 2,092, and the females 1,931.

The general proportion of the births of the different sexes in Europe has been thus calculated: For every 100 GIRLS born, there have been born the following number of BOYS:

In Russia, 109; Prussia, 107; in Sicily, Austria, Pomerania, Brandenburg, France and Holland, 106; in Sweden, between 104 and 105 ; and in Great Britain, rather more than 104.

" Mr. Rickman's Abstract states, that in ENGLAND in the ten years from 1821 to 1830, there were buried 1,193,461 males, and 1,155,665 females. During the eighteen years from 1813 to 1830 were buried 1,899,694 males, and 1,848,048 females. V. iii. p. 412.

In WALES, during eighteen years from 1813 to 1830, the buried were 96,501 males and 94,253 females. p. 483.

In both ENGLAND and WALES, taken together during the ten years from 1821 to 1830, there were buried 1,251,105 males and 1,211,802 females. p. 486.

In the British Isles of Guernsey, Jersey, &c., the buried during these ten years were 9,077 males, and 8,933 females. P.

492.

In

« السابقةمتابعة »