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RICHARD WATSON.

in cobwebs, sheep preying on dead carcasses,
fishes sporting in the woods, and elephants
walking on the sea. Could such figures and
combinations give pleasure, or merit the ap-
pellation of sublime or beautiful? Should
we hesitate to pronounce their author mad?
And are the absurdities of madmen proper
subjects either of amusement or of imitation
to reasonable beings?
Essays.

RICHARD WATSON, D.D., born 1737, Bishop of Llandaff, 1782, died 1816, published Institutionum Chemicarum, Pars Metallurgica, Camb., 1768, 8vo; Essay on the Subjects of Chemistry and their General Divisions, 1771, 8vo; An Apology for Christianity, in a Series of Letters to Edward Gibbon, 1776, 12mo, 6th edit., Lond., 1797, 12mo; Chemical Essays, 1781-87, 5 vols. 12mo, 7th edit., 1800, 5 vols. 12mo; Collection of Theological Tracts, Camb., 1785, 6 vols. 8vo, 2d edit., Lond., 1791, 6 vols. 8vo, large paper, royal 8vo; Sermons, Camb., 1788. 8vo; An Apology for the Bible, in a Series of Letters addressed to Thomas Paine, Lond., 1796, 12mo, 8th edit., 1799; Miscellaneous Tracts, 1815, 2 vols. 8vo; and other publications. See Anecdotes of his Life by Himself, 1817, 4to, 2d edit., 1818, 2 vols. 8vo, Phila., 1818, 8vo.

"His autobiography affords a singular of great talents, high independence, and disappointed pride."-ORME: Bibl. Bib., 460.

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rality of Paganism; you will have robbed mankind of their firm assurance of another life; and thereby you will have despoiled them of their patience, of their humility, of their charity, of their chastity, of all those mild and silent virtues which (however despicable they may appear in your eyes) are the only ones which meliorate and sublime our nature; which Paganism never knew, which spring from Christianity alone, which do or might constitute our comfort in this life, and without the possession of which, another life, if after all there should happen to be one, must be more vicious and inore miserable than this is, unless a miracle be

exerted in the alteration of our disposition.

Perhaps you will contend that the universal light of religion, that the truth and fitness of things, are of themselves sufficient to exalt the nature and regulate the manners of mankind. Shall we never have done

with this groundless commendation of nat

ural law?

Look into the first chapter of Paul's epistle to the Romans, and you will see the extent of its influence over the Gen

tiles of those days; or, if you dislike Paul's authority and the manners of antiquity, look into the more admired accounts of modern Voyagers, and examine its influence over the Pagans of our own times, over the sensual of New Zealand, or the remorseless savages inhabitants of Otaheite, over the cannibals

of America. But these men are Barbarians. display-Your law of nature, notwithstanding, extends even to them, but they have misused their reason,-they have then the more need of, and would be more than thankful for, that revelation which you, with an ignorant and fastidious self-sufficiency, deem useless. But they might, of themselves, if they thought fit, become wise and virtuous. answer with Cicero, Ut nihil interest, utrum nemo valeat, au nemo valere possit; sic non intelligo quid intersit, utrum nemo sit sapiens, au nemo esse possit.

CHRISTIANITY AND NATURAL RELIGION. GENTLEMEN,-Suppose the mighty work accomplished, the cross trampled upon, Christianity everywhere proscribed, and the religion of nature once more become the religion of Europe; what advantage will you have derived to your country, or to yourselves, from the exchange? I know your answer, you will have freed the world These, however, you will think, are exfrom the hypocrisy of priests and the tyr-traordinary instances; and that we ought not anny of superstition. No; you forget that Lycurgus, and Numa, and Odin, and MangoCopac, and all the great legislators of ancient or modern story, have been of the opinion that the affairs of civil society could not well be conducted without some religion; you must of necessity introduce a priesthood, with, probably, as much hypocrisy; a religion with, assuredly, more superstition than that which you now reprobate with such indecent and ill-grounded contempt. But I will tell you from what you will have freed the world: you will have freed it from its abhorrence of vice, and from every powerful incentive to virtue; you will, with the religion, have brought back the depraved mo

from these to take our measure of the excellency of the law of nature; but rather from the civilized states of China and Japan, or from the nations which flourished in learning and arts before Christianity was heard of in the world. You mean to say that by the law of nature, which you are desirous of substituting in the room of the gospel, you do not understand those rules of conduct which an individual, abstracted from the community, and deprived of the institution of mankind, could excogitate for himself; but such a system of precepts as the most enlightened men of the most enlightened ages have recommended to our observance. Where do you find this system? We cannot

EDWARD GIBBON, born at Putney, Surrey, England, 1737, spent fourteen months at Magdalene College, Oxford; in 1753 abjured, at the feet of a Roman Catholic priest in London, what he considered the errors of Protestantism; eighteen months afterwards, on Christmas, 1754, received the sacrament in the Calvinistic church at Lausanne; in 1761, Lond., small Svo (in English, Lond., 1764, sm. 8vo) published, in French, Essai sur l'étude de le Littérature; in 1767-68, Lond., 2 vols. sm. Svo, published in conjunction with his friend Deyverdun, Memoires Littéraires de la Grande Brétagne. 1767 et 1768; from 1768 was employed chiefly in the composition of his History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Lond., 1776-88, 6 vols. 4to; from 1783 to 1793 resided at Lausanne, where, in 1789, he lost by death his attached friend Deyverdun, in whose house he had resided since his settlement in Switzerland; died at the house of Lord Sheffield, London, Jan. 16, 1794. Referring to his admission to the Protestant church at Lausanne, Gibbon remarks: "It was here that I suspended my religious inquiries, acquiescing with im plicit belief in the tenets and mysteries which are adopted by the general consent of Catholics and Protestants." Gibbon "nowhere openly avows his disbelief," and it is impossible to discover from his writings and recorded conversation how far his faith went.

meet with it in the works of Stobæus, or the Scythian Anacharsis, nor in those of Plato, nor in Cicero, nor in those of the Emperor Antoninus, or the slave Epictetus: for we are persuaded that the most animated considerations of the geoy, and the honestum, of the beauty of virtue, and the fitness of things, are not able to furnish even a Brutus himself with permanent principles of action; much less are they able to purify the polluted recesses of a vitiated heart, to curb the irregularities of appetite, or restrain the impetuosity of passion in common men. If you order us to examine the works of Grotius, or Puffendorf, of Burlamaqui, or Hutchinson, for what you understand by the law of nature, we apprehend that you are in a great error in taking your notions of natural law, as discoverable by natural reason, from the elegant systems of it which have been drawn up by Christian philosophers; since they have all laid their foundations, either tacitly or expressly, upon a principle derived from revelation, a thorough knowledge of the being and attributes of God: and even those amongst ourselves who, rejecting Christianity, still continue Theists, are indebted to revelation (whether you are either aware of, or disposed to acknowledge, the debt or not) for those sublime speculations concerning the Deity, which you have fondly attributed to the excellency of your own unassisted reason. If you would know the real strength of nat ural reason, and how far it can proceed in the investigation or enforcement of moral duties, you must consult the manners and the writings of those who have never heard of either the Jewish or the Christian dispensation, or of those other manifestations of himself which God vouchsafed to Adam and to the patriarchs before and after the flood. It would be difficult perhaps any where to find a people entirely destitute of traditionary notices concerning a deity, and of traditionary fears or expectations of another life; and the morals of mankind may have, As regards Gibbon's History we recom perhaps, been no where quite so abandoned mend the third edition of Milman's edition, as they would have been had they been left with Additional Notes by Dr. Win. Smith, wholly to themselves in these points: how-portrait and maps, Lond., Murray, 1854–55, ever, it is a truth which cannot be denied, 5 vols. 8vo. how much soever it may be lamented, that "This book, in spite of its faults, will always though the generality of mankind have be a noble work. . . . We may correct his errors, always had some faint conception of God and combat his prejudices, without ceasing to admit and his providence; yet they have been that few men have combined, if we are not to say always greatly inefficacious in the produc- in so high a degree, at least in a manner so comtion of good morality, and highly deroga-plete and so well regulated, the necessary qualiftory to his nature, amongst all the people cations for a writer of history."-Guizor. Sce of the earth except the Jews and Chris- Lond. Quar. Rev., i. 290. tians; and some may perhaps be desirous of excepting the Mahometans, who derive all that is good in their Koran from Christianity.

See the Miscellaneous Works of Edward Gibbon, Esq., with Memoirs of his Life and Writings, Composed by Himself: Illustrated from his Letters, with Occasional Notes and Narrative, by John, Lord Sheffield. Lond., 1799-1815, 3 vols. 4to (vols. i. and ii., Dubl., 1796, 3 vols. 8vo; Basil, 1796-97, 7 vols. 8vo); Lond., 1814, 5 vols. 8vo. large paper, r. 8vo; 1837, 8vo; Life [autobiography], with Selections from his Correspondence. and Illustrations, by the Rev. II. II. Milman, Lond., 1839, 8vo.

"Whenever the subject is suited to his style, and when his phlegmatic temper is warmed by those generous emotions of which, as we have said, it was sometimes susceptible, he exhibits his ideas in the most splendid and imposing forms of

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which the English language is capable."-WM. H. school was soon obliterated by the commerce PRESCOTT: Biog. and Crit. Miscellanies.

OPINIONS OF THE ANCIENT PHILOSOPHERS

ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. The writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colours the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty of the ancient philosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul. When they are desirous of arming their disciples against the fear of death, they inculcate, as an obvious though melancholy position, that the fatal stroke of our dissolution releases us from the calamities of life; and that those can no longer suffer who no longer exist. Yet there were a few sages of Greece and Rome who had conceived a more exalted and, in some respects, a juster idea of human nature; though it must be confessed that in the sublime inquiry their reason had often been guided by their imagination, and that their imagination had been prompted by their vanity. When they viewed with complacency the extent of their own mental powers; when they exercised the various faculties of memory, of fancy, and of judgment, in the most profound speculations, or the most important labours; and when they reflected on the desire of fame, which transported them into future ages, far beyond the bounds of death and of the grave; they were unwilling to confound themselves with the beasts of the field, or to suppose that a being for whose dignity they entertained the most sincere admiration could be limited to a spot of earth, and to a few years of duration. With this favourable prepossession they summoned to their aid the science, or rather the language, of metaphysics. They soon discovered, that as none of the proper ties of matter will apply to the operations of the mind, the human soul must consequently be a substance distinct from the body, pure, simple, and spiritual, incapable of dissolution, and susceptible of a much higher degree of virtue and happiness after the release from its corporeal prison. From these specious and noble principles the philosophers who trod in the footsteps of Plato deduced a very unjustifiable conclusion, since they asserted not only the future immortality, but the past eternity, of the human soul, which they were too apt to consider as a portion of the infinite and self-existing spirit which pervades and sustains the universe. A doctrine thus removed beyond the senses and the experience of mankind might serve to amuse the leisure of a philosophie mind; or, in the silence of solitude, it might sometimes impart a ray of comfort to desponding virtue; but the faint impression which had been received in the

and business of active life. We are sufficiwho flourished in the age of Cicero, and of ently acquainted with the eminent persons the first Cæsars, with their actions, their characters, and their motives, to be assured that their conduct in this life was never regulated by any serious conviction of the rewards and punishments of a future state. At the bar and in the senate of Rome the ablest orators were not apprehensive of giving offence to their hearers by exposing that doctrine as an idle and extravagant opinion, which was rejected with contempt by every man of a liberal education and understanding.

Since, therefore, the most sublime efforts of philosophy can extend no farther than feebly to point out the desire, the hope, or at most the possibility, of a future state, there is nothing except a divine revelation that can ascertain the existence and describe the condition of the invisible country which is destined to receive the souls of men after their separation from the body.

DESCRIPTION OF MAHOMET.

According to the tradition of his com panions Mahomet was distinguished by the beauty of his person,-an outward gift which is seldom despised except by those to whom it has been refused. Before he spoke the orator engaged on his side the affections of a public or private audience. They applauded his commanding presence, his majestic aspect, his piercing eye; his gracious smile, his flowing beard, his countenance that painted every sensation of the soul, and his gestures that enforced each expression of the tongue. In the familiar offices of life he scrupulously adhered to the grave and ceremonious politeness of his country: his respectful attention to the rich and powerful was dignified by his condescension and affability to the poorest citizens of Mecca; the frankness of his manner con cealed the artifice of his views; and the habits of courtesy were imputed to personal friendship or universal benevolence. His memory was capacious and retentive, his wit easy and social, his imagination sublime, his judgment clear, rapid, and decisive. He possessed the courage both of thought and action; and although his designs might gradually expand with his success, the first idea which he entertained of his divine mission bears the stamp of an original and superior genius. The son of Abdallah was educated in the bosom of the noblest race, in the use of the purest dialect, of Arabia ; and the fluency of his speech was corrected and enhanced by the practice of discreet and sensible silence. With these powers of

eloquence, Mahomet was an illiterate barbarian: his youth had never been instructed in the arts of reading and writing; the common ignorance exempted him from shame and reproach, but he was reduced to a parrow circle of existence, and deprived of those faithful mirrors which reflect to our mind the minds of sages and heroes. Yet the book of nature and of man was open to his view; and some fancy has been indulged in the political and philosophical observations which are ascribed to the Arabian traveller. He compares the nations and religions of the earth; discovers the weakness of the Persian and Roman monarchies; beholds with pity and indignation the degeneracy of the times; and resolves to unite, under one God and one king, the invincible spirit and primitive virtues of the Arabs.

which, under the name of Islam, he preached
to his family and nation, is compounded
of an eternal truth and a necessary fiction.-
that there is only one God, and that Ma-
homet is the apostle of God.
History of the Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire.

ON READING.

"Reading is to the mind," said the Duke of Vivonne to Louis XIV., "what your partridges are to my chops." It is in fact the nourishment of the mind; for by reading we know our Creator, his works, ourselves chiefly, and our fellow-creatures. But this nourishment is easily converted into poison. Salmasius had read as much as Grotius, perhaps more; but their different modes of reading made the one an enlightened philosopher, and the other, to speak plainly, a pedant, puffed up with a useless erudition.

Yet let us avoid the contrary extreme, and respect method, without rendering ourselves its slaves. While we propose an end in our reading, let not this end be too remote ; and when once we have attained it, let our attention be directed to a different subject. Inconstancy weakens the understanding; a long and exclusive application to a single object hardens and contracts it. Our ideas no longer change easily into a different channel, and the course of reading to which we have too long accustomed ourselves is the only one that we can pursue with pleasure.

Our more accurate inquiry will suggest that, instead of visiting the courts, the camps, the temples of the east, the two Let us read with method, and propose to journeys of Mahomet into Syria were con- ourselves an end to which all our studies fined to the fairs of Bostra and Damascus; may point. Through neglect of this rule, that he was only thirteen years of age when gross ignorance often disgraces great readhe accompanied the caravan of his uncle, ers: who, by skipping hastily and irreguand that his duty compelled him to return larly from one subject to another, render as soon as he had disposed of the merchan- themselves incapable of combining their dise of Cadijah. In these hasty and super- ideas. So many detached parcels of knowlficial excursions the eye of genius might edge cannot form a whole. This inconstancy discern some objects invisible to his grosser weakens the energies of the mind, creates companions; some seeds of knowledge might in it a dislike to application, and even robs be cast upon a fruitful soil; but his igno-it of the advantages of natural good sense. rance of the Syriac language must have checked his curiosity, and I cannot perceive in the life or writings of Mahomet that his prospect was far extended beyond the limits of the Arabian world. From every region of that solitary world the pilgrims of Mecca were annually assembled by the calls of devotion and commerce in the free concourse of multitudes, a simple citizen, in his native | tongue, might study the political state and character of the tribes, the theory and practice of the Jews and Christians. Some useful strangers might be tempted or forced to implore the rites of hospitality; and the enemies of Mahomet have named the Jew, the Persian, and the Syrian monk, whom they accuse of lending their aid to the composition of the Koran. Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist. From his earliest youth Mahomet was addicted to religious contemplation: each year, during the month of Ramadan, he withdrew from the world and from the arms of Cadijah: in the cave of Hera, three miles from Mecca, he consulted the spirit of fraud or enthusiasm, whose abode is not in the heavens but in the mind of the prophet. The faith

We ought, besides, to be careful not to make the order of our thoughts subservient to that of our subjects; this would be to sacrifice the principal to the accessory. The use of our reading is to aid us in thinking. The perusal of a particular work gives birth, perhaps, to ideas unconnected with the subject of which it treats. I wish to pursue these ideas; they withdraw me from my proposed plan of reading, and throw me into a new track, and from thence, perhaps, into a second and a third. At length I begin to perceive whither my researches tend. Their results perhaps, may be profitable; it is worth while to try: whereas, had I followed the high road, I should not have been able,

THOMAS JEFFERSON.

at the end of my long journey, to retrace the progress of my thoughts.

This plan of reading is not applicable to our early studies, since the severest method is scarcely sufficient to make us conceive objects altogether new. Neither can it be adopted by those who read in order to write, and who ought to dwell on their subject till they have sounded its depths. These reflections, however, I do not absolutely warrant. On the supposition that they are just, they may be so, perhaps, for myself alone. The constitution of minds differs like that of bodies; the same regimen will not suit all. Each individual ought to study his own.

To read with attention, exactly to define the expressions of our author, never to admit a conclusion without comprehending its reason, often to pause, reflect, and interrogate ourselves, these are so many advices which it is easy to give, but difficult to follow. The same may be said of that almost evangelical maxim of forgetting friends, country, religion, of giving merit its due praise, and embracing truth wherever it is

to be found.

But what ought we to read? Each individual must answer this question for himself, agreeably to the object of his studies. The only general precept that I would venture to give is that of Pliny, "to read much, rather than many things," to make a careful selection of the best works, and to render them familiar to us by attentive and repeated perusals. Without expatiating on the authors so generally known and approved, I would simply observe, that in matters of reasoning, the best are those who have augmented the number of useful truths; who have discovered truths, of whatever nature they may be; in one word, those bold spirits who, quitting the beaten track, prefer being in the wrong alone to being in the right with the multitude. Such authors increase the number of our ideas, and even their mistakes are useful to their successors. With all the respect due to Mr. Locke, I would not, however, neglect the works of those academicians who destroy errors without hoping to substitute truth in their stead. In works of fancy, invention ought to bear away the palm; chiefly that invention which creates a new kind of writing; and next, that which displays the charms of novelty in its subject, character, situation, pictures, thoughts, and sentiments. Yet this invention will miss its effect unless it be accompanied with a genius capable of adapting itself to every variety of the subject, successively sublime, pathetic, flowery, majestic, and playful; and with a judgment which admits nothing indecorous, and a style which expresses well whatever

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ought to be said. As to compilations which are intended merely to treasure up the thoughts of others, I ask whether they are written with perspicuity, whether superfluities are lopped off, and dispersed observations skilfully collected; and agreeably to my answers to those questions I estimate the merit of such performances. Abstract of my Readings, Preface.

THOMAS JEFFERSON,

born at Shadwell, Albemarle County, Virginia, April 2, 1743, became a member of the National Congress, 1775, and in 1776 reported the celebrated Declaration of Independence, of which he has the credit of the authorship; Governor of Virginia, 1779-1781, member of Congress, 1783, Minister of the United States at Paris, 17851789, Secretary of State, 1789-1793, VicePresident of the United States, 1797-1801, and President of the Republic, 1801-1809, died July 4, 1826. See The Writings of Thomas Jefferson; being his Autobiography, Correspondence, Reports, Messages, Addresses, and other Writings, etc., edited by H. A. Washington, New York, 1854, 9 vols. 8vo; and The Life of Thomas Jefferson, by Henry S. Randall, LL.D., New York, 1857, 3 vols. 8vo. Mr. Jefferson's best-known work is Notes on the State of Virginia, Paris, 1782 (really 1784), 8vo: 200 copies privately printed; in French, by the Abbé Morellet, with some alterations by the author, Paris, 1786, 8vo; in English, Lond., 1787, 8vo: other editions.

"The merit of this paper [Declaration of Independence] is Mr. Jefferson's. Some changes were made in it at the suggestion of other members of the committee, and others by Congress while it was under discussion. But none of them altered the tone, the frame, the arrangement, or the general character of the instrument. As a composition, the Declaration is Mr. Jefferson's. It is the

production of his mind, and the high honour of it belongs to him clearly and absolutely. To say that he performed his great work well would be doing him injustice. To say that he did excellently well, admirably well, would be inadequate and halting praise. Let us rather say that he so discharged the duty assigned him, that all Americans may well rejoice that the work of drawing the title-deed of their liberties devolved upon him.”— DANIEL WEBSTER: Discourse in Commemoration of the Lives and Services of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson: Webster's Works, 1854, i. 126,

127.

"After Washington and Franklin, there is no person who fills so eminent a place among the great men of America as Jefferson."-LORD BROUGHAM:

Edin. Rev., 1837, and in his Contrib. to Edin. Rev., 1856, iii. 443.

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