The Growth of Thought as Affecting the Progress of Society

Produced by Jared Fuller
By William Withington.
1851.
Contents.
Life Defined. Intellectual Culture and Intellectual Life, Distinguished. Human Life, a Problem. The Evil to be Managed. Self-Love Considered under a Three-fold Aspect. Three Agencies for meliorating the Human Condition. The Growth of Thought, Slow; and oft most in unexpected quarter.
Welfare as dependent on the Social Institutions. Limited Aim of the Received Political Economy. An Enlightened Policy but the Effective Aim at managing Self-Love, directed towards Present Goods, vulgarly understood. The Political Fault of the Papacy. Its Substantial Correction by the Reformation. Republicanism carried from Religion into Legislation; still without a clear perception of its Principle. Its Progress accordingly Slow.
Philosophy the Second Agency for promoting General Welfare, as the Educator of Self-Love; the Corrector of mistaken apprehensions of Temporal Good; the Revealer of the ties which bind the Members of the Human Family to One Lot, to suffer or rejoice together. Progress in estimating Life.
Mightier Influences yet needed, to contend with the Powers of Evil. Supplied by Man's recognizing the whole of his Being; the extent of his Duties; the Duration of his Existence. Religion, supplying the defects of the preceding Agencies; Considered in nine particulars.
Conclusion.
Recapitulation. Suggestions to Christian Ministers.
Preface.
Not less frequently or intensely, the writer's mind has turned to the problem of applying know truth to the present, reconciling self-love with justice and benevolence, and vindicating to godliness, the promise of the life that now is. If, meanwhile, he has been intruding into those things which he hath not seen, like affecting an angelic religion,—then it were hardly possible but that he should mistake fancy for fact. But if his inquiries have been into what it is given to know, then he cannot resist the belief, that some may derive profit from the results of many fearfully anxious years, here compressed within a few pages. He might have further compressed, just saying: Mainly, political wisdom is the management of self-love; civilization is the cultivation of self-love; the excrescenses of civilization are the false refinements of self-love; while unselfish love is substantial virtue,—the end of the commandments,—the fulfilling of the law: Or, he might have enlarged indefinitely; more especially might have been written on practically applying the principles to the advancement of society. He may yet produce something of the kind. Of the substance of the following pages he has only to say, that, if false, the falsehood has probably become too much a part of his nature to be ever separated. As to such minor considerations, as logical arrangement and the niceties of style, he asks only the criticism due to one, whose hands have been necessitated to guide the plough oftener than the pen, through the best years of life.