JOHN ADAMS TO THOMAS JEFFERSON.
Quincy, September 15, 1813.
Dear Sir,—My last sheet would not admit an observation that was material to my design.
Dr. Price was inclined to think that infinite wisdom and goodness could not permit infinite power to be inactive from eternity, but that an infinite and eternal universe must have necessarily flowed from these attributes.
Plato's system was "αγαθος" was eternal, self-existent, &c. His ideas, his word, his reason, his wisdom, his goodness, or in one word his "Logos" was omnipotent, and produced the universe from all eternity. Now! as far as you and I can understand Hersey, Price and Plato, are they not of one theory? Of one mind? What is the difference? I own an eternal solitude of a self-existent being, infinitely wise, powerful and good, is to me altogether incomprehensible and incredible. I could as soon believe the Athanasian creed.
You will ask me what conclusion I draw from all this? I answer, I drop into myself, and acknowledge myself to be a fool. No mind but one can see through the immeasurable system. It would be presumption and impiety in me to dogmatize on such subjects. My duties in my little infinitessimal circle I can understand and feel. The duties of a son, a brother, a father, a neighbor, a citizen, I can see and feel, but I trust the Ruler with his skies.
Si quid novisti rectius, istis
Candidus imperti, si non, his utere, mecum.
This world is a mixture of the sublime and the beautiful, the base and the contemptible, the whimsical and ridiculous, (according to our narrow sense and trifling feelings.) It is an enigma and a riddle. You need not be surprised, then, if I should descend from these heights to the most egregious trifle. But first let me say, I asked you in a former letter how far advanced we were in the science of aristocracy since Theognis' Stallions, Jacks and Rams? Have not Chancellor Livingston and Major General Humphreys introduced an hereditary aristocracy of Merino Sheep? How shall we get rid of this aristocracy? It is entailed upon us forever. And an aristocracy of land jobbers and stock jobbers is equally and irremediably entailed upon us, to endless generations.
Now for the odd, the whimsical, the frivolous. I had scarcely sealed my last letter to you upon Theognis' doctrine of well-born Stallions, Jacks and Rams, when they brought me from the Post Office a packet, without post mark, without letter, without name, date or place. Nicely sealed was a printed copy of eighty or ninety pages, and in large full octavo, entitled: Section first—Aristocracy. I gravely composed my risible muscles and read it through. It is from beginning to end an attack upon me by name for the doctrines of aristocracy in my three volumes of Defence, &c. The conclusion of the whole is that an aristocracy of bank paper is as bad as the nobility of France or England. I most assuredly will not controvert this point with this man. Who he is I cannot conjecture. The honorable John Taylor of Virginia, of all men living or dead, first occurred to me.
Is it Oberon? Is it Queen Mab, that reigns and sports with us little beings? I thought my books as well as myself were forgotten. But behold! I am to become a great man in my expiring moments. Theognis and Plato, and Hersey and Price, and Jefferson and I, must go down to posterity together; and I know not, upon the whole, where to wish for better company. I wish to add Vanderkemp, who has been here to see me, after an interruption of twenty-four years. I could and ought to add many others, but the catalogue would be too long. I am, as ever.
P. S. Why is Plato associated with Theognis, &c.? Because no man ever expressed so much terror of the power of birth. His genius could invent no remedy or precaution against it, but a community of wives; a confusion of families; a total extinction of all relations of father, son and brother. Did the French Revolutionists contrive much better against the influence of birth?