But praise came this time from a different quarter. A few years before, and Mackintosh had spoken of Mr. Pitt as cold, stern, crafty, and ambitious; possessing “the parade without the restraint of morals;” the “most profound dissimulation with the utmost ardour of enterprise; prepared by one part of his character for the violence of a multitude, by another for the duplicity of a court.”[84]
It was under the patronage of this same Mr. Pitt that the hardy innovator now turned back to “the old ways,” proclaiming that “history was a vast museum, in which specimens of every variety of human nature might be studied. From these great occasions to knowledge,” he said, “lawgivers and statesmen, but more especially moralists and political philosophers, may reap the most important instruction. There, they may plainly discover, amid all the useful and beautiful variety of governments and institutions, and under all the fantastic multitude of usages and rites which ever prevailed among men, the same fundamental, comprehensive truths—truths which have ever been the guardians of society, recognised and revered (with very few and slight exceptions) by every nation upon earth, and uniformly taught, with still fewer exceptions, by a succession of wise men, from the first dawn of speculation down to the latest times.”
“See,” he continued, “whether from the remotest periods any improvement, or even any change, has been made in the practical rules of human conduct. Look at the code of Moses. I speak of it now as a mere human composition, without considering its sacred origin. Considering it merely in that light, it is the most ancient and the most curious memorial of the early history of mankind. More than 3000 years have elapsed since the composition of the Pentateuch; and let any man, if he is able, tell me in what important respects the rule of life has varied since that distant period. Let the institutes of Menu be explored with the same view; we shall arrive at the same conclusion. Let the books of false religion be opened; it will be found that their moral system is, in all its good features, the same. The impostors who composed them were compelled to pay this homage to the uniform moral sentiments of the world. Examine the codes of nations, those authentic depositories of the moral judgments of men: you everywhere find the same rules prescribed, the same duties imposed. Even the boldest of these ingenious sceptics who have attacked every other opinion, have spared the sacred and immortal simplicity of the rules of life. In our common duties, Bayle and Hume agree with Bossuet and Barrow. Such as the rule was at the first dawn of history, such it continues at the present day. Ages roll over mankind; mighty nations pass away like a shadow; virtue alone remains the same, immutable and unchangeable.”
The object of Mackintosh was to show that the instinct of man was towards society; that society could not be kept together except on certain principles; that these principles, therefore, from the nature of man—a nature predestined and fashioned by God—were at once universal and divine, and that societies would perish that ignored them;—a true and sublime theory; but with respect to which we must, if we desire to be practical, admit that variety of qualifications which different civilizations, different climates, accidental interests, and religious prescriptions interpose.
It may be said, for instance, that no society could exist if its institutions honoured theft as a virtue, and instructed parents to murder their children; but a great and celebrated society did exist in ancient Greece,—a society which outlived its brilliant contemporaries, and which sanctioned robbery, if not detected; and allowed parents to kill their children, if sickly. It is perfectly true that the ten commandments of the Jewish legislator are applicable to all mankind, and are as much revered by the people of the civilized world at the present day, as by the semi-barbarous people of Israel 3000 years ago. They are admitted as integrally into the religion taught by Christ, as they were into the religion taught by Moses. But how different the morality founded on them! How different the doctrine of charity and forgiveness from the retributive prescription of vindicative justice! Nay, how different the precepts taught by the various followers of Christ themselves, who draw those precepts from the same book!
If there is anything on which it is necessary for the interest and happiness of mankind to constitute a fixed principle of custom or of law, it is the position of woman. The social relationship of man with woman rules the destiny of both from the cradle to the grave; and yet, on this same relationship, what various notions, customs, and laws!
I make these observations, because it is well that we should see how much is left to the liberty of man, whilst we recognise the certain rules by which his caprice is limited: how much is to be learned from the past—how much is left open to the future!
But all argument at the time that Mackintosh opened his lectures consisted in the opposition of extremes. As the one party decried history altogether, so the other referred everything to history; as the former sect declared that no reverence was due to custom, so the latter announced that all upon which we valued ourselves most was traditional. Because those fanatics scoffed at the ideas and manners of the century that had just elapsed, these referred with exultation to the manners and ideas that prevailed some thousands of years before.
Mackintosh stood forth, confessedly, as History’s champion; and with the beautiful candour, which marked his modest and elevated frame of mind, confessed that the sight of those who surrounded his chair—the opinions he knew them to entertain—the longing after applause, for which every public speaker, whatever his theme, naturally thirsts—and also, he adds, “a proper repentance for former errors”—might all have heightened the qualities of the orator to the detriment of the lecturer, and carried him, “in the rebound from his original opinions, too far towards the opposite extreme.”[85]