For the purpose of acquiring this branch of education, children cannot associate too early, nor too often with their parents, or with their superiors in age, rank, and wisdom.
12. The effects of MUSIC upon the moral faculty, have been felt and recorded in every country. Hence we are able to discover the virtues and vices of different nations, by their tunes, as certainly as by their laws. The effects of music, when simply mechanical, upon the passions, are powerful and extensive. But it remains yet to determine the degrees of moral ecstacy,[** sic] that may be produced by an attack upon the ear, the reason, and the moral principle, at the same time, by the combined powers of music and eloquence.
13. The ELOQUENCE of the PULPIT is nearly allied to music in its effects upon the moral faculty. It is true, there can be no permanent change in the temper, and moral conduct of a man, that is not derived from the understanding and the will; but we must remember, that these two powers of the mind are most assailable, when they are attacked through the avenue of the passions; and these, we know, when agitated by the powers of eloquence, exert a mechanical action upon every power of the soul. Hence we find in every age and country, where christianity has been propagated, the most accomplished orators have generally been the most successful reformers of mankind. There must be a defect of eloquence in a preacher, who, with the resources for oratory, which are contained in the Old and New Testaments, does not produce in every man who hears him, at least a temporary love of virtue. I grant that the eloquence of the pulpit alone cannot change men into christians, but it certainly possesses the power of changing brutes into men. Could the eloquence of the stage be properly directed, it is impossible to conceive the extent of its mechanical effects upon morals. The language and imagery of a Shakespeare, upon moral and religious subjects, poured upon the passions and the senses, in all the beauty and variety of dramatic representation; who could resist, or describe their effects?
14. Odours of various kinds have been observed to act in the most sensible manner upon the moral faculty. Brydone tells us, upon the authority of a celebrated philosopher in Italy, that the peculiar wickedness of the people who live in the neighbourhood of Ætna and Vesuvius, is occasioned chiefly by the smell of the sulphur and of the hot exhalations which are constantly discharged from those volcanos. Agreeable odours seldom fail to inspire serenity, and to compose the angry spirits. Hence the pleasure, and one of the advantages of a flower garden. The smoke of tobacco is likewise of a composing nature, and tends not only to produce what is called a train in perception, but to hush the agitated passions into silence and order. Hence the practice of connecting the pipe or segar, and the bottle together, in public company.
15. It will be sufficient only to mention LIGHT and DARKNESS, to suggest facts in favour of the influence of each of them upon moral sensibility. How often do the peevish complaints of the night in sickness, give way to the composing rays of the light of the morning? Othello cannot murder Desdemona by candle-light, and who has not felt the effects of a blazing fire upon the gentle passions?
16. It is to be lamented, that no experiments have as yet been made, to determine the effects of all the different species of AIRS, which chemistry has lately discovered, upon the moral faculty. I have authority from actual experiments, only to declare, that dephlogisticated air, when taken into the lungs, produces cheerfulness, gentleness, and serenity of mind.
17. What shall we say of the effects of MEDICINES upon the moral faculty? That many substances in the materia medica act upon the intellects, is well known to physicians. Why should it be thought impossible for medicines to act in like manner upon the moral faculty? May not the earth contain, in its bowels, or upon its surface, antidotes? But I will not blend facts with conjectures. Clouds and darkness still hang upon this part of my subject.
Let it not be suspected, from any thing that I have delivered, that I suppose the influence of physical causes upon the moral faculty, renders the agency of divine influence unnecessary to our moral happiness. I only maintain, that the operations of the divine government are carried on in the moral, as in the natural world, by the instrumentality of second causes. I have only trodden in the footsteps of the inspired writers; for most of the physical causes I have enumerated, are connected with moral precepts, or have been used as the means of reformation from vice, in the Old and New Testaments. To the cases that have been mentioned, I shall only add, that Nebuchadnezzar was cured of his pride, by means of solitude and a vegetable diet. Saul was cured of his evil spirit, by means of David's harp, and St. Paul expressly says, “I keep my body under, and bring it into subjection, lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away.” But I will go one step further, and add in favour of divine influence upon the moral principle, that in those extraordinary cases, where bad men are suddenly reformed, without the instrumentality of physical, moral, or rational causes, I believe that the organization of those parts of the body, in which the faculties of the mind are seated, undergoes a physical change[11]; and hence the expression of a “new creature,” which is made use of in the Scriptures to denote this change, is proper in a literal, as well as a figurative sense. It is probably the beginning of that perfect renovation of the human body, which is predicted by St. Paul in the following words: “For our conversation is in heaven, from whence we look for the Saviour, who shall change our vile bodies, that they may be fashioned according to his own glorious body.” I shall not pause to defend myself against the charge of enthusiasm in this place; for the age is at length arrived, so devoutly wished for by Dr. Cheyne, in which men will not be deterred in their researches after truth, by the terror of odious or unpopular names.
I cannot help remarking under this head, that if the conditions of those parts of the human body which are connected with the human soul, influence morals, the same reason may be given for a virtuous education, that has been admitted for teaching music and the pronunciation of foreign languages, in the early and yielding state of those organs which form the voice and speech. Such is the effect of a moral education, that we often see its fruits in advanced stages of life, after the religious principles which were connected with it, have been renounced; just as we perceive the same care in a surgeon in his attendance upon patients, after the sympathy which first produced this care, has ceased to operate upon his mind. The boasted morality of the deists, is, I believe, in most cases, the offspring of habits, produced originally by the principles and precepts of christianity. Hence appears the wisdom of Solomon's advice, “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not,” I had almost said, he cannot “depart from it.”