An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible

by Catharine Esther Beecher

The Susceptibilities.

In regard to the second general class of mental powers—the susceptibilities—the first particular to be noticed is the ceaseless and all-pervading desire to gain happiness and escape pain. This is the mainspring of all voluntary activity; for no act of volition will take place till some good is presented to gain, or some evil to shun. At the same time, as has been shown, the desire to escape evil is more potent and effective than the desire for good. Thousands of minds that rest in passive listlessness, when there is nothing to stimulate but hope of enjoyment, will exert every physical and mental power to escape impending evil. The seasons of long-continued prosperity in nations always tend to a deterioration of intellect and manhood. It is in seasons of danger alone that fear wakes up the highest energies, and draws forth the heroes of the race.

Mind, then, is an existence having the power of that [pg 111] self-originating action of choice which constitutes free agency, while this power can only be exercised when desires are excited to gain happiness or to escape pain. This surely is the highest possible evidence that its Author intended mind should thus act.

But a mind may act to secure happiness and avoid pain to itself, and yet may gain only very low grades of enjoyment, while much higher are within reach of its faculties. So, also, it may act to gain happiness for itself as the chief end in such ways as to prevent or destroy the higher happiness of others around.

In reference to this, we find those susceptibilities which raise man to the dignity of a rational and moral being.

In the first place, there is that impression of the great design of the Creator existing in every mind, either as a result of constitution or of training, or of both united, which results in a feeling that whatever lessens or destroys happiness is unfit and contrary to the system of things.

Next there is the power to balance pleasure and pain, and estimate the compound result, both in reference to self and to the commonwealth. With this is combined the feeling that whatever secures the most good with the least evil is right and fit, and that the opposite is wrong and unfitted to the nature of things.

Next comes the sense of justice, which results in an impulse to discover the cause of good and evil, and when this cause is found to be a voluntary agent, a consequent impulse to make returns of good for good, and of evil for evil, and also to proportion retributive rewards or penalties to the amount of good or evil done.

With this, also, is combined the feeling that those [pg 112] retributions should be applied only where there was voluntary power to have done otherwise. When it is seen that there was no such power, the impulse to reward or punish is repressed.

Such is the deep conviction that such retributions are indispensable, that where natural pains and penalties do not avail, others are demanded, both in the family and in the commonwealth.