THE SCIENCE OF MORALITY.
Section II.—THE HUSBANDRY THEREUNTO; OR, THE CURE AND CULTURE OF THE MIND.
'Tis an unweeded garden
That grows to seed—'
Hamlet.
But we have finished now with what he has to say here of the EXEMPLAR or science of GOOD, and its kinds, and degrees, and the comparison of them, the good that is proper to the individual, and the good that includes society. He has found much fine work on that platform of virtue, and felicity,—excellent exemplars, the purest doctrine, the loftiest virtue, tried by the scientific standard. And though he has gone behind those popular names of vice and virtue, pain and pleasure, and the like, in which these doctrines begin, to the more simple and original forms, which the doctrine of nature in general and its laws supplies, for a platform of moral science, his doctrine is large enough to include all these works, in all their excellence, and give them their true place. A reviewer so discriminating, then, so far from that disposition to scorn and censure, which he reprehends, so careful to conserve that which is good in his scientific constructions and reformations, so pure in judgment in discovering and severing that which is corrupt, a reporter so clearly scientific, who is able to maintain through all this astounding report of the deficiences in human learning, a tone so quiet, so undemonstrative, such a one deserves the more attention when he comes now to 'the art and practic part' of this great science, to which all other sciences are subordinate, and declares to us that he finds it, as a part of science, 'WANTING!' not defective, but wanting.
'Now, therefore, that we have spoken of this FRUIT of LIFE, it remaineth to speak of the HUSBANDRY that belongeth thereunto, without which part the former seemeth to be no better than a fair image or statue, which is beautiful to contemplate, but is without life and motion.'
But as this author is very far, as he confesses, from wishing to clothe himself with the honors of an Innovator,—such honors as awaited the Innovator in that time,—but prefers always to sustain himself with authority from the past, though at the expense of that lustre of novelty and originality, which goes far, as he acknowledges, in establishing new opinions,—adopting in this precisely the practices, and, generally, to save trouble, the quotations of that other philosopher, so largely quoted here, who frankly gives his reasons for his procedure, confessing that he pinches his authors a little, now and then, to make them speak to the purpose; and that he reads them with his pencil in his hand, for the sake of being able to produce respectable authority, grown gray in trust, with the moss of centuries on it, for the views which he has to set forth; culling bits as he wants them, and putting them together in his mosaics as he finds occasion; so now, when we come to this so important part of the subject, where the want is so clearly reported—where the scientific innovation is so unmistakeably propounded—we find ourselves suddenly involved in a storm of Latin quotations, all tending to prove that the thing was perfectly understood among the ancients, and that it is as much as a man's scholarship is worth to call it in question. The author marches up to the point under cover of a perfect cannonade of classics, no less than five of the most imposing of the Greek and Latin authors being brought out, for the benefit of the stunned and bewildered reader, in the course of one brief paragraph, the whole concluding with a reference to the Psalms, which nobody, of course, will undertake to call in question; whereas, in cases of ordinary difficulty, a proverb or two from Solomon is thought sufficient.
For this last writer, with his practical inspiration—with his aphorisms, or 'dispersed directions,' which the author prefers to a methodical discourse, as they best point to action—with his perpetual application of divinity to matters of common life, and to the special and respective duties, this, of all the sacred writers, is the one which he has most frequent occasion to refer to; and when, in his chapter on Policy, he brings out openly his proposal to invade the every-day practical life of men, in its apparently most unaxiomatical department, with his scientific rule of procedure—a proposal which he might not have been 'so prosperously delivered of,' if it had been made in any less considerate manner—he stops to produce whole pages of solid text from this so unquestionably conservative authority, by way of clearing himself from any suspicion of innovation.
First, then, in setting forth this so novel opinion of his, that the doctrine of the FRUIT of LIFE should include not the scientific platform of good, and its degrees and kinds only,—not the doctrine of the ideal excellence and felicity only, but the doctrine—the scientific doctrine—the scientific art of the Husbandry thereunto;—in setting forth the opinion, that that first part of moral science is but a part of it, and that as human nature is constituted, it is not enough to have a doctrine of good in its perfection, and the divinest exemplars of it; first of all he produces the subscription of no less a person than Aristotle, whose conservative faculties had proved so effectual in the dark ages, that the opinion of Solomon himself could hardly have been considered more to the purpose. 'In such full words,' he says; and seeing that the advancement of Learning has already taken us on to a place where the opinions of Aristotle, at least, are not so binding, we need not trouble ourselves with that long quotation now—'in such full words, and with such iteration, doth he inculcate this part, so saith Cicero in great commendation of Cato the second, that he had applied himself to philosophy—"Non ita disputandi causa, sed ita vivendi." And although the neglect of our times, wherein few men do hold any consultations touching the reformation of their LIFE, as Seneca excellently saith, "De partibus vitae, quisque deliberat, de summa nemo," may make this part seem superfluous, yet I must conclude with that aphorism of Hippocrates, "Qui gravi morbo correpti dolores non sentiunt, iis mens aegrotat"; they need medicines not only to assuage the disease, but to awake the sense.
'And if it be said that the cure of men's minds belongeth to sacred divinity, it is most true; but yet Moral Philosophy'—that is, in his meaning of the term, Moral Science, the new science of nature—'may be preferred unto her, as a wise servant and humble handmaid. For, as the Psalm saith, that "the eye of the handmaid looketh perpetually towards the mistress," and yet, no doubt, many things are left to the discretion of the handmaid, to discern of the mistress's will; so ought moral philosophy to give a constant attention to the doctrines of divinity, and yet so as it may yield of herself, within due limits, many sound and profitable directions.' That is the doctrine. That is the position of the New Science in relation to divinity, as defined by the one who was best qualified to place it—that is the mission of the New Science, as announced by the new Interpreter of Nature,—the priest of her ignored and violated laws,—on whose work the seal of that testimony which he challenged to it has already been set—on whose work it has already been written, in the large handwriting of that Providence Divine, whose benediction he invoked, 'accepted'—accepted in the councils from which the effects of life proceed.