At present, the effect of example is perishing, day by day. The example of those who have not pledged themselves is the only one morally regarded; all other persons being known to be bound. Virtue under a vow has no spiritual force. The more reasonable of those who are pledged have confined their pledge to the distinct case of not touching distilled liquors. They have the utmost difficulty in maintaining their ground, as examples, (their sole object,) under the assaults of bigots who complain that they are not "getting on;" and who, on their part, have got on so far as to refuse the communion to persons who will not abjure as they have done; to banish the sacramental wine; and to forbid malt liquors, and even coffee, in taverns and private houses. The superstition,—the attachment to the form without the spirit,—is fearfully revealed upon occasion. A man was brought dead drunk into a watch-house; and before the magistrate next morning, persisted that he could not have been drunk, because he was a member of a Temperance Society. The subservience of conscience to control is as necessary and remarkable. For instance, a gentleman, whose wife, in a state of imminent danger, was ordered brandy, ran and knocked up his minister to get leave before he would procure any for her. It is true that these are extreme cases: but the effect of such institutions upon weak minds must be studied, as it is for weak minds that they are created.
My own convictions are that Associations, excellent as they are for mechanical objects, are not fit instruments for the achievement of moral aims: that there is yet no proof that the principle of self-restraint has been exalted and strengthened in the United States by the Temperance movement, while the already too great regard to opinion, and subservience to spiritual encroachment have been much increased: that, therefore, great as are the visible benefits of the institution, it may at length appear that they have been dearly purchased. I have reason to think that numbers of persons in the United States, especially enlightened physicians, (who have the best means of knowledge,) are of the same opinion. This is confirmed by the fact that there is a spreading dislike of Associations for moral, while there is a growing attachment to them for mechanical, objects. The majority will show to those who may be living at the time what is the right.
Though scarcely necessary, it may be well to indicate the distinction between Temperance and Abolition societies with regard to this principle. The bond of Temperance societies is a pledge or vow respecting the personal conduct of the pledger. The bond of the Abolitionists is agreement in a principle which is to be proposed and exhibited by mechanical means,—lecturing, printing, raising money for benevolent purposes. Nobody is bound in thought, word, or action. There have been a few Temperance societies which have avoided pledges, and confined their exertions to spreading knowledge on the pathology of intemperance, and its effects on the morals of the individual and of society. Associations confined to these objects are probably not only harmless, but highly useful.
CHAPTER V. UTTERANCE.
"A country which has no national literature, or a literature too insignificant to force its way abroad, must always be, to its neighbours, at least in every important spiritual respect, an unknown and misestimated country. Its towns may figure on our maps; its revenues, population, manufactures, political connexions, may be recorded in statistical books: but the character of the people has no symbol and no voice; we cannot know them by speech and discourse, but only by mere sight and outward observation of their manners and procedure. Now, if both sight and speech, if both travellers and native literature, are found but ineffectual in this respect, how incalculably more so the former alone!"
Edinburgh Review.—Vol. xlvi. p. 309.
There is but one method by which most nations can express the general mind: by their literature. Popular books are the ideas of the people put into language by an individual. To a self-governing people there are two methods open: legislation is the expression of the popular mind, as well as literature.
If the national mind of America be judged of by its legislation, it is of a very high order; so much less violence to the first principles of morals is exhibited there than in any other social arrangements that the world has yet seen. If the American nation be judged of by its literature, it may be pronounced to have no mind at all.
The two appearances are, however, reconcilable. The mind of a nation grows, like that of an individual; and its growth follows somewhat the same course. There may be in each a mind, vigorous and full of promise, unerring in the recognition of true principles, but apt to err in the application of them; ardent in admiration of all faithful and beautiful expression of mind by others; but not yet knowing how to utter itself. The youthful philosopher or poet is commonly a metaphysician before he indicates what he is ultimately to become. In the age of vivid consciousness, before he is twenty, the invisible and intangible world of reality opens to him with a distinctness and lustre which make him in after time almost envy himself his youthful years. In this bright spiritual world, much is as indisputably revealed to him as material objects to the bodily eye: principles in full prominence; and a long perspective of certainties melting imperceptibly into probabilities; and lost at last in the haze of possibility, bright with the meridian sun of faith. To him