Separating human prediction from inspired prophecy, we can only ascribe to the faculties of man that acquired prescience which we have demonstrated, that some great minds have unquestionably exercised. Its principles have been discovered in the necessary dependance of effects on general causes, and we have shewn that, impelled by the same motives, and circumscribed by the same passions, all human affairs revolve in a circle; and we have opened the true source of this yet imperfect science of moral and political prediction, in an intimate, but a discriminative, knowledge of the past. Authority is sacred when experience affords parallels and analogies. If much which may overwhelm, when it shall happen, can be foreseen, the prescient Statesman and Moralist may provide defensive measures to break the waters, whose streams they cannot always direct; and the venerable Hooker has profoundly observed, that “the best things have been overthrown, not so much by puissance and might of adversaries, as through defect of council in those that should have upheld and defended the same[[33]].”
“The philosophy of history,” observes a late writer and excellent observer, “blends the past with the present, and combines the present with the future; each is but a portion of the other. The actual state of a thing is necessarily determined by its antecedent, and thus progressively through the chain of human existence, while, as Leibnitz has happily expressed the idea, the present is always full of the future. A new and beautiful light is thus thrown over the annals of mankind, by the analogies and the parallels of different ages in succession. How the seventeenth century has influenced the eighteenth, and the results of the nineteenth, as they shall appear in the twentieth, might open a source of PREDICTIONS, to which, however difficult it might be to affix their dates, there would be none in exploring into causes, and tracing their inevitable effects. The multitude live only among the shadows of things in the appearance of the PRESENT; the learned, busied with the PAST, can only trace whence, and how, all comes; but he who is one of the people and one of the learned, the true philosopher, views the natural tendency and terminations which are preparing for the FUTURE.”
FATALISM, OR PREDESTINATION.
Under the name of materialism things very different from those generally understood are designated: it is the same with respect to fatalism. If it be maintained that every thing in the world, and the world itself, are necessary; that all that takes place is the effect of chance or of blind necessity, and that no supreme intelligence is mixed with, nor in fact mixes with existing objects; this doctrine is a kind of fatalism, differing very little from atheism. But this fatalism has nothing in common with the doctrine which establishes the innateness of the faculties of the soul and mind, and their independence upon organization. We cannot, then, under the first consideration, be accused of fatalism.
Another species of fatalism is that which teaches that in truth there exists a Supreme Being, creator of the universe, as well as of all the laws and properties connected with it; but that he has fixed those laws in so immutable a manner, that every thing that happens could not happen otherwise. In this system, man is necessarily carried away by the causes that compel him to act, without any participation whatever of the will. His actions are always a necessary result, without voluntary choice or moral liberty; they are neither punishable or meritorious, and the hope of future rewards vanishes, as well as the fear of future punishment.
This is the fatalism with which superstitious ignorance accuse the physiology of the brain[[34]], that is the doctrine relative to the functions of the most noble organization in the world. “I have effectually proved,” says Dr. Gall, “that all our moral and intellectual dispositions are innate; that none of our propensities or talents, not even the understanding and will, can manifest themselves independent of this organization. To which also may be added, that it does not depend upon man to be gifted with organs peculiar to his species, consequently with such or such propensities or faculties. Must it now be inferred that man is not the master of his actions, that there exists no free will, consequently neither a meritorious nor an unworthy act?”
Before this conclusion is refuted, let us examine with the frankness worthy of true philosophy, how far man is submitted to the immutable laws of his Creator, how far we ought to acknowledge an inevitable necessity, a destiny, or fatalism. To unravel confused ideas, is the best method of placing truth in its clearest point of view.
Man is obliged to acknowledge the most powerful and determined influence of a multitude of things relative to his happiness or misery, and even over his whole conduct, without of himself being able either to add to, or subtract from that influence. No one can call himself to life; no one can choose the time, the climate, or the nation in which he shall be born; no one can fix the manners, laws, customs, form of government, religious prejudices, or the superstitions with which he shall be surrounded from the moment of his birth; no one can say, I will be master or servant, the eldest son or the youngest son; I will have a robust or a debilitated state of health; I will be a man or a woman; I will have such or such a constitution: I will be a fool, an idiot, a simpleton, a man of understanding, or a man of genius, passionate or calm, of a mild or cross nature, modest or proud, stupid or circumspect, cowardly or prone to voluptuousness, humble or independent: no one can determine the degree of prudence or the foolishness of his superiors, the noxious or useful example he shall meet with, the result of his connexions, the fortuitous events, the influence of external things over him, the condition of his father and mother, or his own, or the source of irritation that his desires or passions will experience. The relations of the five senses with external things, and the number and functions of the viscera and members, have been fixed in the same invariable manner; so nature is the source of our propensities, sentiments, and faculties. Their reciprocal influence, and their relations with external objects, have been irrevocably determined by the laws of our organization.
As it does not depend upon ourselves to have or see when objects strikes our ears or our eyes, in the same manner our judgments are necessarily the results of the laws of thought. “Judgment, very rightly,” says Mr. Tracy, “in this sense is independent of the will; it is not under our controul, when we perceive a real relation betwixt two of our perceptions, not to feel it as it actually is, that is, such as should appear to every being organized as ourselves, if they were precisely in the same situation. It is this necessity which constitutes the certainty and reality of every thing we are acquainted with. For if it only depended upon our fancy to be affected with a great thing as if it were a small one, with a good as if it were a bad one, with one that is true as if it were false, there would no longer exist any thing real in the world, at least for us. There would neither be greatness nor smallness, good nor evil, falsehood nor truth; our fancy alone would be every thing. Such an order of things cannot even be conceived; it implies contradiction.
Since primitive organization, sex, age, constitution, education, climate, form of government, religion, prejudices, superstitions, &c. exercise the most decided influence over our sensations and ideas, our judgments and the determination of our will, the nature and force of our propensities and talents, consequently over the first motives of our actions, it must be confessed that man, in several of the most important moments of his life, is under the empire of a destiny, which sometimes fixes him like the inert shell against a rock; at others, it carries him away in a whirlwind, like the dust.