the first Marquis of Anglesey, high-spirited and impetuous, a dashing general of cavalry; that best of Irish Viceroys, Frederic Howard, Earl of Carlisle; Lord Bolingbroke, accomplished and eloquent; Shaftesbury, the incorruptible statesman, upright judge and friend of religious freedom; Horace Walpole, of whom Macaulay said, that his writings “were among the delicacies of intellectual epicures;” Dr. Dodd, divine, author, editor and chaplain of the king; George Selwin, the celebrated conversational wit; Sir Philip Francis, immortal as “Junius,” and a “friend of the people;” the artistic Farquhar; courtly Waller; elegant Dorset; charming Sedley; and scholarly Congreve; jolly Dick Steele, a master of classical prose; Charles James Fox, of whom James Mackintosh said: “He is the most Demosthenian speaker since Demosthenes;” Sheridan, “capable of the grandest triumphs in oratory,” and noted for his sparkling wit and exquisite songs; Wilberforce, who dedicated his life to a struggle for the abolition of the slave-trade; Edward Gibbon, the historian, splendid, imposing and luminous; Ponsonby, once speaker of the Irish House of Commons; Dr. Colton, author of “Lacon;” William Pitt, of dauntless spirit and unimpeachable integrity; and Lord Byron, a poet famed for his passionate eloquence and pathetic gloom.
Fortuna may proudly enumerate her great votaries in America: Aaron Burr, Edgar Allan Poe, William Wirt, Luther Martin, Gouverneur Morris, Daniel Webster, Henry Clay, General Hayne, Sam Houston, Andrew Jackson, Generals Burnett, Sickles, Kearney, Steedman, Hooker, Hurlbut, Sheridan, Kilpatrick, Ulysses S. Grant, George D. Prentiss, Sargeant S. Prentiss, Albert Pike, A. P. Hill, Beauregard, Early; Ben Hill, Robert Toombs, George H. Pendleton, Thaddeus Stevens, Green of Missouri, Herbert and Fitch of California, “Jerry” McKibben, James A. Bayard—father of the recent Secretary of State—Benjamin F. Wade, the lamented Broderick, John C. Fremont, Judge Magowan, Charles Spencer, Fernando Wood and his brother Benjamin, Colonel McClure, Senator Wolcott, Senator Pettigrew, Senator Farwell, Matthew Carpenter, Thomas Scott, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Hutchinson of Chicago, and Pierre Lorrillard. Names might be extended indefinitely. Enough have been mentioned to illustrate how the gambling habit permeates all ranks of society in the United States.
With the conclusion of our retrospect, we may well exclaim: What is the nature of a passion so inveterate and general: of a propensity that dominates all mankind alike, whether noble or mean, wise or foolish, strong or weak? “Is there a remedy?” propounds the philosopher. The legislator asks, “What is my duty?”
What is Truth?
or,
The Philosopher’s Stone.
CHAPTER II.
What is Truth; or, the Philosopher’s Stone?
In mediæval romance the Alchemist is a familiar figure—with flowing robe and skull-cap, in the midst of crucibles and alembics. This period of the world did not present a feature more weird and picturesque: a body of learned but misguided men, professing the “chemistry of chemistries.” With eagerness and devotion they vainly sought for a principle that could indefinitely prolong human life and transmute the baser metals into gold and silver. Although centuries have elapsed since Gebir and Paracelsus, yet the “philosopher’s stone” is a desideratum. Of the Alchemists it has been quaintly said by Percy, “that their respective histories were accurate illustrations of the definition which describes Alchemy as an Art without principle, which begins in falsehood, proceeds in labor, and ends in beggary.”
Forcibly suggestive is this picture of moral philosophy and philosophers. From the remotest ages certain men have arrogated to themselves a knowledge in the realm of ethics much superior to their brethren. It was manifested by the “gnomic” poetry of Greece, more than 700 years B. C., and in the oracular sayings of the so-called “seven sages” of antiquity. To this day a similar class of wiseacres may be found in all parts of the earth. The moralists, however, search not for the universal medicine or an irresistible solvent. Such persons admit the “grand elixir” is a delusion; and yet, their ambition is more daring and presumptious. They would “be as gods, knowing good and evil.” “Gold is but dross,” they exclaim, “our quest is for necessary moral truth. We seek immutable righteousness.” Long ago was Alchemy abandoned as futile. Not so the egotistic dogmatism of the moral philosophers: with them self-conceit has remained incorrigible, from Socrates and Plato, through Kant and Hegel, to Martineau and Janet. In vain, their assumptions have been repeatedly demolished and their deductions refuted. Unmindful are they, also, of the irreconcilable conflict of “schools”—the hopeless contradiction of “systems.” Fully one hundred great thinkers, first and last, have asserted the discovery of indubitable “good.” But no two of them all agreed upon the infallible line of distinction between what “ought to be” and its opposite. In fact, every individual of the number represents a different scheme. All moral philosophers asseverate the necessity for an authoritative standard of right and wrong—for some peremptory and incontestable guide to human conduct. Otherwise, they admit, one opinion is no more acceptable or commanding than another.
Some affirm the existence of an innate faculty, the unerring dictates of which are defended. But Bentham (a great jurist) denounced the “moral sense” man as a bully who would brow-beat others into accepting his verdict. All such appeals were described by him as sheer “ipse dixitism: as a fraud by which incompetent philosophers would palm their own tastes and fancies upon mankind.” “One man,” wrote Bentham of Shaftesbury, “says he has a thing made on purpose to tell him what is right and what is wrong; and that it is called moral sense: then he goes to work at his ease and says such and such a thing is right, and such and such a thing is wrong. Why? ‘Because my moral sense tells me it is.’” Of the inner-capacity-philosopher, Hazlitt remarked that “his excessive egotism filled all objects with himself.” To Crabbe, “he was a self-conceited man, who pretends to see through intuition what others learn by experience and observation; to know in a day what another wants years to acquire; to learn of himself what others are contented to get by means of instruction.”