Some Observations Upon the Civilization of the Western Barbarians, Particularly of the English / made during the residence of some years in those parts.

by John B. Swazey

The few, most advanced of the Barbarian Philosophers, cut adrift entirely from the Superstition. They copy largely from the Greeks, Romans, and ancient peoples, who said, on such subjects, over and over again what these modern imitators say—and said it better. In Physics these moderns think themselves wiser. They may be, in the use of some things, but are not in the nature. Our Sect called Taos-se resemble these speculative writers in many things: the English may not directly teach the Metempsychosis; but in effect it is the same. Evolution may hold to an original germ which is fixed and indestructible; yet what matters if to the observer this germ takes on every possible shape! The Metempsychosis does not contradict the notion of an original germ—it is entirely consistent with it. This speculative inquiry into the nature of things is as old as man, who, even before he knows how to formulate his thoughts, has the deep shadows of them. The Old Greeks introduced the Literature of these fancies to the Western Barbarians, though themselves were no more than bright and beautiful dreamers of old dreams. The human intellect will always, as it has always, search into the unsearchable, applying to it whatever of sharpness, of imagination, of culture, it may have. There will be the inquiry, but never the answer. The mind itself finds its advantage; nor could the Sovereign Lord have designed otherwise, else the intellect would not persist in a vain task. Nevertheless, wise men rest satisfied with the intuitions of the moral and intellectual nature. The origin and essence of the Sovereign Lord and of the visible world cannot be known. The source, the purpose, the end, and the nature of Things are beyond the scope of man. He may ask, and he may find delight in the asking; for new ranges and glimpses of the infinite may flash upon him. But when he thinks he knows—that he has discovered—he is a fool!

Another department of what is called Philosophy deals with the mind, as the part just referred to more particularly affects to deal with matter. And writers upon the mind, when they speak of the moral function, call that by another name. Thus we have the Intellectual and Moral philosophers, with their many books. Very commonly this division is not sustained, and moral and merely mental evolutions run together. Indeed, there are those who deride this division, and assert that the moral has no real existence; that the mind itself is but matter instinct of life, and has no existence independent of material organisms. They say that man is an animal endowed with Life, and that this occult and hidden force is indivisible. That divisions of the faculties may be convenient to give exactness to mental movements, but are otherwise fanciful. They deny a "Moral faculty," asserting that it is only a peculiar refinement of the life-instinct; that the wish to do honestly is no more than this, and, educated to enlarged views, expands into all that man conceives of Justice. That you may just as easily train one to do dishonestly; and then an honest act gives pain. This proves the very proposition denied—the faculty may be misinformed—the pain demonstrates the existence of the faculty. An animal has the Life-Instinct or mind, if you will; but who imagines that the animal is ever pained by any remorse! To this, these philosophers reply that the pain does not really exist only as the remains of a secondary instinct, remembering consciously or unconsciously the penalty awaiting disobedience. The animal, they say, may be so trained that it will feel this pain or shame; and man, for ages disciplined, transmits to his offspring this secondary instinct of inherited fear; and, here, is the so-called moral faculty.

I may be pardoned in this tedious attempt to give the Flowery Kingdom some insight into the thoughts of the Barbarians on abstract matters, not for their novelty, but as a further illustration of that which is so well understood by our Literati—to say, the ceaseless activity of the human mind and its tireless inquiry into the things of the mighty world. A beneficent fact or it would not be. Perverted by vain thinkers, who do not think, because egotist; yet in humble men, conscious of ignorance, a solace. These reverence the Sovereign Lord, never comprehending other than His infinite Wisdom (and this by delightful flashes), nor His works, nor His methods, nor the use of Man, nor of any the smallest thing, nor the origin, nor the design! Enough that He is, and that by some inscrutable, though certain sense, man, with a grateful joy bounds towards Him, claims to be His, and feels Immortal!

The Barbarian Literati have often rested upon the Greeks as final in Metaphysics. Plato, whom they call Divine, was very generally followed in his notion respecting the eternal and independent existence of spirit and matter. But the newer men insist upon one substance only, and remove the Sovereign Lord so far back into the deeps of an Unknown, that he vanishes, or becomes an unintelligent and unconscious Cause. Here again reproducing the Fate of remote antiquity.

One school of Philosophers indulges in a curious form of materializing the mind. Pretending to fix all the mental and moral processes in the very substance of the brain, they declare that by a careful examination of the head, the exact qualities of the individual may be discovered! Some of these pretend to be teachers and Indicators—for fees, giving a precise chart to any one who wishes of the forces of the brain, so that he may order his affairs accordingly.

They profess to tell parents in what art or business a child should be placed, and in what manner certain good qualities may be made to grow and bad ones to shrink! They say that over each thinking part of the brain rises a corresponding bump [Ko-be], that these bumps contain: some thoughts of music, some of hate, some of love, some of numbers, some of place, and so on. They make charts showing these bumps and the thoughts which lie beneath them! These they sell, marking the bumps (after examination) to show the person what he is. If, for instance, his acquisitiveness (thoughts to take things) is a very large bump, he must develop a counteracting bump or he will assuredly become a thief! It is not quite clear how this development is to be brought about. Some carry this absurdity so far as to say that a man with bad bumps is not responsible—he ought rather to be regarded as an object to be cared for by the State. Before the bumps of the child be formed and hardened, any form may be given to them, by applying a gentle and continuous pressure. Government, therefore, ought to have all children examined in youth, and apply to the heads the proper moulds! In this way a perfectly moral society would be assured!

I refer to this nonsense as the only novel speculation among the Western Barbarians. And any one can readily discover in this, old notions moulded into a defined and material shape, to give charlatans [Qu-ak-st] an opportunity to plunder.

There are many books of the Moral Philosophers, who make a Science of certain movements of mind, and call it Ethical. But these books are to our habits useless or absurd—sometimes positively hurtful. The idolatries and superstitions colour and distort—distinctions are confounded, and a rational morality wanting. A merely Jewish ordinance from the Sacred Writings is made as important as a plain moral precept. The human conscience is overloaded with arbitrary and unreasonable matters taken from the Superstition, and, bewildered, despairs of well-doing. To offend in some priestly dogma, is more terrible than to break an established law of honesty. Disobedience in the false demoralises the conscience as much as disobedience in the true, when both are received as true.

In fact most of the moral books are merely books written to uphold the great Superstition, and the morality is debased by its injurious connection. By what strange perversion could the cultivated mind ever be brought to announce a principle like this, to say; "Belief alone saves man from eternal Hell; morality without it is only a snare of the Devil." Belief means an undoubting acceptance of all the pretensions of the Superstition (as explained elsewhere). What must be the effect of teaching so false and presumptuous an enormity? The Sovereign Lord will not deign to look with pity. He is a consuming fire! Heart and hands pure—a life of disinterestedness—worship warm, grateful. Nothing worse. First, Believe—in the most monstrous thing which the diseased human imagination ever created—the Jew-Jah theology and worship!

When a system of morals is based upon such a pretension, it can only be hurtful; unless, as is largely the fact, the healthy human instinct unconsciously rejects the error. Still, great harm is done—must be done. And how much of prevailing licentiousness and barbarism may be placed to account of this false system cannot be defined. It is the immediate father of Atheism. Men reject the tremendous assumptions and believe nothing. But tender consciences, those in whom the divine faculty is large and clear, in general, directed by a true consciousness, simply disregard the horribly false things and attach themselves to the true. In this, vindicating the nobility of nature, which rises to its true recognition of the Sovereign Lord, in spite of surrounding errors. But, others, not so strong, delicate in conscience and feeble in mind, become the victims of this dreadful system. Thus it is also the father of Idolatry. For these victims, fearful of eternal destruction, place themselves entirely in the hands of the Bonzes, and adore all the gods and observe all the rites. They cannot be sure, of themselves, that they do properly Believe; a thing of a very mysterious nature, concerning which (as I have remarked) the contention is ceaseless. Nor can these victims of the Superstition, ardent devotees though they be, always obtain satisfactory evidence that their Salvation is sure. Then follow the self-imposed penances, and the sacrifices imposed by the Bonzes. They are victimised by the Bonzes in an endless variety of ways. Some build Temples; some go about begging, in mean garbs, to get money for the poor Bonzes; and the like; much as we see among our superstitious devotees. Superstition merely reproduces its natural effects, varied according to the circumstances. Still there remain those poor creatures to whom no escape is possible. They struggle in vain with the dark doubts which envelop them. They believe in all the horrors of their worship: that but a few are saved from hell; that goodness, charity, self-sacrifice, gifts to the Temples, to the poor, even to the Bonzes—nothing avails. Unless they have believed and been duly accepted and enrolled among the Elect-few, they are merely children of the Devil, awaiting death, when they become his associate in Fires of the tormented, for ever and ever! These poor wretches feel already all the horrors of the damned. They find no solace in a moral life; no peace in a grateful heart, turned to a benign, Heavenly Father. To yield to the natural emotions, to indulge in this peace, is vanity—is to be ensnared in the wiles of the enemy of Souls!