The more philosophical spirit of modern, compared with ancient times, is illustrated by what was then considered as the seven wonders of the world. They boasted of magnitude or costliness—of some enormous expenditure of human labor in a pyramid, a statue or temple, which was fitted to make a strong impression on the senses. But what are the objects which now fill men's minds with admiration and astonishment? They are such as are addressed to their powers of reflection—great moral changes like the American or French revolutions; the liberation of Greece or of Spanish America; or if they be of a physical character, then they are of some successful effort of science and art which directly conduces to the benefit of mankind; such, for instance, as the application of steam to manufactures and navigation—the New York Canal, the Manchester Rail Road, and the Thames Tunnel. These, and such as these, are the world's wonders in our day.
Such then, Mr. President, is the character of the changes which the mind of man has wrought on physical nature, as well as in the improvement of his own condition; and these in turn have effected an immense change in the character of his mind. He has become less subjected to the dominion of his senses and more to that of his reason. He is necessarily made to perceive an infinite number of new and intricate relations, which the progress of knowledge and civilization are ever adding to those which previously existed, and his reasoning faculties have acquired strength in proportion to their exercise. From particular facts he is continually deducing general laws; and from those general laws, laws still more comprehensive. The consequence of which is, that the elaborate deductions of one age become the obvious truths of that which succeeds it, and each succeeding generation is more capable of intricate processes of reasoning than its predecessor.
In the same proportion too, as reason acquires strength, the dominion of the passions becomes weaker. They are less likely to be excited by unworthy causes, and less violent when excited. Reason obviously tends to prevent those mental perturbations which arise from false views of things, as from mistaken notions of right—from the exaggerations of future good or evil, and wrong estimates of their probability. Many objects which a more ignorant age has deemed important, the light of philosophy exhibits in their real insignificance. And in addition to all these direct causes, it seems not improbable that our minds being now so much more occupied in noticing causes and effects, and other important relations, will be less prone to strong emotions, except so far as they may have the sanction of reason. Let me not be understood to favor the dream of some speculatists, that philosophy will ever eradicate the passions. This result is neither possible nor desirable. It is in their proper indulgence that consists all that is called either happiness or virtue, and all that deserves to be so considered by a moral and intellectual being. They are
| "The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife Gives all the strength and color of our life." |
The passions have been aptly compared to the winds which impel the ship on the ocean of life,4 but reason performs higher functions than "the card." It sits at the helm, and guides the course of the bark when the gale is not too strong, and takes in sail when it is.
4 [On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale.]—Pope.
One of the consequences of this growing ascendancy of reason is, that there will be less inequality in the civil condition of mankind; and happy are they whose political institutions enable them to accommodate themselves to the change, without going through the process of blood and violence. Whatever may be the advantages, real or supposed, of a difference of ranks, the institution originated in accident, and is supported by illusions, which natural enough in a certain stage of society, the light of philosophy tends to dissipate; and as ghosts, witches and other shadows of the night have vanished at the approaching dawn of reason, the further progress of day will extinguish hereditary rank, which, when it does not, like faux-fire, shine by its own corruption, emits an ineffectual ray at best.
If the preceding views are correct, it would follow that in our reasonings from the past to the future we must take these changes of the human character into account, and if we do, that they would sometimes lead us to expect different results hereafter from those which formerly took place under similar circumstances. The failure to make allowance for these changes, has produced much groundless apprehension, much mistaken confidence, and much false vaticination.
In thus speaking of the gradual progress of reason and philosophy, I do not mean to say that the advancement is uninterrupted. Far from it. Though the tide may be rising, each individual wave does not always reach as far as that which preceded it: so man, in his onward progress to a higher state of existence, does occasionally make oblique and even retrograde steps. By the influence of those prejudices which have not yet been dislodged from their strong holds—under the sway of our passions, which indeed may be regulated, but can never be extinguished, reason for awhile succumbs and philosophy disappears. Thus, in the Reformation, the struggle between those who sought to get rid of the ancient abuses, and those who endeavored to maintain them, was accompanied with ferocity, cruelty and injustice; and men were often hated and persecuted in proportion to their sincerity in avowing their real sentiments, and their firmness in maintaining them. Then too, we beheld those who had been the victims of oppression, when power changed hands, becoming persecutors in turn; and this, not on the principle of retaliation, but because the new persecutors were impelled by the same blind fury as their predecessors, in regarding a mere difference of opinion as synonymous with crime.
Philosophy had not then advanced far enough to teach them that men were responsible only to their own conscience and their God for their modes of faith; and that punishment tended to make hypocrites of the bad and martyrs of the good, but converts of none. They had yet to learn that the unadulterated common sense of that portion of mankind, who were less frenzied by zeal, revolted at such injustice; and that their sympathies acted more powerfully in favor of the sufferer, than their fears in favor of their persecutors; a truth which has suggested the maxim that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."