Library Collections: Document: Full Text

Now, it needs no argument to show that this is the wisest and best arrangement; for it is the only one, by which man, constituted as he now is, could possibly exist: reverse the order, subject the animal to the spiritual nature, and you exterminate the race; dissolve the connexion and the dependence of the spiritual nature upon animal and material organization, and man no longer exists: this connexion, however, must be dissolved -- this dependence must be broken -- the spiritual must have its ascendancy -- aye! but then, thank God! we shall be spirits, and not men.

Let me now consider the influence which social institutions and relations have upon the development of the three natures of man, in their just and due proportion; in keeping up, as it were, the proper balance between the whole. The subject is of vast extent and import; I can of course touch but lightly upon some parts of it; and as it will be more familiar to illustrate the general principle by reflections upon the social institutions of our own country; and; as it is much easier to criticize and find flaws, than to propose or amend, I shall do so.

When we compare our social institutions with those of less favored lands, we may justly feel proud of them; but before we assume to ourselves too much credit, let us compare notes a little with by-gone centuries, or with countries which we vainly suppose are centuries behind us in civilization; let us take, for instance, an example of the method of punishing crime. In the last century but one, over all Europe, and at this day in some parts of it, scenes like the following, were and are common: a conscience-stricken penitent approaches the confessional chair of a priest; he makes a long confession of many slight offences, for each of which the clerical judge fines him so many candles, or dooms him to say so many paternosters, and repeat his prayers so many times: he sees, however; in the hangdog look of his penitent, that there is something untold -- his confession is finished, but, like a lady's letter, the most important part may yet be in the postscript. He urges him to come out with the whole matter, and the fellow at last confesses, that he has been beating and abusing one of his fellow-workmen. Did you hurt him very much, by your beating? Why, not much by beating, but -- I just stuck the end of my knife into him. What! cries the priest, did you murder him? Oh, no! the Virgin be thanked! he did not die, though; I confess, I did stab him badly, several times.

Well, now for the punishment -- it is a heavy offence, it must be heavily mulcted; the priest cogitates, and proceeds; you have grievously offended -- the Virgin is much displeased -- you must pay fifty large candles, to be burnt at her altar, and, sotto voce, the ends will be my perquisites. But, if you cannot produce them in ten days, then in lieu thereof, six additional months shall you pass in purgatory!

Now, doubtless, you will say this is absurdity and imposition: fifty big wax candles, though they cost fifty dollars, cannot atone for having stabbed a man; and if the poor devil cannot raise the money to pay for them, the six months of purgatory cannot help the matter: such things never would be tolerated in our enlightened community.

But, stop a moment; let me read you, not a fancy sketch, but a sentence from the records of a civil court in the City of Boston, state of Massachusetts, April 13th, 1837. -- "Hugh Bailey, for assaulting and stabbing with a knife, was fined fifty dollars; if not paid within ten days -- then, in lieu thereof, six months hard labor in the house of correction."

Now, this sounds very well, because we are accustomed to it, but, substitute fifty candles, for fifty dollars, to be paid to the Virgin Mary, instead of the City Treasurer; the perquisites and parings to go to support priests, instead of paying court salaries; and Purgatory, instead of the House of Correction, and it becomes absurd. But, in the name of the organ of wonder! what had Hugh Bailey's inability to pay fifty dollars to do with his deserving, or not deserving, six months in the House of Correction? and why should his paying fifty dollars, save him from an earthly purgatory, any more than the fifty candles should save our sinner from an infernal one?

I need not, however, say much of the nature of our penal or legal code: these are rather sequences than causes in social arrangements; they should be considered in their adaptation or want of adaptation, to its moral and intellectual condition, and not among the causes of the variety of that condition. To return, therefore, from the digression.

I said, in my last lecture, that the organs of the three great cavities of the body, the cranium, the thorax, and the abdomen, should be in harmonious action and reaction, in order to give firm and continuous health, and great capacity for endurance of physical or intellectual labor. Now the tendency of most of our social institutions and regulations, is to destroy the equilibrium between these functions, and to excite the cerebral organs into undue and unhealthy action. There is no country on earth, whence the brain and nervous system of man is kept in such a state of turmoil and excitement, as in ours; no one has ever reaped such an early, abundant, and bitter harvest of pain and suffering as ours has: verily, we have sown the wind, and are already beginning to reap the whirlwind.