were really actuated by a morose and envious disposition, that had no capacity for enjoyment itself or felt a malicious repugnance to the idea of it in any one else? What in them took the garb of religion, with us puts on the semblance of philosophy; and instead of dooming the heedless and refractory to hell-fire or the terrors of purgatory, our modern polemics set their disciples in the stocks of Utility, or throw all the elegant arts and amiable impulses of humanity into the Limbo of Political Economy. R. I cannot conceive what possible connection there can be between the weak and mischievous enthusiasts you speak of, and the most enlightened reasoners of the nineteenth century. They would laugh at such a comparison. S. Self-knowledge is the last thing which I should lay to the charge of soi-disant philosophers; but a man may be a bigot without a particle of religion, a monk or an Inquisitor in a plain coat and professing the most liberal opinions. R. You still deal, as usual, in idle sarcasms and flimsy generalities. Will you descend to particulars, and state facts before you draw inferences from them? S. In the first place then, they are mostly Scotchmen-lineal descendants of the Cove F F nanters and Cameronians, and inspired with the true John Knox zeal for mutilating and defacing the carved work of the sanctuary R. Hold, hold-this is vulgar prejudice and personality S. But it's the fact, and I thought you called for facts. Do you imagine if I hear a fellow in Scotland abusing the Author of Waverley, who has five hundred hearts beating in his bosom, because there is no Religion in his works, and a fellow in Westminster doing the same thing because there is no Political Economy in them, that any thing will prevent me from supposing that this is virtually the same Scotch pedlar with his pack of Utility at his back, whether he deals in tape and stays or in drawling compilations of history and reviews? R. I did not know you had such an affection for Sir Walter S. I said the Author of Waverley. Not to like him would be not to love myself or human nature, of which he has given so many interesting specimens: though for the sake of that same human nature, I have no liking to Sir Walter. Those "few and recent writers," on the contrary, who by their own account "have discovered the true principles of the greatest happiness to the greatest numbers," are easily reconciled to the Tory and the bigot, because they here feel a certain superiority over him; but they cannot forgive the great historian of life and manners, because he has enlarged our sympathy with human happiness beyond their pragmatical limits. They are not even "good haters" for they hate not what degrades and afflicts, but what consoles and elevates the mind. Their plan is to block out human happiness wherever they see a practicable opening to it. R. But perhaps their notions of happiness differ from yours. They think it should be regulated by the doctrine of Utility. Whatever is incompatible with this, they regard as spurious and false, and scorn all base compromises and temporary palliatives. S. Yes; just as the religious fanatic thinks there is no salvation out of the pale of his own communion, and damns without scruple every appearance of virtue and piety beyond it. Poor David Deans! how would he have been surprised to see all his follies-his "right-hand defections and his left-hand compliances," and his contempt for human learning, blossom again in a knot of sophists and professed illuminés! Such persons are not to be treated as philosophers and metaphysicians, but as conceited sec taries and ignorant mechanics. In neither case is the intolerant and proscribing spirit a deduction of pure reason, indifferent to consequences, but the dictate of presumption, prejudice, and spiritual pride, or a strong desire in the ELECT to narrow the privilege of salvation to as small a circle as possible, and in "a few and recent writers" to have the whole field of happiness and argument to themselves. The enthusiasts of old did all they could to strike the present existence from under our feet to give us another— to annihilate our natural affections and worldly vanities, so as to conform us to the likeness of God: the modern sciolists offer us Utopia in lieu of our actual enjoyments; for warm flesh and blood would give us a head of clay and a heart of steel, and conform us to their own likeness—“ a consummation not very devoutly to be wished!" Where is the use of getting rid of the trammels of superstition and slavery, if we are immediately to be handed over to these new ferrets and inspectors of a Police-Philosophy; who pay domiciliary visits to the human mind, catechise an expression, impale a sentiment, put every enjoyment to the rack, leave you not a moment's ease or respite, and imprison all the faculties in a round of cant-phrases-the Shibboleth of a party? They are far from indulging or even tolerating the strain of exulting enthusiasm ex pressed by Spenser : "What more felicity can fall to creature And to be lord of all the works of nature? To reign in the air from earth to highest sky, To feed on flowers and weeds of glorious feature, To taste whatever thing doth please the eye? Who rests not pleased with such happiness, Well worthy he to taste of wretchedness!" Without air or light, they grope their way under-ground, till they are made "fierce with dark keeping*" their attention, confined to the same dry, hard, mechanical subjects, which they have not the power nor the will to exchange for others, frets and corrodes; and soured and disappointed, they wreak their spite and mortification on all around them. R. I cannot but think your imagination runs away with your candour. Surely the writers you are so ready to inveigh against labour hard to correct errors and reform grievances. S. Yes; because the one affords exercise for their vanity, and the other for their spleen. They are attracted by the odour of abuses, and regale on fancied imperfections. But do you suppose they like any thing else better than * Lord Bacon, in speaking of the Schoolmen. |