EXTRACTS FROM THE DRAWER OF OUR WHAT-NOT. THE LAW OF CONTENT. It is often found that men engage in the pursuits to which their life is to be devoted, with little interest :-but it is seldom found that those who have been long engaged to such pursuits do not create an interest in them. The results which they obtain by their exertions, and which are grateful in themselves, reflect a pleasure upon the means by which they have been acquired. The very effort by which difficulties have been overcome, leaves an agreeable remembrance; the ardour of desire, which is excited in contention with obstacles, throws an interest upon the pursuit itself in which those obstacles have arisen. The vivid excitation of the consciousness of those powers of thought and will which are aroused in the processes of every occupation, and the little triumphs of successful enterprise and exertion which continually attend them, make pleasure to the mind, whatever be its employment. To every man who bends his strength to labour, whether it be the strength of his limbs, or of his exerted mind, there is one great object which he has steadfastly in view: He trusts to owe to powers of his own his independence of the world; and the acquisition of this independence, as he secures it, step by step, is one of the most grateful rewards of even ungrateful labour which success can bring to self-love. But most men have motives to the prosecution of their exertions, which do not terminate in themselves. They have those who depend on them, and who are dear to them. When the honourable welfare of these is earned by his own exertions, there is a requital found to the most painful efforts of the human being, in which the noblest and best feelings of his nature are the most keenly interested. These keen warm feelings of pleasure, which reach so deeply into the mind, become associated with the external objects and circumstances with which they are connected, and on which they are dependent. The man who sustains himself and others by his manly strength sees, in the employment in which that strength is put forth, not its painful and ungrateful labour, though such he may have felt it; he sees in it the means of these results; he sees in it his own power-he himself, with his joy and pride, his affections and strong desires, is identified with that avocation by which all these seek and have found their gratification. If we could go into the homes of mechanic labour, and inquire what are the thoughts and feelings that are at work, to unite mind and heart to the work on which all life is bestowed, we should find that even the implements of art are invested with associations of feeling which reconcile and bind to them the hand which they are daily to fill, even as the walls of the rudest cottage are hung with those thoughts of many years which make it, and it only, a home to its familiar inmates. On which account Wordsworth has, with great tenderness of feeling and fidelity to nature, in speaking of one of these homes made desolate by distressful times, mentioned, among the objects which were painful to the hearts of its dwellers to look upon, "The empty loom, cold hearth, and silent wheel." To that by which the hopes, the desires, the strengths, the loves of the human heart are supported and nourished-to that, whatever it be, will the heart turn with its own fondness. No object that has ever touched our life is seen by us naked and as it is-it is seen clothed with our associations of thought, and powerful through them to take hold upon our feelings. Our fancy easily carries this belief to the life of those whose occupation is to till the earth. The scenes in which their labour is laid, the great changes of nature under which they dwell, and the bounty of nature, with which they hold continual intercourse, awaken our imagination, and make it easy to us to conceive that the employments of such a life may be rich in associations which will take strong hold upon the heart. But if we could enter into that condition, and see how hard it sometimes lays its lot upon those who strive under it, we should perceive that the process which binds to the soil him who waters its furrows with the drops of his brow, is something of a far deeper and more serious kind than offers itself to our ready conception. Men love the earth indeed on which they have dwelt, and which they have sown and reaped, they love that spot which, from sire to son, the hands of one race have tilled. But what thoughts are they which can bring forth a love so deep, that toil hard and unremitting, wearing out the strength-that scanted returns barely yielding the sustenance of life-that privations, sorrow, and fear cannot shake it that they will still live on, the occupiers of their small domain, with the spring-water for their drink and the oatmeal for their food, and be content, rather than part from it? The thoughts are nothing less than the recollections of a life, and recollections left from lives beyond their own. Here they have livedhere they have toiled. They are bound to the earth not by the joy it has yielded them, but by the labours they have sown in its bosom. They have wedded themselves to it by their own acts of persevering and enduring exertion; and it has attached them to itself even by that bare and poor requital which it has rendered from its unfruitful bosom to their patient industry. Of such a kind and of such power are the associated remembrances and thoughts which the mind is able to spread around it upon the subjects of its continual employment. And in such associations, exceedingly various according to the nature and circumstances of the occupation, yet all strong in the same strength, is to be found the explanation of that attachment to their own calling which is found among menwhich is the great "Law of Content" to human life-the strength and support of their exertions and, to no inconsiderable extent, the provision made in nature for their happiness and their virtue. GENERAL EXPEDIENCY. The truth is, that the opinion now so readily and generally admitted, that what is right is also on the whole, most conducive to the general good, so far from having been a connection primarily and necessarily discerned by the human intelligence, is a conviction arising from much philosophical speculation. It is a conclusion now familiar to our minds. But whence is it deduced? Not from ascertaining the fact which we can never ascertain from induction sufficiently comprehensive; but from confidence in the goodness of the Ruler of the world. Something, indeed, we discern towards it; we have discovered an importance in general rules, and can argue that acts which appear expedient in the single case would become inexpedient if they were generally practised. But this is rather a maxim of philosophizing than the result of absolute induction. We know that such an act is wrong. We see that a case can be imagined in which it would appear to be expedient, but we dare not admit its expediency. And in order to extricate ourselves from the dilemma we resort to the principle, that it is better evil should 11 VOL. XLIV. be endured in one instance than that a law of right should be made subject to human judgment. But in that very reasoning we presume that the law of right is made known to us by some different means; and that simply because it is right, its maintenance must be of more importance than any particular advantage that might be derived from its violation. We ask what absolute and universal Reason is there that shall demonstrate to all human-kind this importance of General Rules? If the people of some small country in the centre of Asia fall under severe tyranny, and a patriot is tempted to put the tyrant to death, what light of Nature shall explain to him that if he kills that despot, the same rule of judgment will authorise any man in Europe to put to death any other whose life he esteems a public nuisance; and that therefore he is bound to let his fellow-citizens groan under their yoke, on account of the disorder which his principle of action would introduce among nations of which he has never heard, and who will never hear of him or his action? It may be suspected that such an argument would appear to him exceedingly difficult to comprehend. But let him be told that to kill without authority is murder; and the observation will at least appear to him intelligible. But, to put that case more boldly suppose that we knew no reason against taking away life but the amount of an injury; suppose that all instinctive horror and natural condemnation on the subject were removed, and we were left to gather our own impressions on that point from our own observation and deduction, what confidence have we that it could ever be made matter of evident demonstration to us, that it was better to permit the utmost degree of private injustice and injury, than that the judginent of life and death should, even in the extremest case, be trusted to private hands? No doubt we ourselves have that conviction most powerfully impressed on our minds. But whence have we it? How much of it is derived from our acquiescence in that great Law of Nature which makes life sacred? How much from our mere habitual love of civil tranquillity, making us averse to ferocious justice? But take away these feelings which persuade our judgment, and what assurance have we that demonstration could be made to our understanding that society would be injured and not benefited, if there were sheathed swords within it ready to leap forth against the bosom of the profligate oppressor? What assurance have we that such demonstration could be made conclusive to every mind throughout the nation; being accompanied at the same time by the admission of the principle, that every man was for himself the judge of expediency, and that the question of the propriety of assassination rested solely on the the determination of the expediency? For that the point for decision was not whether a law of crime should, in some cases be suspended; but that it was, ab origine, a question whether such an act was, in such a case, a crime, or a duty, there being nothing in the act itself decisive of the question, and the whole lying entirely open to be ascertained by the probable expediency. It surely would be much to assert that with all their natural belief on the subject completely shaken, and coming to the investigation as to a matter of mere speculative debate, the result would be that all men would reason themselves, without any division of opinion, into that unanimous view of the subject in which we now acquiesce. Now this question, which we have put, by extreme supposition, as possible to be proposed, is one which, according to these theorists, is at all times actually before us for deliberation, in the very terms in which we have suggested it; for, according to them, all passionate natural repugnance and abhorrence on this and every other subject are delusive weaknesses, and our own unconsidered submission hitherto to the common persuasion is either mere inertness or ignorance; for the decision of the expediency alone decides the act to be a duty or a crime, and every man for himself, and no other for him, is the judge of this expediency. He is bound, then, to investigate and to judge, since, otherwise, he knows not but that he is leaving duties unperformed. What we have alleged of the supporters of this theory, that they wipe out from such deliberation the authority of all natural sentiment, and leave the mind solely to the speculative consideration of expediency, may seem to demand some sanction. Hear, then, Paley. "Must we admit," he says, after proposing some difficult cases-"must we admit these actions to be right, which would be to justify assassination, plunder, and perjury?" 66 No," he answers, "these actions, after all, are not useful, and for that reason, and that alone, are not right." It follows then, clearly, that in judging of assassination, plunder, and perjury, the only ground of judgment is their utility or inutility; but our feelings of aversion to them can be no means of assisting us to compare, in any supposed case, their utility and inutility. These feelings tend very strongly to bias our minds one way; and on that account are an impediment to the impartial judgment of the consequences of the action. If the Rule, therefore, of Expediency is our only rule, we must suppose ourselves free from all natural and instinctive abhorrence of crimes, and that in such a state of mind they come before us to to be judged by Reason alone on the ground of their probable advantageous or injurious consequences. If we can satisfy ourselves that in all the most perplexing cases in which crimes might be suggested, the understandings of man, unaided by their feelings, would discern the necessary injury resulting, by general consequences, from their adoption, and condemn them accordingly, then we must believe that the System of Expediency is not attended with the danger which we have represented. But if, on the other hand, it should appear probable that when individual cases arose in which the be nefit from the act, singly considered, would be great, and the injury consisted merely in the violation of the general Rule, the understandings of mankind in general could not be relied on for preferring the sanctity of the general Rule to the apparent advantage of the particular Act, then must we admit that to suffer the condemnation of crime to rest solely on the estimate of Expediency, would shake the foundations of society. DEPENDENCE OF MORALITY ON THE DIVINE WILL. The doctrine of the dependence of morality on the Divine will does involve obscure considerations. In one way, all these questions may become clear; namely, if they are considered not analytically and each by itself, but as the subject is given us in the world. If we view the world as the work of God, our own souls as such, the Divine Will as the actual law of all things, and as that law which does in fact diffuse their moral being through all things (so that even the physical world appears to be conformed to morality), there is no difficulty to the religious and pious mind in conceiving every thing that is good in itself as effluent from and inseparably united with God. What should I be without God? All existing morality, the moral will of intelligent natures, the moral manifestations, appearances, semblances, in nature sentient but not rational, (as the love of animals for their young) the subordination to morality in the constitution of the insensible inorganic world, are all the birth of a Will, eternally, infinitely, invariably, wholly good. This is simple and not easily denied. Again, the soul that renders unto God the good that is in it, sees this relation of its good to its author. Not only he gave me breath and a spirit having light within itself, all good that I have, am, think, or do, even if I had not known him-all capacities of, and determinations to, good, which I know in myself-but in discovering to me, in the mode in which he has discovered himself, he has given me a motive and a rule-the impulse and knowledge--of good, which else I could not have had. If he has given me his Word, he has laid down, in the most explicit and not to be mistaken terms, the law of good; that is, in the first place, not has commanded, but has expounded, good; so that if I desire to know what is good here it is shown me; here is unfolded its absolute essential reality without error. If he has not given me his Word (which for the present it may not be necessary for me to determine, inasmuch as Theism brings morality to him who has not yet made up his mind whether the history contained in the Christian gospel, and the Jewish scriptures, is, or is not, as Christians and Jews understand it, and as it offers itself, truth; and this argument is one which must comprehend all Theists)-—if he has not given me his Word, yet he has given me faculties to learn something of his Being, and of his contemplation, and, if it may be so said, judgment of moral good; he has given such faculties to my species, and has enabled them by reflection, age after age, upon the highest subjects of speculation to which the aspiration of their spirits carries them, to amass a great body, of what I cannot but receive as religious knowledge— purifying gradually their reasonings, advancing deeper into principles, so that I cannot doubt, even if I doubt what these writings deliver as historical realities, that I live in the midst of, and have received, and see by, much religious light. By this light I am morally instructed. By believing him to be a Being, all truth, all holiness, all wisdom, all love, even though my conception of these attributes should have been the work of mere unaided human faculties, I am able to judge of human right and wrong, otherwise and better than I could have done without believing. The accumulated moral speculation of those who have gone before me, en judgment by this belief; because in every particular case, we refer from ourselves under all the perplexities to judgment, the temptations to false opinion, the moral illusions of our nature, to a law or measure of judgment formed and established in the utmost removal of all causes adverse to, and in the utmost presence of all causes favouring, right judgment. This is an evident advantage to morality of the religious belief even of natural Theism; even considered, as much as possible, intellectually merely; making the idea of Deity as much as possible an intellectual abstraction divided from reality. But add the effects that take place in our mind the moment we pass out of this thought. and believe that this conception of ours is merely an infinitely imperfect apprehension of a Being infinitely transcending all finite apprehension; add the effects upon onr will of the vital, undoubting, warm, devout belief of Him who is that which we have thought, exalted, enlarged, purified without end, above our thoughts, and then know what our moral judgment will be in the case in which we are called upon to give it, principally in the case of our own actions, when we are called upon to judge our act in the moment before we are to do, or to forbear it-or when we have done or forborne lightens me, helps my moral judgment, even though I should admit that the principle of moral judgment is in me essentially the same as in them-that they have judged and produced this truth by exerting faculties which I, equally with them, possess. In a yet greater degree am I enlightened, beyond the knowledge which I should without this belief educe from my own soul, by this belief. I see, if I may speak, with the eyes of the Deity whom I have found. My mind receives the direction of its own judgment from the mind I have ascribed to him; for I have ascribed to him that mind in the utmost sanctity of my own thoughts; hallowing my spirit as much as possible by offices of religion, such as I know them, by virtuous exercises, if I know any, by bodily temperances which naturally exalt and guard the powers of the spirit, by justice and truth, by acts of love towards human beings-lifting up as much as possible to attain divine heights, dilating as much as possible to comprehend divine greatnesses, my human powers, I have in that best and most capable state of my soul formed the idea of Deity. In that idea are united at their height all the notions of moral good which those who have preceded me and which I, instructed by them, have been able to collect, in it are embodied, as in a living pre--what difference there will be in it, sence, consecrated, as an object of adoration. Thus, therefore, if it can be supposed that we know nothing of God but our own self-educed conception of him, so that when we refer, in judging morally, from ourselves to God, we do in fact refer only from ourselves to ourselves, still it appears that, even under this supposition, we gain moral under the control and in the elevation of that belief pervading our heart and all its affections, predominating in our volition, or without it, left to ourselves, knowing no higher judge, knowing nothing above or out of our own mind; and then we most feel that there is profoundest wisdom in the words " Imprimis venerare Deos." ORIGIN OF THE FINE ARTS. It may be observed generally of all these Arts that their scope is, either by added embellishment, or by casting it altogether in another form, to give beauty to something which has a natural place and use in human life. Thus the dwellings of men and temples for their worship must have had a place among their works, although Architecture had never learnt any thing from imagination. The purposes of natural life were to be served, but the structures which these purposes re quired, admitted proportions of greatness and beauty, and were susceptible of other embellishments. The mind, which cannot rest in utility, but seeks in all its works to gratify its inherent desires and aspirations, availed itself of the capacities it found in structures of mere natural service, and gave a dominion to imagination in the works of use. Only it is a just restraint that the work of imagination shall not in any wise unfit the structure for its natural service. If it can in any way |