Fiona The Hippo

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Fiona The Hippo

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.
which would have followed, and scarcely casts his eye on the flowers
before they have faded.
 L E TT E R X V I I I .

THE PLEASURES OF THE H E A R T.

The Creator has put forth in his gifts, a magnificence which should
impress our hearts. What variety in those affectionate sentiments, of
the delights of which our natures are susceptible! Without going out
of the family circle, I enumerate filial piety, fraternal affection,
friendship, love, and parental tenderness. These different sentiments
can all coëxist in our hearts, and, so far from weakening each other,
each tends to give vigor and intensity to the other. No doubt, the
need of so many affections and props attests our feebleness and
dependence. But I can scarcely conceive of the happiness, which a
being, impassible to weaknesses and wants, could find in himself. I
am ready to bless that infirmity of our natures, which is the source
of such pure pleasures, and such tender affections.
Let us avoid confounding that sensibility which exacts the
pleasures of the heart, with that which produces impassioned
characters. They differ as essentially as the genial, vital warmth,
from the burning of a fever. Indolence, objects calculated strongly to
strike the imagination, and those maxims which corrupt the
understanding, develope a vague and ardent sensibility, which
sometimes conducts to crime, and always to misery. The other
species is approved by reason and preserved by virtue. We owe to it
those pure emotions which impart upon earth an indistinct sentiment
of the joys of heaven.
There are men, however, who dread genuine sensibility; and,
under the conviction that it will multiply their pains, study to
eradicate the germs of it from their soul.
Hume was unhappily an unbeliever; but I might easily cite from
his life many honorable traits indicative of a good natural disposition.
He remarked to a friend, who confided to him his secret sorrows,
‘you entertain an internal enemy, who will always hinder you from
being happy. It is your sensibility of heart.’ ‘What!’ responded his
friend with a kind of terror, ‘have you not sensibility?’ ‘No. My reason
alone speaks, and it declares that it is right to soothe distress.’
In listening to this reply of Hume, we are at once struck with the
idea, that the greater part of those who adopt his principles, do not
pause at the same point with their model. They sink into that
heartless class, who see all human calamities with a dry eye,
provided they have no tendency to abridge their own enjoyments.
Suppose even that they pursue the lessons of the Scotch
philosopher to better purpose; and without any emotion, without
any impulse of heart, hold out a succoring hand to those who suffer.
This, perhaps, may answer the claims of reason. But the social
instinct will always repel that austere morality, which would give to
the human heart an unnatural insensibility, and deprive it, if I may
so say, of its amiable weakness. I would hardly desire to see a man
oppose a courage, too stoical, to his own miseries. The natural tears
which he sheds in extreme affliction, are his guaranty for the
sympathy which he will feel for my sorrows.
It is a vile but common maxim, that two conditions are necessary
to success in life. The one is, to have a selfish heart. The other, the
adage of egotism, is, that to avoid suffering, we must stifle
sensibility. I say to these heartless philosophers of the world, that if
the only requisite is to avoid suffering, through destitution of feeling,
to die is the surest method of all.[40]
The secret of happiness does not consist in avoiding all evils; for
in that case, we must learn to love nothing. If there be a lot on earth
worthy of envy, it is that of a man, good and tender hearted, who
beholds his own creation in the happiness of all who surround him.
Let him who would be happy, strive to encircle himself with happy
beings. Let the happiness of his family be the incessant object of his
thoughts. Let him divine the sorrows and anticipate the wishes of his
friends. Let him inspire the fidelity of affection in his domestics, by
pledging to them a comfortable and pleasant old age. Let him, as far
as may be, preserve the same servants, and give them all needed
succor and counsel. In fine, let the inmates and dependents of the
house all respire a calm and regulated happiness. Let even the
domestic animals know, that humanity presides over their condition.
Entertaining such views, it will be easy to see in what light I
contemplate those men who take pleasure in witnessing the
combats of animals. What man who has a heart, can see spectacles,
equally barbarous and detestable, with satisfaction; such as dogs
tearing to pieces a bull, exhausted with wounds, cocks mangling
each other, the encounter of brutal boxers, or of bad boys in the
streets, encouraged to the diabolical sport of fighting? These are the
true schools of cowardly and savage ferocity, and not of manly
courage, as too many have supposed.[41] But it is not my purpose to
draw a painting in detail of the abominations of cruelty, or the
pleasures of beneficence, and I resume my rapid and desultory
reflections.
To preserve the sentiments of beneficence and sensibility, let us
avoid the pride which mars them. Beneficence in one respect
resembles love. Like that, it courts concealment and the shade.
The most useful direction we can give to beneficence is, to
multiply its gifts as widely as possible. Let us avoid imitating those
men who are always fearful of being deceived by those who solicit
their pity. In an uncertainty whether or not you ought to extend
succor, grant it. It can only expose you to the error that is least
subject to repentance.[42]
Offer useful counsels and indulgent consolations. Save, from
despair, the unfortunate victim, who groans under the remorse of an
unpremeditated fault. Unite him again to society by those cords
which his imprudence has broken. Rekindle in him the love of his
kind, by saying to him, ‘though you may not recover innocence,
repentance can at least restore your virtue.’
If we have access to the opulent and powerful, we have an
honorable, but difficult task to fulfil. To assume the often thankless
office of soliciting frequent favors for friends, without losing the
consideration necessary to success, requires peculiar tact,
discernment and dignity.—Above all, it requires disinterested zeal. In
attempting this delicate duty in the form of letters, we may soon
dissipate our slender fund of credit. Letters of recommendation
resemble a paper currency. They are redeemed in specie so long as
they are issued discreetly, and in small amounts, but which become
worse than blank paper, as soon as we multiply them too far.[43]
Such is the intrinsic attraction of beneficence, that even if we
refuse to practise it, we still love whatever retraces its image. A
romance affects us. Pathetic scenes soften our hearts at the theatre.
In thus embracing the shadow, we pay a sublime testimonial to the
substance.
The example of beneficence so readily finds its way to every
heart, that we are affected even in thinking of those who practise it.
The coldest hearts pay a tribute of veneration to those women, who,
in consecrating themselves to the service of the poor and the sick,
encounter extreme fatigue, disgust, and often abuse from the
wretched objects themselves, in the squalidness and filth of prisons
and hospitals. How beautiful to learn to put forth patience to
mitigate the maladies of the body, and hope, to soothe those of the
mind![44] Ye, who practise virtues thus touching and sublime, may
well hope the highest recompenses of heaven. Such alone are
worthy of your pure spirits. Ye seem to have passed in light across
our dark sphere, only to fulfil a transient and celestial mission, to
return again to your country.
 L E TT E R X I X .

THE PLEASURES OF THE UNDERSTANDING.

In the savage man the intellectual faculties sleep. As soon as his

appetites are satisfied, he sees neither pleasures to desire, nor pains
to fear. He lies down and sleeps again. This negative happiness
would bring desolation to the heart of a civilized man. All his
faculties have commenced their development. He experiences a new
craving, which occupations, grave or futile, but rapidly changed and
renewed, can alone appease. If there occur between them intervals
which can be filled neither by remembrances, nor by necessary
repose, lassitude and ennui intervene, and measure for him the
length of these chasms in life by sadness.
The next enemy to happiness, after vice, is ennui. Some escape it
without much seeming calculation. My neighbor every morning turns
over twenty gazettes, the state articles of which are copied the one
from the other. Economising the pleasure of this reading, and
gravely reposing in the intervals, he communicates, sometimes with
an oracular tone, sometimes with a modest reserve, his reflections
to those who surround him; and, at length, leaves the reading room
with the importance of one who feels that he has discharged a debt
to society.
In public places, it is not the spectacles, but the emotions of the
common people who behold them, that are worthy of contemplation.
In the murder of a poor tragedy by poorer actors, what transports
from this enthusiastic mass of the audience when a blow of the
poniard, preceded by a pompous maxim, lays the tyrant of the piece
low! What earnest feeling, what sincere tears do we witness! How
much more worthy of envy these honest people who lose their
enjoyment neither by the revolting improbability of the situations,
nor by the absurdity of the dialogue, nor by the mouthing of the
rehearsal, than those fastidious critics who exalt their intellectual
pride at the expense of these cheap enjoyments!
From the moment in which a man feels sincere pleasure in
cultivating his understanding, he may date defiance to the fear of
the weight of time. He has the magic key which unlocks the
exhaustless treasury of enjoyments. He lives in the age and country
which he prefers. Space and time are no longer obstacles to his
happiness. He interrogates the wise and good of all ages and all
countries; and his conversations with them cease, or change object,
as soon as he chooses. How much gratitude does he owe the author
of nature for having impressed on genius so many different
impulses! With Plato, he is among the sages of Greece, hearing their
lessons and associating his wishes with theirs for the happiness of
his kind.[45] In the range of history, he ascends to the infancy of
empires and time. Does he court repose? Horace bids him gather the
roses before they fade; or Shakspeare reminds him, when illusions
will vanish like the baseless fabric of a vision.
If a man has powers and acquirements, it is a great evil, if he is
disposed to fatigue others with his self-love. If we could number all
the subjects of which the most accomplished scholar is ignorant, we
should perceive that the interval between him and a common person
is not so immense as he may imagine. Ought he to be astonished if
the real friends of the Muses tire of his declamations, his recitations
and occupancy with himself?
To attain truth should be the real end of all study. In such
researches the mind kindles, as by enchantment, at every step! The
desire to succeed, produces that noble emotion which is always
developed by ardent zeal and pure intentions. Success, although we
were to think nothing of its results, inspires a kind of pleasure;
because truth comports with our understanding, as brilliant and soft
colors agree with the eye, or pleasant sounds with the ear. This
enjoyment naturally associates with another still more vivid. The
effect of truth is universally salutary; and every instance in which our
feeble intellect discovers some gleams, elevates the spirit, and
intimately penetrates it with a high degree of happiness.
One of the chief advantages of study is, that it enfranchises the
mind from those prejudices that disturb life. How many, and what
agonizing torments have been caused by those which are associated
with false ideas of religion.[46] After those great calamities in the
dark ages which destroyed the traces of the sciences and arts, men,
pursued by terror, seemed to imagine that they constantly saw
malevolent spirits flying among the clouds or wandering in the depth
of woods. The sound of strong wind and thunder came to their ear
as the voice of infernal divinities; and, prostrate with terror, they
sought to appease their angry gods by bloody sacrifices. In process
of time, a small number of men, enlightened by observation, dared
to raise the veil by degrees, and succeeded in dissipating these
terrors by tracing the seeming prodigies to some of the simplest
laws of physics. The phantoms of superstition vanished, and, in the
light of reason, revealed a just and beneficent Divinity presiding over
obedient nature.
We think, in our pride, that an immense interval separates us from
those times of disaster, ignorance and alarm. How many of our kind,
unhappy by their intellectual weakness, still tremble before the
jealous and implacable god of their imaginations, who enjoins hatred
and wrath; and punishes even the errors of opinion by the most
horrible torments. The man who is exempt from prejudices is alone
capable of prostrating himself before the Divinity from a feeling of
love, and whose prayer, alike confident and resigned, is addressed to
his noble attributes of power, justice and clemency.
There are other errors which study dispels. The student who is
charmed with communion with the muses, does not consume his
best years in gloomy intrigues; nor do you meet him pressing
forward in the path which ambition has traced. The Greeks, fertile in
significant allegories, supposed the same divinity to preside over the
sciences and wisdom.
 The habit of living in converse with the noblest works of mind and
art, produces elevation of soul; and he who has an elevated mind
must be intrinsically good and happy. Exempt from the weaknesses
of vanity, free from the tumultuous passions, he cultivates the noble
and generous virtues for the pleasure of practising them. Disdaining
a mass of objects of desire which disturb the vulgar, he offers a
small mark to misery. Should adversity strike him, he has resources
so much the more sure, as he finds them in himself.
No one can ever taste the full charm of letters and the arts, except
in the bosom of retirement. If he reads and meditates only for the
pursuit of fame, amusements change to labors. If we propose to
enter the lists, outstrip rivals, and direct a party, we are soon
agitated with little passions, but great inquietudes. Heaven, sternly
decreeing that no earthly felicity shall be unalloyed, has placed a
thirst for celebrity as a drawback upon the love of study.
But ought the ardor to render immortal services—ought the noble
ambition to be useful, to be stifled? Are not these the source of
pleasures as pure as they are ravishing? I contemplate an immense
and indestructible republic, composed of all those men who devote
themselves to the happiness of their kind. Occupied without
relaxation or abatement in continuing the works which their
predecessors have begun, they bequeath to their successors the
care of pursuing and crowning their labors. Men of genius are the
chiefs of this republic. As they have talents which separate them
from the rest of the human race; they have also pleasures reserved
for themselves alone. What a sublime sentiment must have elevated
the spirit of Newton when a part of the mysterious laws of the
universe first dawned on his mind! A glow still more delightful must
have pervaded the bosom of Fenelon when meditating the most
beautiful lessons which wisdom ever announced to the powerful and
the rulers of the people. To these privileged beings it belongs, to
give a powerful impulse to minds, and to trace a new path for the
generations to come.
 I shall have attained my humble ambition if, docile to the voice of
the wise, I shall be able, in any degree, to indicate the way in which
these lessons may be put in practice. I shall thus have contributed
my aid to dissipate the night of prejudice and vice.
 L E TT E R X X .

THE PLEASURES OF THE IMAGINATION.

If these words denote pleasures which have no reality, let us no

longer use them.[47] The person who, during the twelve hours of
every day that he passed in sleep, believed himself clothed with
royal authority, shared a lot exactly similar to the king who,
dreaming through the same number of hours, imagined that he
suffered cold and hunger, and asked the pity of the peasants in the
streets.
All our pleasures are fugitive, and they are all real. That wonderful
faculty, the imagination, awakens past pleasures, charms the instant
that is flowing, and either veils the future, or embellishes it in the
radiance of hope.
Let us banish that vulgar prejudice which represents reason and
imagination as two enemies which cannot coëxist. The severest
reason ought to disdain no easy and pure pleasures. The happy
paintings even of a dream bring joy, until their rainbow hues melt
away. The dreams of the imagination have greatly the advantage
over those of sleep. Our will gives them birth. We prolong, dissipate
and renew them at pleasure.[48] All, who have learned to multiply
these happy moments, know, at the same time, how to enjoy these
agreeable visions, and paint with enchantment those dreamy hours
which they owe to the effervescence of a gay imagination.
There are situations in which reason has no better counsel to give
us than to yield ourselves up to those illusions which mingle
pleasures with our sufferings. I knew a worthy, but unfortunate man,
who passed twenty months in prison. He informed me that, every
night, he had a dream, in which he imagined that his wife and
children visited him and restored him to liberty. This dream left a
remembrance so profound, an emotion so delightful, that he
determined to attempt to renew it by day. When evening came,
exciting his imagination to its most vigorous action, he endeavored
to persuade himself that the moment of the reunion was come. He
represented to himself the transport of his wife and the caresses of
his children; and he allowed no thought but these delightful visions
to occupy his mind until the moment when sleep once more
wrapped him in forgetfulness. The habit of concentrating his
imagination for this result, he assured me, finally rendered these
illusions incredibly vivid and real. He expected night with impatience;
and the certainty that the close of day would bring some happy
moments, threw over the tedious hours an emotion which mitigated
his sufferings.
These charming illusions, in misfortune, resemble those brilliant
boreal lights which, in the midst of a night that lasts for weeks,
present the image of dawn during the dreary winters of the polar
circle. An excitable and vivid faculty, which deceives misfortune,
ought to embellish happiness. To the pleasant things we possess, it
adds those we desire. By its magic, we renew the hours of which the
memory is dear. We taste the pleasures which a distant future
promises; and see, at least, the fleeting shadow of those which are
passing away.
A gloomy philosopher has told us, that such illusions are the effect
of a transient insanity. It seems to me that insane thoughts are
those which create ennui; and that reasonable ideas are those which
throw innocent charms over life. If you reject these views, be
persuaded, at least, not to adopt a false and gloomy wisdom. You
ought rather to prefer the conviction that everything below is folly.
[50] But still, I can distinguish gay follies, frightful follies, and
amiable follies; and I easily discover that there is a choice among
them.
Why should the morose being who perceives only bad people on
the earth, and only miseries in the future, blame him who cradles
flattering hopes, always springing up anew, for allowing himself to
be beguiled by the illusions of his imagination? Both deceive
themselves. But the one cherishes a mistake which brings hatred
and suffering, and the other lives on gaily in his illusions.
Wisdom does not disdain a faculty merely for being brilliant; and,
to taste all the pleasures of imagination, it is indispensable that
reason should be much exercised.
Imagination resembles the magician of an oriental romance who
transports his favorite hero to scenes of enchantment, to try him
with pleasures; and then delivers him over to a hostile magician,
who multiplies peril and misery around him. This creative faculty, in
its perversion, is as fertile to invent torments as, in its more
propitious moods, to bring forth pleasures. If once we resign
ourselves to its gloomy caprices, it conjures up the terror of a
thousand unreal evils. Reason cannot always follow its meteor path;
but ought, at least, to point out the course in which happiness
invites it to walk.
The aid of reason is still more necessary at the moment when the
chimeras of imagination disappear. It is an afflicting moment. Reason
should prepare us to meet it. Every man, with an elevated mind and
a good heart, has delighted to imagine himself far away from the
stupid and wicked; in a smiling country, separated from the rest of
the world, and alone with a few friends. Suppose this dream
realized; I am aware that, tomorrow, the peaceful exile might be
indulging regrets for the place he had left; and forming plans to
escape from the ennui of the new country. Since we change our
destiny in these respects, without altering our instinctive desire of
change, let us study the art of softening the pains of our actual
condition; and let us learn to extract all possible advantages from it
by imparting to it, if nothing more, the embellishment created by the
happy anticipations of a fertile imagination.
Ought we to indulge regrets because these paintings of the
imagination so rapidly disappear. I have seen the rich and the great
stripped, in a moment, of their fortune and power; and shall I afflict
myself because my dream has vanished? These unfortunate people
lost all that was dear to them, forever. For me, I can renew these
pleasures of imagination at my will.
Far from sacrificing any of our faculties, let us exercise them all;
and let them mutually conduce to our happiness. As we advance in
life, our reason should grow to the calm of mature age. But let the
imagination and the heart still preserve scintillations of the fire of
youth.
 L E TT E R X X I .

M E L A N C H O L Y.

There is no pleasure of earth but, as soon as it becomes vivid, has

a tendency to tinge itself with melancholy. The birth of an infant, the
convalescence of a father, the return of a friend who has been long
absent, fill the eyes with tears. Nature has thus chosen to mingle the
colors of joy and sadness. Having destined us to experience each of
the emotions in turn, she has ordained that the shades of transition
should melt into each other.[51]
The dearest remembrances are those which are accompanied by
tenderness of heart. The sports of infancy, the first loves, the perils
we have forever escaped, and the faults we have learned to repair,
are of the number. Whoever will recollect the happiest moments of
his life, will find them to have produced this emotion.
But there are two kinds of melancholy; or rather, we must not
confound melancholy with gloom. Will the slight tenderness of
sorrow which imparts a new charm to the fugitive pleasures of
existence be inspired by those gloomy books which this age has
attempted to bring into fashion; by those terrific and wild dreams in
which hideous personages enact revolting scenes? Modern
imagination has painted melancholy a tall and unearthly spectre
enveloped in a winding sheet. The real traits of her countenance are
those of innocence occupied in pleasant revery; and at the same
time that tears are in her eyes, a smile dwells on her lips.
It is the resort of a sterile imagination and a cold heart, to invest
even the tomb with borrowed ideas of darkness; to wait for night in
which to visit it; and to torment the fancy to people it with sinister
phantoms. Real sensibility would not require such an effort to be
awakened. It fills my mind with a pleasing sadness to wander in the
church-yard, under the melancholy radiance of the moon, among
monuments of white marble, and hear the night breeze sigh among
the weeping willows. I am deeply affected with, here and there, a
touching inscription.[52] I remember one in which a father says, that
he has had five children, and that here sleeps the last that remained
to him for consolation. In another, a father and mother announce
that their daughter died at seventeen, a victim of their weak
indulgence, and of the extravagant modes of the time. This sojourn
of repose, these words written in the abodes of silence, which
inspire tenderness for those that are no more, and those whose
treasured affection still remembers them, always penetrate the soul
with an emotion not without its charms. In the view of tombs, we
immediately direct our thoughts to an internal survey of ourselves. I
mark out my place among the peaceful mansions. I imagine the
vernal grass and flowers reviving over my place of rest. My
imagination transports me to the days which I shall not see, and
sounds for me the soothing dirge of the adieus of friendship
pronounced over the spot where I am laid.[53]
I generally carry from my sojourn in these our last mansions, one
painful sentiment. I remark that many tombs are raised by parents
for their children; by husbands for their wives; by widows for their
husbands. I observe that there are but few erected by children for
their fathers. Perhaps it is right that love should ascend in that scale,
rather than descend in the other.
Occasional visits to ruins and tombs inspire salutary melancholy.
But the habit of frequently contemplating these lugubrious objects is
dangerous. It blunts sensibility and creates the necessity of always
requiring strong emotions. It nourishes in the soul sombre ideas
which do not associate with happiness. Without doubt, there are
those who are so unhappy as to long for the repose of the grave;
who find solace in these gloomy spectacles. Young, after having lost
his only daughter, after having in vain solicited a little consecrated
earth to cover the remains of the youthful victim; after being
reduced to the necessity of interring the loved one with his own
hands, might be tempted to fly his kind and love only night, solitude
and tombs. There have been men, condemned by the award of
nature, to such reverses as nourish an incurable and perpetual
melancholy. Their frigid imitators, without their reason and profound
feeling, in wishing to render themselves singular, become tiresome
and ridiculous in their melancholy.
Writers of the most splendid genius of the age have consecrated
their talents to celebrate melancholy; not that melancholy which has
a smile of profound sensibility, but that which has been cradled in
tombs and which holds out to us the full draught of sadness. There
is something in these heart-rending scenes, these lugubrious
spectacles, which the age seeks with avidity. A writer whose talent
tends to render his errors seducing, has taken pleasure in viewing
the christian religion as opening an inexhaustible source of
melancholy. It seems to exalt his mind, most of all, when it presents
itself to him under a funereal aspect.
He paints religion as born in the forests of Horeb and Sinai,
forever surrounded with a formidable gloom; and offering to our
adorations a God who died for men. He describes the invasion of the
barbarians, the persecutions of the first believers, cloisters arising
from deep and dark groves, and melancholy continually receiving
new accessions from the austere rules imposed upon the pious
inmates.
‘There,’ said he, ‘the tenants of these religious seclusions dug their
own tombs, by the light of the moon, in the cemeteries of their own
cloisters. Their couch was a coffin. Some of them occasionally
wandered away to sojourn among the ruins of Memphis and
Babylon, striking the chords of the harp of David, surrounded by
beasts of prey. Some condemned themselves to perpetual silence.
Others sung a continual hymn, echoing the sighs of Job, the
lamentations of Jeremiah, or the penitential songs of the prophet
king. Their monasteries were built on sites the most savage, on the
summits of Lebanon, in the deep forests of Gaul, or on the crags of
the British shores. How sad the knell of the religious bells, heard at
the noon of night, must have sounded when calling the vestals to
their vigils and prayers! The sounds, as they swelled and died away,
mingled the last strains of the hymns with the distant dashing of the
waves. How profound must have been the meditations of the solitary
who, from his grated window, indulged in revery, as his eye
wandered over the illimitable sea, perhaps agitated with a tempest!
What a contrast between the fury of the waves and the calm of his
retreat! The expiring cries of men are heard as they dash upon the
rocks at the foot of the asylum of peace. Infinity stretches out on
one side of their cell; and on the other the slab of a tomb alone
separates between eternity and life. All the different forms of
misfortune, remembrance, manners, and the scenes of nature
concurred to render the christian religion the genius of
melancholy.’[53a]
Can it be thought, for a moment, possible that sighs without end,
the love of deserts and the hope of the tomb are all the consolations
that this divine religion is calculated to bring to the heart of man?
Such an error could only have had its origin in an unregulated
imagination. The christian religion, though pensive and serious, is
not sad. Less brilliant, less imaginative than paganism, less friendly
to pleasure, she is far more favorable to happiness.
My opinion in regard to the legitimate tendency of religion, is not
only different but directly opposite. A pure religion must produce
tranquillity, confidence and joy. It is departure from religious views
which are true and just, that is followed by a vague sadness, gloom
and despondency.
These funereal and yet eloquent paintings, traced with the
enthusiasm of melancholy, must have had the effect to increase the
number of men of atrabilious temperament, weary of the world, and
tired of themselves. Were it true that the christian religion inspired
an insatiate craving for funereal reveries, far from considering it as I
do, divine, I should estimate it anti-social.—The true friends of the
christian religion always paint it as it is, more powerful than even
human misery; giving clothing to the naked, bread to the hungry, an
asylum to the sick, a peaceful home to the returning prodigal, and a
mother to the orphan; wiping away the tears of innocence with a
celestial hand, and filling the eyes of the culpable and contrite with
tears of consolation. Let pious thankfulness and a calm courage,
which even death cannot shake, environ its modest heroes. Let its
martyrs be those of charity and toleration;—the protestant opening
an asylum to catholic, falling under the fanatical fury of his brethren;
and when bloody and impious mandates order the massacre of
protestants, the catholic sheltering them in his mansion. Such was
the spirit of Erasmus; such, of the divine Fenelon; such, of William
Penn, and a few tolerant lights that have gleamed through ages of
persecution and darkness. Such are the men whose disciples we
desire to multiply. Let us cease to incorporate melancholy errors and
gloomy follies with the religion of peace, confidence and hope.
Eloquence was imparted for a nobler use.
 L E TT E R X X I I .

RELIGIOUS SENTIMENTS.

The philosophy of happiness must find its ultimate requisite in the

hopes of religion. Man must be persuaded that his present life has
relation to a never ending future, and that an eternal providence
watches over the universe, before he will abandon himself with a
tranquil confidence to those irresistible laws by which he is borne
along. He then marches towards the future, as he would confidently
follow a guide of tried prudence and fidelity in a dark path.[54]
In the fever and tumult of worldly pleasures and pursuits, the
voice of wisdom has little chance to be heard, and it seems
necessary that misfortune should have forced the mind in upon
itself, before we become inclined to find resources in religion. Then
we invoke this sublime and consoling power, and like the friend that
avoids our prosperity and our festivals, but returns to cheer our
misfortunes, this celestial friend is at hand to offer her sustaining
succor. We may class all those pleasures as noxious, which will not
associate with this august visitant. Even in our periods of happiness,
if we pause for the reflection of a moment, we find the need of
immortality. All the generous and tender affections acquire a new
charm in alliance with religious ideas, in the same manner as objects
beautiful in themselves, receive a new lustre when a pure light is
thrown upon them. Filial piety becomes more touching in those
children who pray with fervor for the preservation of the life of a
mother. Let a pious courage guide the sister of charity, and she
becomes the angel of consolation, as she visits the abodes of misery.
Even virtue itself does not receive its celestial impress, except in
alliance with religious sentiments. A few of the higher philosophers
among the great ancients, and Fenelon, Newton, Milton and a few
other men of immortal name, saw the divinity as He is, and
contemplated the perfect model of his infinite perfections. Their
efforts tended to coöperate with the divine views of order and
harmony, in constantly directing human actions and thoughts
towards good. The beautiful system of the gospel has the same
simplicity of object; and its tendency to honor and meliorate
humanity is directed by the highest wisdom. Sentiments which give
to all our faculties a direction, fertilize genius as well as virtue. High
models, in any walk of mind, will never be produced in a world
whose inhabitants believe in nothing but matter, fortuitous
combinations, and the annihilation of our being. Apostles of atheism!
your dreary creed throws an impenetrable gloom upon the universe,
and dries the source of all high thoughts. The advocates of these
views vaunt the necessity of proclaiming the truth. I, too, am the
fearless advocate of the truth, and have no dread of its results. But
could I be persuaded, that religious hopes were unfounded, I should
be tempted to renounce my confidence in truth itself; and no longer
to inculcate the necessity of loving and seeking to propagate it. It is
by the light of this divine torch, that real sages have desired to
investigate religion. Were it possible that the elevated and consoling
ideas, which religion offers, could be baseless and absurd chimeras,
error and truth would be so confounded, that there would no longer
remain any discriminating sign by which to distinguish the one from
the other. Atheists boast that they are the only frank and hardy
antagonists of superstition. They are its most effectual allies. The
superstitious have brought forth the atheists, and the atheists have
re-produced the superstitious; as, in revolutions, resistance produces
fury, and that multiplies resistance.
I have known excellent men, apparently earnest and docile
inquirers for truth, who have desired in vain to establish in their
mind these consoling convictions.—Their understanding refused to
respond to the wish of their hearts.
Why can I not impart this happy conviction to their
understanding? My subject precludes reasoning, and I only know
arguments that are very simple; but I think with Bacon, that it needs
quite as much credulity to adopt the opinion of atheists, as to yield
faith to all the reveries of the Talmud or the Koran. The more
profoundly I attempt to investigate the doctrines of infidelity, and
consider everything that surrounds me, as resulting from the
combinations of chance, the play of atoms, the efforts of brute
matter, the more my inquiries are involved in darkness. I strive in
vain to give to any hypothesis of atheism the honest semblance of
probability. Matter cannot reflect upon the order which its different
parts require. Neither can those parts interchange reason and
discussion. Neither an atom, nor a globe can say to others of their
class, ‘such are the courses in which we must move.’ Let us simplify
difficulties, as much as possible, and admit that matter has always
existed; let us even suppose motion essential to it; a supreme
intelligence is none the less necessary to the harmony of the
universe. Without a governor of worlds, I can only conceive of
nihility or chaos.
From the sublimest of all thoughts, there is a God, flow all the
truths which my heart desires. The beautiful superstructure of
Christianity results, as a corollary, or ultimate inference, from this
consoling axiom. The system which rejects the soul’s immortality, is
equally absurd with that of atheism. Of the different arguments
against the being of a God, the most striking one is that which is
drawn from the evils which prevail on the earth. The first thought of
every man of sensibility, is, that had he the power to make a world,
he would banish misery from it, and so arrange the order of things,
as that existence should be, to all conscious beings, a succession of
moments, each marked by happiness. But infirmities, vices, misery,
sorrow and death pursue us. How reconcile the misery of the
creation with the power and beneficence of the Creator? How
resolve this strange problem? How explain this revolting
contradiction? Immortality is the only solution of the enigma of life.
[55]

A whimsical combination of deism and materialism forms, at

present, the most widely diffused system among the unbelieving.
They have imagined a God possessing only physical power, and
contemplating the movement of his innumerable worlds, alike
indifferent to crime and virtue. He beholds with the same
carelessness the generations that pass, and those that succeed; and
sees deliverers and tyrants alike confounded in their fall.—Admit the
truth of such dogmas, and the conceptions of a religious man would
possess more expansion and sublimity than the views of the Eternal.
Socrates, without the illumination of the gospel, could have taught
them better. Surrounded by his weeping disciples, he points them
beyond the tomb to the places where the sage at last respires freely;
and where the misfortunes and inequalities of earth are redressed.
In painting these illusions of hope, if they are vain, the sage has
conceived in his dreams an equity superior to that of the infinite
Being. Let us dare to maintain that the feeble children of clay have a
right to entertain ideas of order and desert, more just than those of
the Creator, or admit that the heart, made capable of the desire of
another life, is destined to enjoy it.
The destiny of all the inferior orders that surround us, appears to
terminate upon the earth. Ours alone is evidently not accomplished
here. The animals, exempt from vice, incapable of virtue,
experience, in ceasing to live, neither hopes nor regrets. They die
without the foresight of death. Man, in the course of an agitated life,
degrades himself by follies and vices, or honors himself by generous
and useful actions. Remembrances, loves, ties, in countless forms,
twine about his heart. He is torn, in agony, from beings for whom he
has commenced an affection that he feels might be eternal.
Persecuted for his virtue, proscribed for his wisdom and courage,
calumniated for his most conscientious acts, he turns to heaven a
fixed look of confidence and hope. Has he nothing to perform
beyond death? Has the author of nature forgotten his justice, only in
completing his most perfect work?
Our immortality is a necessary consequence of the existence of
God. Let us not wander astray in vain discussions, which, with our
present faculties, we can never master—such as relate to the nature
of the soul. My hopes, my convictions, rest not upon a cloudy,
metaphysical argument. Neither can the proud treatise of a sophist
weaken, nor the puerile dialectics of a pedant increase it. It is