II
An Inquiry, etc.
When I endeavor to divest myself of the influence of habit, and to contemplate a battle with those emotions which it would excite in the mind of a being who had never before heard of human slaughter, I find that I am impressed only with horror and astonishment; and perhaps, of the two emotions, astonishment is the greater.
That several thousand persons should meet together, and then deliberately begin to kill one another, appears to the understanding a proceeding so preposterous, so monstrous, that I think a being such as I have supposed, would inevitably conclude that they were mad. Nor, if it were attempted to explain to him some motives to such conduct, do I believe that he would be able to comprehend how any possible circumstances could make it reasonable. The ferocity and prodigious folly of the act would outbalance the weight of every conceivable motive, and he would turn, unsatisfied, away,
“Astonished at the madness of mankind.”
There is an advantage in making suppositions such as these; because, when the mind has been familiarized to a practice, however monstrous or inhuman, it loses some of its sagacity of moral perception—profligacy becomes honor, and inhumanity becomes spirit. But if the subject is by some circumstance presented to the mind unconnected with any of its previous associations, we see it with a new judgment and new feelings; and wonder, perhaps, that we have not felt so or thought so before. And such occasions it is the part of a wise man to seek; since if they never happen to us, it will often be difficult for us accurately to estimate the qualities of human actions, or to determine whether we approve them from a decision of our judgment, or whether we yield to them only the acquiescence of habit.
It is worthy at least of notice and remembrance, that the only being in the creation of Providence which engages in the wholesale destruction of his own species, is man; that being who alone possesses reason to direct his conduct, who alone is required to love his fellows, and who alone hopes in futurity for repose and peace. All this seems wonderful, and may reasonably humiliate us. The powers which elevate us above the rest of the creation, we have employed in attaining to preeminence of outrage and malignity.
It may properly be a subject of wonder, that the arguments which are brought to justify a custom such as war receive so little investigation. It must be a studious ingenuity of mischief, which could devise a practice more calamitous or horrible; and yet it is a practice of which it rarely occurs to us to inquire into the necessity, or to ask whether it cannot be or ought not to be avoided. In one truth, however, all will acquiesce, that the arguments in favor of such a practice should be unanswerably strong.
Let it not be said that the experience and the practice of other ages have superseded the necessity of inquiry in our own; that there can be no reason to question the lawfulness of that which has been sanctioned by forty centuries; or that he who presumes to question it is amusing himself with schemes of visionary philanthropy. “There is not, it may be,” says Lord Clarendon, “a greater obstruction to the investigation of truth, or the improvement of knowledge, than the too frequent appeal, and the too supine resignation of our understanding to antiquity.”18 Whosoever proposes an alteration of existing institutions, will meet, from some men, with a sort of instinctive opposition, which appears to be influenced by no process of reasoning, by no considerations of propriety or principles of rectitude, which defends the existing system because it exists, and which would have equally defended its opposite if that had been the oldest. “Nor is it out of modesty that we have this resignation, or that we do, in truth, think those who have gone before us to be wiser than ourselves; we are as proud and as peevish as any of our progenitors; but it is out of laziness; we will rather take their words than take the pains to examine the reason they governed themselves by.”19 To those who urge objections from the authority of ages, it is, indeed, a sufficient answer to say that they apply to every long-continued custom. Slave-dealers urged them against the friends of the abolition; Papists urged them against Wickliffe and Luther; and the Athenians probably thought it a good objection to an apostle, that “he seemed to be a setter forth of strange gods.”
It is agreed by all sober moralists, that the foundation of our duty is the will of God, and that his will is to be ascertained by the Revelation which He has made. To Christianity, therefore, we refer in determination of this great question: we admit no other test of truth: and with him who thinks that the decisions of Christianity may be superseded by other considerations, we have no concern; we address not our argument to him, but leave him to find some other and better standard, by which to adjust his
