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A SYSfSM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, R. P, P. HM CBICAOO.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

The Ethics of Spiritualism ; A SYSTEM OF Moral Philosophy FOUNDED ON EVOLUTION AND THE CONTINUITY OF MAN'S EXISTENCE BEYOND THE GRAVE. BY HUDSON TUTTLE, Author of "Arcana of Nature" u Antiquity of Man" "Career of the God-Idea in History, iu * Career of Religious ideas" "Arcana of Spiritualism" Etc. i/< The Old. — Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them. The New.— Do all for others. CHICAGO: PUBLISHED by the religio- philosophical publishing house. 1878.

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Copyright by Hudson Tuttle, 1878.

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INTRODUCTION Receiving the doctrine of a future life as a demonstrated fact, and that the future state is a direct continuance of the present, changed only by environing conditions, what is the morality necessarily flowing from such acceptance, and wbat are its effects on the conduct of life? We are forced to examine this subject because we are told that Spiritualism is immoral in its teachings, and leads to a depraved life. Such an opinion may be honestly entertained by those who believe in and revere the old, and regard the new with jealous eye. They who have been taught from infancy that their hope of future happiness depends on the reception of certain dogmas, even if their reason rebel, cannot throw aside the shackles of superstition, of education and old time customs. What they have regarded as necessary incentives for right doing, they cannot be convinced are useless, and that man can walk the road of righteousness single handed and alone. They cannot believe such an one can be trusted with himself, and are certain evil and corruption will flow from unfettered human nature. They believe immortality is a gift bestowed by God, as a reward for the acceptance of certain doctrines, and not inherent in the constitution of man. In the beginning, we make the broad statement that every belief, however ancient, which is not true, is baleful in its influence, and the time for the presentation of a new truth to the world, is the moment it receives birth in the mind of a thinker. If man is immortal, he is such by virtue of his being human, and no fiat of any external power can annul his birthright. The caterpillar is a prophesy of the butterfly. As well might we say that the butterfly state is a gift bestowed on favored caterpillers for believing the theories of ancient caterpillars, as that immortality is bestowed on certain men because they accept certain ancient doctrines. The butterfly arises from the worm by

VI INTRODUCTION. laws of growth, and the change of the latter to the former is inevitable. So the spirit of man must be an outgrowth of laws, and predetermined by his physical constitution. We are immortal, and cannot blot out our immortality — whether in a heaven of happiness or a hell of misery, we cannot escape the fiat of .endless living. The suicide vainly attempts escape on the earth side of life, to be met on the other side of the narrow grave by Eternity. Escape, there is none. We live, and the spark of life which is ours is more enduring than the adamantine mountain— than the stars of space — and shall blocm in youthful verdure when their fires expire and the sun-ashes are drawn like mist to be rekindled at the central forges of the system. Every human being, as an immortal spirit, stands *orever in the center of the universe. From the abysmal beginning up to the present moment all the laws and forces of nature have labored to give him birth. Through all the ages of the future will they labor to sustain and develop his possibilities. The one auxiliary is his own efforts; eventually all gain must come through the exertion of the individual. A correct system of morals must be founded, not on any supposed revelation or ancient form of faith, but on the constitution of man. It must be the result of the careful study of his physical, mental and spiritual nature. No theory, however long received as infallible ; no revelation, however sacred, has the least weight against the demonstrated conclusions of impartial thought. By the simple enunciation of science that man is a creature of evolution, that he has come up out of the night of the past, step by step, until he has acquired his present stature, by denying primitive perfection and fall therefrom, revolutionizes all our methods of thought in regard to his position, duties and obligations. Instead of a distinct creation, amenable to superior powers, he is an integral factor of the world, and has no escape from its laws. As the hand, so exquisitely perfect in man, so soft and beautiful, so nicely adapted for executing the plans of intelligence, is shadowed in the rod-like limb of the proteus, the flipper of the whale, and the forefoot of the quadruped, so is his intellect prophesied in the dim and unarticulated thoughts of the same beings. His mental superiority is no greater than his physical. The hand that makes the engine is equal to the mind that

INTRODUCTION. VII conceives and plans the engine. Mentally and physically man is a creature of growth, and hence he is allied to the world of matter and the world of thought Through him the animal leaps the abyss between the physical and the spiritual. Human history is a bridge spanning interminable marshlands, its further end reaching towards the brutal, its unfinished arches illumined by the sun flooding down from the spiritual firmament. Along this causeway have been waged the mighty battles of the ages, fought over again in the life of every individual. It is the war between the animal side of man's nature and the spiritual. As the race has unfolded, gathering higher and clearer perceptions of right, truth and justice, age after age, the gain has been on the side of the spiiitual. As in the individual, the brute forces of the desires have been co-ordinated with the moral and spiritual perceptions. Because of this evolution, is there conflict between the two sides of man's nature. Because he is an animal physically, is there war between his physical and his spiritual tendencies. To harmonize this apparent anomaly, by which the aspirations of an angel are linked with the passions of a devil, has been the primary object of all systems of theology. The existence of these spiritual aspirations indicated the innate purity of the spirit and its primal perfection. That it was, in fact, so prone to fly to the ungoverned selfishness and lust of brutes, indicated a fallen and depraved state. The dogmas growing out of this erroneous view were also dependent on equally false ideas of God. A perfect, infinite and good God, would not create an imperfect man. His creation would be in his own image. Man was far from perfect. His imperfection was the result of sin and wicked ness. As his Creator does not wish him to sin, he sins from choice. His free agency shifts the burden of responsibility from God to himself. Created perfect, he has sinned by choice, and became depraved through and by means of his own wickedness. He has corrupted himself. To escape the infinite consequences, he must have faith in a verbal revelation and a certain scheme of redemption. Immortality is not the result of immutable laws, and has no relation to the constitution of things. Men reared in this belief, when they cast it aside are often unbalanced.

VIII INTRODUCTION. The passions held by such faith in obeyance, are ungoverned when it is withdrawn, as the higher faculties which should control are untried or inactive. It is said they are examples of the bad influence of the new and want of faith in the old doctrines. Rather are they examples of the blighting effects of the old. Instead of cultivating the spiritual side, that it might control the animal instincts, it has foisted a blind faith in its place. It has made beiief of more consequence than harmonious development. This has been the theological solution of the problem of man's redemption. It has been made by honest men, who have thought profoundly and reasoned logically from their data. But granting the theory of evolution, of man's development from the world of brute forces, this solution is entirely false. Man having never fallen, needs no redemption. The problem assumes a new form. How shall the animal aid spiritual be harmonized ? In the outset, we must regard matter and spirit as equally sacred. We cannot vent our spleen, as the ascetics of old, against the inherent sinfulness of matter, and think to gain heaven by crueifying the flesh. As long as we are inhabitants of this sphere, our physical being is essential, and the laws and conditions of its development are as pure and holy as those of the spirit. It is not by crushing the instincts under the iron heel of faith, but in their proper and legitimate direction by dominant intellectual and moral faculties, that perfection is to be sought. The accomplishment of this object is the real purpose of life; it has not only a relation for time but for eternity. The golden messengers from that land beyond the grave, in ideal lives, teach us how to order the conduct of our own. We are not creatures of a day, living for the gratification of our physical being ; we have an exalted nature, capable of infinite possibilities, which we ideally represent. When the physical side shall melt, and even the world on which it depends pass away, that nature will only have began its unfolding. In the tangled web of mortal life, beset on one hand by clamorous instincts, and eoaded on the other by the reprovings of angelic aspirations, we still inquire, as did the sages of old, what is truth? what is right? what wrong? how shall we escape ? If we answer, By a just co-ordination of all the faculties

INTRODUCTION. IX of the mind, and a harmony maintained by dominant moral and intellectual power, then is required the methods through and by which this end is attainable. Most perfectly does Spiritualism answer. Her robes of spotless purity are flung as a mantle of all-comprehending charity over all. She has no word of condemnation and contumely for the wrong-doer, but for the wrong. She points not the finger of scorn at the writhing sinner, but at the sin. She utters no words of partial praise for those who never stumble. As the infinite forces of nature pour out blessings alike on all, so she makes no distinction in the breadth of her benevolence. Her voice is melodious with loye while it speaks of eternal and unswerving justice. Listen, oh, mortal, to her voice, and learn how it is possible to climb the golden stairway of immortal life, becoming day by day, year by year, and century by century, perfected in the infinite capabilities of the spirit — learn how to triumph over the accidents of mortal life, meeting all its duties and bearing all its burdens with cheerful heart, laying the deep foundation of that temple immortal, beyond the shadow of death.

THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM. CHAPTER I. THE INDIVIDUAL. The individual has fought the battle of history. The determination of the sphere of mine and thine, where the I terminates in society, has been the bloody battle-field of the past; nor has the ever fresh problem yet been solved. In a just and natural order, the individual should surrender no rights to society. Whatever is right for the mass, is right for the individual. As all rights of society are founded on individual rights, the study of the individual is the key whereby the social order must be resolved. The individual, then, first claims our attention. We are not to regard him as a being degraded from a higher estate, with distorted faculties and abnormal desires, outside of animal life and supernatural. He is a direct outgrowth from the life beneath him, still retaining clearly defined traces of his origin, in his instinctive nature, to which are added superior qualities more or less defined. Man is distinguished from animals by these superior or moral faculties. In the brute there is a prophesy of qualities allied to morality, but in none of them is there anything like a clear perception between right and wrong. Of their actions, we cannot say they are immoral, for they have no such guidance. They act by impulse or desire, and not from a sense of duty. It may be said of savage man, and of the savage of civilized life, that they are as destitute of morals as the brute, and hence not blamable. This fact is the cause of inextricable confusion in the old systems, wherein the distinction between the animal and man have been attempted to be set forth. If an animal kills a man it is not held responsible as morally guilty, while a man who kills his fellow is guilty of the highest crime against morals. It is said the man knew better; he had a free choice, and chose the part of guilt.

12 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: While this might apply to cultured minds, such as the philosophers who study the theme of ethics, it does not to the class who usually commit such actions. The savage is almost as much a creature of blind impulse as the brute, and has as little choice. The feelings excited by contemplation of similar acts in the brute and man, are results of the distinction in motives. The brute is pitied, man is blamed, often mercy being lost in hot indignation. If this be an error, it is relieved by the fact that while the brute is incapable of moral culture, and must be ruled by fear, or hope of reward, THE LOWEST MAN IS SUSCEPTIBLE OP INFINITE IMPROVEMENT. The moral faculties ever are present and may be awakened by proper stimulants. It is the possession of moral faculties, that makes a science of morals possible, and the possibility of their culture gives such science its great and beneficent influence. While moral perceptions were early in appearance, the development of anything like a system of ethics was reserved for recent time. The broad relations of individuals and society were seized and expressed in proverbs and laws, but the subtle questions lying at the foundation were too complex for such general statement. Of all the departments of thought, this lies nearest the central existence of the spirit. The physical sciences are objective, and interest the senses. This is the study of the mind by the mind itself. It enters the secret chambers and studies the methods of its own activities and the causes which incite them. DUTY. An animal rushes at, lacerates and crushes a man. We utter no word of censure. The animal has been true to its brute instincts ; we commiserate the result, and do not hold it responsible. We may even censure its victim, if he has provoked the attack. A man sheds the blood of his fellow. At once we censure the act. We say he ought not to have done the deed. Why? Because he knew better. Here is introduced a word which conveys a meaning unequivocal and distinct. We do not say of the animal, it ought not, for it has no faculty comprehending ought We say it of man because he has such faculty. He has a sense of duty, of obli

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 13 gation, for doing or not doing, to which the animal is a stranger. He is the thrall of a higher sphere of motives, and if he is not obedient, he sinks at once to the animal plane. In fact, he sinks far lower, for the blind instincts of the animal in him are intensified by the intellect, directing and directed. When we consider man as a product of evolution, and not as a fallen being, we eliminate from the discussion the intricate dogmas of his fall, and redemption through vicarious atonement. Moral philosophy becomes a science to be advanced by research and observation, in the same manner as other sciences. We are no longer confused by metaphysical argumentation based on the twisted meaning of words, and dogmatic theology yields its place as blind autocrat. In this study we regard the mind as a unity composed of diversity. It is the bane of metaphysical systems that they analyze the mind into several groups of faculties more or less arbitrary, and then reason from such classifications as though they were finalities. By this means the mental powers have come to be regarded as distinct, clearly defined, and independent in their action. The same error enters into what may be termed anatomical psychology. The brain is mapped into divisions more or less minute, and from these the mind is formed, as a gov. ernment of many individual states. However accurately the brain may be divided, or sharply defined its several functions, the mind must be regarded as a whole, arising from the blending of them all. A greater error, because leading to ruinous consequences, is the doctrine that all the faculties being natural and necessary, should be regarded as equals, and the action of one as right as another. Casting aside revelation as a standard of authority, as will be discussed in a future chapter, man has nothing outside of himself to which to appeal. If he appeals to his own faculties, he must know how to interpret their voice. In a conflict between them, he must have some criterion by which he can decide. For this understanding we must know man's position in the universe, and the purposes and functions for which his mental faculties are adapted. We shall thereby learn if they are equal in authority in the determination of conduct, or if they are co-ordinated in an ascending series,

14 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: the lower subject to the higher. We shall ascertain which are the higher, which the lower, and the distinct provinces of each. POSITION OP MAN. Man is the superlative being, the last, greatest, and yet incomplete effort of creative energy. I shall consider him in the two-fold aspect of a physical and spiritual being, related on the one side to the material world, and on the other to the spiritual. Since the motto "Know thyself" was carved on the portal of a Grecien temple, the study of man has been the most absorbing pursuit of the thinker; for all departments of science cluster around him as a centre, and a perfect knowledge of him is a comprehension of the universe. Early was the momentous question asked by the soul blindly calling for an understanding of itself : What is man f The solution was felt to be fraught with infinite consequences, not only in this life but the interminable future, which was vaguely shadowed on the understanding of savage man. The answer early given, in the very childhood of the race, became the foundation of the great religious systems of the world. The conjecture of untutored minds became the received system of causation, and growing hoary with age arrogated to itself infallible authority, and required implicit faith, and the exercise of reason only in making palatable the requirements of that faith. Conceived in an age when nature was an unknown realm, and law and order not imagined to control or direct causes to effects, when science opened her mysteries to the understanding, and one by one dogmas claiming infallibility were shown to be false, there of necessity was antagonism and conflict. I do not propose to enlarge on the theological aspect of this subject more than incidentally. That treatment has grown threadbare, "stale, flat and unprofitable." for every drop of vital juice it contained has been extracted long ago. The interminable sects, wrangling over the dogmatic solution of the vital question of man's origin and destiny, arriving at nothing determinate, wrangling with each other and themselves, do not furnish incentives to follow their paths. If metaphysical theology contained the germ of truthful solution, satisfaction would have resulted ages ago, and the mind, reposing contented with the answer, would have employed its energy in other directions. Instead there is restlessness, tur

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 15 moil, conflict and indecision, and never has been an answer 90 broad and deep in catholicity of truth as to meet the demand. If science fail also, it is not the irretrievable failure of assumed infallibility. Its teachings are ever tentative, and prophecies of final triumph. As the most ennobling study of mankind is man, the crowning work of science is the solution of this vexed question. By science I mean accurate knowledge, close and careful observation of phenomena, and the conclusions drawn therefrom. MAN A DUAL STRUCTURE. While theology, Brahminical,Buddhistical or Christian, teaches that man is an incarnate spirit, independent of the physical body, created by miracle, supported by a succession of miracles, and saved by miracle from eternal death, material science, as at present taught by its leading exponents, wholly ignores his spiritual life, and declares him to be a physical being only. It is not my purpose to reconcile these conflicting views. Truths never require reconciliation. They never conflict, and if the results of two different methods of investigation are at variance, one or the other is in error, and the only reconciliation is the elimination of that error. The egotisms of theology and the pride of science array their votaries in oposition, while the truth remains unquestioned in the unexplored middle ground. Man is neither a spirit nor a body ; he is the intimate union of both. In and through his physical being; the spiritual nature is evolved from the forces of the elements, and is expressed. There is somewhat more enduring than the resultants of chemical unions, actions and reactions in his physical body. Beneath this organic construction is that which remains, to which it is the scaffolding which assists, while it conceals the development ol the real edifice. PHYSICAL MAN. First, as most tangible and obvious in this investigation, is the physical man, the body, the temple of the soul. The student, even when imbued with the doctrine of materialism, arises from the study of the physical machine with wonder and surprise akin to awe, declaring man to be fearfully and wonderfully made. It is not surprising that we die, but that we live. The rupture of a nerve fibre, the obstruction of a valve, the momentary cessation of breath, the introduction of a mote at some vital point, brings this most complex structure to

16 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: eternal rest. By what constant oversight, by what persis. tency of reparation is it preserved from ruin! This physical man is an animal, amenable to the laws of animal growth. His body is the type of which theirs are but imperfect copies. From two or three mineral substances his bones are crystalized, and articulated as the bones of all vertebrate animals, and over them the muscles are extended. From the amphioxus, too low in the scale of being to be called a fish, a being without organs, without a brain, little more than an elongated sack of gelatinous substance, through which a white line marks the position of the spinal cord and the future spinal axis, there is a slow and steady evolution to the perfected skeleton of man. His osseous structure is the type of all. The fin of the fish, the huge paddle of the whale, the cruel paw of the tiger, the hoof of the horse, the wing of the bird, and the wonderfully flexible hand of man, so exquisite in adaptations as to be taken as an unqualified evidence of Design, are all fashioned out of the same elementary bones, after one model. The change of form to meet the wants of their possessors, results from the relative enlargement or atrophy of one or more of these elements. When the fleshy envelope is stripped away from them, it is astonishing how like these apparently divergent forms really are. In the whale the flesh unites the huge bones of the fingers, and produces a broad, oar-like fin ; in the tiger the nails become retractile talons ; in the bird some of the fingers are atrophied, while others are elongated to support the feathers which are to offer resistance to the air in flight; in the horse the bones of the fingers are consolidated, and the united nails appear in the hoof. If there exists such perfect similarity in the bony structure of man to the animal world, the muscular system for which it furnishes support offers the same likeness. Trace any muscle in the human body from its origin to its termination, mark the points where it seizes the bones, the function it performs, and then dissect the most obscure or disreputable member of the vertebrate kingdom, and you will find the same muscle performing the same function. The talons of the tiger are extended and flexed by muscles similar to those which give flexibility to the human hand, and the same elements are traceable in the ponderous paddle of the whale. More vital than the bony framework, or the muscles to

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 17 which it gives support, is the nervous system, seemingly not only the central source of vital power, but the means of union and sympathetic relation of every cell and fibre of the entire body. The brain has been aptly compared to a central telegraphic office, and the nerves to the extended wires, which hold in communication and direct relation all ihe organs, and from which the functions of each are directed. The nervous system is the bridge which spans the chasm between matter and spirit, and the battle between Materialism and Spiritualism must be ought not only with brain, but in the province of brain. The issue directly stated is this : Does the brain yield mind as the result of organic changes in its cells and fibres, or is mind a manifestation through and by means of the brain of something superior and beyond ? The materialists boldly assert that " mind is a secretion of the brain, as bile is of the l£ver." They claim to be scientists, and rely only on facts, yet the most profound in their ranks admit that the structure of the brain is a mystery, its functions unfathomable, and really nothing is absolutely known of the offices it sustains to the body, or the methods by which these are performed. They are satisfied with the investigation of what may be called secondary relations and effects. The chemist has found phosphorus and sulphur in the nerve substance, and hence it is claimed that they are essential to thought. So much phosphorus, so much thought, and so much waste product of decomposition. These philosophers have gone so far as to prescribe the diet for students. Fish abound in phosphorus, and are hence the best brain food. But you feel sure phosphorus never wrote Homer's Iliad, or solved the problem of gravitation. It is not phosphorus, or carbon, or nitrogen, however vigorously oxydized, that pulsates in the emotions of friendship or love; that feels, and thinks, and knows; that recollects the past, and anticipates the future, and reaches out in infinite aspirations for perfection. Phosphorus will not, nor will any of the elements, nor any of their combinations. The actions of thought on the brain, the effort compelling the body to serve the bidding of the spirit, may consume this element and many others, as the movement of an engine consumes the coal and wastes the steam, but the

18 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: coal and the steam are only the means whereby mind impresses itself on matter. The Materialist studies the brain as a person wholly unacquainted with an engine, and mistaking it for a living being, might be supposed to do. He would observe its motion and weighing the coal consumed and the products of combustion, would say that they appeared in steam, which after propelling the piston was waste. The design in the engine, the effect of these combinations and this waste, this observer would claim to be the guiding intelligence. And he would further argue that so much coal in the grate, so much water in the boiler, and you have so much intelligence, and the waste may be pre-determined by chemical formulae ! Until the threshold of the structure of the nervous system and the functions of the brain have been passed, the primary principles of scientific investigation would at least require modesty in asserting conclusions of such momentous consequences. If it be claimed that man is a natural being, originated and sustained by natural laws, that he came without miracle, then do we unite the margins of the human and animal kingdoms, and are satisfied with placing man at the head of the animal world. An interminable and unbroken series of beings extends in a gradual gradation downwards, until the organs by which the phenomena of life are manifested are lost one by one, the senses disappear, and we arrive at what has been aptly termed " protoplasm." not an organized form, but simply organizable matter, or matter from which organic forms can be produced. If in reviewing this chain of beings, slowly arising by constant evolution, we closely examine several of its consecutive links, we shall find that while each is apparently complete, yet it is only the germ out of which the next is evolved in superior forms. Each link is a prophecy of future superiority. We can trace the fulfillment of the prophecy of one age in the next, until man appears as the last term in the physical series. They who teach us this doctrine of evolution, which is to life what the law of gravitation is to worlds, also teach that united with the doctrtne of " conservation of force," our hope of immortality becomes a dream. What a sham they make of creation ! What a turmoil

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 19 for no result! Infinite ages of progress and evolution, during which elemental matter, by force of inherent laws, sought to individualize itself and incarnate its force in living beings ; ages of struggle upwards from low to high, from sensitive to sentient, from sentient to intellectual, from zoophyte to man ! And now, having accomplished this, and given man exquisite susceptibility of thought, of love, of affection, making him the last factor in the series, he is doomed to perish ! What is gained by this travail of the ages ? It would have been as well had the series stopped with the huge saurians of the primeval slime, or the mastodon and mammoth of pre-historic times, as with man. As each factor in the series prophesies future forms, so does man read in the same light, prophecy forms beyond. They cannot be in the line of greater physical perfection for in the days of Greece and Rome man was as perfect physically, as is seen by their sculptures, as to-day. Ages ago this exceeding beauty was attained. It cannot be in the evolution of a being superior to man, for in each lower animal imperfect organs or structures, or partially employed functions, are improvable and perfected by succeeding forms, in man the archetype is complete, and no partially developed organ Indicates the possibility of future change. THE COURSE OF PROGRESS CHANGED. Progress having arrived at its limits with the body, changes its direction, and appears in the advancement of mind. Death closes the career of individuality, and we live only in thoughts — our selfhood is absorbed in the ocean of being. Mankind perfects as a whole, and the sighed-for millennium is coming by-and-bye. Of what avail is it to us if future generations are wise and noble, if we pass into nonentity? Of what avail to them to be wise and noble, if life is only the fleeting hour? Not yet will I believe Nature to be such a sham— such a cruel failure. The spirit rebels against the supposition of its mortality. The body is its habiliment. Shall the coat be claimed to be the entire man ? Shall the garments ignore the wearer ? This is the animal side of man. Physically composed of the same elements, and having passed through these innumerable changes, he is an epitome of the universe. As man was foreshadowed in remotest ages as the crowning

20 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: type in the series of organic life, so man foreshadows superior excellence. Springing out of his physical perfectibility, arises a new world of spiritual wants and aspirations, unanswered and unanswerable in mortal life. IF THERE IS AN IMMORTAL SPIRIT, IT MUST BE ORIGINATED AND SUSTAINED BY NATURAL LAWS. If this be true, we are to seek the origin of the individualized spirit with the origin of the physical body. We are to place the growth of one with that of the other. The physical body is the scaffolding by which the spiritual being is sustained, and when matured sufficiently, remains after that support is taken away. A certain stage of progress or perfection must be reached before this result, else all living beings would be immortal. Like the arch, which unless completed falls as soon as the scaffolding is removed, the spiritual part of the animal falls at death. Continue the task still further and place the keystone in position, and the arch remains self-supporting. CHAPTER II. THE GENESIS AND EVOLUTION OF SPIRIT. All religious systems of necessity are based on immortality, without which, religion is impossible. Man may be moral without belief in the future. But the faith and knowledge of a life infinitely continued, sheds a glory over the present, and consecrates the character. The motives of the hour become sanctified with the mighty influences which are theirs, in their interminable reach, and every act has a new significance in the super-added eternal relation. Moral science is the crowning arch of all knowledge, •the latest and the best. Its study involves that of all others, for the moral faculties are the acquisition of an ascending series, are directly related with the faculties which reach down and lay hold of the physical world. They are hence subject to laws, form a continuity, and are

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 21 a factor in the mental unity. That we may comprehend the foundations on which we build the spiritual temple whose azurline dome is crowned with the heaven-light of a religion sublimated him a pure morality, a brief outline of the relations of the spiritual and physical universe is here introduced. On this ascending order we found our classification of the mental faculties, as the order of beings is acertained from embryonic growths, and shall determine the higher from the lower. THE ORIGIN OP MATTER AND FORCE. The origin of matter and force evade the grasp of the human mind. Consistent philosophy can only rest its sure foundations on the admission of the co-eternity of the atom and the forces which emanate therefrom. We have no knowledge of the creation or destruction of the least fragment of matter. We are only acquainted with change. The wood or coal burns in the grate and disappears, leaving a small residuum of ashes. Has the fire destroyed the matter of which the coal was formed? Ah, no! If we confine the escaping gasses, and add the ashes thereto, the whole will weigh precisely as much as the original coal. Matter has changed form. Carbon has united with oxygen, and carbonic acid and other gasses escape invisibly into the air. Allowed to freely float in the atmosphere, these atoms are soon brought into the circulation of living beings, remaining the same centers of force. Nor is the force lost. It disappears, as the solid coal disappears in the atmosphere, but retains in its new form all its potentiality. No discovery of modern times has had greater influence than that of the indestructibility of motion. I have instanced the burning of coal. We say it is destroyed and the heat which it produced has ceased. In both expressions are we at fault, for as the carbon of the coal has changed its form, and heat has resulted from the change, that form of force has not cea3edto be after warming our dwellings. The carbon of the coal was secreted by the action of the heat and light of the sun during the coal period. It existed as carbonic acid gas in the atmosphere, and the rays of the sun tore asunder the carbon and oxygen of the gas, and the former was stored away by the plant, at length to become coal. What then have we, when we allow these atoms of carbon and oxygen to rush together? The phenomenon of heat, or in other words the

22 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: identical force which existed millions of ages ago when the coal was in the circulating sap of the plant, tore them asunder. If we place the coal in the furnace of an engine, the heat it affords is changed into motion, and if possible to utilize it all, the amount of motion will exactly equal the amount of heat. Thus a pound of coal represents a certain amount of force derived primarily from the sun. If burned in a furnace and perfectly economized, it will ^ive the engine power to raise a certain number of pounds one foot; or if the engine drive a machine to create friction, that friction will produce light and heat exactly equal to the quantity of sunlight and heat originally required to create the pound of coal; or it may be applied to produce electricity, and that electricity will be sufficient to produce light and heat of the same degree, or to propel another engine of the same power. In all these changes of form of motion, to light, to heat, to electricity, and revertive to motion, nothing is gained, nothing lost. It is the same as with a given quantity of water, congealed to ice, or vaporized by heat, form only is changed. FOUNDATION OF SPIRITUALISM. Here on the assumed co-eternity of Matter and Force, on the foundation of rigid Materialism, we plant our philosophy of Spiritualism. Without such basis, scientific reasoning is futile and vain. Ascend the stream of time as far as we may, we find new formations at every step, but creations never. The Old System ever contains the germ of the New, and the process is of wondrous and consecutive growth. When we reach the threshold of the present order, the remote chaos of the beginning, the ruins of prexisting cycles, declare that even this vast duration is only one swing of the solar pendulum by which the universe is governed. From this fixed foundation we can study the grand process of evolution in the Material world, and also in the world of spirit. For let me here premise that I hold one as rigidly to the control of law as the other, If man possesses an immortal spirit, that spirit is created and sustained by fixed and determinate laws. It is not a gift be stowed, it is a fact of his organization. I propose to treat this great problem from this standpoint, well knowing the magnitude of the task I assume

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 23 and the difficulties to be met. So far as I am aware this is the first attempt to reduce spiritual existence to the dominion of law, or extend the process of formation in a continuous and direct line from physical forms to spiritual life. DEFINITION OF SPIRIT. How far removed this subject is from the path of exact observation or scientific thought, I need only to quote the received definition of spirit to show. It is according to the standard lexicon, " The intelligent, immaterial and immortal part of human beings." If immaterial, spirit at once escapes us. The methods by which we investigate physical nature are worthless, and it is amenable to no laws which we can ascertain. But how can an immaterial being have intelligence ? How, even, can it exist ? It is an absolute nothing, an intelligent nothing, an immortal nothing ! And this nothingness, is not a fact of organization, but a gift from God ! Ardent, indeed, is the imagination of the metaphysician who accepts such an existence, and maintains its desirability. This immaterial part they, say is a fragment from the Divine Being, and is an image of him in quality, but differs in degree. Not a step has been made since the Brahmins of the Granges, so remote that our historic dates are of yesterday, perfected their system ot theology. Man's spirit was a portion of the Infinite Spirit and was after passing through a certain cycle re-absorbed into the divine bosom, to flow out again in an endless succession of being. This theory is plausible, but being entirely imaginary, is no more worthy of credence than the vagaries of a dream. Here the speculations of one man are as reliable as those of another, and all are as idle conjectures, for at the very beginning it is impossible for finite man to know any thing of the Infinite Spirit, and how then so flippantly assert that the spirit of man is a detached fragment or spark from this Infinite Source ? RE-INCARNATION. Nor is the modified form of this theory known as re-incarnation less objectionable. The spirit is something for. eign to the physical body, which takes up its abode therein. This is a very old idea, and is received in almost its original form, as advocated by the Pythagorian and Platonic schools. In proof it is said there are those who dis

24 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM. tinctly recollect passages in their previous existence. As the poet has said: — " Some draught of Lethe doth await As old mythologies relate, The slipping through from State to State." But memory is not always silenced. Sometimes the potent draught is not sufficiently powerful ; and then we decipher the mystic lines of some previous state: — " And ever something is or seems, That touches us with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams." Plato regarded this life as ODly a recognized moment between two eternities, the past and the future. Innate ideas and the sentiment of pre-existence prove our past. To Plato, representative of the light attained of ancient thought, such might be satisfactory evidence, but to us, with the knowledge we possess of the physiology of the brain, they are of little value. If the spirit is an independent portion of the Deity, what can it possibly gain by re-incarnation ? It is claimed that spirits who have sinned in the body are obliged to re-incarnate themselves for purification. If the spirit is essentially pure, and becomes corrupt by contact with the body, it is strange, indeed, a second contact is able to purify. If we admit the theory of re-incarnation, the birth of every human being is a miracle and the spiritual realm at once removes itself from rational investigation. The difficulties which lie in the way of its reception are insurmountable; the greatest of which is, that at best it offers a speculative solution to a problem far better solved by the application of known causes. The entire animal world must receive its living element in the same manner, and re-incarnation must apply to brutes as well as man, for one type of structure pervades all living beings. Say you this incarnate or physical state is one of probation ; I ask how a portion of the infinite can take on a probationary state, and being absolutely perfect, what benefit does it derive from incarnation, or by repeated reincarnations V The higher can gain nothing by contact with the lower, and if spirit exists independent of matter, and living beings receive the breath of life by receiving a portion of the spiritual essence, then that essence must be

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 25 the loser, and repeated contacts degrade rather than elevate it. That we lose our consciousness of the preceding states is among the least of objections, for consciousness and memory are often treacherous. The cardinal objection which supplants all others, is derived from a study of the constitution and order of the world. Nature has one structural plan extending from the animalcule to man, taking in with all embracing sweep the vegetable and animal kingdoms. In accordance with that plan all beings beneath man are developed. Why are we to suppose that, although his physical form is a direct continuance of the line of progress as expressed in animals, and his psychical being different from theirs, not in kind, but degree, a new method is introduced which sets aside and renders worthless this interminable series of advancing life ? Man would exist just the same were not this new method introduced, as the laws of creation extend directly to him. They consequently disturb the otherwise unbroken harmony of nature by the introduction of a miracle. An oak germinates from an acorn, under the favorable conditions of moisture and warmth by which the germ is enabled to expand according to the laws of its growth. It is not necessary to suppose the spirit of a decayed oak takes possession of the acorn to clothe itself again with woody fibre. We say the acorn becomes an oak by the laws of growth. The lion reproduces its kind, and we again refer the process to the laws of its growth, nor feel required to call to our aid the spirits of lions. As the development of man is in a direct line from the animal world, why should we depart from the observed order in his case ? If we received the theory of re-incarnation and that the spirit is a fragment of the Divine spirit, as the physical body is of the physical world, the difficulties are by no means escaped. We can see that the infinite series of creation is the means whereby the fragment we call the body was broken off from the physical world. By what process was the fragment broken off from the spiritual world ? To say that some humau spirits are re-incarnations while others are not, will not suffice, for all are re-incarnations, else none. If all are, then this difficulty is only placed more remote for the first incarnation must have oc

26 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: curred at some time, and how was that effected ? How, was the individual spirit at first created by, or detached from, the Infinite Spirit ? Thus at every point the theory is beset with insurmountable difficulties, and it ever appears supposititious, as the psychical phenomena it seeks to explain are consistently referred to the known laws of the world. I shall now sketch, as clearly as I may in the brief space allotted me, an outline of what may be called the plan of creation, revealed by the light of recent investigation. DEAD MATTER. The old idea of the inertness of matter, that it is dead and inanimate, only moving when acted upon by superior force, has become obsolete. Whether we regard the atom to which matter is finally reduced as a pulsating centre of force, or as an entity, affects not our conclusion. If an entity, we can never know anything of it except by means of the forces flowing from it. We never see, feel, taste nor touch matter. It is its properties or atmosphere which af. feet us. All visible effects are produced by invisible causes. All the forces of nature act from within outward 11 The things to be explained," remarks a modern thinker, " are changes, active effects, motions in ordinary matter, not as acted upon, but as in itself inherently active. The chief use of atoms is to serve as points or vehicles of motion. Thus the study of matter resolves itself into the study of forces. Inert objects, as they appear to the eye of sense, are replaced by the activities revealed to the eye of the intellect. The conceptions of ' gross,' ' corrupt,' ■ brute matter,' are passing away with the prejudices of the past ; and in place of a dead, material world, we have a living organism of spiritual energies." The organization of atoms can not manifest any quality, that does not reside in the single atom. Hence, if matter in its aggregation yields the phenomena of life and consciousness, the atom must contain the possibilities of life and consciousness The revolutions of satellites around planets ; of planets around suns ; of suns around solar centres, the floodings of light, heat and magnetism, in their grand order may be termed the life of the world. The same forces concentrated in lesser spheres, yield what we term life, as exhibited in sentient beings.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 27 We are to divest ourselves at once of the old idea of the inertness of matter. It has within itself the forces by which it acts, without which it could not exist. We have to deal with force, or what has ever been termed spirit, from the beginning. Beyond this force and visible matter may lie the domain of the Infinite Mind, the expression of whose will and purpose these phenomena are. Our present object is to ascend only to the limit of known causes and there lay the foundation of our philosophy. Do not say I deny the existence of the Infinite One, for I neither deny nor affirm. From the necessity of his organization which renders him finite, man can not comprehend the Infinite, and it is useless for him to indulge in such idle speculations. I here deal with the known, and leave the vast unknown for future research. I, accept the existence of matter and force, as indivisible and co-eternal, nor pause to pursue the futile inquiry of their creation, or relation to an Infinite Spirit. Whatever that Spirit may be, the laws of matter, by which term I mean the fixed order of events, is the only means we possess of understanding and bringing ourselves in contact with him. PHYSICAL PROGRESS. Our present purpose is answered by ascending the stream of time only to the period of the introduction of living beings on the globe, and then by rapidly tracing their evolution, to solve the problems propounded at the beginning. The telescope reveals in the cosmical cloud, the uncondensed world-vapor, in which our solar system must have originally existed, and mathematics has achieved its grandest triumph in showing that the relations of the planets is such as it should be were they formed by the rotation of such a mass of condensing vapor on its axis. The earth thrown off from its central sun by the radiation of heat, became a liquid ball, and by further radiation a crust cooled over the intensely heated fluid center. The atmosphere was dense with the vapors of volatilized elements which were too intensely heated to unite in compounds, and not until the temperature became lower, did oxygen and hydrogen unite and form the vapor of water. When the temperature was still further reduced this vapor condensed and fell in showers on the heated surface.

28 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: Then began a new series of actions and reactions, which for awful sublimity can only be witnessed in the primeval state of worlds. The water falling from the dense atmosphere surcharged with volatile elements, ran down into the hollows of the rocks, penetrating the crevices and coming in contact with the internal heat, became reconverted to steam, rending the surface into fragments, and disintegrating and pulverizing the porous rock. Collecting in larger basins, thermal lakes and seas were formed, which boiled like great chaldrons, sending up steam and spray. Confusion prevailed. Land and water intermingled, the sea being an archipelago of thickly interspersed islands of rugged rocks. The low, irregular peaks scarcely appeared above the black waves, and their rugged sides spoke of their fiery birth. The weird landscape of desolation was enveloped with a black and lowering atmosphere in which the storm never ceased. Creation put on a strange garb in those, her morning days, yet order reigned supreme amid the wild confusion. Even then the vast plan of creation in all its minutia, was written in the secret chambers of the constitution of the atom, and this commotion was only its throes and spasms, to give it more complete expression. In this weird sea, overhung with black clouds and tossed by earthquakes, in which the latest of the metamorphic or primitive stratified rocks, were being produced from the crumbling clifls, the first form of life made its appearance; a gellatinous mass formed by the aggregation ot cells, neither vegetable nor animal, but combining both kingdoms, within its microscopic mass. A portion of the metamorphic group, several thousand feet in thickness, and the entire cambrian and Cumbrian series ten thousand feet in thickness, or nearly three miles of rock intervenes between this period where we fix the dawn of life, and the beginning of the Silurian where mollusks, not as high in the scale of being as the oyster, were the most advanced forms of life on the globe. When the mind endeavors to grasp the vast duration represented by that three miles of rock, formed by the slow deposition of sediment on the floor of the ocean, it finds itself wholly inadequate to the task.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 29 ORIGIN OF LIFE. The experimental researches of several scientific men in England and France, show that the low forms of life always appear under certain conditions, however guarded the experiments in preventing the presence of germs Those by Bastian are most extended, and carry the question beyond reasonable doubt that the singularly formed fungi and active atomies were spontaneous generations in the carefully sealed vessels in which his experiments were conducted. What renders these results the more interesting, is that the forms which appeared were such as the theory of spontaneous generation requires. Had they been comparatively light in the scale of being, that very fact would have invalidated the experiments indicating the unobserved presence of germs. It is probable that these simple aggregations of cells have been produced in all ages. The cell is the beginning of all forms of life; even in reproducing life in any manner, as by division or parentage. The cell is the primary form from which the infinite series of vegetable and animal life is derived. Life is inherent in matter, and living beings are the individualization of that life. Its individualization was the result of conditions such as now exist in the sea, so that should the earth be divested of living beings, it would begin a new series of advancement, differing only from that recorded in the rocky strata by the superiority of present conditions to those of the original chaos. The fragment was broken from the world of matter and individualized, and by evolution the gradual unfolding of inherent qualities, we can trace its growth through the successive geological ages. It is not possible, nor desirable here, to trace with completeness the progress from the microscopic cellular atomy to the highest form of mammals. The great Darwin has, with a flood of facts, bridged the vast distance, and established the doctrine of creation by evolution, in a direct and continuous line, in a fixed and unvarying order. ORIGIN OF MAN. The forces of change are operating to-day with the same swift but noiseless energy as in the past. The once prevalent notion of catastrophes has passed away. The geological ages are no longer divided by sharp lines, formed

30 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM : by overwhelming convulsions, but fade into each other. From the cellular atomy to the mollusk ; from mollusk to the fish and reptile ; from the reptile to the warm-blooded animal, is one unbroken line of ascent. The animate beings of each age are direct outgrowths of the preceding. The same course of reasoning applies to man. There is as little necessity to introduce miracle at his creation, as at the production of the atomy of the primeval slime. He did not spring from the brain of Jove, like Minerva, with all his God-like qualities complete. Even the brief records of history carry us back to barbarism, and in the unknown period beyond, man becomes a skin-clad savage, scarcely superior to the animal his strategy eludes or destroys. The first indication of his presence is a broken flint, so rude, it was at first referred to accident; his dwelling was the natural fissures of the rocks, which he disputed with varying fortune with his brother animals. From that remote epoch, to which the foundation of the pyramids are as yesterday, two skulls have come down- to us, showing by their thick and massive structure, the brutal type of their possessors, who must have been lower than the lowest savages of the present. As the animal world advances, man is degraded, until the chasm said to exist between them vanishes, and the two inseparably blend. The old method of referring the intelligence exhibited by animals to instinct no longer finds supporters. It is admitted by those who have studied the subject most profoundly, that the mental powers of animals and of man are the same in kind, only differing in degree. Physically, man is unquestionably an animal, being the archetype of the dominant class of animals. Thus the arm and hand of man is the type, on which the fore extremities of all animals are formed, and the same elements of bene and muscle appear in the post-like arm of the elephant, the paddle of the whale, the claw of the turtle, the fin of the fish, the wing of the bird, and by the loss of its typical elements, becomes finally reduced in the lowest vertebrate being to a simple rod-like extremity. Thus may his other organs be traced, until lost in the lower species. His intellectual and moral faculties can be traced in a similar manner. The distance between the intellect of Newton and that of the dog is immeasurably great, but the difference between him and the Bosjesman, who is unable to count four, is greater than

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 31 between the intelligence of the latter and the dog. The manifestation of intellect is determined by the brain, and the brain of the higher animals and man are identical in structure. Whatever we may hereafter find the functions of brain to be, we know its size and form indicate the thoughts which accompany it. Thus anatomy alone proves the inseparable union in organization between man and the animal. Even language has been employed both by Darwin and Wallace to strengthen this union, animals having signs and sounds to express their thoughts and emotions, and what are they but language ? Physically and mentally man is the culmination of the vast series of organic changes from the dawn of life. Organs faintly shadowed forth in them, or indifferently formed in him, are perfected, balanced and brought in harmony with the perfection of others. He thus is the type, after which the animal world is created, or is the perfection of their structure. MENTAL GROWTH. This survey of the realm of living beings presents us with the perfection of the physical forms of animals as well as of man. The lion, for instance, is no more perfect than its ancestors of the tertiary epoch. The elephant is not in advance of the elephant of the same period. These high forms have attained their completeness and are subject to little variation. The physical man has also reached perfection. In ancient times he had done so, as is shown by the perfection of the marble models of Greece. There is every reason to suppose that the human form was as exquisitely moulded three thousand years ago in Greece, as it is under the highest civilization at present. With the acquisition of intellect, progress changed its object and direction. Previously acting on unresisting bodies, it has now found a directing power in intelligence. Animals are even in their highest estate almost as resistless to the conditions which environ them as the elements. The same holds true of lowest man. He offers no resistance to change. When, however, he begins to understand the laws of the elements, he takes advantage of their power, and dictates to them. In exact ratio of his knowledge is he the master, not the slave. A new element is introduced into the method of evolution. Perfection of physical forms are reached, and progress is directed through the

32 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: channel of intelligence. A certain mental endowment is gained by animals, but their physical structure precludes any considerable attainment. The upright position, the dexterity of the hand, and still more, the balance of faculties and powers which obtain in man, are essential to his intellectual growth. Even were it possible for a tiger to become as intelligent as man, its organization would render such endowment worthless. The hand of the inventor is as necessary as his intellectual faculties. An ox with the mind of La Place, in vain might seek to record its calculations ; aud though it should plan a Hoosac Tunnel, its hard hoofs could not execute the work. The question is asked, may not higher forms result from the plan of progress herein sketched ? If animals in the past, by constantly availing themselves of every change for the better, have reached their present status, will not improvement still continue, and may not races superior to man be expected? In those regions, unmolested by man, the process of change will continue ; but as he meets the requirements of his position, as in him is made perfect expression of type, there can be no physical advance beyond him. If we study the structure of any individual animal, we readily perceive wherein important changes might be made for its improvement. Not so with man. His physical organization is complete, and although we find traces of organs once useful to lower being, but now atrophied, we find no partially developed organs, or indications of latent functions. Furthermore, at this point where he gains physical perfection, his intellect makes him master of Conditions. If he have an imperfect organ it is his brain, which now receives the entire force of the elements of change, and shadows forth the most exalted intellectual attainments possible. The savage oflers slight resistence to the conditions which surround him. The Esquimaux build icehouses to protect themselves, but in the struggle for existence are overpowered by the climate, and as a race, are disappearing. The African is enervated and overpowered by the tropic heat; civilized man on the contrary, by his knowledge of architecture, clothing, fire and skill, overcomes climate. He carries the tropics to the poles, and the polar ice to the tropics. Not only does he set aside the order of progress in himself, he dictates to the animal

A. SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 33 world. He introduces domestic animals in place of the denizens of the wild, which he extirpates. These domestic species are the product of his whim and caprice, in which his ideas are expressed, as he, by study of the methods of nature, has learned to substitute new methods of his own. These though few in kind, are innumerable in number, and will ultimately displace the wild species from all the vast territory peopled by civilized races. By this rapid survey we have determined man's position at the apex of the pyramid of life, the crowning work of creative energy. We have observed the method by which his physical body has been broken like a fragment from the world of matter. The development of mind can be traced by a parallel course, and to continue the figure of speech, indicates the method by which man's spirit is broken, a fragment from the spiritual universe. 8PIRIT. We now come to the consideration of the immortal man. Thus far our course has been with the Materialist, who will be pleased with our conclusions. Shall we say with Carl Vogt, " Mind is a secretion of the brain, as the bile is of the liver; and that as death restores the atoms of the body to the ocean of matter, mind ceases to be ?" Does intelligence vanish, as the flame of the lamp when the oil is burned out ? " You expect in vain," says the Materialist, " the tones of music when the instrument is destroyed, or the hum of the bee after the insect has passed on its busy wings." The highest culture of all ages, and the instinctive yearnings of the soul contradict this conclusion. Ever it exclaims with the great Goethe: " The destruction of such high powers is something which can never, under any circumstances, come in question," and we are prone to say with the shade of Anticlea, " when a man is dead, the flesh, and the bones are left to be consumed by the flames; but the soul flies away like a dream." More deeply are we impressed with that conclusion, when by a survey of the realm of life we find that the progressive labor of the ages is for his creation. He is the resultant of the vast series of evolution. The labor has been for his benefit, and whatever results have flowed to other beings, have been accidental to the main line of advancement. A plan is revealed, which, as previously

34 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: stated, is inherent in the constitution of the world, and must be inevitably followed. To stop short of man would be to render creative energy an abortion. Nothing is gained except the series be completed, and it is completed when man is reached. PROGRESS UNLIMITED. But we cannot limit this progress. Having reached its highest point in physical man, it seeks a new channel through his spiritual nature. I said that in the human form we observed no imperfectly fashioned organs, or illy executed functions prophesying greater perfection hereto, fore, but in the mental realm we do find this state of things. Compared even with his ideal, the man of profoundest thought, is a child. The possibilities of a God are his, and yet he actualizes scarcely the alphabet ! Nor is it possible for the individual man in the short space allotted to mortal life to do more. Shall the race accomplish what is denied the individual ? The great stream of civilization shall onward, and each individual atom shall rise on the preceding ? Then what is the benefit or aim of this progress ? Is there anything gained by the mastodon taking the place of the saurian of the primeval slime, or man of the mastodon ? If the production of mortal beings is the end, the process would be as perfect at one stage as another. We consider it perfect in proportion as the typical structure is attained, and that structure is one which most completely embodies the possibilities of the elements. Man physically considered, is the nearest approximation to this result. He has in a measure become master of the forces which surround him, but who will say he has reached the limits of his capabilities in this direction? With the same ratio of progress for the next century, as in the past, he will have the most essential powers of nature under his control. But this is for the race. What is for the individual ? He cares not if mankind a thousand years hence become as God's ; he asks what is my destiny ? The proposition I have to make is this: The great plan of animal life comes to fruition in physical man ; he is the result of countless millenniums of evolutions. As this progress evolves man, the same laws extend into a higher domain and evolve his spirit.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 35 Unless this be so, creation is a failure, and the interminable beings which form its cycle, represent no purpose, or object gained. Unless the order be extended, and as a result a portion become advanced to a new and higher plane, we have the spectacle of ceaseless activity without object or gain, which, even to our imperfect human understanding, is nowhere else met with in the bounds of nature. Most rigidly do I adhere to my primary proposition, that no force or energy whatever can exist without matter. If man have a spiritual existence, it must be individualized, and if so, must be formed of some kind ol matter, and be as amenable to the laws of its being, as the mortal man. I here freely admit that the material is wanting to bridge the existing gulf between matter and spirit, but it must be borne in mind how brief has been the period since investigation has been intelligently directed to this subject, and also the great difficulties in the way. A boundless field of research is here opened across the threshold of which none have yet passed, except those who have studied it from the immortal side. For the present then, my main argument rests on the perfect and satisfactory manner in which this theory accounts for all the diverse phenomena. I might bring the testimony of spiritual beings, but in this connection I prefer to deal with the question in a purely scientific manner. As the mortal senses cannot recognize the matter or substance of which the spirit-organism is composed, and as all idea of matter is derived from them, we cannot form a just conception of its qualities. We can know little more than that it must be most subtle in character. Many Spiritualists teach that it is electricity and magnetism, forgetting that these are only forces, and of themselves have no separate existence. The spirit must be formed of matter, most refined and sublimated, perhaps, but matter still. OBJECTIONS. We are here met with an objection, urged as conclusive. If spirits are material why can we not see them ? We can not see the atmosphere, and if we trusted to the eye alone, should never know that it exists. Whether a body is visible or invisible depends on its relations to light. Prof. Grove most pertinentlv remarks : " The force emitted from the sun may take different characters at the surface of

36 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: every different planet, and require different organisms or senses for its appreciation. Myriads of organized beings may exist, imperceptible to our visions, even if we were among them, and we might be imperceptible to them." Why seek immortality outside of physical matter? Granting the existence of the unknown elements beyond the limits of hydrogen, the existence of which has been conjectured by many scientists, why should immortality be achieved by them more than by ordinary oxygen, carbon and hydrogen, which enter into the mortal body? These questions lead to an investigation of what constitutes immortality. In the healthy organism the forces of renovation balance those of decay. As soon as a fibre or nerve cell, or bone particle is worn out, new material is ready to supply the waste. So rapid is this wonderful process of decay and renovation that all the soft tissues of the body are renewed, at least, every thirty days. Thus the body is restored twelve'times a year; and an individual at sixty years of age has had seven hundred and twenty different bodies. Could such balance of forces be preserved, living forms would never perish ; an immortal lion, oak or pine would be as possible as an immortal man. But they cannot obtain it with the material of the physical world. Organic forms reach maturity only to feel the insidious mastery of decay. The absorbents become obstructed with bone-forming material, and deposition going on in the bones they become hard, almost material. Through the important organs — as the heart, in its very valves on which life depends, bony atoms are deposited. The minute arteries thus obstructed, the muscles waste, contract and harden. The entire mechanism of complicated fibres, channels, cells and fluids becomes impaired, and at length fails altogether. It is not want of vitality; it is a necessity growing out of the elements of which they are formed. SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS. The necessity of ascending to higher elemental forms is thus made apparent, and the individualization in the spirit is effected by and through means of the mortal body. With a proper understanding of words, we may employ the terms, " matter " and " spirit," the latter meaning the subtile and ultimated elements which pervade and underlie the physical world. From the former the physical

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 37 body is formed; from the latter the spiritual body. This dual development commences with the the dawn of being and is common to all living forms. The two mature together; one pervading and being an exact copy of the other, and death is their final separation. The mortal body is the scaffold by which the immortal is created. Then do all animals possess spirits? Assuredly, for the realm of lite has one fixed order, but it by no means follows that their spirits are immortal. Because the spirit exists after the death of the mortal body is not absolute evidence of eternal existence. As a certain advancement is essential for the manifestation of reason and moral intelligence, so it is to the preservation of the organization through which that reason is manifested. The keystone is necessary for the security of the arch, which if not in place, falls in ruins as soon as the staging is removed. The spirit of the animal may be compared to an incompleted arch, which, when the body which supports it is removed, falls in fragments. But the spirit of man is like a perfect arch, standing firm after its support is taken away. But, as the animal merges through intermediate forms into man, and the infant knows less than the perfect animal, the line of demarkation between the perishable and imperishable, is apparently, drawn with difficulty. Not so, however ; a certain degree of advancement is essential, beyond which immortality obtains. The line is not sharply drawn. A spirit is not necessarily immortal, but can become gradually extinguished, after an indefinite time. As the atoms of the animal's body are absorbed by wind and wave, and wafted around the world, to be seized with avidity by other forms of life, so its spiritual portion is resolved like a cloud into the ocean of spiritual elements. After passing into what may be called the human kingdom, on the threshold where the lowest races blend with the brute, we find the line of mortality remorselessly determining the man from the animal. I shall consider, in conclusion, but one objection, which from its antiquity and apparent incontrovertibility, is the strongest possible to urge. It is drawn from the armory of metaphysical discussion, and has very often been employed with crushing force. It is this: If man is immortal in

38 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: the future, must he not have been in the past? Can an immortal being have a beginning? I think this objection will readily be seen to rest on the old conception of spirit, and when applied to this theory to have no force. When the words " eternity " and " immortality " are used, the sense must, of necessity, be vague , as we can form no conception of either. If we admit ceaseless change as the order of nature, every change is wrought by the force of superior attractions, and we can imagine a state in which an aggregation of atoms are held by the highest forces possible to be brought to bear on them, and such an aggregation, although it had a beginning, because within itself all forces were satisfied, would be eternal. Such an aggregation of elements of most ex quisitely sublimated character we hold the spirit of man to be Studied in the light of this theory, creation becomes a continuous evolution from the earliest, spontaneously generated forms of life, to man; and man becomes the means whereby the possibility of immortality is realized. Without this result, creation is a failure, and man with his instinctive longings, his noble aspirations, his infinite possibilities, is the veriest sham, blotting the fair face of the world. Rapidly, and in barest outline have I sketched the principles of the Genesis and Evolution of Spirit, of necessity dwelling more at length on the material side, and conscientiously pointing at the provinces where future research must supply the deficient links. Yet this outline will make apparent the beautiful order of creation, and reveal the progressive steps from the atom to man, and to spirit, like another Jacob's ladder, from earth to heaven. As man is the fruition of this evolution, and its aim and purpose, so the evolution of an immortal spirit is the crowning glory of man. Again the line of progress changes, for with spirit, it can no longer str>e for the preservation and perfection of races, but for the individual. IMMORTALITY IS CONFERRED, AS THE HIGHEST AIM OF CREATIVE ENERGY. Immortality is conferred, as the nighest aim of creative energy, admitting of no mistakes. Man's spiritual state must surpass his mortal, which is its prototype; extending

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 39 and consummating the mortal life. Whether we die drawing our first living breath, or after a full century, has not the least influence on the final growth and attainments of the spirit, which embodies every law of progress. Whether as a spirit — clad in flesh, or as a spirit in the angel spheres, man is amenable to the same laws. We can learn many lessons from this contemplation. By it we comprehend our duty to lower, and our relations to higher orders of intelligences. The brutes of the field, our ignoble brethren, all the forms of life beneath us, require our kindness, love and sympathy ; the angels of light — our elder brothers, call forth our love and emulation. We are not ephemeral of a day, but companions of suns and worlds, and possessed of a proud consciousness that when the lofty mountain peaks have become valleys, and the earth passed away ; when the sun no longer shines, the stars of heaven are lost in night, our spiritual being will have but begun its never-ending course, CHAPTER III. THE LAW OF MORAL GOVERNMENT. We state the law of morality and of conscience to be, that the highest faculties should always control the conduct of life. Each and every faculty of the mind has its own appropriate function and office to perform, and within its sphere of activity, is promotive of good, and conducive to happiness. Whenever any lower faculty transcends its sphere and encroaches on that of a higher, evil and unhappiness results. But how are we to determine the high from the low ? Are not all good, and for good, and as integral parts of the mind are they not all equal ? For the thorough comprehension of this subject which has become a confusion of conflicting theories, the formation of the mind must be attentively studied. Then we shall be prepared to pronounce on the ascending degrees of higher or lower, and what can be eliminated from the mind and yet preserve its integrity: What faculties and functions man may lose and yet remain man.

40 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: SIMILARITY OP THE MORAL AND PHYSICAL WORLDS. Man as the crowning effort of the physical world, and a compend of the universe, reveals in his organization his kinship with its forces. He is the expansion of the germ prophesied in the beginning, as within the acorn resides the possibilities of the oak. If we ask what is the foundation of the physical world, without which it could not exist, even as material ; what is its highest law, at first we might find it difficult to answer. We can approach the solution by a process of elimination. We shall have no difficulty in pronouncing the vegetable beneath the animal, or the energies called vital above those of purely chemical affinity. Animals may be canceled in this equation and the statement not affected They depend on the vegetable world, and cannot exist without it. The vital forces of vegetation, are a modification of chemical affinity, which lies directly beyond. This force aggregates like substances. Its manifestation depends ON COHESION, The indiscriminate attraction of atoms. Before there can be selection atoms must be brought together. Nebulous clouds, the atoms of which are dissipated by repulsion, have not cohesion. Their atoms are driven so wide asunder, that they have not attraction for each other. But there is a force remaining after the cancellation of vital, of affinity, of cohesion, and that force superior to all others is GRAVITATION. Without the tendency of bodies towards each other there could exist no systems of revolving worlds, nor would such systems have been formed in the beginning from the primal chaos. Drop gravitation, and matter ceases to exist. Whatever else you may have, or not have, you must have this. There is nothing above, or more all-embracing. It embodies the mathematics and mechanics of nature. Life may be extinguished, selective affinity, and cohesion destroyed, yet this force will remain unchanged. As we cannot go beyond it, and it depends on no other, it must be the highest force in the physical world. It was first to manifest its influence in the vortices in which suns and systems were gestated from chaos. When the atoms repelled into most attenuated vapor, were drawn into each

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 41 other's sphere, cohesion and then chemical affinity were manifested. The latter made vegetable life possible, which in turn supported animal life. As the universe of matter has one principle superior to all others, on which its very existence depends, so man as an epitome of the universe has one principle or faculty which makes him man, and without which he is not man, but an animal. As we arrived at that principle of matter by analysis, we can in this pursue the same method. It is self-evident that all those faculties which he holds in common with animals, do not make him man. It is some quality which they do not possess, which confers that title of honor. The development of every child, begins at the same point with the animal. The first germs, have but one function, that of assimilating food. The first command is to grow. The next step is taken by the acquisition of organs of locomotion. It no longer waits for its food, it reaches after it. Then we see the dawn of mentality in the directing power applied to the locomotive organs, the only efforts of which are put forth in search of food. In man the first process is of growth, assimilation, and the mental faculties which are awakened by the gratification of the demands made by this process, and its co-related functions, lie at the base of the brain and are called the appetites and passions. Related to these and in part springing from them are the desires, and above these the emotions. In order of growth, the latest in development are the intellectual and followed by that of the moral faculties. That they are not essential to animal life is proved by the fact that animals exist without them. The later development of moral consciousness proves that is not essential to intellectual life, though these two have kept an even and parallel course. Comparing man with the animal, we eliminate all faculties except REASON AS INTELLECTUAL AND MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS. They are to man what gravitation is to the physical world. It is unlimited by any other faculty, nor is it dependent for its manifestation on any other. Unlike the lower, it makes no prophesy of another faculty ; its promise is of its own perfection. The appetites minister exclusively to the demands of the body, and performing which their task is finished. But if there is not something

42 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: more, nothing but animal life is attained. The body is nourished for something. There is a work for it to do. That work is the evolution of spirit and its mentality. On the appetites rests a group of desires, from the most selfish, to that which reaches into the future, for continued life, and the loves which are represented in the physical world by heat, radiating out from the individual to the family and the world. The body was made to serve the mind and not the mind the body. The Appetites were made to serve the Desires and Love, and not the Desires and Love to serve the Appetite. All below were made to serve those above. And lastly the Intellect was made to serve the moral Consciousness and not the moral Consciousness the Intellect. Here we grasp the true distinction between HIGH AND LOW. When a faculty is the foundation of another, it must be regarded as lower than that to which it administers. Thus the appetites that feed the body are lower than the faculties which arise out of the body being so fed. Reason which takes cognizance of perceptions and emotions must be superior to the faculties on which it sits in judgment. Spiritual reason, or moral consciousness, the essence of the spiritual perceptions must be highest of all. If you now ask what can a man not spare and yet remain man, the answer must be, Reason and Conscience * We now have a rule by which to determine the grade of the mental faculties. It is precisely the same as that by which the naturalist determines the grade of organic life. Whatever looks forward to the sustainance of something beyond, is lower than the organism it thus foreshadows. The faculties possessed by man, which distinguish him from the animal, are as superior to those which belong to the animal, as the hand is superior to the claw, formed of the same elements. SHALL WE BE NATURAL? As every faculty has a function to perform, else it would not exist, any more than a superfluous organ, the natural activity of all faculties is essential to well being. What *The reader will find further on that by Conscience we mean the highest form of Reason, or Spiritual Consciousness. We use the term to avoid circumlocution, but always with this meaning.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 43 is this natural activity? It is activity within the sphere of each, to the point where the superior receive only benefit. The body being created for the mind, its appetites were given, for its proper growth and sustainance, and are for this end productive of good. But if they seek gratification beyond that sphere, they are destructive of the purpose of their being. We at once say this is unnatural and wrong. The idea of man is of a reasoning, moral being, and every faculty and function promises that result. Whatever interferes with growth in that direction is unnatural as it is wrong. Thus hunger is the demand of the body for food. To answer such demand is the first duty of being, as life itself depends on it. To partake of food, until its natural wants are appeased, and of such quality as reason dictates, is right, and is rewarded by a satisfaction which is happiness. When, however, we eat for the gratification of this appetite, when the body makes no demand, and of food deleterious to its sustenance, we defeat its purpose, and bring pain and disease. The same is true of all other faculties. Each has an appropriate sphere, in which it is useful, and productive of good. That sphere is bounded on one side by the body, on the other it reaches upward to the mental qualities which depend and grow out of it. The gormand destroys his intellect and his moral sensibilities by surfeit, while hunger should be limited to the proper wants of the body, which stimulate and do not interfere with mentality. The same is true of the Desires and Loves, in their relation to the Intellect. To present this subject in it3 broadest sense, as immortal spirits we have an infinite future of development before us. That development must come through the spiritual faculties. Hence the gratification of physical desires should only reach that point where they conduce to our spiritual welfare. Our progress has already begun. It dates at the beginning of being. The physical body is an accident of its earth-life, which will be cast aside at death. Its use and purpose is to bring the spirit in contact with the physical world for its development. While this earth-side of our nature is of primal consequence, it sinks into utter insignificance when compared with the infinite life beyond. It should be conducted in strictest reference to future well being and happiness, and the pleasures of the moment

44 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: yield to those of the future; whatever is mortal to the immortal. CHAPTER IV THE APPETITES. The mental qualities are involuntary, or instinctive, and voluntary. The line of demarkation between these divisions is not clearly defined. In the animal the involuntary appear to form the whole mind ; in man, this substratum, held in common, is more or less under the control of the will. In proportion as the voluntary faculties expand, the involuntary recede. The appetites belong to the involuntary division, for though measurably controllable, in the end they escape the will. Those functions which arise out of, and are essential to the existence of man as a physical being, are called the Appetites. These have been classed with the Passions, or indiscriminately called by that name. We prefer to apply to them a term which clearly expresses their relations to the body, and distinguishes them from the Passions which are essentially distinct. As the sustenance of the body depends on the Appetites, they are characterized by their periodical response to its needs. It their demands are not answered, they increase in intensity, until the Will is forced to yield. The Appetites are hunger, thirst, sleep, activity, rest, and sexual instinct. The desire for air, like that for water, may also be included. HUNGER. To exist requires the assimilation of food, and life is a ravenous maw insatiably demanding organizable material. Living beings are created hungry. Their first activity is in search of food. The bit of protoplasm, lowest form of organic life, assimilates and grows. It exists to assimilate and grow. The first articulate sound of newborn life is a cry for food. Life is a wasting force, and as it wastes, it must be fed. Throughout the sentient world

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 45 hunger is the cardinal force compelling activity. It is the ever-applied spur. As food is not held to the mouth, it must be sought, and the seeking is labor. Labor stimulates thought, and civilization grows out of the pangs of Hunger. "Were it not for this motive, idleness would never arise from its imbecility. The fact that man has regarded labor as a curse bestowed for sin, proves how inherently he prefers, idleness broken only by spasmodic activity. He embodied this necessity in the myth of " The Fall," and thus accounted for the disagreeable burden of gaining bread by the sweat of his brow. In the tropics nature spoils man by her bounty. Continued supply of food in wasteful abundance, makes forethought useless, and labor unnecessary. Man enervated by the climate, vegetates under the palm and orange, and never arises above his childhood. In the North he is crushed by the too stern necessities of the climate. Hunger is the one motive of the Esquimaux which absorbs all others, and so difficult to answer, nothing remains. ONLY IN A NARROW BELT OP THE TEMPERATE ZONE, ARE THE ANTAGONISTIC FORCES SO BALANCED THAT MAN CAN ATTAIN PERFECTION. It is only there that the demands are sufficiently great to stimulate, yet not exhaust the vital energies, leaving £ surplus for other and higher uses. On the desire for various articles of food commerce in a great measure depends, to gratify which its ships navigate the farthest seas. The West is supplied with the spices of the East, and the East with the corn of the West. The North partakes of the fruits of the tropics, and the tropics of the North. Such a diet formed of the mixed products of all climes, is not only a result of commerce, it is essential to high civilization. A simple diet, like that of the rice, for example, is, incapable of supporting complex mental manifestations, such as are shown in the nations of Europe or in America. Hunger has not only sent the countless sails of commerce around the world, it has stimulated invention, and the growing of food, is only equaled to its preparation which has become a science as well as an art. The early man, ate the seeds of grasses and weeds, uncooked; masticated the hard acorn, and devoured the warm raw flesh. He

46 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: learned to soften and make more palatable the seeds, and broil the flesh with fire. By culture the small seeded grass became golden grain, filled to the brim with lifeyielding elements. The force used to masticate and digest was relieved by the art of cooking, and the surplus thus gained was an endowment of his intellect. THUS KNOWLEDGE, AND MORALITY, ARE BASED ON HUNGER. The starving man knows nothing but his insatiate desire for food. This desire, when natural, that is when unfettered or influenced by other motives, is a true criterion of its own needs, and a trusty guide in the selection and quantity of food. When stimulated with unnatural foods it fails and becomes treacherous. THE NATURAL ACTIVITY OP AN APPETITE YIELDS HAPPINESS. To insure the proper attention to the demand for food, it is made imperative, and cumulative, and the sense of taste is bestowed not only for discrimination, but pleasure. But the sense of taste, does not pall the moment Hunger is satisfied, and hence we eat after the necessity is supplied, or for the single purpose of pleasing the palate when no necessity exists. As Hunger is the test of the amount of food which can be digested and assimilated, the energy of , the digestive organs, is not sufficient to meet this extra demand; indigestion and imperfect assimilation breed disease. As life itself, with all its manifestations depends on the food we eat, the importance of the quality and quantity of that food will be seen to be of primary importance. Health is the cardinal requisite of a perfect life, and health depends on food. Thus we perceive that Hunger, when answered by appropriate food, is a source of happiness. Its function is to supply the waste of the body. If it do more, transcend, ing its sphere, and the appetite gratified for its own sake, misery is the sure result. THIRST. Nearly eighty per cent, of the body is water, which is an essential element for the manifestation of life. To sup ply the waste of this through secretions, excretions, and chemical changes, thirst is given. It demands water, and no effort of the will can conquer its imperitive voice.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 47 It demands water, and if any other draught, it is through the imposition of habit. The difference between a habit and a natural demand, is that the latter is for something inherently necessary for the support of the organism, while the former is for something which has of itself created the desire. The desire for water is not a habit, but a necessity of being, while the desire for alcoholic drinks is a habit, because such beverages have caused the peculiar changes in the system which call for these beverages instead of water. The same is true of tobacco, opium, etc., the use of which leads to the habit. They all exhilarate for a time, to be followed by a corresponding depression, from which the nerves cannot be rallied except by a new indulgence They induce a radical change in the system, which is felt in the intellectual and moral perceptions. The feverish antagonism of our civilization is promotive of stimulation, as the flagging racer is urged onward by the spur, and the over-working of the masses also creates a desire for unnatural drinks and food. The weary laborer finds momentary pleasure in alcohol, tobacco, opium, coffee or tea, and resorts to their use. Nature requires simply rest, that she may recuperate, but there is not time to rest. The pleasure of years is sacrificed to that of a moment. The stream of life is changed in its course and the appetite is no longer to be trusted. HABITS. When such habits are thoroughly formed, it becomes difficult, if not impossible to break from them, because there is an organic change corresponding, which places it in relation to the habit the body naturally holds to an appetite. Thus the habit of drinking alcoholic beverages once established, every portion of the body becomes adjusted to the presence of alcohol. The victim may fully comprehend his situation, and with his whole will strive against it. In some instances the will may be strong enough to control the desires until the natural action is established; in others it will fail. The artificial state, cries for alcohol, just as the natural cries for water, and in the same manner goes on increasing in urgency. The withdrawing of each particle of alcohol increases this demand until the will is over-borne.

48 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: TEMPERANCE. The advocates of temperance should consider that intemperance has two relations, to the mind and the body, and not trust exclusively as they do to mental influence. It is a disease, and should be treated as such. The body should be purified and sustained by healthful diet, and tonics that take the place of alcohol, until a natural action is established. Then appeals to the Will, and morality, will be beneficial in preserving the new order. More than all men is the inebriate made the victim of false views of mental and moral philosophy. It is said he knows better, and can reform if he would. He may have inherited a constitutional tendency craving alcohol more insatiately than others crave water, or ignorantly he may have induced such a state. Is he to be blamed ? Rather should he receive unmeasured pity ? By over-indulgence the Appetites defeat their end which is happiness. Whenever they are followed for their own sakes,they invade the province of higher faculties, and not only is the result ruinous to those faculties, but to the Appetites themselves. The pleasure of eating, bestowed by hunger is changed to disgust by over-indulgence, and dyspepsia, gout, and a thousand ills and pains follow. A true system of morals must begin with diet, and by that highest law we can regulate our conduct as regards our food. As hunger was given to compel attention to physical waste, when that is met it is sufficient; further is not desirable as opposed to physical well-being and mental growth? ACTIVITY AND REST. These are mutually complementary. After activity, there is a requisition for rest, which becomes more and more imperative, and after the system has recuperated by rest, activity becomes equally essential. The mutual play of these is best seen in childhood. SLEEP. The perfection of rest is sleep. It is then that the rebuilding processes are most active. The worn tissues are repaired and the waste excreted. The day is the season of activity, the negative night of repose. The magnetic state of the earth is represented by that of man. How much rest, how much action, how much sleep ? These questions are answered bv the natural demands of the system.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 49 Sleep is for the purpose of restoring lost energy, but if prolonged it may leave too little time for the use of what is gained. Activity, may overreach itself and destroy the organism on which it depends. THE SEXUAL IMPULSE has for its sole end the perpetuation of species. That this function be unfailingly performed, and not obstructed, it is impelled by physical pleasures as in the case of hunger and thirst, and made cumulative in energy. What in brutes is a blind instinctive impulse, in man becomes sublimated and joined with the highest and purest impulses. We shall again revert to this subject when we consider the social relations, but here in this preliminary discussion of the motives which actuate man, what rule have we as a trusty guide ? It is the same we applied to the other Appetites. Having ascertained their true sphere ; the purpose they have in view, and object, the natural accomplishment of that purpose, is the right, and conducive of the greatest happiness. If then this be the end of the sexual impulse, having fulfilled it, nothing more is required of it, and if gratified for itself alone, it encroaches on the province of higher faculties, to which the energies it wantonly wastes most justly belong. Unrestrained, unguided, it is the cause of the most terrible crimes, and from it flows a great share of the misery and degradation of the world. The force which it exerts is drawn away from the intellect and morals, and flows through the channels of the Passions, all of which are intensified. To eat and multiply is the end of animal being, and when man yields to the same impulses he becomes an animal, more debased and brutal in proportion as his enslaved intellect furnishes the means. DEPLORABLE IGNORANCE. In no department of the science of man does such lamentable ignorance prevail as in this, which is considered impolite a ad of too delicate a nature to mention. Yet the well-being of the present, and of the numberless generations of the future, depend on its proper understanding. When we consider the degradation, disease, misery, and spiritual death, which follows the uncontrolled Appetite, the necessity of knowledge is convincingly shown. The simoon, withering, blasting, is not more terrible, than the life of debauch, which blights every pure and noble aspi

50 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: ration, brands the face with the mark of shame, fills the body with arrows of pain, and destroys the spirit. Pleasure in its lowest sphere defeats itself by its own selfishness. The fire that gently warmed has burned the dwelling, and ashes only remain. What in itself is pure becomes the cesspool of abomination, a Pandora's box out of which unmentionable sufferings flow in never-ending streams. To arrest the cause of misery, man must be educated in the laws of his nature, and impressed with the necessity of obedience. He must learn that to fulfill the law is the supreme good. It is better that the appetites be controlled through fear than not at all. Better that punishment frighten than reckless indulgence. Hence the force of public opinion, religious influences, or legislation, are better than license. But these are only expedients to prepare the way for self-government, which is based on knowledge, and eminates from the superior faculties. THE RULE WE HAVE GIVEN as applicable to all the Appetites, when comprehended and applied, leaves these builders each its sphere of activity? restricted and clearly defined. Unrestrained in the animal, they are self-satisfying and work no mischief, for the animal has no higher end than their gratification, and urged by no conflicting impulses is held true to the laws of its being. Man has higher purposes, and whenever the Appetites oppose these purposes or conflict with their perfect expression, they have transcended their sphere, and there should be no doubt as to the right, or the course from which the greatest good may be expected.

A. SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 51 CHAPTER V. SELFISH PROPENSITIES. These are love of life, combativeness, destructiveness, secretiveness, love of self, love of wealth, and cautiousness. They are held in common with the animal world. The fierce onslaught of the tiger illustrates combativeness and destructiveness; the squirrel lays by a hoard of food like a miser; the fox is secretive; the hare is cautious; the peacock is vain of approbation; all are selfish, and love existence. From the combination of these passions arise the composite known as pride, envy, jealousy, malice, hatred, resentment, falsehood and deceit. The passions are necessary to unite the spiritual with the physical. They are the driving power, which enables the spirit to actualize in the physical world its ideal. In this sphere they result in good and happiness. The love of life is conspicuous throughout the ranks of sentient beings. The preservation of existence, for its own sake, calls into action the play of all their faculties. Though suffering the pangs of most unbearable pain, and life is an excessive burden through disease or want, yet death is regarded with unspeakable aversion. Life is sweet, under the most unfavorable conditions. The criminal prefers the perpetual dungeon to its cessation. In animals it is pure in its expression, for they can know nothing of death, and they live for the sake of living. But man may regard death either as cessation of life, or as the gateway to immortality. The latter idea is the perfect fruitage of this propensity. To him the desire is intensified by his knowledge of death. Human life becomes sacred and surrounded by the strongest safeguards of law. To take it is the capital crime, transcending all others. Though life be a good of greatest value, when its preservation is gained through dishonor it is at too great cost. Here the superlative qualities of man assert his humanity. The animal will blindly risk its life in defense of itself or offspring, but man, fully knowing the consequences, risks his life for an ideal which perhaps has no relation to himself. The grandest examples of history are the exaltation

52 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: of man above selfiishness, where he lays down his life (or principle. The patriot djring for his country, the martyr for the truth, are never forgotten by admiring generations. The story of Thermopylae is ever new, the calm decision of Polycarp and Socrates is the theme of undying song. We feel that the men who willingly give their all for their highest convictions of right and duty, have escaped the motives of ordinary mortals, and allied themselves to the Supreme. If it be better to suffer martyrdom than live dishonored, is it not better when already dishonored to escape by selfinflicted death. In other words, have we a right over our lives ? Life being for its uses, and as no use can come of suicide, we would by the latter defeat its purpose. If we do not destroy life, but only the body, we would gain nothing, and would lose the essential training of the existence from which we escaped. Overborne by burdens and duties, we selfishly cast them on others. The patriot and martyr die for others, but the suicide dies for himself; while they are actuated by the loftiest motives, he is by the most ignoble; they die in strength, he in weakness. Man has no right over his own life, for he is part of the social body, to which he owes allegiance, and he is not to judge when the circumstances environing him warrant the step. True courage meets and grapples with fate, and if defeated dies in harness. The Roman who casts himself on his sword was educated into a wrong conception of life and its duties. That we have life shows that we should maintain it in its integrity. The desire for existence is not only a product of health, but is a leading cause in its maintenance — when we lose the desire to live, our earthly bodies are nearly fallen from our spirits, and we soon depart. It is right to love life — not for its own sake, but for its highest object— which that love may never overstep. Thus, while an animal flees from danger and is praised for so doing, having neither honor or principle to maintain, a man who deserted his post of duty would be execrated and despised, because his love of life is dominated by superior motives — "Though you tear my limbs asunder, throw me into the den of wild beasts, or give my body to the flames, I will never deny what my conscience tells me is the truth," grandly declares the martyr in the presence

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 53 of death, -when the spirit is exulted above the plane of physical life. COMBATIVENESS AND DESTRUCTIVENESS. The antagonistic and destroying propensities when allied with love of property, and the appetites, are the cause of crime. In savage man, and in that sub-stratum present in the most polished civilization, the propensities predominate, and this condition is known as human depravity. It, however, is not total depravity. Man in his lowest estate never reaches that depth. If there be a totally depraved being, it is one without moral or intellectual faculties, in other words a brute, but we cannot say that they are depraved, for they have not fallen from a higher plane, and they are true to their constitution. Only man who is actuated by two motives, a higher and a lower, by yielding to the lower can become depraved. That he advances out of this lower to a higher plane proves that he is not totally bad or depraved; proves that he has the germs of goodness within him, and that he naturally inclines in that direction. There are obstacles to be surmounted, difficulties to be combated, burdens to be borne in this physical life, and these propensities have a wide field. Of themselves they are ferocious and terrible. They strew the battle-field with the dead, and darken the heavens with the smoke of ruined cities. Combined with reason, they grapple with the forces of nature, tame the lightnings and harness fire with bands of steal, to ship and car. The brute elements are compelled to toil. At first man was alone and defenseless in the wilderness. The forest must be felled, the wild beasts destroyed. He was surrounded by destruction, and his life was one of incessant combat. To endure this struggle his propensities were predominant. He would have been sadly defeated had they not been. When the wild beasts were destroyed, he found in man himself a more subtle and*invincible foe. War first caused by the propensities, stimulated the intellect until it at last conquered them, and thus removed the principal source of war. LOVE OF PROPERTY. " Take not heed for the morrow," can never be actualized in this life. It is saying we should not have forethought, which is as impossible, as undesirable. Proper

54 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: ty is the result of labor, and a reserved force, which we can use, long after the labor has been expended. Property is capital which is concrete labor, without which, abject poverty would prevail, and advancement would be impossible. It is essential to human welfare that there be constant accretion to wealth, that labor shall accumulate more than is required to sustain it. The squirrel teaches this lesson, for as nuts do not last the whole year, when they are plenty it gathers for the winter. The bee fills its hive when the flowers bloom, against the time when there are no flowers. Next to the love of life is the love of the means of sustaining it. This is the legitimate function of this propensity, and is entirely praiseworthy. How much it shall grasp, and under what circumstances must be determined by the spiritual faculties. If a hive of bees should gather all the honey for many miles, and fill their comb with a thousand times more than they want to preserve them through the winter, we would say they grasped too much. Especially if by so doing many other swarms were unable to secure any, and hence were starved. The wealth of the world is so limited that when any one grasps at more than is necessary, others are robbed of their dues. Avarice is unrestrained desire for wealth, and in its selfishness is utterly debasing. The miser is the mock of humanity for making wealth the end, he defeats the object of wealth which is its uses. To gain wealth that it may be employed in works of benevolence, charity, or culture, is as noble, as hoarding is ignoble. Avarice is purely selfish. Its greed has no reference to the good or rights of others. It knows no law but its own insatiate desire. Entering into government it legislates for its own advantage, seizing every opportunity to grasp and retain. If wealth be the result of labor, no statement can be more self-evident, than that the laborer has the right to the products of his labor, and that no one has a right to what he has not earned. Property acquired by fraud, deception, or in any way without a just equivalent, is not held by right. And furthermore, the devotion of a portion of such ill-gotten gain, to worthy purposes does not right the wrong. If, then, wealth be acquired, it must be for the noble uses it will subserve, and not by the sacrifice of the high

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 55 er sentiments. It must be gained honorably, and used honorably. In America, circumstances have awakened this propensity into unparalleled activity, and money is the god of the masses. As money has power to purchase almost everything the mind can desire — it is sought with absorbing eagerness. Blinded by the glitter of wealth, the means of its acquisition are not questioned. Sharp bargains, usurious interests, remorselessly collected rents, the dark ways of trade, the deception of ignorance, are not regarded as altogether dishonorable, and are winked at by society. Success is measured by money-getting. Get money first, get money last, and by all means get money is the watchword of the times. It is forgotten that it can be purchased at too great cost, and always is when the least sentiment of right and justice, honor or integrity is disregarded. SELF-LOYE. Self-love, or self-esteem, is allied to the love of power, and of the respect of others. The analysis of this group is difficult and of little practical importance in relation to our discussion. Self-love is essential to self-preservation, and wThen rightly directed, is a strong ally of justice. The love of self then prevents any act which is ignoble or wrong. Alone this propensity becomes selfishness, one of the most contemptible in human nature. It is the antipode of spirituality. The selfish man destroys by his selfishness, the pleasures he might receive through the higher faculties. The disappearance of self-love, in love for others, has always been held as angelic, and selfishness as utterly at variance with ideal character. Its suppression, at least in appearance, has been the aim of polite culture and refinement, and its presence is stigmatized and scorned, even most bitterly by the selfish themselves. It is natural and right for man to love power. It is a function of the Will, for to will presupposes the power of willing. Man delights in the control of matter by mind, the obedience of the elements to his will. This is the legitimate sphere of this propensity. His selfishness enslaves others, and ignoring right and justice, he becomes a tyrant. Out of this love of power, blindly directed, has grown the governments of the world, and their kaleidoscopic changes which make the sum of history. Love of power

56 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: and ambition are the motives of the conqueror, like Alexander, or Napoleon, who count nothing worthy unless possessed by themselves, and are infatuated by praise, which men call glory. Over the smoking battle-field they force their way, forgetting that every groan and pang of pain is recorded against them in the black page of their future. Of the millions who have made ambition and love of glory the end of their lives, a breath will name those who have succeeded in gaining mention in history. Far more have reached renown through quiet adhesion to right, and unswerving justice. The hero-worshiping age is of the past, with its dead a;ods and broken shrines. It will be seen from the foregoing that the propensities are essential to man's well-being, and in their true sphere, pure and right. That sphere is assigned by their position. As they are superior to the Appetites, and inferior to the intellectual and moral nature, their sphere is tor purest and truest manifestation of the latter. Whenever they obstruct or distort, they fail in their functions. They are for the spiritual nature, not the spiritual nature for them. The man who in old age says life is vanity, pronounces his own sentence. He plainly says that he has not been actuated by the proper motives, that he has been the slave of his Appetites and Propensities. For life should be like the snow-ball rolling forward to gather to itself and grow round, large and complete. If it shrivels and shrinks with advancing age, it is because of wrong living. The individual who has no higher purpose than worldly pleasure* when the body on which these depend fails, has nothing on which to lean; the moral consciousness is idiotic; the dwarfed spirit goes down to the grave, pitiably moaning, with incoherent utterances. Most deplorable of all spec, tacles presented in the world, is a spirit inherently glorious, and capable of infinite achievement, thus enslaved by desires, sinking below the horizon of earth-life in black clouds of despair. What the ages of immortal life has in store for that spirit, may relieve the sad picture, which has supported the belief in inherent depravity, and eternal punishment. In what contrast stands the examples of those who have cultivated the intellect and morals, and by them regulated their lives. As of these Humboldt furnishes the most conspicuous illustration. Retaining his mental powers in all their vigor until the hour of his death when

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 57 he departed, saying : "How grand the sunlight, it seems to beckon earth to heaven," prophetic of the spiritual light so soon to break on his existence. All this side of man's nature which he holds in common with animals and relates exclusively to the body, decaj's with it. In health and maturity they make the ordinary every-day character, and the man passes among his fellows as capable. But his capacity rests almost exclusively on this physical life. The spiritual side receives little attention and is more susceptible and active in childhood than at three score and ten. It follows that when the earthside decays, the man is less than a child. He "loses his mind," and enters his second childhood. This is not a necessity. It is a result of giving life over to earthly pursuits, at the expense of the spirit. When the mind is rightly cultivated, and a just harmony between it and the body preserved, it remains growing in vigor with age, and at death is not even in appearance like a lamp extinguished. Perhaps in the life beyond, the errors of this will be righted, and, freed from the weight of physical necessities, the spirit will reach an ideal of which we cannot dream, but even then will the primary lost remain unrestored. CHAPTER VI. LOYE. We enter a new realm. That of the animal is rapidly disappearing, and a new motive becomes apparent. This motive is Love, the antipode of selfishness, holding the relation to the spirit that heat and magnetism does to the physical world, and their type and correspondence. All that we have hitherto considered, has related to the existence of the individual; has been drawing towards self for the individual's exclusive benefit. We now pass the limitation of these lower propensities, and find the exact reverse, a flowing out. Love in the wide definition of that word, flows out from the mind, in a continuous tide as the warmth of the sun flows unceasingly. When combined

58 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: with the Appetites, it presents its lowest manifestation in conjugal affinity; arises to affection for its offspring; friendship, and ultimates in the perfect benevolence which embraces not only man, but all forms of sentient life. Full of truth is the expression, " God is love," meaning that the foundation of all things is this power. Benevolence has been made to cover this wide field, and Love one of its special manifestations, but such a classification is confusing and is entirely arbitrary. Love is always benevolent. It always seeks the good of others. It hoards not for itself. It is self-forgetful, and self-denying. From it flows the socalled virtues, gentle affections, and humane emotions. Gratitude which makes us thankful for the bestowed favors, and desirous of rendering the same to others; Mercy which overlooks offenses; Pity which feels for the distressed; Humility which questions our abilities and worth, and yields the first place toothers, are outgrowths of Love. To it belongs Justice, the sense of merited reward and punishment, the absolute giving to each and all their deserts, and the sense of the sacredness of truth. In the trustingness of Love arises faith, the reliance on the testimony of others, which, unsupported by the Intellect, becomes credulity, and fosters superstition, maintains bigotry, and defies knowledge. Love is the social element, and nature has so exquisitely organized man that he is surrounded by an atmosphere through and by which its attractions and repulsions are expressed. As animals are drawn together in flocks and herds, men unite in social life. Half the joys of existence flow from the amenities of friendship. To be true, it must be founded on similarity of soul, and be free from selfishness. To use one's friends for selfish purposes, is to lose them. The attachments formed on the high-lands where self-enters not are only lasting. We may think, and no second being need enter the current of our thoughts, for our ideas may be purely abstract. We cannot love, or feel any of the innumerable changing sensations which it includes without an objective personality— Justice, Mercy, Benevolence, Charity, Pity, Devotedness, go outside of ourselves. It is claimed that all these conceptions have grown up out of experience. That man knew nothing of them, until he learned by observation that honesty, justice, charity

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 59 were the best policy. He trimmed his course by expediency, until thereby, there grew up in his mind a sense of absolute Right, Justice, Benevolence, and the other virtues. This is simply referring to the Intellect the promptings of Love, and then declaring the Intellect itself to be an effect of long accumulating forces. This, however, does not affect our argument. Whatever may be the cause of mind, or however the mental manifestations may be classified, the Virtues have a distinct place, nor can it be successfully shown that they are resultants of experience, and hence entirely selfish in their inception. We cannot believe that these virtues, which in their perfection make man angelic, began in utter selfishness: that the experience of the inconvenience of falsehood, taught man truthfulness, when he had no sense of what truthfulness was, is contradictory. Light could never be known were it not for the receiving eye, nor could truth be known unless there was a receptive faculty of truth in man's nature. We believe that because there was light in the world, the living beings it evoked, were modified by its rays ; that the diffused nerve tissue, equally sensitive, became more sensitive in some one point, and from this starting point, growth proceeded until our eye was beaten out of living matter by the waves of light. So the principles of truth and justice are comprehended by man, because he embodies the essence of these virtues. Cunning, fraud, deception, perfidy are tolerated in the animal because they do not conflict with the purposes of its life. In fact they are essential to its existence. They do not defeat higher purposes, for it has none. Man, however, has somewhat more than existence to strive for. Its preservation is undesirable when united with dishonor and falsehood. The immortal spirit claims mastery over the flesh, and scorns its limitations and degradation. Granting Justice, Benevolence, etc., are products of accumulated observation we must at once allow that they have become factors of the mind, a part of the mind and the argument again resolves itself into its consideration as a unity. The theory of evolution leads directly to this conclusion. Organs grow into exquisite form after a given type, by the accumulation of advantages, so faculties of the

60 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: mind increase by the accretion of observations. As the perfecting of physical organs tends to unitize the being, so the perfecting of mental qualities unitizes the mind. As the foundation of physical man is laid in the interminable series of forms beneath him, so is the Spiritual. Because he is a spirit, his mind reaches into and grasps spiritual" truths. This gives him a tendency towards virtue, and repugnance to vice. That man has such tendency is proved by history. Had he not had, there could have been no progress, more than in the ox. The virtues are a part of his organization and as such impel him in their pursuit. He loves to be good and to do good, and countless examples of the opposite do not invalidate this claim. A whole race of people inclined to evil without tendency to the good, would never become good, nor would an individual ever do a good act. Nor can we escape this conclusion by saying that from time to time, individuals far better than the average, arise and teach their higher truths. Nor by claiming that as man is incapable himself of llie discovery of moral truth, he must have received and has received a revelation. If such perception is not in human nature no individual can advance sufficiently to acquire it, nor can it receeive a revelation, more than a sightless person can the beauties of light. The fact revealed in colossal proportions by the interminable pages of history, that man has advanced in morality, proves that he has within himself the germinal power of growth in that direction. As will be discussed at length hereafter, this perception is of the Reason and its higher expression in Conscience. The first of these qualities, the one which often gives name, and characterizes the group is BENEVOLENCE. It is the antipode of selfishness. Its office and delight is to bestow. It pictures the Infinite on a throne, from which as light from a central sun uninterruptedly flows boundless streams of beneficence. Uncontrolled, it is like the shower that falls alike on the just and unjust; the parched desert and the flood Its manifestation, even thus indiscriminate, has a charm, for it shows how far removed human actions are towards the spiritual, the unselfish, and such actions are always beautiful, however undeserving the object

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 61 of their bestowal. Better to suffer ten impositions than turn one needy away, is a proverb growing out of this love. The public charities which have grown out of this faculty are productive of great individual good, but it has been questioned if they are of any real benefit to the community. They can only reach a small fraction of want and wretchedness, and it is thought better to devise some means whereby all may be elevated from degradation. Yet as the means have not been devised, and apparently very remote, we shall not soon escape the demands on our charity. This, however, is only a lower form of Benevolence. Its higher sphere of activity blends into the qualities better expressed by Love; that love which exists for its own sake. In its ideal expression, it is absolute devotion to its object, not for any hope of reward, or any benefit to self whatever, but from a spontaneous desire to promote the happiness of others. In animals we often see the affections exhibited in great strength; the conjugal, parental, and fraternal instincts banding herds and flocks together. These are, however, momentary and when the physical necessities or occasions pass, they separate. It is interesting to observe this dim beginning, and by it we learn the beautiful unity of the world. The instinctive attraction is developed into disinterested desire to promote the well being of others, a desire which transcends all others Few attain its ideal. To love those who return vindictive hate ; to feel the same kind regard and interest in an implacable enemy as in a friend ; never to repay unkindness with harsh invective ; to regard wrong and error with charity, is an ideal that few attain, but with which we endow angelic beings, and thus claim as our own highest estate. To be benevolent and to love one's own family ; to extend these to friends, is too common to mention. Benevolence which goes beyond is more rare. When it grasps one's country it becomes Patriotism, still selfish and in a degree instinctive. In all these forms Benevolence does not rank high in the scale of the Virtues, nor does it tend greatly to elevate the mind. The father who loves his children to idolatry, and will make for them any sacrifice, may be a hard, exacting, unjust man beyond his own fireside. When it

62 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: arises from the family, and grasps mankind, irrespective of nationality or race, when it feels for suffering whereever found, and with self-forgetfulness devotes itself to the good of others, Benevolence becomes Philanthropy; its most angelic expression. It sends its Florence Nightingales, to bind up the lacerations of war; its Howards into the dark recesses of prisons; it holds devoted men to their posts of duty in times when pestilence is abroad, and great suffering crushes the people. JUSTICE in the material universe moves in the channels of law. From the star to the dancing mote, there is no accident or chance. Of these laws we know nothing except by means of their phenomena. We kiaow certain causes inevitably move to certain effects. The same is true in the domain of mind. The relations individuals sustain to each other, in the family, the state, and to the world, that each may revolve in his own personal sphere, having all his rights, yet never infringing on the rights of others, this is Justice. The knowledge of what is just and unjust, was not suddenly acquired. Mankind had at first a dim and vague conception of the absolute Right. In their attempts to enforce Justice they often were excessively unjust. But they felt that this absolute existed and that they must conform thereto. They constantly recognized the blindness of their predecessors, and reformed their laws. The laws are the practical expression of the moral feeling of a people, and determine what is their sense of justice. If the laws are severe and cruel, the people are equally severe and cruel as a whole. This, however, may be observed, they are conservative, and usually represent the ideas of a previous generation. When their injustice is felt, it is the task of the present to reform the inheritance of the past. Thus slowly an approximation is made to absolute Justice, as will hereafter be shown, in the discussion of the criminal code, justice is too often used in the sense of vengeance. The penalty for crime is meted out as retribution and not for the sake of Justice, and Mercy tempers Justice not because mercy is of iiself just, but because of the pleadings of the Affections. In our intercourse with our fellow-men, we desire them to act towards us justly, that is to respect our individual rights, and not encroach on our sphere of self

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 63 hood. If actuated by high motives there is no difficulty in being just to all. We would shrink from doing to another what we would not do unto ourselves. There are two states in which all the virtues may exist, a passive and an active. A man may not do an unjust act ; he may never utter a falsehood, he may never be cruel, yet he has small credit if he has never acted justly, truthfully, mercifully. He may exist in a passive state, and while doing nothing bad, do nothing good The Virtues exist but in a latent form ; they are asleep, and the individual is not bad, simply because his Appetites and Desires are also asleep. The harmonious, or ideal man, is the reverse. A thousand desires, purposes and motives draw him diverse ways, but the conscious intellect and love, impel him in the direction of Truth and Right. Does he stumble? Does he at times go astray ? Yes, but he rises and seeks the right path. He grows strong by experience, and his feet become sure. He cannot be always right, for he is fallible, but he is conscious that he must put forth his best endeavors. The young eagle that would cleave the empyrean and soar above the clouds, at first may lose its balance on its untried wings. It is not by failures it gains control, but by its success. The child learns to walk, not by its falls and misses, but by the command acquired over its limbs by repeated efforts. We may not always be just, yet the Absolute Justice is ever before us. Man while on earth may never gain that high ideal. Religion has lamentably failed in teaching Justice. It has allied itself witli the government and taught obedience to Caesar instead of to the commands of the absolute. It has been the servant of rulers, and taught the divinity of kings and autocrats. It has disdained the temporal affairs of this life for the next, and offered the gloomy consolation for Its injustice, compensation in the next. In fact its idea of justice has been compensation. They who mourn in this life shall rejoice in the next, and they who receive their good things here, shall there receive their evil. The main evidence of immortal life as stated by the popular religion is its necessity in order to compensate the injustice received on earth. This is the religious idea of Justice, though sometimes it changes to that of Vengeance. The Infinite Father is pictured as terribly just, and his divine vengeance

64 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: on sinners no more than Absolute Justice! The awful picture is intensified by being thrown on a background of omnipotent wrath. Faith, interpreted to mean belief in dogmas, has been taught to be of more value than actions* and often the so-called religion has been divorced from morality. Religion, if it mean anything, means reliance on the absolute supremacy of law and man's obedience thereto. He who obeys is the religious man. He obeys from the knowledge of those laws; because it is right, and his own good and happiness and that of others depends on his so doing. He is also impelled by his higher spiritual reason, which preciently directs him aright before he has come to a full knowledge of the law. He should obey not from selfish motives, but from his love of Justice and Right. But does man love Justice? Assuredly, else he would have no idea of that virtue. Men may be excessively unjust, but, except in savages, they feel the reprovings of Conscience. They know that there is Justice, and if they do not love, they fear it. In the higher development of the individual the love of Justice becomes a ruling motive. It is not asked if a certain action will be beneficient to self, but is it just? Not in the narrow hard sense of the word, meaning that no one is wronged, but in the large, broad sense, of benefit conferred. LOVE OF TRUTH. In the ascending scale from the savage to the civilized man, there comes a time when the mind arises into the atmosphere of Truth, — as a granite mountain peak is push ed upward above the clouds and mists, and catches the golden glory of the sun while all is darkness below. Man learns by experience the value of Truth. That falsehood and deceit are productive of misery. He finds that it is essential to place confidence and faith in others, and unless they are truthful, this is impossible. It is interesting to trace the progressive growth of this virtue from the savage who regards falsehood honorable, and has no faith in his own brother, his wife or child, to its full expression in the ideal angel. Has heredity stored up the results of experience, and thus made the man of the present heir to all that Truth has gained over falsehood in the past ? This is undoubtedly true, and also true that the mind has within itself the faculty of Truth. It loves Truth for its

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 65 own sake better than all else in the world. Every effort made in invention and discovery arises from this intense love. The astronomer keeps nightly vigils, intently gazing into the depths of the heavens, that he may gain a knowledge of the revolving orbs ; the geologist delves into the bowels of the mountains, and perils his life in upturning strata, questioning the rocks; the fln and tooth, the bone and scale of extinct beings; the chemist labors in his laboratory, failing a thousand times to gain one success; the antiquarian and historian plod in the misty labyrinths of the past, that by chance some hidden manuscript, some rude carving on temple wall may shed the light of absolute Truth on their conjectures, and make plain the early pages of history. Truth is the precious gem for which the student burns his midnight taper, and the man of science never wearies in the search; for it, the collosal telescope fathoms the infinite deep of stars, and the microscope penetrates into the infinite abyss of living forms; for it the Hermit renounces the pleasures of life and wanders into the wilderness ; the martyr cheerfully lays down his life, and the warrior rushes on certain death. Let even the belief that man has the Truth, firmly fix itself in the mind, and no sacrifice is too great, ng pain or suffering appalls, no ties are binding, before the lofty sense of duty and obligation it imparts. The perception of Absolute Truth is of slow growth, and man has often mistaken his own imperfect sense, for the absolute. It is necessary that he should, else he would not hold his position. He must maintain the highest light that is his, for thereby he gains still higher grounds. The same argument applies as to Reason. At first man arrives at erroneous results, which proves not that he should cease reasoning, but reason more ! In his ignorance he has embraced the wildest errors, and as an idolator pays his carven image the same devotion as the most spiritual worshiper gives to his ideal ; he has zealously loved and sacrificed himself to them, because he believed he held the absolute. But does this prove there is no absolute ? Because history is a record of the mistakes, and man has never been able to distinguish the truth, and has been the slave of Error; because he has repeatedly made his eternal happiness depend on the re

66 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: ception of doctrines he soon discarded for others held a9 tenaciously, does this prove there is no Absolute Truth ? It proves the imperfection of man, and that there is an absolute towards which he approximates. The mistake is in the ideas taught in the past by designing men, that man was inclined to error, and had no means of himself of arriving at the Truth. He was thus necessitated to receive a revelation from a source purporting to be divine, as interpreted to him by a class ot self-consti. tuted teachers. This result which has been a break on the wheels of progress, seems to be an inherent growth of human nature, for among all races it has been the samemoral truth has become concrete in holy books and a priesthood has organized itself as vicegerents of God on earth, to interpret his word and guard the morals of the people. Only after ages of struggle have the people emancipated themselves from this bondage. They have gained a knowledge of the Truth in spite of this obstruction. The facts of the material world are truths comprehended by the intellect. Nature never is false, never changes, is constant, nor abuses the faith reposed in her. If there is seeming contradiction we at once refer it to our understanding. The mind in the spiritual spheres represents this harmony. There are a countless host of individuals, all revolving in their own spheres, like the suns and worlds in space, and all governed by fixed principles, which we call Moral Truths, as the methods of Power uniting worlds, we call Law. As nature is exact in her expression, man desires to become exact in the conduct of his life. He must, in order to gain this desirable end, act in accordance with his highest perceptions of Truth. From Truth arises trust, faith, confidence, without which individuals would become selfish, isolated, and unable to unite in society. If we reject everything except what is demonstrated to us, there will be little left of the Past. We must take for granted, or trust to the demonstration of others. We trust because we know that the thinkers of the world are honest, and if they err, it is from ignorance and not design. This trusting faith when it is supported by knowledge, and is not the slave ot ignorance, is one of the most exquisitely sweet and beautiful qualities of human nature.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PIIILOSOPIIY. 67 Deceived it often may be, but we feel that it will bloom in immortal fruitage after all the Desires and Appetites which lead it astray are lost in spirituality. It will be seen in this survey that the mind is so closely bound together that one division cannot be discussed without unconsciously invading another. Thus the group of faculties we have placed under the name of Love, tor their manifestations, are inextricably bound to the Perceptions and Reason. A man could not be moral without the Perceptions, any more than without the group we have termed Wisdom. Reason is essential to morality. If a man acts morally simply by force of a blind instinctive impulse, he is not thereby a moral agent, and derives no merit. Wisdom is an essential quality of moral conduct, and the Will, the executive force flowing from the mind as a whole, responsible for all. Still more clearly defined is the unity of the Virtues. Their basis is Love, of which they are varying manifestation. Love is the divine power which reveals itself in obedience to the order of the physical and spiritual worlds. It seeks the good and happiness of all other beings. Its justice is merciful, unlike the vengeance which flows from the Appetites. It has infinite Charity and Benevolence. It allies itself to Truth, because the absolute in the material universe is stamped on man the microcosm. CHAPTER VII. WISDOM. The senses and perceptions are channels leading up to Wisdom, and are held in common with animals. There is no doubt but even the senses of animals are more imperfect than in man. While they see clearly, often more quickly, they may not perceive a feature visible to him. They may not take cognizance of colors, or of colors only in their most intense hues, and sounds audible to the ear of one species may be unheard by others. The latter difference is marked between savage and civilized man, in

68 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM. whom all the senses appear most complete, and with them the perceptive faculties, which take cognizance of phenomena. Above these lies a region of pure thought. It is related to the superior portion of the brain, which is last to develop. This thought sphere transcends the animal realm, i 1 which are dim prophesies of its grandeur, sufficient to indicate the continuity of being, and relation of the lowest to the highest. Beyond this, man is alone. In the highest faculties of knowing, the spiritual perceptions which take cognizance of spiritual entities and their laws, nothing remains to indicate connection with lower beings. Conscience is exclusively man's. CONSCIENCE. Xenophen says of Socrates that " he never discoursed concerning the nature of all things, how that which is called the Universe i3 constituted, under what laws the heavenly bodies exist, etc., but invariably represented those who concerned themselves with inquiries of this sort as playing fool. First of all he inquired whether such persons thought they had so far mastered the acts which relate to man as to be justified in proceeding to such investigations, or whether they considered it in order to have human inquiries for physical researches." it is not because the thinker has mastered the facts which relate to man that he turns to the Universe, but because he shrinks from the subtle profundity of the problem furnished by his own mind, and essays the easy task of observation of the external world. Thus to the question : Has man a conscience ? the answer to which seems as evident as that to the questions : Can he see? Can he hear? Has he a Reason? exactly opposite answers are given, and the affirmative which was unhesitatingly received at first, has yielded to the negative with the advanced and scientific school of thinkers. The reason for this, is it fell into bad company and became confounded with superstition and thereby the prop of creeds and dogmas. The scientific thinkers starting from matter, desired to refer all manifestations to the scheme of Evolution, and explain how Thought, Reason, Feeling, result from the accretion of experiences, and Conscience must share the common explanation.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 69 There are two schools — the Intuitionist and Utilitarian. The first claims that Conscience is a faculty of the mind, which decides of itself what is right and what is wrong; the latter claims that Conscience is the result of experience. "What it regards as good is that which results in happiness, which is the supreme good. It sneers at Conscience as a phantasm, the creature of education and superstition, which changes from age to age, with the culture of the times. In Mahommedan countries it is different from that in Christian; on the Ganges from that on the Mississippi; in Catholic from Protestant countries ; so inconsistent and dependent is it, that it cannot be an independent faculty. This position is made more plausible when we look still deeper into history. Religious wars and persecutions, all have grown out of and been sustained by Conscience. The Jewish mob crucified Christ to appease their Conscience, as Pilate washed his hands to allay his own. Conscience built the loathsome dungeons and prepared the horrible tortures of the the Inquisition ; it gathered the faggots and kindled the flames around the heretic ; it suppressed learning ; made a merit of ignorance, and has been the slave of religion. The man whose Conscience will not allow him to pare his nails on Sunday, will rob on Monday without compunction. Formerly the minister must have a smooth-shaven face, and the Conscience of the laity prevented them from the most labor on Sunday. Conscience compels the South Sea Islander to knock out one of his front teeth, or cut off one of his fingers; the Jew to circumcise; the Christian to,be baptized. But this is confounding terms. "What is here called Conscience is superstition and nothing more, and has only a similitude to the real faculty, which, it must be confessed it has often blinded or completely usurped the place. If this reasoning prove the non-existence of Conscience, precisely the same argument will prove the non-existence of Reason itself. At one stage of mental advancement Reason declared the world flat, and that the sun and siderial heavens revolved around it. It thus interpreted the facts of perception. From that time to the present, its voice has been in accordance with the entertained facts, constantly changing. Yet we unhesitatingly declare that Reason is supreme umpire in its province.

70 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: Of the Conscience the same may be affirmed. It is like all mental qualities subject to growth. As in the early ages, Reason seems to have been endowed with prescience and intuitively grasped results, only demonstrated after thousands of years of observation, so Conscience with only greater forecast, and more wonderful breadth grasped moral relations so clear and profound, that not yet has man progressed to their practical realization. THE CONSCIENCE OF THE SAVAGE may be obscure and concealed by superstition. Yet as far as it is manifested, it presents the same qualities as that of the most civilized man. There is no swerving in its decision when applied to its proper subjects. The savage has reason, yet arrives at widely varying results from the civilized man by its exercise. But as his Reason is untrained, and like the child's, and is often based on insufficient data, its results are not of final importance. In the same manner the Conscience of savage man arrives at moral conclusions, which are imperfect and subject to constant revision. REASON AND CONSCIENCE. Thus it appears that between Reason and Conscience there is a perfect parallelism. As Reason may be influenced by the Passions and Emotions, so also may be the Conscience, and as one when thus overpowered becomes a slave working in the interests of its tyrants, so the other unites its voice with superstition, and lends its name to religious fanaticism and intolerance. As Reason is the umpire of facts in the intellectual realm, is Conscience in the realm of moral principles. # We better understand the processes of Reason which deals with physical facts, than its spiritual prototype which rests on the subtile perceptions of spirit. The latter more closely resembles Reason in its exalted state of prescience, when it apparently escapes the trammels of facts and at once seizes on the truth. If Conscience is that faculty which discriminates between right and wrong, as the imperfect mind cannot know the absolute right and wrong, the decision of Conscience must be a comparative. As actions of themselves are neither moral nor immoral, these qualities belonging to the actor ; and as all actions spring from motives, the decision of Conscience must be a choice of motives. If all the motives which actuate the

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 71 mind, are on the same plane, and of the same grade, then there can be no choice, for one is as good as the other. But if these motives are of different grades, some being higher than others, then there is a choice. Thus the desires are lower than the spiritual aspirations; selfishness, than benevolence ; greed, than generosity ; intemperance, than abstinence, and when their conflicting claims arise, Conscience at once decides in favor of the higher motive. Its voice can never be mistaken. It never favors the demands of the lower against the higher faculties. It ever is allied with the spiritual, the noble, the pure. In this respect it is the most clearly defined and unmistakable of all faculties of the mind. On this gradation of the mental faculties, whereby the Will is influenced, rests the science of morals. By this means only, is such a science possible. Moral principles must be fixed and determined as the theories of mathematics, else nothing but vague uncertainties can result. Progress itself depends on fixedness here. Conscience deals with living entities— with actors ; with actions it has nothing in common. It judges the actors, founding its judgment on motives. And it will be found that its judgment is in accordance with the grade of those actuating motives The result is rarely taken in consideration. Success would not have changed the verdict in favor of Arnold, or have sanctioned the claims of slavery; nor defeat have reversed the principles of the Declaration of Independence, or of the Magna-Charter of England. The popular voice is usually an expression of popular conscience, and applauds unselfish, noble and magnanimous actions, while it sneers and scoffs the selfish, mean and ignoble. Not from its common selfish experience that such actions of the individual are best for the state, but because to love and respect such motives is inherent in the human mind. If this is not so, we have the mass influenced to admire in the individual unselfish qualities, because these administer to their selfishness Now as the mass is composed of individuals with precisely similar faculties, shall we say, most paradoxically that their selfishness admires unselfishness, or rather that they admire because there is in them a chord which responds with harmonious vibrations to unselfishness? The noble soul is adored for his generosity and deeds of self-forget

72 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: fulness, because his adorers feel that he has done what they should do, and is possible for them. IS THE IMPERFECTION OF CONSCIENCE SUPPLIED BY REVELATION ? If it is, there should be no hesitation in interpreting that revelation. If it is as obscure as Conscience, then it is equally uncertain. The Revelation presented, is more ambiguous than Conscience. It is differently interpreted by different individuals, and hence is an uncertain guide or far worse than none. If revelation is truly given as a supplementary guide to Conscience, it must appeal to Conscience and be interpreted thereby. If it can understand Revelation, then it must have qualities like the revelator ; having which it would arrive at the principles of such revelation without foreign assistance. If it have not these qualities, it could not comprehend such revelation. In either case revelation can be of no assistance in remedying the imperfection of Conscience. If Conscience be the result of heredity handing down to us the experiences it has treasured, we ask, what faculties treasure these experiences, and make this continuous analysis of motives? Is it Reason? Is it the Emotions? Is it not the Moral, or rather Conscience their complete expression and central force ? It is in this sense we shall use this term, choosing to retain it, although liable to misinterpretation, rather than introduce a new one. ACCOUNTABILITY. If a man kill another intentionally or by accident, the result is the same, but he in one case would not receive blame, for he was not actuated by wrong motives, and hence is regarded innocent. The act must be designed, and in the design rests the moral accountability, for it is the expression of the Will. Conscience is the force which influences the Will, or it is a part of the Will itself; distinguishes right from wrong, and decides the course of action. Hence it is the last court of appeal. But appeals cannot create a tribunal, which must pre-exist. It is clear that Conscience cannot exist without Reason of which it is a higher part. It is the result of all the perceiving, knowing spiritual faculties. An individual may be learned and not good, because

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 73 Reason has only been cultivated in the relations of physical life, and lias not advanced to Wisdom which is the comprehension of spiritual forces. Education may stop with the physical perceptions, and then the individual will have no proper conception of morality. It is equally true that a man cannot be positively good, without intellectual knowledge : a passive goodness may exist with the most complete ignorance. In the order of development the Intellect first expaDds in perceptions of nature ; its higher percepton of spiritual phenomena and forces are last to appear. This growth is in the direct line of the knowing faculties, and hence, although as a matter of convenience, and to avoid repetition, the term Conscience may be used, it is with the significance of "Spiritual Reason.'* LOSS OF CONSCIENCE. By disuse, Conscience may become lost in the energy of the Propensities and Appetites. The child who passes sleepless nights because it has gathered a flower not his own, may by continuous crimes so destroy Conscience that it will cease its reprovings. He may become so hardened by deeds of blood that human life will be regarded of no more value than the butcher regards the animals that he slaughters. The voice potent at first, becomes silent in the contention of baser desires, which unrestrained, run swift in their brutal channels. The first glass is met with bitter rebuke, but Appetite soon silences the reprovings of Conscience, and becomes a tyrant. Yet we may rest assured that Conscience is never blotted out. It becomes latent, but may at the proper moment be rekindled. CHANGE OF HEART. It is this fact that makes reformation possible. On this fact rests the " Change of Heart," so much sought by religionists. However bad the individual may become, however much he may be the slave of his Desires, and little reproved by Conscience, he never can fall to the level of the brute, by its destruction. It may be suddenly intensified, and become the master. A pirate, whose hands were red with the blood of numberless victims, and mind calloused to pity, or the emotions of sympathy, was resting under the shade of a grove on the coast of Florida,

74 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: after a bloody cruise. He slept, to be awakened by the cooing of a pair of doves in the branches overhead. For a long time he watched their gentle manners, their assiduous attentions, and constancy. A responding chord was touched in his heart, a chord which had not vibrated since his youth. Conscience became a vital energy, and with its intense light flooded his soul. He arose a new being, with unspeakable abhorance of his old life. He shrank from his former associates, and bade them farewell, forever. Religious revivals often exert the necessary power by which Conscience is awakened, and although accompanied with unessential forms and observances, which are made more essential than the result itself, are thus of intrinsic value. Complete success, however, is rarely attained. The disturbed Desires seek to gain their former control, and the mind oscillates between contending faculties. The individual, "back-slides;" is periodically repentant, and perhaps scorned for inconsistency. CULTURE OP CONSCIENCE. Conscience is strengthened by use. Like the taste for the beautiful, it grows with that it feeds upon. Every time it chooses between contending motives, it becomes stronger and more unmistakable. The moral progress of the race is referable to the culture of Conscience which is typed in its development in the individual. The observance of what are usually called religious rites, is not beneficial for this culture; nor is the reading of so-called moral books, or moral contemplation, of practical value as means of culture. Moral books are invariably religious books, narrow, one-sided, and sapless and at best, contribute to a dreamy, ideal desire. It is by use alone; by contact with and decision on actuality that this faculty receives proper culture. Its constant co-ordination with Reason yields the just and desirable balance of the mind. Our ideal angel is a being perfect in the supremacy of Conscience and Reason. The animal nature has no part in its choice. Even the inclination to wrong has disappeared, and a calm, undisturbed serenity ever fills its being. Temptation may be a test of moral strength, but it is not true as held by many that morality depends on its presence. The estate of the angel is the desirable goal,

A. SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 75 and the nearer it is approached by man, the more perfect he becomes. It is true, that our own failure to do right teaches us charity for others, and quickens our sympathy, but it is not the origin of these sentiments. We are not charitable to others because we feel that we may need their charity; nor sympathize with the suffering because we shall want sympathy when we suffer. These, with their related feelings, spring from that realm of mind the central force of which is Conscience. CAN THE IMPERFECT, BRUTAL MAN ATTAIN THE SUBLIME PERFECTION OF THE ANGEL ? As a flesh-clad spirit* possessing all the faculties of the supreme spirit, as his body is formed from the confluence of all elements of the supreme universe, man has the necessary capabilities. As a being susceptible of progress, the perfection of these faculties is the fruition of time. As an immortal being, eternity furnishes that element, and the improving conditions facilitates the rapidity of advancement. As Reason throned on intelligence will ascend to the comprehension of the laws of the physical universe, Conscience will become the shining light of the moral world, shedding its pure radiance over the character. This**is possible to every human being. However debased and brutalized by the accidents of time and place, the spirit has within itself the immortal germs of goodness and purity. If not awakened in this life, they will be at some period in the Hereafter. Life in man is a continuity, not broken by death and the hour of change known as repentance, is never gone by. In the future life, the spirit freed from the conditions of physical existence, which crushed it in the dust, has a brighter field, and where before all influences were earthward, all become spirit-ward. Under such conditions advancement is as certain as life. The most reckless and debased criminal, lost to sympathy and the reprovings of Conscience; utterly selfish and brutal, will sometime actualize this ideal; and on the highlands where stand those immortals redeemed by progress, the marsh-lands from which they have ascended, though remembered, will cast no shadow. TEMPTATION. It is said that as human life is the combination of an

76 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: tagonizing Aspirations, Desires and Appetites; temptations on one side; resistance on the other, the future life wherein all is perfect and good would be an unbearable monotony; that temptation, suffering from sin and reform are essential to happiness. Temptation maydevelop character through resistance, but it is possible for the spirit to arise out of, and above it. It is possible for every Faculty and Desire to become so perfectly balanced and co-related that no whisper shall enter the mind, enticing it to any course, but the Just and Right. Temptation does not exist for itself, or for its effect on the individual. The individual is tempted because the lower is not under complete rule of the higher nature. It is not conducive to pure morals, to teach that it is necessary for men to be tempted, and sometimes expected to yield, nor is it true. It is not necessary, and they are always expected to act according to the highest spiritual light. If they fail, Charity may shield, but not justify them, PRACTICE. As Conscience chooses between motives, always taking the higher, we may always know its voice. It not only distinguishes, but impels to the higher course of conduct. If then we hesitate, and are at a loss which way to go, we should always accept the highest course presented, unselfish, instead of selfish; generous, instead of ungenerous ; forgiving, instead of revengeful ; charitable, instead of uncharitable ; noble and magnanimous, instead of mean and treacherous. Such decisions will never bring regret. If we are in doubt and many equally strong motives impel us in diverse ways, the highest motive should have the benefit of such doubts. Man should be ruled by his highest faculties, and such rule can never bring permanent regret. He never yields to a lower motive, to selfishness, greed, treachery, fraud, without loss. This is a necessary result of his constitution. REWARD. When Conscience is the impelling power, the character becomes strong, the mind serene, and happiness unalloyed. The unselfish action, made for the good of others, re bounds to the good of the actor. Such is the beautiful

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 77 compensation, by which all obligations meet a just recompense. HOW DOES CONSCIENCE DECIDE? Right is rewarded by good or happiness ; Wrong brings suffering. It will be seen in the sequel how these results are natural and unayoidable sequences. Does Conscience decide spontaneously, knowing by an all-seeing intuition, the Good from the Bad, the Right from the Wrong? Or does it infer from facts, in a manner similar to Reason, arising by a series of steps to conclusions ? This brings us to the question — WHAT IS GOOD ? Jouffroy says that " the particular good of each creature, is but an element of universal order," wherein he strongly blends physical laws with moral insight, and does not account for the idea of Good. Reason may, and often does, regard the " universal order " very differently, and ages before such order was recognized, concrete conceptions of Good were entertained. If to the idea of universal order, be supplemented that of activity for uses related to mind, then would arise the conception of Good. Another school says : " The highest good, the summum bonum, is worthiness of spiritual approbation." — Dr. Hickok, Moral Science, p. 43. Shall we choose, as an ultimate end, that which we must be in order to make the choice ? Equally absurd to suppose the highest good to consist of personal introspection. It would not be a Good to stop short on barren approbation, even of the most spiritual, for activity is put forth for a purpose, else it is objectless, and the purpose of right activity over-steps approbation, to its result. Dr. Fairchild {Moral Philosophy, p. 21) says Good " consists in the satisfaction of that sensibility — satisfaction in every form in which it can exist." This definition places the Desires on a level with the highest spiritual perceptions, and makes the satisfaction of the Passions, in their lowest estate, a Good. This is the position of the optimist, who, affirming all things Right, would allow the fire of Desires to consume themselves forgetting that ashes only remain after conflagration. Happiness, as the Supreme Good, belongs to Paley's Mechanical Scheme of Creation, based on a personal God, and the selfishness of his adherents. In the scheme of na

78 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: ture, as Happiness is always in great excess of Pain, whatever is best must produce the greatest amount of happiness. To say that the Conscience decides in favor of Happiness, is an inversion ; for its decision is for the Right which necessarily yields the Supreme Happiness. Obedience to law is productive of the greatest pleasure, but most rarely, is it practical or possible for the mind to know that such will be the result of a determinate action ? The martyrs and heroes of the world testify that Happiness has no part in their determination of Right and Duty. Not for Happiness stood Leonidas with his three hundred in the Pass of Thermopalae; nor Joan of Arc at the head of the French army ; nor Washington with his bleeding soldiers at Valley Forge. The love of country, the generous emotion of liberty, blotted out every vestige of Happiness as a motive, and to brand them with such ignoble motive, is sacrilege. Man being endowed with varied sensibilities, both on the physical and spiritual side of his nature, their perfect satisfaction in accordance with the laws of each, co-ordinated with all the others, is the highest Good. This result presupposes harmony and perfection of functions, separate and collective, and brings into view the comparative Good with its many-sided consequences. This perfect satisfaction is the Absolute Good, about which no one will differ. When we speak of objects as Good, the word has a relative and distinct meaning. Absolute Good is only realized by sentient and thinkiig beings. The answering of every desire and motive results in Happiness. It is the state of virtue. It is pronounced good by all, as the most desirable state. The opposite condition is Wrong, so pronounced universally, for its result is Pain and Unhappiness. APPLICATION. The most potent fact of wrong-doing is that it is utterly opposed to the best interests of the wrong-doer. The eternal is sacrificed for the temporal; the advantages of all future for the brief moment. The enjoyment of an hour is followed by the bitterness of a life-time. The wrong-doer may, or may not, be conscious of this fact. If sufficiently intelligent, this consciousness will be forced upon him. A well-conducted life yields greater gratification even to the Desires, than one ill-regulated and devot

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 79 ed to the Passions. Happiness pursued as an end, in other words, Self-gratilication, ends in disgust and ruin. Not that there is intrinsic Wrong in the Desires, but in their subjugation of Reason and Conscience. They should be controlled and not control. Self-gratification is for brutes. Not having Reason or Conscience, they are not expected to act otherwise, but man as a moral and reasoning being, should be ruled by these faculties. There were two theories in ancient times, which have held their places to the present : of the Stoics and Epicureans. The former held happiness in contempt as all the accidents of life, and made the Good to consist in living according to Nature and Reason. The latter made Happiness, the enjoyment of Desires, the end of life. The Master did not construe this in a corrupt sense, but made it the enjoyment of mental pursuits, but his followers have not failed to render it in the coarse proverb : •' Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die." This doctrine has found expression in modern times in the theory of WHATEVER IS, IS RIGHT, the fatalism of the Optimists, which annuls all distinctions between Right and Wrong, and vitiates accuracy of thought by destroying its means of expression. Right and Wrong by insensible gradations approach each other. They are comparative, admitted ; so do the great and the small stand compared, in infinite gradation, but the great and the small remain unchanged, and unlimited gradation proves not the mountain and molehill the same. As truthful to say that WHATEVER IS, IS WRONG, to be made right in the future. Either statement confuses accuracy of thought, and if accepted leads to a placidity which receives the most distorting error with approving smile. Tolerance and commendable charity become a weak excuse for, and supine indifference to error. There is no absolute Right nor Wrong. What is Wrong for one individual may be Right for another; what is Wrong in one age, is Right in a succeeding. Even our ideas of Right and Wrong, it is held, are gained from selfish considerations. Whatever effects us unpleasantly or disadvantageous^, we consider Wrong, and the reverse Right.

80 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM : As every individual's impressions are different, so these qualities vary, and hence have no absolute value. The eyes of different observers, take in all degrees of light, and from blindness to clear vision all degree's of sensitiveness exist, yet the light remains unchanging. Right and Wrong as absolute moral qualities exist outside of moral beings, and not as subjective conceptions in the mind. That they are conceived, is evidence of their existence in the order of the world. Their Perception is of growth like all other faculties of the mind, and is as much keener and determinate, in civilized man than in savage, as the former is superior to the latter in intel ligence. This progress points to an absolute toward which the noblest aspirations of the mind are attracted. Hedged in by expediency, and endeavoring to tread the treacherous path of compromise, it feels that beyond its best efforts is an absolute, which admits of no comparison. Every hour of life it asks itself the momentous question : What is Right, and its interpretation seals its destiny. Not how will this effect ourselves alone, but how will it effect others, must be our inquiry. Will it give them pain, deprive them of their just measure, or in any way be detrimental to them ? If we are gainers, and they are losers, is evidence of injustice. We cannot isolate ourselves from humanity and receive benefits at the expense of others, without being overtaken at some time by the consequences. Integral parts of the human world, the least member of that world cannot be injured without our experiencing the result. Right injures no one. It is beneficient to all. HAPPINESS rests on this lofty state of benevolence flowing to the mind, as an under current, from the flood streaming out from it continually. The good of others is our own Supreme Good. Benevolence is never in error, never wrong. It is a key-note in the octave of the spirit. LIFE A DISCIPLINE. As the embryonic forms of higher animals revert to the lower, ascending by various stages to their permanent level, so every child is born a savage, having only the superior capabilities bestowed by hereditary descent from civilized ancestors. The capabilities are at first latent, and the child of savage and the child of civilized parents

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 81 travel side by side in gaining knowledge of the relations they sustain to external things. It has been said that the first questions asked by primitive man were — How? Why? Wherefore ? These are the first asked by every child — asked even before they learn the use of spoken language. From that period onward, the child is absorbed in the acquisition of knowledge. He has entered a new and strange world, and it is essential he learn the relations between himself and external nature. Possessing a will seemingly independent and free, the young barbarian asserts his kingship— to find his vassals stubborn and relentlessly unyielding. He clutches at the moon and learns the reality of space ; or the glittering flame and discovers the properties of heat; essays to walk and by many a fall becomes conscious of attraction. TO CONQUER NATURE. Nature submits to no rude hand. He learns that she is only conquered by obedience to her laws. He may pout over his bruised head, cry over the smarting burn, but Nature is an unrelenting mother coaxing none of her children. Her rules are fixed and deviate not for the child of an emperor more than for the larva of the ephemera. He gains knowledge of her laws by the resistance they offer — a veritable fetish worshiper, he kicks the table, against which he bumps his head, as the grown children in the childhood of the world sought to chain the sea, or control the winds. The table does not change to a cushion to save his tender feet. Such is his first discipline, and slowly, as his mind matures, he finds that so far from being a born lord, he is a humble serf; that above, beneath, and around him, stretch the iron arms of inflexible law, and instead of commanding, he must obey. Overwhelmed with a dim consciousness of his position— his weakness on the one hand, and on the other the gigantic powers of nature — primitve man defied the latter, and explained his own contradictory being by saying that his mortal life was a probationary state wherein his god-like spirit underwent a process of purification, which completing, it would ascend to its native home. How, why, wherefore, were all explained and through the solution, vaguely gleamed a strand of truth. This life was perceived to be one of discipline. Here man, the brute, was wedded to man, the spir

82 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: it, and the high end of his existence was to bring the former into subjection to the latter. Fearfully long and wearisome ; terribly painful, and beset with torture of body and spirit has been the road in the race he has traveled to reach the goal. THE PATH OF ADVANCE. It began with the savage of the wild, clad in a skin tied around his loins, hairy, matted-locked, armed with a club or stone, feeding on raw flesh, solitary, distrustful, vindictive, cruel and selfish, living only for himself. It ends in the ideal of spiritual perfectibility, the man living for others instead of himself, with sympathetic benevolence embracing all human beings, acknowledging the use of his physical nature, but holding it in strict abeyance to his spiritual perceptions. This long stride of development has been made with blood and toil. Tribe has destroyed tribe ; nation, nation; and great races have pitted themselves in death grapple. Empires have arose and melted away. Kings, theocrats, autocrats, and the turbulent masses have in turn vainly striven, retarding or accelerating as their influence was thrown on the side of the brute or the angel. Great thinkers have been cast up by the seething waves, like pearls from the wild depths, from whose birth date eras of progress. This interminable interval must be traveled by every child with this advantage ; the way is prepared for it, and it may thus quickly pass over. May, or it may linger under the pressure of interwoven circumstances, and in the midst of civilization remain a barbarian, as criminals and law-breakers exemplify. This life is not probationary ; coming up from the rank soil of animal being, dwelling in the midst of sentient life, and sending down strong roots into the physical stratum, our spiritual nature, of slow growth, must be cultivated carefully as an exotic; else the rank weeds will overtop and sap its vitality. From the cr adle to the grave, Life is discipline. Children are sometimes born with extraordinary mental and spiritual endowments; the majority must by effort attain the status these possess by their happy organizations. If "whatever is, is risht," then the brute of our nature is as divine as our morality. " It in excess, let the passions burn themselves out, and

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 83 then will the man become subject to hi9 angel nature," says the optimist. This conception so satisfactory to the Desires, and appeasing to opposing Conscience, is dangerous and false as it is subtle. The strongest faculty draws the most sustenance at the expense of the weaker. Like the hardiest cub, it not only absorbs its own share, but pushes its weaker fellow. Does it grow weak by satiety ? The fire is extinguished by burning itself out—what remains ? Ashes. *' The passions are natural, let them go; ae a river flows to the sea, as the fire burns. Their manifestations are as right as those of the intellect. Why restrain them ? Why denounce and punish V It is the only way some men can be reduced, and gain control of themselves, and commence a higher course of advancement." THINGS ARE AS THEY ARE BECAUSE THEY MUST BE, not because right ; because such is written in the constitution of the world. He who unleashes his brutal nature, under the delusion that it is right, ever finds, to his cost, that misery is the sternly inflicted penalty. Do the passions extinguish themselves? Ah ! the result is a wreck of manhood over which angels weep! The distinction of Right and Wrong in all our actions is spoken in words unmistakable; "Right always confers true and permanent happiness ; and Wrong with equal certainty brings suffering. The deceptive gleam of sensuous pleasure, too often mistaken for happiness, is the foretaste of misery: sensuous pain in the triumph of conscience, is the harbinger of endless pleasure. Subjected to this impartial test, " Whatever is, is right," with the deductions flowing logically therefrom, fall as idle schemes of those who would rebuke error with an excuse for the ruin it produces. Even these theorists acknowledge that ultimately the recreant will commence to advance, and as they ignore discipline and restraint, they would have a ruin burned and charred, rather than the plastic material fresh from the quarry. Life is for discipline and progress. Reasoning founded on its termination at the grave is fallacious. Our every thought and deed having eternal relations, the faculties which connect us to external life are necessary so far as they effect that object, but any further extension of their

84 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: sphere is detrimental. They are for to-day, but the spiritual is for time. In this life we are dual in our relations; ours are the finite possibilities of to-day, and the infinite of tomorrow. Turn where we will we find this lesson taught in unmistakable language, and the lash of pain distinguishes with nicest discrimination the Right from the Wrong in the conduct of life. The child setting forward toward the ideal angel, befogged by the world, is content to remain half a savage; that is, dominated over by his brutal nature, or its slave, restrained only by the laws of the society of which he is a member. CONSEQUENCES. If we do Wrong we are certain to bear the consequences; if Right to enjoy the results. To know the Right from the Wrong is the foundation of moral conduct. To know these involves a knowledge of man's nature and of the world. Hence the highest morality must rest on knowledge and the Intellect be between the world of life and morals. CHAPTER VIII. WISDOM— THE WILL. The Will is considered by mental philosophers as a distinct and independent faculty, and source of power. In moral philosophy it becomes the source of responsibility, and its freedom is a cardinal doctrine of theology. Man cannot be held responsible for his actions unless they are of his own free choice. They must be within his means of doing, and he must not only be allowed to do or not do, but have the power within himself. If he is hedged in by circumstances which change the purpose of his Will, and if that Will be dependent on his physical surroundings and mental conditions, he cannot be said to be a free moral agent in the theological acceptation of that term.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. S5 IS MAN FREE ? If we consider the constitution of man, we shall arrive at a widely diverse conclusion. The individual is the result of every cause and condition, which has been exerted not only directly on himself, but his ancestors from remotest time. He is a center stance, in which blends this infinite series of causes and conditions. This cumulation from the beginning; this resultant of the entire mind, is the Will. If the Will is a distinct power, or source of power, why is its strength in any given direction exactly proportioned to the strength of mind in that direction? For illustration, when combativeness is strong, why does the individual Will to be combative, and if weak, why Will to be the reverse ? If a man has untoward ambition, the Will is alike favorable to ambition. If he is without, there is no vaulting Will. The same is shown functionally when a portion of the brain is removed, as has been repeatedly done by accident. With such destruction or removal, certain faculties cease to be manifested, and with them the Will in their particular direction. The Will is the result of all past experiences of the individual, direct and by heredity, received through all the faculties, reacting on the outer world. While responsible, it is not correct to hold it as an absolute free agent, which of itself choses and impels. What is this power of the Will ? It is that of the individual as a whole. It is essential that the Will be understood, for on its understanding rests an estimate of human actions; praise and censure, and our penal code. If a man do wrong because the Will is inherently depraved, when he could do right if he so willed, moral philosophy assumes a theological aspect, with which this is a favorite dogma: Man can will as he pleases. Although this has long been accepted, it certainly is one of the most erroneous theories, and lead3 to deplorable consequences. REFORM. If a man after a long series of crime changes his course, and begins to do right, we say he wills to reform. It would be more correct to say that the nobler faculties of his mind have been aroused. This can not be accomplish

86 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: eel by the unassisted Will, for no such autocratic power, superior to all the faculties exists in the mind. The loss, or weakening of the Will, is the decay of all the faculties, or it may result from a negative passive condition. Such persons are said to have *' no Will of their own," always conceding to those they are with. They would be of no use in the world, were it not for the use others make of them. CAN WE DO AS WE PLEASE ? To say we can do as we please, ignores the question of Will, for it is really saying we Will thus and so, consequently we can Will, which is a truism. The real question is, Can we Will ourselves to Will, to do a given task, or think a certain train of ideas ? It is self-evident that we cannot; that the Will cannot transcend the mental qualities on which it rests, and from which it springs. Nothing proves this more completely than the force of habit. The drunkard may Will to reform, and for a time maintain his determination, but the desire for stimulants increases, until it sweeps his resolution away. He strives for a time, and beats the current, all the time feeling that his strength is only for the time, and will soon yield. He feels that he is doomed, irrevocably. The Appetites affect the Will in the same manner, and starvation will reduce the most sensitive to a cannibal. DEVELOPMENT OF THE WILL. The assent of the Will may be traced from the sensitive contraction of protoplasmic life upward through the ascending series, from the involuntary to the voluntary. The highest animal is governed by instincts which are incoherent efforts of Will. Children are dominated in the same manner, and many adults cannot be said to have Wills of their own. In the more perfect man we find the diverging purposes unitized, and the highest expression of Will is the voice of Reason and Conscience, which is justly given the government of the conduct of life. It is considered wrong to Will to do anything unjustified by the higher faculties. To do otherwise, to Will to follow the Propensities or Appetites is regarded as DEPRAVED. The Will receives the blame and is made the seat of "moral depravity." The seat of " moral depravity " is not in the Will, for

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 87 the Will cannot act without motives, and these motives of wrong action are formed by the Propensities and Appetites. The moral faculties are always moral, and hence the term " moral depravity " is a misnomer, such a state being impossible. CULTURE OF THE WILL. An Egyptian physiognomist on reading the character of Socrates, said he was a libertine. Then his disciples laughed, so far thought they, the reading departed from the truth, but Socrates chided them, saying the Egyptian was right; that he had been, and only overcame his appetite by severest discipline. Strength of Will, morally directed, is one of the noblest traits of man, because it is a measure of his attainments, and prophesies his inconceivable possibilities. By the culture of the harmonious activity of all faculties, and the constant enort to place the higher in just ascendency, the Will may be strengthened in that direction, to an unlimited extent. Not only can it gain mastery over the body, defying the pangs of hunger, and the fever of thirst, and the keenest arrows of pain, it treads the desires beneath its feet, and shows how much stronger is the spirit than the body. The martyrs who smile at physical pain, show how independent the spirit may become through the force of high resolves, and they who forsake all for principle illustrate the same in the higher sphere of intelligence. In this high relation, the Will has no limitation except the mental qualities with which it deals. It can create no new faculty. It can only use the material at hand. The term Will, as popularly used, means the sum of the mental activities. We must regard it as the dynamics of the mind. To say it is corrupt, is saying in another form that the mind itself is corrupt. To say it has become pure, and never yields to base desires, is saying that the mind has been cultured in that direction. But so thoroughly are we bound in the iron ways of habit, that the term must be retained, to avoid tedious circumlocution, as we retain Conscience, giving it a modified meaning. So far as man is a circumstance, his Will is not free ; as a centerstance of force it becomes free. The mind as a

88 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: treasure house of the past, is a mighty reserve force which is at the disposal of the Will. Writers of the school of Darwin, Spencer and Bain have explained the processes of this cumulation, and consider their statement of facts as demonstrations. They have, however, allowed the real question to escape them. They have only shown how individualized spirit gains control over matter. They have not given the least explanation of the origin of ideas, or how matter gets caught in the vortices of thought. After all their labors they are little nearer the explanation than at the beginning, for they are prepossessed with false views which distort their conelusions. Man's accountability must be referred to his Will, as his executive power. He cannot be said to be accountable in the old sense of that term. He is only accountable to the fixed order of nature expressed through her laws. We have thus rapidly outlined the principles of the mind sufficiently to make clear the application of practical morality. We have not attempted to state the theories of others from Plato down to the present time, a task which of itself would have many times filled one volume, and been barren of results ; nor have we wasted time in disputation, disproving the countless speculations on the origin and clarification of the mental and moral qualities. Instead we have presented direct the principles on which we base our practical system with our reasons for their acceptance, and the future pages will be devoted to their plain application, so that we may not only say, do right, but give the reasons therefor.

A. SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 89 CHAPTER IX CHARTER OF RIGHTS. The existence ot a being is its Charter of Rights. It is an incontrovertible evidence that such a being has the right to all the essential conditions for the maintainance of such existence. The presence of lungs not only proves that there is an atmosphere, it also proves that this organ ovrns by right so much of the atmosphere as is required to expand its cells, and arterialize the blood that flows thereto. The appetite of thirst, which indicates the absolute necessity of water to the sustainance of the organism, declares its right to so much water as shall answer its wants. There can be no other side to this question. For it would not only be a want of benevolence, but a cruel blunder to create a being with imperative wants and not to supply those wants. To create fish, which by their constitution, could only enjoy life in the water, and not to give them the boundless tide to which fin and gills are fashioned; to create birds with wings to cleave the atmosphere of the azure sky, and withhold that element, would be to defeat the object of their creation. The form of the fish demonstrates its right to the water ; the wings of the bird its right to use them in the air; the lungs have a right to be filled with air, the thirst to be slaked by water. Hunger, the terrible necessity of life, carries with it the right of gratification. In the animal it knows no limitation. It is there the fundamental right, equivalent to that of existence. In man the rights of the Appetites are subject to the limitation of his superior faculties. The individual is confined in his sphere by that of other individuals. He has a right to act precisely as he pleases in that sphere. He must never transcend it and trespass on the rights of others. The air and water are so abundant that none claim preoccupancy, or dispute their use. With food, and the right of Hunger, it is different. In the savage state, man a creature of the tropics, supplies his scanty wants from the teeming abundance of Nature, and the answer of hunger is as certain as that to the desire for air. But in an advanced and more crowded state, food keeps pace in no ratio with the demand. The intelligence of man must di

90 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: rect his hands to labor for the increase of fruits, grains and animal life. IN A CROWDED STATE LIFE MUST BE SUPPORTED BY LABOR. The earth itself will furnish only a little of what is demanded. The game in four thousand acres of forest, may satisfy the hunger of one Indian, but it will be an insignificant fraction of supply to a thousand people which civilization crowds on the same area. Only by labor can the deficit be supplied ; labor of the hands, in tilling the soil, mining the ores, fashioning machines to do more work, or the exchange of surplus products. Hunger stimulates labor and is supplied thereby. Hunger has the right to the food it demands, limited by the right to gain that food by labor. This is the first law of Right, limited in man by Benevolence, for, labor must not be at the expense of others. It follows that LABOR, WHEN SO DIRECTED, HAS THE RIGHT TO ITS OWN PRODUCTS. The idea of ownership is inherent in being, and the deed of ownership is doing something to create or appropriate. Any law, or usage which conflicts with this primary right is wrong. " Ah," it is said, " you make no exceptions ; then every child, when born, has a right to be fed and clothed; every man to be fed and clothed 'c" Certainly, as every child, when born, has a right to fill its lungs with air, to be nourished at its mother's breast, to water when thirsty. This right is, however, subject to this qualification, love assures the rights of the child, labor must that of the man. It is not enough that this be granted. LABOR MUST BE ALLOWED OPPORTUNITY. It is not enough to say man has the right to labor; he has the right to the opportunity to labor, and having the opportunity all that results, should be his. RIGHT TO LAND. As the land is the primary source of supply of food, Labor has the right to the land, and they who use it with greatest profit, that is, make it most productive, have the right to the land. This law is illustrated in the contact of culture with barbarous peoples. The race that make the land produce the greatest supply of food, is its triumphant owner.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 91 '• Ah, this is agrarianism !" No, for in a long period of civilization the land does not remain in the wild. Air and water are ever the same, but the land is changeable. The forest is removed ; the stagnant waters drained away, the crust pulverized, and an ownership established by the labor expended, which has received no reward, except in ownership, which is valuable for what it may yield in the future. If such land cannot be occupied by the one who has given this preparatory labor, and is by another, it is just that the products of this joint labor be equitably divided in proportion to the value of each. This is rent, or interest which are really one and the same, for interest would never be paid on money, if money would not procure the use of something desired. Rent, then, of itself, is just, and not to be regarded by labor as a grievance. But when it exacts more than its share, it becomes the most unjust and oppressive power possible to conceive. Having seized the means of life, it reduces labor to a pitiable struggle for existence granted by monopoly with begrudging scorn. RENT AND INTEREST. In our present complex civilization, however, rent and interest are means whereby present lab^r is robbed by that of the past. Past labor is aggregated in capital, which represents the surplus savings of labor. The desire of ownership is essential to human well being, to progress and civilization; but ownership should not transcend the law of Love and Benevolence. So great are the demands that labor cannot of itself, honestly directed, accumulate more than a competency under the most favorable circumstances during the brief period of earthly life. By yielding to the love of wealth for its own sake ; crushing love and be, nevolence, and giving rein to the propensities; by fraud, dishonesty, sharp practices and dubious ways of trade, fortunes are accumulated, which have no relation to the labor of the legal owner. The production or acquisition of wealth is not governed by the laws of human well being, as expressed in the higher morality, and hence accumulated labor, or capital stands opposed to present labor. The means of labor are monopolized, and it is compelled to give the lion's share for the privilege of activity. ILLUSTRATION OP THE MILL. As an illustration, there is a river, which by a costly

92 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM : dam, will become a continuous source of power. The opportunity is seized by an energetic individual, who proceeds to make the dam and build a mill for grinding. To make the comparison complete, we must suppose that there is no other mill, nor can be, and that the people cannot grind for themselves. This mill must grind their corn, or they can have no bread. The owner of the mill now says, " I will grind your corn for half," and the people are thankful, he is satisfied with less than the whole; or he may not wish to work himself, and say to the people, " You may grind for yourselves, and give me nine-tenths and you may ha^e the remaining " Under these circumstances they would be compelled to obey or starve. So long as their oortion sustained them, they may not rebel, and to find that mini, mum, would be the study of the owner. The injustice of such an arrangement is too obvious to require serious answer, yet it is a mild form of monopolv. Cannot the mill-owner say to the people, " This is my mill, I built it, and the dam, ana by foresight discovered the water-fall. You may do as you please about bringing your corn. If you do not, I can lock my door." They plead: " We cannot have our corn ground into meal anywhere else. We must bring it." " Well," he might reply, " do not grumble, then. I am not to blame for there not being two mills. I built this for myself, and not for you. I hope you do not doubt my ownership, and has not oae a rignt to do as he pleases with his own?" Justly, the mill-owner should receive reward for the labor he has invested, in due proportion to that which uses it. Because he caw, exact more is no reason why ne should. He has no right to the work the powers of Nature are doing for him, more than he would have to the air or the sunshine. These forces are the birth-right of all men. If actuated by justice, he would say, " I will take so much as will pay me for my labor, past and present, or you may grind yourselves, and give an equivalent for my part of the labor." It is thus seen that the wrong is fundamental, lying at the root of the popular idea of ownership, which is possession, and thejpower to hold. Whereas true ownership is based on the spiritual law of uses. If the farmer owns his farm, cultivates his broad acres of grass and grain, and rears his domestic herds for the purpose of increase, as the ultimate end, he fails in his efforts.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 93 The purpose of all bis labors should be the culture of his family and himself. More than this, it is not possible for him to do, and less is giving the control of his life to the earth-side of his nature which has no permanent value. He has ownership, so far as the gratification of physical wants demand for his highest spiritual attainments. By the present monopoly, the Past instead of a loving mother, becomes the enemy of the Present, and enslaves it for the purpose of accumulating a stronger power against the Future. Day by day the lot of the laborer becomes harder, and to achieve success more difficult. Everything is grasped and will not be relinquished. While ownership is natural and desirable, it must not rest alone on legal enactment. Whenever exercised for its own sake, it must work disastrously, as the exercise of selfishness always does. The man who collects a vast library for the purpose of owning it, while he cares not to read, nor allows any one else, would be considered supremely selfish and ignoble, while the man who made the collection for the pur. pose of throwing it open to the public for the benefit of all, would be regarded as a benefactor. It is precisely the same with all wealth. When grasped for self, the purposes of its creation are defeated. A greater evil than has yet been mentioned, results from this monopoly. The many who are compelled to over-work to gain a sufficiency to supply the demands of Hunger alone, having no time, nor inclination for spiritual culture, lose all the advantages of life. Denied the first right, they lose by default all the others. If such monopoly did not exist; if Wealth was held by Benevolence and not by. Selfishness ; if the better and nobler ideas of the purposes of life and its mutual responsibilities were entertained, Hunger would not only have the right to labor, but its opportunities. The Government of the United States, at a day too late for its full usefulness, has recognized this principle in the free homestead law, by which the actual occupant becomes the owner of the soil. It has not, be it regretted, forestalled monopoly by just laws. In all this reasoning we have understood that Labor is to be directed in channels for the good of man, and not to his detriment. The statement may be softly made that one-half of all the labor expended by man is for objects

94 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM : deleterious or useless. In the ministering to the habits created by narcotics and alcoholic stimulants, an incalculable amount of labor is expended, for the ruin of fellowmen. If the laborer understands the law and responsibility of labor, he could not conscientiously engage in work which is not only useless, but positively and unmitigatedly bad in all its consequences. We have then three fundamental rights: the right to air, to water, to food, and the right necessitated by the latter to labor, with the opportunity which makes such labor available. Also that Labor has the right to its own productions, limited by the law of highest uses. These may be regarded as physical rights, having which we may consider our spiritual. LIBERTY. First, is Liberty. Of bodily Liberty we need net speak, for it is to the American mind an axiom, that man should be physically free. In whatever station of life, he is born free. His muscles are for the support of himself and for the use of no other. Except by forfeiting this right by disregard of the laws of Society, he cannot lose it. Of the freedom of the mind doubts still exist and a vast majority live in abject slavery. The fetters which bind the body may be unspeakably wrong and deplorable, but those which bind the soul are incomparably more ruinous. This bondage is gained and exercised through ignorance, and the superstition it fosters. It is this which maintains the hoary wickedness of church and state. Religion has been the hardest master, and to it man has gone down abjectly in the dust. It has forbidden him to think for himself, and he has received through a blind faith the wildest dogmas. HAS MAN THE RIGHT TO THINK FOR HIMSELF? Protestantism answered, "Yes," but it added thereafter, "to think as Protestants do!" From whence came the right of a church to dictate what a man shall think, or believe ? Is not a church an aggregation of men, and does a body of men acquire a right not possessed by them as individuals? Can they as a whole arrive at a truth which they could not as individuals ? Having a body, carries with it the right to use that body for its natural uses, and having a mind gives the right to use that mind — to think. We have

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 95 a right to believe, or disbelieve, whatever we please; to read such books as may interest us ; to listen to such discourses; to write or speak, as we please, subject only to the limitation that in so doing we do not interfere with other's rights in the same direction. It may be urged that any divergence from established customs, would be such interference. Sabbath-breaking, for instance, might be thought a violation of the rights of those who regard that day as expressly holy. But it must be considered that no one can justly or authoritatively say to another what is holy or what is not holy. If the day is to them holy, they may use it for such service as they please, and allow others who do not agree with them to use it as they may desire. They have no right over the day except for themselves. It may be claimed, in the same manner, that the Press, although tree, has no right to publish pernicious doctrines. Who is to decide what pernicious doctrines are ? To church members, materialism or atheism would be considered exceedingly so, and to an atheist the church dogmas would be thought exceedingly harmful. There is iortunately or unfortunately no infallible tribunal to which to appeal, and if the press be free it must be allowed to express views on all subjects, nor be prohibited except in case of gross immorality. Even in such case, it is doubtful whether suppression is the proper method. Such papers are not the cause, but effect, and when the cause is removed they will disappear. The heralding of every crime by the press at first may incite to crime, but in the end, the certainty of wide exposure becomes a strong motive against its committal. The argus eye of the newspaper is ever open, and there is a scorpion's lash ready at any moment. The true principle is that in FREEDOM THERE IS SALVATION. The failures it apparently makes grew out of a preceding order for which it is not responsible, as the flame is not for the injury done the moth that is dazzled into infatuation and burns its wings. Liberty must not be confounded with license, which is its selfish exercise at the expense of others. It is the mistake of the suddenly-freed slave ; of the emancipated serf of ignorance and superstition.

96 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: America is said to be free, and every one allowed to think as they please. Yet it is far from that perfect liberty which is desirable. It would be impossible for a Mohammedan to gain an official position, and a free thinker receives fewer votes as he is outspoken. It is not true that every one is allowed to worship or not worship, with identical results. The tendency is powerfully toward the church, and a large proportion of the people are held in spiritual bondage. If man has the right to think, he has the right to think as he pleases. How correctly he may think, how truthful the results of thinking, depends on his education. The ignorant man is a slave of superstition. His mind is not reliable and is swayed by inferior influences. RIGHT OF MENTAL CULTURE. As the province of the mind is thought, which is the sum of all uses, and the apparent purpose of life, it has the right to the means of its cultivation. In other words, the possession of an educatable mind proves its right to education. Society acknowledges the right, because it understands the advantage conferred, is reciprocal. Education is the food of the mind, as bread is that of the body. What we mean by education is not the narrow training, to read and speak as taught in the schools, but the complete harmony illustrated in the chapter on "The Duty of Culture." One may read and write well and yet be abjectly ignorant. HAPPINESS. This subject may be argued on other grounds, and often is; that of happiness. It is the right, it is said, of every being to enjoy the largest measure of happiness compatible with its constitution. Happiness is a result, and should not be a motive. We do not seek food that we may be happy, but because impelled by hunger. We may be very happy when we secure it, but that is an after thought. The experience may be remembered, and in that manner enter into our ideas of the gratification, the primary motive remains. If we associate happiness with the gratification of the appetites, it is from memory of experiences which have taught that such gratification gives pleasure. In the same manner we associate misery with experiences of great deprivation or over indulgence.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 97 WOMAN'S RIGHTS. In the foregoing discussion, the word man is used in its broad acceptance as embracing all human beings, and it must be understood that all the rights belonging to one sex, equally belong to the other. To decide what are woman's rights, there is but one question. Is she a human being? If" yes " be the reply, then she has all the rights of a human being. There can be nothing more self-evident. If it be asked : Is she the equal of man? We reply, that she is equal in some respects, inferior and superior in others. Her constitution and the sphere it prescribes is different from his, in a portion of its arc, but in the main coincides. Her equality, or inequality, however, has nothing to do with the question. The highest form of civilization must give woman equal rights and equal opportunities with man. Emancipated from the slavery which, from the dawn of the race, has been her lot, and freed from the mental traits this slavery has cultivated, her future will be inconceivably glorious. She is now behind man in the race, because she has been retarded. Her future is now opening before her. Everything she may desire to do awaits her hand. It is pitiable to see the opponents of woman's rights, bring as evidence anatomical and physiological peculiarities, in precisely the same spirit as the old defenders of slavery did that of the hair, the color of the skin, or the conformation of the skull. What has all this to do with rights and justice? Would they prove their mothers not to be members of the human family? The question is not of Rights of Sex, but of humanity, and will fade into and be solved by that greater issue. SUMMARY OF RIGHTS. The child as an immortal intelligence, capable of infinite progress, has these self-evident rights: To air and water, which, requiring no artificial change, and incapable of ownership cannot be monopolized. He has the right to food, through the ministrations of Love. He has a right to be clothed and sheltered by the same He has a right to an education. Matured, he has a right to labor, in whatever direction he pleases, not conflicting with other's rights, and to the full, all his labor produces. He has the right to think, and as thinking can never inter

98 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: fere with the thinking of others, he has here perfect freedom. In speaking and writing, in putting thought into action, there is the limitation by the sphere of others. This limitation, however, is daily being pushed further away, and must ultimately be obliterated, except so far as the amenities of culture and refinement dictate. Freedom of speech and of the press embrace their own purification. CHAPTER X. DUTIES AND OBLIGATIONS OF THE INDIVIDUAL, Rights presuppose Duties. Freedom is overshadowed by obligations. This is true in the highest sense without relation to theological dogmas. The system of duties and obligations created by the latter, are artificial and foreign to the constitution of man. Theoretical duty and obligation to God or the gods, has been the foundation of religion. Theology starting with a false conception of God, the religion arising from it has been vitiated and baseless. Christian, Jew, and Pagan place the same great stress on these subjects, and the priests and clergy are the interested parties to enforce acquiescence. DUTIES AND OBEDIENCE TO GOD. To obey God was the first requisite of a good man. As no one knew or could know what God's commands were, the priestly order declared them. To obey God was to obey the voice of the priest. Obedience was religion, and all temporal duties sank into insignificance by the side of this. To obey God in Egypt, meant to worship leeks and garlics ; in Rome, to obey the oracles of a multitude of gods and goddesses. To obey him, in Turkey, means to believe in Mohammed and Alcoran. To obey him, in Christian lands, is to believe wHh some one of the Christian sects. Perhaps more intolance has grown out of the idea of the necessity of compelling this arbitrary obedience than any other dogma. Allow an order of men to set themselves up

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 99 as God's chosen exponents, and give them power to enforce obedience, and there is nothing at which they pause. The decay of the priestly order, has shorn it of its power of enforcing doctrines, but the dogma of obedience and duty to God remain, and form the foundation of the Christian religion. Man must obey the laws of his being, and of the physical world or suffer. He cannot swerve a hair's breadth from implicit obedience without pain. To obey, is not a duty, it is a necessity. This, however, is not obedience, as understood by theologians. The will of God is expressed not in Nature, but the Bible. To believe the Bible, and obey the requirements of the church, is the obedience intended. We unqualifiedly say that man owes no such obedience, and has no such duties. Yet to assert this is the most heinous and unpardonable sin known to theology. SIN. Sin is not the refusal to meet these arbitrary demands, but the yielding to the impulses of the lower nature. Such impulses may appeal to the Reason for support, and even force it into alliance. Thus the drunkard before the habit is formed, may have a reason for gratifying his desire, and he will reason in his lowest depths of degradation. Desire itself becomes a reason. While virtue is obedience to right, reason and intelligence, sin may be regarded as the unrestrained action of the Appetites and Propensities. Their desire to do, is the reason therefore. HOW CAN WE OWE OBEDIENCE TO GOD ? The system of dogmatic theology grew up in an age which unquestioningly received the personality of God. When he was regarded as an Asiatic despot seated on an ivory throne, there was nothing contradictory in the supposition that he personally demanded obedience and to disobey excited his anger. The slow relinquishment of the personality of God, has left this doctrine in a most precarious state, and with its fall, churchianity ceases to be. The personality of God is an irrational theory, for he must be infinite. If infinite, every part must be infinite. An infinite personality must have, for instance, an infinite hand, but if his hand is infinite, filling all space, then there will be no space for the remaining organs. Hence an infinite personality is absurd. If God is a principle, or the sum of all principles, man

100 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: must obey such principles as are expressed in his physical, spiritual, mental, or moral constitution. He can know, nor be held amenable to none other. He owes no obedience to any arbitrary authority. This inference is equally applicable to moral action, for man could not comprehend a moral principle better than a physical, unless expressed in his mental constitution. The nature of God, which has always formed a prominent feature in Christian ethics, has little interest in this discussion which relates not to God, but to man. Man's conception of God must grow out of himself, and be a part of himself. He can form no idea of a being of different qualities from himself. It is happy that theoretical views of the Deity do not necessarily affect the true system of morals. The grand foundations of Right and Justice have been slowly and painfully builded under innumerable forms of belief, and the moral sages of the world alike have bowed to the shrines of Ormuzd, Jupiter, Allah and Jehovah. The problem of man's Rights and Duties is solved by a study of man himself, and not by foreign revelation. Hence admitting any theory of the existence of God that may be advocated, it follows that an infinite good being, such as God must be, desires man, his crowning effort, to perfectly fill the sphere in which he has placed him. To do so, man must be true to the principles of his constitution, and this is the only obedience that can be required of him. FORGIVENESS AND PARDON FOR SIN. Out of this false idea of a personal God and man's relations to him, has grown the equally false dogmas of punishment and forgiveness. If God demanded obedience, he must have the means to enforce his commands. If man did not obey his artificial requirements, he must be punished, and a Hell and Devil furnished the ready means. If man disobeyed, and then through fear of the terrible consequences, or the influence of friends returned to his allegiance, he must be allowed to make his peace with God and be forgiven. He could, in this manner, escape the consequences of his sins. Terrible is the significance and humiliating to the student of history, of the words, "peace with God," "lost from God," "reconciled into God," " atonement," " salvation through the blood of the

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 101 lamb," "regeneration," an endless vocabulary, in which is fossilized ignorance, credulity, folly, selfishness, fear and rascality. To sin, vet escape the penalty and become reconciled with God, are even to-day important problems in theology, at which sixty thousand ministers in the United States alone, and probably three times that number in the Christian, and ten times that number in the Pagan world, are engaged. Many a scape-goat has been invented before and since the one allowed by the children of Israel to depart into the wilderness, bearing the sins of the whole people. The Devil is the prompter of evil with Christians, and receives the blame for the sins of the world. Yet as man is claimed to be free and act from choice, if Satan is the instigator his victims receive the punishment. In ancient times men sought to atone for sin by sacrifices. If they had committed a great sin they made an unusual sacrifice. All the nations of antiquity offered human beings on their altars on great occasions. The Hebrew was not an exception, as the story of Isaac proves. Whatever is most pleasing to man, must be to his God, and hence he sacrificed whatever gave him joy. The best, the first of the flock or the harvest, the most useful, were for the Gods. Some of the South Sea Islanders knock out a tooth ; others cut off a finger. The Dervish lashes his bared back until gory or hangs himself upon iron hooks. The Christian blots joy and pleasure out of his life as unworthy. His God demands faith, prayer and change of heart. Man is lost from God and only by faith in Christ can be redeemed. It is unquestionable that man is just as God created him, and that he acts just as God desires him to act. Else God is not omnipotent nor good. Being infinite and omnipresent, it is difficult to understand how we can become "lost" from him. It is not manly to pursue a sinful course for years and allow Christ to bear the punishment. His blood is as nothing to one noble act. If man cannot escape from sin, except in this manner, he is not worth saving. He in his best estate is a sneak and a coward. But is there an escape ? By faith and prayer ? There are fixed and unchangeable methods of action in the world,

102 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: and these are known as laws. If a man throw himself from a precipice, thus allowing gravitation to act unimpeded, will faith and prayer save him or prevent his being dashed on the rocks below ? If all the priests of Christendom stationed themselves on a railway track and should attempt to stop a train by simple prayer, their united voices would not have the weight of a single wave of a red flag. Prayer or faith will not prevent fire from burning, nor change in the least the order of the world. Moral sins may not be as tangible, but their influence and punishment are as certain. Slaughtered oxen, hecatombs of human victims, or ten thousand bleeding Christs will not atone for the least transgression of the laws of our being. An infinite God can and has made the world sufficiently well not to be compelled to be nailed to the cross as an atonement. As long as man is imperfect, he will not fully comply with the laws of his being, and will suffer, not punishment, but the result of his imperfect compliance. He need not expect pardon or forgiveness. The words are not known in nature or with God. The true redemption is not through the blood of Christna, of India; a pilgrimage to the shrine of Mohammed, or the efficacy of Christ's blood, but by compliance with the laws of the physical and spiritual worlds. Knowledge of these is the true Redeemer, the Savior of the world. To do right is a pass,port to heaven. Then, forgiveness is unnecessary, and no one will feel in doubt whether they are of the " elect." The doctrine of the atonement is a pleasing one for crime, which can pursue its terrible career and at the end lift its hands in prayer and have all its sins washed away ! Rarely is there a murderer who does not slip through the hangman's knot into heaven ! A religion which teaches that a man may enjoy the fruits of sin and crime and then escape all punishment by obtaining pardon through Jesus Christ, is verily a religion of rascality offering a premium on vice. First, then, it we ask, can sin be pardoned, we answer, !No; for there is no pardoning power in the universe. To pardon, is to set aside the consequences of the laws transgressed, and as laws are unchangeable, this is impossible. DUTY OF PRAYER. The savage, when over-awed by the elements, cries out

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 103 in terror to their invisible personification, and implores the Being he thus creates in fancy, to asuage his wrath. This is the beginning of prayer. For it is necessarily a personal God, capable of changing the laws of nature and the order of events, who hears and is changed in his purpose by the prayer that is offered. If he is not thus changed, if events follow a determined plan, prayer is useless. It is utterly impossible to appeal to an impersonal being, to a principle or combination of principles. Of the countless millions of prayers made by Buddhist, Mohammedan and Christian, there is nothing cognizant to human intelligence more certain than never one has been answered by a personal interference of any deity, or that any law of nature has been changed. This alone ought to silence forever the advocates of constant appeal to " the throne of grace." The duty of prayer depends entirely on the character of its objects. If an autocrat sits on the throne of the universe, overseeing and superintending the movement of everything, and has commanded us to pray, then it is our duty to do so. If, however, there be no such autocrat, and we have no command, there can be no such obligation. We cannot implore principles and laws. Gravitation would draw a saint over a precipice despite his prayers with the same energy it would a stone. There is not a religionist in the world who dare to prove the efficacy of piayer in the incontrovertible manner of such an appeal. To escape this unpleasant certainty, it is said, prayer does not affect the physical world, its province is the moral. This of course removes it where demonstration is far more difficult But it has been held, up to recent times, that prayer was efficacious in the material world. The Bible teaches it. The prayer of Joshua caused the sun and moon to stand still, and it is said that if one have faith, as large as a grain of mustard-seed, he might remove mountains with his prayers. The prayer of Jesus fed the multitude with five loaves and two fishes. Millions daily offer prayers, for like objects, expecting like results. The failure of tangible evidence has caused the withdrawal of this claim. It is now said that prayer, although it may not affect God, or change the order of nature, may react on the supplicant and thus become of great benefit. Prayer in time of mental or physical suffering, may confirm resignation,

104 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM I which by passive endurance of the inevitable, is one of the most praiseworthy traits of human nature from a religious stand-point. In this manner it is a source of strength. If God sends the chastening rod, it is not only folly, but sinful to repine. He expects no vain questioning of his goodness. To rebel, is a waste of strength ; to submit, is therefore a gain, and if the mind be actuated by a lofty idea, that we are under the special care of God, who, however hard he may chastise, will hold us from harm, we are strong as Hercules, and invincible by the pangs of suffering. To have this effect, it must proceed from belief. We must have faith or there will be no reaction. The child may receive pleasure in lisping to the unknown in which it trusts, and the savage feel that he is one with the great Spirit by his offerings of tobacco or game; they who have advanced beyond these early and mistaken ideas, can feel none of these emotions. They have no personality to which to appeal, and their knowledge of the inevitable action of causes, is not promotive of devotion. From a profound knowledge of nature we may have faith, confidence and perfect trust in the laws of the world, yet reverence we can not feel, for that implies personality. We cannot reverence impersonality, nor can we experience piety, which is based on reverence and love of the divine personality, and a desire to obey his wishes. These qualities are artificial creations, and are not included in our understanding of duties and obligations. Not that whatever is beautiful or beneficial in these traits is lost, but that they are refined, and directed to their proper objects. FAITH RESTING ON KNOWLEDGE. Faith the sheet anchor of religion, may be more firmly grounded on knowledge, than on ignorance, as the faith of a man is superior to that of a child. Sweet, indeed, is it for the worshiper to rest in the arms of implicit faith arising from utter ignorance. There is no need of the effort of thinking. No doubts assail, no antagonism of theories; no jar to shake the implicit trust. Out of this lethargy, to advance is to awake. To awake is to be torn with doubts. Before knowledge is gained skepticism rules; terrible rule. The circle is completed by a return to faith, this time based on the knowledge of the laws of the world. They never change, and are without shadow of turning. Implicitly

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 105 can we trust them, and again the happiness of rest is ours. What has been gained by this mighty cycle which has taken mankind several thousand years to accomplish, and through which every individual runs ? We are prepared for the comprehension of truth and the infinite life before us. We have become active entities instead of passive receptacles. NATURAL DUTIES. Man has natural Duties and Obligations, dependent on his constitution. Rights are overshadowed by Duties. First and at the foundation of all others is that of the preservation of the integrity of his physical body. That condition is known as health, when every organ performs its natural function in perfect harmony with all the others. It is a crime to be sick. The knowledge of the effects of food, of activity and rest, and the elements which environ us will in the future teach how health may be conserved. So intimately is the spiritual blended with the physical, that the inharmony of the latter effects the former, and although at times special advancement is made under most painful physical conditions, we may state it as a rule that spiritual culture, rests on the harmony of physical funcions. Hunger and thirst must be answered, and the wants of the body supplied before there is force for spiritual work. The preservation of health then is a cardinal duty, carrying the obligation not only of carefulness, but of the acquisition of a knowledge of the laws on which it depends. OP SPIRITUAL CULTURE. The object of life is the perfection of spirit; hence the constant effort to exalt the life and devote it to noble purposes, the rule of Love, over the lower faculties is an unceasing duty. The care of the body is not only for the body's self, but for the spirit. If it stop with the body it fails in the primary object of human life. The processes and methods of superior culture need not be specially mentioned here as they form the context of this entire work. DUTY OP CHILDREN. To the ministrations of love, the child owes obedience. For a time it reverts to the ancestral savage and is gov

106 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: erned by the same motives. Its intellect and morality are last to develop. It is ruled by impulse and emotion. It is presumable that its parents have outgrown this stage, and hence for the time their Reason and Conscience must guide the child. To these faculties the child owes obedience. It owes none to selfishness. It asks not for existence—which is determined by the parents, and as this should be for the child's own sake, the latter owes allegiance only to the love which shall minister to its highest welfare. The present status of parents and children has no bearing as evidence against this, perhaps so considered, Utopian view. The biblical scheme of force, of brute coercion by the rod, has been discarded by those who have grown into the atmosphere of love. If the child cannot be influenced by love, it cannot by fear. It may yield to force, but there will be no change of mental qualities which make yielding of value. If severity governs, it fosters revenge, hate, falsehood, and when the subjects escape they are either ruled by those faculties, or yield to uncontrolled license. As the parent treats the child, so will the child treat the parent in the after years, and when old age reverses their relations, abuse, contumely and scorn will repay the harsh word and the use of the merciless rod. If parents are abused by their children, they receive what they themselves have sown. DUTY OP PARENTS. The culture of an immortal germ, and shaping its being for infinite uses, is one of the most momentous undertakings possible to contemplate. The parents are creators, and their creation is the highest object in nature. Their influence for good or evil will extend into remote ages. The rule by severity lingers in its strong last citidal, the prisons, and the old plea is made of strength meeting strength ; forgetting that the smallest strand of Love is stronger than the combined forces of Nature. The old idea entertained by parents that the child must obey them whatever they commanded, should be discarded. The parent's right of command is not based on parentage, but on true superiority manifested in love. This is always obeyed, and obedience excites responding qualities in the child, as the rod used in anger, as it always is, excites anger, hate and revenge.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 107 The position of parent is self-imposed, and should be assumed with a full sense of its vast obligations. The belief that children came by special providence, and were bestowed by God in preordained numbers, has been a potent cause of conjugal sin and misery. They should have existence through parental desire, and thus the first duty of the welcome of love be assured to them. That mankind have continued to grow better and wiser under the past system, which has forced children into the world by unbridled passion; received them as distasteful burdens, and given them the least possible attention, shows the presistency of human nature. The child should be welcomed with love and its birthday held as a memorial. Its physical wants should be answered, and its spiritual growth cultured with unfaltering care. But, it is objected, this is fanciful, for how can the poor perform these offices, which even the wealthy fail to do f )r want of means! We answer, that this objection can not be urged against the principles we have stated. They cannot for a moment be doubted by any one. Their practical application depends on the political economist, and if society is in such a state that it cannot be just to its children, that state should be changed as soon as possible. It is not the number of children that gives strength to society, it is their perfection, and hence it is better to have one child thoroughly reared and cultured than the largest neglected family. DUTIES TO SOCIETY. These embrace a wide field, and are most diverse, and their statement in the light of true Spiritualism may seem Utopian. The present system of morals, if it may be called a system, practically is a system of selfishness. With rare exceptions the daily lives even of the most devoutly religious show that they are atheists at heart and without faith in a future life. They order their conduct after the advantages of to-day. If there were but one human being in the universe, that being might be an individual sovereign. There would be no reciprocal relations, for to him there could be no social or moral world. However strong the moral and social faculties might be, they could not be called into action, because

108 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: there would be nothing to excite them. This is the isolation, and dreary waste of individual sovereignty, and impossible state. The individual cannot exist alone, millions of others must be forced around him, with whom he comes in continuous contact. If he lose somewhat of his individuality he gains immeasurably by reciprocity. Without marriage he could know nothing of the joys of conjugal love; the union of heart, and purpose, of mind and body with another, or the refining, purifying power of such devotion. Without becoming a .parent, he would Dever know the happiness of caring for, and rearing children and the thousand joys they bring. He would remain cold, and emotionless, thinking only of his self. Paternity and maternity call the entire range of those high qualities we have designated as Love into action, and although at first they are directed to the offspring, under proper guidance they expand outward to society at large. Without society the net-work of reciprocal relationship which forms a large share of earthly experience would remain unknown. Hence the individual is bound with adamantine cords to society, which he can no more break than he can blot out his own existence. His interests compel him to become cognizant of the condition of all humanity even to the furtherest isles of the sea. He is conscious that his own status depends on that of all others, and when he elevates from crime or ignorance, a single hapless being, he elevates the temperature of the moral atmosphere of the world. At present these relations are coarsely determined, and concretely expressed by laws. They were more rudely expressed in the past Their execution is referred to brute force. This legal expression usually places the greatest stress of obligation on artifical requirements and ignores the great, underlying principles of social justice and morality, precisely in the same manner as religion places love of God first and love ot man second in importance. If we were to give the cause of the brutality of law, we should point to the fact that laws are fixed in comparison to growing humanity, and have descended from a savage past. Why they have not been ameliorated, is because the element of love has been excluded from legislation in the person of woman. Legislation because of this, is severe, and its logic is compulsion.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 109 The artificial requirements of legislation, of custom and public opinion are burdens often grievous to be borne, and so far from it being a duty to observe them when they conflict with justice, it is a most imperative duty to discard them. DUTY AS A SOURCE OF STRENGTH. Allegiance to Duty, is among the strongest motives which actuate the human breast. History teams with examples of high resolve, and self-sacrifice, and the adoration of succeeding ages. When Xerxes with the superb arm}- of Persia and allied hordes drawn from every province of his vast Empire, in all a million of men, marched on Greece, he considered the conquest of that little county, forming but a dot on the .map of his Empire, an easy task. He knew not the power of a single human soul fully imbued with the principles of justice, sense of honor and unfailing loyalty to duty. All his vast army drawn from the banks of the Oxus to the Ethopians beyond the confines of Egypt; from the iEgeanSea to remote India, gorgeous armor-clad Persians, lords of the realm, cotton-vested Indians, Assyrians with brazen helmets, painted Nubians; warriors seeking renown and delighting in carnage, rustics drawn from field and forest; Lycians armed with bows, Chaldeans with clubs, Sagartians with lasso and dagger, in solid phalanx with sword and spear; myriads on foot with escorts of clouds of Arabians on the fleet steeds and dromedaries of the desert; terrible engines for hurling masses of rocks with war-chariots from Babylon, Africa and India, all united and hurled in an avalanche of fury were not equal to the strength of one man encased in the armor of justice. The single arm of Leonidas, Sparta's noble King, arrested its course and shattered it in foam. He buckled on his armor and with a chosen band determined to die in the pass of Thermopylae, through which the Persians must pass in order to enter Greece. Xerxes hearing that a handful of men disputed his progress, in a rage ordered forward the advanced portion of his army, and saw them hurled like spray from the rocks. He ordered forward the ten thousand Immortals, as the flower of Persia's chivalry was called. Carnage raged without avail until betrayed and surrounded, the heroic band, worn with incessant struggle, sorely wounded and with broken spears and swords, sank

110 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: beneath the weight of the countless hosts of their assailants. They never murmured nor shrank from their post. The heroic soul of Leonidas, trained to feel that life was nothing if dishonored by falsehood to trust, bore the burden of duty. He imbued his followers with his spirit. When one was requested to bear a message home, he replied: " Our deeds will tell all Sparta wishes to know." Who conquered ? Every Greek was slain, but the Persians met defeat. Xerxes appalled by such heroism, inquired how many more such men there were in Greece, and was answered that Sparta alone had eight thousand who if occasion demanded, would do as Leonidas had done. The blood of that devoted band stained not the rocky pass in vain. The mountain became an altar, and all Greece saw its red stream, and smoke ascending to heaven. Her people became united as one soul, with garments purified by this baptism of blood, and Salamis and Marathon, were sacrifices of the barbarian hordes offered to the manes of the heroes of Thermopylae. The myriads of invaders were powerless before antagonists who knew no law but of honor, and justice; no allegiance, but to the demands of duty ; no result but victory. One great soul comprehending, and unselfishly devoted to its duty is stronger than the combined forces of the world. CHAPTER XI. DUTY AND OBLIGATIONS OF SOCIETY. Nature is a remorseless strife of all against all; a pitiless struggle to annihilate competitors. Selfishness and the passions are the motives of action. This terrible struggle for existence by which the stronger dominate over the weak, is the Darwinian theory of ascent, and has been carried into history by his school, and made even an apology for cruelty, selfishness, and heartless disregard of consequences to the suffering individual. It is forgotten that when we reach the plane of humanity, a new and distinct

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. Ill element enters into the problem. The intellectual and moral nature of man is opposed to this antagonism. Such is the momentum it has acquired, it is not checked by a single effort. These faculties began their growth and have expanded in the midst of this struggle, until they have become controlling influences. The animal man may be impelled by animal forces, but the spiritual man, is governed bv a higher code. It is no longer burly strength and rude selfishness; it is the gentle power of fostering love. The weak are no longer trodden under foot, the unfortunate pressed to the wall, asylums and hospitals, are initial expressions of this grand love and benevolence which slowly is taking the place of force. There was a time when man existed in the wilds of the primitive world, an individual sovereign. What his condition then was, we may learn from the savage people who are nearly as low as he was then; such as the Australians, the Bosjesman, and the forest tribes of Borneo, although none of these reach the depth of savageness of this autocrat of the forest. The branches of the trees furnished protection from wild beasts and from the storm, or a more secure refuge was sought in the clefts of the rocks. Man was alone. He lived exclusively for himself, like the animals on which he preyed or which preyed on him, he had no thoughts beyond the gratification of his animal instincts. The history of civilization is the narrative of the progress from this estate. The problem it presents is this : — " Given a brute, how shall brutality be eliminated and the divinely human evolved?" THAT PRE-HISTORIC MAN stands before us brawny, sinewy, with shaggy, unkempt locks, and scraggy eyebrows, from beneath which gleams black and sunken eyes, with cunning, shrewdness, treachery. The jaws are furnished with prominent teeth, covered with coarse sensual lips ; the nose is arched and prominent. Over his shoulders is thrown the skin of some wild beast, a club formed from a broken branch or a stone is his weapon of offense and defense. He is too selfish to be gregarious. He is a hermit in the wilds of the primeval world. His hand is against every other, and every other is against him. There are no tribes. He even shuns the ties of family. The mother clings to

112 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: her offspring until it is able to care for itself, and then the ties are broken never to be renewed. Such is the startling picture drawn by those who have explored the evidences of man's primitive history, passing downward through the lake deposits of Switzerland, which stands on the borders of historic time, into the beds of drift gravel, where the only vestiges remain to prove man existed in the days preceding the glacial epoch, a contemporary of the mastodon, at a time when Europe was a tropic clime inhabited by the lion, tiger, rhinoceros, and the elephant, and the flakes of flint so rude as to have passed, as natural fractures, washed from an older formation. Out of the wreck of this forgotten world, whose existence no one dreamed of fifty years ago, fragments of bone and broken skulls show the low estate of our ancestral man. How vast the interval between that time and his first appearance on the highlands of Asia in a vaguely defined historic character ! DAWN OF CIVILIZATION. The revelations of geology are here met by tradition. In the dawn we perceive the form of Chaldean civilizaiion, and beyond that, misty in outline, colossal in half-defined magnitude, older empires which arose and sank in the interminable waves of time. But the theological record, by no means touches the historic. Countless ages intervene which the fancy aided by the study of savage people, can not even outline. There is the prognathous skull of the drift, far from the lowest, for the ages have swept away all trace of numberless preceding races, itself indicative of great advancement. It is thick, marked with great knobs and ridges for the attachment of strong muscles. It is low browed, broad through the base, extended backward, drawn out forward into massive jaws. Then there is an impenetrable night. No footprint on the shore of the ages, no carved stone, no fossil bone, no record in brazen metal, nothing but silence and darkness, until suddenly in the gloomy twilight, numberless ages thereafter we see looming in the mists on the plains of Assyria, empires of colossal proportions, with their walled cities, their written languages, their vast armies, from which comes the neighing of steeds and the roar of chariots.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 113 That interval was filled with pain and struggle. The inherent principles of growth forced itself through the darkness of that night. It seized upon every advantage, and the strong came forward in the dreadful struggle for existence. There was the individual, alone, a hermit, skin clad, defenseless, except by his club. Around him the wilderness, filled with savage beasts, and what he most feared, men savage like himself. What were his family relations? If we pass to Australia we shall find a similar estate of savage life, a fossil remaining for our inspection. The Australian selects a hollow tree for his house and goes out to seek a mate. He prowls through the forest like a beast of prey. If he chance to meet a female, his courtship is of short duration. It is unmarked with the gentle amenites of civilized life. He stealthily approaches her, knocks her down with a club, and drags her to his rude retreat. This is the beginning of marriage, of the family, of the state. It will be perceived that should '.the affections become sufficiently strengthened to hold the family together, an incipient tribe would be founded, and deriving strength from mutual protection, they would possess great advantages over solitary individuals. GOVERNMENT RESTS ON THE FAMILY. It is said that governments all rest on the family, and truly the family is the origin and foundation, the centre of departure of the social fabric. I do not propose to sketch this progress, which of itself would require volumes, and I only introduce it to show the origin of that bundle of customs, beliefs, usuages and attainments, which we call society. I wish to introduce my discourse in this manner, that a reason may be given for the stand-point I occupy, regarding man as an evolution from the lower world of life, and society as a higher evolution in the domain of the human mind, instead of a degraded being from a more perfect state, and the customs of society as foreign, foisted upon him. This evolution is subject to fixed and unchangeable conditions. Diverse as the phenomena presented by society, seemingly conflicting and uncertain as are its individual phenomena, we are assured by those who have studied the

114 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: perplexing diversity, that births and deaths, the phases of crime, the occupations of people, the intensity of their thought, their character is governed by unchanging laws. The whole social fabric is bound together with bonds no individual can break. Here is forced upon our attention the primary problem which law in the beginning attempted to define, from which has grown all legal enactments, and which forms the basis of history. RIGHTS OP SOCIETY AND THE INDIVIDUAL. This problem is to determine where the sphere and rights of the individual leave, and those of society begin. Here is the battle field of human rights, on which the combatants have fought with varying fortune since society began. The individual has been slowly and surely gaining on society, sometimes victorious and plunging into anarchy, sometimes defeated and made a slave. The understanding correctly of the obligations of society to the individual, or the opposite, the obligations of the individual to society, is the solution of this interminable problem. The primeval man as an individual sovereign, owed allegiance to no one; he depended on himself. It is true his life was not complicated, a simple matter of eating and breathing, in which he was left alone. With the family, the tribe, the nation, and the acquisition of property, came the conflicting rights of the clan over its individual members. The latter were compelled to surrender more or less of their individual liberty for the good of all. In those ages of war, when might constituted right, the conqueror was ruler. The individual became nothing; the state, the rulers, everything. The effects of this condition still remain in all the nations of the old world. The government, be it an Emperor, a King, a Monarchy, is absolute over the individual. AMERICAN SOLUTION OP THE PROBLEM. In America, we consider this order changed, and our boast is that the government flows from the consent of the governed, and is an expression of their will. Yet we can not change what has been inwrought by the ages, with a word. Revolutions are not the work of a day, but of cen

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 115 turics. If the active force of coercion has ceased, there is a force still stronger and more subtile brought to bear, that of public opinion. They who advocate the sovereignty of the individual overlook, or too lightly estimate the bonds which unite society since the time that the family held itself together, because it derived great advantage in the struggle for existence; by so doing new obligations were assumed, and as the welfare of all depended on the actions of each one, they became interested in the welfare of each of its members. Society was organized laws framed to define these various and conflicting rights, constantly becoming more and more complex as new interests were involved, until the present time, when the best metaphysicians are led astray in thsir attempts to reconcile the conflicting claims. FABLE OF THE WHEEL. There has supervened such a perfect mutual dependence, society has become so thoroughly blended and unitized, that the whole body is intensely sensitive to the disturbance of its individual members. The depression of one trade, for instance, affects many others. One occupation cannot suffer without all others feeling it more or less. The most insignificant pursuit has its own field and is woven by golden threads into the most extensive. No one can withdraw without damage to the others. Such is this close connection, reminding, one of the fable of the coach-wheel, the parts of which got into dispute as the coach was descending a mountain, which was the most essential ; the hub claiming that It was the central pivot, the spokes that they gave it extent, the felloes that they gave circumference, and the tire that it bound all together. When they waxed warm in argument, the linch-pin cried out, it was overlooked, " Ah, my little fellow, what are you good for ?" they all cried. " Well, I'll show you, for I will drop out and we will see what will become of you." So it dropped out, the wheel came off, and the coach dashed over a precipice. Those who would centralize government and grant it control over everything, argue after this fashion : The individual is a brick in the edifice, and lives not for himself but for that edifice.

116 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: THE TENDENCY OP CIVILIZATION has been to place greater and greater safeguards around the rights of the individual, assuring him safety of person and property, and freedom of thought. To do this is the essential function of government. It guards the individual from encroachments, giving him liberty to do as he pleases at his own cost, so far as he does not interfere with similar rights of others. In the United States it has been held as a maxim, that the best government was that which governed least ; in other words, which allowed the greatest liberty to the individual and the minimum of control to itself. Our theory of government is that the individuals composing it unite for the purpose of mutual aid and protection. This end is best accomplished by allowing each individual his own chosen sphere of activity, and bestowing on the general government the power to compel their members to grant the same liberty they demand for themselves. If they will not confine themselves to their own spheres and trespass on the rights of others, the government must carry out the will of its component members, and restrain the offender. In no other case, can it rightly deprive any of its members of liberty, and it can do this only because the individual has shown himself incapable of governing himself. In such cases the object should not be vengeance or punishment, but reform, and in this light our present prison system is a blot on the fair face of our civilization. We do not reform, we punish. The government promises protection to its citizens from the criminal class, and most justly removes the right from the individual to become his own avenger. Having done this, it is obligatory on it to render the detection of crime certain, justice unflinching, and provide such conditions for the offender as will tend to his reformation, instead of plunging him deeper in crime. The sentencing of criminals for a fixed term, to emerge at its termination to resume their career of crime, is a farce. A man commits robbery, and is sentenced for a certain time, does the judge or any one else expect he will issue from his cell at the end of that time a better man, or less a rascal ? No ! It is not even so stated. It is so many years punishment, having received which, the debt of justice is canceled. If a man will injure others, he should be confined where

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 117 lie cannot do so, and surrounded by the best educational influences, and not allowed freedom until it is apparent he has met with a reformation. EDUCATION. As education lies at the basis of progress, it is of vital importance that every individual become educated. This is a matter in which all are equally interested, and it becomes obligatory on the State, to assume its control. As the government discards religious influences, that education must be strictly secular, and whenever it is otherwise, the government transcends its just powers. Experience has taught that it is cheaper to educate the children than to punish the criminals, but half the potency of that training is lost, if accompanied with sectarian bias. The Protestants at the reformation opened wide the doors of learning, and have never been able to close them. The Catholics recognize its value, but govern the school by the church, and dictate what shall and what shall not be taught, Human foresight and reason is good enough in the priest but cannot be trusted in the layman, a logic only correct by bestowing on the priest peculiar qualities by virtue of his office. It is of incalculable value to all that education should be universal; as this is the only safeguard against decay and degradation, it becomes obligatory on society to open free schools, at which all can receive the benefit of instruction. It is essential therefore that sectarianism under none of its insidious forms, shall be taught, for then the State enters the province of individual beliefs. Its course of instruction should be exclusively confined to the facts of science, and demonstrated knowledge. The question at present forcing itself on public attention, of compelling attendance at the public schools, here claims a hearing. There is no doubt but the issue was first broached by the Catholics, in the hope of breaking down our present system, nor can it be gainsaid that if free schools be founded for the purpose of educating all alike, and especially for the wants of those who cannot provide for themselves, the object is defeated if these do not attend, and in practice those who need instruction the most, and by whose attendance society would be most benefited, are the ones who stay away. It is not the concern of society where an individual ob

118 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: tains his education; it is concerned only in its being obtained. Hence it may consistently require every child at a certain age to pass examination in prescribed branches of knowledge; as at fourteen to be able to read, write and pas3 creditably iu arithmetic, grammar and geography, and hold the parents or guardians responsible. It is true the rights of society here closely tread on those of the individual, and there is no more tender point than the rights of a parent over his child. But the parent has no right to allow his child to become a burden to the society which must receive him, if he can avoid so doing, and hence if he will not educate it himself, he must be compelled to do so. FAMILY BELATIONS. In this field lie all the family relations, out of which society itself originally sprang, and which it seeks to support. When society attempts the regulation of marriage, it deals with the most subtle and complex relations of human beings. The reactionary element demands freedom in this relation, claiming it to be a contract entered into by two parties, and should be as readily canceled by the consent of the parties. They overlook the fundamental principle involved which distinguishes marriage from all other contracts. In the latter, if broken, reparation can be made ; the damages can be estimated in dollars, and the obligation canceled. In the former, each party changes even the form of their lives, under the inducement of the pledges of the other. The union is valuable because it is expected to be permanent. If these pledges be broken there can be no reparation. Furthermore, unlike other contracts, it looks forward to a third party or parties, as much or more deeply affected as the principals. It is for the protection of these, and the rights of the individuals themselves, that society is under the obligation to interfere. Its own rights are also involved. Experience has shown that civilization and purest morality are cultivated best by the family. Around the hearth cluster the beatitudes of love, friendship, and lofty aspiration. Monogamic marriage purifies and ennobles, and by it the parents are compelled to bear the burdens they assume when they enter that relation. The duty of the parent plainly is to care for and educate his children, and only when he fails to do so un

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 119 der the pressure of circumstances lie cannot control, is he justified in casting his burden on society. As this contingency may arise at any time, society in self-defense is obliged to surround the family institution with such restrictions as experience has taught essential to the best interests of the individual and the State. The mistake committed, which renders the objections of innovators plausible, is placing man and woman in an unequal relation before the law, a remnant of barbarism ; of marriage by the dub, as illustrated by the Australian, and the creation by public opinion, another relic of an early age, of a different code of morality for man than woman. CENTRALIZATION. Against the general tendency towards individualization, recently there has set a counter current in favor of centralization. It was introduced by the war, and presses itself continually into notice. It would place all the railroads, telegraphs, canals, banks, etc., in the hands of the general government, which expresses society in its most concrete form. This centralization if correct in principle, should not rest here, but embrace all great manufacturing interests, and that engine of power — the press. Then society would be everything; with such an immense patronage, a popular election would be impossible, and we should have a tyranny to which the monarchies of Europe would be liberty itself. REMNANT OP THE OLD IDEA. The old idea that the government should direct the individual, is a constant bane. We have men who should know better, constantly saying that the government should do this or that, charging it as the cause of hard times, panics, strikes and corruption, when should the government act on such suggestions, it would become a despicably tyranny. A representative government cannot be better than the aggregate of its component members. It can not become corrupt, if these be pure. If rascals as a rule obtain office, it is because of a rascally constituency. Government has no right to do what individual enterprise can do better. Its province is to protect such individuals in their enterprises, and open wide the door of competition, by forbidding monopoly. In matters of conscience, in religion, when nothing can

120 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: be demonstrated, and each individual is proportionally tenacious of his opinion, it is obligatory on the State to allow absolute liberty; guaranteeing all in their rights and forbidding interference of opposing beliefs. Because certain beliefs honestly held, are opposed to those popularly accepted, or because they may be deemed immoral, does not justify interference. Everyone must be his own judge in this matter. Take for instance the ordinance of Sunday. It is well to rest one day in seven, and on physiological grounds the custom of its observance is a good one. In order to yield its full benefit it must be general, that the labors of one may not compel that of another. Yet to make it a sacred day, and by legal enactment compel every one to observe it, transcends the sphere of the State. The individual is the best judge of his own actions on observing that day, and his methods. In the days of the Puritans, who strove as thoroughly as they could to chase pleasure and joy out of the world, every other place of resort was closed, that there might be no excuse from the church. It has taken two hundred years to outgrow that bias, and yet the museums and public libraries refuse to open their doors on the only day the laboring people can enjoy them. THE DANGER. The great danger which now threatens the liberties of this country is the insidious attack on the constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience. The evangelical party who are engaged in this bigoted movement, unknowingly join hands with the Catholics they detest, and together form a strong force, which the utmost might of liberalism will find it difficult to stay. This movement has the destruction of the common schools at heart, and with them perish civil liberty. True government is that which allows the individual the utmost freedom, and exercises that power which is necessary to guarantee this freedom, and execute those measures which society as a whole can better perform than the individual. The obligations of society end here, and the sphere of the individual begins.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 121 CHAPTER XII. RIGHTS OP GOVERNMENT The rights of government are based on eternal justice. If it be said it rests on the consent of the governed, then this must mean that the governed consent to the requirements of justice; if on the will of the majority, then that it is presumable the majority comprehend justice better than the minority. But the minority may be in the right, and there may be such an occurrence as a single man standing on justice opposed to a whole realm. It is not correct to say government is based on the free consent of the governed, for it is not, more than the right of Reason and Conscience to control the mind rests on the consent of the lower faculties. Those who make repressive laws necessary, and are controlled by them, never have consented to such laws and would not had they been given the choice. The entire criminal class rebel against government, and would annul all repressive laws, so far as they are concerned. That such government exists is because a large proportion of the community have so decided, and their decision is directly against the wishes of the class they seek to govern. It is the same under all forms of government, autocratic or extreme republicanism ; for in the latter the majority force obedience on the minority. In a society where the criminal class were in majority, repressive laws might be enacted, as a homage of vice to virtue, but they could not be enforced. The criminal majority would bid defiance to legal control. Hence the laws as the expression of a few wise and good men, may be far better than the society, they are, however, powerless unless their execution is in the hands of efficient power, which cannot exist in a republican government unless a majority are on the side of virtue. In fact, until this be the case, a republic cannot exist. A free government can not maintain itself unless a strong majority of its individuals are able to govern themselves. Until this stage is reached, autocracy and monarchy, are the only rule capable of holding, with strong hand, in necessary restraint, the dominant vicious element, and thus giving protection to the weaker portion.

122 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: The worst form of tyranny, although itself given over to propensities, depends for its existence on the observance of the higher laws by those it governs. The tyrant may hold himself amenable to no law but his desires, but the people are controlled by laws fixed by the wisest of the realm. If the tyrant introduces his own vices into his government, his reign is brief. It is this fact which has made monarchy an essential means of progress. However, it may have failed, as a whole it has followed the course expressed in the law of the higher governing the lower. It has attempted to enforce right, with might, in a rude, coarse fashion, and because it has done so, it has had the right to rule. The freest republicanism attempts the same. Society has advanced so far that a sufficient number of its members have acquired the power of selfgovernment. The monarch is replaced by the majority. The right of government rests on the necessity of restraint, which makes any government for a savage or half-civilized societey better than none, and the purpose to compel obedience of the lower to the higher faculties ; of selfishness, to benevolence; of hate to love; of individuality to patriotism ; of animality to morality. It will thus become evident that all governments from tyranny to republicanism rest on the same foundation. Tyranny or absolute monarchy is the first step out of barbarism, and becoming more and more limited prepares the way for republicanism. The former will exist until the preparation is gained. When the majority in the latter form of government, temporarily advocate injustice as is sometimes the case, it becomes one of the most arbitrary forms of tyranny. CHAPTER XIII. DUTIES OP SOCIETY TO CRIMINALS. True government is the concrete expression of the will of society; practicallv based on the free consent of the majority. If we ask why it is established at such sacrifice and cost to the individual, there is one answer, and only one, for protection. It guarantees the protection of life, liberty and property. This is the principle end of free

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 123 government, by the people and for the people. If it exceeds this sphere, and grasps the rights or the property of the individual, it is robbery. If it fails to give protection it is illegitimate. If it is made an object of itself, it becomes dangerous, and one step removed from tyranny. A true republican government, is the expressed will of the governed; and its every provision must be for the good of the whole. As government means restraint, we shall find that this restraint rests on those who do not control themselves, society is compelled to protect itself against the appetites and propensities of its members who do not or cannot restrain themselves. Were all governed by morality and knowledge, repressing laws were unnecessary. A complicated portion of the machinery of government, is set in motion for protection against fraud, rascality and crime. It has been in operation since immemorial time. Under whatever form of government, tyranny, monarchy, theocracy, or republican, almost the same identical code has been accepted. The individual who has broken the law, has been dealt with an iron hand. The way of the transgressor has been hard. The Mosaic code, of an " eye for an eye," flourishes even to the present day, despite that Christianity claims to be founded on charity and love. Jesus taught if a man strike you on one cheek, turn the other also, but Moses taught, and the law retains. If a man strike you, strike him back as hard as you can. Our criminal laws are founded on Moses and not on Christ, Theology is to blams for their cruelty, and the injustice they work, by the false doctrine it has taught, that man being a " free agent," sinned from choice, and must be punished, and punished eternally. As the sin was in the will, that must be broken, and the sentence of the law was vengeance. When it speaks of Justice even, it is vengeance, not justice that is implied. The law to-day depends on force in the same manner it did in Moses' time. It is backed with jails, state prisons, penitentiaries, dungeons and gibbets. There has been no change in its spirit. This must all be changed. Fear may prevent, it never reformed. It has held undivided sway and the result is not flattering. Men rob and are false and murder under the very shadow of the scaffold. Hanging is a sacrilegious mockery, which serves to make lite cheap, and to erect

124 TELE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: new gibbets. Society is protected imperfectly, both in life and property. The prisons overflow, ani daily the gallows stretches its gaunt arm, and only a few raise their voices, that this is not the best possible method of disposing of human beings! There is a criminal class. They are human, but unfortunately constituted. They cannot be trusted. They encroach on the rights of others, and thus show that the}' are dangerous to allow at large. Whenever one of these commits a crime, he is seized by the law, and sentenced for a fixed term of years at hard labor in the penitentiary. The judge grades the time to deal justly, that is to administer the proper punishment! But why do we punish? Is it for the good of the individual, or society ? Nature never punishes for the sake of punishment. To do so is the height of cruelty and folly. It cannot change the results of the crime, and at most can only by fear prevent its recurrance. The unfortunate criminal remains the same, or is made worse. He expiates his offence and is then free. He was at first a dangerous individual to trust at large, he has become still more dangerous. He was systematically brutalized. His hair was cropped, his clothes changed for prison stripes, he was compelled to labor for others, his diet reminding him of his ignominous position, cut ofl from all news from the world, literally buried alive. This has not tended to reform him. Now he is again free the mark of Cain is on his brow. He goes into the world, moneyless, friendless, characterless, unless it be with an evil repute. No one will employ him, he must steal or starve. He may go forth with high resolve, but it will be blown away by the rude contact with heartless life, and in desperation another crime will blacken the dark annals, and again punishment will avenge injured rights. The law and the theology on which it rests have no faith in man, nor belief in his immortality. Is he an immortal being, with the grand and infinite possibilities which form the horizon of such a being; his earth-life one of growth and reform from the bondage of desires, or a vicious brute to be hung or branded with infamy to deter other brutes from like cause ? If anything is self-evident, it is that this system has completely failed, as appeals to the lower nature always must, for in their spirit they degrade instead of elevate.

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 125 If there is any law of moral duty written in letters of light, 30 that he who runs may read, it is the obligation we owe to the unfortunate, and the undeveloped. Picture to ourselves a pure and loving angel in the judicial chair, sentencing a wretched being to prison or the gallows! The picture would be branded as a falsehood. We anticipate the estate of the angel; to become as pure and loving we feel is our birth-right. Is not that which every instinct revolts against referring to the angel equally abhorent when practiced by ourselves ? Do not say this is idle sentimentalism. We advocate the most practical system, which will give certain results of the highest order. We by no means would allow the criminal the freedom which he forfeits by his disregard of the rights of others. He is incapable of self-control, he must be controlled. How? By temporary imprisonment and compulsion to work for others? By binding with infamy? Rather by confinement so that he cannot injure others, and intellectual and moral education. This confinement not to be a definite punishment for a certain crime, but the crime indicating incapacity of control, he is to remain until he gives assurance of being able to govern himself, be that time one year or a life-time. Under the present system, when a convict emerges from the gate of the penitentiary, does any one claim that he is reformed ? Is it not known that with rare exceptions the punishment has hardened him in crime, and he is more dangerous than before? Why should he be reformed, when there has not been the least effort made to reform him ? Deprived of books, of papers, of conversation even with his fellows, often confined in a solitary cell, how is it possible for the higher faculties to gain that activity which alone can assure him a better life? There are asylums in which the blind, by patient instruction learn difficult arts, and to read with their delicate sense of touch. There are others where humane men learn the deaf mute to converse by signs, and thus unbind the fetters of the struggling spirit. And others yet undertake the almost hopeless task of instructing the idiotic, and are rewarded by seeing the dormant intellect quicken and gleam with the inspiration of thought. Numberless asylums for the insane are conducted, without stint of cost, that reason dethroned may again assert

126 TIIE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: her rule. Is the case of the criminal more hopeless ? Why treat him with such vindictive hate ? He, too, is capable of culture, and in a far superior measure to any of the others. His is a species of moral idiocy and insanity, requiring the same benevolent training, and loving charity. The prison should not be a rack of torture, but a school of reform. By this means life and property would be far more secure than at present, for at least one-half the crimes are committed by those who have been set at liberty from our prisons. The portion of life these convicts spend outside the prison walls is brief compared to that which they are incarcerated. Nor would the prisons be more overcrowded, for those who were sent out would not return, and the influence of the whole system would be to lessen crime. GOVERNMENT SHOULD GIVE ASSURANCE. If government attempt, as it does, to assure protection, let it make its assurance good. Now if a robbery is committed, the robber is convicted and sentenced, but government attempts no restitution of the lost property. It taxes the loser for protection and grants none. Justice demands such restitution, and that the government look to the robber for its rendition. He should be employed and the proceeds of his labor used to make good the amount he appropriated. The last crime we have to consider is the capital offense, which has been unflinchingly punished with death. While we maintain that society has the right to employ such means as is necessary to protect itself, we hold that it cannot justly resort to severest means when others will answer the same purpose. By capital punishment it ignores the sacredness of human life, the very offense it strives to punish. It does not lessen crime, and hence can not plead intimidation. As conducted in the jail yard, with priestly confessors it is a ghastly farce little removed from a brutal butchery. The sacredness of human life should be upheld firmly that even the murderer should not forfeit it. He should lose his liberty, and safety may demand the forfeit perpetual. If the death penalty is for the purpose of vengeance, or if it is for intimidation, hanging is too mild a form of execution. The most terrible tortures and excruciating meth

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 127 ods should be used so as to appal the stoutest heart. This was done in olden times, and resulted in stimulating instead of frightening. Crime grew out of the punishment of crime. In those States that have abolished capital punishment, crime has decreased. These, however, have not gone far enough. They have only reached what may be called a passive stage, which simply places the criminal where he can do no harm, and do not trouble themselves with his culture. The priest is their reliance to work a change of heart, which when pronounced, is practically denied by the fastened bolts of the prisoner's door. Humanity can know but one duty in the premises. It may shrink from it now but the future is full of promise. Even the murderer, is immortal and sometime, will begin an advancement which shall culminate in angelic excellence. The Laws of the universe work out their own purpose. We need not trouble ourselves to avenge their transgression. We can with justice protect ourselves, and in doing so work directly in their channel. CHAPTER XIV. THE DUTY OP SELF-CULTURE. It is said the chief end of man is "To glorify God and enjoy him." To glorify God is his paramount duty, which absorbed all others. There is a duty which precedes this, however, or else is the same expressed in different words, and that is to glorify himself. By glorify we mean the glory of a noble well spent life. If man lives not for this end, his life is aimless and profitless. The necessity of education is felt by all who have thought on the subject. The free school where all can receive the rudiments of knowledge, are justly regarded as the bulwark of liberty, yet there is a broad difference between the learning of the schools and the true culture most desirable. Statistics show that the criminal class are not all unlearned, and some of the most flagrant are thoroughly educated so far as the schools go. Learning to read, to write, to read foreign tongues, or becoming adept in science, may leave the mind beyond these acquirements, a barren waste. What

128 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: is usually considered as an education is only the means whereby an education may be acquired. Even the collegiate course is rudimentary and when finished, the graduate is no more than poorly prepared with means whereby he may become truly educated. To say of such that they are educated, is like calling one an artist, because he has the materials with which to paint a picture, or chisel a statue. He has the means but it rests with himself how he uses them ; whether he produces a daub or a Raphael, a grotesque caricature, or an Apollo Belvidere. The parrot learning of the schools, which takes no deep root in the mind, may be used, and more frequently is, by the lower as well as by the higher nature. Then we see the anomally of learning making men worse instead of better. This shows the necessity of a radical change in our educational methods and the ideas on which they are founded. Man was not created for the exclusive development of any one faculty. If he ignores this fact he becomes onesided, deformed and dwarfed. Education should embrace the entire circle of human capabilities, and if it falls short of this it is proportionally defective. The ordinary routine of the schools ignores the body. The student graduates with enfeebled health, and thus in getting knowledge, has destroyed the means, by which it can be made practical and effective. On the other hand, the laborer by unremitting physical toil almost entirely ignores mental and moral culture. The result of this onesided activity may be seen in the deformed characters everywhere to be met with. PHYSICAL CULTURE. As the body is the instrument whereby the spirit expresses itself, its perfect development is important not only to earthly existence, but the best spiritual well-being. Health is the greatest good to the body. It is the harmonious activity of all its organs, performing all their functions each in its sphere. Disease is the reverse of this, and comes not as a punishment, but as a result. As soon as the mind perceives the organic laws of the body, morality reaches down to their observance. There are instances where the mind seemingly has arisen above physical limitations, and while disease has slowly destroyed the body, it has shone bright and clear as a star ; yet these are exceptional cases. Disease weakens phys

A SYSTEM OF MOliAL PHILOSOPHY. 129 ical power, and suppresses spiritual energy. The spirit at best has a heavy weight to carry, and would be so much the better by casting it aside. As long as it remains in the body it is subject to its limitations. The body is an instrument perfectly adapted to bring it in contact with, and give it control over matter, but may become through disease a clog to the eagle, and bind its pinions to the earth. To preserve the health, should be the first effort. Everything detrimental to it should be regarded as only a step removed from immorality. This subject falls under the law of the Appetites, as already discussed. They should each be gratified within the limitation of their sphere, and the moment any one of these transcends its sphere, suffering and disease result. We would not be understood as teaching that health requires extra physical development, which may be carried to an extreme, and defeat entirely its purpose. The muscles of the gymnast are too often enlarged at the expense of his mind. Muscles half as strong may be quite as healthy. The child should be taught, first of all, that labor is not only noble and honorable, but a duty. That as everything is created by labor, he must be too magnanimous to live by the toil of others. It must be instilled into the mind that it is as noble to plow, and sow, as to pull the oar; to swing the sledge, as the dumb-bells. The body as the temple of the spirit should be regarded as holy and too sacred to be desecrated by any vile habits. The man who thus regards his earthly temple, will not dare defile its purity. He will regard it as an obligation to maintain its functions to the utmost of his power. Disease must not be regarded as a punishment. It is an inevitable consequence, not inflicted as a retribution. While many of its causes inhere with the body, the great proportion are of the mind. When properly directed the will can rise above, and entirely cast them off. This is the right method of treatment. The remedy should be applied to the mind in most cases where now only the body is regarded. The Will can possess a far greater control over the body than it does at present Instances are recorded where individuals could arrest the circulation, and the pulsations of the heart, and restore the same by their Wills. These

130 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: extreme cases show what is possible for all. From the control of the excretions and secretions, is scarcely a step to molecular changes in the tissue itself, on which health and disease depend. It is possible for the Will to become so strong as to dominate over the body and control its activities. This is the new medical science of the future, when drugs will be regarded as the coarse expedients of a rude age. As the spirit constantly gains power over the body from generation to generation, there can be no limits set except where it gains perfect control. That this is possible is shown by the degrees of Will and instances of its triumph. The martyr smiles on burning coals, and feels not the tortures which rend the limbs asunder. There is that state of spirit ecstacy, of freedom and triumph, which changes physical pain to spiritual pleasure. When such control is gained and directed by the knowledge which finally will be its accompaniment, the body will no longer be a fetter to the spirit. It will be built up beautiful and perfect, and the most poisonous substances — the venomous fang and sting, the malarious atmosphere, the changes of temperature, all forms of disease will be harmless against the strongest force in nature, the human Will. Such is the perfection of physical culture, when the body is under absolute control of the Will. How imperfectly it is at present, our educational methods show. The child in learning to walk, is taking its first lessons in Will over its limbs. Its eflort to speak, is a struggle of the Will to control the tongue. In learning to write, the ideal forms of the letters are in the mind, the difficulty is to move the fingers correctly. The same is true in music, to execute which excellently, training must begin early and be continued for a life-time. And yet after all this practice the Will never gains perfect control. Even in walking and speaking this is quite apparent. The efforts of the elocutionist shows how great an improvement can be made in speech, what fine tones and subtile distinctions may be produced, yet this is only a prophecy of what is possible. The dancer shows what command the Will can gain over the feet,, and the skilled penman and artist what it can gain over the hand. That it has not similar mastery over other organs and

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 131 functions, is because it has not been educated in their directions. It is thus apparent that education begins with the body, which must be preserved in health, the equivalent of purity. We must feel that it is a sacred shrine wherein the immortal spirit resides during its earth-life, and by which it is brought in contact with and is able to control the material world, and should disdain to do any act which shall deform or defeat its usefulness. The ascetics taught that the body was inherently sinful, and the best efforts of the spirit were to free itself entirely from its trammels. They had a ray of truth. Not the body, but its diseased condition, as a reflex of an unhappy spirit condition; the want ot proper control, inclines to wrong, rather than right. CULTURE OP THE INTELLECT. The possession of mind by man imposes the obligation of its culture. He must not only think, but think aright. Observation of phenomena is the food of the intellect, which digested appears in ideas. Of the methods of culture a wide diversity of opinion prevails. This, however, may be held as true, the Intellect is benefited in proportion as it assimilates its food. Collegiate cramming is the antipode of education. It is the learning of the parrot, and not of the man. What the Intellect is capable of achieving is shown by the attainments of those who have led in the discoveries of science and art. Newton shows what all may become in mathematics; Herschellin astronomy; Humboldt in the sciences, and assured that what is possible for them is possible for every human being, we open an interminable field for culture; for the individual sciences it maybe better that each have specialists, but for the specialists it is a sacrifice of completeness, and dwarfing of their minds except in certain directions. Ignorance is a sin, if not the greatest, for it is the prolific source of crime, bigotry, superstition and vice. THE CULTURE OP MORALITY. The morals are the highest faculties of the mind. Without them, Intellect becomes the ally of the Appetites and Propensities. The sense of right, justice, benevolence, unselfish love which is benevolence, all are included in this

132 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: group. Its culture is of highest importance as by it man approaches the perfection of his ideal. The culture should be gained by actual exercise and not by theorizing. You may commit to memory all the moral sayings of the world, and read all its moral philosophies, and one deed will have more influence than all. It is usual for age to give mellowness to character, for the Propensities are less active, and the morals gain ascendency. The same desirable state may be gained by culture. Let it be known that morality is not obtained by means of a confession of faith, or observance of religious forms. It is the growth of a life-time. For it is not what a man does, except as it indicates the condition of his mind, so much as what he really is, and the motives which actuate him. The murderer on the gallows murmurs a prayer, calls on Jesus, and is forgiven. He dies with the certainty of salvation it is said, all his crimes washed away. This is a most immoral doctrine and leads to ruin instead of salvation. The young convert who receives mercy from the throne of grace is told and believes he is religious, or in other words, is as moral as it is possible to become. He cultivates a vain self-conceit instead of moral character, which cannot be gained by a resolve in an hour, a day or year, but by slow accretions, building with each new opportunity, and trial. There can be no healthy, moral culture in seclusion. True character is the balance of faculties in the presence of the active world. There is no virtue in the gormand not eating when surfeited, of the drunkard not drinking when unconscious. Strength is gained and tested by temptation. The parents who keep their child away from contact with the world for fear of its contamination, forget that sooner or later this contact must come, and that the only way it can be prepared is by the contact itself. Then its tendencies can be watched and balanced, and morality grow strong by use. The plant droops and withers in darkness, and the only way it can be prepared for the light is by the light itself. The present every-day business and political code of morals, is a keen satire on the moral system taught under the name of religion. It shows how false is the basis of

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 133 that system. It has authoritatively told mankind that they were weak, and depraved until they have come to thinfc weakness and depravity their normal state. They are not ennobled by the thought that they are divine, but degraded as worms of the dust. The child should be taught as the first grand moral lesson, that it is a divine and holy being, too good and pure to do wrong. That as physical health is the perfect action and balance of all bodily powers, so spiritual health or happiness, depends on the action and balance of all mental faculties. It should be taught that expediency should never influence it in the choice between the good and the bad. It is expected always that moral power will rule. The struggle may be severe, but in the end it must triumph. For the man and woman there is the same code. The thought or word which causes one to blush should crimson the cheek of the other. Virtue, chastity, fidelity have no limitation of sex. Such should be the first lesson instilled into the mind of the child. He should be taught to fear ignorance as the source of all error, and to seek knowledge as his only savior. If the men of thought are instanced as examples of the grand capabilities of the intellect, and the school-boy incited by achievements of the Humboldts, Herschels, LaPlaces and Darwins, still more should his moral character receive this incitive. Now it is deadened with the opiate of business necessities which are ruled by selfishness. The Astors, Vanderbilts, and Drews, are embodiments of commercial morality. How low and ignoble their selfish, grasping, unscrupulous aims ! None of these, but the sages of ancient and the spiritual thinkers of modern times, show to what sublime heights it is possible for man to reach. The Christian well may worship his ideal Christ, not that Jesus may forgive sin, but because what is possible for him is possible for every human being. He perceived the true object of life, and made his ideal practical. Every child has the germs of these high qualities, which, however, dwarfed by the conditions of earth-life, will mature in ripe fruitage in some future time. As this is the ultimate destiny, moral education should take precedence of all other instruction. In fact, education should be directed toward the moral instead of the purely intellectual.

134 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: It is not enough to know. Facts have no life unless their relation to spiritual advancement is understood. And here the knowledge of future life enters and unites all knowledge into one complete whole. Man becomes the greatest fact in the world, and his moral nature the gratest fact in man. CHAPTER XV. MARRIAGE. The difference in the condition of man and woman, has been an element of confusion in reasoning on the relations they should sustain to each other. She being the weaker, has during the vast ages of man's savage life been subject to his strength. Instead of the wife being the equal of her husband she has been his abused slave and beast of burden. It is interesting to trace the marriage relation, as it arises from the brutal instinct, to the spiritual plane, and note the slow conformation ot our intense, selfish appetite, to the ally of the purest sentiments, and feelings of humanity. The union of man and woman in the relation of husband and wife, a connection around which the holiest affections and purest emotions of the heart gather, to us is so natural that we infer all the races of men regard it in like manner. On the contrary, however, the lower races have no marriage in our sense of that term, nor are they susceptible ot true and abiding love. Marriage is little more than the meeting of the sexes, and is unaccompanied with affection. The words expressive of tender emotions, as " to love," " dear," " beloved," are found in few languages spoken by savages. The lowest races areas destitute of affections as the brutes, and cohabit in the same manner. " The Hottentots," says Kolben, " are so cold and indifferent to one another that you would think there was no such thing as love between them." Lander, in his " Niger Expedition," says of the Central African, " Marriage is celebrated by the natives as unconcernedly as possible : a man thinks as little of taking a wife as cutting an ear of corn — affection is entirely out of the question."

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 135 The lowest form of marriage, as presented by the most inferior races, cannot be termed such, more than the connections of animals. It has been styled very inappropriately communal marriage, but this term applies as well to the sexual relations of animals. It is consummated without love or affection, and is simply the result of brutal instinct. From this instinct we arise to a consideration of the abstract significance of its development in marriage, as expressed in civilization. The conjugal instinct in the savage, like all his appetites, is unrestrained by higher motives. We perceive as we arise to more advanced stages the blending of those motives, but nowhere their full appreciation. Marriage even with the most civilized people is not wholly redeemed from the original stain. Viewed as it was by the ascetic religionists of the past, it is not strange that it should be forbidden their holy men, or regarded as evil. Marriage, which should be made in heaven, was in their conception made in hell, and to speak in correspondence, truthfully in the hell of the Passions. Now that attention has been drawn to this subject more scrutinizingly than ever before, and the very foundations of monogamic marriage itself questioned ; now that in some quarters, the savage form of communal marriage is sought to be revived, and there is a loosening of confidence in the permanence of the marriage relation, by the ease with which legal divorce is procured, a thorough investigation of the subject is demanded. Never before has social science received such close and careful attention and impartial scrutii.y as at present; and the marriage relation as the basic institution of our social life, has of course absorbed a due share of investigation. It must, however, be confessed that sociology is far from resting on a fixed basis, and as yet holds similar relations to science that alchemy or astrology did several hundred years ago. We are entering a new era. Old ideas and cherished beliefs are broken up, and we eagerly ask where is the new truths which are to enshrine themselves in the place of our broken idols ? The social relations are of such subtle character, so intricate and difficult to understand, that the student is con

136 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: founded on the threshold of the subject. Right and wrong become confused and the new is sought because new; it is said that the old is false because old. In a measure this social agitation is the result of the emancipation of the state from the church. Marriage has been regarded as a sacrament. The state declares it a legal institution, and by giving its officers power to legalize marriage, has destroyed its sacramental character. In this change is danger, for the mind pressed in one direction, is prone to swing too far in the other when the pressure is removed. Marriage considered as a sacrament solemnized by God's vicegerents on earth, and founded on divine ordinance, was considered indissoluble except for great crimes. There is enchantment in this view of marriage. If the right individuals are united in its adamantine chains, so far from galling they give perfect security and re3t. Love receives the sanction of divine authority, and is declared eternal. But the right individuals do not always unite. Human nature being fallible, errs in its judgment. The wrong inflicted by irrevocable marriage became apparent, and the institution came under the control of the state. The poesy, the charm of imagination, the play of fervent fancy in this prosiac age, gather, as they should, around the actual love; but the ceremony has no divine power or awful mystery of authority. It rests on man-made laws. Now the social philosopher swings with a bound from the sacramental to the legal. He declares marriage to be a mere legal contract, and like all other legal contracts dissolvable with the consent of the parties. This theory has wide publicity. Is it true ? We say emphatically, No. So far as marital laws protect the rights of the contracting parties and their offspring, it becomes like other legal contracts. Beyond these limits, it is subject to higher laws. A legal contract, when fulfilled, if justly made, leaves the contracting parties as they were when the contract was made. If the marriage relation is assumed, can the contracting parties make restitution, and is it not impossible to fill its obligations except with an entire and devoted life? Furthermore, the institution with all its enactments, looks beyond, to children as a third party, who, although outside of, absolutely depend on its provisions. It is ab

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 137 surd to term such an agreement a legal contract, like any other which may be annulled at any time by the desire of one or both the parties; for its permanence is of as vital importance to the children as to them, and no power can make good the loss of a united paternal home, and the love and care of parents. These are rights which the child demands, which transforms, marriage from a legal contract. When this demaud is made the contract becomes irrevocable so far as they are concerned. The rights which grow out of marriage may be defined by law; but no human enactments can reach the subtle relations of souls. Estates, real and personal, may be measured and apportioned by law; the heart lies beyond its province. Sacred and holy are its relations, and so far as it enters, marriage becomes a divine sacrament; the golden chalice in which the mutual lives of parents and offspring are pressed by generous hands to willing lips. The theory of no individual, however, plausible, or gratifying, will win. The great question is what will bring the most good and happiness to the individual and humanity, and whatever that may be will certainly gain ascendency. We feel assured by history that wife-slavery has been tried and failed. Woman has the same right to freedom as man, and a wrong inflicted on her is a wrong on the race. Half the life of humanity is destroyed by her slavery. Communal marriage has been tried and proved a failure. In its gross form, or combined with wife-slavery it gave no warm social life, and threw the burden of the family on the wife to whom it did not belong. Polygamy is essentially brutal and degrading. The family with its united responsibilities, its social life, its purest of joys, can never exist with a plurality of wives and mothers. It has been fully tested, and civilization where it exists is a failure. We have, then, to consider monogamic marriage, and ask, first, is it based on the constitution of man ? The fact that the number of male and female births is nearly the same, being practically identical, and when uninterfered with remains identical, is a strong evidence in favor of monogamic marriage. If one man have several wives, then several men must remain single. If marriage has advantages, and through and by it a higher good and happiness be attained, then on the latter an irrepara

138 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM : ble wrong is inflicted. Polygamy does not cancel this wrong, by a greater amount of happiness or good bestowed on the plurality of wives, for they are held in abject slavery, and the harem is not a favorable school for children. Marriage looks forward to the family. Children have a right to parental love and affection, and parents by the marital act assume the responsibilities of the care and proper education of their children. Society is interested in marriage so far as compelling the individual to bear such responsibilities, otherwise if the individual did not, then the burden justly his, becomes a common tax on all, which would be unjust, except through benevolence. The duties of parents of caring for their children, lasts until the latter have attained their majority, and this period extends over the mature portion of parental life. It is in the home established by such marriage, that the most complete expression of the best qualities of human nature is attained. It is through the family that love goes forth to the world. Then the child receives the attention the warmth of affection bestows, which in no other way can be poured out in such full measure. Then the mother can receive the protection, and care which is her right : For to the father belongs the maintainance of his child. This duty is his, because of his greater strength and ability. This state demands honor, truthfulness and fidelity. While love is free to choose, it is not free to cast aside duties once assumed. When it has once decided, the fact that its decision is final, is a potent cause of permanency. If it be allowed to decide with every momentary whim, there could be no marriage, which by its nature contemplates, and presupposes permanence. The pledges of lovers are exchanged under the assurance of eternal duration, for love is prophetic, and recognizes with clear prescience its demands. Conjugal love is exclusive, because it presciently feels, what science is slowly but surely revealing, the great and imperishable influence the parents have over each other through the parental act. The very being of the mother is molded by the force which fashions the germ after its father. She assimilates and becomes like him. It is a union, if possible, more close than were the same blood to pass through their united veins, and beyond this, in the

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 139 domain of subtile magnetism, yet almost unknown, are more delicate blend ings. The attraction and repulsion which finer natures experience, and which are remorselessly sacrificed, to convenience, or interest, are the surest guides in the formation of proper unions, and the health, beauty, and development of offspring are directly related to their satisfaction and balance ; for they express the primal condition of the spirit, which builds up the physical body. The suffering which flows from ruthlessly ignoring conjugal love, both mental and physical, is beyond the expression of language. The magnetic, or nervous forces, if unbalanced and unsatisfied, induce mental suffering, which can only be borne by high resolves, and the passivity of endurance. The germinal force carries with its mental, the physical conditions of the father, and the body and spirit of the mother is warped by its influence. The transmission of disease, long latent in the father, is the most obvious illustration of this statement. The poison may not appear in the same form as in the father, but attacking the weakest organs of the mother result in consumption, nervous debility, scrofula even in the terrible form of cancer. Or it may fail to attack the mother from constitutional peculiarities, and fall on the offspring. They will die young, or struggle with chronic disease, incurable, because resulting from radical organic changes. By entering the physiological and psychological fields a volume might be written on this subject, in evidence of the principles here stated. These principles lie at the foundation of human progress, and cannot be ignored. Their evidence is in the experience of every one who has given the least thought to this momentous subject, and still more wonderful, the husband and father, though these nervous forces are subject to changes second only to those in the wife and mother. This vast province which lies between physiology and psychology has yet to be explored. Thus the necessity of removing marriage from the plane of Appetites, of the Desires, to that of the purest spiritual necessities, and its consummation by the guidance of knowledge instead of blind, infatuated ignorance, is presented in its strongest light. Free Love, has by its plausibility led many a well intentioned soul to perdition. Love is not free, nor can it be. It has freedom in its own sphere, but not to interfere with

140 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: other faculties. If by love is meant simply the Appetite, then in animals it is free. They have no sense of Rights, they have no duties, and are led only by the reproductive instinct. In man this Appetite is combined with the most spiritual and noble qualities He has Rights and Duties, unknown to brutes, and his love is bounded by them. Their voice is superior to the promptings of love, even in its most spiritualized form. The necessities of their existence forbids the stability of the conjugal instinct in animals, and mutation is their law. The same instinct in man of itself, prompts to the same evanescent character. Its uncontrolled activity, or misdirected energy has caused more pain and ruin than all other causes of human wretchedness combined. The novels of the day fan its flames, and teach impressible youth, that love is a mysterious power which draws souls together and union must be consummated at all cost, regardless of reason ; that love must be blind, if true, work evil and evil only. A more destructive belief never existed, than this which converts man into an automaton guided by one of his lowest Appetites. Free? Certainly, to love, under guidance of Wisdom. The doctrine of affinity is responsible for a large share of those erroneous ideas. It is a revival of the old myth that husband and wife were two halves ; when the right ones came together a perfect unit was formed, but when the wrong, inharmony and antagonism was the result. As with fallible imperfect beings such units are rare, the presumption is that the wrong halves have been brought together. If every one has a corresponding mate created especially, it is self-evident that all have a right to seek until they find that mate. The search may be hopeless, they nevertheless have the right. The modern phase of this myth has as little foundation as the ancient. Its belief leads to discontent, and thus intensifies any inharmony which may exist. Love is free to choose, but in man love means more than instinct : it means the affections and all that vast sphere of unselfish qualities wh^'ch have been aptly termed the benevolent. Having made choice, it incurs the most momentous duties, possible for a human being to assume, and rights spring up which cannot be set aside. These can be properly met, only by a life of mutual devotion between the

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 141 husband and the wife. The fruit of love is an immortal spirit, coming unbidden into this world, and claiming as a right inalienable, the affection and care of its father and mother. No sophistry can answer this first grand law of humanity. Not only does the child call for care and attention, it itensifies the best qualities of its parents' hearts. This is not all. Man is the most helpless in infancy and remains so for a longer period, than almost any other being, and hence the rearing of two or three children spans the length of most lives, from youth to age. During this period separation of parents is a deplorable event to their children who thus lose the care and affection which is justly theirs. In case of separation, the children being the joint right and responsibility of both parents, are either torn from each other, or because the affection of the mother is the strongest, they are given to her. She, however, is least able to support them and thus bears a double injustice, But it is replied, this objection does not apply where there are no children! When a man and woman unite their lives, and found a home, the chief consideration which actuates each, is that it will be permanent. They risk everything on this belief; all their plans are made in accordance with it. There is a trust and confidence which never would be gained, if there was a shadow of a doubt. There are rights common to both. Purity and chastity are required by physiology as well as morality. Unselfish affection and devotion are also demanded, which shall always regard the happiness and pleasure of the other rather than its own. Less than this will yield unhappiness. There are duties which cannot be set aside. First of truthfulness to the vows as taken ; of mutual assistance, of yielding affection. No untoward event can cancel these rights and duties. " Can you help loving the lovable ?" is asked. We reply, Can you help committing an injustice? Can you help stealing ? Why do you claim that you can refrain from gratification of avarice ; of taking that which is not your own, and not from loving? For here love is simply appetite. If you mean the pure love which ignores self in a grand benevolence, we sav the more of it you have the better, for it only elevates you and those you love. Look

142 THE ETHICS OF SPIPwITUALISM: at the practical results of the doctrine of Freedom in Love. After half a life-time spent together, during which all the interests of each is inextricably bound in those of the other, the husband finds a lovely person whom he must love because lovely. Which shall triumph, the rights of the wife or the attractions of love; justice, honor, purity, or animal instinct? Every one will draw back with aversion from the gulf on the brink of which this man stands. The hell of passion is in that abyss. If he yields, manhood, character, integrity, usefulness are gone, for the cable which holds him to right is broken ; the compass of duty is lost, and at one fell step he is plunged from humanity to brutality. No course so utterly paralyzes the spiritual nature as this: None arouse all the other propensities with equal stimulant. For this instinct saturates and influences all others. The treachery of the tiger, the cunning of the fox, the ferocity of the lion it augments tenfold, and even the timid deer will fight to the death. It allies itself with brutality, and stimulates the taste for intoxicants and narcotics. It is unmixed and unmitigated selfishness. The smallest part of human life should be diverted to the natural and essential obligation of this instinct. With as many offspring as can be cared for and educated its function is accomplished. That number must be determined by the united wisdom of loth parents. An undesired child will never* enter a family holding the relations we have outlined. They will come fast and abundantly into the house of " free-love," but to that fire-side where love is benevolence, they will come because sought. It is objected, that marriage often results disastrously. The home becomes a pandemonium, and unmentionable suffering results. This is only too true, but it must be admitted that such marriages are the exceptions, and they are such because they violate the principles before stated, to which a union fraught with such vital consequences should conform. Likeness, similarity of views and tastes, are considered unimportant, and attractions of the moment, convenience, or interest, decide the most important matter which can be presented, on which life-long happiness or misery depends. Should these mistakes be remedied by divorce, we

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 143 think as the lesser of two evils, both appalling, they should be. That divorce, however, should be granted for such reasons, and in such a manner as not to weaken confidence in the marriage relation. What is wanted, is not divorce, which is a bad remedy for a bad disease; but education, in the broad and most liberal sense, and especially a deep, moral culture, which shall present the purpose of life, its objects and destiny. This can be accomplished only by Spiritualism in its ideal, as opposed to Materialism. The highest form of marriage as taught and exacted by the Christian churches, endures until death. Vastly higher and purer is the ideal of Spiritualism, which extends this union into the infinite future, where every stain of earthly attraction, shall perish and soul be drawn to soul by the holiest motives of benevolence. Beyond this no higher relation can exist. It lies at the foundation of all social life. And as in its lowest expression, it is a creator of beings, in its higher, it is the golden bond which unites them into universal brotherhood. Speculatively, what will be the ultimate of this union which we have seen reaches its adamantine cords, through every fibre of the united beings ? Will it continue the gross connection it is commonly regarded ? There can be no doubt that love survives the shock ot death of the physical body, and in the sphere immediately beyond this contributes to the joys of existence. Yet the proposition has axiomatic force, that whatever has relation only to this mortal life and not to immortality, will sooner or later disappear. Nature, in her interminable series of living beings, from the atomie to man, ever keeps one aim in view, the evolution of a perfect human being. Sexual distinctions are her methods of propagation, arise from necessity and have this one object in view. With this distinction is correlated, or of necessity accompanies, others of dependent character. The mental qualities of the parents must correspond to the diverse demands made on each. The qualities of father and mother are stamped on the spirit. It is also axiomatic that whenever a function ceases to be required, all its dependent manifestations, however remote, sooner or later also cease. The distinction of sex is an accident in the immortal life of the spirit, essential for

144 THE ETHICS OF SPIItlTU ALISM : the furtherance of the requirements of organic being, but when the spirit has cast aside the physical body, through and by which such distinctions are of value, it becomes necessary to suppose that the mental and spiritual accompanying distinctions are cast aside. The organization possessed while in the physical body, will for a time reflect itself on the spirit. It will think and feel as it did on the earth, but these effects will be outgrown. The fundamental faculties of man and woman are the same, the mental distinctions arising from greater activity in certain directions than in others ; an activity dependent on organic requirements. It consequently follows that as soon as such demands are no longer made, the mind will seek a state of equilibrium The mental qualities dependent on the accidents of earth-life wili be lost, as man and woman become like each other by mutual approach to a common type. Conjugal love, so exquisitely beautiful in its expression on earth, will become sublimated into a higher and purer form. The stain of earthly qualities will disappear, and the spirit be conscious of its own completeness, in feeling that it is self-contained. It has at last reached the ideal perfection of Love, which pours out its golden flood like the ever-pulsating sun, unasked, and with no selfish thought of recompense. CHAPTER XVI, CONCLUSION. Immobtamy!— That secrect lies in a tissueless realm whereof no nerve can report beforehand.— A Iger. If man is immortal, should he not know it?— Spirit. There are, nor can be, but two classes of thinkers : — Materialists and Spiritualists. The former refer the phenomena of the world to matter alone, the latter look beneath the surface for a universal cause. To one, creation is a meaningless change, to the other every change has a purpose and means evolution to a grand and determinate goal. There has never been a system of materialistic ethics, because such a system must be essentially selfish and be rather a system of political economy than of morals. Materialists may be very good and moral, but their char

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 145 acter is not an outgrowth of their philosophy. The prevailing moral systems are allied to the prevailing religions, and are a part and parcel of religious education, and have not their foundation in the nature of man. Now, while religion is based on Spiritualism, and is its rude expression from age to age, it has misinterpreted the phenomena of man's spiritual nature, and been untrue to its infinite trust. Spiritualism differs from religion in as much as it substitutes the knowledge of the spiritual universe for simple faith. It is to spiritual things what the physical sciences are to physical. Its ethics are the principles which lie at the base of the constitution of man as an immortal being. They who regard the turning of a table, or the answering of questions by the rappings, as all there is of Spiritualism, labor under a great mistake. The modern manifestations of trance, writing, speaking, do not constitute its entirety ; but these are only accidental waves thrown up on the sea of Spirit-life, which break at our feet, while beyond, the horizon sinks away in the haze of the infinite past. This Spiritualism is not alone for to-day. It streams through all past ages, and is for all future time. It is the Science of Life, penetrating all things, sustaining all things. It runs like a golden strand through the revelations of the past. It forms the glorious pattern in the web of history. It is the vital essence of the literature and pcetry of all races of mankind. Take it away and there is naught left but the corpse, the dead and desolate material. In its modern aspect it presents new ideas corresponding to the times, the progress of thought, the demands of civilization. The same grand laws of spirit communion,— cut through all the ages, and are alike expressed among all races of men. Clouded and obscured by accidents of time and place, yet unchangeably the same. As in its modern phase the unlettered medium in the rude cabin in the pine forest of Michigan, moved by invisible influence to write on a rough pine board with a piece of charcoaland the cultured lady surrounded by the luxuries of wealth, similarly actuated, to write on scented note, communicate each in their own way, the same great truths,

146 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM without contradiction, proving that above, beyond, there is a controlling influence superior to its earthly mediums; so in the revelations of Hindoostan, of Persia, of Arabia, of Judea, cardinal ideas, and sublime inspirations alike common to all, enforce their unity of origin. The ancient and the modern manifestations are one, and from the time the first spirit entered the great Beyond until the present, the inspiration of the departed has not ceased. It may have had its ebb, and its flood tides, as the conditions of man changed between the day and night of intelligence, but never has wholly disappeared. It has had its days of Pentecost, of which the present is one, when the angel world seems to approach nearer, or the clouds of materiality to be riven and blown aside, and angel whispers more clearly heard through the trembling bars of physical man. Cast on an age of infidelity and doubt, we have acquiesced in the sneers of our scientific teachers, and rejected the supernatural, the spiritual, without a moment's thought, with scoff and sneer as beneath the attention of a thinking man. A narrative in any way transcending the region of the senses, brings a smile of pity on the faces of our learned leaders at the credulity and want of culture in the relator. It is the fashion to doubt and sneer, and the easiest method of concealing ignorance. The anathema of the priest is met by the scorn of the scientist, and both overlook the happy mean where the stream of truth flows on in its crystal course. SPIRITUALISM IS THE SCIENCE OP LIFE. If you take all its modern phenomena, the gentle rappings, expressive of the approach of angel guests, the movement of physical objects, trance and inspiration in their varying forms, you have but an insignificant part. If to this you add the sacred volumes, the Zend Avesta of the Persian, the Holy Vedas of the Hindoos, the Koran of the Mohammedan, our own Bible, both old and new, you have brought together the collected inspiration of the childhood of the world, and superimposed it on its most perfect expression, but you have not all of Spiritualism. If you take the sciences, those relating to our own earth, and the more exalted which treat of the infinite nomenclature of the stars, you have added the concrete wisdom, resultant of the combined thought of the world, but you

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 147 have not Spiritualism, you have still achieved only the known, while the unknown realm lies in shadow, stretching an infinite sea, whose shore you have reached, and gathered a handful of pebbles. When that sea *i explored, when the mysteries of the unknown are explained, when the laws of the realm of spirit are as well known as the laws of matter, in that remote time the lofty spirits of the temple of spiritual science, will proudly pierce the clouds of doubt, and we shall understand that spirit is the real, of which matter is but the fleeting shadow. LAW NOT MIRACLE rules the spiritual as well as the physical world. When we are told that it is impossible for a physical object to float in the air without being operated on by some physical agency, that it is contrary to the laws of gravitation, the story of the stone rolled from the mouth of the sepulcher by angel hands, comes freshly to mind. When we relate how Home was wafted from his chair out through the open window of the second story, and returned through another window of the same room, we hear a laugh of derision, but then shall we believe the story of Ezekiel being taken up and carried a great way and set down amidst the assembly of the seventy ancient ones ? The first phenomenon rests on the evidence of men like Prof. Varley, electrician of the Atlantic telegraph, Prof. Dr. Morgan, and Lord de Vere; the other on the evidence of whom? Trance Media, when their spiritual perceptions are opened, see the radiant forms of the immortals, and describe them. Are they deceived or deceiving? When Peter, John, and James went up into the Mount with Jesus, M and as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistening. And behold ! there talked with Him two men, which were Moses and Elias, who appeared in glory, and spoke of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem." Were Peter, John, and James deceived or deceivers? There are media who are specially endowed with power over disease. They can, by " laying on of hands," remove pain, restore the lost equilibrium of the vital forces, give sight to the blind, and heal the lame. Christ, while on earth, exercised the same power, and bestowed it on his disciples, making it a test of their faith

148 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: ia him, saying that these works should follow those who believed on him. Where is written any revocation of this gift ? Are the healing media of to-day frauds and impostors? Are not the phenomena attending them parallel with those recorded as miracles in the L\ble? They who discard the modern manifestations, fall into an unfortunate dilemma. There is one law of spirit communion, and if it were possible for Moses and Elias to appear to mortal vision two thousand years ago, it is possible for your friends and mine, who have passed beyond the shadow of the grave, to appear to us under similar mediumistic conditions. If it was possible for angel-hands to roll aside the huge stone from the mouth of the sepulcher, it is possible for the hands of our angels to move a table or rap responsive to our thoughts. If Ezekiel could be levitated by the grasp of an overshadowing angel, media of the present can in the same manner be transported. Do you say the present phenomena are results of fraud, electricity, hallucination, or the devil ? Have a care, for you wield a two-edged sword which cuts both ways ; and after you have satisfactorily proved modern Spiritualism to be the result of fraud, electricity, or the devil, you will learn that your explanation will apply with equal force to the sacred record of the past ; its holy prophets become impostors, its sages mouthpieces of Satan, and the inspiration which has furnished the bread of life to countless millions, is fraud, the trick of electricity, the instigation of the devil ! There is only one escape. WHAT IS POSSIBLE IN ONE AGE IS POSSIBLE TO ALL. The angel world is ever near us. Its waves break on the coast line of materiality. If we see not our beloved, it we hear not their voices of love, if we feel not their sacred presence, ours not theirs the fault. Clouds darken the day, and the light is obscured by the murk of the storm, but the sun is ever shining. Out of the clouds, above the thin veil of the storm its glorious rays shine with undiminished lustre. So our spirit friends stand outside the shadow which our own earthliness gathers around us. Their love is ever perfect, their presence ever holy, their affections unchanging. If we allow this shadow to thicken into impenetrable night, and conceal their presence, we can rest

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 149 assured that their love burns on the altars of their hearts with undying intensity. We can not test these spiritual entitles by retort, crucible, or balance, says the scientist. Tney never communicate with us! No, they do not, and is it a matter of pride that you plume yourselves? Though mediumship measurably rests on physical conditions, purity of its communications depends on spiritual purity of life. That you do not see nor feel the presence of the angels, does not prove that they do not exist, more than the clouds blot out the sun, but is only evidence that. your own being is surrounded by the murk of clouds, outside of which the radiant spirits await unseen. The seers and prophets of ©Id, when they sought to place themselves in rapport with the divine and spiritual powers, retired to the solitude of nature; the cave, the desert, the wilderness, and by contemplation and fasting, cleared the atmosphere of their own spirits, becoming purified before they petitioned the approach of spirit intelligences. Christ went into the wilderness and fasted forty days before the full flood-tide of his mission poured out upon him. Even Spiritualists themselves do not fully understand this relation between spirits and mortals. They seek communication while they are enveloped in the clouds of passion, and disturbed by the fitful fever of earthly cares, or stained by vicious habits. Is it strange the radiance of the spirit's thought is changed to a lurid glare, or that it fails even distortedly to break through the fog ? Is it strange that communicatioDs are false and puerile? Rather is it not strange that any are received, when so little care and attention are bestowed in preparing for their reception ? WITH UNSANDLED FEET the Moslem enters the portals of the Mosque. With head reverently bowed he approaches the holy shrine. He has purified himself by fasting and ablutions, and feels that he is in a degree worthy of bowing at the altar. But now with feet shod with iron, dust-covered, with begrimmed garments, and bodies saturated with effeteness, the pro duct of unwholesome food, of poisonous drinks, of narcotizing habits, you would enter the courts of spiritual purity, and because you blot out the light, you say it does not exist, or because you receive distorted images, or only a

150 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM red glare penetrates the fog you say it is unreliable and eyil. You not only blot out, you repel the angelic influence, and if there be Diakka or spirits of evil, you court their presence. First of all THE TEMPLE SHOULD BE PURIFIED. We should feel that this body should be made a pure and holy place for the presence of the immortal spirit. It is so closely related to that spirit that it reflects every scar and stain. You cannot make it a pest-house, the abode of uncleanliness with impunity. THE FIRST CONDITION OF SPIRITUAL PURITY, is health, and health is the resultant of the harmony of spirit and body, which rests on perfect obedience to the laws of life. SPIRITUALISM DISCARDS NOT THE PAST. It throws away not a single stone or brick from any edifice, however moss-grown and ruinous, which has furnished shelter to humanity. No truth uttered is rejected. The inspiration received by fasting hermit beneath the banyan shade by the holy Ganges; by Persian Magi around their altar fires; by Moslem prophet in desert solitude; by selfdenying apostles, and suffering martyrs; by plodding students into nature's arcaha, are alike written in its sacred Bible — sacred because true. IT IS LEADERLESS. Perhaps no form of belief ever made more rapid progress than Spiritualism has done in the last quarter of a century. We may reject as erroneous the statement put forth by Judge Edmonds, that there are eleven millions of Spiritualists in the United States, but we cannot close our eyes to the fact that its adherents are numbered by milliocs, that they who openly profess their belief are few in number to those who secretly entertain it. It has pushed its way into the churches, and has changed the tone of thought not only of laymen but of the pulpit and the press. It has in Europe achieved even greater success than in this country, and in Hindostan and the Australian Seas has made multitudes of converts. Yet this conquest has been accomplished without a leader to direct its career, and in the face of the united opposition of the press and of public opinion. Silently, without effort it has won its way. During these years many have attempted to seize the helm and

A SYSTEM OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 151 guide the cause as they thought best, but without exception they have sank in disgrace and oblivion. It is not in mortal hands. All failures have been converted into successes, and the cause, borne onward by the tide of constant inspiration, has had an accelerated movement. IT MAKES MAN THE DIVINE CENTER. Man is the perfected flower of the Tree of Life, and his spirit, its immortal fruitage. He concentrates in his organism all the elements, and all lower forms of life. In his spirit is aggregated the forces of the universe. He understands all because a part of all. The laws of revolving worlds are written in the congeries of his brain. Hence he is the divine center around which the universe of being revolves, and is capable of infinite possibilities. SPIRITUALISM IS NOT A SYSTEM OP THEOLOGY. It is not a religion in the usual acceptance of that word. It is the Science of Life, and its understanding requires the study of nature in all departments of thought. No organization fashioned after the old methods can possess permanence. The new wine can not be put into old bottles. They who are Spiritualists are such because they cannot coalesce with organizations. They are isolated because of their intense individuality. No form or statement of belief will hold them together. NOT SACRIFICES OR PRAYERS REQUIRED, BUT A HOLY LIFE. When we become fully impressed with the fearful position, with its vast responsibilities, we occupy ; that we are not creatures of time but eternity ; that every thought and act has relation to our eternal welfare, we shall be impressed with the necessity of fashioning the conduct of our lives in accordance with the highest principles of right. Outside of ourselves there is no salvation, and our redemption can only be gained by growth. WE ARE NOT LIVING FOR OURSELVES ALONE. "We are atoms in the great Republic of the universe and our condition rests on that of all others. We are "individual sovereigns," but the sphere of our sovereignty is narrowly circumscribed. It is bounded by the rights of others which we cannot transcend. Spiritualism substitutes knowledge for faith. We do not believe, we know that our loved and lost live on the other side of the grave. We hear the whisper of their angel voices; we are rejoiced at the messages they bring of

152 THE ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM: never dying love of friendship. Overshadowed by their presence, we feel the impulses of a new and higher life, which guides our feet in the pathway of purity and magnanimity of life. In the struggle of life we may stumble or fall. Never a tree, however, rugged and grand but by storm and tempest has lost a limb or been lightning scarred. Sustained by our trust, we shall arise humbled, but not over-borne by the lesson, and press onward to higher and higher ground. And when we cast aside this mortal garment, and the elements claim it as their own ; when the night of death settles darkly over our mortal eyes, our freed spirit, no longer impeded by the accidents of time and place, will be greeted on the evergreen shores of immortal life by the friends we have known; with them will the spirit realize its possibilities, and there will be no more parting forever and forever. THE END.

I ]N J-/ SLi J±» Absolute truth, 65. Accountability, S3, 72. Activity and rest, 48. Advance, path of, 82. Alexander, 55. American solution of the social problem, 114. Animals, duty to, 39; senses of, 67; benevolence in, 60. Atonement, 101. Benevolence, 60; in animals, 60. Capital Punishment, 123. Centralization, 119. Charity, 79. Charter of rights, 89. Change of heart, 73. Civilization, tendency of, 116; dawn of, 89. Cohesion, 40. Combativness, 53. Conclusion, 144. Conscience, 68; has man a? 68; what is? 69; of savages, 70; reason and, 67; loss of, 73; tribunal of, 76; how does it decide, 74; culture of, 74; creation and evolution, 36; criminal class, 124; duty of society to, 122. Culture of the will, 88; of conscience, 74; of the intellect, 131; of morality, 131. Dawn of civilization, 112. Depravity, 88. Diet, morality dependent on, 48. Discarding old beliefs, why dangerous, vii. Destructiveness, 53. Duty, 78; to God, 98; as a source of strength, 109; of self-culture, 127; to animals and lower forms of life, 39; of prayer, 102; of children, 105; of parents, 100; superior to love of life, 52. Duties of society, 110; to criminals, 122; of the individual, 98; natural, 105; of society, 107, 110. Education, 117. Epicureans,79. Eternity, 36. Evolutions, 36. Fable of the wheel, 115. Faculties, gradation of in the animal world, 42. Faith, 66; resting on knowlege, 104. Fairchild, 77. Family, origin of 21; continuity of, 21; government rests on thee, 113. Force, origin of, 21; continuity of, 21. Free will, 12. Freedom, salvation in, 95; of the press, 95. Geographical conditions of human progress, 45. Good, what is it ? 77. God, 27; duty to, 98; obligations to, 98; obedience to, 99. Government, 121; should give assurance, 123; rights of, 121. Gravitation, 40. Habits, 47; happiness, 77, 80, 90; Hickock, 77; high and low, rule by which they can be distinguished, 43. Hunger, 44.

15A INDEX. Ideal perfection, 34. Immortality, governed by law, 20; basis of religion, 20; not bestowed but inherent, v. Interest, 91; Individual, the, 11; not degraded from a higher estate, 11. Intellect, the, comprehends the fact of i the material world, 66. Iniuitionists, 69. Intolerance grows out of ignorance of, 98. Justice, 62; in the material universe, 62; in man, 63; of religion, 63. Labor, 90; has a right to its own products, 90; to land, 90; to opportunity, 90. Law, not miracle, 147. Leonidas, 109. Liberty, 94. Life a discipline, 80; right to one's own, 52; love of, 51; in connection with duty, 52; beginning of, 2S; progress of, 28, 29. Love, 57; of power, 55; of property, 53; of self, 55; of life, 81; of truth, 64; combined with the appetites, 58. Man, his fall, viii; position of, 14; a dual, 15; right to think for himself, 94; origin of, 29; pre-historic, 110; imperfect senses in savages, 67; has he a conscience? 68; his stimulants to progress, 45; by nature moral, 59, 60; susceptibility to infinite progress, 12; a product of evolution, 13; similarityof, to animals, 16; incomplete, 18; prophecy of his present incompleteness, 18. Marriage, 134. Materialists, errors of, 18. Morals begin with diet, 48. Metaphysical systems of morals erroneous, 18. Moral government, loss of, 39. Martyrdom, 52. Mill, illustration of the, 91. Natural, shall we be ? 42. Nervous system the bridge between matter and spirit, 17. Not sacrifice or prayer required, but a holy life, 151. Obedience to God, 98, 99. Obligations of the individual, 98 Old age, 55; beauty and deformity of, 58. Paley, 77. Perfection, ideal of, 74, 34. Plato, 24. Pirate, illustration of, 73. Power of love, 55, 73. Prayer, duty of, 102. Propensities, the selfish, 51. Press, freedom of, 95. Present danger to the, 121. Pre-historic man, 110. Property, love of, 53. Physical culture, 128. Progress, 27; of the spirit, 74; path of, 82; geographical conditions of human, 45; unlimited, 34; changes direction in man, 31; physical progress ends with him, 32. Punishment, 123. Reason as intellectual and moral consciousness, 41. Reason and conscience, 67.

INDEX. 155 Reform, S5. Reiucarnation, 22. Religion, meaning of, 63; based on immortality, 20; fa'ls in teachingjustice, 63. Rent, how much demanded, 4S. Revelation, necessity of, 66; does it supply the imperfection of conscience? 72. Reward, 76. Right, whatever is, is, 79. Right and wrong, S3. Rights, charter of, 89; of society, 114; of the individual, 114. Rights of government, 121. Rights to mental culture, 90. Rights, woman's, 97. Rights, summary of, 97. Senses of animals, 67. Sabbath breaking, 95. Sacrifices for sin, 101. Sleep, 4S. Selfish propensities, 51. Self-preservation, 55. Self-love, 55. Sexual impulse, 49; law of, 50; its end, 49; ignorance in regard to its laws, 50. Sickness a crime, 105. Sin, 99; forgiveness of, 100; pardon of, 100; sacrifices for, 101. Spirits, 33; origin of, 20; evolutions of, 20; definitions of, 22; evidences of, 33; of animals, 36. Spiritual culture, 105; body, 35. Spiritualism, ix; foundation of, 22; is the science of life, 46; discards not the past, 150; it is leaderless, 150; it makes man the divine center, 151; is not a system of theology, 151. Social problem, American solution of, 114. Stoics, 79. Suicide, 52. The Appetites, 44. Thought, region of pure, 68. Temperance, 48. Theology, its object, vii. The Temple should be purified, 150. The first condition of spiritual purity, 150. Thirst, 45. Tolerance, 79. Truth, the absolute, 65; love of, 64. Utilitarians, 69. Virtues exist in two states, 64; unity of the, 67. Vogt, C, 33. * "What is possible in one age is possible to all, 148. We are not living for ourselves alone, 151. Wealth, its purpose, 54; where and how right to accumulate, 54. Wisdom, 67. Will, S4; not a distinct faculty, 85; development of, 86; culture of, 88; not free, 88; depravity of, 88. With unsandled feet, 149. Wrong doing, result of, 79. Wrong, what ever is, is,79. Xeuophen, 6S. Xerxes, 109.

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