The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Growth of Thought, by William Withington

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Title: The Growth of Thought As Affecting the Progress of Society

Author: William Withington

Release Date: April 18, 2006 [EBook #18202]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GROWTH OF THOUGHT ***

Produced by Jared Fuller

THE GROWTH OF THOUGHT AS AFFECTING THE PROGRESS OF SOCIETY.

By William Withington.

1851.

Contents.

Part I. Introductory.

Life Defined. Intellectual Culture and Intellectual Life, Distinguished. Human Life, a Problem. The Evil to be Managed. Self-Love Considered under a Three-fold Aspect. Three Agencies for meliorating the Human Condition. The Growth of Thought, Slow; and oft most in unexpected quarter.

Part II.

Welfare as dependent on the Social Institutions. Limited Aim of the Received Political Economy. An Enlightened Policy but the Effective Aim at managing Self-Love, directed towards Present Goods, vulgarly understood. The Political Fault of the Papacy. Its Substantial Correction by the Reformation. Republicanism carried from Religion into Legislation; still without a clear perception of its Principle. Its Progress accordingly Slow.

Part III.

Philosophy the Second Agency for promoting General Welfare, as the
Educator of Self-Love; the Corrector of mistaken apprehensions of
Temporal Good; the Revealer of the ties which bind the Members of the
Human Family to One Lot, to suffer or rejoice together. Progress in
estimating Life.

Part IV.

Mightier Influences yet needed, to contend with the Powers of Evil.
Supplied by Man's recognizing the whole of his Being; the extent of his
Duties; the Duration of his Existence. Religion, supplying the defects
of the preceding Agencies; Considered in nine particulars.

Conclusion.

Recapitulation. Suggestions to Christian Ministers.

Preface.

A contemporary thus reveals the state of mind, through which he has come to the persuasion of great insight into the realities, which stand behind the veil: "What more natural, more spontaneous, more imperative, than that the conditions of his future being should press themselves on his anxious thought! Should we not suppose, the 'every third thought would be his grave,' together with the momentous realities that lie beyond it? If man is indeed, as Shakespeare describes him, 'a being of large discourse, looking before and after,' we could scarcely resist the belief, that, when once assured of the possibility of information on his head, he would, as it were, rush to the oracle, to have his absorbing problems solved, and his restless heart relieved of its load of uncertain forebodings."* [Bush's Statement of Reasons, &c., p. 12.]

Not less frequently or intensely, the writer's mind has turned to the problem of applying know truth to the present, reconciling self-love with justice and benevolence, and vindicating to godliness, the promise of the life that now is. If, meanwhile, he has been "intruding into those things which he hath not seen," like affecting an angelic religion,—then it were hardly possible but that he should mistake fancy for fact. But if his inquiries have been into what it is given to know, then he cannot resist the belief, that some may derive profit from the results of many fearfully anxious years, here compressed within a few pages. He might have further compressed, just saying: Mainly, political wisdom is the management of self-love; civilization is the cultivation of self-love; the excrescenses of civilization are the false refinements of self-love; while unselfish love is substantial virtue,—the end of the commandments,—the fulfilling of the law: Or, he might have enlarged indefinitely; more especially might have been written on practically applying the principles to the advancement of society. He may yet produce something of the kind. Of the substance of the following pages he has only to say, that, if false, the falsehood has probably become too much a part of his nature to be ever separated. As to such minor considerations, as logical arrangement and the niceties of style, he asks only the criticism due to one, whose hands have been necessitated to guide the plough oftener than the pen, through the best years of life.

The Growth of Thought, As Affecting the Progress of Society.

Part I.

Introductory.

The meditation on human life—on the contrast between what is, and what might be, on supposing a general concurrence to make the best of things-yields emotions both painful and pleasing;—painful for the demonstrations every where presented, of a love of darkness, rather than light; pleasing, that the worst evils are seen to be so remediable; and so clear the proofs of a gradual, but sure progress towards the remedy.

The writer is not very familiar with those authors, who have so much to say on the problem of life—the question, What is life? He supposes them to follow a train of thought, something like this: The life of a creature is that perfection and flourish of its faculties, of which its constitution is capable, and which some of the race are destined to reach. Thus, the life of the lion is realized, when the animal ranges undisputed lord of the sunny desert; finds sufficiency of prey for himself and offspring, which he raises to inherit dominion; lives the number of years he is capable of enjoying existence, and then closes it, without excessive pains, lingering regrets, or fearful anticipations.

Life differs from happiness. It is supposable, that the lion, tamed and petted, trained to feed somewhat after man's chosen manner, may be as happy as if at liberty in his native range. But such happiness is not the animal's life; since this implies the kind of happiness proper to the creature's constitution, in distinction from that induced by forced habits.

To happiness add knowledge and intellectual culture, and all together do not realize the idea of life. The tame lion may be taught many arts, assimilating him to the intelligence of man; but these remove him so much further from his appropriate life. Thus there may be a cultivated intelligence, which constitutes no part of the creature's life; and this without considering the same as a moral agent.

Macauley remarks, that the Jesuits seem to have solved the problem, how far intellectual culture may be carried, without producing intellectual emancipation. I suppose it would be only varying the expression of his thought to say, Jesuitical education strikingly exemplifies, how much intellectual culture may be superinduced upon the mind, without awakening intellectual life—without developing a spontaneous aptness to appreciate, seek, find, embrace the truth. The head is filled with the thoughts of others-many ascertained facts and just conclusions. It can reason aright in the circles of thought, where it has been trained to move; but elsewhere, no spontaneous