toms, in which cruelty is carried to the highest pitch, and men seem turned into devils incarnate. Hence the practice among so many savage tribes of murdering their captured enemies by slow torments, even of drinking their blood, and devouring their flesh; hence the custom among the Persians and other barbarians, of cutting off the hands and tearing out the eyes of prisoners of war; hence those elaborate and ingenious tortures invented by more civilized nations, as the just punishment of political and religious delinquencies.

5. In the latter case, indeed, the sentiment of selfcomparison adds its force to the impulse under which these cruelties are perpetrated. The man who entertains, especially if he attempts to promulgate, political or religious opinions which we consider wrong, we not only regard as a dangerous enemy to our country and to mankind, we also look upon him as one who casts a personal indignity upon us, who has the audacity to say that we are wrong; that upon those points which perhaps we have most studied, we are mistaken and deceived. This is a pain of inferiority, to which few men quietly submit. Hence the promulgators of new opinions, even upon questions of abstract science,

and

much more touching those political and religious institutions and dogmas upon which all the arrangements of society rest, or are supposed to rest, and in the sustentation of which so many personal interests are involved, have so commonly been the objects of the bitterest persecution, have been denounced as disturbers of the public peace, and enemies of the

human race. Here, too, is to be found the reason of that observation, that men above forty rarely become converts to newly broached opinions. Young men, who are yet learners, are willing to follow any teacher who seems to them to lead towards the truth; old men who esteem themselves teachers, do not readily consent to renounce their old opinions, or to commence pupils a second time.

6. Indeed, it is only within the last century that the slightest approach has been made in modern times, to any thing like freedom of inquiry and discussion. Philosophers, within that period, have recognized this freedom as an essential means towards the discovery of the truth. But, though truth be professedly every where an object of admiration and desire, most men mean by it, the opinions already adopted by themselves. The great mass of men, under the influence of the sentiment of selfcomparison, and of other motives which will be pointed out in the Theory of Education, adhere obstinately to errors of which they are themselves the victims; while those best able to discover and to promulgate the truth, the men of the greatest abili ties and most learning, too often have not only a direct personal interest, but a still stronger interest of sympathy, in perpetuating error. In Christendom, till very lately, the priesthood and the nobility possessed all the science and intelligence of the day, and there have been few priests and few nobles who have not preferred the interests of their respective orders, to the interests of humanity.

7. Nor from human nature could we reasonably

For in all current moral expect any thing else. codes there is a great class of duties reckoned among the most imperative, founded upon sympathy, upon the idea that fidelity to friends, to party, to sect, to caste, to country, requires of us, among other sacrifices, even that of our natural feelings of humanity towards all those, who, though they have done us personally no harm, are yet for some real or imaginary reason, objects of distrust and dislike to those who put in a special claim to our sympathy. It is these duties of sympathy, which, in current moral codes, demand of us, for the benefit or supposed benefit of our sect, caste, party, or clan, actions which, if performed for our own individual benefit, would be stigmatized as among the most criminal. Hence the doctrine that no faith is to be kept with infidels and rebels; and that a good cause is to be promoted by any sort of means; hence men practise even with a strong sentiment of self-approbation, upon those of a hostile sect, caste, or party, from whom individually they have never experienced the slightest wrong, cruelties, which, if inflicted upon their worst personal enemies, would make them regard themselves as monsters of malevolence; hence, even the dead have been dug from their graves, to be exposed to imagined indignities; hence, men of unquestionable benevolence look not only without sorrow, but with the keenest delight, upon the most terrible calamities suffered by those who are not objects of their sympathy, but which are thought conducive to the welfare of others who How many such men have justified and re

are so.

joiced in all the atrocities of religious persecution! How many such men have vindicated negro slavery, unjust wars, oppressive governments, and a thousand other social wrongs, because they esteemed those wrongs beneficial to the caste, the nation, the party, the order, the religion, or the race for which their sympathies were specially engaged!

*

8. We have shown elsewhere that the mystic personal God, both from the character ascribed to him, and from the special degree of favor with which devout believers always suppose him to regard them, is calculated to engross their entire affections, and to become the sole object of their sympathy. And according to that law of sympathy above explained, just in proportion to the ardor of their love for him, except perhaps with a few of the theosophistic school, has been the fierceness of their hatred towards his supposed enemies; and their disposition to justify, to enjoin, to extol, the most horrible severities exercised towards them, as sensible proofs of love and zeal for him. How could they imagine that a Deity himself supposed to inflict interminable torments upon sinners in another world, could be otherwise than pleased that those

* "One of the largest meetings perhaps ever held in Exeter Hall, was held on Tuesday evening, convened by the London Missionary Society, to consider the means of extending and promoting in China, the objects of the Society. Wm. T. Blair, Esq., of Bath, presided. Dr. Liefchild moved the first resolution, expressive of thanksgiving to God for the war between China and Great Britain, and for the greatly enlarged facilities, secured by the treaty of peace for the introduction of Christianity into that empire. The resolution was seconded by the Rev. Dr. Adler, and was carried unanimously." — London Examiner, January 21, 1843.

same sinners should be made to commence their sufferings here!

Hence, the Djehad, or holy war of the Mahometans, to be perpetually carried on against the infidels for the love and glory of God, and represented as the most meritorious of acts; hence, the crusades of the Christians, another name for the same thing. Hence, the Holy Inquisition, and the autos-da-fe, those acts of faith, perpetrated by Protestants as well as Catholics, which consist in burning heretics and infidels at the stake. Hence, those ruthless persecutions, those wholesale banishments, those cruel penal laws, those massacres, assassinations, confiscations, dragonnades, that setting of the son against the father, of the daughter against the mother, of the wife against the husband; those miserable mutual hatreds, jealousies, and contentions, by which, in times of religious excitement, every city, every town, every village, every neighbourhood, every family is distracted; and in which the chief actors so often are conscientious men, who, having sacrificed their reason, sacrifice their humanity, also, to their notions of religious duty.

If, of late, the fierceness of religious bigotry has somewhat subsided, it is because the increasing humanity of the times has greatly modified the popular idea of the Deity, who, even in the minds of the vulgar, has grown less a person, and more an abstraction; so that mystic faith, even among professed believers, has become historic and traditionary, and less what it used to be, vision and feeling.

9. Closely connected with these duties, of sym