ETHICS

IN THE preceding lectures, we have been considering one after another, the elements of history, and have seen of each, that they are only the dealings of the soul of man with the external world that all these grave forms of which books and laws make so much, viz. Art, Letters, States, Religion, Customs, are only signs more or less near of the human will. History is ever inferring the hidden nature of the human soul from these gigantic and remote effects. What is that we explore with so much curiosity in all these conspicuous departments of study? Man is the game we hunt. Man is the mystery we unveil. There are nearer manifestations of this interesting being—in the walls of his house, in the walls of his flesh. The same phenomena which the world illustrates in capitals the house illustrates in small letter. To the clock of history the movement and mechanism is the same whether we read upon its face seconds, minutes, and hours or years, centuries, and millenniums. The history of a man is the history of the world, and if we would rightly understand our subject, we must not always view it in the gross but sometimes also in the particular. A single house, said the Roman poet, will show all that is done and suffered in the world.

I cannot feel that we have explored all the divisions of our subject until some essay has been made to unfold a part of philosophy very little treated in formal systems, and only treated, as far as I know, in the proverbs of all nations, and yet, a subject the most engaging and sublime we can study and which for want of a more exact title may stand under the name of Ethics. It is that we mean by the phrase that goes current in all men’s mouths, the Nature of things. The law of all action which cannot yet be stated, it is so simple, of which every man has glimpses in a lifetime and values that he knows of it more than all knowledge, which whether it be called Necessity or Spirit or Power is the law whereof all history is but illustration, is the law that sits as pilot at the helm and guides the path of revolutions, of wars, of emigrations, of trades, of legislation. And yet private life yields more affecting examples of irresistible nature of the human spirit than masses of men or long periods of time afford us. In the present lecture I wish to offer you some sketches of the appearance of this law in various parts of life, all suggesting the importance of the instincts, that the simplest, the instinctive action is ever the part of the wise man.

The moment the act of reflection takes place in the mind, that is, the moment we look at ourselves in the light of thought, we discover that our life is embosomed in beauty. Behind us, as we go, all things assume pleasing forms as clouds do far off. Not only things familiar and stale, but even the tragic and terrible are comely, as they take their place in the pictures of memory. Even the corpse that has lain in the chambers has added a solemn ornament to the house. If in the hours of clear Reason we should speak the severest truth we should say that we had never made a sacrifice. That which the mind is in these sane hours seems so great, that nothing can be taken from us that seems much. All loss, all pain is particular; the Universe remains to the heart unhurt. Distress never, trifles never abate our trust. No man ever stated his griefs as lightly as he might. Allow for exaggeration in the most patient and most sorely ridden hack that ever was driven. For it is only the finite has wrought and suffered; the infinite lies stretched in smiling repose.