CONTENTS. AGAINST QUARRELLING AND FIGHTING AGAINST SWEARING AND COARSE LANGUAGE PAGE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL MORALITY. MAN. HIS MENTAL AND MORAL NATURE. WHAT IS MAN? and WHAT ARE HIS DUTIES TO HIS BROTHER MAN? are questions that seem to lie at the root of all morality. What he is; is necessary to be known, in order to ascertain his capabilities for improvement; although it must be briefly stated in this place, as more pertaining to other sciences. What are his social and political duties? we will endeavor to trace in the following pages; however imperfect may be the result of our labors. Man physically seems endowed with every quality fitting an inhabitant of this world. He has strength to level before him the densest forest-to cut his pathway through the hardest rock-to break down hills-upraise valleysturn rivers from their course; and erect barriers to obstruct the progress of the ocean. He has physical strength and courage to oppose and master the fiercest animals, and to make them contribute to his enjoyments. His unwearied labors have converted bog, marsh, wood, and wilderness B into fruitful fields teeming with plenty. And with materials raised from the depths of earth, he has erected wonderous structures of durability and convenience, and stupendous monuments of his greatness and folly. The proofs of his mental powers are numerous in every civilized community. They are seen in his various appliances of all the materials and powers of nature-in his ingenious and multifarious constructions for economizing time and saving labor-in his wondrous modes of conveyance by sea and land-in his social and political arrangements his laws, science, art and literature; all afford proofs innumerable of his ability, his genius, and mental application. But while these afford abundant proofs of man's collective power, he is often seen to be individually weak, ignorant, and demoralized; hence the necessity for investigating those causes which tend to his individual improvement. The physical strength with which he is individually endowed, is found to be dependant on the size of his muscles, the power of his nerves, the exercise he may have taken to develope and strengthen them, and the means he may have used for the preservation of his health. His mental qualifications, however, would seem to depend more on the causes which conspire to develope his mental faculties, than in their original power and capacity. For we often meet with examples of comparatively small developments highly enriched with knowledge and strong in virtue; and others of superior mental powers highly vicious and almost void of understanding. But while such facts show the importance and necessity of education, and form the groundwork of our hopes of man's social and political progress, other facts as clearly prove that were all men subject to the same educational influences, the size, strength and activity of the mental organs, and peculiarity of temperament, will always give their possessor mental advantages. By those mental powers are meant the brain and nervous system, the senses, the life, blood, and nervous power that stimulate the whole to action. The brain is the organ on which seems to be impressed (more or less durably) the sensations conveyed to it through the senses; which are the great inlets by which all knowledge of things, and of the qualities of things, are conveyed to it. If sufficient mental exertion is made to retain the sensations conveyed to the brain, the retained impressions are called ideas; and on the number and arrangement of such ideas, stored up in the memory, will man be able to think, to reason, and to judge correctly, on the various subjects that may be brought before him. But though, in this way, man gathers up his knowledge, he will form but very imperfect notions of most things he perceives, if he has to depend solely on his own observations and experience. He must, in fact, be informed of the character and properties of most of the existences around him, by those who know something of their nature; not from their own experience merely, but from the remembered or recorded experience of those who have made the subject their study, and have treasured their observations and experience in their works. But man has not only the power of storing up ideas, or knowledge of various kinds which have been impressed upon his brain, but he has also the mental power of recalling them from the recesses of his memory, and of examining, comparing and contrasting them with one another; or with objects or ideas at present before him. He likewise possesses the power of combining them into an infinitude of ideal forms; harmonious or discordant, beautiful or incongruous. |