Produced by Jared Fuller
By William Withington.
1851.
Contents.
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 formeliorating the Human Condition. The Growth of Thought, Slow; and oftmost in unexpected quarter.
Welfare as dependent on the Social Institutions. Limited Aim of theReceived Political Economy. An Enlightened Policy but the EffectiveAim at managing Self-Love, directed towards Present Goods, vulgarlyunderstood. The Political Fault of the Papacy. Its SubstantialCorrection by the Reformation. Republicanism carried from Religioninto Legislation; still without a clear perception of its Principle.Its Progress accordingly Slow.
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.
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 hascome to the persuasion of great insight into the realities, which standbehind the veil: "What more natural, more spontaneous, more imperative,than that the conditions of his future being should press themselves onhis anxious thought! Should we not suppose, the 'every third thoughtwould be his grave,' together with the momentous realities that liebeyond it? If man is indeed, as Shakespeare describes him, 'a being oflarge discourse, looking before and after,' we could scarcely resistthe belief, that, when once assured of the possibility of informationon his head, he would, as it were, rush to the oracle, to have hisabsorbing problems solved, and his restless heart relieved of its loadof uncertain forebodings."* [Bush's Statement of Reasons, &c.,p. 12.]
Not less frequently or intensely, the writer's mind has turned to theproblem of applying know truth to the present, reconciling self-lovewith justice and benevolence, and vindicating to godliness, the promiseof the life that now is. If, meanwhile, he has been "intruding intothose things which he hath not seen," like affecting an angelicreligion,—then it were hardly possible but that he should mistakefancy for fact. But if his inquiries have been into what it isgiven to know, then he cannot resist the belief, that some may deriveprofit from the results of many fearfully anxious years, herecompressed within a few pages. He might have further compressed, justsaying: Mainly, political wisdom is the management of self-love;civilization is the cultivation of self-love; the excrescenses ofcivilization are the false refinements of self-love; while unselfishlove is substantial virtue,—the end of the commandments,—thefulfilling of the law: Or, he might