LETTER XI. SYSTEM OF NATURE AS TO THE SUCCESSIVE STATES OF XI. In our Seasons we have the grateful succession of LETTER the spring, the summer, and the autumn. In our Vegetation, the new leaf, the beauteous flower, and the nutritious fruit. These correspond with contemporaneous atmospherical changes of our system, and are followed by that peculiar destitution and apparent death of nature, which frosty and chilling winter brings on. The insect and reptile world exhibit congenial analogies. The vernal temperature recalls or hatches their tribes into life and feeling, in a creeping state. They have their summer day of playful gaiety, varying in its duration, and enjoy existence in a winged form; their autumn is their time of depositing their oval brood; and from that they depart into death or insensibility. These four states of all that have vital being, growth, maturity, decline and death, and these annual successions of aerial agencies, which are so much associated with the life, produce and suspension of vegetative nature, have been made the characteristics of our terrestrial system. In the human race an analogous series of changes and states takes place, with such striking moral and intellectual results, as to excite our admiration at the kindness of our Creator, for having formed His human nature on a plan XI. LETTER of such sagacious benevolence. By this He has appointed, that every human being should have a season of childhood, another of youth, a third of full maturity, with its parental produce, and a following period of decline and death, to pass into another mode of existence elsewhere. These laws are attached to all who are permitted to pass thro the regular course of human life; tho its Giver has reserved to Himself the resistless right of calling each of us away, at whatever part of it He shall think proper, without completing the full progression of these successive conditions. These changes in us, have the analogy, with the rest of the organized and ethereal kingdoms of nature, above remarked. But they are obviously a very artificial system of living being, and have been, as to our race, purposely selected and appointed to it; for neither of them was unavoidable. There was no necessity for our being so many years a babe, and so many more in each of the succeeding conditions. We might have sprung up at once into full formed beings, as Adam was at his creation; and as the Theban fable imagines that body of men to have done, who emerged instantaneously from the dragon's teeth, which Cadmus was fancied to have sown.' But the great object with us has been, to make moral and intelligent beings of that peculiar kind, which we have thus far attained to be; and we may 'Ovid describes this fable with his usual ease and picturesqueness. 'He opened the furrow with the plough, he urges and scatters the teeth in the ground; soon, passing belief, the clods began to move, and the point of a spear was seen coming above the earth; presently, heads covered with a nodding painted crest emerged; shoulders followed; breasts and arms laden with spears arise, and a crop of men with shields grows fully up.' Ov. Met. lib. 3, v. 104-110. XI. therefore assume that the successive ages and states LETTER thro which we grow into maturity, and decline into dissolution and departure, have been chosen and attached to human nature, from such foreseen and operating instrumentality in facilitating this great result. That each state, till our decline, is a series of acquisition and progression, none can dispute. In all of us, our powers of body and mind, our ideas and knowlege, our experience and judgment, our skilful use of what capacities we have, our bodily activities and our manual dexterities, incontestably increase before decline, or before final decay comes on. Even as this advances, the intellectual process is in most, if not in all, continued with beneficial enlargement of our anterior attainments. In each of the subsequent periods we can do, what we were not competent to perform in an earlier condition. We are more efficient, both as moral and as intelligent beings, in our maturity, than at either of our previous ages. The appointed plan has therefore accomplished its assigned results; and all obtain the benefits from it which were meant to accompany it, tho with that diversity which appears in every human individual. It was an admirable idea to begin our earthly existence as a filial babe; for in this state, our moral feelings evolve in the most pleasing manner. The first emotions are those of love. If the sucking infant is conscious of any sensibilities, and its sweet smile soon announces that it is so, they must be those of affectionate gratification. How exquisitely happy does it show itself to be on its mother's neck! Its moving and moulding fingers; its murmur of placid XI. LETTER delight; the eye of its pleased soul, looking thankfulness, or at least expressive of it, indicate not only its own enjoyment as it feeds, but also that the feeling of love is in action within it, tho it has not then learnt to distinguish it from its happiness. But as its emotions become more marked, it is sufficiently obvious that gratitude and affection, and soon, obedient duty and acquiescing will, are the moral sensibilities first awakened, or rather produced within it.2 2 The Hebrew prophets display to us the Deity Himself alluding, as to his final intentions towards the Jewish nation, to the maternal and parental feelings which He has so beautifully caused. Can a woman forget her sucking child, That she should not have compassion On the son of her womb? Yea-they may forget Yet WILL I not forget thee. Ye shall be borne upon her sides, And be dandled upon her knees: Isa. xlix. 15. XI. At this period also commence our modesty, our LETTER diffidence; our sense of the need of social kindness; our thankfulness on receiving it; our pleasure from it; and as the result of these, that germination of our benevolent sympathies, for which our Creator has formed and prepared us; but which, like the seed of the vegetable, require to be excited and fostered into vital being. We desire to be assisted by others, and we like to help them when we can in return. The little child is as officious to oblige, as he is gratified by being obliged. He is often importunate to return the favors he receives, by little efforts in his own way to do the giver what he thinks a service, or means to be a kindness. But it cannot be necessary to pursue the subject further. It is sufficient to have thus intimated the fact, that by the succession of infancy, youth, and manhood, a gradual train of moral feelings is brought into existence and into operation, in that series which most secures the best moral formation which we can receive. Those of childhood are succeeded by the additional ones, which the position and circumstances of our youth bring out. A new class arise as we advance into manhood, yet still maintaining a pleasing connection with the former.3 The uncivilized nations of the 3 The Turks, with all their self-pride and strange customs, show this effect. Mr. Slade thus expresses their conservation in their manhood, of their filial feelings as children, and their grateful memory of the parental kindness: Turkish women are entitled to the credit of being the best of mothers (to those they rear); wet nurses are unknown among them.' Hence they never lose their influence with their sons; the chief care of a Turk on arriving at wealth and power, is to place his mother comfortably.' Slade's Trav. p. 322. When his son complained to Socrates of his mother Xantippe's unfortunate temper, and the undeserved upbraidings he had received from her, the sage recalled to his recollection that she had suffered often, P 2 |