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would leap up to the window, upon which they let go their hold and the Doctor escaped. In this instance, we have an example of the function of sagacity, which seized in one view the whole chain of cause and effect, or means and ends, in surprize, wonder, madness, in the moral temperament of lunatics, as means to accomplish the end of his escape. The function of sagacity, opposed to science, is to consider things in their complicate and changeable relations of ends and means, whereas science, or the technical power of intellect, considers them in their simple and fixed relations of mode only.

I shall illustrate this important distinction of science and sagacity by applying their action to the various institutions of social life. It has been the great error of modern revolutionary philosophy to consider liberty as a simple mode of freedom, and to conclude that an argumentation of its mass would improve its mode. Sagacity, on the contrary, regarding legal liberty, as a mean accommodated to the moral powers and temperament of the people, makes it harmonize through various modifications with its end, protective government, modified by circumstances to promote the advancement of intellectual energy as the only mean of perfectibility. Again, science, considering the institution of matrimony as a mode of domestic tyranny, the diminution of that evil by unqualified divorce is proposed as a modal reform. Sagacity considers matrimony as a mean of sexual intercourse, accommodated to domestic peace, in the present state of ignorant self-love, and contracted sympathy, and makes its dissolution cautious and difficult.

Science gives to the mind a technical power and propensity to mistake theory for practice. Sagacity presents the double scale of theory and practice, or means and ends, to ascertain the truth of predicament as commensurate with that of perfectibility, which constructs this important axiom, that man must be taught to think before he is called to action, lest, like the unfledged bird, he moves from the nest before he has got his wings, and is lost. From this exposition of the nature of sagacity as distinct from science, it is evident, that all reform must begin with its endowment and improvement in the individual mind; for the progress of science will avail nothing, as the example of all history teaches, to procure actual good or advance the perfectibility of

human nature.

I come now to consider the last and highest quality of human intelligence, called wisdom, which comprehends all the subordinate qualities of intellect, and may be regarded as universal sagacity, which, instead of being applicable to profession, as a sagacious physician, sagacious politician, or sagacious legislator, applies to man in all his relations, and nominates him the philosopher, the sage, the man existing in his true category of manhood.

There can be no greater instance of the absence of good sense, and the undisciplined state of human reason, than the incapacity of all ages and nations to discriminate between the qualities of wisdom and science. Sir Isaac Newton, who discovered the Jaws of light and motion, and the remote relations of the celestial bodies, was regarded as a higher species of being for his excellence in science, while in wisdom he was a downright idiot, proved by his theological writings. Voltaire says, he consoled the envy of mankind for his pre-eminence in science, by his defect in wisdom. The quality of wisdom implies a knowledge of ends and means, and the man of wisdom must know that the end of human existence is not to dissect colours in a prism, or calculate the return of comets, but to develope all his powers in the augmentation of good and diminution of evil in the mundane system, as a member of the great body of the universe of which his material identity forms a co-equal, co-essential, and co-interested part, in time and futurity. That the means to effect this end of existence is the developement of human energy in intellectual power, to discover truth, that is, the most just and most general relations of things in the moral science of laws, institutions, and education. That physical science procures nothing but the means of subsistence or intellectual amusement, and when compared with the knowledge of self becomes obscured like the stars in the presence of the sun.

The pursuits of the physical sciences produce a morbid temperament of dogmatic intellect, repugnant to the functions of good sense, sagacity, and wisdom, tempered with rational doubt. Its discriminations are all specific, gross, and fixed, which offer to good sense no exercise of its delicate and doubtful tact of probability instead of certitude. The fixed relations and definitions of science, in their inflexible rules, take away from sagacity that temperament of pliability and invention which contrasts means with their ends, and ends with their means, by making restraint the means of civil liberty, and licentious liberty the cause of slavery and anarchy. The systematic exclusions of one science from the relations of another; as chemistry from astronomy, this from botany, &c. &c. deprive wisdom of that comprehensive contemplation which consummates the evidence of the moral science, comprehending all knowledge, and the dogma of inflexible rules in the physical sciences destroys that temperament of doubt, which enables wisdom to approach, by doubtful computation, the probabilities of moral truth. The late Dr. Priestley, I think, a more prominent example of the repugnance and incompatibility of wisdom and science than Newton himself. Priestley had written and published the most vuluminous works on every subject of science with the most approved ability, and yet in his theological writings he displayed arguments bordering on idiotism. The quality of wisdom is to be acquired by reading such books as

treat of it distinguished from science by the conversation of liberal, sagacious, and enlightened minds, and by constant meditation upon the inventive actions of our own thoughts, and not the reminiscent ideas of others. Thought and meditation upon the inventive actions of our own minds teach us to play upon the instrument of the understanding with its keys, while science makes a barrel organ of the mind, and teaches us to turn the cognee of custom and prejudice. The cognee player in science can produce no notes beyond what education and custom have fixed on the barrel, and is incapable of harmonizing with the new notes of perfectible theories, while the key player is enabled to strike the most novel and delicate notes of theory, and to accommodate them to the barrel notes of practice, which operation marks the character of wisdom, or the capacity, to choose the best ends, and the best means of human existence in theory and accommodative practice.

In the present state of civil society in Europe, its crowded population, active policy, extensive commerce, extreme luxury, become necessary to provide subsistence in cities. Diffusive lettered education, intelligential intercourse, foreign and domestic, by means of the press, produce precocious observation, and equality of knowledge, unaccompanied with thought, contemplation, and the discipline of reason. In this crisis of the civilized

world, the peace and progress of human society demand either the most energetic power of government, or the most diffusive wisdom and sagacity among all classes of population. The province of sagacity is to discover means accommodated to a particular end, while the province of wisdom is to discover ends, and direct them to the great object of improveable and universal good. The sagacious politician discovers means to execute established ends, or system, while the wise legislator discovers the improveability of ends or system, to advance them towards the distinguishing characteristic of human species--perfectibility. The simple definition of wisdom is a capacity of mind to select ends of theory and means of practice, and the universal conduct of mankind in all ages proves its total absence in the human species.

The technical power of intellect having no capacity of selection has constantly preferred and pursued the relation of modes to the relations of man, and thus has acquired a pompous, vain, and useless knowledge of every part of nature in a total ignorance of self and its momentous laws of happiness.

At the present awful crisis of social life, threatening a most tremendous hurricane of discord in a general revolution, not of power, but of moral, political, and philosophical principles, wisdom dictates the construction of an intellectual compass, as a just end and mean, to meet the awful catastrophe, and to weather the storm while sciolists fill the reviews of Europe with the trifling pursuits of literature, and institutes offer rewards for the

discovery of cockle shells; thus mankind are like the astronomer in the fable, who, being told his house was on fire, shut the door of his observatory and desired not to be disturbed.

I think it no presumption to announce to you, that I hold the discovery of the laws of intellectual power, and the discipline of the human understanding as exhibited in these Lectures as salvatory as the fabled ark in the deluge to prevent the buman species from falling into the most irretrievable state of barbarism. Literature has been widely diffused over all nations, by means of increasing wealth and leisure, and millions are excited to competition of speech and lettered knowledge. Education can alone remedy this logomachy, by parents teaching their children to think, which requires neither wealth nor leisure, and its diffusion will be universal instead of partial, to generate wisdom and sagacity, to discover truth or happiness in the most just and most general relations of things.

America seems the only country where my important discoveries of wisdom can be diffused to meliorate the moral and intellectual temperament of the people, where social power, like a pyramid standing on the solid basis of numbers, gives organism and duration to the politic body, while sects and colonies go forth to advance in experiments of perfectibility, accommodated to the advancement of intellectual power. I do not mean to flatter the people of this country in a comparative view of their moral temperament with that of other nations. The American character is generally reproached with a sordid pursuit of wealth that absorbs all intellectual energy, and a remarkable defect of the sense of honour, lost in popular equality, which by opposing personal excellence, levels all pride of character, and seems thereby to render all social and moral improvement attainable only through the advancement of intellectual power. But there exists, at the same time, a physical force in the equality of property over the whole mass of population, which offers an infallible pledge of the duration of law and liberty, to perpetuate and diffuse instruction, which must triumph over all impediments, and terminate, however slow its pro gress in the advancement of human perfectibility, through the only medium of wisdom and sagacity and virtue.

'Tis not for science moral truth to scan,

But wisdom! Wisdom! Faith, guide, life of man,
Which shews how little's needful to be known,
And what that knowledge which impairs the sense.

Printed and Published by R. CARLILE, 185, Fleet Street.-All Correspoudences for "The Republican," to be left at the place of publication.

No. 22. VOL. 13.] LONDON, Friday, June 2, 1826. [PRICE 6d.

TO THE ELECTORS OF MEMBERS OF THE HOUSE OF COMMONS.

FEW as you are, in comparison with the whole people of this. Island, who should be electors, it is in your power to do good and to put a check upon all the evils that are pervading the country. You the electors constitute the most powerful part of the Parliament, and every unrepresented individual has a fair ground, on which to trace the misconduct of the Parliament and the evils of the country to you. If any one of you sell his vote, if any one of you give his vote to a man who he does not conscientiously believe will do some good, as a Member of the Legislature in the House of Commons, that man is the country's enemy, he has no ground whereupon to complain of any political distresses that may befal him; he has given proof that he is a vicious individual, and every unrepresented individual has ground sufficient to impeach that elector as the cause of whatever political evils may befal the country.

Thousands of you, who are electors, complain of the state of the country: the remedy is in your hands; elect no man as your Representative but one who, you have some grounds whereupon to believe, will arduously endeavour to change the state of the country to what you may wish it to be. There are some hundreds of men in the country ready to become, and qualified to be, your Representatives; but mark you, they are men who will not thrust themselves upon you, they are too honest to solicit your votes, it is your duty to find them, and not to wait until they come in search of you. The men who solicit your votes, do not do it to become your Representatives; they solicit your support to enable them to represent themselves and their little parties. If ever it becomes my lot to be elected by any of you, I would not appear among you until that election be accomplished. My views on this head are future: I have no desires on it for the present; therefore, I feel in a condition to write to you upon sound and good principle.

The source of all the evils of this country is in excessive taxation. No country on the face of the earth is taxed to the same extent, or in the same ratio. The men whom you want as good Members of Parliament are men who will vote against every tax that is not beneficial to the people; against every one that is not worth more in the protection which it procures than it costs.

Printed and Published by R. Carlile, 135, Fleet Street.

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