The Growth of Thought | Page 6

into conformity with a rational rule; a rule not overlooking the advantages of the division of labor, but taking in too such qualifying considerations as the healthful stimulus of free competition, watchfulness over public functionaries, and the necessity of harmonizing private and corporate interests, with public duty.
The movement has been slow; for the actors have dimly apprehended the part they were acting, and the principles by themselves vindicated. It has consisted of two principle acts. The Reformation carried republicanism into religion: our own Revolution into legislation. The two movements were parts of one whole; and, to get at the principles at bottom, either will serve for both, as well as for what may remain for finishing the work begun.
The Reformation having been conducted by theologians, it was natural that disproportionate importance should have been attached to theological niceties. So far as Luther was right in regarding the doctrine of justification by faith only as the great article at issue, it must have been, because the opposite doctrine favored the conceit of a mysterious mediating power vested in a priesthood--a conceit so favorable to the aggrandizement of the order thus distinguished. But considered as a politic movement--as an advance in rightly adjusting the social relations--the Reformation aimed principally at that ill arrangement, by which the authorized expounders of the law divine found their account, in involving that law in a glorious uncertainty, and entrapping people in a frequent violation thereof. Considered as a politic institution, Protestantism differs essentially from Popery, in that it makes more of prevention than of remedy; gives the ministry its best flourish, in the best welfare of the whole body; and pays for spiritual health, rather than for spiritual sickness. If all Protestants do not consistently so, the fact accords with the dim understanding, on both sides, of the essential points contested.
This dim understanding further appears, in that after all the political discussion which has been, the success of republican institutions is still appealed to, as vindicating the reign of justice and benevolence in the public mind; mankind have within so much of the divine, are so self-disposed to do right, that they do not need much control, but may pretty safely be left to their own guidance. Nor is it left to the mere demagogue to talk thus.
Doubtful it may be, whether it should be called dimness of understanding, or rather perverse ingenuity, that men reason thus, when the facts are: So general is the disposition to abuse power, that wherever it is accumulated, it will surely be abused; accordingly it must be distributed as equally as possible. If government be made the business of one part of the community--one tenth, or one hundredth, or one thousandth--that part will inevitably exalt self, at the cost of the others. So strong is self-love, turned towards temporal interests, so acute to discern what tends to the one desired end, and so sure to bend every thing that way, that men's temporal interests are pretty safe in their own hands, and safe no where else. Now the legitimate end of civil government being, to secure the temporal welfare of all, all must have a share in it, or the excluded portions must find their rights neglected.
It may have favored the common mistake, that the leaders in successful republican movements have so often shown a heroic self-devotion and disinterestedness--men like Luther, and Washington. But these are the exceptions, the rare gems of humanity. If they were the fair specimens, their work would never have been needed. Then we might leave to a class the regulation, whether of our spirituals or temporals, with the like advantage, that we leave the making of our watches or our shoes to their respective trades. But the indistinct apprehension, why the advantages of the division of labor fail in the matter of government, accords well with the observation, that republican principles make slow progress in the world, are held in gross inconsistencies; and the most zealous assertors thereof in one department, are oft found most strenuously opposed in others.
It is thus that we are so slow to conform to one rule, our arrangements for spiritual instruction; for preserving health; for preventing crime; for cheaply, expeditiously, and satisfactorily settling disputed claims; for furnishing the whole people with instruction in their rights, interests, and duties; as well as that thorough cultivation of the whole man, which the full success of republicanism requires.


Part III.
Welfare as Dependent on Philosophy.
But the whole office of Policy, in arranging the social relations, supposes the prevalence of an ill-informed and misdirected self-love. And, accordingly, the second way of attempting the promotion of general welfare is, to convey and impress just estimates of its constituents. Such is the office of Philosophy: the study of the truly wise man-wise for the present life--still leaving out