not upon all fours; they use sticks for weapons, divine has to administer to the soul, that is his they live in society, they carry off negro girls, profession; and whatever may be thought of whom they make slaves of, and use both for its utility, it makes all that concerns the digwork and pleasure." This, it must be con- nity of the soul the peculiar care of the divine, fessed, is anything but "asserting the dignity who would feel much scandalized were it proved of human nature," but it is of far more conse- that bis flock were, after all, but the fiftieth quence than asserting human dignity, to know cousins of sheep. While physicians, who in the that when Lord Monboddo talks of whole practice of their honourable profession are as nations of monkey men, without the use of little interested in the entire cure of bodies & speech, who walked erect, and not upon all- the divines are in the entire cure of souls, are fours; he gave us a legacy of nonsense, and shrewd enough to understand the real state of bad men having possession of the precious relic the question, which is this, that did correct and use it most unscrupulously as a sharp weapon sober ideas prevail with regard to the nature of against those who maintain the substance and man, his rights, duties, and real position as a sense of Monboddo's theory, without its out- member of the great commonwealth-physic rageous nonsense. To our minds one simple would be thrown to the dogs, for assuredly men fact is sufficient to overturn the theory of Mon- would have none on't. So that these two boddo, a fact mentioned by White, which is, brothers in the medicinal art have long made that the law of gradation, that philosophers common cause together, most artfully raising of his school so strenuously maintain, would be such a cloud of prejudice that the patients can't destroyed if the hypothesis of tailed men were see an inch in advance of their noses, but are correct; for in descending through the species led by that useful organ, to borrow an expresof apes, we meet with no tails till we reach the sion from the poet, as asses are." If, however, baboons, which are further removed from man which is not very common, a Taylor or a Lawthan the apes are; but surely it is much better rence step forward to expose these peccadillos, to state the fact or facts, and cure the delusion, why their mouths are stopped with a sop of a than to persecute or abuse its author. It will sword; they having the alternative, poverty hereafter be proved that Lord Monboddo is and independence in prison, riches and degrasufficiently refuted by a reference to the rela-dation in a palace; for whatever may be said of tive structure of men and monkeys; but enough individuals, it is certain that associated bodies has already been said to free us from the im- act to the letter upon the scripture injunction, putation of supposing that real bona fide men "if thine eye offend thee pluck it out "—for or women ever did wear so unsightly an ap- any member offend them they thrust him out. pendage. The tendency of the multitude to be gratified with all that flatters their prejudices and puffs them up with the notion that they are in action like angels, in form, apprehension, &c. like gods, has strangely affected philosophers, especially modern ones, who, though at fitting opportunities will preach and moralise to admiration about corrupt, degraded, and fallen human nature, will yet insist that there is in that nature something divine, angelic, and the like; so that he had better been born a dog who, notwithstanding all this fuss, should affirm that man is but a two-legged, two-handed animal, less swift than the hare, less strong than the lion, and, though better organized for all the purposes of intelligence and happiness, has been perhaps less reasonable than either. But it is evident that in a state of society where it is treason to expose bad governments, however vile and corrupt, and flat blasphemy to propagate any opinions against a hireling priesthood and law-made religions; it is natural to suppose that the people should be systematically deceived, and reduced to that state of servile vassalage, both of mind and body, that wholesome truth is an abomination to them; and the public orator, who is loaded with popular applause,has good reason to demand, like Phocion, whether he have not given birth to something foolish. Between doctors for the body, and doctors for the soul, the credulous multitude have been physicked out of all plain sense. The

SYMBOL WORSHIP.

I.

"The Egyptians assigned to their gods certain animals, as their symbols. They were introduced into the temples, as were the images into the churches of the Christians, and afterwards they were adored. Clement of Alexandria says, that the Egyptians regarded the ibis and ichneumon as the statues of the gods. That is to say, as their symbols."-Jurieu's Histoire des Dogmes et des Cultes de l'Eglise.

IT is intended to devote a portion of these pages to a consideration of the nature and origin of symbolic worship. An attempt will be made to trace its moral influence upon the social and political condition of nations. A concise, plainly written series of papers upon a subject so pregnant with important considerations will, it is hoped, be acceptable to general readers, who may not be in a condition to purchase, nor even to afford so much of leisure as would enable them to wade through, bulky and expensive folios. The aim here is to popularise, by smoothing the difficulties which in many learned works beset the path of the student, and thus bring the mysteries, or hidden things, of the world of symbols within the reach of the simplest understanding. There is no want of admirable matter for a full and complete history of symbolic worship, but the narrow limits of this paper render it necessary to crowd much that is useful into a small space, to do which

with effect demands some skill; it commonly happening with the book as with the palace, that abundance of excellent material is rendered worse than useless by a bungling architect: The end to be attained is concentration, not diffusion; a bringing close together facts of peculiar interest, which bear with force upon the question; and not as is usual to spread those facts over a large surface, so that by colcting, or as it were drawing, into one focus he rays of information which are now dispersed over the pages of many authors, light may be thrown upon a subject hitherto so much obscured by national vanities, party violence, and sectarian prejudices.

which rests the clumsy superstructure of their divine logic; and not merely so, but their anathemas are pronounced against those shocking infidels who scruple to receive their assumptions as the only standard by which the truth or falsehood of all other ideas and all other systems of theology are to be determined. If the discussion turn upon the relative antiquity of the Sanscreet and Jewish histories; if the disputed point be whether the Indian Geeta or the Jewish Bible has most claim to the respect and veneration of mankind, it is at once decided by these self-sufficient logicians, that as it is clear a god wrote the Jewish Bible, and as it is equally clear that the account given of creation in the sacred books of the Hindoos flatly contradicts that furnished by the great Jehovah himself, ergo, what is written in the Hindoo books must be false. Their conduct admirably illustrates the judicious remark of Sir Thos. Brown, that those who would obtain a clear and warrantable body of truth, must be content to forget or part with much they know; for how can all truth be obtained by a partial pursuit of it?-how, unless they forget or part with the prejudices of caste, sect, and nation, can philosophers, Christian or Hindoo, obtain a clear and warrantable body of truth? or how, in reason's name, can any writer who assumes that to be true which is the very point in dispute, lay claim to the character of an accurate investigator or an impartial historian? Mr. Maurice, a writer respectable by his talent, is the fairest and least offensive specimen of this genus, yet his History of Hindostan, and his Indian Antiquities, are both greatly disfigured by an unnecessary obtrusion of his religious opinions and gratuitous impertinencies, levelled against those whose orthodoxy is not his doxy. The animus of this writer is shown in the following passage from the introduction to Indian Antiquities, p. 22: "I have entered further into their astronomical disquisitions than my friends may think was either necessary or, in regard to the sale of my book, prudent; but this particular subject was intimately connected with others of a higher nature and more momentous research. The daring assertions of certain sceptical French philosophers with respect to the age of the world, whose arguments I have attempted to refute; arguments, principally founded on the high assumptions of the Brahmins and other Eastern nations, in point of chronology and Making the inspiration of Moses the fixed astronomy, could their extravagant claims be point from whence to set out in search of phi- substantiated, have a direct tendency to overlosophy, taking it for granted that he was a turn the Mosaic system, and with it ChristiDivine legislator, and the account of beginnings anity. I have, therefore, with what success and creation, as given in Genesis, as the only the reader must hereafter determine, laboured that can be true, these doughty reasoners to invalidate those claims with all the persemake everything satisfactorily square with their vering assiduity which a hearty belief in the sumptions. Having upon their own autho- truth of the former (the Mosaic system), and nity determined, not only that Moses wrote the an unshaken attachment, not merely profesToks of Genesis, but also that they were writ-sional, to the latter system (Christianity), could a by the express command of a god, the ideas not fail of exciting and animating." The above sequent thereupon form the substratum upon passage shows that while Mr. Maurice, wedded

All that concerns the religion, the learning, the virtues, and vices of antiquity opens to our View a field of investigation of almost unlimited extent, with no other boundary line than that presented by the great globe itself, and suggests the idea of periods of time which seem to mock all ordinary chronologic computation. The facts which relate thereto are confined to works which, from their costliness, are as completely scaled books to the poorer and more numerous classes of society as though printed and published in the planet Jupiter; and even could they be placed at the disposal of the mass of the population, few would have sufficient courage to commence the investigation, or, if they made the attempt, would fail to grow weary and disgusted; weary of the drudgery inseparable from such a pursuit, and disgusted with the ophisms, gratuitous hypothesis, and wild imaginings, so pompously paraded by theologic historians as sacred truths. Many of these writers, who have so largely contributed to bring this species of literature into merited Contempt, seeem to have no other object in view, when treating of the religions of antiquity, than studiedly to depreciate and misrepresent them. When they illustrate the religions of India and Egypt, it is with a view to throw into the foreground what they call the divine truth of their own holy religion; so that their Listories amount to little more than special pleadings in favour of certain cherished dogmas; and if they succeed in establishing for a season me fanciful hypothesis, or give a colour of reasonableness in favour of some systematic theology, they are then reckless as to what becomes of truth, reason, or any thing so vulgar

is common sense.

to system, and fettered by the prejudices of his nation, was quite unfitted to treat fully and impartially the important subject he had engaged to develop, that nevertheless he was one of those men to whom Bacon alludes, who know how to sound the sharps and flats of discourse; for the strain of his work was well adapted to tickle the ears of the honourable directors of the East India Company, to whom it was dedicated.

criterion of intelligence. They inform us that size indicates power, ceterus paribus, that i other conditions being equal; arguing that larg heads always have and always will rule the small ones, which opinion may be very good, but it is in direct opposition to that: held be Aristotle, who insisteil that small headed me are by far the most knowing, so it is likely the Aristotle had the same idea of a large head that we, in these more enlightened tunes, bave n If the high assumptions of the Brahmins and thich ones. Aristotle, like the phrenologists. other Eastern nations in point of chronology mapped out the head; or, to speak with acand astronomy be an erroneous assumption; curacy, the phrenologists map out the head like if their claim to superior wisdom be "extra- Aristotle; so that organology is by no mean vagant," let such assumptions and claim be a modern science-Aristotle and the phrenoshown to be such by fact and argument. The logists only differing as to the number an assumption of an Indian or Egyptian priest is place of the organs, which, with all due subjust as good, to our thinking, as the assumption mission to Coombe, Deville, and others, is a of a Christian priest; the claim of the Hindoo ticklish point to determine. We leave th. philosophers for priority in point of time and reader to take one hypothesis, hoth, or neither. moral superiority, may or may not be extra- as he finds it convenient; as our object now n vagant, but if they are the extravagance should to show by facts and figures that men have not be exposed, and let us not violate the plainest more brains than many other creatures, biper rules of justice and right reason by pronounc- or quadruped, notwithstanding the assertion o ing them to be such because they have a di- the phrenologists. That the elephant, the ' reet tendency to overturn the Mosaic system, phin, and the whale have more brain than mur and with it Christianity. Away with the is well known, and we believe the patient Mosaic systém, if it require falsehood and in-borious ass has the like advantage over the justice for its support! perish Christianity, if "lord of the creation. So that, as regards it harmonise not with the cultivated reason of absolute size, human beings have no advanta man! The plain truth is, that Mr. Maurice, over many creatures of an inferior species and all writers of his dogmatic school, fully while with respect to the relative size, a sonagree with Sir W. Jones, that "either themary of the result of Cuvier's investigation is first eleven chapters of Genesis (all due allow-shown in the following table →→→ anes being made for a figurative, Eastern style) ΜΑΝ are true, or the whole fabric of the Christian. religion is false," which accounts for their Gibbon terrible wrath and fierce declamation against the philosophers who flourished during the eventful period of the first French revolution; the Volneys, Dupuis, and others of the same school, whose writings have so largely contri buted to destroy all belief in the literal text of Genesis; reducing it to a mere allegoric fiction, thereby aiding, without doubt, to overturn the Mosaic system, and with it Christianity. <

Saimiri
Sai
Quistiti
Coniti

QUADS. CONTINUED, Elephant

Young Wallrock 2 1.21 Porpoise.
Callitriche
Mone
Mongabey

1.500

1.30

MONKEYS.

1.48

Sheep,from1.192to T.1

1.22

Ox

1.809

1.25

Horse

1.400

1.28

CETACEOUS ANIMALS.

1.41

Dolphin, fr. 1.25 to, 1.10

-1.903

1.4T

1.44

Eagle

The soul was supposed by the Cartesians to to be snugly quartered in the pineal gland(glandulis pinealis); granting that to be true, a dexterous operator, with a sharp dissecting Cuvier considers the brain in man in proporknife, would be enabled to cut out the apart-tion to his body, as one to thirty, but the corment containing the soul, and show the soul's rectness of this has been disputed, Professor house upon a plate, for the satisfaction of the Sewal and others calculating it as one to forty curions; the thinking principle being carried or fifty about like a monkey in a box. The Jewish Rabbins declared that the souls of men were comfortably located in the back bone, which highly honoured back bone they called luz, and if we may believe Manesses Ben Israel, is incorruptible, and so tough as to set fire, water, hammers, and everything else at defiance. Our men of science teach that the brain is the sensorium or seat of sensation, the size and activity of which phrenologists consider a safe

It was a saying of Cesar's, that "It is the common vice of nature, that we have the most confidence in, and the greatest fear of, things unseen, concealed, and unknown.” BRISTOL: Printed & Published by FIELD, SOUTHWELL, and Co., 6, Narrow Wine-street.-LONDON: Hether ington, Watson.- MANCHESTER: Heywood.-BIRMINGHAM: Guest, Taylor.-LIVERPOOL: Stewart.GLASGOW: Paton and Love.

Saturday, November 6, 1841.

ORACLE OF
OF REASON;

Or, Philosophy Vindicated.

"FAITH'S EMPIRE IS THE WORLD; ITS MONARCH, GOD; ITS MINISTERS, THE PRIESTS;
ITS SLAVES, THE PEOPLE."

No. 5.]

EDITED BY CHARLES SOUTHWELL.

POLICY versus PRINCIPLE.

[PRICE 1d.

I look upon your party, considered as progressors, to be virtually defunct; my reasons for this opinion shall be given in full in this

To the SOCIALISTS of ENGLAND. series of letters; and while addressing you, who

LETTER I.

"Honesty IS the best Policy."

FRIENDS,

are so numerous, influential, and generally intelligent a body, my language shall be to the point-sober, plain, and gravity itself. It is my practice to suit the food to the palate, and use one style with canting hypocrites, and another with just and reasonable people. So that you will please to credit me with the absence of all intention to cast ridicule upon your proceedings, whatever reflections I may feel it

I OFFER no apology for thus addressing you. Socialists can require none. Stigmatised by bigot enemies as a band of reckless infidel innovators, you are not now, and I sincerely trust never will be, respectable enough to stifle inquiry; and, as lovers of truth, you consistently my duty to make. If by the mere statement and properly court publicity, challenging of plain truth, such a result be produced, the the most severe investigation of your principles fault cannot justly be chargeable upon me. My and policy. Whether the investigator be friend hostility is not towards the principles of your or foe, it matters little, if you have a principle, society, but the corruptions of them; not the and that principle be sound; if you have a practices to which you anxiously look forward, policy, and that policy be useful and honest-but the measures adopted to obtain them. Had you cannot fall. A society with true principle as fundamental, and just practice as superstructure, cannot be permanently injured by any weapon, blunt or sharp, friendly or unfriendly.

My reasons for taking the present course are two-fold. First, because having been one of your missionaries, and thinking it my duty to separate from you, my silence might have been misinterpreted, and placed to the account of treachery or fear, vices incident to human nature, that I heartily abhor. Secondly, because it is criminal to hold back truth, which in our consciences we believe ought to be told. Every right-minded member of your society will agree with me, that if to deceive when we ought to instruct is to act the knave; not to undeceive is to be a practical liar. The virtues are active and passive; it is sometimes good to suffer, it is often criminal not to resist. True Socialists are worthy to be called the advanced guard of the army of politicians. The pure philosophy once taught by Robert Owen is the very poetry of politics. Now the pure ore is all but lost amid the dross and rubbish by which it is encumbered. Before Socialism was churched, shorn of its consistency, or its preachers bereverended, it was, as a theory, more beautiful, unique, and admirable than the wit of man had ever before devised. Those who called Socialism "moral Chartism,” caught the true idea of what Socialism was, and what it may yet become, if, like the phoenix, it should rise from its own ashes.

33

principle not been violated; had the association been true to itself; had your talented leaders repudiated, instead of imitated, the vices of mere demagogues, I would have fought in the van, in the rear, or side by side, with them: aye, even to the last gasp; my notion of these things having ever been, that in the glorious warfare against error and tyranny, to a mind not spoiled by vanity, it would be held far more honourable to be a corporal in a well-disciplined regiment, than a general among ragamuffins.

There will be nothing invidiously personal in these papers, and though I shall often have to allude to the Social Missionaries, it will be as an independent friend, who scorns to flatter and disdains to abuse. Their talent is undoubted, while their morality, as this world goes, is generally unimpeachable. Public men are public property; and in glancing, as I shall sometimes have occasion to do, at the conduct of your leading missionaries, I wish it to be understood, that as men of genius and excellent moral feeling, who have won the laurel bravely and worn it nobly, I honour and respect them; but as Brutus did not love Cæsar less, but Rome more, so I do not love these excellent friends less, though I love truth much more. Indeed, so far am I from entertaining feelings personally hostile to the Socialists individually or collectively, that all my sympathies, and prejudices, if you will, are knit up and, as it were, entangled with you.

From Mr. Owen I received the first strong ray of light in my benighted intellects, and [SECOND EDITION.]

the Lambeth Social Institution, upon the occasion of my farewell lecture, much of what is written above would have been unnecessary; but I am driven to take my own affairs into my own hands, and do myself that justice which they have denied me. This shall be done fearlessly and honestly, with a rigid adherence to truth, and full determination not unnecessarily to irritate or wound the feelings of any party.

from the Social body the Promethean touch | pedient, or safe, to do me the simple justice of that first warmed me into public life. As our inserting the substance of what I delivered at enemies would say, I was but the cockatrice's egg, you hatched it into the serpent; so that for me, because the policy of your society is not my policy, to shower abuse and invective upon it, would, as I declared in my farewell lecture, be playing the serpent that stung the hand which warmed it into life. My judgment condemns the abandonment of principle of which the Social representatives have been guilty; my judgment heartily despises the hesitating, shuffling, equivocating, white-feather policy, that has been pursued for some time past, but more especially since the period when the Bishop of Exeter attacked you in the House of Lords; my judgment condemns the taking of oaths by your missionaries, as a miserable, truckling, unprincipled policy, that had nothing in its favour but its immediate convenience, no sort of apology but the wretched one, that those who took it were rescued for a season from the fangs of a vile law. All this, and much more, of which you, the Social body, have been purposely kept in utter ignorance, my deliberate judgment despises and condemns; so that while feeling tugs at my heart-strings with complaining cries to talk me from my purpose; honour and right reason demand that, at all hazards, and any personal sacrifices, the whole truth should be told, "without mystery, mixture of error, or fear of man."

It is always a bad sign when men shrink from investigation; honesty having nothing to dread so much as concealment. If I should fall into error, and these letters contain falsehood, scurrility, or mischievous sophistry, your society will furnish many able men, who can use the tongue or the pen with equal facility, and drub me for my pains. But if I can show that the policy of your society is not the policy which ought to be pursued; that it is neither just, honourable, nor useful; and that if persisted in it will end in confusion and shame; and you who ought to be the admiration, become the laughing-stock, of Europe; if I can demonstrate this by reason and argument, you should at once abandon so vicious a policy, retrace your steps, and not be ashamed to acknowledge, with the Grecian sage, that you grow old learning many things. It is the fundamental axiom of my policy, that no reforms, no morality can be safe that is not firmly inbedded in principle. That a society, or a nation, to be permanently prosperous, must have integrity. No man can raise a good building with bad materials, no matter what his architectural skill; no society or public body can be stable or secure, the members of which have not a high sense of honour, and perfect faith in principle-not a nominal, but real, faith; men and women in whose moral scales wealth weighs as nothing against principle. I am not fighting shadows but substance, not for empty names but solid benefits, which nothing but union with knowledge can give; and what, I ask, hinders union so much as an affection for pelf, and the readiness of individuals and of public bodies to set their affections upon bricks and mortar, and sacrifice principle, honour, and consistency upon the altar of a time-serving, profitable expediency? It is the want of principle and tendency to corruption of all public bodies, that have hitherto existed, that has brought them into contempt, and filled men of sense and spirit with disgust; and, let me tell you, that your society will go the way of all societies, unless it reforms from within. It has nothing to fear from its enemies, but everything to fear So much for matters.purely personal, which from its friends, who, without sterling integrity, have stretched over a larger space than I had may, if not checked by your intelligence, be intended; for bitter experience teaches, that reckless of principle, and sacrifice all that is the less said about individuals, and the more high and noble-minded in policy. There are about the mass, the better. Had the conduc- no essential diffierences among men, the aggretors of the New Moral World thought it ex-gate, or individual man, is good or bad accord

All these remarks are preliminary, but essential and highly useful, for without the soil be duly prepared the seed cannot be put in with advantage; and though all who know me will answer for my motives and intentions, there are few in your society who do know what my views, sentiments, opinions, and conduct really are, and this principally in consequence of the narrow policy upon which the now nominal, but formerly actual editor of the New Moral World uniformly acted; which was to exclude from its columns those opinions which he thought it unsafe or inexpedient to publish; that is, all opinions which did not fit his paper's Procrustean bed. I never disputed his right, as your editor, to prevent the voice of any heterodox missionary being heard; but I did, and do, dispute its justice and policy; and am fully prepared to show it, either through the press or on any public rostrum. If you have paid missionaries, you ought to know what opinions they hold; if their opinions be sound, there can be no harm; if unsound it is essential they should be known, so that the interests of your society may not be sacrificed to the wild vagaries or peculiar crotchets of any individuals.