Semitic philosophy: showing the ultimate social and scientific outcome of original Christianity in its conflict with surviving ancient heathenism

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SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY:

'^■'.

SHOWING

THE ULTIMATE SOCIAL AND S(TENTIFIC OUTCOME
OF ORIGINAL CHRISTIANITY ^

"X

IN ITS CONFLICT WITH

SURVIVING ANCIENT HEATHENISM.

BY

PHILIP C. FRIESE.

CHICAGO:

S. C. CRICtGS & COMPANY,

1890.

^.\S''' '■'!'

/

Copyright, 1S90,
Bt S. C. GRIGGS AND COMPANY.

OOTsTTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

PAGE

THE SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY, called Semitic from xnE
Author op its great Revival, — being Man's first
thought as an isolated person, before the invention
OP Language, and being conducted by means of the
Sensuous Ideas, — was the Normal, Instinctive, Origi-
nal Philosophy, ....._ 1-35

1. Thought without Language in the Isolated Individuah

Philosophy, many systems, begins in childhood with
Instinctive Thought, ..-_... 1

2. Instinctive Thought of the unlearned may be Philosophy.

The Higher Law, . 4

3. Revolutions of the Past and of the Future, by Instinctive

Thought, -..-..--- 7

4. The means employed by Instinctive Thought are the Sensu-

ous Ideas, ......._. 8

5. There is but one Philosophy, — the Doctrine of the King-

dom of God, — the Semitic Pliilosophy, .... 9

6. Thought before Language in the Isolated Individual, . 12

7. Conservative Analysis: of Consciousness, . . . .12

8. Conservative Analysis : of the action of Man's spirit, . . 16

9. Conservative Analysis: of Man's body, . . . .17

10. The Sensuous Ideas, . . . . ■ _ . .20

11. The Imaginative Ideas, ....... 20

12. Enumeration of the Modifications of Speculative and Prac-

tical Action, ___..... 22

13. Feeling, .......... 23

14. Use of the representative Sensuous Ideas, without Lan-

guage, 23

iii

IV CONTENTS.

15. We know things as they are, . . . . . .30

16. A universal concrete notion, . . . . . .32

17. It alternates in its analysis with its artificial synthesis, and

furnishes the whole domain of Philosophy, . . .33

CHAPTER II.
MAN'S ORIGINAL PHILOSOPHY, or First Thought,

WHEN IN CONSCIOUS RELATION TO OTHER SPIRITS, FIRST,

WITHOUT Language, in Natural Society, then with
Language, in Artificial Society, was at first in
both cases Normal ; until Ancient Artificial Society,
BY the lapse op Man's Thought through the abuse
OF Language into Idolatry and by the reduction
OF his practical action through Idolatry into Crime,
became, as the union of Idolatry and Crime, Ab-
normal, and was called Ancient Heathenism, . 35-64

18. Man, still without Language, in conscious relations to other

spirits, sees moving, material, outward objects, . . 35

19. Organic World, Inorganic World, . _ . _ .36

20. One Superior Spirit, ....... 37

21. Practical action, nourishment of the body, . , .38

22. Association with fellow-men for this purpose, _ . _ 40

23. Man cooks liis food, and thei-eby observes Artificial as well

as Natural Qualities of Matter, . . . . .41

24. Before treating of the uses of Language in Society, some-

thing of the nature of Language is here anticipated, to
explain the Sensuous Ideas. Language externalizes the
Sensuous Ideas, ._...... 42

25. Space, Time, Gravitation, .43

26. Mysteries created by Science, .-.--. 44

27. Faith may be acquired without Language, . . .45

28. Primitive Natural Society without Language, Artificial

Society with Language, ...... 46

29. Natural Society, the Family, associated by the original

Social Contract between God and Man, . . .46

30. Moral obligation from Man's relations to plant life and

animal life, 47

CONTENTS. V

31. In Human Society the moral obligations of Man to Man

arise under the original and continuing Social Contract, _ 49

32. The five elementary Social Activities, Society an Integral

Whole. Natural Society Undenominational, based on
the First Principle, cannot be historically traced in its
development by Language into Artificial Society. Nor
can the origin of Language be traced in history, . . 50

33. Language, a system of externalized Sensuous Ideas, was

probably suggested by Prayer. Superiority of the Sen-
suous Ideas, ..-.---- 53

34. Moral Evil arose from Idolatry, and Idolatry, from the

abuse of Language, ...---. 55

35. The absolute sway of Idolatry over Ancient Society, result-

ing in Despotism, Sacerdotalism, Offensive War, and
Slavery, 57

CHAPTER III.

THE DOCTRINE AND THE PRACTICE OP THE KING-
DOM OP GOD, BEING THE REVIVAL BY JeSUS OF

Normal Artificial Society from Ancient Heathen-
ism BY MEANS OF THE REVIVAL OP THE SPECULATIVE

Side, and the consequent RE\^VAL of the Practical
Side of the Original or Semitic Philosophy, . 65-98

36. Normal Artificial Society revived in Modern Civilization,

or Christianity, from Ancient Heathenism, which was
universal, at the birth of Jesus, as Orientalism, or Des-
potism with Idolatry, Polytheistic and Monotheistic, —
the latter among the Jews, ...--- 65

37. It was necessary that the Reformer of Polytheistic Idolatry

should be a Jew, ...--..- 68

38. Jesus of Nazareth, as a Jew, began at his home among

Jews his reform movement, _ . . _ . .70

39. He summed his doctrine in the formula " Kingdom of God,"

expounded it by oral speech, addressed to the Common
People and his Disciples, and left nothing in writing,
thus showing his distrust of Written Language, . - 70

40. Exposition of the formula " Kingdom of God," and its two

terms, "Kingdom" and "God," . . . - . 71

VI CONTENTS.

41. Summary of the meaning of this formula. On its specula-

tive side, it is the Semitic Philosophy. On its practical
side, it is the Organization, or practical Constitution of
Normal Artificial Society, ...... 76

42. The primary speculative and practical activities of Man

are derived from the First Principle. Corresponding to
them are the five universal associations, or Integral
Organs of Society, ....... 77

43. The Undenominational Association of Jesus with his Dis-

ciples was the first typical Christian Community, _ . 79

44. Representation was almost the only development of early

Cliristianity, .82

45. The adoption of Sacerdotalism and Despotism by the Cliris-

tian Community, about the beginning of the third century, 83

46. The compromise with Constantine, resulting in the Nieene

creed of impure Monotheism, . . . . .84

47. The Christian Sacerdotal Machine, and tlie Christian Mili-

tary Machine, or Government, . . . . .86

48. The inward development of Christianity, its popular tradi-

tion, .......... 87

49. The Sacerdotal Order subordinated the popular tradition to

their Oriental dogmas, ....... 89

50. After the lapse of sixteen huiulred years, it is difficult to

assign the motives of those engaged in the movement or
Revolution of the Sacerdotal Order. The Inquisition, . 89

51. The State's complicity with the Inquisition of the Church, 91

52. Oriental maxims of Conquest and of Oppression adopted by

the Military Governments of Europe, . . . .92

53. The Christian Community inaugurated by Jesus relapsed

into modern forms of Ancient Heathenism, . . 92

54. It also developed into forms of Modern Civilization in the

Rei^ublic of Letters and Art, and the Republic of In-
dustry, .-92

55. Conflict between the Sacerdotal Order and the State for

Mastery, ......... 95

56. There is for Man a controlling and attracting Unity, and a

consequent Simplicity in his View of the Universe, — one
source of Normal Action, one cause of Moral Evil, one
Normal Order of Society, the description of which must
be the Ideal Social Constitution, . . . . .95

CONTENTS. Vll

CHAPTER IV.

THE IDEAL WRITTEN SOCIAL CONSTITUTION,— being

A DEVELOPMENT OF THE REVIVED, PREDOMINANTLY SPECU-
LATIVE Social Side of the Semitic Philosophy, 99-149

57. The Artificial Constitution of the "Kingdom of God," as

Normal Society, or Modern Civilization, . - .99

58. Article L— The common features of all the Integral Organs

of Society, ..------- 100

59. Article II.— The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Letters

and Art, ...------ 105

60. Article III.— The Republic, or Integral Organ, of the

Church, ..------- 109

61. Article IV.— The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Industry, 115

62. Article V.— The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Public

Charity, - - 135

63. Article VI.— The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Govern-

ment, with its Four Partial Organs ; namely, its PoUtical
Parties, its Regular Legislature, its Body of Executive
Officers, and its Legal Profession, . . . _ 128

64. The Government's Political Parties are Honorable Associ-

ations of the People, .....-- 131

65. The Government's Regular, or Denominational Legislature, 134

66. The Government's Body of Executive Officers, . .135

67. The Government's Legal Profession, with its Judicial and

its Practicing Branches, ....-- 139

68. The Government's extraordinary, general or local, Unde-

nominational, Representative Convention, for exercising
the People's reserved Powers, whether Legislative, Execu-
tive, or Judicial, as required by the occasion, . . 146

CHAPTER V.

THE GENERAL SOCIAL REFORMATION, as the revived,
predominantly practical, Social Side of the Semitic
Philosophy, and called Practical Christianity, or
Developed Modern Civilization, — attainable by all
Monotheistic Races and Nations, ... 150-310

Vlll CONTENTS.

69. Semitic Philosophy, an exposition of the Kingdom of God,

as a reality, a fact, ---____ 150

70. The relation of man's spirit to his body, is used to explain

the relation of God to the whole Inorganic world, . . 151

71. The Kingdom of God abstractly and concretely regarded, . 152

72. The action of spirit, being Integral, frames man's body as a

conductor of spiritual action, and as an instrument, . 154

73. Normal association of all men with God, Social Contract,

Social Organization, -.-.... 155

74. General View of the errors and irregularities in each of the

Integral Organs that hinder its Normal action, . _ 156

75. A General Reformation of Society, with Reform of the

Reformers, must be effected by a competent knowledge of
the First Principle, .--.... 159

76. The shortcoming of the Republic of Letters and Art in

apprehending and teaching the First Principle, is its
entertainment of Oriental false so-called science, . . 163

77. The most prominent practical error of the Republic of the

Church, is its failure to adopt a Normal Organization,
and its consequent control by an Abnormal Ecclesiastical
Ring, - 168

78. The greatest practical error of the Republic of Industry is

its failure to secure, as a whole, a separate and independ-
ent Industrial Organization; a failure resulting in general
Industrial Anarchy and War, - - . . . 175

79. The most serious practical error of the Republic of Charity

is likewise its failure to secure a separate and independent
Charitable Organization ; a failure that accounts for the
want of concentration and of energy in its charitable
efforts, . . . _ 181

80. The practical error of faulty Organization prevails not only

in the Republic of Government as a whole ; but also in
each of its Partial Organs, and in its extraordinary Un-
denominational Governmental Conventions, . . . 187

81. In the Political Parties the want of efficient Normal Organ-

ization prevails, along with Abnormal, non-representative
Rings, 188

82. The Governmental Legislature, virtually composed of Com-

mittees elected by the Political Parties, fails to carry out
the Principle of Home Rule in many countries, . . 197

CONTEISTTS. IX

83. The Body of Executive Officers in the Civil Service, the

Military Service, and the Naval Service, should have
their appointments dependent on the same kind of exam-
ination, respectively, with the same tenure of office, and
privilege of promotion, ..._-- 201

84. The Legal Profession fails to attain its proper degree of

influence and of usefulness, owing to its defective Organ-
ization, which does not include, as it should, all its mem-
bers of all its classes, eomliined by Representation in
National, International, and, in time, Interrace, Associa-
tions or Guilds, ...-...- 203

85. The Government's Undenominational Organization, by rep-

resentative Conventions, called to exercise the Reserved
Sovereign Powers of the People, is defective, owing to the
absence in it of a systematic localization ; so that it may be
called into action in a regular and orderly way, according
to the Principle of Home Rule, in large or small Govern-
mental districts, according to the sphere in which its
action is properly required, ------ 207

CHAPTER VI.

CONCLUSION. — The special difficulties in the way of

REALIZING THE NEEDED GENERAL SoCIAL REFORMATION,
AND THEIR remedies; — THESE REMEDIES BEING SUMMED

in the pursuit of the first principle of the semitic
Philosophy, --...-- 211-246

86. The logical effect of a Revival of the Semitic Philosophy,

will ultimate in a general Social Reformation, . - 211

87. Three fundamental difficulties in the way, . . - 212

88. The first difficulty is the prevailing Monotheistic Idolatry, 213

89. The second difficulty is the Abuse of the Productions of the

Press, - 214

90. The third difficulty is the undue respect paid to our ances-

tors and predecessors, in handling their errors, . .217

91. Untenable Mediieval notions of the Hierarchy of the Roman

Catholic Church, regarding religious instruction in the
Public Schools, ..--.... 220

X CONTENTS-

92. Obsolete ancient notions of the Roman Catholic Hierarchy,

respecting the Temporal Power and the Ecclesiastical
Government of that Hierarchy, in opposition to the Civil
Representative Democracy of the American People, . 222

93. The Industrial War now prevailing, and inaugurated by the

erroneous measures and practices of former generations,
can be settled by a general Industrial Peace, if those
ancient errors are disregarded, . - _ - - 229

94. The measure granting Suffrage to the Negroes in the coun-

try of the Whites, is as plain a violation of the Para-
mount Interrace Law, — which assigns to each Race a
separate country, — as was the forcible deportation of the
Negroes from their native country in Central Africa; and
the proper redress for both violations of that Law is to
return the Negroes to their native country in Africa by
the Whites; — by whom the wrong in both cases was com-
mitted, .-...---- 231

95. One-sided views will be replaced by liberal culture and

advancing Civilization of all tlie Races through the steady
pursuit of the First Principle of the Semitic Philosophy, 243

mTRODUCTION.

rpHE Semitic Philosophy is the doctriue of the King-
-^ dom of God, as it was first, under circumstances
of very great difficulty, briefly proclaimed, and as it is
capable of unlimited development. It is a system of
principles, of first truths, based on patent facts of the
universe, and couclied in a brief formula.

The fact that its author did not write it down in a
book, suggests that he did not regard it as altogether
beholden, for its preservation or for its development, to
elaborate written forms of human language, or to any
rigid verbal methods. The inference, indeed, is clear,
that he relied, for the extension and propagation of his
doctrine, on something entirely different from words.

That there is, and always has been, another, though
always much neglected, vehicle of thought, an internal
instrument, altogether diverse from spoken or written
words, is for every person that reflects a moment upon
the process that, when he thinks, takes place Avithin
him, a most palpable truth. When he thinks of an
object, or group of objects, not present, he sees within
him something that represents it; and which, when
the object is a physical one, that he has before
observed, and when its representation is vivid, he

XU INTEODUCTIOK.

• clearly perceives not to be either a word or a group of
words, but an apparently distinct image of it, which,
if he were not aware that the object was not present,
he could not distinguish from the object itself. Now,
the thing tluit vividly represents in thought an absent
object, and that seems its image, may be called its
sensuous idea.

The nature of the sensuous ideas and their uses
deserve attention. They can be proved to be material;
to be organic parts of man's body, located, probably,
in the brain; constructed like the rest of the body, by
man's spirit; and marked with significant signs by
forces rayed upon them, through the senses, from out-
ward objects. It is they that immediately represent
to man's spirit, outward objects, whether absent or
present. Even words, oral or written, as outward ideas
or representations of objects, are represented by the
inward sensuous ideas, before they can be known.

The thouglit carried on by means of sensuous ideas,
without words, is instinctive. Sometimes, it is so
rapid that its separate steps cannot be remembered,
but only its result; and its process is virtually uncon-
scious. At other times its steps are deliberate and per-
fectly conscious. The advantage of instinctive thought,
on account of its vividness and rapidity, over thought
conducted by means of words, is manifested by its
almost exclusive use in the common affairs of daily
life. Its superiority is equally obvious in the con-
structions of the highest science, by means of the

IKTEODUCTION. XUl

sensuous ideas resulting from careful observations and
experiments.

Without impugning the proper advantages of lan-
guage for recording and communicating truth, the
api)ropriate adaptation of instinctive thought for inves-
tigating, exploring, methodizing, building up, and
developing an embryonic system of social doctrine, as
was that of the Kingdom of God when first pro-
claimed, embracing l)y implication all liberal culture,
and including philosophy, the special sciences, and the
practical disciplines of religion, industry, charity and
government, is unquestionable.

Committed to the kee2^ing of mere language, the
doctrine of the Kingdom of God would have come
down to us as a dogmatic, illiberal, contracted, dwarfed,
and stunted abortion. But faithfully and generously
confided, as the "comforter" of mankind, to the
instinctive thought of the learned and the unlearned
alike, it has been not only preserved, but cherished and
developed, by the study of learned scholars, and by the
tradition of the unlearned masses of the peoj)le; until
it has grown from the tenets of a small and despised
sect, to become the rule and the ideal, not only of
modern civilization, but, also, of that more perfect
universal, Interrace society which modern civilization,
by proving the increasing capacity of the masses of
the people for liberal culture, clearly foreshadows.

Combinations of true sensuous ideas revealed in
sudden glory, like constellations and galaxies of distant

XIV INTRODUCTION.

stars, shining fortli in the night, and skilfully sug-
gested by Jesus, rej)resented truths to the spirit of
man which could not in his time be fully interpreted by
the heathen words then current, and as then under-
stood. For the languages known to the circle in
which Jesus personally moved Avere imperfect and
undeveloped; and in that circle little cultivation of
those languages prevailed. It would have been neces-
sary to invent a body of new technical terms, that is a
new and extremely difficult language beyond the easy
comprehension of the common people, to express at
large and in an intelligible way the newly proclaimed
truth of the Kingdom of God.

Since that time new meaning has been infused into
modern language, which has become reconstructed in
new tongues and dialects, and has now in its various
modifications, in Christian nations, become a better
vehicle of Christian thought.

But, if Jesus had attempted to write his doctrine
in any of the imperfect languages of his day, it would
have been necessarily liable to gross misinterpretation.
By not writing his doctrine, he has referred its keep-
ing to the sensuous ideas, where it always was, and
where, in its original purity and truth, it always will
be, found by earnest searchers with the instruments of
deliberate instinctive thought.

Many of the so-called religious dogmas of the day
are linguistic formulations, couched in language that
preserves its heathen implications, and which, therefore.

INTRODUCTION. XV

fails to fully express them iu a Cliristiau sense; al-
though they were first suggested, perhaps, by deep, far
awa}^ indistinctly perceived truth.

By treating in the light of instinctive thought, and
by means of the sensuous ideas, what we have called
the Semitic philosophy as the doctrine of the Kingdom
of God, this philosophy can be carried back, before
the origin of language, and, therefore, independently of
it, to the primeval man, as well as carried forward to
that ultimate consummation of perfect universal society,
which is the ideal goal of all reform, and in which all
merely human language must give place to other
purely spiritual modes of intercourse.

The lifegiving, energizing, and developing influence
of instinctive, or free, thought upon the inward growth
and the outward extension of the doctrine of the King-
dom of God, can then be contrasted with the deadening
obstruction fastened upon its vital functions by the
cumbrous load of merely verbal, and arbitrary symbols,
creeds, dogmas, canons, and decrees, that in some quar-
ters have hindered, and in others have totally stopped
its progress, and have turned it backwards towards the
errors of ancient heathenism.

No form of words can fully express, although it may
indicate, a principle, far less a system or doctrine of
principles. A principle can only be reached, by means
of the sensuous ideas, in free or instinctive thought.
Words, like a boat, may conduct us to the continent
of truth; but, if we would explore the continent, we

XVi INTRODUCTION.

must leave the boat behind us, and follow whither our
inward guides, the faithful, unerring sensuous ideas,
lead. We only go back to our boat when we wish to
report our discoveries to those we left behind.

P. C. F.
Baltimore, January 4, 1890.

CHAPTER I.

rriHE Semitic Pliilosopliy, so called from the race of the
-^ author of its great revival, is the Christian doctrine
of the Kingdom of God. It was nian^s first thought, as
an isolated person, before the invention of language, and
being conducted by means of the sensuous ideas before
its revival, it Avas the instinctive and normal original
philosophy.

1. To avoid any misconception from the name of
the Semitic Philosophy, and from its relation to the doc-
trine of the Kingdom of God, it seems necessary to make
two preliminary remarks. In the first place, it should be
said that the Semitic Philosojihy, like the doctrine of the
Kingdom of God, with which, in its developed sense, it is
virtually synonymous, does not propose to enounce the
principles of the science of religion only, but of all the
sciences, and especially of all social science; deriving all
principles from its one universal First Principle. In the
second place, it is projDer to say, that the Semitic Philos-
oj)hy, while based on instinctive, or free, thought, and
departing from some of the verbiage of prevailing systems,
and particularly eschewing the trammels of obsolete,
ancient, and arbitrary verbal maxims, creeds and dogmas,
does not, in putting forth its views with the perfect freedom
that belongs to truth, ''^come to destroy the law;" but **to

2 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

fulfil" in every jot and tittle the Higher Law of God; for
with this law must all true philosophy agree.

There are many interesting and imi)ortant systems of
philosophy. They all propose, in avoiding the details of
the special sciences, while having a tacit reference to them
all, to give general views and explanations respecting the
nature of man, and both of the material universe, and of
the society, in which he is placed. Those systems which
recognize God and his true relations to man, include in
this society, expressly or by implication, the superior and
presiding spirit of the one God.

These systems have been composed at different and
widely separated periods; some being very ancient, and
others quite modern. All have much in common; but
while each gives a condensed epitome of the highest cul-
ture of the times in which its author wrote, or verbally
expounded his doctrine, they are said, upon the whole,
in combining ancient wisdom with modern improvements,
to exhibit a decided progress.

A new system of philosophy, therefore, cannot now be
made entirely new, without culpably disregarding the
merits of the old. But, if it eliminates from the sys-
tems that have preceded it some important error, or
adds to these systems some hitherto neglected weighty
truths, it may in these respects, without presumptuously
contending for the glory of a brilliant creation of genius,
make a modest claim to attention on the ground of nov-
elty. It is also possible, as will now be attempted, by
disregarding the verbiage of prevailing systems, to ascend,
by instinctive thought, to the simple philosophy of pri-
meval man.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 6

Philosophy has been called the science of sciences, the
science of knowledge, the science of being, the science of
principles, the science of the universal, the study of the
cosmos; and, in fact, it is all of these. For it is an inte-
gral discipline, and each of its functions involves in its
exercise all the rest; while each of these definitions merely
brings one of its functions into prominence.

Viewed as a seeking after the universal-, it begins in
childhood; for the child is ever making wider and wider
classes of the things surrounding it, and higher and
higher generalizations; investigating with curiosity the
part of the universe within its reach, and seeking to com-
prehend its significance, and to utilize it for realizing its
practical schemes.

Indeed, the system of the kindergarten, as a method
of primary education, is profoundly philosophical in rec-
ognizing and developing the surprising fund of thought
without language, or the instinctive thought, exhibited
by the young child before it has learned the language to
express it; yet which is strictly carried on, as will be
explained, by means of the sensuous ideas; and which, if
expressed in learned language, would well deserve the
name of philosophy. For the instinctive thought of the
child is constantly reaching after the universal.

A lower, but still a remarkable, degree of reasoning,
without language, is shown by many wild and domestic
animals, and by insects, which exhibit instinctive thought
in traces of foresight, prudence, mechanical skill, and
industrial combination, in their work.

But not only in children and animals does instinctive
thought take place in the absence of language. It is

4 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

a remarkable fact that the greater part of the reasoning
performed by all grown men, learned and nnlearned
alike, perhajjs ninety-nine hundredths of it, is carried on
instinctively, without the use of language. This fact, on
reflection, is as evident as it is important; plainly dis-
closing philosophy at work in a new and unexpected
field.

2. Indeed, it cannot be doubted, that a large por-
tion of the instinctive thought, as well of the unlearned
masses as of the learned few, is true philosophy, or gen-
eral reasoning based upon the highest universal princi-
ples. Many instances can be given in which a universal
principle announced by some scholar from his study, or
by some man of business to his associates, has been taken
up by those that heard it, and spread over a nation, over
a continent, and over the whole civilized world — with some
helj), indeed, of language and of the press, as well as
with some opposition from them — but with a speed that
no such helj) can ex])l:un. For although the sjioken word
and the press can circulate the statement or formula of a
principle far and wide, with some of the reasoning calcu-
lated to enforce its acceptance, experience proves that at
first they will find only "a paucity^' of hearers and read-
ers. A striking formula in which the principle is
expressed may be remembered; but it is the afterthought,
the instinctive free thought, of the people in silence, in
solitude, or at their work, that collects from far and near
and applies those arguments and motives from every source,
that support the principle and make it a guiding and con-
trolling popular force.

For instance, a distinguished lawyer once asserted that

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 5

there is ''a higher law than the Constitution." The
expression, bearing on the questions and discussions that
were agitating the people, attracted attention, and
seemed almost immediately to command conviction and
the support of millions. But before the principle in-
volved could bo rationally accepted, there was required
a comparatively long train of reasoning — of reasoning
opposed to the hereditary sentiments and maxims of
the people, coming down from past generations, and
urged by trusted and patriotic men of gigantic intellect —
as Daniel Webster, who had gained immortal glory by
defending the Constitution against another line of attack.
The reasoning of the people in their afterthought on this
subject was necessarily, in most cases, instinctive.

The principle claimed to be the higher law, was the
right of personal liberty, which was instinctively or intu-
itively seen to be a law of nature, and as such to be a
law of God, and was therefore concluded to be para-
mount over the Constitution, which is positive law, and
as such is made by man — a conclusion intuitively and
instinctively reached in opposition to the tons of legal
reports and legal text-books yearly scattered over the
country, to the great mass of the current literature, and
probably to the majority of sermons at that time preached.
The instinctive nature of the reasoning which impelled
the movement of the people in favor of the higher law,
will be most clearly apprehended, as well as its force,
from the rapidity and universality of its action.

If this movement is traced from its defensive position
in the comparatively small l)ody of its early adherents,
the Abolition party, when they united with their fellow

6 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

citizens, who had then no sympathy with this movement,
in the Northern, the Western and the Border states, to
resist the actual revohition and civil war that chiefly
aimed to dissolve the union of the United States and to
seize a part of its territory, it will be evident that, in the
midst of this revolution and civil war, a sudden counter
revolution against slavery, and in favor of the higher
law, aiul inaugurated by the Proclamation of Emancipa-
tion, swept over the whole country.

This counter revolution changed the issues of the
war. The General Government reluctantly adopted the
views of "the Abolitionists as a war measure. For it was
evident, that if slavery could be abolished, there would
be no longer any motive for dissolving the Union, or for
dividing the common country of the States. Both sides
acknowledged that the new issue of the abolition of
slavery, in accordance with the higher law, took prece-
dence over the first issues of the war, and must be set-
tled first.

Battles were fought after the new issue was made up;
but the decisive battle, the real tug of war, was on the
field of reason. The instinctive thought of the people
was set to work, and through its electric action the dark
cloud of slavery disappeared from the political horizon,
and left " not a rack behind."

The force of the instinctive thought of the people
was demonstrated by the fact that the whole people, the
masses as well as the highly educated classes, in the
South and in the North, came at once to the same con-
clusion, and acquiesced in it without reserve; namely,
that slavery, notwithstanding all tlie positive laws and

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 7

judicial decisions made in favor of it, was illegal as well
as immoral, being a violation of the 2:»aramount higher
law; and that, as it could not be justified, it could not
be defended.

If it be said that the rapid spread and the ultimate
success of the principle of the higher law was due to
military force, and to the victory of the supj)orters of
that doctrine on the field of battle, the answer is that
force, although it may put down outward opposition and
compel outward conformity, cannot produce conviction.
The practice of slavery was doubtless, in a great meas-
ure, suj^pressed by military force; but the sincere aban-
donment of the doctrine of slavery, and the adojjtion of
the higher law, could not be effected by force, and
must have been caused by reasoning; and that reasoning,
spreading in so short a time its legitimate logical conclu-
sion from a few Abolitionists to the general body of the
people, must have been instinctive.

3. Similarly, there have been other revolutions, —
the French Revolution, the American Revolution, the
English Revolution; and before these, the religious revo-
lutions called the conversions of the Saxons, Prussians,
Russians and some other European nations to Chris-
tianity, and the revolutionary spread of IMohamme-
danism, in all of which movements force was used to
overthrow and suppress ancient jjractices; — while the
ultimate, peaceful and virtually unanimous conformity
of the masses of the people to the new doctrines can only
be explained as the result of instinctive reasoning. So in
the Middle Ages, by the same reasoning, and not by
learned discussions and treatises, was established in the

8

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

masses the principle of the separate organization of
industry, leading to the erection of free cities and to the
limitation of the monarchical governments of Europe, by
means of organized trade guilds.

But instinctive thought is interesting, not only for
what it has accomplished in the past, but also for what
it is able and will be called on, to do in the future.
There are impending movements, peaceful revolutions,
practical social reforms, — both in primary and in liberal
public education, in the general Church, in the organi-
zation of industry, in the system of public charity, and
in the simplification and organization of the various
branches of government, — which must be first fully
thought out, and then worked out, by the masses of the
people; and which are so vast in their scope, and so
multitudinous in their details, that they can only be
fully thought out instinctively.

Formal dogmatic methods would be far too narrow,
and far too slow. But, when the fundamental principle
of each needed social reform is once clearly stated, —
then, with whatever aid the common fund of language
can afford for consultation and comparison of views, and
with occasional light from some learned thinker, — the
masses of the people will be responsible for carrying the
principle out to its full practical realization in a general
advance of modern civilization, under the guidance of
instinctive reasoning.

4. It is highly important, therefore, to examine the
nature of instinctive thought, and for this purpose to
consider the means it employs. These may be called the
sensuous ideas.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 9

They enable man, without hmguage, to discover the
first of all principles, and under its guidance to carry on
instinctively the most important and complicated train
of reasoning. Their examination will lead us up to that
first principle, from which all the derivative principles
of speculative and of practical action can be deduced;
and which is the basis of that first covenant of God with
man, Avhich is the original and continuing social con-
tract, the fundamental unwritten constitution of soci-
ety:— the principle, therefore, that must underlie all
philosophy.

That which will appear to be most novel in the system
of philosophy now proposed, will be that it pays more
attention than other systems to the instinctive action of
man, both practical and in thought.

5. There is, in fact, but one ])lnloso2")liy. It is a
perfect, unwritten, instinctive, predominantly specula-
tive ideal. It is the Knowledge of God, — involving all
truth and goodness, and written, as the prophet says,
on man's heart. It rests on tlio first implied covenant
of God with man, the promised uniformity of the uni-
formities of God's action, or of the laws of nature; —
that uniformity which is the highest law of the king-
dom of God, and is the basis of Christianity, of modern
civilization; — the first principle of all science and of all
practice.

Many systems of philosophy, and, to represent their
peculiar doctrines, respectively, many so-called funda-
mental questions, have been proposed. lUit all the fund-
amental questions of true philosophy form one univer-
sal, integral, or organic question. The universal and at

10 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

the same time integral or organic question of all philos-
ophy is: How is man related to the Kingdom of God,
as the rational system of the universe? It involves the
problem of rationally conducting man's normal, specu-
lative and practical life, whether instinctive or fully con-
scious, under the conditions presented by the actual
universe.

The formula, Kingdom of God, implies, and it has
always been regarded as imj^lying a philosophy, which
may be expanded into a compact, consistent statement of
the highest principles or laws of the spiritual and mate-
rial universe, as its fundamental regulative constitution;
this being the sum of the laws of nature or of God; all
of which may be grasped into the one first principle as
the uniformity of the uniformities of God's action.
Hence, this formula necessarily implies, on the one hand,
a rational, organic, or integral system of thought; which
explains, on the other hand, the universe as a rational
organism of being, including society as an organic asso-
ciation, under the social contract of all men with God.

The philosophy of the formula. Kingdom of God,
may be called the Semitic Christian philosophy, in dis-
tinction from the ancient philosophies of Greece and
Rome and of the Orient, and from the modern out-
growths of those antiquated roots. It is instinctive as
well as implied, and is, therefore, unwritten, being
thereby distinguished from all other systems of philos-
ophy. All its principles were proclaimed in the one first
principle implied in the formula. Kingdom of God; and
were then preserved by popular tradition in the language
of the common sense and public opinion of modern

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 11

civilization; and were also constantly confirmed, inde-
pendently of language, by the mechanism of unspoken
instinctive thought, used, as will be explained, by the
learned and the unlearned alike.

It must, as all philosophy, be a theory both of knowl-
edge and of practice, as well as an inquiry into the
nature of things. We must enter upon philosophy l)y
the way of thought, and then through thought we shall
learn somethiug of being.

Thought and being are intimately connected as cause
and effect; and hence they cannot be identical. We
know being as the predominant cause of our thought,
and our thought as the predominant effect of being on
our spirit.

We begin to philosophize by investigating the process
of conscious thought, because the process of instinctive
thought is in general partly unconscious; and it cannot,
therefore, be fully inspected at the very time when it
takes place; but, like all unconscious action, it can be
proved afterwards by circumstantial evidence.

In the first place, man's conscious thought performed
without language, will be examined in uian, both as an
isolated individual, and in primitive or natural society,
as the associate of God and of his fellow-men, whom
that thought makes known to him. Afterwards, the use
of language, and the danger of its abuse, in his thought,
will be shown.

In fact, before language there was thought. For lan-
guage is proved, by the vast variety of the languages
always found in the world, to be the invention of man ;
and thought was evidently necessary to suggest, guide.

12 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

and develoj) man's action in the formation of language.
The greater part of tlie thought that prevailed before
language, was necessarily instinctive ; and it is the un-
questionable fact, that instinctive thought, owing to its
superior speed and certainty, has remained, after the
invention of language, the larger portion of the thought
which both the learned and the unlearned now carry on.
It will be seen, on investigation, that the same means or
instruments that are employed in instinctive thought, are
also used in all the conscious thought performed without
language.

Thought, with its connected practical action, will be
examined (I.) in the isolated individual without language;
(II.) in man connected with other living beings, j)lant or
animal, human or divine, without language, in natural
society; and (III.) in artificial society, with language.

G. I. The investigation of conscious thought in
the assumed isolated individual without language, who
may represent the primeval man, may be considered as
beginning: either at the first dawn of consciousness in the
life of infancy, or on the awaking of the individual in
mature life from sleep. The first steps of the investiga-
tion, in both cases, must be virtually the same ; the only
difference being that in infancy they succeed each other
much more slowly.

7. In both cases consciousness is preceded by a
state of unconsciousness more or less complete ; and this
state of unconsciousness is proved, in both cases, by cir-
cumstantial evidence, that will be mentioned hereafter,
to have been one of extremely varied, perfectly accurate,
practical instinctive action.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 13

The awaking of consciousness from unconsciousness, is
the concrete beginning of a section of subsequent con-
crete conscious life ; and every such beginning necessarily
involves every other beginning that has preceded it, and
consequently also its absolute beginning, to the concep-
tion of which it is the nearest approach that can be made.
For it is self-evident that we cannot conceive either the
absolute beginning or the absolute ending of anything.

But every concrete beginning is also a concrete ending
of what went before; and so a concrete ending is a con-
crete beginning of something following, not altogether
new. Thus there is an alternation, indefinitely repeated,
of man^s conscious Avith his unconscious life, producing a
probable immortality, that may be compared to the con-
servation of energy, in its alternating forms, in the
outward world. Solomon said, "There is nothing new
under the sun "' — in the sense of absolutely new; — as every
effect must have been involved in its cause. We may
extend his remark, if he did not, to regions beyond the
earth. For the concrete endings of conscious life on earth
must, as causes, result in effects as concrete beginnings,
if not on the earth, then in the same universe beyond it.

Commencing, now, our investigation at the beginning
of man's concrete consciousness, and passing by minor
details that belong to psychology, the first stej) of philo-
sophy is the conservative analysis of awaking conscious-
ness, displaying for our observation its separate parts,
while preserving their normal relations and their organic
connections.

The difference between a conservative and a destructive
analysis of an animal organization, is like that between

14 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

vivisection and butchering. Similarly, in all integral or
organic wholes, or things composed of integral or ideal
parts, each part pervading the whole and the whole each
part; as in spiritual organisms, or in the action of spirit,
or of the reason, or of the mind ; — while a conservative
analysis ji reserves, in the interaction and articulation of
the integral or ideal parts, the integrity and the common
life of the whole, a destructive analysis deprives them all
of healthy life, by attempting to sever the integral or ideal
parts from their natural articulations with each other,
as if they were independent and irrespective organs or
faculties, and by thus taking away the aid which each, in
performing its appropriate action, derives from the others.

It is a common, if not a universal error, to apply a
destructive analysis to the action of man's sjiirit, or of
the mind. Its reason, understanding, sense, judgment,
imagination, memory, will, are cut off and disconnected
from each other; and these dissevered members are made
to go through spasmodic actions, like the galvanized
limbs carved off from the body of a dead animal. But,
as no complete life, either of any sj^iritual or of any ani-
mal organism, can take place without the perfect union
and co-operation of all its organic parts, a conservative
analysis of it, instead of sundering, will carefully preserve
intact, and exhibit in full view, all the connections of its
parts and their means of reciprocal interaction.

The first operation made by such a conservative
analysis uj)on man's awaking consciousness, is to distin-
guish from each other its two main elements, the active
subject, or the self, or the sj)irit of man, and the present
inert object of the subject's action.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 15

Continuing the conservative analysis of consciousness,
and omitting for tlie present unnecessary psycliological
details, we Avill find that this analysis must pursue a dif-
ferent course in regard to each of the tAvo elements into
which consciousness is divided.

The first of these elements, the subject, or man's
spirit, is an indivisible spiritual unit, the distinguishing
attribute of which is its life, or action; and it is to its
action, as an integral whole, with integral parts, that the
analysis must be applied.

The other element of consciousness is man's body, an
organic material instrument, the distinguishing attribute
of which is its 23assivity and its inertness; so that its con-
servative analysis must distinguish the adaptation of its
several articulated organic parts to subserve the various
modes of the spirit's action.

The body is called material or matter to distinguish it
from the spirit; because in their qualities, as has been
well observed, they are altogether different from each
other, and have no attribute in common. The term
spirit will be used instead of the terms subject, mind, or
soul, or interchangeably with them, when any one of them
is employed to exj)ress an indivisible spiritual unit, in
direct contrast to a material body.

The analysis of the body will be naturally preceded by
that of the spirit's action, to which the body as its instru-
ment is subservient. For the first conscious relation of
the spirit to the body, as manifested in conscious action,
is that of the agent to its instrument. Another relation
between them, originating in the spirit's unconscious life
preceding consciousness, will be mentioned hereafter.

16 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

8. In the conservative analysis of the action of
man's spirit, to wliich we now proceed, the first division
of this action is into its two fundamental elements of
speculative or cognitive, and practical action ; then each
of these may bo immediate or mediate; oi', again, un-
conscious or conscious; or, further, real or imaginative.
As the action or life of man's spirit is an integral whole,
the parts resulting from its conservative analysis must
likewise be integral — each pervading the whole, and
each interpenetrated by the rest. Every cognitive or
speculative act of the spirit, whether immediate or
mediate, imconscious or conscious, real or imaginative, —
is aided by some or all of its modes of practical action;
and every practical act of the spirit is guided by one or
more of its speculative modes.

But, while all the elements of the spirit's action, and
all their subordinate modes must co-operate in every act,
one of its fundamental elements, in one of its various
modes, must in every act predominate. Predominately
speculative action, therefore, though called simply specu-
lative, is partly practical; and predominately practical
action is always jiartly speculative.

The qualities of normal and abnormal, or of good
and evil, do not belong to the action of the isolated indi-
vidual; and they will only come to be noticed when
man is considei'ed in society.

Owing to the integral nature of the sj^irit's action, the
unconscious mode of its action must sometimes, to some
extent, be simultaneous with, and sometimes almost
entirely pass into, its conscious mode. Hence, the term
instinctive action will be sometimes used in place of the

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 17

term unconscious action, — it being understood that the
instinctive action of the spirit is predominately uncon-
scious, although it often tends to become, and at times
partly, and at other times altogether, does become,
conscious.

The instinctive action of the spirit, whether specula-
tive or practical, is not observed at the time it takes place,
because it is for the most part unconscious; but, when
it is practical, it is afterwards proved, by competent
conscious circumstantial evidence, to have occurred; and
when it is speculative, its results indicate the reasoning
that led to them. The circumstantial evidence to prove
foregone practical instinctive action, is the effects or
changes, of which it must have been the cause.

The first conscious speculative action of the spirit,
after distinguishing the subject from the object, is its
intuition of the facts constituting, as effects, the cir-
cumstantial evidence of its preceding unconscious or
instinctive practical action. These effects are its body.

9. Man's body is notoriously composed of the mate-
rial elements surrounding it, and which he consciously,
by eating and drinking, and unconsciously, by breathing,
places within it, and thereby in immediate relation to his
spirit. When he moves his body, which he knows to be
an object, and different in every resj)ect from his spirit,
and therefore to be matter, he is conscious that its motion
is caused by the immediate practical action of his spirit;
and, as soon as he learns that there are other spirits
besides himself, he infers, by analogy, that every original
motion of matter is caused by the immediate practical
action of some spirit. Hence, as by every conscious or

18 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

instinctive movement of his body man demonstrates that
within it liis sjiirit, by its instinctive, immediate, practical
action, can move, and therefore use, matter, he infers tliat
his spirit, which he thns knows to be a sufficient and
present agent, does in fact use the matter within liis body
for buikling it up and repairing it.

If it can be shown that the sensuous ideas within man,
representing outward things to man's spirit, are material,
and are organic parts of man's body, it will also follow
that they, too, are made by the spirit's instinctive, imme-
diate, practical action.

It may be observed, in passing, that the ideas here
mentioned, and afterwards described, are virtually the
same things understood, by the same term, by Plato,
Aristotle, Kant, Locke, Hume, Berkeley, Descartes, and
others; all of whom, while differing from each other as
to the nature and proper use of the ideas, saw them as
plainly and used them as habitually, as they saw and used
the sun. But no philosopher seems to have been always
consistent in his views concerning them. Plato was per-
haps the most inconsistent. For, besides giving his
well known fanciful and utterly absurd philosophical
explanation of the ideas — an explanation confuted at the
time by Aristotle — he has left for universal admiration a
poetic figure, which foreshadows, although it only dimly
foreshadows, the true representative nature of the sen-
suous ideas. He describes a cave, and a man within it,
facing its back, and watching the shadows flitting there
and cast through its mouth, which is behind him, by
passing persons and things of the outward world. But
we shall see that the sensuous ideas are more than flitting

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 19

shadows; that a pencil of light from without photographs
upon them in the brain the shifting scenes, and writes
upon the heart the universal laws, of the outward uni-
verse; and that man's spirit within his body, like Plato's
watcher in his cave, looks not outward for knowledge of
the outer world, but scans its faithful messages imprinted
on living tablets within him.

That the representative sensuous ideas are material,
is a self-evident fact. For they are objects, intuitively
seen, and known, by the spirit's immediate speculative
action, to possess the primary qualities of matter, espe-
cially magnitude; and also color, motion, and relative
place. That they are organic parts of the body, follows
from the facts that they are within the body, and are, so
far as is known, inseparable from it, at least for definite
periods of time, and certainly contribute, with the rest of
the body, to give the spirit, in all its speculative and
practical functions, most important aid. Hence, as
parts of the body, they must be made, with the rest of
it, by the spirit's immediate practical action.

The conservative analysis of man's body, the creature,
as we have seen, as well as the instrument, of his spirit,
will exhibit it as an organism, or a collective instrument
composed of many co-operating parts or organs, and per-
fectly adapted to serve and facilitate both the speculative
and the practical action, unconscious as well as conscious,
of man's spirit.

For the explanation of all the modes of the spirit's
action, a specification of all the organs or integral parts
of its collective instrument, the body, would be neces-
sary. But all those organs, chiefly internal, that minister

30 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

to the part of life that is common to man and the
lower animals, may be left to physiology. For we are
only concerned now with man's higher life as a rational
being, and with those of his bodily organs that directly
serve it. Of these bodily organs it is only necessary to
mention here the outward bodily frame and its outward
members, with the five outward senses, and the inward
appendages of the latter, the brain and sensuous ideas.
10. Among these bodily organs it is only the sensuous
ideas that call for any extended remarks. The outward
frame of the body, its outward members, and its outward
senses, are sufficiently known to contribute both to the
speculative and the practical action of the spirit; and the
brain has been proved by specialists to be connected,
through the nerves, with the outward senses; and to be
the seat of important action communicated through
them from the outward world. The particulars concern-
ing the uses of these parts of the body need not detain us.

The sensuous ideas having been shown to be inti-
mately connected with the spirit's unconscious, or, as we
shall now call it, instinctive action, as effects which that
action practically causes, they will now be exhibited as
the means which it speculatively employs. The use of
the sensuous ideas to represent outward things, will be
explained, somewhat at large, to be independent of
language.

11. Besides the representative sensuous ideas described
above, and easily proved, like them, to be material, by
exhibiting the primary qualities of matter, the spirit,
by its combined speculative and practical action, frames
and introduces among them what are known as the

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 21

imaginative or fictitious ideas; evidently composed of the
same kind of highly plastic matter as the representative
ideas, but marked and modeled by the spirit, to serve
either as mementos of some broad generalizations or
lofty abstractions; or as ideals, schemes, plans, and pro-
jects for future realization and execution.

The imaginative or fictitious ideas obviously answer,
as is well known, a very valuable end both in science and
in the fine and useful arts, so that little more need be
now said concerning them. It is evident that they do
not make their appearance in consciousness until long
after the representative sensuous ideas.

In the conservative analysis of awaking consciousness,
to which we now return, we have advanced to the consid-
eration of the representative and the imaginative sensu-
ous ideas, viewed as organic parts of the body, and as
constructed by the spirit's instinctive, immediate, prac-
tical action. Being within the body, and therefore in
the immediate presence of the sjiirit, its immediate spec-
ulative action, or intuition, is exerted upon them. This,
according to its rapidity, is either instinctive and partly
unconscious, or fully and deliberately conscious. In-
stinctive speculative action, as we shall presently see, is
so very rapid that but few of its steps can be remem-
bered. Its results are conscious and are highly import-
ant; but the instinctive process, by which they are
reached, can only be apprehended and described in
general, and without detailing its separate stages.
We are first concerned to know what the spirit, in its
intuitive conscious thought, observes in the sensuous
ideas; and what use, in its several modes of speculative

32 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

and practical action, it makes of them, without lan-
guage, and as an isolated individual.

13. It seems proper, however, before describing what
the spirit of man observes in the sensuous ideas, and
before stating, in general, the use that it makes of them,
without language, in its speculative and practical action,
as an isolated individual, to enumerate the various mod-
ifications, of speculative and practical action; and to
observe that in all these modifications, except for the
purpose of communicating thought, the use of the sensu-
ous ideas without language will suffice. In this way, the
true value of language will be noticed and enhanced, by
recognizing that its proper sphere of usefulness is to
communicate, record, disseminate, and preserve thought;
thereby making the use of thought joint, and thus pro-
moting associations for joint practical action; while all
the processes of individual or original thought, and of
individual practical action, can be carried on without
language, by means of sensuous ideas alone.

Now. while the spirit's speculative action, as a whole,
is designated as mind, or intellect, or understanding, or
speculative reason, the chief modifications of its indi-
vidual, or original speculative action, are called sensa-
tion, sense, intuition, presentation, representation, know-
ing, thinking, judgment, comparison, classification,
generalization, notion, conce^Jt, inference, induction,
deduction, imagination, memory, and speculative faith;
and while the spirit's practical action, as a whole, is
called the practical reason, the chief modifications of its
original or individual practical action, are named will,
desire, intention, purpose, planning, scheming, expec-

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 23

tation, hope, passion, anger, and practical faith. It
must always, however, be borne in mind, that, owing
to the integral nature of the spirit's action, every exer-
cise of its speculative mode of action is combined with
some mode of its practical action, and every exercise of
its practical action, with some mode of its speculative
action. But, in presenting a general view of the spirit's
speculative and practical action, as an integral whole, it
is not necessary to enter upon a strict discrimination of
the multitude of terms used to express its parts.

13. It should also be observed here, that feeling, or
emotion, although a highly important incident of action,
is not a distinct and independent mode of action, between
the speculative and the practical modes; but is a mark or
attribute, pleasurable or painful, belonging to various
modes of practical and speculative action, serving as an
instinctive festhetic guide for their exercise, though
always subordinate to the reason, and to faith. For
although instinct is undeveloped reason, it shows its
inferiority when it conflicts with reason, which is fully
developed instinct, and still more when it conflicts with
faith, which is fully developed reason. The main cause
of the importance of feeling, — as we shall see when we
pass from the action of the isolated individual to the
action of society, — is the fact that the same feeling, in a
modified degree, results from fictitious or imaginative
action as from real action, and from fictitious or imagin-
ative ideas, as from real representative sensuous ideas.
For this fact is the basis of all the fine arts.

14. We are now prepared to describe what the spirit
observes in the representative sensuous ideas, and to

24 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

explain what use, independent of language,, it makes of
them in thought. They are commonly called images of
outward things, but this is a figurative expression.
All that the spirit actually sees in the sensuous ideas,
overlooking in respect to them as well as the other
inward parts of the body the fact that they are matter,
are certain marks, impressions, and signs inscribed upon
each of them, and altogether, or nearly altogether, dif-
ferent upon each.

Only a brief experience is necessary to satisfy the
spirit that the inscriptions it observes upon the sensu-
ous ideas are significant. As a ship is built with a form
adapted to traverse the uneven surface of the sea, to ride
and breast its rolling waves, so man's body is con-
structed with a form suited to travel over the rough
surface of the land, and to navigate over it, amidst a
throng of fixed and moving solid objects. Thus, the
form of the body points to the existence of an outward
world beyond it; and accordingly Avhen the body success-
ively approaches different outward objects, comes in con-
tact with them, or departs from them, and when the
spirit observes corresponding changes in the marks upon
its sensuous ideas, it associates these changes with
related facts in the outward world. Soon, certain marks
upon these ideas are associated with the near presence of
certain outward objects. Then, some of these outward
objects are further identified, as those actually present,
by the senses of touch, of smell, of taste, and of hearing,
giving corroborating supplementary marks, when the
primary or prominent marks proceed from the sense of

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 25

sight; and by the sense of sight, when the primary or
prominent marks proceed from the other senses.

The marks upon the sensnous ideas may be explained
as impressions made upon them by forces rayed or
reflected upon them, in lines or undulations, through the
several outward senses, from outward objects. Among
such forces, are light, heat, electricity.

The representative sensuous ideas, with their marks,
may be further regarded not only as loosely indicating the
presence of their respective outward objects, but also as
exact differentials of them, or as indefinitely small aux-
iliary magnitudes, precisely represejiting them all on the
same scale; and thus giving to the process both of con-
scious and of instinctive thought the certainty and com-
bining power of mathematics. Indeed, the differential
and integral calculus of the mathematics may be looked
upon simply as an instance of success in imitating, by
momentarily arresting, correctly observing, and carefully
educing into consciousness, and then into verbal and sym-
bolic expression, the fleeting and rapid but certain method
of instinctive thought.

But, while the differentials of mathematics are all pri-
marily quantitative, the sensuous ideas are qualitative as
well as quantitative differentials; and they are, therefore,
far more efficient instruments of thought than the differ-
entials of mathematics.

The ground of certainty for all thought carried on by
means of the sensuous ideas, is the fact that the ratio of
every outward object, in virtually the same relative situa-
tion, to its sensuous idea, must be the same; for otherwise
the sensuous ideas would be delusive. It follows that the

2G SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

ratios of outward objects, in virtually the same relative
situations, to eacli other, must be equal to the intuitively
seen and known ratios of their respective sensuous ideas.
An equation, therefore, between the ratio of two sensuous
ideas, and the ratio of their corresponding outward
objects — these being in the same relative situations —
forms a proportion, any thi-ee terms of which being
known involve and imply the knowledge of the fourth
term.

Man, knowing the sensuous ideas and also their ratios
by intuition, and knowing near outward objects also by
a confirmatory bodily sense of touch or taste, can com-
pare a near outward object thus known, or an object by
inference otherwise known, with an unknown object sim-
ilarly circumstanced, by regarding their ratio as equal to
the intuitively known ratio of their sensuous ideas; thus
constituting an equation of two ratios, or a proportion, of
which the three known terms render, by legitimate infer-
ence, the before unknown fourth term likewise known.

In this way, the knowledge of concrete object after
object, of concrete group after group to which they
belong, and of fact after fact, in the outward world, is
added to the sum of experience; and the growing, intu-
itively seen, synthesis of the sensuous ideas, gives assur-
ance of a corresponding synthesis of the part of the out-
ward world which they represent.

Great differences of distance and perspective in out-
ward objects, and apparent in their ideas, give the basis
for a conscious mathematical calculation, in simple cases,
to adjust the true outward relations of those objects, by

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 27

comparison with other objects; and for an instinctive
calculation in cases of great complication.

When the perfection and rapidity of man's instinctive
action, without the incumbrance of words and of tools,
as evidenced by the construction of his body, by his
immediate combined speculative and practical action, is
considered, with the fact that the axioms on which the
whole system of mathematics is built are few and self-
evident; and with the further fact that even every dumb
animal habitually puts these axioms in practice in its
simplest acts of locomotion, when steering to avoid ob-
jects in its way, or to reach distant objects by circuitous
routes, or when measuring the distance it can spring on
its prey; the resulting conclusion, to say the least, is prob-
able, that the isolated individual man does in fact work
out in practice by his instinctive action the very compli-
cated and very difficult mathematical problems necessary
both to triangulate his course in his daily walks, and to
measure and compare the mathematical relations of the
outward objects by which he is surrounded.

Likewise, between sensuous ideas, viewed as qualitative
differentials, there may, by analogy, be qualitative ratios,
leading to qualitative proportions and conclusions. For
example, by observing the ratios between the sensuous
idea of a specimen orange, which I have in my hand,
and have smelled, and tasted, and the idea of another
object hanging on a tree, or held in my other hand; and
by noticing whether this ratio is one of equality, simi-
larity, or great ditference, I can infer the same ratio
between the orange in my hand and the other object;
and, accordingly, that this other object is, or is not.

28 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

another orcange, having or not having, the same, or
simihir, taste, fragrance, and juiciness.

Cognition is an integral process of predominantly
speculative action or thought. It involves intuition,
comparison, judgment and inference, as its modes and
factors, all acting successively, though seemingly at the
same time, in one indivisible cognitive act; and it is aided
in observation and experiment by practical action, when
it needs it. For instance, the sensuous ideas are observed
by intuition; their ratios are comparisons; the equations
of ratios of the sensuous ideas with ratios of their out-
ward objects, forming proportions, are judgments; and
the conclusion to the fourth term of a proportion from
the other three is inference.

Cognition may embrace matters of fact, as spirit, life
or action, matter, existence, coexistence, sequence, causa-
tion, resemblance, difference; and also modes of being,
or qualities. Cognition of the sensuous ideas is imme-
diate; all other cognition is mediate, by means of them.

To conceive an object is to note and group the main
or characteristic qualities in its sensuous ideas, and con-
sequently in the object itself. Its conceijt or notion is
the sum of these qualities. A general couc.ept or notion
is the sum of the qualities common to a group of sensu-
ous ideas, and therefore to the outward objects they rep-
resent. A category is a universal concept comprising the
quality or qualities common to one of the few largest
groups into which all thinkable things have been divided.
It is a concej^tion of conceptions.

The act of forming general conceptions effects the
organization, or incorporation, or collection, of the sen-

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 29

suons ideas in groups by the spirit for tlie furtlier pro-
cesses of its thought. It musters and brings together as
a whole tliose which are particularly or nearly related.

These general conceptions, which are also notions,
may be only used on a single occasion, or they may, if
found convenient, be habitually reformed and used; and
when they corresjjond to natural kinds or familiar classes,
there is no difficulty in doing so.

Categories, therefore, are not "forms of the under-
standing," or particular modes, or predetermined results
of the spirit's action; but, like other concepts or notions,
of which they are only the most general, they are groups
of attributes or qualities variously combined in cognition
by different philosophers; and they may evidently be
formed by instinctive thought without language, as
doubtless they are by many of the unlearned, to serve
their daily needs of thinking.

Cognition, with its notions, concepts, and categories,
embracing objects and groups of objects, with their qual-
ities, is then extended to the motions of objects; and is
applied in all its forms to matters of fact, all of which
have some reference, through time, to motion.

When we come to consider the practical action that is
involved in, and associated with cognition, or speculative
action, we will then learn the true nature of qualities,
and find that space and time rank first among them, and
are not so-called "forms of sense." We will see, as Ave
may now state, by way of anticipation, that all the puali-
ties of matter are results of some spirit's action upon it;
that all the so-called qualities of spirit, of its life, are
modes of its action; that by its action all original motions

30 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

of matter are caused, and tliat its actions are indicated
by these motions.

15. By means of the seusuons ideas, both in instinct-
ive and in conscious thought, we know things as they
arc in tliemselves. For, in the first pkice, the different
sensuous ideas from the same sense, and from different
senses, confirm each other in the knowledge they respect-
ively convey; and this knowledge is further aided by the
spirit's practical action, as by handling, weighing, and
measuring their respective objects; or by analyzing these,
or other specimen objects, into their elements. And
then, in "the next place, — for the same reason that the
ratios of outward objects to their resj^ective sensuous ideas
must, under the same circumstances, be always the same;
and that the sensuous ideas by their ratios, therefore, must
convey true knowledge in rcsjiect to the ratios of the
outward objects themselves, — the knowledge of outward
objects, in other respects, imparted through the sensuous
ideas to man's spirit must be true; that is, it must repre-
sent the outward objects as they are in themselves.
Otherwise, the forces rayed from outward objects upon the
sensuous ideas, and marking them to guide in thought
the action of man's spirit, through the bodily organiza-
tion or mechanism by Avhich it acts, would only serve as
a system of delusion, inconsistent with the rational and
benevolent order of the universe.

Kant says all knowledge is the product of two factors,
the knowing subject, and the external world. He omits
the third, the true mediating factor, the sensuous ideas.
These, in their concreteness and synthesis, furnish the
unity of conception, and the general conceptions.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY, 31

Phenomena, or perceptions, or presentations, are not
an unconnected manifold in experience; because they are
conveyed by the sensuous ideas, and the sensuous ideas
reju'esent adjacent parts of the universe until they arc
distinguished from each other by voluntary abstraction,
and then each represents a concrete object, or a definite
concrete part of an object, or a concrete group of objects;
distinguished, but not separated from the general field,
or continuum from which it is abstracted; and phenomena
are not more manifold than their sensuous ideas.

There are no antinomies in instinctive thought, or in
the conscious thought that is exclusively guided Ijy the
sensuous ideas. For the intimations that come directly
from the outward universe to man's sensuous ideas, serve,
when carefully apprehended, only to guide, and not to
mislead, his thought. When to an observer the sun
appears to rise, although it is in fact the horizon that is
sinking below it, the erroneous appearance is occasionetl
by the observer's omission to consider his own motion as
that of the earth on which he is carried; just as a traveler
in a railroad car, or in a boat, seems to see the trees, the
houses, and the hills rushing towards him, until he re-
members that it is he, with the car or the boat on which
he is riding, that is rushing past them.

The conscious beginning of knowledge, or the aAvaking
of consciousness, as we have traced it to the time when
the spirit, attracted and taught by the changing marks in
its sensuous ideas, looks out beyond the body, must early
have become self-consciousness, as a universal synthesis
of cognition; combining in organic union the self and
the not-self, a representative and symbolical notion of the

32 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

universe, — a notion exceedingly complicated, and there-
fore apparently nebulous and confused; but gradually
resolved ])y tlie spirit's power of attention into a luminous,
harmonious, and rational system; an integral or organic
whole, of distinct but reciprocally interacting parts, or
facts, constituting together the one universal synthetic
fact of the universe.

16. In this developed self-consciousness there is a
universal conception, a universal concrete notion, of all
the sensuous ideas as a whole, and of the universe repre-
sented by them, so far as man knows it. This synthetic
notion, or conception of the universe, is the objective
continuum, or the presentative continuum, of the psycho-
logist. It is a permanent background, as it were, for any
particular idea, or group of ideas, to which attention is
directed. It is a representation of the field or arena on
Avhich every action of man is to be performed. In it
man can see all the relations of the things he has done,
or is doing, or proposes to do. In it he can see all the
present, and in the present, all the past as its cause, and
all the future as its effect. In it also are found the parts
of man's experience already in original, synthetic, close
combination, which Kant strove to find, and only failed
to see because he applied a destructive analysis instead
of a conservative analysis, to man's original, universal,
integral, synthetic notion of the universe.

This synthetic notion, representing the one universal
fact of a universe framed with all knowledge and truth,
reflecting and imparting them to man's intelligent
inquiry, may be divided l)y abstraction, analysis, classi-
fication, and generalization of its sensuous ideas into

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 33

many separate systems of sensuous ideas, corresponding to
the partial facts which they represent, respectively, of
concrete outward things; but it will always, by means
of these ideas, collectively considered, be reflected again
in its concrete form from its original, and return as a
whole for the deliberate investigation of conscious and of
instinctive thought. When recalled, it always represents
and keeps in view the universe as a rational system, or
the " kingdom of God." The conservative analysis of
this synthetic notion, when aided by outward, practical
action, is, both in action and result, scientific observation,
experiment, — in a word, experience.

17. The conservative analysis of the original synthetic
notion of the universe alternates with the artificial syn-
thesis, or. construction of its parts in thought. Thus,
after the synthetic notion of the universe is analyzed, the
sensuous ideas composing it are separately reviewed,
marshalled, classified, brought under genera and species
by the integral action of the spirit; and by their arrange-
ment in this way each class, when consciously or instinct-
ively perceived and distinguished, is constituted an in-
tuitive, conscious, or instinctive, conception or notion.

This forming of conceptions by the arrangement of
the sensuous ideas into classes, collective bodies, selected
masses, may be regarded as the grouping of them for the
convenience of simultaneous general views. This pro-
ceeding may also be called Induction, when the group or
class thus formed is assumed to contain all the individuals
that j)0ssess the observed common characteristics of the
class or group; — while Deduction is the process by which
any individual recognized as belonging to any group is

34 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

held to possess all tlie common characteristics of that
group; and by which any group noticed as comprised
within a larger group, is held to have all the common
characteristics of the larger group.

Thus, the one integral and universal synthetic notion,
or microcosm, reflected from the one integral fact of the
universe by means of the sensuous ideas, and representing
as well as expressing all the real, both spiritual and mate-
rial, constitutes the whole domain of philosophy. In the
interpretation of this notion, by means of the first prin-
ciple, all philosophy, and all the physical and all the
philosojihical sciences, metaphysics, logic, psychology,
epistemology, ontolgy, cosmology, ethics, theology, will
combine to rationally explain the ultimate nature of
the universe; and will leave it better understood, in their
joint result, as a rational system.

CHAPTER II.

MAN'S original philosophy, or first thought, even
after he came into conscious relations with other
spirits, first without language in natural society, then
with language in artificial society, was instinctive and
normal; so, at first, were both natural and artificial
society, until ancient artificial society, by the lapse of
man's thought, through the abuse of language, into
idolatry, and of his practical action, through idolatry
into crime, became abnormal as the union of idolatry
with crime, and was called ancient heathenism.

18. So far we have considered the spirit of man as an
isolated individual. We are now prepared to regard him
as he stands in conscious relations with other spirits. We
will see that, when he comes to have these conscious
relations, he enters upon a higher and wider sphere of
speculative and of practical action; and that his practical
action affected by his conscious relations with other
spirits greatly extends the scope of his speculative action;
while this, in turn, advances his practical action in
dignity and importance.

Now, looking out from his isolated position, by means
of his sensuous ideas, upon the outward world around
him, and judging, from the motions caused in his body
by the immediate action of his spirit, that all original
motion is caused by the immediate action of some spirit,

35

36 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

he sees numeroiis material moving objects of many diifer-
ent forms; lie observes that each of these objects of a
certain form exhibits a somewhat similar series and sys-
tem of motions; some of these objects being stationary
and rooted in the soil, and displaying their motions in
growing, leafing, flowering and frniting; while others
move about from place to place, some on the laud, some
in the water, and some in the air; each performing the
peculiar system of motions belonging to its kind. And
he concludes that each of these objects is moved, like his
own body, by an individual spirit dwelling within it.

Among these moving objects ho notices some with
forms like his own, j)erforming similar motions, and these
objects he infers to be inhabited by spirits like his own
sjiirit, and to be his fellow-men, — his equals. The rest,
with their various forms, vegetal and animal, and with
their diversified systems of motions, he concludes to be
inhabited by spirits inferior to himself.

10. Then, grouping the sensuous ideas of all these
moving objects, he forms a universal conception of them
as the world endowed with spirit, or with life — as the
living world; and, when he further observes that each
of these objects is possessed of members or organs to
facilitate its motions or actions, he views this universal
conception as that of the organic world.

Afterwards, furnished with the universal conception
of the organic world, he groups the rest of his sensuous
ideas, representing the rest of the outward material
universe, into another universal conception, embracing
them as signifying the inorganic world.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 37

Each of these universal couceptious wonki be a collec-
tive sensuous idea; and it could be used with facility in
. thought, by means of some smaller group, or single
sensuous idea, either belonging to it as a remarkable
feature, or framed by the imagination, for the purpose
of representing it. Indeed, general ideas may be viewed
as the solemn dolls and serious playthings of the mind,
the happy work of the imagination, relieving the labor
of thought; and, while differing probably from each
individual, yet performing the same symbolic office for
all of a class.

20. Now, contemplating the inorganic world, by means
of its concei^tion, or collective idea, as a whole, man
perceives in it, too, a general system of motions or laws,
or principles, the so-called laws of nature; and, by the
analogy of the other systems of motions which he has
observed, he is constrained to assign as the cause of the
laws of nature one superior spirit, and to regard them as
uniformities of his action.

Of this superior spirit, called God, man, by means of
his sensuous ideas, has the same kind of knowledge that
he has of his own spirit. Man knows his own spirit by
his predominantly practical action or work, aided by his
speculative action or work; both of which, constituting
his actual life, he sees, by means of his sensuous ideas, to
be realized together in the forms and motions of outward
matter; and he concludes from these, as others may also
do, what are the true character and attributes of his spirit.
In the same way, man infers the being with certainty, and
also, though liable to some deception, the probable attri-
butes and the apparent character of the spirit of his

38 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

fellow-man. In the same way also, when relying solely
on the sensuous ideas, and not misled by the antinomies
of language, and in a case where no deception can be
presumed, — man proves, by a strictly logical demonstra-
tion, the being or life, and the true character of the
spirit of God, from the general system of the forms and
motions, or laws, of the inorganic world; which must
necessarily proceed from the action of spirit, and, owing
to their uniformity and vastness, from a siugle superior
spirit; and which must bo necessarily designed to effect
the very complicated system of useful, and benevolent,
and ennobling ends for man's benefit and education,
which they actually accomj)lish.

Man infers the omnipresent action of the superior
sjiirit in all parts of the material universe from tlie
simultaneous presence and action of his own spirit in
all parts of his body — performing thousands of bodily
motions at the same moment.

31. Before proceeding further in the investigation of
man's speculative action, we will review, to some extent,
his conscious as well as instinctive practical action from
its concrete beginning in the outward world. Man's
early individual practical life, after his birth into the
outward world, is consciously as well as instinctively
devoted, in the first place, to the nourishment, shelter,
and defense of his body. In these operations he experi-
ences sometimes aid, sometimes opposition, from the
spirits or lives of plants, of animals, and of his fellow-
men, all engaged in caring for their own bodies; while a
bountiful supply of materials for their construction is
provided for all from the inorganic world by God.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 39

In fact, it is evident from the analogy of the action of
man's spirit in constructing his body, that the spirits of
plants and of animals, in regard to their bodies, do the
same; and that the bodies of man, of animals, and of
plants, are all built up by their respective spirits, out of
materials furnislied to them for this purpose from the
elements of the inorganic world. These elements are
manifestly prepared and fitted for this use, through the
laws of nature by God, as that superior spirit who is seen
to exhibit in the forms and motions of the inorganic
world the benevolent character, as well as the power of
his action; and who, by allowing for this use unstinted
stores of the inorganic matter which he controls, and
works up for this application of them, displays in a
marked and particular manner his unselfish and dis-
interested goodness.

There are certain fluid elements, as air and water,
that can be directly taken from the common stores of
inorganic nature, by all plants, men, and lower animals,
by breathing and imbibing them, and are thus util-
ized for their bodies; water forming the greater part
of their bulk in men and animals, and carbon, a con-
stituent of the air, composing a large proportion of the
bodies of plants. These fluid elements are so abundant
that no opposition is experienced, and consequently no
effort or enterprise, in most cases, is required for appro-
priating whatever portions of them any individual
organism can use.

But there are certain mineral elements, equally neces-
sary for the construction of the bodies of plants, of man,
and of the loAver animals; but which only the plants can

40 SEMITIO I'llILOSOPHY.

directly take into their bodies from inorganic nature.
To obtain these mineral elements for the use of their
bodies, herbivorous animals consume the bodies of plants;
and carnivorous animals for the same purpose consume
the bodies of the herbivorous. Man, with the same end
in view, consumes the bodies both of plants and of
animals.

Plants always yielded up their bodies for man's use,
without resistance, for clothing, for wea})ons, for boats,
and for his domestic structures, as well as for his food.
Animals, from the beginning, defended themselves against
him. Some also assailed him openly, others secretly, by
sur])rise and strategem, thus teaching him self-defense
and the arts of offensive war; while others, as the ant,
the bee, and the beaver, gave him lessons in co-opera-
tion in the industrial arts, — lessons of great value in
man's early history.

22. Thus, the plant life and the animal life, by which
man saw himself environed in the outward world, and the
necessity experienced by him to defend his body against
hostile attem2:)ts, and to seek for the support of his body
those indispensable elements that are only to be found in
a condition suited for this use in the bodies of plants and
animals, — led to the exercise of practical labor and in-
dustry, with skill, energy and foresight by the individual
man, in order to accomplish those ends. Then, the
further jiursuit of the same ends led him to form con-
tracts or agreements to realize them as common social
ends by the association, community, or society of man
with his fellow-man. Accordingly, in order to more
effectually protect himself against carnivorous animals.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 41

also to hunt and kill, or to capture, collect, and herd
animals, and to cultivate plants, useful for food, he
was early induced to form associations with his fellow-
men beyond the family for mutual advantage in such
designs.

In this way, human society began to extend beyond
the family; and with the extension of society there was
produced a vast enlargement of man's speculative views,
and of the scope of his practical action. But, before
entering upon a discussion of his social relations with
his fellow-men, it is proper to notice a circumstance
growing out of his relations to plant life and animal
life; and which affords a clue to the solution of some
mooted questions concerning the elements of his knowl-
edge. These questions can be rapidly disposed of.

23. Man is distinguished from all other animals by
the fact that he cooks his food. The imjDortance of
this fact is, that man by his practical action changes
the natural qualities of the material objects he uses as
food, and imparts to them new artificial qualities. Now,
if man can siiperinduce qualities on matter, it follows
that God can do so. And if no other cause is known,
or can be found for the qualities of matter, it follows like-
wise that their cause is the action of God. We are free,
therefore, to think of matter as being originally pure,
without any of what we know as its natural qualities,
and to consider it as carefully prepared by God with
qualities adapted to man's senses; cooked for him, if
you please; or distilled and condensed in Nature's vast
alembic, from floating uebulse.

42 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

Quality, therefore, is the adaptation of matter to the
apprehension of man's senses, and a fitness of it for
man's nse. The adaptation and tlie fitness are not
evolved, but are the deliberate results of God's action,
which are seen in the laws of nature.

24. Owing to the small size of the sensuous ideas, and
the great number of them ever present which the spirit
can conveniently contemplate at one time, it can use
directly in forming its judgments and inferences its
groups of these ideas, instead of the notions, concep-
tions, and imaginative symbols it has constructed to
represent these groups. In order to explain the sensuous
ideas by contrasting them with language, something of
the nature of language will Ijo here anticipated, before
we come to treat of the uses of language in society.

Lanffuaffe, as we shall see, is a contrivance of man
to externalize the sensuous ideas, their groups, symbols,
notions, and conceptions, in plastic, oral, written, and
mimic signs, for the purpose of communicating, record-
ing and preserving his thought in society. But, even
when most verbose, it is an extremely abbreviated, rude,
and imperfect short-hand notation of the immense num-
ber of the sensuous ideas, and the groups of them,
actually used in original thinking. It vainly seeks, by
its abbreviations and condensations, to overtake the
marvelous rapidity of instinctive thought. Sometimes,
therefore, its terms connote abstractions and complexes
that instinctive thought, in the same connection, does
not always need to employ; and sometimes they fail to
connote important parts of the fact they are designed
to denote.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 43

25. Space, time and gravitation, are among the terms
whose definitions, in language, present difficulty. Space
is a compound quality of matter, its most general quality,
belonging to every particle of it; and it consists of the
three simple qualities of length, breadth, and height, the
three so-called dimensions. Its universality, as appre-
hended by spirit, implies the universality of matter, and
of motion in the inorganic world, as all matter known
is in motion; and it therefore also implies the universal
presence of God's spirit, as the cause of all original
motion of the inorganic world. Time is a compound
quality of action, and therefore of motion, which is
caused by action; and it consists of the simple qualities
of present, past and future; rendering action a train, or
series, as the co-existence and the sequence of sequences
or changes. Every action, whether in thought or in
the outward world, produces an effect, a change. The
change produced on outward matter is motion. The
change produced by the spirit's action in thought on the
sensuous ideas, is their analysis and synthesis in trains,
corresponding first to the sequences of events in the out-
ward world, passing or present; then to their causes or
antecedents in the past; these trains being supplemented
by links of imaginative ideas, projecting the effects or
sequels of the present into the future, and the whole
thus produced being qualified as a continuous time line
of action, or chain of causes and effects, reaching from
the remotest known past, through the present, to the
most distant future. The time line of action is meas-
ured from a known era by known units of motion, in-
volving and representing assumed units of time, — the

44 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

yearly orbit of the earth, the monthly orbit of the moon,
and the daily revolution of the earth, — the latter multi-
plied into weeks, and divided into hours, minutes and
seconds.

Gravitation is the continuing, original, calculated com-
bination of forces, constituting the action of the spirit
that impelled condensed matter into our system of the
universe, and resulting in the known compounded mo-
tions of this matter towards the several centers of that
system.

SiDace, time, and gravitation may be considered, in-
stinctively, without language, in the vast system of the
sensuous ideas, in a general view that will give support to
the tendency of modern physical science to represent
"all physical phenomena as modifications of motion."

26. In the absurd conflict that has hitherto been car-
ried on between science and religion, based in a great
measure on the antinomies and paralogisms due to the
abuse and inefficiency of language, and especially to the
term infinite, which has no single or collective represen-
tative in the sensuous ideas — it has been forgotten that
although ignorance still places limits on the advance of
science as well as of religion, science, while decrying
the alleged ignorant mysteries of religion, has invented
for itself, as its boasted prerogative, mysteries still more
incredible.

For, although the defective terms of language, when
relied on as instruments of thought, convey only imper-
fect knowledge of Nature and of God, the sensuous
ideas, being far more perfect instruments of original
thinking, impart to the spirit in instinctive thought, for

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 45

the reasons already given, correct knowledge of outward
material things as they are, and through them, for the
same reasons, the true knowledge of God. The mys-
teries, therefore, that false science, whether idealism or
agnosticism, has contrived by denying the reality of the
noumenon or thing in itself, or by admitting its reality
and denying all knowledge of it, and by asserting the
inscrutable nature of the power, called God, which it con-
fesses to stand, although unrevealed, behind the opera-
tions of nature — are as Aveak and superstitious as any
mystery of religion. Nor do the idealists and agnosti-
cists fail to admit, accordingly, that their mysteries, or
dogmas, are instinctively rejected by all mankind. The
mystery of materialism, or a world without spirit, is
virtually identical with the mystery of idealism, or
a world without matter; matter and spirit being used
interchangeably in these scientific mysteries.

If it should be objected to the reality of the sensuous
ideas that, although they are plainly visible to the sjiirit,
they are not laid open by the dissecting knife, the answer
is, that their matter may be as impalpable as the material
ether which is supposed to pervade the universe, and still
to be matter.

27. It only remains now to show, before considering
man in general society, that in the primitive family he
was capable of acquiring without language, by means of
his sensuous ideas, the rudiments of that faith which,
when developed in society by true education, is the
highest liberal culture.

Faith means the action of man's spirit when energized
by divine influence. As the action of man's spirit is both

46 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

speculative aud practical, there is a speculative faith and
a practical faith. The method of 2)rocuriug divine in-
fluence upon man's spirit is l)y his study and application
of princijDles, which are the rules or uniformities fol-
lowed by God's action in the laws of nature. They are
speculative and practical.

By the study and apiilication of speculative principles,
as those of scientific truth, man is exercised, educated,
and discijilined in the manner of God's speculative action,
or thought; and his spirit by this communion with God
is intellectually energized; as it is even by frequent inter-
course with a fellow-man of superior intelligence; and it
thus acquires speculative faith. Similarly, by the study
and application of practical principles, as those of love
and justice, even in the primitive family, man is exer-
cised, educated and discij^lined in the modes of God's
practical action, and his spirit is thereby practically
energized; and it thus acquires practical faith.

When man entered into society, therefore, before his
invention of language, he was, as this invention proves,
not meanly endowed.

28. We have now come in the course of our inquiry,
to consider man's social life and the mutual relations
of that social life and artificial human language.

Man's practical and sjjeculative social life, integrally
connected, as exhibited, first, without language in primi-
tive, or so-called natural society, and then in the arti-
ficial society formed by means of language, will therefore
next claim our attention.

29. The concrete beginning of all normal human
society is the family. Its absolute beginning, like every

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 47

absolute beginning, lies beyond the scope of our investi-
gation. The male and female members of the first family
or families, if there were more than one family at first,
were associated by a practical common covenant made
with each member for their common benefit, by the supe-
rior sj)irit, God; and initiated by his promise, symbolized
by the rainbow, that the laws of nature, so long as man
conforms to them, will continue to act uniformly for the
benefit of all men. The acceptance by man of this
promise, by habitually making use of the laws of
nature, and acting with reference to them, completed
the covenant as a contract between God and man, and
implied man^s assent, and virtually his promise that the
laws of nature will be utilized by him in the way God
intends them to operate; that is, not only for the indi-
vidual benefit of man, but also for the common welfare
of all his fellow-men, who are all equally the objects of
God^s care.

This covenant between God and man is the original
and continuing social contract. God's promise, man^s
acceptance of it, and its resulting binding obligation,
are all proved, on one side, by the continuance of the
uniformity of the laws of nature, and their manifest
purpose; and, on the other side, by man's intelligent use
of them, and by his social arrangements whose avowed
object is the general welfare.

30. Man's earliest intercourse with animal life and
plant life tended to develop his normal practical action,
his moral nature. In his conduct towards animals, as
fellow living beings, although not human, yet serviceable
to him, he might exhibit the rudiments of morality in

48 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

kindness and gratitude. Animals domesticated for liis
use claim from him a gentle and forbearing as well as
firm treatment, devoid of cruelty and of imnecessary
harshness. In opposing formidable or noxious animals,
he learns the duty he owes himself, to defend his rights
of person, with prudence and resolution, against violence
and oppression. There are also moral considerations in
man's conduct toward plants. While their use and
consumption as necessary, is allowable, their wanton
destruction, or abuse, may be immoral. The removal of
forests may render, as it probably has rendered, extensive
regions of fertile country comparatively barren, and it
may therefore become a public crime. Careless or negli-
gent cultivation of plants necessary for human subsist-
ence, by those who have undertaken it, is manifestly
blameworthy.

The obligations of man resulting from his relations
to animal life and plant life, impose on him rudimentary
moral duties. Some of the obligations of man to out-
ward animal life are expressed by the statistics of the
extensive interests involved in animal culture and the
fisheries; to plant life by the mere terms agriculture, gar-
dening, horticulture and floriculture; and to both animal
and jilant life, by the clothing he wears, representing the
vast textile manufactures of wool, cotton, flax and liemp.
Now, all these obligations, showing the dejiendence of
his life on outward living things, and awaking in him
the theoretical sentiment of thankfulness to them,
although he lacks the power to repay their benefits,
prejiare him for the grateful experience of his indebted-
ness to the help of his fellow-men, and for actually

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 49

reciprocating, by his services, as he lias the power to do,
their helping practical love.

31. But, it is in human society that the moral obliga-
tions of man to man under the original and continuing
social contract, which may be simply called the social
contract, arise. They demand for their ascertainment
the highest speculative action of man, and for their real-
ization his purest and most energetic moral practical
action. For their discharge requires the fulfillment by
him of the social contract, and, for this purpose, its
investigation and a review of the laws of nature, which
it binds man both to study and to utilize, as well for his
fellow-man as for himself.

The laws of nature, as we have seen, are the uniform-
ities of God^s action, as manifested in the motions of
the inorganic world. They are called, when appre-
hended as conceptions by man's spirit. Principles; and
the uniformity of the uniformities of God's action, or
the whole inten-elated system of his action, as an integral
whole of action, may be called, when apprehended by
man's spirit as one complex conception, the First or
highest Principle, from which all other principles, as
its integral parts, may be deduced.

The First Principle is the highest principle at once of
knowledge and of practice, — of the speculative reason
and of the practical reason; that is, of the integral action
of man's spirit.

The laws of nature, and the first principle which
includes them all, exhibit not only the variety, and
energy, and scope of God's action on inorganic matter,
but also both his wisdom or intelligence in guiding that

50 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

action, and liis moral character in determining tlie rela-
tions of liis action to tlie spirit of man. Tlie first prin-
ciple, therefore, exhibiting the moral character of God
for man's imitation, involves the whole moral law.

32. There are five elementary activities, both of in-
dividual and of social life, constituting five distinct
common or universal social ends; which are, education,
religious service, industry, charity, and government.
The extreme complexity of society arises from the fact
that each individual takes part, in different degrees, in
each of these elementary activities. But, as the in-
stinctive practical actioii of man's individual spirit,
guided l)y his instinctive thought, constructed the
amazingly complicated and wonderfully perfect organ-
ism of his individual body, so the combined instinct-
ive practical action of man, associated with his fellow-
man by the original universal social contract, which
includes in the first principle the moral law, gradually
built up, in the lapse of ages, under the guidance of
his instinctive thought, by means of his sensuous ideas,
the still more complicated instinctive mechanism of the
normal universal society of mankind.

This society, even in its primary form, must be
regarded as an integral Avhole; each of its individual
members being engaged, in different degrees, in each
of the five elementary social activities as a common
social end. The conservative analysis of the primary
universal society, therefore, must be based on these five
elementary social activities, and must be purely ideal,
exhibiting five integral parts corresponding to them.
These integral parts of society are its five Integral Organs,

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 51

each devoted to one of the primary social activities. All
these integral organs, therefore, are numerically iden-
tical; each as integral interpenetrating all the others.
Just as the same body of individuals may constitute at
the same time a school, say, of philosophy, a church,
an industrial association, a charitable corporation, and
a local government; all exercising their different func-
tions either successively, or, if at the same time, then
by separate representatives for each separate function.

This early society being natural, or without language,
and its shifting, roving, wandering groups of individuals
and families being, respectively, like the atoms and
molecules of a fluid body, tended to become unstable,
and to have its loosely cohering elements constantly
arranged and re-arranged in ever varying combinations.

Yet, it must be regarded, from the beginning, as an
undenominational association of all the integral orsrans:
each of tliem being considered as a separate social
denomination in theory, while all of them are simul-
taneously and indistiuguishably active in practice. But
in the natural course of the development of society each
of its integral organs would be subdivided into partial
organs, and these into smaller associations, each devoted
to the special care of one of the particular social in-
terests, involved in one of the common social ends. The
lowest of these subdivisions, in each integral organ, would
then require a certain permanency in the association of its
members, for mutual support in its practical work; and
would establish permanent primary local neighborhoods,
and thus gradually localize and solidify society.

53 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

The instinctive organization of society, established
by the original and continuing social contract between
God and man, is based on the first princij^le; and, so far as
it is the co-oj^eration of all the primary social activities,
it is like that princiijle, which is the co-operation of all
princijoles. It is the undenominational germ of society,
an undenominational association, involving all the social
activities and interests that tend to the individual and
the general welfare of man. Its integral organs will
re-appear, further developed by language, in artificial
society, "as the separately organized, independent, co-
ordinate, and numerically identical repiiblics of letters
and art, of the church, of industry, of charity, and of
government. For natural society, after the invention of
language, became artificial society.

But the normal development of the original unde-
nominational association of natural society, by means of
language and of the princij)le of the division of labor,
into normal artificial society, cannot be traced in history.
It can only be inferred from the historical development
into modern civilization of the undenominational asso-
ciation of Jesus and the twelve disciples, by means of
the revived principle of representation, as will be seen
hereafter. Before Christianity, there were seen in his-
torical times, outside of the great heathen monarchies,
only single tribes under patriarchs and chiefs in various
parts of Asia, Europe and Africa, except twelve tribes
occasionally loosely united in Palestine under a judge;
and only single cities in Asia Minor, Arabia, Africa,
Greece, and Italy, under different kings; the kings in
the cities of Greece and Italy, being for a time super-

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 53

seded respectively by sej^arate democracies or aristoc-
racies. The great despotic monarchies were consolidated
by conquest. But nowhere, before Christianity, could
tribes or cities be seen united by representation into larger
political communities.

Nor cau the origin of language, by means of which
natural society was converted into artificial society, be
historically traced. Something of the nature of language
has already been anticipated. We now proceed to its
uses in society.

33. Language is a system of sensuous ideas external-
ized by means of conventional, oral, graphic, plastic or
mimic signs. Prayer, or the communion of man with
God in instinctive thought, by means of the sensuous
ideas, probably first suggested language. This com-
munion was carried on with the sensuous ideas, because
God, being omnipresent and omniscient, could know
them while they were within man. But instinctive
thought could not be communicated by man to his
felloAV-man by the sensuous ideas alone, for one could
not look upon them in another. Hence, ajDpeared the
obvious necessity to externalize them, by signs rejDre-
senting them by representing the objects which the ideas
represented; and by other conventional signs, indicating
the relations and motions of those objects.

Language as the body of conventional outward signs
of the inward sensuous ideas, by gestures, sculptures,
paintings, cries, oral and written words, — is perhaps
man's most important invention, and it doubtless re-
quired many centuries to obtain approximate perfection.
But no language can fully represent the innumerable.

54 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

individual, concrete, sensuous ideas. Nor can language
successfully compete, either in the s]3eed or the certainty
of reaching results, with the sensuous ideas.

The superiority of the sensuous ideas compared with
mere verbal descriptions, is evinced by the effect of ob-
ject lessons, practical experiments, plans and diagrams,
in teaching physical and mathematical sciences. A
verbal description of a physical object, as a plant, an
animal, or a mineral; or a verbal demonstration of a
geometrical theorem, as that the square of the hypo-
thenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of
the squares of the other two sides, would convey a
very inferior degree of knowledge compared with the
effect either of a specimen of the physical object, or of
a diagram representing the steps required to prove the
theorem. The sensuous ideas which the names of the
physical objects and the statement of the theorem would
produce, would probably be either altogether false, or
indistinct and confused; while the sensuous ideas result-
ing from a view of the specimens and of the diagram,
would bo clear and distinct.

By far the greater part of thought, therefore, con-
tinued from the first, as it still continues, to be instinct-
ive; and only its final or joartial results, and not its
intermediate processes, are what language concerning
any subject matter was first used, and is still chiefly
used, to communicate. Hence language was invented
to communicate, but not to sujjersede, the instinctive
thought that is carried on by means of the sensuous ideas.

For the social contract imposes the obligation, not
only to learn by solitary instinctive thought, but to use,

SEAIITIO PHILOSOPHY. 55

in common with others, and for this purpose to com-
municate, to teach, the laws of nature, or the first prin-
ciple; and the society formed by the social contract
requires the frequent communication of a common end
or object, as can best be done by language, in order to
form the various co-operative associations that constitute
society.

Language, from the first, therefore, was chiefly useful
in furthering agreements, contracts, and associations
among men, by expressing through signs intelligible to
them all objects proposed for their common assent or
pursuit. It was in this way that society, by the employ-
ment of language as an artificial means of communicat-
ing thought for its development, became artificial.

There is no ground for assuming that in the primitive
society, before the invention of language, called natural
society, the action of man, however limited or imperfect,
became abnormal or immoral. The rise of moral evil,
and of abnormal social action, must be sought, as will
be explained hereafter, in artificial society. The separate
beginning, however, of artificial society cannot be exactly
defined; because, while language was the means by which
artificial society was made, it was artificial society that,
by its agreement, established the significance of language.
Hence, the concrete beginning of each is the simul-
taneous concrete beginning of both.

34. The rise of abnormal action, or of moral evil
and intellectual error, may be traced to the abuse of
language in artificial society; moral evil being the result
of intellectual error, and language, as an imperfect
human invention, being suited to communicate either

56 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

truth or falsehood; while the marks imprinted on the
sensuous ideas by the forces of nature can only express
the truth of facts. Not only antinomies and paralo-
gisms, but also all false doctrines spring, not from the
sensuous ideas, but from the unskilful manipulation of
language.

Moral evil results, not from the erroneous teaching
of mathematical or of physical science, but from im-
parting a false intellectual conception of the character
of God. For the man that is taught to know and that
does know the true character of God, as the impersona-
tion of truth and goodness, power and love, knows also
that he is in God's immediate presence; and in that
presence his unfeigned reverence and awe, with all that
is noble in his nature, are called forth, and he does
not dare to think evil, or do evil, even if he could.
On the other hand, when man is taught to regard God
as an idol, or an immoral monster, he gathers courage
from the imagined example of his idol, as its devoted
follower and worshipper, to commit all the evil to which
his own unbridled passions tempt him.

It seems probable, therefore, that moral evil, or the
abnormal moral action of individuals in early artificial
society, originated in idolatry, or resulted from it; as this
did from imperfect and misleading forms of language,
misdescribing God's character; breaking up the potent
unity of his perfect personality into a weak assemblage
of comparatively insignificant, personified, individual,
divine powers and attributes, associated with personified
and deified human crime; forming a grotesque, abomin-
able hierarchy of vile and wicked sun gods, moon

SEMITIC PIIILOSOPnT. 57

gods, star gods, bird gods, fish gods, beast gods, and
snake gods, besides monstrous so-called good and evil
sjnrits. Figures of speech, however innocent they now
are, doubtless aided, in ancient times with other forms
of language, to establish idolatry.

The scene in the garden of Eden, purporting to
describe the origin of moral evil, shows both the abuse
of language in a statement giving a false character of
God as untruthful, and the resulting idolatry of Adam
in believing that statement — a belief amounting to a
departure from the God of Truth, and to the accept-
ance, in his stead, of a false idol. For the attribution
of immorality to God creates, in his stead, an idol of the
imagination.

Much time was required to elapse after man's inven-
tion of his powerful mechanism of language, before he
learned, if he has yet learned, to use it with absolute
safety in his highest concerns. Hence it would be well
to inquire, whether the greater part of the crime pre-
vailing in modern civilization is not due to the wide-
spread Oriental doctrines taught there, assigning to God,
by an al)use of language adopted from heathenism, a
cruel and immoral character.

35. But, however idolatry originated, its absolute and
almost universal sway over ancient society, and its trans-
formation of that society into the system called an-
cient heathenism, or Orientalism, is undoubted. For
the original social contract and its first principle, with
the instinctive organization of the primitive universal
society, discovered by instinctive thought, were gradually
reduced by idolatry and man's consequent abnormal

58 SEMITIC PHILOSOrilY,

practical action, except in the faintest outlines, to utter
oblivion and neglect.

The transition period of society from the original un-
denominational association of primitive normal natural
society, through the first stage of normal artificial society,
before idolatry set in, — to those loose and promiscuous
combinations of individuals and families that are found
along with idolatry at the beginning of history, and
were then subject to the mere customary rule of patri-
archs or chiefs, supjiorted by the influence of idolatry,
in single independent tribes, — preceded all historical
records and monuments.

Only a myth or tradition of this j^eriod has come
down to us. This transition period of society is what
we may suppose to be meant by the tradition of the
Golden Age. Because it was before the introduction of
idolatry and of moral evil, it must have been a season of
peace, unvexed by war. Its peaceful growth would par-
tially develop its integral organs in local neighborhoods;
and its localization would render its habitations perma-
nent, and free from the disturbance of nomadism. Its
masses, not being driven together and concentrated by
conquest, or domineered over by military rule, must have
been kept together in quietness and order by the delib-
erate adoption of positive laws; which, in the absence of
any so-called political superior, or despot, must have been
enacted in the form of express contracts or agreements;
and these, when extending over large territories, must
have been negotiated and concluded by authorized agents
or representatives of the people, although no trace of
such ancient representation has survived.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 59

But, after some unknown lapse of time succeeding the
supposed normal period of artificial society, the begin-
ning of history records a very marked degradation of
society, shown by nomadic wanderings, occasional con-
flicts, and resulting offensive and defensive wars of single
tribes, under their respective patriarchs, against each
other. Then, the elevation of a successful military
leader in these wars as king over a tribe, instead of the
patriarch ; and the conquering wars of the king subduing
and plundering tribe after tribe, and reducing them
under his dominion, driving the population of conquered
districts in herds, as slaves, to his capital, until he estab-
lished, as king of kings, a vast predatory and conquering
despotic empire; to be in turn shattered and broken in
jaieces by a mightier conqueror, is the often relocated out-
ward history of the East. The despot superseded the
patriarch.

The patriarch was both the political ruler and the
priest of his tribe; and the desj^ot succeeded to the patri-
arch's authority in both capacities. Thus was established
the system of idolatrous despotism, or ancient heathen-
ism, otherwise called Orientalism.

To complete the picture of ancient heathenism, or
Orientalism, its religious and domestic economy must be
considered. To its outward military despotism must be
added the description of its inward sacerdotalism, and the
resulting slavery of its people.

The patriarch, the king, and the king of kings, were
supported in their political rule by the priestly office.
The patriarch was his own priest. The king or despot

60 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

employed a company or order of priests, a sacerdotal
order for the support of liis authority over the people.

Institutions must be judged by their own characters,
not by the characters of their casual incumbents. There
have been in ancient times good patriarchs, good despots,
and good priests, as goodness was accounted in their day.
Abraham and Melchizedek were model patriarchs, but
they did not originate patriarchism, which arose long
before their time in idolatrous nations. Marcus Aure-
lius, the Roman despot, who lived thousands of years
after the reputed author of despotism, Nimrod, was a
Stoic philosopher; and although he conscientiously perse-
cuted the Christians, he was notoriously endowed with
all the Stoic virtues. Early Jewish history reports some
good priests, but they disappeared in the glory of the
prophets.

A good patriarch or despot might allow and proclaim
a God of justice and mercy. But a heaven-daring con-
queror, making it the occupation of his life to form, and
when the occasion offered itself, to execute plans for
ravaging and laying waste extensive territories, and
visiting with indiscriminate slaughter or slavery their
unoffending populations, would not permit himself to be
insulted by the worship of a just and merciful God.
After the shining example of Nimrod, he allowed his
creatures the priests, to proclaim his divinity. He
would then through his priests, his sacerdotal order,
command the worship of a wrathful, cruel, and unjust
idol despot in heaven, to countenance the unjust and
cruel despot on the earth.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 61

He thus systematically debased his fellow-men, by
enforcing the unworthy worship of himself, and of an
idol like himself, as fellow-gods. For the series of
ancient conquerors were a race of men as exceptionally
strong in intellect, as they were wicked and unscru-
pulous in practice, and they well knew that a (lod of
love, and mercy, and pity for the people, is only suited
to a democracy; while the cruel policy of despotism,
conquest, and slavery, required the sujierstitious, super-
natural support of a wrathful, unjust and cruel idol.

In fact, the sacerdotal order in the despotism of Ori-
entalism, or ancient heathenism, did as much to degrade
and brutalize men, and fit them to become ' loyal and
submissive subjects of the despots, as did the armies
which the despots employed for that purpose.

For this order, by its support of the despot^s jiower,
earned from him the unlimited privilege of plunder-
ing the j)eople by pretended mercenary religious services;
and it stimulated the willingness of the people to bribe
them for these services, by further debasing them with
degrading superstition, first intensified by multiplying
and diversifying their idols, and then utilized by
assuming an official and confidential relation to these
idols; and by asserting the ability to jilacate their wrath
and win their favor, by sacrifice, the universal cere-
mony of idolatrous worship.

Nor should it be forgotten that in ancient heathenism,
or Orientalism, the same merciless cruelty of the ruling
classes to the people, was exercised, when the peo2)le were
submissive, by those classes towards each other, and their
own members, and even by the nearest relatives.

62 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

Thus, it appears that, l)y the system of ancient heath-
enism, the light of humanity was almost extinguished;
mankind, with few exceptions, having been degraded into
two classes of beasts: beasts of burden, and driving or
ruling beasts. For, by this system, when idolatry and
abnormal action became predominant, the instinctive
germ of social organization, based on the native dignity of
man as the image of God, on the original social contract
of God with man, and on the first princijile, was thor-
oughly overthrown, broken up, disintegrated, and super-
seded. The order in which the ruin of the integral organs
of society took place, after they had been partially and
symmetrically developed, according to the five primary
individual and social activities, and had been, to some
extent, duly localized by local neighborhoods or associa-
tions, must have been as follows: first, the functions of
the integral organ of the republic of government were
usurped by the despot; secondly, the functions of the
integral organ of the republic of the church were usurped
by the sacerdotal order; thirdly, the integral organ of
the republic of industry, as an association of freemen, was
oi-ushed by the despot and the sacerdotal order, by means
of the universal slavery of the masses of the people;
fourthly, by the same means, and the consequent universal
misery of the masses of the people, and the isolation of
the ruling classes from them, the integral organ of the
republic of charity was rendered impossible as a public
institution — although charity was not entirely obliterated
by slavery, there having been at Rome, as is proved
by tender inscriptions still to be read in the Catacombs,
charitable associations, as for burial, among the unhappy

SEMITIC PniLOSOPHY. 63

slaves; and fifthly, the integral organ, or republic, of
letters and art, was restricted, by the same means, either
to the sacerdotal order alone, or to it along with the rich,
learning having been monopolized by these classes, and
no public education in which the poor could share hav-
ing been established.

Ancient heathenism, or Orientalism, founded on des-
potism, idolatry, sacerdotalism, and slavery, was a vir-
tually uniform system. Its primitive form, with very
little variation of its essential features, dating from the
mighty hunted of men, Kimrod, whose memory, to awe
mankind by his pretended divine example, was enthroned
by superstition and kingcraft in the brightest constella-
tion of the Northern skies, Orion, has been handed down
in regular succession, through the despotic and conquer-
ing monarchs of Chald^a, Assyria, Media, India, China,
Persia, Parthia, Egypt, Greece, Imperial and Papal
Home — for the teinporal power of the Pope is despotic —
to the present Grand Turk, and the Tsar, with his Ori-
ental Tartar rule of to-day.

The system of ancient heathenism, or Orientalism,
grew to be as universal as it Avas hideous and monoto-
nous. Normal artificial society was altogether oblit-
erated by it. Only an individual, here and there,
remained, upon whose heart was written the law of God,
and who led a normal life; testifying to the power of
instinctive thought, when duly heeded, iu the most unfa-
vorable outward circumstances, to sustain man in the
intimate communion with God, and to derive from that
communion the energy of speculative and practical faith.

64 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

Doubtless, many such individuals, oppressed by sla-
very and despotic cruelty, lived in obscurity, and per-
ished unknown. But a few others have achieved the
brightest fame of history, and have indicated, amidst
almost universal despotism and idolatry, the glory of
humanity. Such were Pericles, Demosthenes, Socrates
and Plato among the Greeks ; Abraham, Moses, and the
prophets, among the Jews ; the Gracchi and Cicero
among the Romans ; Buddha, and perhaps Confucius, in
the East.

l)ut the name, in the splendor of which every other
name of man must pale, is that of a child, Avhose birth in
a poor and isolated family, in Bethlehem of Judea, is the
new era, from which the revived normal artificial society,
or the new Golden Age, called modern civilization, is
dated.

CHAPTER III.

rr^HE doctrine aud the practice of the Kingdom of
-■- God, being the revival, by Jesus, of normal artifi-
cial society from ancient heathenism, by means of the
revival of the speculative side, and the consequent
revival of the practical side, of the original or Semitic
Philosophy.

36. We will now inquire by what means, and how far,
normal artificial society was first revived from ancient
heathenism in modern civilization, or Christianity; what
is its natural constitution, as revealed by instinctive
thought; what steps backward it has taken in reaction
towards ancient heathenism ; and what, afterwards, has
been the course of its progress and reform, in its symmet-
rical normal development.

At the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, the system of
ancient heathenism, or Orientalism, in the despotic and
coterminous empires of Eome and of Parthia, virtually
covered the whole of the then known world; extend-
ing in the Eoman Empire from the Atlantic to the
Euphrates; in the Parthian, from the Euphrates to the
farthest East.

The Greeks had gloriously, but vainly, resisted and
defeated at Marathon the entrance of Oriental despot-
ism into Europe. For afterwards they succumbed to it

65

66 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

under one of themselves, ii conqueror wlio surpassed the
conquests, and adopted the despotism, of the kings of the
East — the Macedonian Alexander, whose empire, in turn,
was conquered, and whose despotism was imitated, by the
Komans.

Thus, despotism and idolatry, as the system of ancient
heathenism, or Orientalism, were established throughout
the known world, with the exception of the few persons
on whose hearts was written the law of Crod.

But the idolatry of the Koman Empire was not all
polytheistic. For the great body of the widely disi:)ersed
Jews held fast, with wonderful heroic obstinacy, to the
doctrine of monotheism, which they received from
Abraham. Yet, it cannot be denied that the object
worshipped by the majority of them was not that God
of justice, mercy, and love proclaimed by their great
prophets; but rather the popular ideal of a mighty and
ferocious conqueror, whom they expected to batter down
in blood and carnage, either in person or l)y a Messiah,
the hosts of Eome and Parthia, and to divide their spoils
among his favorites, the Jews.

The savage and cruel being whom they imagined
and worshipped must be classed among the idols of imag-
ination; and their worship, as monotheistic idolatry.

The idolatry, therefore, that prevailed, along with
desjjotism, throughout the known world, at the ])irtli of
Jesus, was both polytheistic and monotheistic.

The monotheistic idolatry of the Jews arose from their
degrading the character of the true God of the original
pure monotheism of Abraham to the level of the behavior
of the cruel chief idols worshipped by the heathen

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. C>7

nations. It was the monotheism of the Jews that gave
tliem the power of resistance against the ineffable
oppressions which they suffered from successive con-
querors for thousands of years, and that enabled them to
survive all their oppressors; but it was these oppressions
that degraded and obscured the spirit of the Jewish peo-
ple, and thereby caused the majority of them to lower
their estimate of the character of God. Yet, there
always remained, mostly in humble circumstances, a few
who did not bow the knee to Baal, and among them,
occasionally, a great prophet.

It should cause no surprise, therefore, that in the
general darkness of idolatry and despotism that had over-
spread the world, a young Jewish villager, who, at the
age of twelve, was carried by his zeal for the knowledge
of the true God to the feet of the great teachers of his
faith, in the Temple of Jerusalem; and who, by question-
ing the travelers that regularly passed his door at Naz-
areth with the great caravans from the far East to Tyre,
Sidon, and Egypt, had opportunities to know all the
forms of idolatry, and to learn the need of the world for
enlightenment, should be inspired by the thought that
the great Deliverer expected by his people must be a
great enlightener; and should recognize in the conscious-
ness of his own great power of thought and of expression,
a call to assume that providential office for his day. For
he saw that an enlightener or reformer of the world,
necessarily beginning his reformation by instructing a
small circle of pure monotheists, could most easily estab-
lish that circle among the Jews, already monotheists,
by purifying their monotheism.

68 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

It was, accordingly, the monotheism of the Jews that
as a Jew he first purified; so that as in its original purity
it was made the foundation of Christianity; and it became,
after his death, the vehicle for spreading Christianity, by
means of the Jewish synagogues, scattered throughout
the Eoman Eraiiire.

37. For it was necessary on account of the mono-
theism of the Jews, although it was in some respects
imj)ure, but prevailing among no other people, that a
Jew should become the reformer of the polytheistic
idolatry _of ancient heathenism. It was necessary for
him to begin his reform in his own country, among his
own countrymen, and in his own neighborhood, among
his neighbors; in order that he might at once — in the
brief period that his enemies would allow him — bring
together, instruct, and inaugurate in action, a small
association inspired by a pure monotheism, as a type of
a new and normal artificial society, a present example
of it, and as a germ or nucleus for future development.

As the original normal artificial society must have
been at first undenominational, and was as such over-
thrown by idolatry, it was fitting that the revived
normal artificial society should at first also be unde-
nominational, and should be founded on the overthrow
of idolatry by a pure monotheism; while the development
of its social denominations, or separate integral organs,
must be left to be called forth by the exigencies and
opportunities of the future.

The only way to remove error, is to teach the truth.
The only way to remove the error of polytheism, with
its related despotism, was to teach the truth of mono-

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 69

theism. To do this effectually it was apparent that —
in order to produce an immediate and lasting effect on
the vast heathen world — a band of zealous monotheistic
teachers, missionaries, or apostles, was required who
could bo prepared for their mission in a short time.
Such a band young Jesus, at thirty years of age, in his
humble sphere of life, could only expect to find among
the Jews, — his countrymen, his neighbors. These were
already monotheists, prepared in that aspect to his hand.
It only remained for him to select willing and able
associates among his humble acquaintances; to purify
their monotheism from some common prejudices, regard-
ing their expected Messiah, and the true character of
God; and to instruct them for their mission in the short
time at his disposal.

There was every reason why Jesus should seek in his
great mission his associates among the Jews. The mono-
theism of the Jews had separated them from all the
peoples witli whom they came in contact, who were all
polytheists; and it had thereby made the associations of
individuals and families among the Jews more sym-
pathetic, more close, mutually more helpful, and more
lasting, than among other non-Semitic nations; and thus
it preserved the inward cohesion, and consequently the
national vitality of the Jewish peoj^le; while in the calm
of these domestic associations the idolatrous features of
their monotheism would find nothing to call them forth;
and the true character of God, revealed by instinctive
thought and the sensuous ideas, and preached by the
prophets, would at least dimly shine forth, and — so far
as it was apprehended — would ennoble their intercourse.

70 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

and give strength to their character. Their Mosaic
institutions of civil hiw surpass in humanity any of the
ancient heathen codes.

38. In the way tlius pointed out, Jesus of Nazareth,
as a Jew, began at liis liome, amoiig Jews, liis reform
movement. It is recorded of liim, in books that are
almost universally conceded to be authentic history, tliat
ho was born in Bethlehem, of Judea, of poor Jewish
parents, his father being a carpenter; that in childhood
he was taken to Egypt, and then brought to Nazareth,
of Galilee, where lie lived until about thirty years of
age, when he began a public ministry of teaching, by
proclaiming what he called the "^Kingdom of God,^' or
the "Kingdom of Heaven"; that he carefully instructed
twelve men of the common people, and formed them
into an association with himself, to spread his doctrine
of the "Kingdom of God," and his association, among
the people; and that, after a public career of about three
years, preaching his doctrine with unexampled genius,
eloquence, prudence, and intrepidity, — besides minister-
ing charitably to all Avhom he met afflicted by sickness, —
he suffered on the cross a heroic martyrdom for the
cause he had advocated, saying of his doctrine, in almost
his last utterance, that he was "born to bear witness
unto the truth." X,

39. By generously consecrating his young and pure
life to the witnessing of the truth, he made that life its
best witness, the true interpreter to all noble and sym-
pathizing minds, of the formula "Kingdom of God,"
in which he summed its comprehensive import.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 71

Tlic most eloquent of men, he distrusted tlie power
of written language to adequately express the doctrine
which he taught for all mankind, and for all time. For
this reason he left nothing in writing. He committed
his doctrine to the perfect instinctive mechanism of
the sensuous ideas, aided by the oral tradition of his
discourses.

He simply addressed oral speech to the common
peojjle, to awaken their instinctive thought, and to call
their attention to the systematic action and Providential
care of God, manifested in the observed order of the
universe. From the order of the universe, as the action
of God, he drew the character of God, as the perfect
ideal of goodness, love and wisdom, for man to imitate.
He thus left all questions as to his doctrine to be
answered for him by God as the supreme oracle in the
temple of the universe.

It will be more appropriate here to develop briefly
the intrinsic meaning of the formula. Kingdom of God,
in which he condensed and symbolized the whole import
of what he taught, than to needlessly dwell on the con-
vincing collateral testimony and authority which his
life, as credibly reported, and already universally known,
gave to his teaching.

40. The formula. Kingdom of God, may be con-
verted into the projoosition. The Kingdom is of God.
When Jesus proclaimed the formula, Kingdom of God,
he asserted as a truth, that the Kingdom is of God.
The sensuous ideas of the conception and of the asser-
tion are the same. Now, in order to understand the

72 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

teaching of Jesus, the meaning of the two terms, king-
dom and God, must be clearly ascertained.

The term God meant, in that formula, the God of
pure monotheism, as already described; the one superior
spirit of power, wisdom, goodness, justice, and love, far
exceeding any attainment of man. The term, king-
dom, meant concretely, the organization, order,i or sys-
tem produced in anything by the action of spirit, and
abstractly the power, authority, or guidance of the
spirit that produces the organization, order, or system.

The term. Kingdom of God, then, meant, concretely,
the organization, order, or system, resulting in the
material universe from the immediate action or power
of God, and in the spiritual universe, and in a particular
and primary sense among men, it denoted the normal
society effected by God's instruction, discipline, and
example, co-operating with the action of man. When
the term, Kingdom of God, does not plainly mean the
whole material and spiritual universe, it means the
organization, the order, the co-operating union, associa-
tion, or society of God with mankind.

Tlie term, kingdom, connected with the term God,
cannot luean anything implied in human government.
Such a meaning given to the term kingdom, in this
connection, is an abuse of language, involving gross
error, and leading to the most disastrous results; to an
idolatry tending to thrust back modern civilization into
all the evils of ancient heathenism. For the applica-
tion of the term king to God in any sense implying
functions of command analogous to those of a heathen

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. '^S

king or despot, or any other human, royal prerogatives,
is simply idolatry.

Indeed, the conception of government between God
and man, is absurd as well as idolatrous. Government
inflicts punishment as an evil to make retribution for
another evil. God inflicts no evil, and therefore no
punishment. He administers discipline as a blessing;
in order to lead the offender to repentance and reforma-
tion. God is the rule for man to live by, to measure and
direct his conduct, not man's ruler. If God should
issue a command as a ruler or absolute king, it would
be known to whomsoever it might be addressed, from
one end of the universe to the other, as the still, small
voice; and man could not fail to obey it. But his
obedience would be a mere matter of necessity, and it
would have, therefore, no moral value in his eyes or in
the eyes of God.

Man is in the power of God, dependent on his gifts
and his guidance. God is at once his loving father,
friend, associate, and his skilful employer, teacher,
trainer, — in the school, in the field, in the workshop,
and in the arena of life, — and man can only show his
gratitude to God, by doing his duty and giving his
assistance to his fellow-man, and thereby doing the
work of God. For God asks of man no tribute of
empty praise, or idle, sentimental love, or vain or costly
sacrifice to him, — but calls on all to lend a hand and
aid him in his work of universal blessing to mankind.
The spiritual relation of man to God, is that of a
scholar to a teacher, of a free apprentice to a just.

74 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

wise, and good employer, and of a practical helper to
God in bestowing his beneficence.

The heathen depravation of God's character, by the
attribution to him of heathen governmental functions,
and of corresponding heathen acts, analogous to those
of a human despot, or king, judge, or military leader,
was the chief heathen or idolatrous element of the
monotheism of the Jews. But the term kingdom, in
the formula Kingdom of God, excludes every function
of government. It merely designates the organization,
order, or system of the material and spiritual universe,
and particularly of normal society.

This meaning of the term kingdom, in the formula
Kingdom of God, will be further elucidated by the
signification which Jesus evidently attached to the
terms king and kingdom, when applied to himself
and to his association with his disciples. For when
he was called king before Pilate, he openly admitted
the fact; but said that his kingdom was not of this
world, meaning that it was not a government at all, as
all real kingdoms of this world are, and that it certainly
was not a revival of the Kingdom of David, which was
unquestionably a real kingdom of this world; and this
answer, with the reasons he gave for it, satisfied Pilate,
who would not have dared to tolerate any government
opposed to Caesar, as a rival kingdom of this world in
Judea, and least of all a revival of the famous Kingdom
of David. Jesus was directly charged by his accusers
before Pilate, with setting up a government as king;
but Pilate evidently thought him innocent of the
charge, and said so; and yielded to his fears for himself

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 75

in condemning Jesus, and not to liis judgment, as he
publicly confessed, by symbolically and ostentatiously
washing his hands, to remove the guilt of the condemna-
tion from his conscience, according to the form of his
superstition.

Jesus, in fact, never exercised any governmental office,
and never performed any governmental act. In the only
recorded case of his being sought to act governmentally,
he expressly and publicly declined to do so, when
called upon to divide a disj)uted inheritance — an act
that would have belonged to a king or a judge, as govern-
mental functionaries of a human government. The term
king, therefore, as used by Jesus in relation to himself,
must merely signify that he was the chief, or master of
his disciples. The word translated king, in the text in
question, denotes a master — as the master of a house or
of a school; and it has, indeed, many more meanings,
from signifying a heathen god or monarch, to a mere
term of comj^limentary oi flattering address to any
person admitted for the occasion, or feigned, to be a
superior.

Hence, the kingdom of Jesus, which he expressly said
was not like the heathen kingdoms, which were govern-
ments, was merely the organization of the association of
his disciples, which was an undenominational association,
and of which he was the unquestioned head, or chief,
or master, but without any governmental function or
authority. Nor can it be doubted that the term King-
dom of God must have an analogous meaning, denoting
only the organization, the order, and the system, of the
material universe, and of normal society.

7G SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

Ill confirmation of this view, tlio passage may be
referred to, in which Peter is called, by Jesiis, the rock
on which his church — as the term for it is translated, or,
as it may be otherwise called, his community — shall be
built. The transaction is narrated in the usual figurative
style of the time; and it probably means that Peter was
then appointed, or foreordained, to succeed Jesus as the
future head, or chief, or president of the first Christian
community. Afterwards it appeared that he was fol-
lowed by James, when the first Christian community set-
tled in Jerusalem; and that each of the other Christian
communities, as they arose, had a separate head, not
called a rock, but a bishop. Now, the bishop, as the
head of a separate Christian community, did not, so long
as it was undenominational, take the place of an apostle,
but a j)lace analogous to that of Jesus; not the jilace of a
mere religious teacher, but the charge of the general
interests of the community. But there is no jiretense of
any political government in any of these chiefs of the
early Christian communities for more than a century
after the death of Jesus. The term kingdom, then, in
the formula Kingdom of Clod, must evidently be taken,
as it is used in other connections, in a figurative sense.
As a class, an order, or system of things, as of plants, is
called a kingdom, so the Kingdom of God must signify,
in a general sense, the system of the universe, and, in a
particular sense, the system or organization of normal
society, of the society based on the social contract, and in
which man is the associate of God.

41. It would be no easy task to state all that is
implied in the formula, Kingdom of God. This task will

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 77

not here be attempted. But a brief summary of what it
implies may be given. The formula. Kingdom of God,
has been already considered, on its speculative side, as
implying the system of Semitic philosophy; and it will
now be viewed, on its practical side, as implying the per-
fect instinctive conception, or ideal, of the organization,
or practical constitution of normal artificial society.
Both sides constitute an integral whole, of which each is
an integral part; so that its speculative side is only pre-
dominantly speculative, and its practical side only pre-
dominantly practical.

Leaving, therefore, as already sufficiently explained,
the speculative side of the Kingdom of God; the mechan-
ism of instinctive thought, with the sensuous ideas; the
laws of nature as the uniformities of God's action, and
their sum as the uniformity of the uniformities of his
action, or the first principle; with the moral law, as the
moral features of God's action towards man, involved in
the first principle; we proceed to the social contract of
God with man, as determining, in connection with the
primitive individual and social activities of man, the per-
fect organization or practical constitution of normal arti-
ficial society, or modern civilization.

42. The primary activities of man are derived from
the first principle, being copied from the action of God
towards man. God instructs man, communes with him,
furnishes him with the materials of his food and cloth-
ing, aids him in his trials and necessities, and exercises
over his conduct a wholesome discipline, designed to lead
him to rejientance and reformation. In all these par-
ticulars, man engages, by the social contract, to imitate.

78 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

towards all his feliow-meii;, the action of God. by utiliz-
ing the laws of nature, which God provides; each man
utilizing them both for his individual benefit and for the
general welfare of all.

Thus^ corresponding, resi^ectively, to the five primary
individual and social activities of man, which may be
called education, religious communion or service, indus-
try, public charity, and government — there necessarily
arise under the social contract, and are instinctively
formed, five universal associations, as integral organs of
society; in each of which every individual is a member
more or less actively engaged, and all of which, practi-
cally co-operating together, constitute the organization of
normal artificial society.

For the original and continuing social contract, as
already stated, made and jn'oved by acts, consists, on one
side, in the inferred engagement of God to continue the
uniform operation of the laws of nature for the common
benefit of all men; and on the other side, in the inferred
engagement of man, when he accepts the use of the laws
of nature, to use them in the way they are obviously
intended to be used.

It follows, that in every social relation every indi-
vidual is bound to make his own interest consistent witli
the general welfare; and that in every normal association
God is virtually a member coucerned for directing its
common end in harmony with the benefit of the whole
community. Man has very important duties to himself
to discharge; so has every association, and every com-
munity to itself; but these duties, when lorojoerly under-
stood, must conduce to the well-being of the public.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 79

The five integral organs of society, or social denom-
inations, as they may be called, have each, respectively,
one of the primary social activities for its common end;
and as every man must to some extent be engaged in all
these activities, he must belong to all the integral organs.
Hence, every integral organ must embrace all the people,
and all the integral organs must be numerically identical,
co-ordinate, and independent.

Each of tlie integral organs, therefore, must be a
republic, and must be organized by subdivision into
appropriate partial organs, or associations.

AYe have seen, that the original primitive or natural
society, that preceded artificial society, must have been,
at first, undenominational, holding, as a germ, all the
social denominations, or integral organs, undeveloped
within it; that afterwards these integral organs must
have been to some extent developed; although, as this
development took place before the commencement of
history, its extent cannot be exactly determined; and
that when history begins to throw light upon society
all the normal social denominations or integral organs
have disappeared, under the influence of idolatry, leav-
ing in their jilace only an abnormal despotic government,
and an abnormal sacerdotal church; these two abnormal
institutions constituting the system of ancient heathen-
ism, or Orientalism.

43. We have seen, also, that Jesus began his reform
movement for the overthroAV of ancient heathenism,
or Orientalism, by establishing, as the first typical
Christian community, or germ of the new society of
modern civilization, which he inaugurated, an undenom-

80 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

inational association of twelve disciples, with himself at
its head.

It is from this germ, and by the influence of the
formula, Kingdom of God, implying and perpetuating
the perfect instinctive conception, or ideal, of the organi-
zation of normal artificial society, that the five social
denominations, or integral organs, which in their full
normal realization must constitute perfect modern civili-
zation, or the true Kingdom of God, here and hereafter,
have been already to some extent partially developed,
after many vicissitudes and obstructions from the
unyielding power of ancient heathenism. Passing over
the details of the outward history of this development,
we will aim to follow its inward genesis.

In the first place, it is plain, that with idolatry both
sacerdotalism and despotism were removed by Jesus from
the type which he instituted of modern society.

The removal of sacerdotalism from the new society
introduced freedom of thought from the slavish bonds
and from the temporal power of superstition, by sepa-
rating science from the dominion of false religion. It
gave to true religion the enlightenment of true science
by making both co-ordinate. It committed the interests
of science, with the care of all principles, as included
in the first principle, to the predominantly speculative
integral organ, the republic of letters and art; while it
assigned the service of God, or the preparation of man
for worthy communion with him, here and hereafter,
in immortal life, as the peculiar charge and duty of
religion, to the practical integral organ, or republic, of
the Church.

■ SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 81

For this boon to science, as well as to religion, and for
the encouragement, among the masses of the unlearned
people, as well as among the learned, of original thought,
by entrusting the development of the fundamental prin-
ciples of science and of religion, involved in the doctrine
of the Kingdom of God, to the freedom, the mathematical
and logical precision, and the instinctive mechanism of
the sensuous ideas when used, with the aid of oral speech
and of tradition, in the instinctive thought carried on
in silence and seclusion by the common people, Jesus,
as the Emancipator both of science and of religion from
priestly rule, deserves the highest honors, both as the
perpetual chief of the republic of letters and art, and
as the founder of the rej^ublic of the universal, pure,
spiritual, practical, and free catholic church.

The effect of removing despotism, or the abnormal
centralized state, all absorbed in an abnormal central-
ized government, from the new society, was to replace
despotism by a normal decentralized state, consisting of
three separate and independent integral organs, each
charged with one of the primitive social activities, or
social common ends. These integral organs are, first,
the integral organ, or republic of industry, restored to
independence from the despotic interference of the
government in all purely industrial concerns. Secondly,
the integral organ, or republic of public charity, emanci-
pated from the obstruction of government, and needed
to purify, liberalize, and harmonize public social inter-
course, by aesthetic, literary, and scientific public enter-
tainments; to smooth over and overcome by its aid the
temptations, difficulties, partial disasters, and disappoint-

82 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

monts, arising from the operations of nature, and the
competitions of society; to alleviate misfortunes, and to
promote moral reforms. And, thirdly, a decentralized
and simplified integral organ, or republic of government,
confined to purely governmental functions, exercised by
the people through their rejiresentatives, as a civil
representative democracy; and aiming chiefly to secure
the public defense, to maintain public order, to enact
needed governmental positive laws, and to administer
justice in the courts.

Tims, by the removal of the abnormal systems of des-
potism and sacerdotalism, constituting together ancient
heathenism, or Orientalism, that had overspread the
known world, Jesus brought into play the five integral
organs or social denominations that together compose,
by their co-operation, the normal organization or consti-
tution of modern civilization. But this result, although
undoubtedly due to the genius of Jesus, and embraced
in his vision and design of the future Kingdom of God
on the earth, was not effected at once.

44. In fact, almost the only normal outward develop-
ment of the early Christian communities, while they held
fast to their pure monotheism, was their system of repre-
sentation, according to which they each sent representa-
tives to meet in a general council, for the consideration
and dispatch of their common concerns. But this system
was most important, being the mechanism by which the
extremely complicated normal organization of each of
the integral organs and of society, as a whole, can be
brought into an orderly and practical system; and being
the means by which the several Christian communities

SEMITIC niiLOsopnY. ■ 83

came to be considered together as having the unity or
catholicity of one Christendom.

It must be borne in mind that, as in the primitive
natural society, so also in the type of modern society
instituted by Jesus, the integral organ of government,
on account of the absence in both of idolatry and moral
evil, was only potential; Jesus, the head of modern
society, having absolutely refused to perform any gov-
ernmental function. Where there is no moral evil to
be coerced, government would plainly be superfluous.

But the advent and increase of moral evil logically
tend to produce the realization of government, and to
stimulate the activity of its functions; while, obversely,
from the rise and multifariousness of government may be
inferred the growth of moral evil. Nor can it be doubted
that the augmentation of moral evil, in the absence of
polytheism, indicates as its cause the influence of mono-
theistic idolatry, or the worship of an imaginary being,
with an immoral or cruel and unjust character, instead
of the just and loving God. For moral evil is the effect
either of polytheistic or of monotheistic idolatry.

45. Now, about the beginning of the third century,
a sudden and ominous portent made its appearance in
all the Christian communities. As if by common con-
sent, they almost simultaneously adopted sacerdotalism
and despotism in the place of their primitive constitu-
tions. They had evidently determined to fight heathen-
ism with its own weapons. The influence of Orientalism,
or gnosticism, had prevailed.

A revolution was made in Christendom by a ring
composed of a banded few, calling themselves the clergy.

84 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

to subvert the growing organic Christian system of civil
representative democracy, and to substitute for it the
heathen systems of subordination, and of arbitrary usurpa-
tion. The clergy claimed to be the privileged few, the
superiors of the people, who were called the laity, and
were merely their subjects. The clergy formed them-
selves into a sacerdotal order, a hierarchy, and their head
assumed to be, with their suj^port, an Oriental monarch,
a despot, under the name of a bishop, in every Christian
community.

Outwardly, Christianity had relapsed into ancient
heathenism. The revolution of reaction was completed,
confirmed, and perpetuated by substituting the awful
heathen religious ceremonial of bloody human sacrifice,
rejjresented in a mimic show, for the tender memorial
service of the last supper instituted by Jesus.

Corresponding to this sacrificial ceremonial, typifying
the injustice and cruelty of the being to whom it was
offered, the sacerdotal order adopted Oriental dogmas
and mysteries, concocted in the fertile imagination of
the idolatrous East, couched in delusive and unfamiliar
forms of speech, but interpreted by the sacerdotal order
to sustain its ambitious pretensions.

Combinations of bishops in provincial councils, formed
inner rings of the sacerdotal order, and a union of all the
bishops in a general council, completed the ecclesiastical
machine, the head of which became the bishop of Eome.

46. The ecclesiastical machine of Christianity had,
after the labor of a century, in the year 335 A. d. ,
undermined the authority of the avowed heathen sacer-
dotal system in the Roman Emjiire; when the heathen

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 85

emperor, Constantine, who was at once the head of the
heathen sacerdotal system as its Pontifex Maximus, and
of the military machine of the empire as emperor, con-
ceived the practical plan of securing for himself the
powerful support of the Christian ecclesiastical machine
by a compromise of its impure monotheism with the
shaken and effete j^olytheism of the Roman sacerdotal
order. Accordingly, Constantine, with a view to such
a compromise, proposed a conference with the Christian
ecclesiastical machine, which met him in full force in
a general council at Nicea; and over which he presided
as the heathen Pontifex Maximus, representing the poly-
theistic element of the empire. The result of the con-
ference was the adoption of the so-called N'icene creed,
one of the conflicting Oriental or gnostic dogmas that
had invaded Christianity from the East; and which the
shrewd imperial Pontifex Maximus foresaw would easily
admit of a sufficiently idolatrous interpretation to satisfy
the entire heathen element of the Roman Empire; al-
though he was somewhat vexed and disappointed to find
that it did not receive the unanimous support of the
bishops.

Soon followed the irruption of the barbarous and
idolatrous masses of the Roman Empire, with their gross
superstition, into the Christian church, or the so-called
conversion of the Roman Empire; and the Christian
ecclesiastical ring was elevated at once to a pitch of
opulence, splendor, pomp, luxury, and power, unsur-
passed by any sacerdotal order in the most idolatrous
ages and populations of the East.

86 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

47. From that time to the present, as logical results
of the prevailing impure monotheism of Christianity, the
Christian ecclesiastical ring or machine, representing the
Oriental sacerdotal order, on one hand, and the Christian
military machine, or military government, representing
Oriental despotism, on the other hand, have almost
everywhere, with occasional prudent relaxations, or
necessary exceptions, outwardly dominated the unre-
sisting masses of the people, in the larger part of what
is called modern civilization. But the final frustration
of the . ecclesiastical machine's attempt to subdue the
state under the church by its claim of temporal power
in Europe, has saved the people there from a worse than
Mohammedan rule.

Of the crimes of the ecclesiastical ring, which is also
the model of the military ring, I do not propose here
to speak; but of its errors, or rather of its one funda-
mental error, — its imjiure monotheism, or monotheistic
idolatry, from which all its well-known historical crimes
and persecutions have proceeded, — it was necessary that
something should be said in its proper place. lu the
criminal rivalry of the church and the state for supre-
macy over each other, the state Avas as guilty as the
church.

In the Roman Empire the Christian church and state
were only partially separated. The emperor arrogated
much authority over the church. Theodosius made a law
punishing heresy with death. Some judicial authority
was granted to the bishops, and they usurped more,
thereby intruding on the functions of the state; but not
more grossly than the state had trespassed upon the

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 87

functions of the church. In this respect the church and
the state of Christianity were equally heathenized.

48. Having shown the outward career of Chris-
tianity to have been a sudden, early, and persistent
relapse into the system of ancient heathenism, we will
now as briefly trace its inward development. Under the
surface of society, below the rings and classes that had
usurped ecclesiastical and political authority over them,
the common people, the descendants and successors of
those to whom the gospel of the Kingdom of God was
preached by Jesus, have always preserved, with the
formula or symbol. Kingdom of God, the tradition of
the main points of its development, as orally delivered
by Jesus to his disciples. By means of this tradition,
they were always, and they are still, fully able, by their
instinctive thought, aided by their experience, their
sensuous ideas, and their personal communion in prayer
with God, to reconstruct, develop, and apply to present
circumstances, the doctrine that Jesus taught.

For, what Jesus taught was not a figment of the
imagination, an invention, a fantastic dream, a fiction, a
creation of his unequalled genius; but the truth, com-
mitted to him, as he said, by the Father, to be com-
municated to all men,— the truth of God, and as such
suited to the common understanding of all men, and
which they can find, where Jesus found it, written for
their benefit in the heart, on the face of nature, and
proclaimed in God's Providence.

It was an idle, as well as a wicked thing, for the Chris-
tian hierarchy, or ecclesiastical ring, to pretend to have
received the deposit, and to have the exclusive custody

88 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

of the true faith, as they called it, or of the doctrine
tauglit by Jesus. While the people could elect their
religious leaders and teachers, these could be held in
check, and could be relied upon, to keep alive the pure
tradition of the Kingdom of God. But when the clergy
separated themselves from the people, and formed them-
selves into a self-constituted body of priests, they cut
themselves off from the true line of tradition, and their
tradition became as worthless, and for the same selfish
reason, as the tradition of the Pharisees.

The claim of the ecclesiastical ring to be the infallible
church is utterly untenable, for the church is the people.

The true supernatural revelation is the First Principle,
and that is not confided to the ring; but is open to the
interpretation of every one who will diligently consider
it, and seek its instruction. In view of the fact that the
truth of the Kingdom of God is traceable in the Pirst
Principle, and is a common possession, which, as to
man's ordinary wants, may be utilized by all men, and
as to his higher spiritual needs may be enjoyed as a
solace by all those who have higher aspirations, the infer-
ence is clear, that among the masses of the people, a large
proportion of whom were slaves, though of the white
race, in the Eoman Empire, and as intelligent as most
of their masters, there would be, in large volume and
measure, an ever renewed tradition of the comforting
doctrine of Jesus. Nor is it probable that the Christian
sacerdotal order, who were for several centuries chiefly
concerned to mingle in the pursuit of wealth among the
rich, would attempt to inculcate their peculiar dogmas.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 89

with the care their teaching required, upon the unprofit-
able poor, to the excUision of that tradition.

49. It is not asserted, that tlie Christian sacerdotal
order altogether ignored the popular tradition of the
doctrine of the Kingdom of God; for the tradition was
vouched for by martyrdoms of world-wide renown, and
was afterwards reduced to writing in documents made
imperishable by it, and which in turn sustain the tradi-
tion; but that this sacerdotal order made the tradition
of the facts and doctrines of the true primitive Chris-
tianity entirely subordinate to the dogmas they invented
or imported from the East, altogether outside of Chris-
tianity, and operating merely to support and magnify
the authority and power of the order, as a self-constituted
non-representative ruling body, over society.

50. After the lapse of more than sixteen hundred
years from the revolution which transformed the simple
and unassuming elective bishops, or overseers, of the
early Christian communities into Oriental despotic mon-
archs, then banded these bishops, with those persons
who officially assisted them in the ceremony of religious
worship, from presbyters and deacons down to the door-
keepers, as a clergy, into a self-constituted, non-repre-
sentative Oriental sacerdotal order, or religious ring, and
gradually adopted or devised, outside of primitive Chris-
tianity, Oriental dogmas, that afterwards grew into a
permanent creed or symbol, tending to consolidate and
perpetuate that sacerdotal order, it would be difficult
now to correctly assign the motives of those engaged in
the movement. It may be that the revolution met with
no opposition from the masses of those communities.

90 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

composed to a great extent of slaves and of very sim-
]Ae and poor persons not accustomed to take part in
public affairs. It may bo that the increasing pressure
and persecution of the heathen government seemed to
make it necessary for the Christian communities, who
could no longer hide their meetings in upper chambers,
in grave-yards, or otlier out-of-the-way places, at night,
to have leaders analogous to those of their oppressors,
and vested with authority to enforce unquestioning obe-
dience for the general good, in the sudden and distressing
exigencies that frequently occurred.

But, whatever were the motives of those concerned in
this revolution, a Christian sacerdotal order was then
established; Oriental dogmas wore then, and shortly
afterwards adopted ])y it, and those dogmas have ever
since helped to strengthen that sacerdotal order.

That sacerdotal order, the clergy, never burned nor
otherwise tortured, in any way, any person for violating
the Christian moral law, — for not paying his debts, or
not supporting his family, or for any fraud or violence
against his neighbor. But, if any man, woman or child,
whispered, or even formulated in silent thought a doubt
concerning any one of the Oriental, or gnostic dogmas,
tending to maintain the authority of the clergy, they
would set up a court of inquisition, that by the most bar-
barous and exquisite tortures and fiendish cunning would
extract a confession of the douM, and condemn the victim
to be burned at the stake. Thus, if any person doubted
the doctrine of transubstantiation, or of the real pres-
ence, or of the trinity, or of the autocracy, or absolute
political power of the pope, he was condemned to be

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 91

burned alive, and his property was forfeited to the clergy
and the state.

The punishment of secret thought, by the Christian
sacerdotal order, was a refinement of heathenism that no
heathen sacerdotal order had ever imagined. The crim-
inality of the condemnations of the Inquisition is aggra-
vated by the fact that it blasphemously asserted that they
were made for the glory of God, when in fact they were
decreed for the support of the sacerdotal order. The
crusades against the Waldenses of the Alps, and the
Albigenses of southern France, were cruel, wholesale
executions by order of the Inquisition,

To be just to the clergy, it must be stated that they
did not themselves burn their victims; but only " com-
manded, and that under the most awful threats, that
the fire be lighted, and the victim tied to the stake by
others." [Milman, L. C, VII., 437.]

51. The demoralized state of Christendom stepped
forward and executed the commands of the Christian
sacerdotal order. In England a statute, " de comburendo
haeretico," was passed under Henry IV., in 1400. In
Continental countries of Europe it is believed that no
special statute or law for the purpose was considered
necessary, and that the governments simply obeyed the
orders of the clergy in burning its victims.

The complicity of the governments, or military ma-
chines of Europe, as the successors of heathen Oriental
despotism, in the abnormal action of the Christian sacer-
dotal order, in the matter of burning so-called heretics, is
evident. This may be said of the governments of Europe

92 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

in general, Protestant and Roman Catholic; both before
and since the so-called Protestant Reformation.

52. The military governments of Europe have also
adopted the heathen governmental maxims of Oriental-
ism— the maxims sanctioning offensive war and conquest,
and those permittiiig the arbitrary rule over the i)eople
by a hereditary governing class of kings, emperors and
nobles.

53. It may be said, therefore, on the one hand, that
the primitive Christian community, inaugurated by Jesus
as the Kingdom of Grod, has outwardly relapsed into
modern forms of that ancient heathenism, or of that
sacerdotalism and despotism which Jesus had completely
excluded from it. For all abnormal action, or moral
evil, as already stated, results from idolatry, and may be
called heathenism; while normal action is in accordance
with the Kingdom of God. And it .may be added that
the modern, like the ancient forms of heathenism, origi-
nate from the same cause: namely, from that mode of
idolatry that consists in attributing a false or immoral
character to God.

54. But, on the other hand, the primitive Christian
community has developed itself in partial accordance with
the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, as taught by Jesus,
into forms of modern civilization, altogether foreign to
ancient heathenism.

The Christian church, notwithstanding its sacerdotal-
ism, has divided itself into the two inchoate, but dis-
tinct, integral organs, formerly combined in the sacer-
dotal church: namely, the republic of letters and art,
and the republic of the true church. Likewise the

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 93

Christian state, notwithstanding the modified despotism
of its military government, has also unfolded itself into
the three separate integral organs, which were before
compressed into it in the despotic state: namely, the
republic of industry, the republic of public charity, and
the republic of government.

The separation of the inchoate republic of letters and
art, from tlie sacerdotal church, was caused by repeated
revivals of letters; first proceeding from the Mohammedan
Arabs, who soon after their conquest of degenerate
Christian countries, far surpassed the Christians in
literature, especially in Spain; then from the culture
inspired by the wealth and industrial activity of the free
cities; then from the Christian schools and universities,
and especially from the study of philosophy and of the
newly found civil law taught there; then from Abelard,
Arnold of Brescia, and the school men; then from
Savonarola, Wy cliff e, Huss; then from the renaissance of
the study of the G-reek classics on the fall of Constan-
tinople; and then from the invention of printing and
paper.

The sacerdotal church attempted in vain, by the
Inquisition and by the crusades against the Albigenses
and the Waldenses, to check the advance of learning and
of liberal thought, which it correctly supposed would
undermine its sacerdotal authority. But the inchoate
republic of letters and art defended and saved, as it must
ever do, the cause of truth.

The separation of the inchoate integral organ or
rejiublic of industry from the military or heathen state, is
still only partially accomplished. The first step of the

94 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

separation was caused by the remarkable revival of indus-
try in the cities, beginning in the old Roman municipal
towns of Italy, soon after the completion of the barba-
rian conquest of the Western Roman Emjjire, and
extending rapidly to tlie cities of Spain, France, Flan-
ders, Holland, England, Switzerland and Germany.
The object pursued by this industrial movement, and
accomplished by it in the course of centuries, was to
emancipate the industrial classes from the oppression and
virtual slavery imposed upon them by the feudal, which
had succeeded the Roman government.

This revival of industry caused also a partial develop-
ment of the integral organ or rej)ublic of jmblic charity,
by supplying funds for endowing and operating many
charitable institutions and associations.

The revival of industry further affected the govern-
ment, by enabling the cities to obtain their freedom, and
secure it by charters, from the feudal government.
This tended to somewhat mitigate the heathenism, or
desjiotism, of the government by introducing representa-
tion from the now imj)ortant cities in the legislatures of
different Eurojiean nations — as Cordova, France, England,
Germany, and Switzerland; and l)y securing for a time,
until grossly abused, the independence of the cities of
Italy.

But it must not be forgotten, that the most reformed
of the European governments, in 1350, in the reign of
Edward III., retained enough of its heathen character
to retard the organization of the rej)ublic of industry,
by passing an act of parliament which fixed the rate
of the wages of working-men, forbade them to contract

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. " 95

for higher wages, and puiiishud as crimes combinatious
among them to defend their rights.

55. While the disintegration of the sacerdotal church
and of the despotic or military state was progressing, as
above stated, a conflict between them for mastery was
carried on with great vigor; the sacerdotal order, on one
side, claiming supreme temporal power over the state,
and the state, on the other side, claiming authority to
rule the church. The sacerdotal order of the western or
Roman Catholic church, by various devices, succeeded in
obtaining the temporal j)ower it sought, after abandoning
the less energetic Greek church to itself, so far as this
enterprise was concerned; and during the thirteenth cen-
tury the authority of the sacerdotal order of the Eoman
Catholic church over the state in western and central
Europe became desj)otic, and was despotically used.
After that time, the temporal power of the sacerdotal
order gradually declined, and by the so-called Protestant
Reformation it was entirely thrown off from the states
that adopted Protestantism; while the power of the jieople
in the government gradually increased; results that may
be fairly attributed to the rise and partial development of
the two modern or revived integral organs, or republics,
of letters and art, and of industry.

56. It may be stated, as an inference from all the pre-
ceding observations, that there is a controlling and
attracting unity, and a corresponding simplicity, jire-
siding over and ordering all the manifold variety of
being, of thought, and of action, in the universe. By
tracing the individual man in his examination of self-
consciousness, and in his relations as well to the inor-

96 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

ganic as to the organic world, to the inferior spirits of
plants and animals, to the eqnal sj^irits of his fellow-men,
to the one superior spirit, God, to the laws of nature, as
the uniformities of God's action, to the uniformity of
those uniformities, as the one First Principle of all truth
and of all normal practice, and to the one original and
continuing social contract of God with man, developed
from that principle; we have arrived at the unity of per-
fect society, as the Kingdom of God, or the association of
God with man, in the one universal society of the races of
mankind. Moreover, as there is only one external source
of all normal human action, namely, the example of
God's moral character manifested in the First Principle, so
there is only one internal source of man's abnormal action,
or of moral evil, namely his error or ignorance as to the
true moral character of God. Leading to man's depart-
ure from imitating that character, this error is also a
virtual denial of the true God, by falsely attributing to
God a character false, cruel, or otherwise immoral. It
is the monotheistic idolatry, which is the single cause to
which may be assigned all the crime, the secret sin, and
the discord prevailing, not only in ancient heathenism,
but also in modern civilized society. To this fact the
attention of every church should be directed.

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that, the fun-
damental internal cause of the moral evil and of all
crime and ignorance in modern society being a single
error, the nature of which can be plainly taught, which
can be removed by instruction, and only by instruction,
being the original and prime heresy of monotheistic
idolatry, into which the sacerdotal Christian church early

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 97

fell; it was to overcome by the truth of God this heresy,
inducing and inchiding all the other heresies and crimes
of society, that the republic of letters and art, the pre-
dominantly speculative integral organ of society, as an
investigating and teaching body, entirely independent of
the church, co-ordinate with it, and having the peculiar
function to seek, and to teach, in the First Principle, the
whole range of the principles, as well of truth or science,
as of normal practice, or practical morality, has been
gradually developed from the original germ of the King-
dom of Cod. Hence, all the practical integral organs,
including the church of God, entitled to be called
catholic, or universal, when free from heresy and sacer-
dotalism, became bound to adojit from the republic of
letters and art, and to realize in practice, all their
respective practical principles.

It follows that, as all the integral organs of society
have the same system of laws or principles, derived from
the First Principle of the Kingdom of God, by the repub-
lic of letters and art, there can be only one normal order
of society, constituted by those integral organs and their
principles. It follows, also, as the Kingdom of God was
proclaimed by Jesus as a fact, involving the system or
complex of unalterable laws or principles, which, when
viewed together, are called the First Principle, and em-
brace all principles; that the one normal order of society
constituted by the integral organs of society and their
respective principles, must also be a fact within the King-
dom of God, and must be detected in the actual society
of mankind as its true organization, at work below the
surface.

98 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

A conservative analysis, or ideal vivisection of the
actual society of mankind, therefore, so far as it approxi-
mates to the Kingdom of God, must disclose the true or
normal organization of that society; and the description
of that organization will furnish the ideal social consti-
tution,— as a matter, not of theory, or of imagination,
but of fact.

The next chapter will attempt to sketch the actual
ideal social constitution, striji^^ed of the deformities of
heathenism still adhering to it, and fitted to regulate the
perfect universal society of mankind.

\
\

CHAPTER IV.

rr^IIE Ideal Written Social Constitution, — being a
-*- development of the revived, predominantly spec-
ulative, social side of the Semitic Philosoj)liy.

57. The artificial constitution, humanly expressed,
of the Kingdom of God, or of normal society, as mod-
ern civilization, and as instinctively conceived, will now
be described; it being so much of the unwritten, instinct-
ive, rational, ideal, or natural constitution of the King-
dom of God, or universal society of the races of man-
kind, as may, when universally assented to, and adopted
by tacit or express general agreement, be established as
such in writing.

All future social progress of mankind can be nothing
more than the rational realization of the instinctive con-
cejjtion of the Kingdom of God, as outlined by the
teaching of Jesus, and based not only on the original
and continuing social contract of God with man,, and
on the first principle of all science, and of all normal
practical action, but also on the five elementary and
universal, individual and social activities of man ;
namely, public education, religious service, industry,
public charity, and government.

The following articles, describing from the instinct-
ive conception of the Kingdom of God, as the ideal

99

100 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

of perfect iiniversal society, its actual organization, as
a real though embryonic fact, by giving both the com-
mon and the distinctive features of its working integral
organs, exhibit the outlines of what must hereafter be
more definitely formulated, by general agreement, as
the written, universal, social constitution.

AliTICLE I.

58. This article will give the common features of
all the integral organs of society, leaving the details dis-
tinguishing the organization of each of them, respect-
ively, to sejiarate succeeding articles.

Universal society is an association of associations, each
independent of the rest in all that exclusively concerns
it; all formed to promote the five elementary and uni-
versal, individual and social, activities of man; associ-
ations rising in generality from the primary associations,
composed of the inhabitants of the lowest territorial
or local subdivisions of each nation, to associations
which are national; from these to those which are inter-
national in each race; and from these to those which
are Interrace among all the races.

Each of these associations is five-fold, constituting a
separate, though numerically identical, association for
realizing, in a separate capacity, each of the five ele-
mentary activities.

The territory of each nation is parceled out into a
number of primary subdivisions, called districts, or
neighborhoods, or parishes, of a convenient size to
enable the inhabitants of each to assemble in a pri-
mary meeting of its association.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 101

The organization of the association of each primary
local district, or neighborhood, must be the meeting
of all its members, or of those choosing to be present,
convened at stated times, for each of its capacities; and
at other times, on due notice; organized according to
the general parliamentary law; adopting its resolutions
by a majority vote of those present, to bind as a con-
tract the whole association; and electing its authorized
agents, or representatives.

Each higher association than a primary one, is
formed for a larger territorial district, and acts by
means of representatives assembled from such of the
next lower class of associations as occupy together the
larger district. Its resolutions bind it as contracts, and
appoint and authorize its representatives.

Each nation is divided into at least one intermediate
class of districts above the primary; with a co-exten-
sive association for each intermediate district, acting
by representatives from the lower districts within it,
and designed to regulate, according to its several capa-
cities, and in respect to each of the several elementary
activities, the local concerns of its district, whether a
city, town, county or other rural area.

If a nation is divided into larger territorial divisions,
as states, or provinces, each of these should have a
central association, acting by representatives from the
next lower associations within it; and the nation should
also have a national central association, acting by rep-
resentatives from the state or provincial central asso-
ciations.

103 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

If a nation is not divided into states or provinces,
or other analogous large sections, it will have a central
national association acting by rej)resentatives from the
intermediate associations.

The organization of each association higher than
the jirimary is representative, and it is of two kinds,
called resjDectively, undenominational and denomina-
tional. Both of these kinds of organization are distin-
guished from everything heathen by employing rep-
resentation as their means of co-operative action, and
they are . distinguished from each other by the dif-
ferent kinds of representation they use. These two
kinds of representation may be called generic and
specific.

Generic representation is the kind used by the
undenominational organization; as, when all the rep-
resentatives of an association are charged to advocate
its general, undivided or integral interest, without par-
tiality for any particular denomination of that interest.

Specific representation is the kind used by the
denominational organization; as, when some of the
representatives of an association are charged, respect-
ively, to advocate specifically one particular denomina-
tion of its interest, and some, another. There may,
in different cases, be relatively different degrees of
generic and specific representation, according to the
interest represented.

All the elementary individual and social activities
are practiced by individuals, and by temporary asso-
ciations of individuals. But these individuals and
temporary associatious, as members of universal society.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 103

are entitled not only to have the protection and
encouragement of the whole community, or society,
to which they immediately or mediately belong, but
also to have the helpful guidance of wise general regu-
lations adopted by universal agreement for the equal
profit of all; and it is the duty, and should be the
object, of normal society to afford this equal protec-
tion and guidance by its highest organization.

The most general associations of each nation, as well
as of the race to which it belongs, are the five inte-
gral organs of society; each designed to promote, in all
the races, one of the elementary activities, and having
in each race a thorough national organization, which
receives authority " from below,^' as distinguished from
the despotic, sacerdotal, and feudal systems, which derive
their authority "from above." Combining all the local
associations having its special activity in charge, in
each nation of the race, every integral organ is, in
theory and potentially, international and Interrace in
its scope.

The complete organization of universal society is the
co-operation of its integral organs. To effect this co-
ojjeration each integral organ, besides its fundamental
organization of lower local associations, must have an
organization that is superior, or general, and separate
from the rest; each integral organ being regarded as an
independent republic.

The type of the general organization of each integral
organ, regarded as an independent republic, is the system
of civil representative democracy, partially realized in
the general government of the United States of America.

104 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

For tlie integral organs other than that of govern-
ment, however, there will necessarily be some diversities
from some of the general governmental forms.

The government, in a military point of view, needs
a chief executive officer, a head, a leader, a representa-
tive of the whole people, and co-ordinate with the legisla-
tive and the judicial departments.

The other integral organs need no chief, or leader,
co-ordinate with the legislature. In each of them its
highest representative body is its general legislature.
The highest executive officers in each of them may be a
small board of executive commissioners, elected for a
short term of years by the legislature, responsible to
it, and ajipointing their subordinates subject to its
confirmation.

The general legislature, or the central regulative body,
of each integral organ must form the head of an ascend-
ing scale of representative assemblies, delegated respect-
ively, from its primary, intermediate, state or national
local associations; each local association determining by
its representatives the affairs relating exclusively to its
locality; and leaving to the highest, or general legisla-
ture of each integral organ, the formulation of those
general regulations, that relate in common to all its
mem]:)ers, in the exercise of its particular elementary
social activity. Each integral organ may have two
general legislatures, one undenominational, the other
denominational.

The general regulations adopted by the general legis-
latures of each of the integral organs, and by their local
associations, must, so far as they are positive laws, be

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 105

morally binding, as public contracts, on all the members,
respectively, of the integral organs or other associations
enacting them; and their enforcement, like that of other
contracts, must be sought in the courts of the govern-
ment. Hence, a judicial department in any of the
integral organs other than the government, would be a
superfluous piece of machinery.

The constitution of the Kingdom of God, as perfect
universal society, being an infinite ideal, open in its
integral generality and graded development to the in-
stinctive apprehension of all, the description of all its
minor details would be as useless at any time as it must
always be impossible. Only the main features of the
divine plan, as they have been already in j^art realized,
or in the advancing progress of society have come into
the near jirospect of fulfilment, need be outlined. The
organization of the integral organs of society, as the
main elements of the Kingdom of God, will now, in
succession, be separately treated.

ARTICLE II.

50. The Eepublic, or Integral Organ, of Letters and
Art.

The elementary activity of this integral organ of
society, is public education.

Its means are schools, colleges, universities, public
lectures, and the press.

Its modes of action are investigation and teaching. It
acts by individuals worthily assuming to represent it,
and by associations. Its highest associations are its two
general representative assemblies, or legislatures, one of

106 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

wliich is undenominational, and the other denomina-
tional, in each state or nation; and from which, resjDect-
ively, delegates or conference committees may be sent
to some central point to meet similar bodies from the
other states or nations of the same race, to form similar
international assemblies or legislatures.

The subjects of its investigation and teaching are
language, all the principles of pliilosophy, of the special
sciences, and of practice, including the fine and the
useful arts; all these principles being included in, and
derived _from, the first j^rinciple, or the system of
the laws of nature, or of God. It must particularly
teach manual training, and the cultivation of a healthy
body, and practical morality, with whatever else it may
teach.

Its general representative undenominational legisla-
ture will be composed of representatives, themselves
chosen by representatives of its undenominational, local,
primary meetings, when assembled in their respective
local intermediate districts; these local meetings being
convened to act for the general interest of public educa-
tion.

It will enact such regulations as may be necessary to
direct the general affairs of the various institutions of
public education it may establish. x^

It will also appoint two boards of Commissioners. One
of these boards would be executive, called general Com-
missioners of Public Education, whose duty it should be
to establish, according to instructions prescribed by that
legislature, a complete system of puldic education, from
primary schools to colleges and universities, for teaching

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 107

all the subjects enumerated before, belonging to liberal
culture. Acting also under the instructions of that legis-
lature, local commissioners of public education, elected
by the people of each locality, will have charge of the
local schools.

Teachers should be appointed, according to general
regulations, during good behavior, after favorable exami-
nation. The office of commissioner of public education
should be honorary, and for a short term, subject to
re-election.

The other board of commissioners, predominantly
critical, though j^^rtly executive, would be called the
Commissioners of Public Criticism. The reiiublic of let-
ters and art being responsible for all seemingly impor-
tant ]3ublications allowed to pass without its dissent, these
commissioners should be men selected for their eminent
knowledge, character and skill, and suitably salaried to
pass deliberate judgment, for the information of the
public, as the authorized decision of the republic of
letters and art, on a classified range of the most impor-
tant current publications of science, literature, art, and
journalism; separating the good from the worthless, how-
ever well meant, and reporting their decision to the
public in a cheap periodical paper.

They should pay particular attention to the inde-
pendent, general, or undenominational journals, form-
ing the bulk of the reading of the general public,
and which should furnish, with all the resources of
condensation, precision, and system, a vivid panoramic
representation of the present doings for the passing day,
with occasional retrospects, of all the social activities.

108 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

All publications should be protected by a general copy-
right for a certain specified term, or until condemned
or approved hj the commissioners of public criticism;
and after approval by them a further special copyright
should be granted for the usual term by the commis-
sioners, by their certificate specifying their approval of
such works as they have favorably criticised. The com-
missioners should certify the works they have unfavor-
ably criticised or condemned.

Authors and publishers dissenting from the decisions
of the commissioners, would be free to appeal to the
public through the courts, by applying for an injunction
against reprinting a work improperly condemned by the
commissioners.

Tlie general undenominational legislature shall provide
funds for the jiayment of salaries and other expenses
incident to public education, by a small general assess-
ment, to be limited by the Government, and by receiv-
ing voluntary contributions. It shall also supervise
the investments of voluntary endowments of educational
institutions.

It shall encourage original investigations, as well as
teach their results.

A general representative denominational assembly, or
legislature, composed of representatives from the various
associations formed to promote different branches of
public education, whether scientific, artistic, mechanical,
moral or religious, may be convened at the instance of
the undenominational legislature of the republic of let-
ters and art; or upon the call of any of those associa-
tions, as the undenominational legislature, by general

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 100

regulations, may direct; and when convened, it shall
consider such of the interests or subjects of public edu-
cation as may be specified in its call, and it shall report
the result of its deliberations to the undenominational
legislature, for its action.

As the normal action of society is a unity, or integral
Avhole, of action, the harmony of the combined action, or
co-operation of all its integral organs; and, similarly, the
normal-action of each integral organ is also, a unity,
or integral whole, of action; so, accordingly, the normal
action of the republic of letters and art is an integral
unit — a consensus of every investigation towards a per-
fect system of truth derived from the first principle; and
a corresponding consensus of every effort of teaching
towards a universal system of liberal public education,
by the school, the college, the university, and the press,
and equally independent of the church and the gov-
ernment.

But while independent of both, the republic of letters
and art furnishes for the support of both, all liberal cul-
ture, the whole system of true principles, and establishes
on a firm foundation the true value of the Bible, as the
most ancient charter of human liberty, the sacred repos-
itory of the rational Truth that makes men free, what-
ever else it may contain.

ARTICLE III.

60. The Republic, or Integral Organ of the Church.

The elementary activity of this integral organ of
society, the church, is public religious service. This
activity serves God by serving man, in leading him into

110 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY,

communion with God, teaching him the knowledge of
God and his true moral and benevolent character. It
thus renders to man the highest service. By this acti-
vity, therefore, man, voluntarily and gratefully offering
himself, and graciously accepted, as God's agent or
instrument, does a material part of God's work in bless-
ing man.

It induces man to think principles as God's specula-
tive action, or thought, thereby acquiring some of the
energy of God's thought, as speculative faith; and to
imitate .God in his practical action, or character, thereby
gaining some of the energy of God's practical action,
as practical faith.

It is the immediate communion of man with God
in jDublic, without the necessary intervention of any per-
son pretending to be an official mediator, but with the
aid of all present, sympathizing fellow-men, and espe-
cially of ministers chosen by the people, or congrega-
tion, to lead in prayer, and teach the knowledge of
God's character. This, when followed by subsequent
exemplary conduct, is true public religious service. It
does service to God, because it helps him to benefit
man.

The religious experience, called by the Quakers the
Inner Liglit and the Inward Monitor, and some mystic
declarations of other sects, may be rationally explained
as the true knowledge of God, derived from the First
Principle, by means of the sensuous ideas and the opera-
tions of instinctive thought, independent of language.

The means of effecting communion watli God, is
prayer; the association with others in pursuit of it.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. Ill

or public religious Avorsliip; the aid of the arts; and
especially full instruction as to God's character, derived
from its manifestation in the principles of nature, in
the events of history, and in his common providential
dealings with the individual man. Of the arts, in
respect to religion, poetry and music, as spiritual, are
the chief; to which architecture, sculpture, and paint-
ing contribute their aid.

The rej)ublic of the church consists of all the peo-
ple, and it embraces all the religious denominations not
heathen in their dogmas or practices. Eeligious denomi-
nations in all their relations to the general church, are
somewhat analogous to the political parties of the gov-
ernment, in that they are separated from each other by
differences of opinion, and that they jointly constitute
the whole people, the whole church — all uniting in
holding the same ultimate principles, notwithstanding
their disagreement in matters of indifference.

The general undenominational representative assem-
bly, or legislature, of the church, for a state or nation,
consists of representatives from the undenominational
assemblies of its local associations. It regulates, in
general, the elementary activity, the religious service, of
the church, in essential points.

It is analagous to other legislatures, because it is
a deliberative body designed for a free expression of
ojDiuions, with a view to agreement in some resolution
declaratory of the truth, or in some decision in a matter
of practice. But it differs materially from other legis-
latures in several important particulars.

112 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

Firsts it has no political power. It cannot, therefore,
use governmental modes of coercion to enforce con-
formity with its opinions, or to punish disagreement with
them. Nor can it, as a Christian body, use any of the
well-known so-called spiritual methods of enforcement,
which are heathen modes of superstition and idolatry,
pretending to engage and enlist the wrath of an idol
god to vindicate the heathen dictates of a sacerdotal
order.

Secondl3^ the subjects of its deliberation and action are
truly spiritual, as distinguished from temjjoral, and espe-
cially from all outward matters of the State, whether
industrial or governmental, or even of pulilic charity. It
may properly discuss the means by which communion
with God in jniblic or in private is effected, with a view
to improve them all. But public religion, or the public
service of God, is its general subject. Private or indi-
vidual religion, indeed, underlies and supports all nor-
mal life, as life is one consistent and integral whole,
guided by the one First Principle that involves the prin-
ci2:)les of private or individual religion, with all other
principles. And man, as an individual, can only live a
normal life and serve God as he serves man. The ways,
therefore, in which man can serve his fellow-man, and
thereby exercise his religion as an individual, are very
numerous. But the chief outward manifestation of his
religion, and the one mainly committed to the charge of
the church, is the public service of God, the public exhi-
bition and teaching of the true character of God, as the
just, wise, and loving Father of mankind; for the public
encouragement of man by association, prayer, example.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 113

and instruction, superinduced upon enlightenment and
liberal culture, to commune with him, and follow his
example in private as well as in public.

Hence, the deliberations of the church in its unde-
nominational legislatures, or councils, Avhile aiming at
agreement in essential religious truth, must be spiritual,
and Avill charitably recognize freedom of thought and
toleration of differing opinions and usages. The councils
of the church, therefore, will abstain from formulating
any authoritative creed; but will call on all men to find
and to follow all the truth of God. They will, to the
best of their ability, confute, Avitli charity, all funda-
mental error; and will avoid the heathen practice of
stigmatizing error as punishable or damnable heresy;
but will prescribe for all error, as its only rational and
religious human remedy, cogent argument and wise in-
struction, leaving all further remedy to the examjDle and
discipline of God.

When required, an interstate or an international un-
denominational legislature, or council of the church,
may be formed, by sending representatives from its state
or national undenominational legislatures, to meet at
some central point.

The general undenominational legislature, or council
of the church, may appoint Executive Commissioners to
bring the resolutions of the council to the general knowl-
edge of the people; to promote Sunday schools, as unde-
nominational as practicable, in the various churches; and
to send efficient and liberal undenominational missions
to the heathen world, at home and abroad.

114 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

There may be convened a denominational representa-
tive general assembly, or legislature, of the church, as
a denominational council^ composed of rej)resentatives
from all the religious denominations, as such, as far as
possible, to exhibit and discuss from time to time, in a
charitable way, the actual characteristics or differences
of all the religious denominations, while carefully noting
their points of agreement, and in those points of agree-
ment making a joint search for any common elements
of ancient heathenism, or monotheistic idolatry, as op-
posed to. the simple and pure rational Christianity.

The union, at least of the Christian religious denomi-
nations, in Christian charity, the lowest degree of which
is toleration, must precede, and would probably 2:)roduce,
the general reformation of all the monotheistic religious
denominations, — a movement which would be first of all
the extirpation of all the roots of ancient heathenism and
monotheistic idolatry; for only after these are removed,
Avill the truth of God have free course and unimpeded
growth.

The republic, or integral organ, of the church, in
its normal action, is unquestionably an integral unity
of all its denominations, — the one catholic church of the
one true God. For all its various religious denomina-
tions, normally seeking the knowledge of the true char-
acter of God, with a view to its faithful imitation in
public religious service and in private life, as their only
essential objects; while each questions its own denomi-
national peculiarities, resolved to dismiss from its doc-
trine and its practice, or ceremonial, every vestige and
reminiscence of ancient heathenism; the Roman Catholic,

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 115

the Greek Catholic, and the English Catholic, looking
narrowly to what is distinctly Eoman, Greek, and Eng-
lish, respectively, in their religious systems; and the
other denominations examining closely that which in
their doctrine and practice is rather peculiar than essen-
tial,— must seriously ask themselves whether their denomi-
national peculiarities, even if abstractly true in doctrine
and formally correct in practice, as understood by them-
selves, have not become, by their overestimate and their
unnecessary obtrusion, mere unduly magnified accidental
departures from true catholicity; but are easily harmo-
nized and freed from every mark of monotheistic idolatry,
by a return to the simplicity of pure, catholic, original
Christianity.

AKTICLE IV.

81. The Eepublic, or Integral Organ, of Industry.

The elementary activity of this integral organ of
society, is industry, a term the meaning of which ex-
pands with the advance of society, and which may be
regarded now as comprehending the production, ex-
change, transportation, distribution, and the redistribu-
tion of natural and artificial values, and as including the
regulated partial consumption, or use, and the residuary
savings of them.

The means by which the elementary activity of
industry is carried on, are partly material, and partly
spiritual. Its material means are the material gifts of
nature, and material capital, both fixed and circulating.
Its spiritual means are its spiritual capital, as free labor,
skill, science, credit, and the so-called forces of nature,
with language and the arts.

116 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

The modes of action, or the operations, of the ele-
mentary activity of industry, are extremely various and
complicated; but they may be collected, for discussion,
into four groups, rej)resented by the action of the four
industrial classes, — the employers, the working-men, the
consumers, and the capitalists.

While it is necessary to consider each of these groups
separately, it should be observed that they are, in theory,
integral parts of one whole of industry; all tending, in
practice, with the progress of society, to have identical
interests, -with diversified advantages, as the same indi-
vidual person may belong to all these classes at the same
time. For, when industry is properly organized, the
Avorking-man will be not only, to a fair extent, a con-
sumer, but also, according to his skill and prudence, a
capitalist, and thereby potentially, if not actually, an
emjiloyer.

The industrial classes, constituting the whole people,
may all be traced to the working-men. Indeed, when
it is considered that material capital can only be utilized
in the operations of industry by means of spiritual
capital, which is entirely within the reach of all work-
ing-men by diligence and good conduct; and that the con-
trolling elements of sj^iritual capital, expressed by the
term credit, are daily seen to elevate working-men to the
class of employers, entrusted with the use of material
capital by its owners, and enabled thereby to acquire
material cajntal, in the form of profit; it is manifest that
in a normal system of industry, when the government
ceases to interfere with it, and the other integral organs
co-operate with it, especially the republic of letters and

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 117

art, by furnishing to all a liberal education, and the
republic of the church, by stimulating in all the religious
and the moral impulses, there will be offered for every
one, according to his skill and perseverance, a free and
open career, to pass upward from the lowest to the
highest employments of industry.

To a careful observer a constant series of changes in
the ranks of industry will appear, even now, to take
place Avith spectacular interest; as in a drama, in which
an actor enters the first scene as a serving man, and in
the crisis of the plot throws off his humble disguise and
assumes the character of a distinguished personage; or
as in a circus, when a horse gallops around faster and
faster, like fleeting fortune, and no rider is seen; but
suddenly a person from among the audience, muffled in
coarse clothing like a plain working-man, stumbles into
the ring, is helped upon the horse, and sways un-
steadily in his seat, seeming ready every moment to fall;
but at length becomes steady, shows a level head, starts
to his feet on the saddle, throws off disguise after dis-
guise, appears more and more richly dressed, as if
rising in life, until at last he bursts upon the startled
and admiring audience in all the glory of spangles and
embroidery, — a glittering, full-blown capitalist.

The alleged conflict of labor and capital is absurd.
For labor is spiritual capital, and is daily converted
into material capital. After the primary distribution
of the productions of industry, wages representing the
share of the workingman, the relative consumption by
the distributees of their respective shares determines
the possession of material capital. Those distributees

118 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

who consume less than they receive, and save the surphis,
have tliis, as material capital, in their hands.

The beginnings of inaterial capital are always in the
hands of free working-men, who receive wages; as the
highest honors of government, of the church, of science
and art, may often be traced to the same origin. From
small beginnings material capital, increasing sometimes
slowly, sometimes rajDidly, produces by economy and
enterprise wonderful results. Working-men bent on
accumulation and endowed with energy, prudence, and
patience, ^ee and utilize the constantly recurring but
rapidly passing opportunities of business, adding success
to success, now by inventions, now by investments, and
now by prudent and skilful management of affairs

It is by the saving of material capital, year after year,
that wages are paid; and that the wonderful system of
reproduction of industrial values, including material
capital, is carried on. For, if the saving of material
capital by working-men and emjoloyers were to cease, and
every man were to consume all that he received iu the
distribution of industrial products, the material capital
already accumulated would soon be exhausted, and
the industrial business of the world would stand still.
The only general occupations left to mankind would be
hunting and war; war for the few wild vines and fruit
trees found scattered in the woods, and for the hunt-
ing-grounds tluit would occupy the fields of present
cultivation.

The division of labor caused by the great variety of
industrial occupations, when a free interchange of their
productions, by means of money and of commerce, is

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. • 119

allowed, necessarily conduces, when these occupations are
supported by educated intelligence and religion, not only
to the present, but also to the ultimate harmony and
prosperity of them all; both by encouraging the separate
organization of the industrial classes, and by facilitating
the saving of material capital.

It is evidently proper that all the industrial classes
should be carefully organized. Labor is partially organ-
ized, and it is desirable that organized labor should be
able to meet and to consult with organized capital,
organized employers, and organized consumers. For
this purpose, it is necessary that the organization of each
of the industrial classes should be carried to practical
completeness.

The organization of labor, or of the class of working-
men is defective. It is founded too much on military tac-
tics, on compulsion, on the excessive use of self-help,
which in a community governed by law should only be
resorted to in a case of the last necessity, and on the
imagined force of its erroneously supposed superiority of
numbers; forgetting that every working-man is also a
consumer, and in respect to spiritual capital, if not also
to material capital, is likewise a capitalist. It lacks an
institution that will enable large bodies of its members
to enter, backed by strong financial influence, into busi-
ness relations with employers, for well-considered and
lasting mutual benefit. Such an institution is the labor
bank, in which the labor and the savings of a consider-
able number of working-men and working-women, as its
members, under suitable regulations, may be pooled; so
that the bank, by its officers, may make contracts for

120 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

its labor of difEerent grades, with a guaranty against
strikes, taking adequate security, and insuring the jjay-
ment of wages to its members; whik^, as a savings bank,
on strict business principles, it would loan its funds,
by preference, to judicious and liberal employers.

The labor banks, if prudently managed, would prob-
ably take the jilace of the present savings banks, and
would give the working-men an influential and peace-
making standing among capitalists and employers.

But the present labor associations, though they may
still have. a legitimate use, whether they are called trades
unions, knights of labor, or otherwise, seem to chiefly
confine their attention to the most obvious interests of
working-men, in respect to wages and the hours of labor;
while they neglect their less obvious, but e([ually import-
ant, interest in the peace and harmony of all the indus-
trial classes. Of what advantage, however, are high wages
and few hours of labor, when gained by irritating threats
and expensive strikes, if thereby a universal, cruel, and
vindictive industrial war among the leaders and repre-
sentatives of all tlie industrial classes is kept up; leading
to stoppages, disasters, and panics in trade, which fre-
quently throw many- thousands of working-men and
working-women, and in the course of a few years, even
millions, out of all employment for months, and out of
steady employment for years?

In normal society, in which the integral organs are
separately organized, there will be a science of industrial
economy, showing the organization of industry and its
proper modes of action; but because there will be no

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 121

interference of government Avith industry, there can be
no science of political economy.

Nothing can be more inconsistent with industrial
economy than the plan of some working-men, who, in their
rash quarrel with material capital, propose to vest all pro-
perty, including all material capital, in the government.
For this measure would necessitate the extreme central-
ization of the government, with an unavoidably absolute
central ruling body, like Plato's suj^reme council of
philosophers; and would, by excluding all comjietition
of capitalists, create a practically despotic monopoly of
material capital, under the management of that ruling
body, who would be the only employers, and whom all
working-men and working-women would be compelled, by
the whole power of the government, without resistance
or complaint, to serve.

Although in normal society there could be no inten-
tional interference of the government with industry, the •
right of the government to raise its revenues, in whole
or in part, by duties on imported goods, can not be
denied. But the integral organ of industry would have
an equal right to insist on there being apjDended to the
tariff of import duties a proviso, that, ^'when it shall be
made to appear by a consular certificate in the form
prescribed by the Secretary of the Treasury, or by law,
that any articles in the list of imports are produced
abroad by labor for which wages are paid equivalent to
the wages paid in the United States of America for
similar labor, these articles shall only pay a rate of
import duty, say, twenty-five per cent, less than the
regular rate of import duty charged upon such articles

122 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

in said tariff." Such a proviso, which could be im-
proved by a sliding scale of duties, rising with low
wages, and falling with high wages, paid abroad on the
production of the imported goods, would tend to pro-
duce among nations that equalization of fair wages, and
reciprocity of beneficial commerce, which are the con-
ditions of rational free trade.

The undenominational general representative assem-
bly, or legislature, of the republic, or integral organ, of
industry — for a state or nation — must consist of repre-
sentatives chosen by the intermediate undenominational
associations indiscriminately from all the general indus-
trial classes.

It may enact general industrial regulations, which
may be called general industrial positive laws, or public
industrial "contracts; appoint Executive Industrial Com-
missioners, for collecting and distributing useful indus-
. trial statistics; for awarding limited privileges, by letters
patent, to inventors of useful industrial contrivances or
combinations; for granting charters to incorporate in-
dustrial corporations; for exercising supervision and
control over industrial corporations of a public nature,
and for receiving and disbursing whatever revenue it
may control.

There may be, for a state or a nation, a general
denominational legislature of industry, consisting of two
branches, elected at different times. Its members will
be representatives, respectively, of the four fundamental
industrial classes. As these classes are integral, and
to some extent interpenetrate each other, and the class
of consumers actually contains all the other classes, one

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 123

branch of the denominational legislature may be com-
posed exclusively of representatives of the consumers,
and may be elected by the intermediate local associations
convened to act undenominationally for all the classes
of industry.

The other branch of the denominational legislature
of industry may consist of an equal number of repre-
sentatives, unless another proportion can be agreed on,
for each of the other three industrial classes, — working-
men, employers, and capitalists, — and elected from the
respective associations or corporations belonging to them.
Perhaps the most practical way to elect separate repre-
sentatives for these three classes, would be to let the
elections be made by the regularly organized and com-
bined associations of each class, respectively, say, by
organized labor, by organized capital, and by the
organized employers.

In this way, there would be assembled in both
branches of the general denominational legislature of
industry, an adequate number of recognized representa-
tives of each fundamental industrial class; and their
points of difference and points of agreement would be
clearly brought out for rational deliberation by intelli-
gent discussion.

The general denominational legislature of industry
will settle by its resolutions the temporary general differ-
ences among the industrial classes; adjust a standard
scale of wages and of hours of labor, as a practical basis
for private contracts on the subject, while leaving all
fair private contracts free; and appoint an advisory
board to recommend temporary modifications of this

124 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

scale, when they are required by changes of general
economical circumstances.

It is probable that the discussions of the two branches
of the general denominational industrial legislature, by
demonstrating the truth of the principle, that in the
long run, and in a large view, the interests of the four
industrial classes are identical, would stop the industrial
war now raging throughout the civilized world, and
establish universal industrial peace.

It is not difficult to i)rove that it is the true interest
of the consumer to pay a fair price for a good article;
for this price will return to the consumer, who is a
working-man, fair wages, and it will leave to the con-
sumer, who is an employer, a fair profit; and it will
yield to the consumer, who is a capitalist, a fair rate of
interest. Again, fair wages, with a due regard to the
hours of labor, are plainly the highest that can be paid
consistently with the security and maintenance of capital,
and it is as clearly the true interest of the working-men,
with a view to preserving the source of wages, to receive
no more, as it is the true policy of employers and capital-
ists, in order to keep up the consuming ])ower of the
working-men, from whom a large part of their profits
is derived, to pay no less.

The republic, or integral organ, of industry, there-
fore, in its normal action, is a unity, an integral whole
of action; the true permanent interests of all its mem-
bers, its consumers, employers, working-men, and capital-
ists, in a system of intelligent harmony, and rationally
organized industrial peace, being virtually the same.

SEmXIC PHILOSOPHY. 125

AKTICLE V.

62. The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Public
Charity.

The elementary activity of the republic, or integral
organ, of public charity, is the public-spirited helping
love of the people. It aims to remedy the deficieiicy of
the action of each of the other four integral organs of
society, and also to cure the evils common to them all.

Its means, besides its own action, are charitable gifts
entrusted to it.

Its action, being public, is effected by associations,
some of which are local, and others are confined to no
locality. Hence, to accomplish its general aims, there
have been developed in it five general groups or classes
of charitable and benevolent associations.

One group of charitable associations supplements the
general action of the republic of letters and art, by
extending the benefits of education to the decrepit, the
idiotic, the deaf and dumb, the blind, the incurably sick,
whom the general system of public education does not
effectually reach.

Another group of charitable associations ekes out the
general action of the church by extending the benefits
of its religious service to persons to whom the ordinary
ministrations of the church do not extend, — the sick,
the prisoner, the outcast, the dweller in thinly settled
neighborhoods, the heathen.

Another group of charitable associations aids the
deficencies in the ordinary working of the republic of
industry; alleviates by generous contributions the calami-
ties of bad harvests, of floods, of fires, of disappoint-

126 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

meiits to the industrious poor, caused by unforeseen
chcinges of trade, and by new applications of machinery;
and seeks to protect working-men, working-women, and
working children from excessive hours and unwholesome
conditions of labor, and from labor at too early an age;
and to preserve for them every week a day, and some-
what more, of rest.

Another grouj^ of charitable associations suj'jcradds
its action to the government's dealing with crime; aids
in deserving cases the defense of the accused, counsels
with humanity the condemned, seeks to convert their
jjunishment into means for their reform, and, after
the term of their punishment expires, leads them with
generous sym^^athy and needed assistance into honest
courses of life.

The remaining group of charitable associations re-
lieves the infirmities of immorality common, more or
less, to all the integral organs, by promoting moral
reforms; humanizes, refines, and elevates the modes of
intercourse among the individuals and the collective
members of society, by providing cheap, aesthetic public
entertainments of high art.

The undenominational general representative assem-
bly, or legislature, of the republic, or integral organ, of
public charity, must consist of representatives chosen
by the intermediate undenominational associations, con-
vened to consider the general interests of public charity.

Its duty Avill be to collect and distribute statistics
of public charity; to issue general advisory regulations
on the subject, and to appoint a board of Executive
Commissioners of Public Charity.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 127

The duties of the executive commissioners of public
charity would ]u% to examine and rej)ort, from time to
time, the condition of all permanent charitable invest-
ments; to furnish practicable plans for all extensive
charitable enterprises, when required by those having
them in charge; and to make, under the direction of
the associations engaged in the promotion of moral
reforms, and of refined social intercourse, all the neces-
sary arrangements for cheap, assthetic public entertain-
ments or amusements, by means of literary lectures, and
of displays of high art in theatrical performances, and
in other exhibitions, easily accessible to the masses of
the people.

The denominational general representative assembly,
or legislature, of the republic, or integral organ, of
public charity, must be composed of representatives,
elected as far as possible from all the general groups,
orders or classes of charitable associations, and associa-
tions specially designed to promote moral reforms.

Its duty will be to harmonize by its deliberations the
action of the various groups of associations engaged in
charitable and reformatory work; and to furnish statis-
tics and suggestions for general regulations to the un-
denominational legislature of the republic, or integral
organ, of public charity.

Evidently, there may be an international and an
Interrace organization of public charity, as well as of
the other integral organs of society.

But charity, being as universal, and as ever present,
as humanity, need not wait for the formation of inter-
national or Interrace charitable associations, in order

128 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

to extend its lielp from one nation to another nation of
the same or of another race. A national association,
therefore, of the white race, in tlie United States of
America, can properly perform an act of Interrace charity
by assisting with money and counsel the negro nation
sojourning there to emigrate to its natural habitat and
providential home in Central Africa.

Similarly, acts of Interrace charity, though of a dif-
ferent kind, are performed by national associations of
the white race in the United States of America to the
Indian race now there.

In its normal action, the republic, or integral o-'^^'^j^xy
of public charity, is a unity, or integral whole of action,
sujiplementing and rounding ujj the action of all the
other integral organs, with itself, into a consistent whole,
by its public-spirited helping love.

AETICLE VI.

63. The Republic, or Integral Organ, of Government.

The elementary activity of the republic, or integral
organ of government, is to defend and secure the public
peace, to preserve domestic tranquillity and harmony,
to prevent and detect crime, to punish criminals, and
to administer the law in litigated cases.

Its means are the wealth of the nation levied by taxa-
tion; the physical force of the nation organized as a
police, militia and navy; the enactment of general gov-
ernmental positive laws, and the establishment of courts
of justice.

The modes of action of the elementary activity of
government, may be gathered into four groups, repre-

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 129

sented by the action of the four partial organs of gov-
ernment, which are : its Pohtical Parties, its Govern-
mental Legislature, its body of Executive officers, and its
Legal Profession, divided into an Official or Judicial
branch, and a Lay, or practicing branch.

The limited sphere of the modes of action of the
government, as indicated by the above enumeration of
its partial organs, will be best understood by considering
that the government, which in the system of ancient
heathenism, or Orientalism, now superseded by Chris-
tianity, contained all the functions of society, has been
gradually emptied of the functions properly belonging
to the republic of letters and art, to the republic of
the church, to the republic of industry, and to the
republic of public charity; and that it now retains
only the functions strictly pertaining to normal gov-
ernment.

The progress heretofore made in divesting the gov-
ernment of the functions which, in its ancient heathen
or Oriental form, it had usurped from the other integral
organs of society, leads to the inference that the govern-
ment, even as now constituted, will be considered in
the future as either the needless duplicate, or the non-
essential auxiliary of the other integral organs; either
arbitrarily taking up the functions which they volun-
tarily or by force abandon, or discretionally aiding
functions which they inefficiently exercise. Hence, it
seems probable, that if the other integral organs will
act intelligently and energetically in discharging their
proper functions, the government will be still further
simplified.

130 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

Indeed, when, by systematic public education, the
republic of letters and art endows the community with
liberal culture in the principles of physical, moral,
religious and esthetic science; when the republic of the
church exercises the people in true religious service,
that leads them to imitate God's true character; when
the republic of industry conducts its industrial affairs
on a system of wise and equitable principles, doing exact
justice to every industrial class; and when the republic
of public charity refines and humanizes the masses of
men in their intercourse with each other, and ennobles
them by moral reforms, it is evident that nothing will
remain for the government to do.

It is true that, owing to the unconscious color-
blindness of the reforming as well as of the conservative
chiefs of society, preventing them from recognizing
and following the one faithfully leading light of the
world, to the Kingdom of God, society may never on
earth arrive at this ideal condition; but that it may
approximate it here, with a continued simjilification of
the government, is not an irrational supposition. The
mere practical adoption of industrial principles, that
would stay the present universal industrial war; and of
legal principles that would abolish the present system
of offensive and conquering political war; to say nothing
of a general, rational, religious reformation, would be
a long step towards this desirable consummation.

The nature, the duties, and the organization, respect-
ively, of the partial organs of the integral organ of gov-
ernment, will now he briefly stated.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 131

64. The governineut's Political Parties, as distin-
guished from factions, or rings, and from the supporters
of rings, are honorable associations of independent voters,
acting with deliberate, instinctive thought, on all avail-
able information, and with the observance of all per-
tinent principles, for the practical determination of the
current governmental questions of the day. They de-
serve a place in the written constitution of every state
and nation.

Each political party acts collectively by nominating
and voting for representatives of its party for the ordi-
nary governmental legislature, and also for the leading
executive officers of the government. The political par-
ties together constitute the whole people, and each pro-
fesses to act for the general welfare. They differ, not on
princij)les, because these are common to all the people;
but on practical measures, involving the application of
these principles.

The organization of each political party is formed
by assembling in central points in the intermediate dis-
tricts, respectively, representatives from primary local
meetings of its members in each of the primary terri-
torial districts, and so on. The representative meetings
of each political party nominate its candidates for the
ordinary governmental legislature, and for the leading
executive officers of the government; and the members
of the party afterwards vote for these candidates in the
general elections of the people.

Political parties are sometimes local, and sometimes
general, or national, according to the scope of the issues
or questions which they maintain. Individuals belonging

132 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

to the same party on national questions, may belong to
ditt'erent parties on municipal questions.

The jjroper organization of political parties requires
the erection in each primary district, or neighborhood,
of neighborhood houses, with central houses in the in-
termediate districts, and in central jioints of each state
or nation, arranged with a convenient number of apart-
ments; so that the members of each party may meet sepa-
rately, either on the same or on different days, to become
acquainted, and to consult with each other on public
questions. And there may be a room where all parties,
if they choose, may meet together.

These neighborhood houses, and the central houses
connected with them, may be so arranged as to
accommodate, for some purjjoses, ])y courtesy, all the
integral organs; and the accommodations they reqiiire
will suggest a new order of public architecture. But,
as they would be primarily intended to promote the
projier action of political parties, they should be con-
structed by the national and local governments.

By this arrangement for friendly and frequent con-
sultation, the masses of each political party may become
personally known to each other in the primary districts,
and come to the general election well informed as to all
political questions and political movements, and well
prepared, Avithout dictation from any ring, and without
undue influence from any quarter, to vote upon them
understandingly. In this way may be secured, for
every j)olitical party, the advantages which the local
Demes, introduced by Clisthenes into Athens, gave to
the Athenian democracy in its most glorious days.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 133

An important precaution to secure spontaneity of
action and free deliberation in tlie nomination of can-
didates for election, would be to require all ballots or
tickets voted for this purpose in the primary meetings of
political parties, as well as in nominating conventions,
to be written by those who cast them.

Old political parties will be dissolved, and new parties
formed, as old practical questions are settled, and new
practical questions arise; thus keeping up a healthy
current of popular political life, in changing practical
political parties, according to the practical exigencies
of the times, while the same fundamental principles,
held by them all, live on forever. For a political party
can no more have peculiar principles to act by, than it
can have peculiar sunshine to bask in, or peculiar air to
breathe.

Political parties should pay their own necessary
expenses, by a small voluntary contribution from each
member, as does every other honorable association that
pursues an object of common interest to all its members.
To preserve equality among their members, they should
not allow the payment of any contribution above a low
measure, to be fixed from time to time, say one dollar
from any one person.

Hence, a political party, as an honorable association
of equal members, cannot tax its candidates, or the
holders or expectants of public offices, higher than its
other members. For a higher tax implies that the
public offices are not primarily held for the benefit of
the public, but of a ring, by whom the tax is impudently

134 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

imposed, or more impudently assumed, as an investment
to be repaid, with profit, by public offices or jobs.

65. The government's regular, or denominational
legislature consists of representatives elected, in fact, by
the people in general, but virtually delegated by the
political parties by whom they were nominated. Its
sphere, according to the territory it represents, will be
national or local.

Its action should be confined to what is strictly gov-
ernmental. Its business should bo divided into two
classes: one class, being temporary matters of govern-
mental business, relating chiefly to the taxes, their dis-
bursement, and necessary loans; the other class, being
general governmental positive laws. The first class
should chiefly occupy the legislature's time. The other
class, the general positive laws, should only receive
additions or amendments at long intervals, and only
when demanded by urgent necessity, after full delib-
eration, to keep pace with the development of principles.

The organization of the legislature should be either
in two co-ordinate bodies elected for different terms, or
in one body with members elected for different terms; so
that at every session it would receive new members, to
succeed those whose terms had expired. It should have
the usual standing committees, and such special com-
mittees, and joint conference committees, as its business
demands. It should also adopt for its guidance par-
liamentary rules, framed to secure the deliberate dis-
patch of business. Its sessions should be frequent, and
if annual, should be short.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 135

Its enactments should roqnire the concurrence of the
chief executive officer of the territorial sphere, or locality
represented by it, if he is elected by the people; but they
could be passed, notwithstanding his objections, by the
votes of two-thirds of the legislature, if it is one body; or
of each of its bodies, if it is composed of two branches.

It is proper, also, that the concurrence of the legis-
lature, or of one branch of it, should be required to
ratify some special action of the chief executive officer,
co-ordinate with it, such as, in general, the appointment
of a few executive and judicial officers; or in regard to
the action of the chief executive officer of a nation, in
the conclusion of treaties with foreign nations.

Besides the general governmental legislature of a
nation, there will be corresponding subordinate legis-
latures for each of its states or provinces, and further
subordinate legislatures for its municipalities, and its
intermediate districts; each of these legislatures being
limited in its sphere of action to the governmental in-
terests exclusively affecting the locality it represents.

International, or even Interrace, governmental legisla-
tures, if, in the distant futui-e, tliey should come to be
required, could be easily organized, according to the
principles of civil representative democracy, and of in-
ternational and Interrace law.

66. The body of Executive officers of a national gov-
ernment should consist of a chief executive, or presi-
dent, elected by the whole people, and of different grades
of subordinate executive officers, aj^pointed directly or
indirectly by him, both for the civil and for the military
service, including the army and navy.

136 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. ,

Corresponding also to the series of subordinate gov-
ernmental legislatures;, for states, provinces, municipal-
ities, and intermediate districts, there are sets of chief
and subordinate executive officers, respectively, for each
legislature; but, as they are in many respects analogous
to the set belonging to the general government of a
nation, nothing further need hero be said of them,
excejit that the local chief executive officers mainly
control the local police; while the chief executive offi-
cer of the nation commands the national militia and
the navy..

Besides the chief executive officer of the national gov-
ernment, there must be, under him, for tlie civil service
two principal classes of subordinate executive officers;
one class being leading executive officers, the other class
being ministerial executive officers.

Of the military and naval service it is only necessary
to say that it is subject to the ordinary military rules,
and is subordinate to the civil i^ower.

The duties of the whole body of the executive officers
of the civil service of the nation are as follows: It is
the duty of the chief executive officer to superintend
generally the execution of the leading measures of the
government as devised by the legislature and prescribed
by the laws; it is the duty of the leading subordinate
executive officers to plan and practically direct, under the
supervision of their chief, the execution of these meas-
ures; and it is the duty of the ministerial subordinate
class of executive officers, to specifically execute the
details of these measures under the orders of the leading
class.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. ISif

Then, among the class of ministerial subordinate
executive officers, who in a populous nation must be very
numerous, there must be a few confidential officers,
known to the leading officers, and trusted by them, to
have general charge, as chiefs of bureaus, or foremen,
over particular sj)heres of executive work.

The chief executive officer must be directly respon-
sible for his immediate subordinates, the leading subor-
dinate executive officers; one of whom should be the
legal counsellor of the executive branch of the govern-
ment, while the others are the heads of the various other
executive departments; and they should each, respect-
ively, be directly responsible for the ministerial execu-
tive officers subordinate to them, especially for those
designated as confidential. The chief executive officer,
therefore, should appoint the leading subordinate execu-
tive officers; but he may be required to report their
names for confirmation to the legislature, or one branch
of it; and the legislative body to whom they are reported
shall be considered as confirming them, unless it objects
to them by a two-thirds vote, within a week from his
report. The leading executive officer at the head of
each department, shall appoint the confidential minis-
terial officers belonging to his department, subject to the
approval of the chief executive officer.

The remaining mass of subordinate ministerial execu-
tive officers below the confidential class, should be re-
garded as a standing body of public servants, like the
privates and lower officers of the army and navy. They
should be so organized, and the affairs of the govern-
ment should be so simplified, by discarding from it all

138 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

matters not strictly governmental — as, for instance, the
post-office, "wliich is the proper business of an express
company — that their number could be reduced to the
actual wants of the government; and their compen-
sation should be made equal to that paid in private life
for such services as they perform.

They should be appointed only after a successful ex-
amination, and their removal should be made only by
the head of tlieir department, and for inefficiency, negli-
gence, or misconduct only.

Any vacancy among them should bo filled, from the
number of qualified applicants, by the head of the de-
partment in which it occurs.

A proper commission should conduct the examination
of applicants, and report it, with their age, which, if
mature, should not alone exclude them; and the stune
commission should hear appeals from those who are
removed. But an apjDcal from the decision of the com-
mission may be taken to the chief executive officer by
the head of the department making the removal.

In this way the influence of political parties will be
confined to its legitimate sphere, the chief executive
office, the leading subordinate executive offices, and the
confidential subordinate ministerial executive offices.
Otherwise there is an obvious danger that, if political
parties allow their respective organizations to enter into
a rivalry with each other, to obtain the numerous minor
offices of the government, and if they give a license to
the rapacity of their officious, brawling partisans to
claim them as rewards for pretended services to their
party, rewards won by them either as spoils of a mere-

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 139

tricious victory, or as prizes in a game of trickery and
fraud, political parties will be degraded from honorable
associations, insjiired by generous, patriotic principles,
into dishonorable, selfish factions.

67. The Legal Profession is a voluntary association,
the admission to which is regulated by law, subject to
a prescribed examination as to the professional or legal
knowledge, and the moral character, of the applicant.
It is divided into two branches; the official or judicial
branch, and the lay or practicing branch. Its object
is to render service in the administration of justice.

The official or judicial branch are the judges of the
courts, and the official legal advisers and representatives
of the government, taken from the lay or practicing
branch. The lay or practicing branch is composed of
the rest of the legal profession.

The duty of the courts, as the judicial branch of the
legal profession, or the judicial department of the gov-
ernment, is to decide litigated cases according to the
law; with the help, in criminal cases, of a legal prosecu-
tor representing the government, in fairness, and of a
practicing lawyer representing the accused, in just de-
fense; and with the aid, in civil cases, of practicing
lawyers, on both sides.

The duty of both branches of the legal profession is
to maintain, in their expressed 02)inions, and in all their
other legal acts, the supremacy of the law. To this end
they should study law as a science, based on the phil-
osophy of law, and elucidated by modern historical re-
searches into the remotest antiquity; and should discard
the heathen and despotic maxims and precedents that

140 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

have come down to the present day, in the cnrrent doc-
trine of tlie legal profession, from the ancient heathen-
ism and Orientalism that preceded Christianity.

If the law is viewed as a science based on true phil-
oso^diy, it will rest on the Semitic philosophy, which
deduces all principles from the First Principle, and this
from the uniform action of God; the rules or unifoi'mi-
ties of which, in its morality and justice, man is bound,
by the original and continuing social contract of God
with man, to imitate as derivative principles of law,
regulating the conduct of man to man. Hence, all the
princijdes of law, being derived, like all the so-called
Christian laws of iiature, from the First Principle, and
being consequently not made by man but by God, are
a higher law, paramount over all positive law, all of
which is of human origin.

There was a remarkable anticipation of this higher
law, though in somewhat confused and imperfect state-
ments, by the great jurists of the ancient Roman law.
They, too, treated law as a science, and based it on
philosophy; but the foundation on which they placed
it Avas the heathen philosophy of the Stoics. Among
their legal maxims, or rules of law, they distinguished
some as rational from others as positive; deriving the
former from their philosophy, calling them separately
laws of nature, or collectively natural law, and regarding
them as "laws of laws;" thus reaching in their specu-
lative theory, the logical conclusion, which in their
despotic government they dared not practically apply,
or even openly avow, — that their rational rules of law,
as "laws of laws," or what we call the principles of law.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 141

were of higher authority than all positive laws. But
the great truth, that principle is a higher law than
positive law, was practically vindicated, to a great extent,
by the ancient Eoman Prsetorian law, which was the law
introduced by the decisions of the Eoman Praetors; who,
in their official public edicts, upon entering on their
office, — relying upon the public conscience, the public
intelligence, and the general supjiort of the legal pro-
fession,— boldly proclaimed the legal rules by which their
decisions would be guided; thus laying down, from time
to time, rational rules, or "laws of laws," derived from
their philosophy and their law of nature, whereby grad-
ually many of the barbaric "positive rules" of the old
Roman law were superseded.

But, it must not be forgotten, that the philosophical
legal system of ancient Eome, however relatively admir-
able when compared with other ancient bodies of law,
is the scheme of heathen Stoic philosophy, and that the
law of nature referred to in ancient Roman jurisprudence
is a heathen law of nature, the law by which that philo-
sophy imagined that Zeus, the immoral chief Roman
idol divinity, governed his mythical "City of Zeus."
Now, the heathen natural law contains many gross
abominations, such as license to wage offensive war and
to make conquests, and is altogether different from the
Christian law of nature, as the law of God, or the prin-
ciple of law. Hence, although it was a memorable
event, for his day and generation, when the Dutch law-
yer, Grotius, set iip, in imagination, his curule chair,
like a Roman l*ra3tor, assuming to judge among the
nations of the civilized world, as if they were simple

143 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

Roman proprietors;, and when assuming the moral au-
thority of that magistrate, while sustained by the unani-
mous voice of the public, he issued his pnetorian edict,
as it were, in his treatise, " On the Law of War and of
Peace,"' requiring them to demean themselves towards
each other according to the rules of the Eoman natural
law; yet, the present day demands the proclamation of
a more ancient and a higher law, — the very law of prin-
ciple and of God. This law forbids offensive war and
conquest, and requires the nations to unite their rational
efforts for the general welfare.

Among the legal maxims, still current in law books,
and descended from the system of ancient heathenism
and Orientalism, is the maxim that positive law is the
^''command of a political superior."' But in the normal
form of government, in civil representative democracy,
there is no political superior; and all positive laws are
public contracts, made by and among the people, either
immediately and tacitly among themselves, and evi-
denced by custom; or mediately and expressly, by their
duly authorized agents, assembled in a legislature, or in
a diplomatic meeting. Positive laws, therefore, must,
like all contracts, be conformed to and controlled by
principle.

It will be the duty of the legal profession to frame a
code of common positive law consistent with principle,
and fit for universal adoption.

It is also manifest that positive laws, when made
among the nations of the same race, whether immedi-
ately or by agents, will be international; and when made

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 143

in either of these modes^ among different races, will be
Interrace.

All grave questions of domestic or foreign govern-
mental policy can be put into the form of a public
contract, either as the sul)ject matter of a statute, or
of a treaty. They must all involve a question of law,
and the same test, by 2)rinciple, as to the legal validity
of such a contract, will apply to the question of its ex-
pediency; both questions resting on the same ultimate
grounds. For, as the law is conceded, as principle, or
as the law of God, to be the perfection of reason, the
question. What is the rule of law resulting from the
facts, or from a proposed contract, in a particular case?
and the question, What is expedient, in the light of the
highest reason, under all circumstances of that case?
are virtually identical. Hence, it is the duty of the
legal profession to mature and express, for the guidance
of the public, deliberate opinions on the legal bearings
of all important public measures; and, in order to enable
them to do so, by earnestly cultivating the study, and by
jointly asserting the paramount authority, of principle,
they should i)erfect their organization.

When, as the prophet predicted, the knowledge of
God shall cover the earth as the water covereth the
sea, the knowledge of the law will become universal.
Then, in the ultimate simplification of the government,
the legal profession, as is already indicated by the jihe-
nomenal increase of its numbers, will be absorbed into
the general community. But, until that period arrives,
the importance of organizing the legal profession, and
of thereby aiding its mission to maintain the present

144 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

autliority of princi^ile, and thus to secure the progress
of society without forcible revokitious, should not be
ovei'looked.

The legal jirofessiou should be organized as a vol-
untary association, or general guild, for joint delibera-
tion and council, aiming to secure its own and the
public advantage, by promoting the liberal culture and
the moral conduct of its members in both its branches.
It should pursue the usual mode of undenominational
rejiresentative organization, by convening in a central
or convenient place in each nation, state or province,
rejiresentatives chosen indiscriminately from all its classes
by primary local meetings of its members in the inter-
mediate territorial districts of the nation, state, or prov-
ince; a nation composed of only one state having only
one representative meeting; and a nation composed of
several states or provinces having a representative meet-
ing for each of them, and also a central national
representative meeting of delegates from each of the
state or provincial meetings. An international rejjrc-
sentative meeting would consist of delegates chosen
by the national meetings. An Interrace rejiresentative
meeting could be chosen by the several international
meetings. The lower representative meetings, in their
choice of delegates to the higher rej^resentative meet-
ings, should not be confined 'to their own members.
The terms of all representatives should be short, and
shorter for the lower than for the higher meetings; and
all representatives should be re-eligible. A national rej?-
resentative meeting, or convention, of the legal profes-
sion should appoint the days and places of its elections

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 145

aud meetings, and the terms of its representatives
and delegates. Care slionld be taken tliat, in tlie pri-
mary meetings of the profession, of which due notice
should be given, every member of every class should
be free to particij)ate; and should thus .share in all the
benefits, and be bound Ijy all tlie constraints, of the
whole organization. In this way, professional rings and
close corjiorations of the few would be avoided, with
their j^'^rtial views; and the whole legal jn'ofession, after
freeing itself of those who do not legally or properly
belong to it, would be raised to a higher and more
liberal standard, both of excellence and of influence.

The judges, the prosecuting officers, and the sheriffs,
or higher executive officers connected with the courts
of the state, j)rovince, or nation, should be elected for
a permanent term, from the legal profession, by a plu-
rality vote of the people, without reference to political
parties. The judges should appoint the other officers
of their courts.

The courts should not be unnecessarily numerous;
l)nt should form a system, each being complete, with a
judge, or a bench of judges, to decide questions of laAv;
a jury, to ascertain matters of fact; a recording officer,
to record its proceedings, and bailiffs, or executive
officers, to execute its processes. Some should have
original, and others appellate jurisdiction, in order to
afford an opportunity, in the interest of justice, to
correct any errors committed in the first hearing of
a case. The lowest courts, for small cases, should have
as able judges as the highest.

146 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

But, -where principle is lielcl to be jiaramount over
positive law, and to control all contracts, there cannot
be a separate set of equity courts.

The officers of the courts should receive moderate and
regular salaries; and the costs of the courts should be
so regulated as to relieve the suitors of the courts from
unnecessary burdens, and should not be jiaid to their
officers. For, in courts having much business, the fees
paid to their officers by the suitors constitute emolu-
ments so extravagant as to make the positions of these
officers coveted prizes i)i the eyes of political factions,
and to exert a corrupting influence on the election of
the judges; especially where judges aiid the officers of
their courts are elected by political jnirties, and are nomi-
nated in the same party convention.

68. The four partial organs of the government, its
political parties, its ordinary or denominational gov-
ernmental legislature, its body of executive officers, and
its legal profession, with its official or judicial branch,
and its lay or practicing branch, having been sufficiently
discussed, there only remains to be considered its extra-
ordinary or Undenominational General Eepresentative
Assembly, called its general governmental convention,
for exercising the people's reserved powers, whether legis-
lative, executive, or judicial, as required by the occasion.
It is a well known and effective agency of the gov-
ernment, often employed in modern times, to change
the form of government, or to remove dangerous or
otherwise objectionable j)ersons from j^ublic office, with
the consent of the people. It effects, in a peaceable
way, without any disturbance of public order, the same

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 147

results that could only otherwise be accomplished by a
violent revolution or civil war.

Its a^iplication presupposes that the peoj^le are suffi-
ciently informed and instructed to note, from time to
time, the emergence of principles, which are not merely
opposed to positive laws of long standing and of high
authority, Init Avliich also herald, by that opposition,
the advent of great political reforms and revolutions.
The effectual assertion of a great political principle in
opposition to ancient positive law, is a successful revo-
lution; and it may be accomplished as thoroughly by the
resolution of a convention as by a revolutionary uprising
of the people.

The undenominational general representative assem-
bly, or convention, of the integral organ of government,
its highest legislature, may be of a nation or of a state,
if the nation contains more than one state; and it con-
sists of representatives from the intermediate districts
of the nation or state, chosen from the people indis-
criminately, without regard to the partial organs of tlio
government.

It is called together by the express or implied general
agreement of the people; and is invested with all their
jjower, so far as necessary to effect the purposes for which
it is called. It is only brought into existence, upon rare
occasions, to formally inaugurate great political reforms,
which have already virtually been decided upon, or
admitted to be necessary by the people.

It exercises the reserved powers of the people; and it
is able, therefore, not only to modify the present institu-
tions or elements , of the government, but also, when a

148 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

suitable occasion arises, to add to them. For instance,
in addition to the present courts, and above them, it
could establish a Political Tribunal, with jurisdiction to
try and punish for official misconduct, whether jiolitical
or moral, the highest legislative, executive and Judicial
officers of the government, as well as other persons; and
especially all jiersons guilty of high crimes against the
majesty or sovereignty of the jieople.

The whole republic, or integral organ, of govern-
ment, in its normal action, as a civil representative
democracy, will exhibit, on a review of all its functions,
a unity, or integral whole, of action. For while its
political parties are enlightened and honoralile associa-
tions, agreeing upon all fundamental principles, and
differing only in practical measures; and its legislature
is virtually composed of conference committees delegated
from its political jiarties, and deliberately advising with
each other, settling their party differences in regard to
these practical measures, by public contracts of the
whole people, in the form of positive laws; and its ex-
ecutive officers see to the maintenance of public order
and the due execution of the laws; its legal profession,
by the co-operation of both its branches, in one united
organization, will not only urge the reduction of all pos-
itive laws, man's imperfect inventions, to a harmonious
system, by requiring their conformity to God's para-
mount universal principles, but it will also inaugurate,
in the correct decision of litigated cases, according to
the rule of principle, the universal reign of absolute
justice.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 149

Such, as has been sketched, being the normal Social
Constitution of mankind, already approximated in the
modern civilization of the white race, and serving as an
example to the other races, it is manifest that Law, the
higher law of God, the uniformity of the uniformities
of God's action, or the First Principle of the Semitic
philosophy, as in nature, so in mind and in society, or
in the whole Kingdom of God, is the predominant, the
ruling, and the harmonizing power.

CHAPTEE V.

rr^HE General Social Eeformation, as the revived,
-■- predominantly practical side, of the Semitic Phil-
osophy, and called Practical Christianity, or develo2:)ed
Modern Civilization, is attainable by all monotheistic
nations and races.

69. The Semitic philosophy, as we have traced it, is
an exposition, or a general explanatory and descriptive
view of the Kingdom of God, as a reality, as the one
universal fact, which, althongh it cannot be fully ex-
pressed, and can only be indicated, by language, can,
l)y means of the instinctive ideas, be clearly conceived
and rationally developed by instinctive thought. The
Semitic philosophy explains the nature, and describes the
prevailing order of the Kingdom of God, as the universe.

It explains the nature of it as being, in part, spiritual,
composed of one superior spirit, God, of the spirits of
mankind, and the spirits of the inferior animals and
jilants; and in part material, consisting of matter ;
distinguishing spirit from matter by their respective
qualities, and showing that the qualities of the one
are absolutely, and in all respects, different from those
of the other.

It describes the order prevailing in the universe, as
the uniformity of the uniformities of God's action, and

150

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 151

as such the one First Principle, at once speculative and
practical, from which all others are derived, and as
potentially consisting of two derivative systems of prin-
ciples ; one system being rules for the actions of the
spiritual part of the universe, and the other system
being rules for the motions of its material part; and
both systems comprising the laws of God, which are
sometimes erroneously called, from a dogma of the
heathen Stoic })hilosophy, the laws of nature.

70. It then uses the relation of man's spirit to his
body, — a relation analogous, in some respects, to that
of the spirits of lower animals and plants, respectively,
to their bodies, — to explain in other respects the relation
of God, as the one superior spirit, to the whole inorganic
world, or material universe ; and, after proving by the
intuitive evidence of consciousness, in voluntarily raising
an arm, that man's spirit, by its immediate practical
action, causes within the body to which it is confined
original motion in matter, it infers that all original
motion of matter is caused by the immediate practical
action of spirit; the original motions of the organic
world by the immediate action of the spirits inhabiting,
respectively, its several parts, as their bodies; and the
original motions of the whole inorganic world, or the
material universe, outside of their bodies, by the imme-
diate action of God.

Hence, it follows that both the systems of rules, or
laws, for actions of spirit and for original motions of mat-
ter, respectively, are primarily laws for the normal action
of spirit; and that the one First Principle, comprising
both systems, and being the uniformity of the uniform!-

153 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

ties of God's action^ takes in the uniformities^ or laws of
man's normal action; man being the image, and his
normal action being the imitation, of God.

71. The Kingdom of God, abstractly regarded, is the
First Principle, which is related to the derivative princi-
ples, or laws, of all the speculative and practical, physical
and natural sciences, either as the root to the ramifica-
tions of a tree, or as a river to the branches contributing
by their inflow to its volume; according as, in one view,
the unity of the one God as their immediate origin, or, in
the other view, the variety of his operations in them,
is chiefly noticed; although likewise, even when the First
Principle is likened to a river with numerous tributaries,
themselves receiving the supply of many springs, and
these replenished from the lofty and swiftly moving
clouds, it has then, too, in the spirit of God, as the
river in the bosom of the ocean, one ultimate source.

The Kingdom of God, concretely conceived, is the
compound system of the spiritual and the material uni-
verse ; including in its spiritual element God and man
related to each other as the society of God and man,
related also to the organic world outside of man, and to
the inorganic world; and including likewise, as its mate-
rial element, that inorganic world as the instrument aiul
the passive means used by the spiritual universe for real-
izing its action.

The concrete Kingdom of God exhibits the effects of
God's action, through the First Principle, upon the
universe. In this way, he acts immediately, directly,
constantly, and with uniformity, upon the material uni-
verse outside of the organic world, that is, upon the

SEMITIC PIIILOSOPHT. 153

inorganic world, by imparting to it original molecular
and relative motions, tlie combinations of which deter-
mine in matter its various qualities and relations. Of
these it is only necessary here to say that all the problems
of physical science are now found to be questions of
motion.

Further, in the concrete Kingdom of God, by the
same First Principle, Grod acts mediately, and indirectly
upon the spiritual universe, and especially upon the
spirit of man; using matter as the means of communi-
cating both his speculative and his practical action.
Thus he foreshadows, by useful modifications of matter,
adapted to man's recurring necessities, the elementary
practical activities of man, and with them the social
contract of God with man, and the resulting normal
organization of society. This is easily proved.

For matter is evidently a necessary medium for com-
municating the action of spirit from spirit to spirit.
The form of matter, viewed as a medium for communi-
cating the spirit's speculative action, is a sign; and
viewed as a medium for communicating the spirit's
practical action, it is a tool or instrument.

Matter is also used to preserve and store, for future
use, both the speculative and the practical action im-
parted to it by man; speculative action, in books and
monuments; practical action, in provisions of food, and
in money. Similarly, it is recorded that in ancient days,
as now, signs of the times indicating God's thoughts and
purposes, have been always recognized by man in the
changing forms of the inorganic world, whether in the
inspiring succession of the seasons, or in the expressive

154 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

face of the heavens; and it is manifest from the re-
searches of modern science, that the earth, the sun, and
the stellar universe are not only eternal monuments of
God^s wisdom for the instruction, but also stores of
correlated various energy for the practical use, of man
and all the spiritual universe.

72. The action of sj)irit being integral, its speculative
and its practical action are simultaneous and interfused;
its practical action shaping matter, both as a conductor
to convoy integral spiritual action, and as a sign to ex-
press its speculative meaning. Thus, man's body, as
we have seen, is a complicated instrument, framed by
his spirit, for transmitting the integral spiritual action
reflected from outward objects to its inward parts, sup-
posed to be the brain, constituting the material sensuous
ideas, and for enabling that action to inscribe them as
signs of the speculative meaning it is designed to convey.

It is through his body, therefore, that man, apart
from the spiritual action he receives from his fellow-
man and the rest of the organic world, takes in the
spiritual action of the suj)erior spirit, God, reflected from
the inorganic world; and it is by the interpretation of
the sensuous ideas, as signs of that action, that he learns
its intention and design to be the loving service of God
to all mankind. \

That service man, by reflection, comes to know as
consisting of the First Principle, and God's resulting
elementary practical activities of instruction, religious
service, or communion, industry, charity, and govern-
ment; the imitation and pursuit of which activities,
again, by man, leads him, he sees, into the association

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 155

of God with man, or tlio original social contract. For
the isohited individual is imijelled, by the conscious
similarity and inferiority of his spiritual nature to that
of God, to accept the instruction of the superior spirit,
and, in pursuance of it, to imitate the other practical
activities of God, and thus to work with him. Further,
when man observes the presence of other spiritual beings
similar and equal to himself, and working, like himself,
with God, he groups and associates himself with them,
as a class of equals, working together, for the benefit of
each other, under the one common superior spirit, and
he infers that all the elementary activities of God are
designed both for the imitation and for the benefit of
all men alike, and are intended to bring about their
universal co-operation.

73. Then follows the conviction of every man, that
if he would imitate God, he must serve all men, and
serve them, as he is served, by means of those elemen-
tary activities. The result is a normal association of all
men with eacli other, for their common benefit under
God. This is at first an undenominational association,
giving equal attention to all the elementary activities.
Afterwards, as the operations of the original association
become extended, it is ideally divided into denomina-
tional associations, or integral organs, for each of the
elementary activities. The original and the denomina-
tional associations, with their individuals, while normal,
and properly doing their own work, are helping each
other, and are also, in this way, doing the work of
God. Thus God and mankind are working together, are
associated

156 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

This association of God with man, is the original and
continuing social contract. In its formation language has
no ijlace, but is represented by the sensuous ideas. It
is a contract by action, without words. It is continuing,
perpetual, and potentially universal. It embraces all on
whose hearts the law of God is written, or who have a
knowledge of the true character of God; but those who,
from ignorance, fail to enter into this covenant with
God, are not therefore excluded from his providential
care. The domain of the social contract is extended by
the jiositive law, which rests on it, and includes it as also
the First Principle, and all other principles with the
first, and which binds all who enter society and enjoy its
benefits, whether they have a particular knowledge of
the social contract or not.

Like all valid contracts, the social contract has a con-
sideration on both sides. The consideration on man's
part is his recognition of the universality of the con-
tract, and his consequent implied engagement that man
shall not selfishly attempt to monopolize the aid God
gives to all men in his principles and laws; but shall
altruistically assist God in blessing all other men; and
the consideration on God's part is, that he will continue
his principles or laws unchanged, for man's present ben-
efit and for his future reliance. \

From the social contract is derived, as we have seen,
the normal organization of society, with its five integral
organs.

74. Each of the five integral organs, in its normal
action, and all, as comprising together the whole social or-
ganization, have been described; and there only remains

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 157

the task to point out in each of them some of the
errors and irregularities that hinder its normal action,
and prevent its full development. On these errors there
will first be given some general remarks, to show their
united scope; afterwards a few of the most important
will be discussed in view of their removal by a general
reformation of society.

In the republic of letters and art, if the views be-
fore advanced in these papers are admitted, some false
science, so called, is left for future correction, in the
extravagances of evolution, of agnosticism, of monism,
idealism, and materialism. But the correction of these
errors, after what has been said, may be confidently left
to the zealous pnrsnit of truth in true science, which
now universally engages the learned. As a consequence
of this activity of the republic of letters and art, leading
to a more general liberal culture, there must also ensue
in the community a sound public opinion, a lively public
conscience, and some general common sense, to guide
and check the conduct of the mass of individuals.

In the republic of the church, not to reiterate ques-
tions of principle already discussed, it may be men-
tioned that its sacerdotal or governmental organiza-
tion, after the model of a human government, is a very
ancient abnormal institution, which is already eighteen
centuries old in its present form, and is copied after a
still more ancient heathen sacerdotal institution, reach-
ing back thousands of years into earlier antiquity; but
concerning this subject little more need be said, as the
institution is suffering from the common ills of effete

158 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

decay, to which all antiquated abnormal institutions,
under the stress of inquiring reason, at last succumb.

In the republic of industry a universal industrial war
has raged for many years, owing to abnormal indus-
trial organization. Labor, under the social contract, is
entitled to the equal benefit of the laws of God, both
in the First Princii^le, and in their practical ajiplica-
tion. The ill-judged attempt of the employer and capi-
talist classes to monopolize the benefit of these laws,
otherwise called the laws of nature, by securing for
themselves exclusively the advantages of mechanical in-
ventions and scientific discoveries, without according a
corresponding increase of wages or decrease of the work-
ing hours, is the real source of grievance of the labor
class; and the proper remedy will be the abandonment
of violent methods and the resort to reason, by the
labor class, and a rational appeal, in a normal indus-
trial organization, to the consumer class, which controls,
as it includes, all the industrial classes; as it has been
demonstrated that the vital and lasting interests of all
the industrial classes, in the matter of wages, as in all
other important respects, are identical.

In the republic of public charity, devoted to the
regulation of normal social intercourse, and to the pro-
motion of public moral reforms, intoxication is encoun-
tered as a master public evil that requires the united
energies of the people for its reformation.

In the republic of government, at home and abroad,
there are many abuses calling for suitable remedies; but
these abuses are not so universal as those of the other
integral organs; government everywhere among the

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 159

white nice, except Russians, Poles, Turks, Arabians and
Persians, having progressed far in the way from Oriental
despotism to civil representative democracy. Yet all the
partial organs of government need some reformation, —
chiefly its political parties and its legal jDrofession; as
the reform of these two would include that of its legisla-
ture and its executive officers.

The disgraceful conduct of party leaders at home, —
constituting a so-called ring, entirely distinct from, but
within, each political party, which, as such, however,
is an honorable association, — is illustrated by the action
of such leaders, controlling the party, in accepting and
counting notoriously fraudulent votes for their presi-
dential candidate in 1870; again, in attempting to carry
a presidential election by bribery; and, as charged, by
accomplishing the election of a president by the same
means. To charge such misdeeds on a political party
would be a libel on popular government.

But the introducing of negro suffrage, in the country
of the white race, is not the work of a ring, but of a
party, by an error based on good intentions, and surely
awaiting its correction from the people's "sober second
thought."

The legal profession has furnished, notoriously, many
members of the political rings of all i^arties; and it
greatly needs a thorough, universal organization, to
keep all its members under proper control, as Avell as
to extend and confirm its legitimate and salutary
influence.

75. A general reformation of society must be, from
what has been said before, a more perfect realization of

160 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

the Kingdom of God, as an integral system of knowledge
and of practice, both in the individual and in the
community.

To be successful, it will require the co-operation of
all genuine reformers in matters of education or science,
of religion, of industry, of jiublic charity, and of govern-
ment. For these elementary activities form one integral
social system, and any derangement in one of them ob-
structs the rest; so that every particular reform in one
of them depends for its success on the general reform of
all.

The harmonizing of the leaders of at least approxi-
mately all social reforms, the reform of the reformers,
is a very great difficulty that must be encountered at
the outset of a general social reformation. But, when
once accomplished, it will produce a union and co-op-
eration of forces that can be applied successively, with
overpowering effect, to each of the needed reforms, and
then eventually to make them all unite. At present,
however, the advocates of one reform Avill strongly
oppose another, while both can be shown to be neces-
sary parts of one more general reform.

An embarrassment in the way of combined action for
the reform of social errors and abuses, lies in the fact
that some of them are both ancient and general; so that
the attempt to reform them implies not only a criticism,
the expression of which the discussion of the reform
necessitates, on the past and present action of the great
white race; but also a grave censure on our near ances-
tors, from whom we have inherited the institutions,
good and evil, under which we live; and even on par-

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 161

ticular great men of the past, of whom we are justly
proud, but who are recorded in history as having orig-
inated, or at least supported, those evils. But, as
greatness and limitation are often found together in
the same race and in the same individual; to call
attention to the shortcoming of the truly great,
whether an individual or a race, and thereby to vindi-
cate the truth of history, and to utilize its lessons for
the present and the future generations of mankind, is,
in fact, a necessary, although a reluctant, undertaking.

Now, when, in order to get a view of the general
social reformation that is demanded, we examine in
succession the present social errors and abuses, with
their remedies, we will find that these errors and abuses,
as departures in thought and practice from the one
First Principle, are intimately related to each other;
and that, for effecting their respective remedies as
partial revivals of that principle, in its various aspects,
a combined attempt to promote a general revival of
that principle, as the guiding element of the social con-
tract, and as the necessary condition for realizing the
Kingdom of God, or 2)erfect society, would suffice, and
would harmonize all the efforts necessary to bring about
that general social reformation.

The conception, in various stages of development, of
the First Principle, being common to all men, leading
them to expect, at the same time, the same series of
helpful or unfavorable events, and then jointly, to pre-
pare for them, is the means by which the co-operation
of mankind in society is accomplished. For the past,
the present, and the future, as ultimate eifects of the

162 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

uniform controlling action of God, being the continuous
outward manifestation of that principle, the present
containing the past as its cause, and the future as its
effect; the conception of that princijile enables man not
only to explain the past by the present and the present
by the past; but also by the past and the present to pre-
dict tlie future.

But, wliile a full and clear concejDtion of the First
Principle, as the uniformity of the uniformities of God's
action, is of the highest importance for man's specu-
lative and practical action, it can only be sought, and it
must be gained;, by careful observation and experiment,
and the reasoned study of the resulting sensuous ideas,
or so-called experience.

Such a clear conception of that principle, being a
revival of it in man's consciousness, must be not only
the source of the laws and predictions of all true science,
but also the ground of that knowledge of the spiritual
nature of God, of man, and of society, that is necessary
to guide man in advancing and completing, by the nor-
mal organization of society, its general reformation.

But a scant, superficial, and careless conception of the
First Principle, being a virtual departure from it, and
involving a neglect of exact experience, with a result-
ing confusion of thought, must afford occasion, first, for
self-deception and error concerning the material nature
of the inorganic universe, and the laws of physical
science; and then concerning the sj)iritual nature and
action of God, of man and of society. The omission,
therefore, of tlie leading integral organ of society, the
republic of letters and art, to clearly conceive and

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 163

appreciate the First Principle, must seriously obstruct a
general social reformation.

76. Accordingly, the first of the fundamental errors
requiring a remedy in the general social reformation,
and to be now examined, is the entertainment, even in
the white race, by a great part of the republic of letters
and art, of the false Oriental science handed down from
the earliest historical times, and the consequent failure
of that integral organ to fully apprehend the First
Principle.

That false, ancient Oriental science assigned a malig-
nant moral character to matter, thereby making matter
spiritual, and spirit consequently material. It thus con-
founded both, either as idealism or materialism, and cul-
minated in idolatry; first, in Pantheism, which considers
the whole material universe as God; and then in the
subsequent multitudinous forms of idolatry, arising from
splitting up the conception of the inorganic world as
God, and making each of its parts a subordinate or
derivative god, as the sun, the moon, the stars, the
earth, the winds, the waters. It then supplemented
these gods, to suit man's growing depravation, by going
down into the impure organic world, and making gods of
its trees and animals, its beasts, birds, reptiles, insects,
and fishes. Last of all, it deified the most degraded of
all things, men divested of all the noble characteristics of
humanity involved in the imitation of the character of
the one true God; and who masquerade as selfish, crafty,
and cruel political and ecclesiastical despots, under the
false but most significant colors of seemingly authorized
representatives and vicegerents from a supernatural and

164 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

cruel monster^ described as disregarding all human rights
in his desire to elevate his assuming representatives and
official servants above the masses of mankind, by
making all other men slaves to serve his pretended favor-
ites. Thus the scale of Oriental idols runs down from
sun gods, moon gods, star gods, beast gods, fish gods,
bird gods, snake gods, to the base man gods of 2:)olitical
and ecclesiastical despotism.

This Oriental error, which still pervades, in its ele-
mentary form of monism, much of modern so-called
science and philosophy, results from carelessly ignoring
the primary truth taught by the sensuous ideas, that
spirit differs, in every respect, as an active agent, from
matter as a passive means and instrument, subservient to
the spirit's action; so that the spirit, whether of man or of
God, differs, as active subject, from its immediate object,
which must be matter; as matter is the medium by which
the action of spirit is received and conducted or trans-
mitted by the subject. By neglecting the nature of the
princijiles of science, as uniformities of God's action, or
laws of God, exhibited in matter, as something moved by
him, and therefore altogether different from him, this
error not only precludes all physical science, which must
cease to be science when its matter is spiritualized,
and is no longer matter; but it also perverts the moral
character of God; who must cease to be a jiure spirit or
a good spirit, when he is in any way identified with the
Oriental conception of matter, and is thus materialized.
Hence, this error sets up, instead of the true God, and
widely differing from him, an idol of science, which.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 165

because it is purely imagiutiry, is incapable of being
known.

It is to this revamped error of ancient Orientalism
that must be attributed the rise of modern agnosticism,
and the establishment of a scientific monotheistic idol-
atry, with an unknown idol, but with an influence dis-
astrous at once to the progress of science, and to the
perfection of all practical social life, which must be the
imitation of a known God, of perfect truth and morality.

JSTotwithstanding, however, the almost universal prev-
alence of that ancient heathen Oriental error, some of
the rules or principles of art, and some principles of
the science of mathematics, which in their lower stages
are independent of that error, seem to have been early
collected, by means of the sensuous ideas, among some
ancient nations, especially the Greeks. But it is owing
to obstruction from that error that the principles, or
laws, of the physical sciences, and the methods of scien-
tific inquiry have only been discovered in modern times,
mostly since Francis Bacon. And in all the practical
operations of modern society the injurious effects of
that error are still being experienced.

Thus, the fundamental error of the republic of letters
and art, in the white race, is its failure to clearly and
fully apprehend the First Principle of the Kingdom of
God; and this error, induced by the ancient error of
heathen Orientalism, and injuriously affecting all the
interests of society, must necessarily, in a general social
reformation, be first corrected.

The white race, although it has partially failed to
clearly apprehend the First Principle of the Kingdom

166 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

of God, has hitherto been mentioned as being the first
impersonation of the Kingdom of God; as exemplifying
in its practice normal social organization; as the leader
of the other races, far in advance of them all, and as
distinctively the race of progress. Such, indeed, it is;
and as such it holds, in view of its obligation to God,
under the social contract, a position of grave respon-
sibility to the other races, both as their natural instructor
and as their natural guardian, as their teacher of the
truth, and as the protector of their rights.

But it must be remembered that the white race is
endowed with liberty; that while liberty is a priceless
treasure, its abuse is fraught with unspeakable evils;
that this race is as free to lapse into error as it is
free to advance toward the truth, as free to do evil as
it is free to do right, as free to worship idols as
it is free to serve and imitate God; and that without
this liljerty it would have no approving judgment of
truth, and no moral consciousness of merit in its service
to God, or in its practical goodness to man.

It should not surprise ns, therefore, to find in the
white race, as the result of the abuse of its liberty,
occasional instances of temporary degradation in error
and crime, both individual and national; and instances
extending, in the case of nations and even of the
whole race, over tracts of centuries and millenniums
of debasement. Against the repetition of these lapses,
we are morally bound, knowing the cause of such
disasters to be a departure from the principles of the
Kingdom of God, to provide, by a timely and general
social reformation, an adequate remedy.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 167

For individuals, nations, and the race, are always
free to resume, by repentance, their place in the King-
dom of God. While error and crime are departures
from the First Principle, repentance is a return to it.

The departure from the First Principle by mankind
in general led to almost universal error and crime,
which culminated, as we have seen, in ancient heathen-
ism, comprised in despotism, idolatry, and sacerdotalism,
and maintained by ignoring the social contract. It
resulted in offensive wars of conquest and subjugation,
with consequent domestic as well as political and ecclesi-
astical slavery in the masses of the people, throughout
the known world. Then was preached in the white
race the noted call to repentance, and a new era of
hope and of ultimate civilization and liberty was inau-
gurated by the proclamation of the Kingdom of God.

At that time, the white race commenced a glorious
career of progress; but it soon lapsed again into grave
heathen errors and crimes, which now again call for
repentance and reform. The necessity for immediately
heeding this call is manifest. ^

For, judging from the net result of the alternate
progress and retrogression of the white race, even since
the beginning of the new era, not to speak of the
danger of a prolonged positive relapse, it would require,
at the slow rate of the absolute progress of the race, a
millennium before the error of Orientalism can be entirely
disentangled and eliminated, in the speculative and prac-
tical action of modern civilization, from the First Prin-
ciple. Hence the necessity for directing universal
attention to that principle and for working up its

168 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

universal revival, as the first step of the community,
or society, into the Kingdom of God.

This revival must be scientific, philosophic, and even
in part metaphysical, — engaging not merely the emo-
tions, but the highest reasoning powers of the learned;
while it is taken up and followed out, by means of the
sensuous ideas, in the instinctive thought, and in a
rational public opinion, of the masses of the people.

When the republic of letters and art has measurably
discarded the fundamental Oriental error, which still
dwarfs and perverts its energy, it will be free, as the
predominantly sjieculative, and the leading integral
organ of society, to develop from the First Principle,
and to teach in its universities and other institutions of
learning, for the benefit of all the predominantly practi-
cal integral organs of society, not only all derivative,
speculative and practical principles, but the whole im-
plied scheme of the social contract.

While the discovery, elaboration, and teaching of all
principles belong properly to the republic of letters and
art, the practical application of these principles is the
appropriate work of tlie other integral organs. Leaving,
therefore, the reiJiiblic of letters and art, for its part of
the proposed general social reform, to develop and to free
from heathen Oriental influence the First Principle, we
will glance at the leading practical errors in the other
integral organs that need a remedy.

77. In the republic of the church, the religious in-
tegral organ of society, the most prominent practical
error prevailing in by far the greater portion of it, apart
from its mere dogmatic errors, resulting from the false

SEMITIC PniLOSOPHY. 169

Oriental heathen teaching of the republic of letters and
art, is its abnormal organization. This is the self -con-
stituted, non-representative ring, adopted from the forms
of heathen despotism, and opposed to the normal general
form of social organization, called civil representative
democracy.

The supposed basis of this fundamental practical error
of the repuljlic, or integral organ, of the church, is the
assumption that its permanent so-called heavenly type,
the Kingdom of Grod in heaven, is analogous to a human
despotic government; and that Clod is consequently to be
regarded as an absolute monarch, or despot, issuing
arlntrary commands for man to obey.

But the laws of God are not Ilis commands; other-
wise, men could not fail always to obey them. His laws
are the uniformities of His action; and it is by His action
towards men, that God shows them what they should do
to each other. It is not by words, an imperfect inven-
tion of man, but by perfect acts, that God tells men
what they should do. There is in man's nature an innate
nobility, as well as a tendency to imitation, that leads
him, when he sees a perfect ideal or example of conduct,
to do what is right. When man knows God, he can
not fail voluntarily to attempt, to the extent of his
ability, to imitate Him. Being free, it would not be
right to drive him by irresistible commands, which would
take his freedom away. The moral restraints upon
man's actions are their rational and easily foreseen im-
mediate consequences, in which consists the discipline
of God. Besides, if God, for any purpose, had ever
literally spoken to man, or addressed him otherwise than

170 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

by His Providential actions. He would do so now, for
God is unchangeable.

The explanation of the fact, that in very ancient times
the laws of Clod, as the Ten Commandments, and the
two Great Commandments, were put into the form of
commands, is that, in those times, heathen, Oriental
despotic government being almost everywhere estab-
lished, and most human laws being issued in the form
of despotic commands, God, who was represented as a
despot, was also supposed in His law-giving to imitate
the usual earthly dosiDotic forms. Hence, those persons
who were then believed to have learned, in any way, the
will of God, and who consequently felt Justified in say-
ing before the peojjle, " Thus saith the Lord,^^ were led
to put their honest conception of His will into what was
generally received as the most forcible, and the most
appropriate, official form, which evidently must then
have been the form of a despotic command.

All normal human society has been shown to be the
association of God with man, based on an original and
continuing social contract between God and man. The
conception, first, of tlie Kingdom of God, and then of
the church, in imitation of it, as a rule or government
of God over man, is a purely heathen. Oriental, despotic,
and sacerdotal invention. It is the contrivance of some
ancient, forgotten ring of office-seekers and place-hunters;
but surviving, like other rings, in the consequences of its
evil deeds. It is a scheme designed to create a number of
well-paid priestly, or sacerdotal, j)wblic offices, parallel
in their emoluments, and in public estimation and

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 171

influence, with the class of political offices; thus throw-
ing a double burden on the people.

Although, at first, the political offices of the ancient
despotism, including the office of the despot himself,
were primarily supported by military power, and the
sacerdotal offices by idolatry and superstition, both sup-
ports afterwards became blended, and both classes of
public officers afforded to each other mutual protection;
until, in Christendom, in the middle ages, the sacerdotal
officers attempted, by usurped jjolitical power, to subor-
dinate to themselves the political officers, or the political
government.

It was in times of general ignorance that the sacerdotal
or ecclesiastical officers, calling themselves the church,
overcame by their so-called spiritual, or rather supersti-
tious weapons, the temporal weapons of the political gov-
ernment of the state; and asserted for themselves, in the
name of the church, but without any authority from the
jjeojile, a paramount government, with despotic temporal
power, over the whole world. Since the thirteenth cen-
tury, however, in proportion to the increase of public
intelligence in Christendom, the governmental author-
ity, the so-called temporal power, of the ecclesiastical
officers of the church, the hierarchy, has gradually
declined.

But, until very recently, in the second half of the
present century, the head, or Pope of the hierarchy, or
body of ecclesiastical officers of the larger portion of the
Christian churcli, the Eoman Catholic, has maintained,
with few interruptions, at Rome, over a circumscribed
mass of Italian political subjects, a despotic throne.

172 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

sliorn, indeed, of the splendor of mnch of the tem-
poral power it formerly symbolized beyond the limits of
Italy, but distinctly foreshadowing the hope of that
hierarchy to resume and extend over the whole world
the full measure of its former temporal power.

If the Pope has temporal power, as he claims, he is
clearly a despot; for there is no constitution emanating
from the people to limit his power, nor is he elected by
the people, or by representatives of the people. If the
temporal power claimed by the Pope and the hierarchy
is lawful, the Italians and the rest of the world are not
entitled to liberty. But if the Italians and the rest of
the world are entitled to liberty, as one of the boons of
Christianity, the temporal power claimed by the Pope
and the hierarchy is not lawful.

The hierarchy, in claiming temporal power, is not
only plainly aiming to set up a temporal government of
the hierarchy in opposition to the spiritual Kingdom of
God, but is also engaged, in opposition to the temporal
rights and liberty of the people, in a direct conflict
against the principle of civil representative democracy.

Both Saint Peter and Saint Paul, far from being mere
ecclesiastical shams and make-believes, are proved by
unquestionable records to have been honorable gentle-
men, as well as saints, in the best sense of those words;
and doubtless, in imitation of the master, whom they
openly and honestly professed to follow, they would
have scorned to claim a temporal power involving neces-
sarily a government "of this world," which he dis-
claimed. Nor is it possible to prove, that any unsophis-
ticated follower of Saint Peter or Saint Paul, or of their

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 173

common muster, can consistently claim, in his ecclesias-
tical capacity, any temporal power in opposition to the
political government of the state.

An ecclesiastical ring, with its government, is not
pecnliar to one religious denomination. It is found alike
among Jews, Mohammedans and Christians, Roman
Catholics and Protestants; except some Christian de-
nominations which have advanced to clearer notions of
the proper separation and independence of the church
from the state and of the state from the church.
Wherever there is an order of clergy separate from, and
claiming sujieriority to, the laity, there are the rudiments
of an ecclesiastical ring with its government, which,
although it may at present be impotent in deed, is evil
in its tendency.

If the Christian church, in all its divisions, or
branches, will reject its ecclesiastical ring and ecclesias-
tical government, and adoj)t a normal organization of the
church, according to the general organizing principle of
civil representative democracy; electing by the people
of each of its denominations, respectively, those whom
each chooses to honor and sujijiort as its religious leaders,
teachers, and officers; the whole church, by fair repre-
sentation, can easily be united in one organization, under
the general Christian tradition, as one Christendom, com-
bining all the religious zeal, the calm piety, and the
saintly devotion of the whole Christian body, as an
example to be followed by the other sections of the uni-
versal church.

The discussion leading to this result ought not to be
made to hinge on names of ecclesiastical distinctions that

174 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

have been heretofore acrimoniously used. But even the
old sectarian shibboleths that are employed to express
and hedge different shades of religious belief or diversities
of religious ceremonial and office — as Roman Catholic,
Old Catholic, Greek, Protestant, Presbyterian, Baptist,
Methodist, bishop, archbishop, presbyter, priest, pope,
deacon, elder, minister, pastor — may be emptied of their
uncharitable implications, and made to do good service
in designating indifferent outward forms of highly im-
portant things that are, respectively, essentially the
same at heart.

Even the word priest, which to many persons smacks
strongly of heathenism and of the old disj^ensation,
because it is used to translate the classical and the He-
brew words that signify the bloody, butchering sacrificers
of innocent animals, and even of men, upon the ancient
altars, is a perfectly innocent Anglo-Saxon contraction of
the familiar New Testament word presbyter, which
simply means elder.

When, by separating entirely, in a normal organization
of society, the integral organ of the church from the
integral organ of government, and assigning to each
what properly belongs to it and no more, the mock eccle-
siastical governments and their feuds are dispensed with,
there will be a reign of religious toleration and peace.
The social communion under one organization of the dif-
ferent religious denominations will not be prevented by
their various false dogmas, which will then bo left to
the enlightened discussion and calm judgment of the
rej)ublic of letters and art, to be finally settled in con-
formity with the First Principle.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 175

At the same time, tlie numerous benevoleut aud char-
itable orders and associations supported by those denom-
inations can be united with others in their common
charitable and benevolent aims in the integral organ of
charity.

78. The next practical error to be considered is an
error of organization in the republic, or integral organ,
of industry, leading to the prevailing general industrial
anarchy, or industrial war. The practical error of the
republic of industry is two-fold. First, it neglects the
separation of its general organization from the other
integral organs, and especially from the integral organ
of government; which, from ancient heathen times to
the present, has uniformly degraded, to the ultimate
injury of all the industrial classes, the class of working-
men; who, under the ancient despotic governments, were
slaves, under the feudal governments were serfs, and
under the modern governments are impoverished by
monopolies, privileges, and so-called protection, granted
to a few favorites. Secondly, it fails to secure among
all the industrial classes a co-operative union and organi-
zation based on the identity, in the long run, of their
respective interests.

The integral organ, or republic of industry, consists
of four distinct industrial classes, ideally separate and
integrally connected; each, therefore, interpenetrating
the rest, and all interoperating Avith each other — the
working-men, the employers, the capitalists, and the
consumers. In a higher state of society than the pres-
ent, the interests of the working-men and employers
will be considered so absolutely identical as to constitute

170 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

tliem one class, that of labor, the employers repre-
senting the highest grade of skilled labor; as in a still
higher state of society the interests of all the indus-
trial classes will be regarded as identical. But for the
present the four industrial classes named above will be
treated as distinct from each other.

In the arrangement of these classes, sex is here un-
noticed. Working men include working women, as enti-
tled to the same rights; and if it be said by the men that
most women are not producers, and are not concerned
in the general interests of productive industry, but are
properly limited to domestic work, the reply is, that
the domestic women as a class are the mothers of the
producers, and for this reason should Ije eminently re-
spected, an<I comfortably supported, in their domestic
work, l)y the men.

Seemingly, the evil eifects of the two-fold j^i'^ictical
error of the republic of industry are felt exclusively by
the class of working-men, whose loud comjolaints of
wrongs are heard, and whose multitudinous unions and
associations for obtaining redress are seen, throughout
the civilized world. But, as separate and distinct classes,
the employers, capitalists, and consumers suifer also, in
many instances, and in many respects, from the same
error. For the result of that two-fold error is the pre-
vailing universal industrial war, which threatens with
disaster and unsettles every industrial interest. In this
war, as in other wars, a few individuals, who in this
war are capitalists and emj^loyers, may heap up }dunder;
but among the multitudes disabled and stripped ujion
the industrial battle-field are many who have been

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 177

generous employers and liberal capitalists, and are com-
pelled to surrender to tlie temporary victors of their
own class the honest accumulations of a well-spent life,
and the very business by which they trusted to gain a
livelihood.

Yet, passing by the grievances of capitalists and em-
ployers, let us see what remedy can be applied to right
the wrongs of the working-men. For, if it does justice
to these, it must equally benefit the other classes. The
industrial elements, which all live alongside of each other
in society, like adjoining tribes, are labor, the business
capacity of employers, capital and consumption. Each
of these elements is indispensable to the rest. The
present industrial policy, which has led to the present
industrial war, is to arm each of these elements by a
hostile threatening combination against all the others.
This is the policy of ancient, heathen, offensive, con-
quering war; by which one tribe, instead of cultivating
with each adjoining tribe neighborliness and commercial
intercourse, which would enrich both, invades it, con-
quers it, robs it, enslaves it. Industry is a machine,
and the interest of all its parts is to keep it going, for
when one part stops, the whole stops. So, when con-
sumers strike, or boycott the producer, by refusing to
purchase goods, or by insisting on getting them for cost
or less, at a bargain; — that stops production, and injures
labor, capital and employer; when capital strikes, or
gets timid and withdraws from business; — that injures
labor, employer and consu2ner; when employers strike,
or lock out, or reduce wages; — that injures labor, capital
and consumer; and when labor strikes, that injures labor.

178 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

employer, capital and consumer. Thus, the working-
men suffer by every stoppage of industry, no matter
whose strike is tlie cause; and every industrial class can
strike, and when it pleases, does strike. It is evident,
therefore, that the remedy for the evils suffered by the
working-men must be the stoppage of those strikes,
which are the battles of the industrial war; and it is
equally evident that those battles, like the battles in
every other war, can only be stopped by negotiation,
through representatives of the parties to it, resulting in
a treaty or contract among them.

An industrial treaty of peace, then, among all the
industrial classes, adopted deliberately and based on
rational conditions, is the remedy demanded by the in-
terests of them all, and especially of the working-men.
But to accomplish a wise treaty leading to beneficial and
permanent industrial peace, it is not enough for the
contending parties to be banded or brigaded in hostile
armies; they must have a civil and national organization
which can appoint duly authorized agents to conduct
and conclude negotiations for peace. Mere military
bodies can at most make a temporary truce.

In order to bring about an industrial peace, it is
necessary for the republic of industry to correct its two-
fold practical error, preparatory to disbanding its hostile
and threatening combinations, its armies; and, after
separating itself from the government, to establish for
itself, in the way already pointed out, according to the
principle of civil representative democracy, a normal
social organization of all its industrial classes. This or-
ganization would include a general industrial legislature;

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 179

the resolutions of which, as industrial positive law,
would bind all the industrial classes, and place them, in
regard to each other, in normal and equitable relations.

The preliminary steps to this organization could be
taken by some concerted action of organized labor in-
viting to a conference with its representatives the repre-
sentatives of tlie numerous large organized bodies of
employers and capitalists; or the invitation to a confer-
ence could come from the other side; or, if neither of
these hostile parties would make tlie first move, the con-
sumer, as the equally interested body of the general pub-
lic, could proceed, of its own motion, to effect the neces-
sary general industrial organization.

It should be particularly noticed in the republic of
industry, that, according to the Semitic philoso2:)liy,
every normal association, by taking the First Principle
as its guide, virtually has God as a leading or controlling
member, and according to his known Avill, must seek not
only its own, but also the public welfare, in conformity
with the general social contract.

It may also be added, that as all legitimate capital,
besides the direct gifts of God, originally consists in the
labor and wages saved by the working-man, there also
belongs to the working-man, according to liis skill, indus-
try, and character, the opportunity to become an em-
ployer and a capitalist; and that, accordingly, while
many if not most of the employers are or luive been
working-men, a large proportion of the vast capital of the
savings banks belongs to working-men, or has been accu-
mulated by them for their families. But, in addition to
the opportunities of advancement open to the individual

180 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

working-man, it is }>liiin that if a large number of work-
ing-men known to each other will associate themselves
as a corporation, under capable directors of their own
choice, and will pool their labor and their savings, as a
labor bank, which, if Avell managed, Avould soon take the
place of the present savings banks, they can advance
their savings in suitable sums, Avell secured, and their
labor of different kinds in gangs, by contracts guaranteed
on both sides against strikes, and in other respects, on
business jirinciplcs, to employers of labor. Thus, work-
ing-men^ by In'inging their own labor and their own cap-
ital into profitable co-operation, can not only place their
capital in friendly competition with other capital, but can
also influence in their favor, and at the same time greatly
benefit, such employers as they approve.

Such labor banks, ably conducted, would be highly
conservative. They would practically secure the har-
mony, and thereby demonstrate the identity, of the inter-
ests of all the industrial classes; furnishing cajntal to the
employers, and work to the working-men, and thus
enlarging, for the benefit of other capitalists and of the
consumers alike, the scojie of the general business of
transportation and distribution; while, according to the
principles of industrial economy, as distinguished from
so-called political economy, the dangers of overproduc-
tion would be avoided by the industrial statistics, and the
facility of intercommunication and consultation among
the producers, which would be furnished by the normal
general organization of the republic of industry.

In contrast with the conservative general industrial
organization, and its labor banks of working-men, as

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 181

above described, the radical socialistic notion of vesting
all capital in the government should receive a passing
notice. A few obvious considerations Avill show that the
socialistic scheme based on this notion opposes the social
contract, by pauperizing the masses, and thus depriving
individuals of the power to charitably help their fellow-
men; as it would cut off the career of advancement of the
industrious, intelligent, prudent, and moral working-man,
by compelhng all to share the same lot with the idle,
improvident, and sensual — the evident lot of ultimate
equal pauperism, barbarism, and slavery. For this
scheme would make the government the sole capitalist,
and virtually the sole or chief employer, without any
competition to check the rapacity of the central political
ring, which necessarily, on account of the extreme com-
plication of the machinery of the government, would
rule with despotic power, and would doubtless repeat
the old story of the many governed and utilized by
the few. Thus, this scheme would intensify, in the
highest degree, the very evils now charged to the hos-
tile combination of capital and employers against labor;
but which, it has been shown, may be entirely removed
by the rational harmonious action of all the industrial
classes.

79. The practical error of the integral organ, or
republic, of public charity, besides its omission to com-
plete its separate general organization, in the form
already indicated, is its failure, in cases of aggravated
and widespread moral delinquency, threatening great pub-
lic disaster, to invoke, in support of its efforts for public

182 SEMITIC nilLOSOPHY.

moral reform, tlie aid of the moral authority, fortified
by the physical jjower, of the government.

In early rude societies, merely moral offences are not
generally noticed; public crimes are of few kinds, and
the public moral reformer does ]iot walk abroad. N"ew
kinds of crimes, because not at first regarded as such,
are for a long time committed, not only Avith impunity,
but also without rejj roach; until public conscience, dis-
closing their true nature, modifies in regard to them the
public 023inion, and the public opinion modifies the
public hiw, causing it to declare them criminal, and, as
such, punishable. From time to time, in the progress of
society, some apparently merely moral delinquencies of
little seeming public interest, have from changing cir-
cumstances in the environment of society, become dan-
gerous to the social order; and the government has felt
itself bound to stigmatize them as public crimes, and to
impose upon them severe jjunishments.

For instance, Avhen personal property was of small
comparative value, and was usually kept in the owner's
immediate possession, almost the only crimes recognized
by the old law, in regard to personal property, were lar-
ceny, or private stealing, and robbery; as they involved
a fi-audulent or forcible taking away of jiersonal prop-
erty from tbe possession of the owner, against his will.
But, if the owner voluntarily parted with tlie possession
of personal j)i"operty, there Avas no public crime com-
mitted when the person to whom it Avas entrusted con-
verted it to his own use. For a breach of trust Avas not
tlien regarded as a criminal offence, but a mere moral
delinquency.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 183

But, when transactions of trade, that required the
money or other personal property of one person to he
entrusted to another, increased in number and impor-
tance, breaches of trust became an injury to the public,
and they were considered as violations of the higher law
of principle, and as illegal. Positive laws were then
enacted by the government to declare them public
crimes, and to impose upon them definite punishments.
So, there are many other acts that were formerly com-
mitted with impunity, and, in the case of duelling, with
even decided public approbation, that have now been
stigmatized and are punished by the law, as odious public
crimes.

From the experience of the past, it must be con-
sidered probable, that, with the advance of society in
intelligence, in religion, and in morality, and with the
increasing complication of human affairs, requiring their
regulation by the far reaching and consistent system of
the First Principle, other instances of acts committed
now, not only with impunity, but without any suspicion
of their criminality, by multitudes of individuals, will
be found, on examination, to be highly injurious to
the public, and as such both immoral and of evil
public example, or criminal. Such acts, in an enlight-
ened community, by whomsoever committed, even by
individuals in criminal ignorance of the criminality of
their acts, must be condemned in the public conscience,
not only as private immoral practices, but also as public
wrongs in violation of the social contract; because these
acts are injurious to the public, while the social contract
requires that all acts, whether of individuals or of

184 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

associations, must, if not indifferent, conduce to the
public welfare.

But, when the public conscience is thoroughly awak-
ened in regard to acts of individuals producing any
pul>lic wrong, it will steadily direct the public opinion
of the people to the practical steps necessary to prevent
such acts. Nor can it be doubted that a moderate law
called for by the public conscience for this purpose,
declaring such acts of individuals to be criminal and
punishable, will be enforced with all the power of the
aroused public conscience, and of the enlightened and
instructed public opinion of the people, so as to i)re-
vail triumphantly among their masses; aud that the
opposers of it, however self-sufficient in their own pri-
vate estimation, will be publicly set down among the
other criminal classes, and will be treated accordingly.

That intoxication or drunkenness is a monstrous pub-
lic evil, and that, being voluntarily or intentionally
inflicted, it is a grave public wrong, is undoubted.
Equally certain is the fact, that it is the use of intoxi-
cating drinks or drugs by individuals, that produces this
public wrong. The conclusion is inevitable that the act
of individuals in using intoxicants, in itself, and as an
evil public example, is criminal. It is a mistaken
notion to regard the makers and sellers of intoxicants as
exclusively responsible for the public evil caused by their
use. The makers and sellers of intoxicants are guilty as
aiders and abettors of the crime of those that use them;
but the principal criminals, primarily guilty of the great
public wrong voluntarily inflicted on the public by intox-
ication or drunkenness, are those by whom intoxicants

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 185

are used. For, if intoxicants were not used, they would
not be made, and they could not be sold, to produce
intoxication; although they might be made and sold for
an innocent purpose, as for use in the arts.

When the public conscience becomes aware of the true
state of the case, and sees Avho are the most guilty parties
in the perjietration of the public wrong of general intox-
ication, it will stir up the public opinion to frame and
enforce a stern but moderate law placing the use of
intoxicants among the most baneful public crimes. It
may seem to many a harsh measure, to forbid by law
what they esteem the agreeable stimulation caused by
the use of intoxicating drinks; but, when society has
advanced to a higher plane of cultured civilization by
stamping out the crime of intoxication, with all its bru-
talizing consequences, the proposition to allow the use
of intoxicants, and thus to debauch the rising pure gen-
eration, would shock the community quite as much as
\Could a proposition now to restore the former impunity
for breaches of trust, and to place the vast accumulations
of capital in public institutions, as well as the funds of
private individuals, at the mercy of those entrusted with
them; so that they could do with them as they please,
without the fear of criminal prosecution for the breach
of their trust by embezzlement.

Intoxication having been handed down to us as a relic
of ancient Oriental heathenism, being described in the
Vedas, the oldest religious books of the Aryan race, as a
part of the ceremonial worship of a god of intoxication,
called Soma in those books, Dionysos by the Greeks, and
Bacchus by the Romans, a strong effort for its abolition

186 ■ SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY,

is a plain duty of the integral organ, or republic of public
charity, the integral organ of Christian society that is
charged with the work of moral reform.

But, wliile the republic of public charity, to aid its
practical efforts and moral suasion to this end, is entitled
to call upon the government to perform its duty in this
respect by the enactment of proi^er criminal legisla-
tion, it is equally entitled to require it to abstain from
interference with the proper work of the integral organ
of public charity, either by illegal and extravagant per-
version of public funds, contributed for governmental
purposes, to ill-advised and pernicious almsgiving, as in
pensions not fairly earned; or by enforcing with the
power of the government the pretensions of one class
of citizens demanding, as sturdy beggars, gratuitous con-
tributions from the rest. For neither are alms illegally
lavished from an overflowing treasury, nor are contri-
butions from the poor exacted by governmental force for
the benefit of the craving rich, charity, and as little
are they justice; but they tend not only to pauperize
the masses, but also to demoralize the whole of the
community.

Intolerance, being the greatest enemy to charity,
should be altogether Ijanished from the whole integral
organ, or republic of charity. The different charitable
and benevolent associations in each of the five general
classes of associations that are assigned, respectively, for
relieving the strain and facilitating the normal work of
each of the five integral organs of society, should then
combine in the general organization of its class, without
regard to the religious distinctions prevalent in the

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 187

sej)arate associations. This action would produce a pow-
erful concentration of charitable force in each of five
parallel lines of charitable effort. These lines, by an
extension of liberal culture, with increasing human sym-
pathy, according to the general drift of the First Princi-
ple, can then be drawn, by the attraction of mutual love,
to converge to one center of integral charitable power.
This could bo made to bear harmoniously, at once, by
instruction, moral and religions insjjiration, industrial
employment, material aid with friendly encouragement,
and governmental justice, on the eradication of the roots
of immorality and crime, sprung from uncultured mono-
theistic idolatry, and growing from the soil of igno-
rance, irreligious, immoral, unsympathetic social conver-
sation, destitution, and the enticing impunity of gross
offenders.

The present lack of organization is most important in
the class of charitable associations intended to co-operate
with the government. One branch of these would aid
the ultimate purpose of the government by converting
the punishment into tlie reformation of criminals; while
another branch would promote, in practical social inter-
course, the general cultivation of the social ideals, by
providing first-rate, aesthetic, rational, and cheap public
entertainments.

It will then be seen that charity is as paramount as
the apostle describes it; and that, by completely organ-
izing it, society will thoroughly humanize and reform
itself.

80. In the republic of government the practical error
of faulty organization not only prevails in its action as

188 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

a whole, by its usurping functions of the other integral
organs; but also both by the absence of normal organi-
zation and by the prevalence of abnormal organization in
each of its four partial organs, and in its extraordinary
undenominational governmental representative assembly,
or convention. The usurpation by it of functions of
other integral organs has been explained. The partial
organs of the government, as before mentioned, are (a)
its political parties; (b) its ordinary governmental legis-
lature; (c) its body of executive officers, and (d) its
legal profession.

81. (a) Political parties are the outward mechanism
of the people's collectiA^e thought, leading to their col-
lective practical action. They are based on the truism
that every question has two sides, while some questions
have more than two. Every struggle of political parties
involves a public debate, in which each jjarty embraces
one side of the leading question of immediate and con-
trolling public interest, and brings into the general dis-
cussion all pertinent arguments in support of its side;
so that every individual citizen, by giving due attention
to the arguments of all the political parties, can determine
understandingly the side with which he agrees, and can
then give practical effect to his determination by his vote.

As political parties, with the First Princijile, have all
principles in common, the questions on which jjolitical
parties differ cannot be questions of principle; but must
be applications of principle, or practical measures. For
the same reason, political parties as distinguished from
factions, must be honorable associations; and as normal

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 189

associations, each must have as its end the general wel-
fare of the public.

It must be remembered that the people can act col-
lectively otherwise than as political parties. There are
questions which, in private judgment, can have more
than one side — as questions regarding action towards a
public enemy, or the discharge of public obligations; but
which, in their public aspect, can have but one proper
issue, can lead to but one set of patriotic measures.
There are also elections held for public offices that are
entirely unconnected with the questions debated by
political parties. There are likewise periods when the
proper work of existing political parties, or of those
which have chiefly divided the public, seems, by the final
adoption or rejection of their respective practical meas-
ures, to be accomplished; and when, accordingly, the pub-
lic attention, looking away from those measures, and from
the parties which have supported or contested them, is
variously directed either to questions hitherto regarded
as of secondary importance, but now claiming the first
rank of public interest; or to questions newly emerging
on the horizon of the boundless and ever moving sea of
public debate; so that individuals, without regard to
their former political affiliations, will be grouped around
these new questions, and will form new parties for the
support or rejection, respectively, of the practical meas-
ures which these questions suggest. In all these cases
the j)eople will be compelled, for a time, to act independ-
ently of the organization of any political party, and
entirely upon their own individual responsibility. Thus

190 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

we see the limit to wliicli the proper action of political
parties extends, and beyond which it cannot go.

The organization of a political party, like that of
every other large association, is designed to produce the
intelligent and concerted action of its members. Its
intelligent action can only be promoted by the free inter-
course and conference of its members. Its concert of
action can only be effected by means of fair representa-
tion, by reliable delegates, duly authorized to act for it
by its primary meetings, and uniting in a central repre-
sentative meeting for deliberation and joint action.

The" prevalent abuses of the organizations of political
parties are two-fold. In the first place, no provision is
made for the free public intercourse and habitual con-
ference with each other of the meml)ers of each party,
in their jndmary neighborhoods, whenever so disjoosed.
Hence, the individuals composing the masses of a party
hardly ever meet each other except on the day of an
election, and then only to ratify by their votes the action
taken in their name by a few persons without actually
consulting them. It is probable, that this abuse has
arisen from the fact that, in the beginning of a jDolitical
party, a few persons, by their strenuous advocacy of its
measures, and by their untiring activity in executing its
behests, acquire, as they deserve, its almost unbounded
confidence, and are almost exclusively entrusted with the
management of its affairs; and that afterwards, in vari-
ous ways, other persons succeed to the position and
authority of these original managers, without having the
same titles to the party's regard. Thus, the masses of
the party are led to take final action by their vote, without

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 191

previously taking together any j^reparatory counsel. In
the next place, this abuse leads to the formation within the
party of the other consequential, or rather connate and
twin abuse, of a non-representative governing, or despotic,
ring. The ring is formed by the most ancient despotic
device of governing the many by the few. Consultation
on the general affairs of the party being dispensed with,
the attendance on the primary meetings is small, and can
always be controlled by a few trained retainers in the
interest of a smaller few, constituting the ring. 8uch
are the prevalent two-fold abuses of the organization of
political parties.

The obvious remedy for both of these abuses is to
provide in each neighborhood, or smallest locality in
which primary political meetings are held, convenient
houses with separate rooms, as permanent places in
which, at all seasons, the members of each political
party may meet by themselves for consultation and
counsel in advance of the regular periods for making
nominations of candidates, and for elections; so that the
general body of members, the militia, of each party,
may have an opportunity both to become acquainted
with each other's views, and to be well informed of all
significant movements having a political bearing, whether
within or without the party; and thus to be quite as
well prepared as the trained bands of the ring, not only
for sending reliable delegates to the nominating con-
ventions, but also for casting their votes at the general
elections.

The arrangement of these neighborhood houses, and
of corresponding central houses, the rules for appor-

193 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

tioniiig their ajjartments to the differeut political par-
ties, for loaning them, by courtesy, to other associations
and to the public for occasional meetings, and the pro-
priety of furnishing them with books and papers, need
not detain us.

The importance of encouraging the conference of the
members of a jiolitical jiarty in its several neighborhoods,
by providing the proper means for it, will be ajiparent,
when the magnitude of the pnljlic evils caused by the
ring, and brought about by the want of those conven-
iences, is considered.

The Tirst Pri]ieij)le, and the social contract founded
upon it, the public conscience, and the private con-
science of each individual, all teach that it is the duty
of every citizen towards his fellov/ citizens to act, and
therefore to vote, honestly. lie is bound to vote with
his best and most deliberate judgment, intelligently, if
he can; but at all events honestly. Montesquieu, in his
book entitled "Spirit of the Laws," publishe<l a little
before the middle of the eighteenth century, asserts that
the peculiar and distinguishing princijile of a republic is
virtue.

This position has been abundantly proved by others.
But the ring of a jiolitical party directly antagonizes the
fundamental j^rincii^le of the republic, by habitually
engaging, and using for the accomplishment of its crim-
inal ends, mercenary, that is dishonest, votes; thus cor-
rujiting the political life of the people, and thereby
committing the highest political crime. For this action
of tlie ring attacks and impairs the sovereignty of the
people, a crime for which the jieople, in self-defense, are

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 193

justified in inflicting tlie highest punishment. The legal
action of the people is declared by the honest votes cast
at an election; the ring undertakes to nullify and defeat
the action of the people by dishonest votes. The ring
thus engages in a conflict with the people, and it should
be prepared, when clearly convicted, to suffer the penalty
of its high crime.

The bribes used by the ring to corrupt voters are of
several different kinds. They are public oftices, public
contracts or jobs, and public legislation for private ben-
efit, besides money directly paid as bribes to voters.

The public offices in Avliich the ring deals are of two
classes. The first class are the leading elective jiolitical
offices, by which the general policy and administration
of the government are shaped. In disj)osing of these
offices the worst and most insidiously demoralizing
influence of the ring is developed. These offices form
the legitimate career of all seeking political distinction
among their fellow citizens, and the privilege of doing
service to the public. They should be open to the fair
competition of every honorable ambition, and especially
to the generous asjiirations of the young, who may be
encouraged in their political aims by the sympathy, the
approbation, and the public spirit of their neighbors.
But the candidates for these oftices are soon made aware,
that unless they are willing to do disgraceful homage to
the ring, by pledging their oflicial action to serve its
ends, they will meet its irresistible opposition. Hence,
the ring, except in the case of strong personalities and
great talents that have acquired a wide popularity inde-

194 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

pendent of its influence, can use the promise of tliese
of&ces to bribe asjnrants.

The other class of public offices used as bri})es by the
ring are those which have no connection with the avowed
policy of any political party — this jiolicy being usually
based on national political questions — and which offices
can be equally well administered for the interest of the
public by any incumbent, otherwise proj^erly qualified,
without regard to his political opinions. Such are
judicial offices, clerkshi2)s of the courts, sheriffalties,
mayoralties of cities, and other leading municipal offices,
besides the great array of purely ministerial executive
offices that are disposed of by the ring as the spoils of
party victory, in pursuance of its bargain with the class
of leading elective political officers. Such of these non-
political offices as are elective are disposed of by the ring
in the same way as the class of elective political offices
properly connected Avith jiolitical parties, and with the
same exceptions, by prostituting and utilizing the organ-
ization of political parties in elections that should be
independent of it. The remaining offices of this class,
being the purely ministerial executive offices that are
conferred by the appointment of elective executive chiefs,
are distributed according to the influence, and the ante-
cedent bargains, of the ring with those chiefs, express or
implied, concerning them.

The resources of the ring for bribery by public con-
tracts or jobs, have been much curtailed by the open
public competition for them demanded by public 02)inion.
But public legislation for private benefit continues to be

SEMITKJ I'lIll.oSOPHY. 195

an unmitigated source of public grievance and of wide-
spread corruption.

The money directly paid by the ring to bribe voters,
and contributed in large sums by persons of great
wealth, who also claim to be highly respectable, but who,
if they have even a small measure of intelligence, must
know that it will be expended for that juirpose, is a foul
insult to the majesty, as well as a bold attack upon the
sovereignty, of the people. It may be, and it seems
probable, that rings in both of the great political parties
are guilty of this crime. If so, the honest members
of both political parties should unite to bring the guilty
to condign punishment. For, it must be repeated, that
political parties, as distinguished from factions, are hon-
orable associations.

To check these briberies on the part of the ring, and to
preserve equality among the members of political jmrties,
the expenses of each party should be kejjt within narrow
limits, and confined to strictly legitimate and necessary
objects; should be defrayed by nearly equal and small
contributions, or assessments i\j)on every member able to
pay them, and should be exactly recorded in a regular
system of accounts; nor should any member be allowed
to impose obligations on his fellow members by larger
contributions; nor should any candidate be expected
to pay more than any other member of the party towards
the expenses of an election held to promote the views
and interests of the party.

When the ring performs its work, its leaders are rarely
seen. Its common members are indistinguishable from
the crowd. For all that are not within it, the ring is

196 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

invisible^ impersonal, a mere chimera of the imagina-
tion, a tiling ''without a local habitation or a name."
Yet, in reality, it is an nbiqiiitons, despotic institution,
exerting upon political parties vast, oppressive, degrad-
ing and malignant power.

The ring, as it uses dishonorable means, does not
belong to the j^arty, but is a potent unseen faction within
it, — a baleful parasitic growth. It preys upon the vitals
of the party; and it compels those portions of it which it
cannot corrupt to become, however reluctantly, its tools,
by voting for its nominees, on what is called the party's
ticket.

The registration, however exact, of voters, and the
secret deposit, however guarded, of votes, are no protection
against either the legion of bribed actually registered
voters, or the unlimited number of unregistered votes, at
the command of the ring, while it controls the machinery
of the party's organization. There can be no purity of
election, no party action at once honorable and efficient,
until the ring, the despotic, non-representative scheme to
rule by force or fraud the many by the few, is extinguished.
Nor can this be done except by abolishing dishonesty,
with the present facilities for dishonesty, in politics.

It is idle to inveigh against the ring. It thrives upon
maledictions. Its evil fame invites, by the hope of its
wicked aid, the strong support of the unscrupulous hosts
that seek by ignoble means the ends, either of sordid
avarice, or of soaring, as well as of groveling, ambition.

The ring works in darkness, by preparing secretly, in
advance of the primary meetings, their attendance and
their action. Its secrecy is its strength. The only way

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 197

to destroy the ring, therefore, is to throw the glare of day
upon its operations. This can be done by permanently
locating the primary meetings in the smallest local
neighborhoods, and providing, in the way before described,
architectural conveniences for the habitual public inter-
course of the honest masses of the party in the intervals
between the formal primary meetings which transact the
local business of the party. Thus, when these meetings
take place, every man knowing his neighbor and his
neighbor's views, and no opportunity being presented for
secret machinations, the masses of the party, acting with
full knowledge of what the occasion demands, can easily
overcome, by a fair majority vote, in these probably full,
zealous and instructed meetings, the drilled few of the
ring.

Although political parties now are chiefly national,
they may become, for different objects, Interrace, inter-
national, state or provincial, and municipal.

88. (b) The governmental legislature is virtually a
union of committees elected, respectively, by the different
political parties, and authorized to meet together for
joint action ; and by such action to bind, as public agents,
or representatives, the whole peoijle. The action of the
legislature expressing the common resolutions of the peo-
ple, and resulting from the conference of their authorized
agents, is in form as well as in substance a public con-
tract, and, like all contracts, requires for its validity
perfect good faith.

Hence, the remarks made before concerning the ab-
normal action of political parties, and the elimination

198 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

from them of tlie pernicious influence of tlie ring, apply
to tlie legislature.

Grovernmental legislatures have different local spheres.
While in theory they may be Interrace and international,
they are, in fact, national, state or provincial, and
municipal, the latter embracing rural as well as urban
districts.

The defects in the organization of the system of gov-
ernmental legislatures are conspicuous in the absence of
such legislatures for local spheres that greatly need them.
The connected system of graduated local legislatures may
be called the system of home rule.

The principle of home rule is, that the inhabitants, or
citizens, of every local sphere, from a neighborhood to a
nation or a race, are competent to determine by legislation
all questions relating exclusively to their sphere. Under
this principle, there can be no conflict of proper or normal
legislation.

France and the British Empire are examples of the
violation of this rule. Both have too much central leg-
islation for local affairs. France needs local legislatures
for its dejiartments, or provinces, and for its communes.
The British Empire requires local legislatures, or parlia-
ments, for England as well as for Ireland, Scotland, and
Wales, and for some of its municipal districts, both urban
and rural, and esjoecially for the large municipal district
of London, which is most unjustly and unaccountably,
in view of its vast intrinsic power, deprived of home rule
in its exclusively local affairs.

In the United States of America, home rule in practice
is generally carried out. But some of the state courts

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 109

have absurdly ignored the princiiilo of home rule, by
decidiug that the municipal governments of large cities,
as Baltimore and New York, are mere creatures of
their state legislatures; whereas, according to that prin-
ciple of law, the people of any municipal district have a
perfect right ^o set up a municipal government for their
exclusively local affairs, quite independent of the state
government; while the people of the municipal district
are subject to the state government in matters exclusively
affecting the state. Heiice, municipal constitutions, as
distinguished from municipal charters, should be of co-
ordinate authority with state constitutions, each in its
respective sphere. Likewise Interrace and international
legislatures are needed to settle Interrace and inter-
national questions.

Another defect in the organization of many govern-
mental legislatures is the inequality of the numbers of
the voters represented by the individual members of
the legislature.

Of this inequality of i-epresentation the most re-
markable example is the Senate of the United States.
The provision of the Constitution of the United States,
which, in violation of the principle of representation,
assigns two and only two representatives to each state, is a
monumental survival, as slavery was, of ancient abuses
which the framers of the Constitution were unable to
overcome. It is a part of the ancient despotic system of
governing the many by the few. It has made the Senate
a blot on the political system of America, and should
have been abolished with slavery, its twin political mon-
strosity.

200 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

The provision in the Constitution of the United States
forbidding its amendment in tlie matter of the represen-
tation of the small as well as the large states by two
members in the Senate, regardless of the difference in the
population of the states, is, like slavery, a violation of
legal and political principle, or of the higher law. It is
a violation of the principle of representation, which
demands approximate equality, so far as practicable, in
the numbers represented by each delegate. As slavery
was a violation of the principle of personal liberty, this
provision of the Constitution is a violation of the princi-
ple of representation involved in the principle of civil
representative democracy, by which alone personal liberty
can be effectually protected by the organic and con-
certed action of the people.

This provision of the Constitution, therefore, is illegal;
and justice, as well as a proper sense of self-respect in all
the states — for the exercise of illegal authority is more
degrading in a moral point of view to him who exercises
it than to him who is subjected to it — demands its elimi-
nation by a proper amendment. Although it is a mere
nullity, as illegal, public convenience requires that in the
removal of it the forms of a regular constitutional amend-
ment should be observed.

Approximate equality of representation is all that can
be reasonably required, and this can be easily attained.
All unnecessary departures from it are violations of prin-
ciple, and, like all violations of principle, they imply
their own condemnation. They prevail so glaringly in
some local legislatures in the United States, that they
need no further remark, except to say that they are

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 301

notoriously continued for the benefit of rings of tlie
political parties.

The abuse of governmental legislatures in legislating
for the special advantage of individuals, as distinguished
from the general public, has already been mentioned in
connection with the rings of political parties; but it is
also the result of a defect of the general governmental
organization. For, if the government keeps strictly
within its proper organization, it will not interfere with
industrial affairs, vdiicli belong exclusively to the integral
organ of iiulustry, by which they should be regulated.

But, as it cannot be denied that the government has
the right to raise revenue necessary for its proper pur-
poses by duties on imports, it should neutralize the inci-
dental interference with industrial pursuits, caused by
such duties, by adjusting them on a sliding scale; impos-
ing the highest duties on articles produced abroad by the
lowest rate of wages, and the lowest duties on articles
produced abroad by the highest wages. Otherwise, the
government, by the incidental protection of such duties
to particular industries, not to speak of direct protection
to them, would reverse the part played by the senti-
mental and benevolent highwayman of romance, who
remorselessly robbed the rich, but liberally bestowed his
gains upon the poor; it would plunder the poor, who are
the masses of the people, to enrich the wealthy.

83. (c) The body of executive officers, in the civil ser-
vice of the people, gives rise to great abuses on account of
its defective organization. These abuses have been suffi-
ciently indicated in what has been said concerning the
rings in the political parties. They could be avoided by

202 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

making the appointments to office dependent on exam-
inations similar to those in tlie military service, with the
same tenure of office, and privilege of promotion.

In the military service, the abuses are those incident
generally to standing armies, and in a less degree to
standing navies; and they can only be cured by abol-
ishing the standing army and navy, and by suljstituting
for them a properly organized and trained militia, for
land and sea service. The European governments would
require a preliminary international, or even Interrace
agreement for a general disarmament, before they could
disbaiul their regular armies and navies. The United
States of America would experience the same necessity,
in regard to its navy; but no such difficulty need prevent
them from substituting at once, for its regular army, the
militia, mustering in small quotas from all the states and
territories, for short terms of service, aggregating about
the same number as the present regular army, to do the
same duties, with the same organization, drill, and pay.
Under proper regulations, the best material would volun-
teer; and if only the best were accepted, the service
would be a source of honor.

Indeed, the illegal employment of the regular army
in executing the Eeconstruction Act of Congress, is a
sufficient warning that the change cannot be made too
soon in the United States.

84. (d) The legal profession also is prevented from
doing effectually the duty it owes to the public by a
defective organization.

It is evident that the legal profession, or the profes-
sional lawyers, those who give legal advice, prepare

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY, 203

legal papers, argue and decide cases in court, should,
on account of their common interest, as respects both
each other and the public, be organized as a national
and international, and in time, an Interrace guild.

The legal guild would not be a close corporation, but
its membership would be accorded with the utmost lib-
erality to all qualified members of the public, and would
include all the legal profession in a normal association.

A notable defect of the partial organization of the
legal profession of the United States of America, is that
it is cliicfly composed of bar associations of several cities,
united as a national bar association; but that it is far
from including all classes of the legal profession, or all
the members of even one class.

Similar defects occur in the partial organizations of
the legal profession elsewhere. But all classes of the
legal profession, — barristers, counselors, pleaders, convey-
ancers, attorneys, solicitors, proctors, as well as judges
— should be brought under one organization in each
nation; so that these national organizations in each race
may unite in an international organization, and the
international organizations, in time, may combine to
form an Interrace organization, whenever this shall be
needed.

In this way, the good, bad, and indifferent members
of the legal profession will be brought under the uniform
regulation and discipline of the majority, composed of its
reputable members, for the equal benefit of the profes-
sion and of the public. The legal profession would thus
become a public guild and a normal association, seeking,
besides the benefit of its members, the public welfare.

204 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

The association of all the members of the legal profes-
sion in one organization, will afford opportunity for gen-
eral public discussions, among them, of the great legal
questions, as they successively arise, that must affect the
decision of proposed public measures; and the general
agreement of the legal profession on such questions
would be a useful guide to tlie people.

When the legal profession, in its judicial, or official,
and in its lay, or practicing branch, shall be systematic-
ally organized, its title to be considered as one of the
partial organs of government, co-ordinate with the
others, will l)e evident; and its legitimate influence on
the conduct of public affairs will be clearly apparent, and
fully acknowledged. For like each of the other partial
organs of the government, the legal profession, in a par-
ticular way, represents the people.

The political parties are, and so represent, the people,
bodily; the ordinary governmental legislature is directly
or indirectly elected hj the people, and so represents
them; tlie body of executive officers represents the
people, because in part elected by the people directly,
and in part appointed indirectly by the people, as by
those directly elected and authorized by the people to do
so; while the legal profession, as a committee volunteer-
ing to act for the rest of the people, in answering, dis-
cussing and deciding questions of law, according to
principle, and in preparing legal papers, is tacitly con-
firmed by them, and in this way represents the people.
Indeed, the legal profession is the people, so far as
they choose to enter that profession, which is free to
them, when they acquire the necessary qualifications;

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 205

and the whole people are, to a certain extent, lawyers,
inasmuch as they are continually considering and deter-
mining, not professionally, but for themselves, the ques-
tions of law that are involved in most of the practical
measures of every-day life; while only in a few cases they
apply for assistance to lawyers by profession. Besides,
the official or judicial branch of the legal profession, for
Avhom tlie lay branch are chiefly aids or assistants, are
either directly elected by the people, or are indirectly
appointed by them through elective executive officers.

The legal profession, when fitly organized, should and
could take care, by proper regulations, to raise the stand-
ard of qualification of its members, by insisting on a
preparation for them of liberal culture, leading to a
supreme regard for j^rinciple. For it would require a
preliminary study of the science of jurisprudence, the
basis of which, as of every science, is the First Principle
of the Semitic Philosophy. In its legal aspect, indeed,
this First Principle, being, in fact, the basis of the
original and continuing social contract, and hence of
the general organization of society, of the resulting gen-
eral organization of society's integral organ of govern-
ment, and of the separate general organization of the
government's partial organ, the legal profession, is most
appropriately considered as the scientific foundation of
jurisprudence. This First Principle of the Semitic Phil-
osophy, and not the heathen Greek and Eoman Stoic
natural law, is the Christian natural law, sometimes
called the higher law, the universal common law, the
perfection of reason, or the law of God; being distin-

206 • SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

guiBhed, as divine and perfect sovereign equity, from
hnman and imperfect j^ositive law.

Case law should be studied to pursue the development
of legal jirincijDles realized in practice. The rejwrts are
mines in which principles, few and far between, are
found, embedded in much poor ore and mere rubbish.

When a principle, or rule, is evolved out of one or
more cases, it must be established on grounds of reason,
and then the principle, or rule, lives on inde^iendently of
the cases; and the cases, except the few having a his-
torical interest, may be consigned to oblivion.

A rule, ignorantly adopted, not bottomed on reason,
may, according to the debatable maxim '■^ stare decisis,"
be called law, as the imj)lied ground of contracts or
other business presumably based on it; but when it is
shown to be opposed to principle or reason, it must be
disregarded, as conflicting with the higher law.

Positive law, although in ancient heathen despotisms
and in their modern imitations it appears in the form of
a command, is in normal society that approximates to
the scheme of civil representative democracy, a voluntary
rule adopted by the people for their social co-operation;
and thus it partakes of the nature of a contract. Ac-
cording to the end of the co-operation it is designed to
promote, it will differ in each of the integral organs of
society. Thus, there is an educational positive law, a
religious positive law, an industrial positive law, a chari-
table positive law, and a governmental positive law.
Positive law also has different degrees of generality; as
municipal, national, international and Interrace.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 307

The positive law with which the legal profession is
primarily concerned, is the governmental. Bnt the skill
it acquires in framing and interpreting governmental
positive law, may be called into requisition in regard to
the positive law of the other integral organs of society.
The fact also that the legal profession is required to be
versed in the discovery, maintenance, and application of
principles, in connection with positive law, causes its
members of reputation to be called upon for their opinion
and advocacy in all social questions involving lorincijile,
not only iii all the other partial organs of the govern-
ment, but also in all the other integral organs of society.

Thus, by the suitable organization of the legal pro-
fession, its influence and its usefulness, by its advocacy
of principle, will be increased to so great an extent, that
a leading part will be assigned to it in that general
development of the First Principle Avhich must bring
about the next impending great social revolution. Nor
would the peculiar work of the legal profession, the intro-
duction of uniformity, system, and brevity in the general
written positive law, and the extension of the field of
scientific jurisprudence, to embrace the races of man-
kind, as the units of universal society, with rational
Interrace rights and duties, be the least of the benefits
which that reformation would produce.

85. Having concluded our examination of the defect-
ive organization of the four partial organs of the gov-
ernment, that constitute its denominational organization,
we will proceed to the consideration of its defective unde-
nominational organization, or its extraordinary unde-
nominational governmental convention; which, in respect

208 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

to the special objects of its call, and according to its gen-
eral or local sphere, is authorized to exert the reserved
sovereign power of the people.

The undenominational organization, or convention,
of the government is general or local. Its usual gen-
eral form needs little change. Its varying local form
is so defective that it must be regarded as merely
inchoate, and as needing great improvement.

(1) It should be observed that its general form is sel-
dom called into action. But these occasions are com-
monly preceded by so much general discussion, showing
the necessity for a general convention, and designating
the points which it will be called on to determine, that
the people, without distinction of political parties, can
readily assemble in jirimary meetings, in the usual places,
and elect delegates to nominate members of the con-
vention, who will then be elected in the usual way by
the votes of the people. It seems, therefore, super-
fluous here to suggest organic changes in the usual
methods of conducting popular elections, since these
methods will be as sufficient for the formation of an
undenominational convention as for other purposes.

A convention is called undenominational, when all the
voters, at the same time, and irrespective of the gov-
ernment's partial organs, which are denominational, vote
for or against its call and proposed action. But while
the political parties are denominational, and cannot
properly divide their vote for or against a convention
and its action according to their party lines, there may
be pronounced differences of opinion in regard both
to the necessity of a convention, and to its proper

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. :^09

action; and the respective adherents of these dilferent
views may organize themselves in the usual way, for
voting in concert both as to tlie call of a convention,
and as to the members to l)e sent to it. State and
national conventions are general; and so would be an
international convention, as for the nations of Europe.

(2) The local form of undenominational governmental
organization should corres2}ond, in a civil representative
democracy, with the government's denominational organ-
ization, at least in its elective feature, except that the
primary meetings should be undenominational.

The convention exercising the local sovereignty of
the people, should be elected by the people, for that pur-
pose, in the locality concerned.

But, in the United States of America, where local
undenominational proceedings are of frequent occur-
rence, regular forms are seldom met with, the bodies of
men that assume to act with the authority of local unde-
nominational governmental conventions, exercising the
local sovereignty of the people, the so-called lynching
companies, or vigilance committees, are mostly tumult-
uary self-constituted crowds, collected from a compar-
atively small neighborhood, and banded under a single
leader; acting from righteous indignation caused by
some gross outrage, and designing to execute upon the
offender the swift justice which they believe the regular
authorities of the government will either fail to apply,
or unreasonably delay.

The reform demanded for the undenominational con-
ventions of local districts of the government, is, that
they should be openly elected, upon due notice, from a

210 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

district composed of several primary neighborhoods, and
should proceed deliberately and publicly to exercise the
reserved sovereign rights of the people for the district
represented by the convention in the mode expressed or
implied in its call. Such action then would be revo-
lutionary, but legal. But it should carefully avoid the
desultory and undignified disorder of a mob.

CHAPTER VI.

CONCLUSION.

r I iIIE speciiil difficulties in the way of realizing the
-■- general social reformation, with their remedies; the
remedies being summed up in the general pursuit of the
First Principle of the Semitic Philosophy.

86. The logical effect of a revival of the Semitic
philosophy, as the doctrine of the Kingdom of God,
would evidently be a development of the knowledge of
its First Principle, with a resulting general sj^read of
liberal culture, and a consequent universal and radical
social reformation, exhibited in each of the integral
organs of society.

In the integral organ, or republic, of letters and art,
there would be an improved system of public education,
intellectual, religious, moral, artistic, and industrial, be-
ginning by means of the sensuous ideas, with early child-
hood, and extending to the finished discipline of the
universities. In the republic of the church there would
be a normal general representative democratic religious
association for divine service, including with liberality and
toleration all monotheistic purely religious denominations,
and excluding all Christian, Jewish, and Mohammedan
ecclesiastical governments. In the republic of industry
there would be a normal general industrial organization,

211

212 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

with representatives from each of the four industrial
classes, of capitalists, employers, working-men, and con-
sumers; the now lacking organization of the consumers
being tlie slumbering industrial force, deeply interested,
and fully able, when aroused, to shake off from the com-
munity the shackles of the trusts and of all the other
abnormal industrial associations. In the republic of
charity there would be a general co-operating organiza-
tion of all classes of charitable and benevolent associa-
tions, without distinction as to their religious denomi-
nations. Finally, in the republic of government, there
would be a harmonious develoimient of its four partial
organs — its political parties, its legislature, its body of
executive officers, and its legal profession; the latter
effectively organized, with its official or judicial branch
and its lay or practicing branch, and with a universal
and uniform system of law inaugurated and apj)lied by
it; both of positive law and of principle, Interrace, as
well as international, national and municipal.

It seems that a fitting conclusion of the present dis-
cussion, therefore, would be to point out the principal
difficulties that now obstruct the attainment of a uni-
versal social reformation, and to suggest the proper
means for their removal.

87. Of such difficulties there are three, the strong
tendency of which to check the normal j)rogress of
society clearly marks them, in this connection, for special
notice. They are, (1) the general and almost universal
jirevalence of an unsuspected mode of monotheistic
idolatry in all the monotheistic nations; (2) the abuse
made of the vast mass of printed books and journals, to

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 213

restrict original, free and energetic, instinctive thought;
and (3) the undue respect paid to ancestors and predeces-
sors, leading men to tolerate, cherish, and imitate, rather
than to correct, the faults of those who went before
them. These dilficulties and their appropriate remedies
will be briefly considered. To the first in order of these
difficulties, if not also the first in importance, we now
proceed — the prevailing monotheistic idolatry.

88. (1) In the creeds and dogmas of the largest
denominations in all the monotheistic churches. Chris-
tian, Jewish, and Mohammedan, describing the action
of God towards sinful transgressors, there is an unmis-
takable element of unjust, despotic cruelty, which, if
true, would mark the character of God as immoral; but
which, as false, creates in imagination, in the place of
the true God, a monotheistic false idol.

The tendency of idol worship to promote crime, by
giving the sanction of its idol to the immorality it rep-
resents, is evident. The brutalizing tendency, there-
fore, of the prevailing monotheistic idolatry cannot be
doubted; and to it can be traced the cruel practice of
offensive war and conquest, involving all the highest
crimes. Drunkenness, also, is a moral degradation
derived from a similar idolatrous source; it having been
originally a part of idolatrous worship. It widely pre-
vails in Christianity, and to a less extent, perhaps, in
Judaism; while, to the disgrace of both, in the other-
wise inferior system of Mohammedanism, it is so far from
being licensed, that it is practically suppressed, by sup-
pressing, not the sale, but the use, of intoxicating drinks.

214 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

The remedy for monotheistic idolatry, and all other
idolatry, whether Christian, Jewish, or Mohammedan, is
to teach God's true character as free from passion, and
with its parts or attributes co-operating with each other
to form one consistent integral whole of justice and love,
or mercy, according to the original Christian concep-
tion of his universal Fatherhood. This teaching must
exclude all idolatry.

Man's life surely tends to accord with the object of
his worship. If that object, however called, is in fact an
immoral monotheistic idol, his life will be immoral ; and
it will be more easily accounted for by his idol, than by
an imagined original sin of his first progenitor. But if
the object of his worship is the one personal, perfect
God, his life will be cultured by his knowledge of God,
with or without the learning of books, and it will be
virtuous. For worship as required by reason in general,
and by religion in particular, is first the knowledge,
and then the imitation, of the one personal, perfect
God. The responsibility, therefore, of the largest mono-
theistic religious denominations, from their teaching of
the cruel and hence immoral character of God, for the
crime prevalent in monotheistic nations, is manifest.

80. (3) The next difficulty in the way of a general
social reformation, by means of the First Princij^le of
the Semitic philosophy, as the doctrine of the Kingdom
of God, is the abuse, or misuse, of the present stock and
the current accumulations of the productions of the
press. The abuse of the enormous and increasing store
of books and journals, is the ftiilure to systematically
criticise and use them.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 215

To describe the universe, or any considerable part
of it, fully in writing, would make a mass of books
almost as large as the universe or the part described.
To write down all the thoughts that pass through men's
minds, even for a year, would form a bulk of written
matter almost equally large. The books and journals
thus written would be worse than useless, although they
would contain all science, all philosophy, all poetry, all
literature. They would leave no place in the universe
for man and his work.

Selection of the contents, and limitation of the j)ro-
duction of books and journals, are evidently necessary.
Equally necessary are selection and limitation in the use
of books and journals actually produced. For few of
them are altogether good and useful; while some of them
are absolutely worthless, and many are positively bad.
Some betray ignorance; others show intentional mis-
representation; some present vice under a veil; others
display it in all its nakedness; some disseminate error;
others elaborate crime.

In the schools of all kinds, the books should not only
be select, but they should be supplemented by the sen-
suous ideas; in other words, by object lessons, or sj)eci-
mens of nature and of art in museums and art galleries;
and by the work of the skilled hand directed by the
trained eye of the student in workshops and laboratories.
In this way the repression of original or instinctive
thought by books, will be prevented.

After leaving school, the life of man, in outward
action and inward thought, is guided not only by his
past attainment of knowledge, but also by passing events,

216 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

new discoveries and inventions; partly observed by him-
self, but mostly recorded in books and journals, and to
a great extent in newspapers; and it is highly important
for him to know in which of them to look for reliable
information.

Language, as an incident of the sensuous ideas,
designed to externalize, or, as it were, to express them,
and thereby to communicate, record and preserve them,
their combinations and results, is one of the oldest, and
perhaps is the greatest and the most useful, of man's
inventions. It is the most effective means of artistic as
well as of scientific expression, and it should, as such, be
carefully cultivated. It far excels painting and sculpt-
ure, representing not, like them, single scenes and
actions; but expressing in a brief compass the whole
integral action of man's spirit, his own ideas, notions,
conceptions, judgments, feelings, past deeds and future
purposes, and those of other persons; as in science,
history, contracts, positive laws.

While, for the most part, thought disembarrassed from
language, as its artificial, outward, mediate instrument,
is carried on freely, and instinctively, with perfect ease
and certainty, and with almost infinite rapidity, by
means of its natural, inward, immediate, and orig-
inal instruments, the sensuous ideas; the artistic quali-
ties of language should be judiciously utilized. To
promote the excellence of books and journals, the use
of language should be taught as a fine art, and as the
highest art.

But, however well written books and journals may be,
still, owing to man's limited capacity for digesting them.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 217

some means should be provided to enable every person to
pick out those wliich are suited to his needs. For this
purpose, the institution of the national or international
'^Public Commissioners of Criticism," belonging to the
complete organization of the republic of letters and art,
would, when put in operation, be admirably suited.

It would pass in review, in a personal examination,
or by skilled assistants, the whole body of current publi-
cations; giving in a regular periodical, shortly after their
appearance, brief notices of their excellences and defects
to the public; and making different short lists of old
and new publications best suited, respectively, for the
reading and study of persons in different situations of
life.

Of course, every person would be left free to delve for
himself in the general mine of letters for such hidden
treasures as it may contain. But for the general public,
not having the means, the time, nor the enterprise for
such an investigation, the systematic action of the "Pub-
lic Commissioners of Criticism " Avould be found a valu-
able aid.

It is evident, on the whole, that the irregular and
unassisted use of books and other publications, must
retard and contract the liberal culture that would result
from persistent application of the knowledge of the First
Principle of the Semitic philosophy.

90. (3) Passing now to the undue respect paid to
ancestors and predecessors, as the third one of the prin-
cipal difficulties before enumerated that obstruct the
attainment of a universal social reformation, we have to
remark, in the first place, that it participates with the

218 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY,

other two in the vice of retarding the free development
of the knowledge of the First Princijile of the Semitic
philosophy, as the doctrine of the Kingdom of God;
and, in the second place, that it partakes of that super-
stitious worship of dead ancestors, which formed a part
of the ancient heathenism, joracticed formerly by the
white race.

It is a very old experience that very great men often
have very great faults. In this centennial season, 1889,
commemorating the inauguration of the Constitution of
the United States, we are reminded that not only very
great men have had their faults, but also very good men;
and that while we admire the greatness and the virtues of
these men, we should neither be blind to their infirmi-
ties, nor let our veneration for their exalted qualities
seduce us into an imitation, or even an excuse, of their
errors.

True conservatism is of j)rinciple. All true conserva-
tism must concur in developing and upholding the First
Principle of the Semitic philosoj)hy, or doctrine of the
Kingdom of God. All true progress is the improvement,
or evolution, both of the expression, or dogmatic state-
ment, and of the practical realization of principle.
While the First PrincijDle, therefore, as the basis of all
true conservatism, stands fast forever, reaching un-
changed back into all the past, and forward into all
future time, the expression of that principle in science
and in the fine arts, with its practical realization in
society and in the useful arts, must, as the even manifes-
tation, or evolution, of man's inward and outward immor-
tal life and growth, present a changing scene of eternal

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 219

progress. Hence, true conservatism and true progress
are identical.

Error and crime and all unskilful work are depart-
ures from principle; and as such they are purely per-
sonal, resulting from personal ignorance and personal
depravity. They are communicated and jierpetuated by
personal false instruction and evil example.

True social progress, as well as true social conserva-
tism, is a return to principle and a constant adherence to
it, not only with personal repentance, but also with a due
personal regard to its absolute truth and universal social
application and obligation.

Experience shows that it is easier for the majority of
mankind, not instructed in correct methods of thought,
to follow the tradition and the examples of past gen-
erations, than independently to investigate and judge
their truth and propriety. Hence results the unreason-
ing obsequiousness of large masses of men to the false
opinions and evil examples of their forefathers. The
evident remedy for this evil is the liberal culture of the
. masses, which would enable them to appreciate the worth
and the authority of principles, and to discriminate justly
the true insisfht and the virtues of their ancestors from
their errors and their faults.

To establish, therefore, as the foundation of all in-
struction, the First Principle of the Semitic philosophy,
or doctrine of the Kingdom of God, involving all prin-
ciples, would at once stop the evil of tlie unquestioning
reception of dogmas and practices, however long de-
scended, inherited from the past. For whatever dogma

220 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

or practice conflicts with this First Principle must be
false and of evil tendency, and will be seen to be such.

91. The acknowledgment of the First Principle will
clear the air in the discussion of many highly important
public questions; sweeping away the misty grounds of
the differences of opinion among good and able men;
correcting the errors that originated in former genera-
tions, and leaving the truth of the matters in dispute
clearly visible. Two of these questions, of very ancient
origin, and connected with the church, will be briefly
considered. They owe their importance to the new and
aggressive relations of intolerance recently assumed by
the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic church to the
masses of the people of the United States, of all religions;
and the mention of them here affords an appropriate
occasion for recognizing the very different spirit of relig-
ious tolerance manifested with chivalrous daring by the
early Roman Catholic colonists of Maryland, who, in
striking contrast to the religious intolerance of Puritans
and Cavaliers, north and south of them, only long after-
wards converted to an equal spirit of tolerance, boldly
proclaimed what was then a new as well as generous doc-
trine of religious liberty.

, (a) One of these questions is involved in the public
controversy now carried on regarding the expediency of
religious instruction in the public schools; and one of
the disputants. Cardinal Gibbons, says: "Religious
knowledge is as far above human science as the soul is
above the body, as Heaven is above earth, as eternity is
above time." This is from the mediaeval, ecclesiastical
standpoint. Another of the disputants, from another

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 221

standpoint, says: "Religious truth is revealed in alle-
goric and symbolic form, and is to be appreciated, not
merely by the intellect, but by the imagination and the
heart. The analytic understanding is necessarily hostile
and skeptical in its attitude towards religious truth, and
the mingling of secular and religious instriTction culti-
vates flippant and shallow reasoning on sacred themes/^
[See Bait. 8tin Supplement, July 11, 1889.]

But as it has been proved that every principle, in the
sense of a law of l^ature, or a law of God, is a uniform-
ity of the action of God, it follows that the uniformity,
or simultaneous, correlated complexity, of these uni-
formities, must constitute a First Principle, from which
all the special principles, both of religious and of secular
truth, or knowledge, must be deduced. Hence, religious
truth and secular truth are derived from the same First
Principle, are co-ordinate, reciprocal, and insei^arable;
and they must both be taught, by the same methods of
demonstration and verification; whence it follows that
they can and ought to be taught in the same school.

It remains true, however, that society, Avhen perfectly
organized, should assign the charge of all the schools to
a separate, appropriate and universal agency, or integral
organ, the republic of letters and art, numerically
identical and co-ordinate alike with the state and the
church, and equally independent of both; and that
while the state has temporarily volunteered, on account
of its financial resources, to support the schools, in the
absence of an efficient organization of the republic of
letters and art, it should administer them under its
general direction, as its trustee, with due regard to civil

223 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

and religious lilDerty, and for the equal benefit, both of
a normal representative democratic state^ and of a nor-
mal tolerant universal church.

93. (b) Again, the observance of this First Principle
will also make clear the grounds of the still unsettled
controversy about the supreme temjjoral government,
between tlie hierarchy, or ecclesiastical body, on one
hand, that absolutely ruled the whole mediasval Christian
church, and still nominally rules the greater part of it,
and on the other the modern state. The ultimate
ground of this controversy, on the part of the hierarchy,
is virtually the same untenable position taken by it, in
opposition to the First Principle, when it claims the
control of the schools. For, wrongly assuming that the
religious duties of man are more important, more con-
ducive to the welfare of the soul in this world and the
next, than his secular duties, and that they are, therefore,
designed to control the secular, and thus to have in an
alleged superior sphere the special care and supervision of
the hierarchy; while secular duties belong to the state,
which is limited to them, and which must partake of
their subordinate condition, — the hierarchy claiuis that
by undertaking to regulate and enforce the religious
duties, and to thereby exercise a higher function than the
state, it is in dignity and in authority paramount to it,
and thereby entitled to rule it. But, Avliile the First
Principle necessarily leads to the service of God by the
j)eople, in the responsible performance by them of both
religious and secular duty, in the light and inspiration of
civil and religious liberty, and of liberal culture, it also
absolutely encourages them to freely use their own

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 223

powers of tliouglit and of practical action, for which
they are responsible, in rationally governing themselves.
Hence, it as positively disconntenances any self-enslave-
ment of the people by submission to a despotic or
paternal ecclesiastical government over them by the
hierarchy, as any subjection of them, to any other non-
representative government over them by a political
desjiot or ring.

For, according to the First Principle, which is practical
as well as speculative, the ideal, at once, of all duty and
of all truth, and which is the part tliat God faithfully
performs in the original and continuing social contract
between God and man, constantly consummated without
words, and designed for the help and blessing of all
mankind, — man's religious duties and his secular duties,
being man's part in that contract, are equally as import-
ant in their exercise as they are inseparable in their
source. Every man, in consideration of God's help,
which he accepts in that principle, is bound to co-operate
with him by the performance alike of all religious and
of all secular duties; they being demanded for helping
and blessing, according to God's love and purpose, all
other men.

Although to commune and take counsel with God,
either alone, or while encouraging others to do the same
in large or small assemblies, convened for that purpose,
is the first part of man's religious duty, yet the sequel of
that duty must issue, according to his means and oppor-
tunities, by the force of that principle, not only in occa-
sional benevolent and philanthropic enterprises, but also
in such a just and liberal regular conduct of his secular

224 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY,

affairs, as will aim to promote as well the rightful
interests of his fellow-men as his own. Nor will
man's part in the performance of any secular duty be
properly completed without religiously seeking for that
purpose the aid of divine wisdom in the due contem-
plation of that principle, in the doctrine of the Kingdom
of God.

The First Principle of the Semitic philosophy affords
as little ground to the hierarchy of the mediajval
Christian church for establishing non-representative eccle-
siastical government over the people, or any portion of
them, as for interfering with the jiublic schools; indeed,
it gives as little right to the head of that hierarchy, the
Christian Pope, as to the Mohammedan "commander of
the Faithful," to assert despotic " temporal power " over
the people. For this principle necessarily implies the
principle of the sovereignty of the people, while it im-
poses on the people the duty and the responsibility of
maintaining a moral social order, and a normal social
organization.

Yet, after the early Christian communities had each
adopted as the germ and the undenominational type of
modern society, or of modern civilization, the form of
the association of Jesus with his Apostles, which he called
the general assembly of the people, or, as it were, the
town meeting, the congregation, of the people — by the
Greek name " ecclesia," — and after they had developed
from the First Principle a distinctively and peculiarly
Christian representative or synodal constitution, serving
as a bond of unity to combine them into one Christendom,
and based on the sovereignty of the people; it is a

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 225

remarkable phenomenon, deserving grave considei-ation,
and showing the seductive and demoralizing force of
ancient heathen examples, that the hierarchy or clergy
of the Eoman church of Christendom, in the Middle
Ages, by means of a separate Roman ecclesiastical govern-
ment,— which ignored the First Principle of the Semitic
philosophy, or Kingdom of God, and its principle of the
sovereignty of the people, but was exactly modeled after
the ancient heathen despotic Roman empire, and was
based on the submissive degradation of the people by the
power of heathen superstition and ignorance, miscalled
the spiritual power, — actually succeeded in acquiring
over the whole of western Christendom a supreme, des-
potic, and universal temporal dominion.

While, however, the pagan Roman emperors, followed
in their despotic rule by so-called Christians, claimed that
the right to rule and make laws was conferred upon them
by a law made in regular form, the lex regia, by the
people, (Dig. i., iv.); and they thereby admitted the
original sovereignty of the people, the hierarchy does
not deign to refer to the jDCople at all as the source of its
power. It asserts (Gratian's Deer. Dist. xcvi., c. x.)
that "there are two things by which principally the world
is governed, the sacred authority of the pontiffs, and the
royal power." It also irreverently pretends that the
authority and power of the pontiffs is directly granted to
them as vicars or vicegerents of God; a pretense suffi-
ciently refuted by the notoriously immoral character of
more than one of those pontiffs, — a character which could
not, without blasphemy, be considered as belonging to
God's representative among men.

220 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

The famous simile of Gregory VII., comparing the
popedom to the sun, and the temjooral empire to the
moon, while exhibiting his contracted ecclesiastical view
in this respect, displays his want both of far prophetic
vision, and of rational appreciation of the social duty
imposed upon man individually and collectively by the
moral force of the First Principle of the Semitic philos-
ophy. For, blinded by the contemplation of two shining
motes, as it were, of the solar system, Avith the larger and
brighter of which he proudly identifies himself, he fails
to see the boundless stellar universe of the people.

The ecclesiastical government of the Eoman hierarchy
is evidently a gnostic scheme of Magian or Manichean
Orientalism, regarding the people as contemptible, and
fit only to be deluded by Magian arts. The purely relig-
ious and the moral tenets and practices of the laity of the
mediaeval Christian church, and of the modern church
that has succeeded it, are not here discussed or ques-
tioned. They are derived more from tradition among the
laity, than from the hierarchy, which occupied itself for
many generations more with government than with
teaching; and then, having neglected the First Principle
of the Semitic philosophy, the hierarchy fashioned its
dogmas after the heathen philosophers of Greece.

But, remarkable as are the distant heathen origin and
the brilliant ambitious career of the ecclesiastical govern-
ment of the Eoman hierarchy, still more memorable is
the fact that it is dead, and has been dead more than a
century, and yet is carried about unburied by the living
church that it long ruled. It has succumbed gradually
to successive revolutions that have developed, one after

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 227

another, the specuhxtive and practical elements of the
First Principle; reviving thereby the original pojmlar
tradition of the Kingdom of God, or Christianity, and
increasing the intelligence and the free instinctive thonght
of the people. It has yielded, namely, to the modern
revival of letters, of science, of the fine and the industrial
arts; to the organization of industrial guilds, of free
cities, of the universities; to the representation of the
Commons in the parliaments of England, Spain and other
countries; to the Protestant reformation; to the Roman
Catholic reformation of the council of Trent; to the
English rebellion and revolution; to the American revo-
lution, establishing, at last, the sovereignty of the peo-
ple; and to the consequent French revolution, which,
whatever else it did, gave a fresh impetus to the other
revolutions by which it was preceded.

If the ecclesiastical government of the Roman hierarchy
were not now dead, it wonld surely put in operation the
institution which it otherwise vainly invented with fiend-
ish malignity for the terror, and torture, and destruction
of those who actively, or in words, or in secret instinctive
thought, opposed or doubted it. But the dungeons of
the Inquisition are untenanted; its racks, its wheels, its
deftly contrived machinery for inflicting exquisite tor-
ture, are rusting from disuse; its autos-da-fe have ceased;
the smoke of its burned victims no longer ascends bearing
to just heaven the indignant protest of outraged humanity.
Its cunning and hypocritical, as well as cruel and inhu-
man inquisitors, immolating, with washed hands, their
doomed victims by the hands of the subject and subor-
dinate civil government, for the pretended glory of God,

238 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

but really and unquestionably, to maintain, by the rule
of the ecclesiastical government, the authority of the
sacerdotal order, — where are they? Dead, long ago.

For Eoman Catholic Italy has raised a monument in
Rome to Bruno, the simple man of letters, the innocent
victim whom the Inquisition malignantly burned to death
at the stake, in open defiance of the right of free thought
by the people, and neither has the Inquisition stirred,
nor has there been j)roclaimed a crusade. The ecclesi-
astical government, therefore, with the Inquisition, must,
indeed, be dead. The paper documents on which its
claim to authority rested, though not repealed, as in
candor they should be, are obsolete. Then peace to its
ashes. This monument proves at once the downfall of
the ecclesiastical government of the Roman Catholic
church, and the liberty of its laity to elect their priests
and bishops.

Corresponding monuments, erected by. Protestants, to
the victims of the ignorant fanaticism of their predeces-
sors, would greatly tend to remove the barriers of intoler-
ance still separating the monotheistic religious denomi-
nations,

Bruno's monument, in a generous and liberal age,
must form a greater attraction for cultured iiilgrims in
Rome, than all its boasted heathen antiquities. An
equal decoration to Geneva would be a Protestant mon-
ument to Servetus. Nor would a monument erected in
New England by liberal Protestants to victims judi-
cially sacrificed there by Protestant courts and witnesses
blinded by religious fanaticism, for the impossible relig-

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 229

ious crime of witchcraft, sliine in future ages with less
glory than its splendid memorial of Bunker Hill.

To mark in this way, by other monuments, the de-
parture of the present age from the errors of past gen-
erations, would serve to greatly advance the jieriod for a
general social reformation.

93. (c) Another question seeks, in regard to the
general industrial war brought about by former gen-
erations, a better way; and proposes the means of a gen-
eral industrial pacification. This end would be pro-
moted by the adoption of the significant and effective
pojiular measure, of practically inaugurating the aban-
donment of the ancient abuse of the interference of
government in industrial affairs.

The present industrial war, aggravated by the par-
tial interference of government in the affairs of industry,
can only be composed by the independent and complete
co-operative and non-belligerent organization of all the
industrial classes, — the working-men, the employers, the
capitalists, and the consumers. Hapjjily, while each class
is too strong to be reduced to subjection by the others
combined, each is practically benefited by the prosperity
of all the rest.

The class of working-men are to a great extent already
organized, though not on a harmonious, liberal, and far
reaching industrial principle; and recently, the classes of
capitalists and employers, in large numbers, have jointly
contrived and put in operation, with the partial assist-
ance of the government, a system of combining their
property and business, on a great scale, in special trust,
for their joint benefit, in opposition not only to the class

230 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

of working-meu, but also to the class of consumers. But
the isolated organization of the class of working-men and
the joint organization of the classes of capitalists and
employers, are hostile and destructive ; and they mean a
continuance of the present universal industrial war.

Now, a measure inaugurating the abandonment of the
ancient abuse of the interference of the government in
the affairs of industry, and thus promoting the harmony
and co-operation of the industrial classes, by proving tlie
capacity of the republic of industry, as an organized
whole, to efficiently, liberally, and justly regulate its own
interests independent of the government, would be to
add to the separate organizations of the other industrial
classes a general organization of the class of consumers
and users, as such, of the productions of industry; but
containing also bodily, in a great measure, owing to the
integral nature of industry, the other ideally separated
industrial classes of working-men, of employers, and of
capitalists; and thereby representing the general public.
This general organization of the class of consumers
would be as fully able, as it would be rationally and pro-
bably inclined, to balance and control, in strict justice
and clear reason, the other industrial classes in a general
system of fair wages, fair interest, fair profits, and fair
prices. It would especially promote liberal and conserva-
tive competition, by discountenancing, except in the case
of temporary overproduction, all unremunerative prices,
and, in all cases, prices cruelly or unreasonably low; and
it would thus prevent capitalists and employers from
ruining each other at the expense of the working-men,
and by the aid of thoughtless consumers, who would

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 231

sacrifice, for a trifling present gain, not only vital in-
terests of producers, but their own future permanent
convenience.

This general organization of the class of consumers, to
control the other industrial classes, and to co-operate
with them, must rest on the ultimate identity of the
normal or proper interests of all the industrial classes, as
required and established by the First Principle, and as
demonstrated by the science of industrial, as distin-
guished from political, economy.

94. (d) Another evil of vast importance, involving a
renewal of ancient violations of Interrace law, and pro-
duced by modern legislation in the United States of
America, is the body of so-called Constitutional amend-
ments, illegally granting suffrage to the negroes. The
remedy for this evil must be applied, before a general
social reformation can l)e expected; but is embarrassed
by great respect due to the strong and earnest character
of the men, now departed, under whose leadership it was
inflicted, in probable ignorance of its enormity, and even
in the belief that it was highly meritorious. This rem-
edy remains to be considered, with all the frankness due
to its importance.

The great anti-slavery leaders, the old and staunch
Abolitionists, to whose burning zeal, tenacity of j3ur2Dose,
energy of speech, fearlessness of action, and skilful polit-
ical generalship, for liberty and humanity, the country
is indebted for the abolition of slavery, have one by one
passed away. Some died as martyrs; others as active
partisans in the dangerous contest for their cause; and
others in peace and old age, surrounded by reverent

233 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

neighbors, in a halo, as it were, of local sanctity. But, so
far as they were zealous and active Abolitionists in their
public life, and nothing more, they deserve of their coun-
try and of the world, and they must receive, as high
honors as any martyrs and saints of modern times.

It is an undeniable fact, however, that some of them
went beyond the abolition of slavery, and encouraged
and sanctioned, without the warrant of experience, the
action of the Republican party in the granting of suffrage
to the emancipated negroes. If, in this respect, therefore,
the Abolitionists who did so violated a principle of the
higher law, they must be treated as common men, liable
to commit error and do evil, as well as to see the truth
and do good. They must be content to be classed, not
as immaculate saints, but as men like the worthies of
the American revolution, who vindicated one principle
and violated another, — asserting with immortal glory the
principle of the sovereignty of the people, and violating
the principle of personal liberty, by inserting in the Con-
stitution a recognition of slavery and the slave-trade.

The abolition of the slavery of the negroes was a legal
measure, neglected by the great men of the American
revolution, and for which the Abolitionists, according to
their share in its promotion, are entitled to all honor;
because it is in conformity with the higlier law de-
rived from the First Principle, or law of God, of the
Semitic philosophy. But the granting of suffrage to
the negroes in the country of the white nation of Amer-
ica, is easily proved to be illegal, by whomsoever adopted;
because it is a violation of that higher law, which, as the
Interrace law, provides that each of the great races of

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 233

mankind, for the preservation of its separate individu-
ality and peculiar civilization, shall occupy a separate
country.

As it is a matter of history, however, that the party
of the Abolitionists were few, and were an almost insig-
nificant ally, in point of numbers, to the Eepublican
party, at the time of the dc facto adoption of the meas-
ure granting suffrage to the negroes, it seems per-
missible to treat that measure, not only apart from all
consideration of the Abolitionists, but also, notwith-
standing its constitutional form, as the action, under
very extraordinary circumstances, of the same Republican
party which both at that time controlled the government
of the United States, and is still, in 1889, after a brief
overthrow, the great living political party predominant
in that government. It is the Republican party, there-
fore, that is responsible for that measure, and which, if
convinced of its illegality and unconstitutionality, must,
as an honorable association, move to reconsider and
repeal it.

The Interrace law is based on the old figurative prov-
erb used by Paul, that God "hath made of one blood
all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the
earth," (Acts xvii., 26); which, in connection with the
other figurative saying, of at least equal antiquity, that
"the blood is the life," (Gen. ix., 4, Dent, xii., 23),
embodies much of ancient wisdom. This proverb is a
universal proposition, expressing the fact of observation,
or experience, that all men have a universal physical
quality, or set of qualities, in their blood, along with
spiritual qualities of equal universality. It also implies.

334 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

what modern chemistry has demonstrated^ that the blood
of animals differs from that of man. It is a proposition
that, by calling attention to a distinctive and striking
sensuous idea reflected from every man, enabled early
man to think distinctly of his fellow-men; to group
them as a whole physically and spiritually different from
animals; to compare them with each other and note their
differences as well as their points of resemblance; to
think of them individually as equals in the most imjjort-
ant physical and spiritual respects, while differing in
others; to think of them collectively as a nation of such
men; to think of nations collectively as a race of such
nations; and to think of all the races collectively as the
general family of mankind.

There is also very ancient evidence, that the outward
appearance, or color, of the skin, as something outwardly
permanent and significant respectively, in the different
races, notwithstanding both the inward oneness of blood
in men, and their acknowledged general equality, was
considered to mark a very great and permanent differ-
ence of character among them. This is what Jeremiah
must mean when he sa3's: "Can the Ethiopian change
his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also
do good that are accustomed to do evil." (Jer. xiii.,
23.) The comparison, according to Hebrew usage, is
double as well as elliptical. Its point is the difficulty of
changing character. The Ethiopian and the leopard had
fixed and unchangeable general traits of character,
known to all that saw them, by the skin of the one and
the spots of the other. The unchangeable skin and
spots are symbolically put in the place of unchangeable

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 235

character. The meaning of the prophet is that the char-
acter of him that is accnstomed to do evil, is as fixed
in his evil way as the proverbial general character of the
Ethiopian or the leopard.

The races of mankind, thus distinguished by different
colors of skin, have also been observed to dwell from
immemorial time in different countries; their local sepa-
ration being obviously necessary to preserve their respect-
ive individuality; and being clearly, therefore, like their
individuality, of divine appointment. For Paul, in the
same connection in which he says that God ''hath
made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all
the face of the earth," adds immediately ''and hath
determined the times before appointed and the bounds of
their habitation."

Hence results the Interrace law that apportions to
each race of mankind a separate country, with the abso-
lute right to its exchisive possession, occupancy, and gov-
ernment. Being evidently involved in the First Prin-
ciple of the Semitic philosophy, the Interrace law is the
paramount law of the universal society of the races of
mankind.

This Interrace law was violated when the ancestors of
the negro nation now in America were violently carried
away, as was notoriously done, from their native country
in Central Africa. For it is an unquestionable historical
fact that Central Africa has been occupied from imme-
morial time by the negro race as its providential native
country.

The same Interrace law was violated, when the negro
nation, whose ancestors were thus illegally brought to

236 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

America;, was permitted, by the grant of suffrage, to par-
ticipate in the government of the country which was
acquired by the white nation there, and to whom,
according to that Interrace hiw, that country, with its
government, exckisively belongs.

It is evident that these two infractions of the Inter-
race law can only be properly and efficiently remedied,
and therefore must be remedied, by the return of the
negro nation in America to the providential native coun-
try of their race in Central Africa.

This remedial measure, viewed deliberately, in all its
magnitude, and in face of its apparently onerous asi^ect,
as highly costly, on the part of the white nation of
America, is proved, by the complicity of their ancestors,
as shown by the original Constitution of the United
States, not only in the enslavement, but also in the im-
portation, and, therefore, in the forcible deportation
from Africa of the ancestors of the negro nation now in
America, to be for that white nation a political and
legal, as well as a moral and natural, obligation.

The emancii^ation of the negroes has made no amends
to them 'for the debt due them for the injury of depriv-
ing them, in their ancestors, of their native country;
and as the grant of suffrage to them, in a country not
their own, is illegal, it is false money, and both parties
incur guilt by its use; while, if it was intended to pay
the debt due to the negroes for the deprivation of theii-
country, this debt remains unpaid with interest.

But the measure of restoring the negroes to their own
original home in Central Africa, and assuring them there
an ample, fertile, healthful, and independent country, by

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 237

the white nation of America, has for both races, like all
great measures of liberal statesmanship, affecting two dis-
tinct but rightful interests, a mutually beneficial aspect.
Little need be said of its obvious material advantages to
both parties. While the negro nation would acquire, by
the just generosity of the white nation of America, the
means of colonizing and possessing, as their own ances-
tral property, a country in the old land suited to their
nature, with independence, and social as well as political
equality, and also affording not only ample reward for all
useful labor, and the energizing stimulation of estab-
lishing new and permanent homes, but also all the prizes
of legitimate social, industrial, and political ambition;
the white nation of America would receive, in return,
the benefit of a homogeneous population, increased value
of its land, and room, equivalent to new territory, for
seven millions of white immigrants to take the places
of the departing negroes, besides the industrial activity
incidental to the movement, and to the wise expenditure
it would necessitate of large sums in ship-building, com-
merce, manufactures, and agricultural produce.

But the chief benefit of this measure would be
spiritual, or moral, religious, and intellectual; and this
would consist in its efficacy to facilitate in the two races,
both the present preservation and the future development
of their respective modes and measures of civilization.

There is only one normal civilization, Avhicli is the
knowledge and the practical realization of the First
Principle of the Semitic philosophy, or doctrine of the
Kingdom of God. But there are several degrees, grades,
or steps of civilization attained, respectively, by the

238 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

different races of maukiiid, and all tciiding to the one
normal civilization; all capable likewise of being gradually
developed into it, and all being analogous to the shades
of culture reached by individuals. NationS;, like chil-
dren, must begin civilization with its rudiments. The
true normal civilization must be developed in the nations,
as children, by the system of exciting sensuous ideas by
object lessons, and by leading instinctive thought, with
these and other related sensuous ideas, from something
like Frcebel's Kindergarten exercises to a more or less
thorough acquaintance with, and exercise of, the First
Principle in advanced schools and universities, and in
enlightened social institutions and modes of general
social life.

The one uniform normal civilization, developed accord-
ing to the First Principle, must be the ideal of civiliza-
tion for all the races in their universal society. While it
may admit of modifications in matters of indifference, it
must at least embrace, in the First Principle, the original
and continuing social contract of God with man, the
normal social organization, and the moral or higher law.

The white race, as a whole, although, owing to its gen-
eral monotheistic idolatry, its prevalent vice of drunk-
enness, its demoralizing lotteries, and its offensive wars,
it is still very far from that ideal, has so far made, of all
the races, the nearest approach to it. But this race is
bound to make great strides of self-improvement, before
it becomes worthy and able to convert, by its missionary
enterprises, the other races to the true standard of civili-
zation. It must also change its missionary methods, and,
instead of degrading the Bible by translating it into

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 239

inartificial heathenish jargons, some of which are also
vile, it should teach modern civilization, including Chris-
tianity, in one of the civilized modern languages, in every
one of which a great part of it is embodied, just as the
old Latin civilization was taught in Europe for centuries
by means of the Latin language. Perhaps, for many
reasons, and especially because it is most widely known,
the best suited of the modern languages to teach modern
civilization is the English.

Now, in view of the different degrees of civilization
prevailing in different races, the local combination and
cohabitation of two different degrees of civilization
in the same country, may be rationally expected, like
the joining of scholars of different degrees of pro-
ficiency in the same class in school, to be hurtful to
both; checking the advance of one, and driving the
other on too rapidly. In the lower, it tends, first, to
promote the vices, which are easily learned, and thereby
to obstruct the more difficult task of assuming the vir-
tues, of the higher civilization; and especially is this
the result where the two degrees of civilization meet in
two different races, as is clearly illustrated by the disas-
trous contact of the white man with the red man, and
the gradual extinction of the latter, in America. In the
higher civilization, too, in which, even when it is isolated,
vices, as survivals of an earlier degree of barbarism, may
abound in some of its individuals of every class, the
advent of the lower civilization, besides re-inforcing such
vices, may re-introduce still more barbarous or even sav-
age vices, which the higher has already outgrown; as
was seen when the savage ancestors of the present negroes

240 SEMITIC riilLOSOPHY.

in America were forcibly brought into the white nation
there, bringing with tliem slavery, which the whites had
long ago abandoned, and which caused among the whites,
for its abolition, one of the most tremendous civil wars
history has recorded. Such are the effects of combining
in the same country, in different races, different degrees
of civilization.

He must be blind, indeed, who does not see that in
measure and degree the civilization of the negroes is dif-
ferent from that of the white men in the United States
of America. There are, it is true, a few exceptional
negroes of culture and industry, who can rank in
these respects with the majority of the whites; and many
more of a morality and a piety as high as those of
the best of the whites; and there are some exceptional
whites who demean themselves as fit associates for the
lowest of the negroes. But the signs of the superior
civilization of the majority of the whites are unmistak-
ably displayed wherever large numbers of whites and
negroes live close together, as in the cities of the north,
and in the cities and fields of the south.

Hence, as negro civilization in America is inferior to
that of the whites living with them, the violation of the
Interrace law by negro suffrage there, must reasonably
be anticij^ated to strengthen the influence of the inferior
negro civilization, and thereby to degrade the superior
civilization of the whites, to the manifest prejudice of
both races. For, since the freedom of the negroes and
all the rights of person and of property which they now
enjoy in America are due alone to the civilization of

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 341

the wliites, if that civilization should be degraded, few
rights would be left to the negroes.

Moreover, the degradation of the civilization of the
whites by negro suffrage, will not only affect the whites
in the states where the negro population predominates,
by affiliation of negroes with the whites of their own
level, but in all the states. For instance, the state of
Louisiana, with a large and influential negro jiopula-
tion, has established and sanctioned, by the public
authority of that state, in opposition to the civilization
of the Avhites, a system of public lotteries, designed to
gratify the immoral savage passion of gambling, which
is condemned by the other states as criminal; and that
public institution of the state of Louisiana, by sur-
reptitiously circulating in other states its tickets and
its illusive advertisements, in violation of their laws, is
successful in daily debauching the public morals and
plundering the weak and unwary in all the other states,
where otherwise the civilization of the whites in this
matter prevails.

The true policy, therefore, for all the states, is by con-
stitutional amendment, or by a decision of the supreme
court, or otherwise, as they may agree, to recognize and
declare according to the paramount Interrace law, the
illegality of the suffrage of negroes in the country of the
whites.

But, when the Interrace law is obeyed, the separate
and different degrees of civilization of the different races,
in their respective separate countries, may all differ, and
yet may all be good in their kind. For no one that
observes the regular variety of things, as well as the

242 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. -

uniformity of laws, in the organic and inorganic worlds,
noting that no two stars, no two grains of sand, no two
leaves, no two fruits, no two animals, are exactly alike,
but that every separate thing is endowed with a special
individuality, can doubt, that, as the apjole tree, the pear
tree, the orange tree, the palm tree, while all follow the
general laws and processes of vegetation, produce differ-
ent fruits, all being good, and each having its different
individual excellence; so the great races of mankind, the
white, the Mongolian, the Hindoo, the negro, while all
obey their fundamental laws involved in the First Prin-
ciple, will each, in time, work out, and mark with its
special individuality, a separate and distinctive, rival
degree or kind of civilization. To attain, however, their
peculiar development, the different races of mankind
must dwell in sej)arate countries.

Civilization does not, like electricity, pass by induc-
tion from one body, collective or individual, to another;
although the marks on the sensuous ideas, the elements
of civilization, are reflected by an analogous j)rocess from
their outward objects. Civilization can only be conferred
on, or improved in, an individual or a nation by rational
and persistent educational work on one side, with earnest
co-operation on the other. Colonization, for a large body,
as the bringing up of a nation, directing and developing
its powers, and supplying its needs by another from
helpless infancy, until it is able to make its own destiny,
is evidently for both parties, the best and most stimu-
lating educational work. For improving the inchoate
civilization already acquired by the American negroes.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 343

their colonization in Central Africa by the white nation
of America is evidently the proper means.

To facilitate the development of a true negro civiliza-
tion by colonizing the American negroes in Central Africa,
and to protect it there from hostile interference of the
whites, the diplomacy and the Congress of the United
States of America should assert the supreme authority of
the Interrace law, by insisting not only that the sale of
intoxicants and arms by a superior race to savages should
be included in the definition of piracy, but also that
Central Africa, having been immemorially the natural or
providential habitat of the negro race, belongs to that
race exclusively. And the United States of America
should claim, by treaty with the nations of Europe, or
by a constitutional amendment, the authority to protect
the negro nation growing from the colony of American
negroes, in its right to select, acquire and exclusively
occupy and govern an ample, well located, and inde-
l^endent country in the central portion of Africa; not the
least commendation of which establishment would be its
agency in spreading light over the Dark Continent.

For this new African state, both for example and for
warning, the experience of Liberia, Hayti, and San
Domingo, in regard to negro civilization, should be con-
sulted. The general legal profession, when organized,
could greatly aid this enterprise by preparing for the
consideration of the new African state a brief code of
universal positive common law, suggested by the expe-
rience of all civilized nations, and fit for their adoption.

95. Besides the difficulties now specifically men-
tioned, the chief general cause of the slow, vacillating.

244 SEMITIC rillLOSOPHY.

halting progress of the civilization of society, in all the
races of mankind, is the fact that most men lack, and
have always lacked, liberal cnltnre, all-sided views; and
are narrow-minded, with a contracted, one-sided outlook,
being men either generally ignorant, or mere specialists,
following exclusively one idea, one subordinate principle,
and ignoring, or even antagonizing, all else. The re-
moval of this one-sidedness must be the work of the
liberal culture that will result from the pursuit of the
one First Principle of the Semitic philosophy, in Avhich
principle all other principles are involved.

This pursuit, in which, with moderate success, the
masses of mankind, by means of their sensuous ideas and
their instinctive thought, aided by a jiublic common edu-
cation, can unite with the learned, will yield a unitary
and universal all round view of all things; not based on
the one supposed element of the ancient Greek, but on
the one composed of many, the American e pluribus
unum, the organic one, the integral one, the one of God,
one universe, one humanity, one social contract, one
republic of letters and art, one republic of the church,
one republic of industry, one republic of charity, one
republic of government, one republic of all these repub-
lics; one social order, one order of the universe.

This view will also result in one rational general con-
clusion of that enlightened and energized reason, which
is speculative faith, from all the past and present, by
analogy, to all the future, — from life to immortality,
from unceasing social progress, however unsteady, to the
one ultimate and perfect Kingdom of God here and here-
after, as the ideal society.

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 245

But it would be idle to expect to overthrow at oiice^
or in a generation, or in a century, all the heathenism of
the world, or of the white race, or even of its most
favored nation, or most liberal church, or most orthodox.
The accretions of eighteen hundred years of deleterious
ancient Oi'iental heathenism must be stripped from the
slender growth of original Christianity, before the
shriveled and stunted plant can flourish, in its appointed
way, like the vine of Egypt, or the tree of life.

It must be acknowledged, however, that civilization
in the last few centuries, and especially Christianity, its
distinguishing element, notwithstanding the counteract-
ing influence of heathenism, has made some progress,
although the road to its ultimate perfection is still a long
one. The next century bids fair to make at least as great
an advance of civilization among the masses, not only of
the leading race, but of all the partially civilized races, in
respect of philosophy, of science and of art, as well as of
morality and religion, beyond the nineteenth century, as
this century made over the eighteenth, and as the eight-
eenth made over all the centuries that went before it.

But the work to be done in the next century in fur-
therance of civilization, of liberal culture, and of pure
Christianity, should be outlined and prepared as well as
forecasted in the present. To consider well therefore,
and to lay down firmly and understandingly, the plans of
the coming era of social progress, in thorough public
education from the lowest to the highest grades, and to
provide for its sure direction a wide and certain outlook
in a popular true philosophy, — is the duty of the present
day.

246 SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY.

Even the Avork of many future centuries of social
progress can be read at this time in an embryonic form
in tlie First Princijile of the Kingdom of God, or
Semitic philosophy, which, when properly ajipealed to,
will yield all the true oracles needed for the instruction
and the guidance of all coming generations.

Accordingly, its influence in the recent universal and
almost silent revolution of Brazil in favor of the prin-
ciple of civil representative democracy, indicates the
Providential drift, as well as the irresistible jiower of the
instinctive thought of the masses of the people, when
it is properly directed by their leaders. This movement,
as C-anada is only nominally monarchical, virtually closes
in triumjih the westward march of the star of the true
empire of the people; and vindicates the whole western
hemisphere for the principle of civil representative
democracy, with all the social reforms in Church and
State which this principle necessarily involves. While,
therefore, the closing decade of this century may now
witness, as the sequel of this event, the consolidation and
security of all the true American international interests
of the western liemisj)here — effected, not only l)y means
of the present Pan-American Congress, but also by occa-
sional future liberal international American conven-
tions— the next century will be prepared, throughout all
the borders of the Eastern Hemisi^here, in Europe,
Australia, and wherever else the white race dwells,
among the colored races in India, China and Japan,
and even in a future mighty nation of American negroes
in Central Africa, to welcome the beneficent controlling
power of the universal principle of civil representative

SEMITIC PHILOSOPHY. 247

democracy, as exhibited in its shining example of
fraternally united free America.

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