Читать книгу Beadle's Dime National Speaker, Embodying Gems of Oratory and Wit, Particularly Adapted to American Schools and Firesides - Various - Страница 11

The world moves in a grand cycle of days, and weeks, and months, and years, susceptible of approximation, but not of exact ascertainment. There are cycles, also, of the human understanding; or, at least, of opinions with regard to the faculties and organism of the human intellect. Locke was thought to have demonstrated, by unanswerable argument, our entire lack of innate ideas; thus demolishing the foundation upon which others had erected so many and such various theories. But now Kant has proven, by a logic far more subtle, and altogether more conclusive, that the mind acts only in certain processes, or by means of certain categories, which are the laws of its organization, and whence result conceptions or ideas not derived from experience, or observation, or confidence in others. Plato arrived at the same conclusion two thousand years ago, although he supposed these conceptions or ideas to be the reminiscences of a former and superior state of intellectual existence. What has Kant accomplished, in all his philosophy, except our remission to the speculations of Plato, as enforced and illustrated by the wisdom of revealed religion? And so, in the world of moral sentiment, there must be cycles of repetition and restoration, but of restoration with new auspices, and informed by principles of higher and pure significance.

The Age of Chivalry was an age of moral improvement, an age of sympathy and generous enterprise, after centuries of darkness, antagonism, and oppression. When scholars, therefore, shall have become true to themselves, true to the mission of their faith and labors, as against the overwhelming allurement of our time; shall have become the actual prophets, and priests, and rulers, which once they were, another Age of Chivalry will arise and dawn upon earth. It will restore us a Government paternal in character, and yet stripped of the usurpations by which government is now rendered oppressive; it will restore us a Church of pristine authority and influence, but authority and influence derived from purity in practice as well as in precept. And with these two elements so long extinct or lost – leaving mankind to all the terrors of tyranny and all the wiles of imposture – with a Church and a Government reflecting the Divine conception of men's duties toward their Creator and toward each other, will Human Society attain, at last, the summit of human perfection. Then will the original brotherhood and equality of our race be forever acknowledged; then will there be work for all, and wages for work, instead of the injustice, the crime, the misery, the wasteful disorder which fill our hearts with so much despondency and woe. This Chivalry is of magnificent design; since to the faith, to the hope, to the steadfastness of our fathers, to their moral excellence and solid greatness, will thus be united the wondrous material achievements for which we have been so distinguished – a Chivalry of splendors enhanced as well as rekindled, or splendors essentially bright, and joyous, and immortal.

History tells us of republics full of promise and full of glory like our own. Such were those which clustered upon the shores of the Mediterranean, in almost the same latitude with us, and accomplished, centuries ago, their rise, their zenith, and their fall. Such were those free states and cities which braved the bleakness and inclemency of the Baltic and German coasts; and which likewise had their increase, and fullness, and extinction. These were all the children of Commerce, and followed her along the borders of the sea. Their ships explored the very ends of the world; laid the Indies under tribute; and on this remote continent, also, planted colonies and outposts of civilization. Alas! those republics and free states and cities have gone to their decay; the armed legions of Despotism tread upon their tombs, and scatter even their sacred ashes to the winds. But may our New World, which inherits their enterprise as well as their liberty, rejuvenate the nations grown old in oppression and despair, and plant upon the Eastern Continent the germs of a Civilization nobler than has yet been recognized – nobler than was ever sung by the poets, or foretold by oracles – a Civilization which shall raise up Labor from its fallen estate, heal its infirmities, cover its nakedness, and enthrone it with honor; as the rescued maniac, by Divine compassion, was seated near the feet of our Saviour, clothed, and in his right mind!