Mr. Chairman: The questions which were yesterday proposed to Mr, Owen, very naturally presented themselves from his own premises. He proposed to prove all religions human, therefore he must show that human beings could invent them. This, I contend, he must do, or give up his first position. But he supposes that I will not insist upon his attending to them. In this he is doubtless mistaken, I do insist upon it, and I think he will feel himself compelled to attend to them. But he has promised to take them under his consideration by-and-by. I will just remark here, that his last address is but a repetition of the preceding one. Both amount to this, that man did not make himself, and consequently is irresponsible: ergo, all religions must be false. This appears to be his darling corollary. As to my admission of the twelve "facts," which I did for the sake of argument, I say again, I am ready to admit them all, with the exception already stated. But what of this? Mr. Owen may state twelve facts, as he calls them, more about man, and I may admit them all, and yet the original question be just as it was. If Mr. Owen had said, that a man has two eyes, two ears, two hands, two feet, etc., etc., and such and such mental faculties; I would admit it. But when admitted, will it follow from these truths, [55] accidents or properties, affirmed of man, that all religions are false? I admitted, at first hearing, most of his facts, because, my great object is to admit everything in any degree relevant or pertinent to the argument, that we may save time, and put the controversy upon the proper issue. But my friend has said that the whole pith of the argument is concentrated in the corollary, that man did not make himself, ergo, is irresponsible. Now this dogma puts out of the world, and out of human language, every idea of responsibility of any kind, or to any being whatever. Is this the consummation devoutly to be wished by all necessarians? According to this argument, no responsibility of any sort can be predicated of man any more than of a stone, this is the legitimate stopping-place of the emancipating principle, of the system of unconquerable circumstances. What mighty results! No blame, no praise, no virtue, no vice, no thanks, no gratitude! All our social, moral, natural, and religious relations, obligations, and dependencies are at once annihilated by the besom of this sweeping corollary.

      Mr. Owen has dwelt with much pleasure upon the loveliness of those kind feelings which his system is to generate. How short-sighted the philosopher! Will not this principle of necessity inevitably exterminate all good, kind, and generous feelings? Does he lay any basis for benevolent feelings? He inveighs against the bad feelings of society. His system condemns him here. He might as rationally inveigh against benevolent, as malevolent feelings. And I repeat, what basis does he lay for the former, rather than the latter? Do not these principles assume man to be as much a particle of matter as my friend's coat, which he says cannot help being black? Who would think of praising a coat because it is white, or of blaming a coat because it is black? As little commendable is virtue--as little condemnable is vice!!

      Mr. Owen views man as just so many pounds of matter subject to all the laws of matter, and in this view his laws of human nature are no more than the laws of a stone. And it is plain that no man, compos mentis, can attribute praise or blame, merit or demerit, virtue or vice to a stone. It is quite natural for me to like good water, but can I feel grateful to the fountain or rivulet which slakes my thirst? Can I thank the earth which sustains me with its harvests, or the tree which refreshes me with its fruit and its shade? No, because there is nothing voluntary, nothing moral, in these contributions of nature. This beneficence of the fountain, the earth, and the tree is purely necessary or involuntary. I know that they cannot refuse to render me their tributes. I know that it is a necessary and inseparable incident to the law of their nature that they should be tributary to man. I repeat it, that Mr. Owen's doctrine of irresponsibility lays the axe to the root of [56] that tree from whence spring all our feelings, good as well as evil. Like a rash and unskillful physician, he kills the patient while he kills the fever. All the kind feelings, complacency, affection, and social delights are murdered by the same sword which is unsheathed to stab religion to the heart.

      If I could be brought to admit that man is altogether a material being, a pure animal, I could have little difficulty in admitting the whole of Mr. Owen's theory. I could then be brought to believe that all our ideas of our natural, moral, social and religious relations, obligations and dependencies were absurd. I earnestly wish that my friend was more fully aware, than he seems to be, that while he is thus aiming at the extermination of all bad feelings, he is in reality sapping the foundations of society.

      But Mr. Owens tells us that the infant man could not help being surrounded with his individual set of circumstances. Well, admit it; but is man ever to remain an infant? If he were always to remain in a state of infantile imbecility, then he might be likened to the tree or to the stone located to the soil, subject only to the laws of mere organic matter. But how few of the human family are controlled by the peculiar circumstances which surrounded their infancy? That they are in some measure affected by them, is admitted; but ninety-nine in every hundred rise superior, or fall inferior to their circumstances. I apprehend it to be a capital fallacy in Mr. Owen's theory, that while he originates man in a certain set of circumstances, he leaves him there, and never considers that the adult man is continually changing his circumstances, and that there is not a more common incident in human life, nor a more common phrase in human language, than to change one's circumstances. We change our circumstances, and our circumstances change us. And while, in one sense, man is as dependent for his future development as for his organization on circumstances, it is just as true that he controls his circumstances with as much ease as Mr. Owen changes his coat, his climate, his food, or his country.

      We say that infants, idiots, lunatics, and the non compos mentis, are irresponsible, and we have guardians assigned them. All societies agree that these are irresponsible, because they are either untaught, or unteachable. But carry out Mr. Owen's principles to their legitimate length, and the conclusion irresistibly follows that all men are reduced to the stage of non compos mentis--the sage is as irresponsible as the idiot. Irrational animals and vegetables are to be loved or hated, praised or dispraised--are as sociable, as responsible and as irresponsible as philosophers. There can be no responsibility exacted [57] from any human being on these principles, more than from a stone, a tree, a horse, or a dog.

      What is involved and presupposed in the idea of responsibility? Certainly rationality. We never think of praising or blaming, or rewarding or punishing an infant until its rational faculties are in some degree developed. When he has been trained to acquire a rational discrimination between right and wrong, then we begin to connect the idea of responsibility with that infant. Common sense, then, teaches us that rationality and responsibility are terms nearly allied, and that the development of the one is inseparably connected with the development of the other. All but philosophists agree that reason can control that which is irrational; that reason is stronger than the laws of attraction or cohesion, and, therefore all men who have not philosophized themselves beyond the regions of common sense, are agreed that every being whose reason is developed, is responsible for his actions, and that where reason does not exist, or is not developed, praise or blame, or responsibility cannot be attributed. Now Mr. Owen makes all men everlasting infants, or predicates his whole philosophy on the assumption that the infant, the idiot, and the philosopher, are equally irresponsible, and equally controlled by circumstances, both of which are as far removed from the regions of common sense and all human experience, as the reveries of Baron Swedenborg. This far, right, reason, and common sense go with us. But when we transcend these limits, both reason and common sense bid us adieu. It is obvious that man, in the first instance, comes upon the stage under a great variety of circumstances, but it does not follow that he is riveted to those circumstances, or that he may not exalt or degrade himself by rising superior or falling inferior to these, circumstances.

      But not only are sages and idiots reduced to the same level of irresponsibility by Mr. Owen's system, but it reaches still further. It saps the foundations, not only of all human responsibility, of all morality, but also, of all obligation to any being in the universe. In the first instance, it involves us in impenetrable darkness with respect to our origin. Mr. Owen's system gives us no idea of any origin of our being, or of any relation in which, as creatures, we stand to our Creator. The system not only goes to revolutionize the moral, civil, and municipal policy of all the civilized world, but it proscribes all dependence upon any unknown, unseen cause whatever. This led me, yesterday, to show that Mr. Owen could not demonstrate his first proposition, without accounting for the relation in which we stand to a superior being, or discarding it altogether. This led me to call on him for an analysis of our mental powers. This, too, induced me to present those five [58] questions to him at our adjournment yesterday evening. This is just the point on which so much depends, and to which we anxiously solicit the attention of my opponent and this audience. But Mr. Owen declines this investigation for the time being, but promises it hereafter.

      In the meantime, then, as I conceive, I have glanced at the items in his last address, which have any direct bearings on the proposition before us, I will occupy my time yet remaining with some strictures on the different systems of skepticism. And I think it will be seen from the brief notices which we are about to take of them, that, as soon as we abandon the Bible, there is not a speck of terra firma accessible to human ingenuity, on which anything worthy of the name of system can be built. No system of nature, nor of human nature can be presented from the annals of the world, nor from the improvements of modern science, which is not confessedly conjectural, doubtful, and unworthy of any sort of confidence; which is not based purely upon imagination; and which only allures from the haven of safety, to the wide and tempestuous ocean of absolute uncertainty, without even promising us compass, helm, or pilot to conduct us to a safe anchorage again. I have rummaged antiquity, and the systems of philosophy, ancient and modern. I have explored these systems, and find them all rich in promise, but bankrupt in accomplishment. They begin with a perhaps, proceed with a may be, and end with a perchance.¹ But let us take a peep into these treasures. [59]

      Skepticism embraces as great a variety of sects as any other of the isms of ancient or modern times. The skeptics generally range themselves under one or other of the following general denominations: Deists, Theists, Atheists, Pantheists. The subdivisions are too numerous to mention in this place. It comes with a very ill grace from skeptics to object to Christianity, because of the various sects into which the Christian community is torn, seeing they cannot exhibit anything like a visible unity among themselves, except in opposing Christianity. I presume there are not to be found upon earth so many writers on any one subject, differing so much from one another, as the skeptical writers. I do not know that there can be found two works extant, under any respectable name, on any one system of skepticism, which do not differ from each other as much, at least, as the Calvinists differ from the Arminians. While they boast so much (especially such of them as believe with Mr. Paine) of the easy intelligibility of the volume of nature, which he sometimes calls the "Word of God" (that speaks the same thing in all languages), one would expect to find a remarkable conformity and coincidence of sentiment among the students of this one volume, which needs neither translation or commentary. Yet none are more unsociable in their sentiments, nor more diverse in their conclusions, then they. The Persian, the Indian, the Hindoo, and the Philosopher, all read and understand this volume of nature very differently. There are more versions of the volume of nature, than of the volume of revelation. Though, they say, it wants no written commentary, it certainly requires some prophet or interpreter to explain it. How else came it to pass that all the ancient nations, and all the modern, without revelation, have, from the same premises, come to so many different conclusions? Rome had one hundred and seventeen opinions about the summum bonum in its Augustan age; the Grecian states had almost as many gods as soldiers; and a wit once said: "It is more easy to find a god than a man in Athens!" But not only did the multiplication of gods and goddesses exhibit the fooleries of the [60] readers of the volume of nature, but the infamous characters they gave their gods and the crimes they laid to their charge. Their Gods were monsters of cruelty, lewdness, and profligacy. The morality learned from this volume was as various and as imperfect as its theology. Human sacrifices were offered upon their altars; their temples were places of prostitution; fornication and drunkenness formed the religious worship of Venus and Bacchus. Plutarch, in some particular instances, recommended as a virtue, that which, in many places, was a common usage, viz: to expose infants to death by cold and hunger, or to be devoured by wild beasts. The Grecian sages gave parents permission to kill their children--and suicide was recommended as a virtue. So teaches the volume of nature!

      But I only intend here to notice the divisions among skeptics as respects the systems extant.

      Some Italian and French skeptics, shortly after the Reformation, or about the time of the Reformation, assumed the honorable designation of Deists. These agreed in three things, viz: 1. To profess no system of religion, and to oppose Christianity. 2. To contend for the existence of one God. And 3. To follow what they called "the light of nature." But about this "one God" and this "light of nature" they were anything but agreed. Deistical writers subdivide themselves into mortal and immortal Deists; the former denying, and the latter affirming a future state. Dr. Clarke enumerated four grand classes of Deists or of deistical writers, all agreeing in acknowledging one Supreme God, but differing in almost everything else. Lord Herbert stands at the head of the list of the English fraternity, and seems to have aimed in his book, "De Veritate," at giving some sort of a system to skepticism. His five points are the following:

      1. That there is one supreme God.

      2. That he is chiefly to be worshiped.

      3. That piety and virtue are the principal parts of his worship.

      4. That we must repent of our sins; and if we do so, God will pardon them.

      5. That there are rewards for good men, and punishments for bad men, both here and hereafter.

      This English Baron wished to form a universal religion for all mankind, predicated of what he calls "reason and the light of nature." He was emboldened to publish it in the seventeenth century by a miracle, as he represents it!

      Concerning the Theists we shall only observe that they are censured more than the Deists by Monsieur Mirabaud for approximating more to the superstition of Christians than the pure Deists. They [61] humanize their God too much; give him too much the character of a governor, and too many of the attributes which are supposed essential to a good governor; whereas the pure Deists make their God rather an indifferent spectator, an uninterested observer of the affairs of this life. Among these natural religionists, or Theists, there is a great variety. They are as discordant as the Speculative Deist. The celebrated Atheist Mirabaud thus castigates them, vol. 2, p. 208:

      "The Theists, one after another, to explain the conduct of his God, finds himself in continual embarrassment, from which he will not know how to withdraw himself, but in admitting all the theological reveries, without excepting even those absurd fables, which were imagined to render an account of the strange economy of this being, so good, so wise, so full of equity; it will be needful from supposition to supposition, to recur to the sin of Adam, or to the fall of the rebel angels, or to the crime of Prometheus and the box of Pandora to find in what manner evil has crept into the world, subjected to a benevolent intelligence. It will be necessary to suppose the free agency of man; it will be necessary to acknowledge that the creature can offend his God, provoke his anger, move his passions, and calm them afterward by superstitious ceremonies and expiations." All these and many more faults does he find in the Theists.

      Thomas Paine, in his Age of Reason, page 3, gives his creed in one period--"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life." In another period he gives his creed in morality--"I believe the equality of man, and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy." In speaking of the perfection of the book of creation as a word of God, or as a revelation, he thus eulogizes it--"Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order, by which the incomprehensible whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In short, do we want to know what God is? Search not the scripture other than that called the creation."

      Mr. Paine did not want to see his justice; and therefore, he failed in telling us what to contemplate in order to discover this. Deists have not so much curiosity on this point. The skeptics of the atheistical school are not more unanimous than they of the Deistical. It is amusing, if not instructive, to hear or see how these skeptics of the two schools handle one another. Let us take a sample from two of [62] the most notable--viz: Mr. Paine the Deist, and M. Mirabaud the atheist. The atheist says--vol. 2, 211: "Is there in any one religion in the world, a miracle, more impossible to be believed, than that of the creation, or of the education from nothing? Is there a mystery more difficult to be comprehended than a God impossible to be conceived; and whom, however, it is necessary to admit?" "Between the Deist and the superstitious (Christians) it is impossible to fix the line of demarcation, which separates them from the most credulous men; or from those who reason the least upon the article of religion. Indeed, it is difficult to decide with precision the true dose of folly which may be permitted them." After this denunciation let us hear Mr. Paine, page 57: "The only idea man can affix to the name of God, is that of a first cause, the cause of all things. And incomprehensively difficult as it is for man to conceive what a first cause is, he arrives at the belief of it, from the tenfold greater difficulty of disbelieving it. It is difficult beyond description to conceive that space can have no end; but it is more difficult to conceive an end. It is difficult beyond the power of man to conceive an eternal duration of what we call time; but it is more impossible to conceive a time when there shall be no time. In like manner of reasoning everything we behold carries in itself the internal evidence that it did not make itself. Every man is an evidence to himself that he did not make himself; neither could his father, nor his grandfather, nor any of his race; neither could any tree, plant, or animal make itself: and it is the conviction, arising from this evidence, that carries us on, as it were, by necessity, to the belief of a First Cause eternally existing, of a nature totally different from any material existence we know of, and by the power of which all things exist; and this first cause man calls God." Then he sings Addison's versification of the 19th psalm. These distinguished skeptics are as opposite here, though not so palpably so, as when the former says: "All theology is false;" and the latter affirms there is one true theology--and one unadulterated revelation of God--viz: the Universe. The Deist even puts these words into the mouth of his deity. "I have made an earth for man to dwell upon, and I have rendered the starry heavens visible, to teach him science and the arts. He can now provide for his own comfort, and learn from my munificence to all, to be kind to each other," page 35. But more contradictory yet--Mirabaud asks: "Can there be a mystery more difficult to be comprehended than a God?" and Paine asserts, page 54: "The belief of a God, so far from having anything of a mystery in it, is of all beliefs the most easy: because it arises to us out of necessity." But the French sage, though he so frequently asserts the belief of a God to be the climax of absurdity, [63] is contradicted flatly and boldly by his brother skeptics of the great assembly at Bordeaux, who in their twenty-five precepts of reason, placed the following at the head of the list:--

      "All nature announces to thee a Creator: adore him. He is everywhere: Everywhere he will hear thee."

      But going no further into the detail--let us just notice the varieties existing among Atheists. Among the ancients Dr. Cudworth reckons four distinct sects of Atheists: 1. The Disciples of Anaximander, called Hylopathians, who attributed the formation of everything to matter destitute of feeling. 2. Atomists, or the Disciples of Democritus, who attributed everything to the concurrence of atoms. 3. The stoical atheists, who admitted a blind nature, but acting after certain laws. 4. The Hylozoists or the Disciples of Strato--who attributed life to matter. Dr. Cudworth's systema Intellectuale, chap. 2, mir. vol. 2, p. 300.

      Other diversities have occasioned various sects among atheists. They have differed as much upon morality, virtue, and vice, as about the origin of all things. Aristippus, Theodorus the atheist, Bion, and Pyrrho, denied any distinction between virtue and vice. In modern times, the author of the fable of the Bees, and the Man Automaton have reasoned away all difference between virtue and vice. Mirabaud, vol. 2, p. 319.

      Indeed, Mirabaud, though one of the oldest advocates of atheism, declares, vol. 2, page 318, "THAT ATHEISM WILL NOT MAKE A WICKED MAN GOOD."

      Bayle, when speaking of the Epicureans, says: "Those who embraced the sect of 'Epicurus the atheist' did not become debauchees, because they had embraced the doctrine of Epicurus; they only embraced the doctrine of Epicurus, then badly understood, because they were debauchees!" High encomiums on atheism!!

      Among the moderns we have had several sects of atheists, or Atheistical writers, such as Spinoza, Hobbes, Vannini.

      Spinosism, so called from Spinoza, the Jew, born in Amsterdam, 1632, teaches but one substance in nature--all the bodies of the universe are various modifications of this one substance--all the souls of men are modifications of this one substance--that there is but one being and one nature; and that this nature by an imminent act produces all those which we call creatures. Thus his Deity is both agent and patient, creator and creature. No two atheists now living, or who have published anything to the world, agree in their speculations. Indeed, how can they? There is no fixed principle. The materialists of Mr. Owen's scheme differ, in some respects, from the materialists of the French school. But, indeed, they differ from themselves. They are not the [64] same theorists in June and January. A change in the thermometer often produces a change in the whole system. An attack of bilious fever, a single emetic, or a cathartic, has been known essentially to change a whole system.

      Pantheism is of early, but unknown origin. Some of the Pantheists held the universe to be one immense animal, of which the incorporeal soul was properly the god, and the heavens and the earth the body of that god. Orpheus, one of the most ancient Pantheists of whom we read, called the world the body of God, and its several parts his members, making the whole universe one divine animal. Aristotle was pretty much of the same opinion: he held that God and matter were co-eternal, and that there is some such union among them as exists between the soul and body.

      Polytheists have deified dead men, animals, and even vegetables, and have ascribed to them honors and attributes which belong to the Creator alone. But there is no boundary to be set to the vagaries of the human mind. At one time, and in some circumstances, it sees a god in everything; at another time, and in other circumstances, it sees a god in nothing. So true is yet found the saying of the unpopular Paul of Tarsus, "Professing themselves to be philosophers, they became fools."

      My friend and opponent has contributed his mite to the mass of bewilderment which has been read. He has given us a new system of skepticism perfectly intangible. "Twelve facts" have been asserted concerning the materiality of man. And these facts have been presented to us in such a shape as to strike at the root of all our ideas concerning our spiritual relations.

      We are unable to conceive of the immense revolution which must be produced in the mind of one who has been put in possession of all the biblical ideas and terms, by the annihilation of all ideas of God, and the relations to which they give birth. The idea of the existence of a God and his perfections once annihilated, and what have you left? On the principles of philosophy it is just as hard to destroy as to create a single idea. In philosophy, these two ideas concerning the power of creating and the power of destroying are intimately connected and inseparably interwoven. If I could forget that I ever had heard the name of God, and could erase from the table of my mind all my ideas of spiritual things, I am at a loss to conceive what views I could entertain of any object around me. Everything would be to me a most inexplicable puzzle. But the question which must forever confound the materialists of all schools is, How did these ideas get into the world? There must be some way of disposing of them. It devolves on my [65] friend and opponent to explain the origin of those ideas, which have universally obtained among mankind, on spiritual subjects. It is incumbent on him to avow explicitly whether he conceives us to be indebted to a supreme or superior being for anything we possess. Man does not owe his existence to any human being; from whence, then, does he derive it? The unde derivatur of man, or the whence came he, must be determined before he can ascertain the nature of any of his relations.

      The basis of all obligation or responsibility I hold to be dependence. A being, independent of any other, has no rule to obey but that which his own reason or will prescribes. But a state of dependence will inevitably oblige the inferior to take the will of him on whom he depends as the rule of his conduct, at least, in all those points wherein his dependence consists; consequently, as man depends absolutely upon his Creator for everything, it is necessary that he should, in all points, submit to his will. This I do hold to be the true and immovable basis of natural, social and religious obligation and responsibility. Now, if Mr. Owen can prove that we are all independent beings, and show wherein we are all independent, he carries out his system to a triumphant issue at once. Only let him prove that we are independent beings, and then the conclusion must follow out that we owe nothing to our Creator, to our parents, our benefactors, or any other creditors. I say, in holding the affirmative that we are irresponsible, he must prove that we are independent. But this will be to wage war with common sense, with universal experience. I will not consume time in proving a point which is itself as plain as the proof could be, viz: that mankind are dependent, and therefore responsible.

      Mr. Owen supposes the capital error of all religions to be that they teach that belief is under the control of the will--whereas he supposes the contrary. But it would seem that he attaches no very definite meaning to the word belief, when he asked you to be so good as to believe for only five minutes that he did not stand in propria persona before you, or that Mahomet was a prophet sent from God.

      Mr. Owen certainly errs in his views of faith, or supposes you have an uncontrolled power over your belief, when he asked you to believe, without evidence, that Mahomet was a true prophet. If I, or any Christian, had affirmed that a person could believe without evidence, then he might have made such a demand upon you; otherwise he could not rationally have made such an appeal. We contend that testimony is essential to faith; and that whether we shall possess the testimony sufficient to constrain belief, very generally depends upon our determination or volition. [66]

      But I would ask what idea he attaches to the word belief. I am apprehensive that he confounds, or uses interchangeably, the terms belief, knowledge and opinion. Belief always depends upon the testimony of others; knowledge, upon the evidence of our senses; opinion, upon our own reasonings. I do not, in strict propriety of language, believe by my eyes, any more than I hear by my fingers. I know this desk is before me, I do not believe it. We know that Mr. Owen is here, but we cannot believe it. Therefore, for Mr. Owen to ask the audience to believe that he is not now before them, is entirely unwarrantable. I know that which is communicated to my sensorium through the avenues of my senses; and all that is thus communicated, we denominate knowledge. On the other hand, belief has exclusive reference to testimony; and opinion merely expresses different degrees of probability; and after weighing these probabilities, we say that we are of this, that, or the other opinion. I may be of opinion that there is a navigable passage around the north pole--that all infants who die go to heaven, etc. Opinions result from premises not certain, or are the conclusions to which we are led from all the data before us. But wherever we believe, it must be upon sufficient testimony. In a word, I know this desk is before me; I believe that Thomas Jefferson is dead; and I am of opinion that Symmes' theory is all a mere fancy. I think Mr. Owen will accede to this.

      I must just remark, in passing, that it is not difficult to prove the contrary of Mr. Owen's sixth position. That our volitions do, in many instances, determine our belief, or have some influence upon it, I doubt not can be made apparent to all. Suppose, for example, that I am told that some important event has transpired, which, in a peculiar point of view, is very important to me--my informant, we will farther suppose, is a man of suspected veracity. Now, I cannot believe nor disbelieve on the evidence offered. But in consequence of the interest I feel, I determine to examine the evidence, and finally I collect such a body of evidence, as convinces me of the truth of the first report. But, if I had not willed or determined on eviscerating or searching out the truth of my first informant's narrative, could I have arrived at a full belief of the report? Now, the question is, was not my belief of this fact, some way dependent on my volition?

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