Mr. Chairman: I should be led to conclude from the argument, (if such it may be called) that the error into which my friend has fallen in his whole process of deduction, is exhibited in one assertion in his last address. His mind has dwelt so long on the influence of circumstances that he supposes that if a child of a Quaker were to be removed into the family of a Jew, and vice versa, that in process of time, the two children must inevitably imbibe the faith of the families in which they were respectively reared. Now, I have no doubt this would be the case in very many instances, but not universally. And so it is with most of his facts. They are true in very many instances, but are false in his universal application of them. It is illogical to argue from particulars, however comprehensive, to such general and universal conclusions. This proposition of my friend's is not a mathematical proposition, which, if true in itself must be true in its most extended or contracted sense. That children may be powerfully impressed by circumstances, is true; but must we therefore conclude this to be an invariable law of our nature, that they are forever doomed to the control [109] of the circumstances which surround them at birth? Mr. Owen was himself educated in a family of Episcopalians; is he now an Episcopalian? We see that the circumstances of his education could not shackle his active mind. We see that he has broken his chains, and that his emancipated mind now walks abroad, as if it had never known a fetter. This shows that there are some geniuses formed to overcome all disadvantages, to grasp a whole system, as it were, by intuition; that in some minds there is a renovating and regenerating power, paramount even to the influence of circumstances, omnipotent as my friend represents them to be. Now if this be true, in Mr. Owen's regard, why may it not be equally so with respect to countless other persons?

      Mr. Owen has attained to the knowledge of certain facts. But on the foundation of a few facts, he has proceeded to erect the superstructure of a whole code of fundamental laws of nature; a divine system of legislation. In fact, to place mankind under a modern Theocracy.

      But none of his laws is more immutable, than the one to which we have just referred.

      At one time, I would think he was preaching to us concerning the millennium; that he was the herald of a better day. Skeptical as my friend is, I must infer that he is a believer in the millennium; and, for aught I know, he may be doing as much as a thousand missionaries to induce it. Cyrus knew not the God of Jacob; he had no desire to emancipate the Jews. In like manner, Mr. Owen may possibly be an unconscious instrument in the hands of Providence. He is consoling himself with the anticipation of a better day, and earnestly persuading us to cherish the same anticipation. And from his own premises, I would undertake to prove the certainty of the fulfillment of the prophecies of the New Testament, even, I was about to say, by a mathematical demonstration: Mr. Owen tells us, that wars shall cease; that plenty shall follow us superabundantly as the waters of the Ohio; that there shall be no more need for accumulating property to answer our future exigencies, than there now exists for bottling up the waters of the Ohio. Now all this tends to encourage bright anticipations of future glory and happiness to man. Mr. Owen's millennium, we will suppose, has arrived; how long is it to continue? A millennium is a thousand years:--

      What now if we should attempt to prove, arithmetically, the certainty of prophecies concerning the final consummation of all things? The expectation of Christendom is notorious. It is this: that some time soon, perhaps in the present century, a new order of things, in the political and religious relations of society, will commence. That [110] it will pervade the whole human family; that soon after its full introduction, it will continue a thousand years; and that soon after its completion, the present state of things will terminate, and the multiplication of human beings cease forever.

      Without going minutely into the detail, such is the general expectation of Christendom built upon those writings called prophecies. Well now, should we prove by an arithmetical calculation, the certainty of such conclusions relative to the final consummation, what will the skeptics say? I do not know, whether they have been tested upon this point. We shall hear Mr. Owen when I submit the problem. The premises or data are these: The present population of the earth is estimated, say at one thousand millions. Now I will leave it to them, to furnish the data, or state what the population was two, three, or four thousand years ago. They may even furnish me data from the census of any nation of Europe for two, three, four, or five hundred years back. It will give the same result. We shall take the Bible data until they furnish another. But I again repeat, the population of any country, or of the earth, two, three, or five hundred years ago, will give the same result. According to the Bible data, the whole human family about, four thousand years ago, was composed of eight individuals, four males and four females. And to keep our calculation in whole numbers, we shall evacuate Europe and America of all their population, and place them in Asia and Africa, on the population there, which will fill that half of the earth as full of human beings as can subsist upon its surface. We have now got, say the half of our globe empty and the other half full. Now the question is, if eight persons in four thousand years fill the one-half of the earth as full as it can subsist, how long will one thousand millions be in filling the other half? If in despite of wars, famines, pestilences, and all the waste of human life, under the corruptions of the last four thousand years, such has been the increase of human beings; what would be the ratio of increase were all these to cease, and peace, health, and competence be the order of the day for one thousand years? Why, my friends, there would not be one-half acre of land and water upon the face of the globe for every human being, which would live at the completion of the millennium, or the seven-thousandth year from the creation; what I contemplate from these oracles to be about the end of the present state of human existence. Either, then, some desolation must empty the earth of its inhabitants, or the human race must be extinguished. Logic and arithmetic compel us to the former conclusion, but when we add to logic and arithmetic, the prophecies of holy scripture, we are compelled to embrace the latter. I think no prophecy ever admitted [111] of so certain a calculation, or so exact and definite a computation; in fact, no other oracle in the annals of the world is proved by arithmetic so inevitably and unanswerably as I conceive this to be. If any flaw be in my data or statement of this question, I hope Mr. Owen will detect it, and give me the opportunity to illustrate and corroborate it still more fully.

      Mr. Owen's notion seems to be this: that his twelve laws once proved, the Christian scriptures must tumble to the ground! I have very little scruple or hesitancy in admitting all his facts, save one, so far as they apply to the physical constitution of the animal man; and yet I cannot perceive how they contravene any part of Christianity. How are we to account for his hallucinations? He supposes that the admission of his twelve facts would prove his five propositions. This is most manifestly a logical error, unless these are identical propositions. Suppose that by the aid of this fact, he had made out the proof of his first proposition, will he repeat the same fact to prove the second proposition? Without the most perfect parallelism and identity in the whole five propositions, how can he expect the same facts which prove one of the five propositions, to prove them all?

      There is more couched in this speculation concerning the adolescence or infancy of the primitive stock from which man is derived, than a superficial thinker is perhaps aware of. On the hypothesis that the first pair came into existence, in a state of adolescence, when they first saw light they must have had some information concerning their origin. Infants or adults they must have been. If infants, they could never have reached maturity; they must have perished for lack of nurture. They must, therefore, have been adults. And when they saw the creation around them, they must have had some knowledge of their origin, of the source from whence they derived their principle of vitality, and their control of the animal tribes around them.

      I am now pretermitting the biblical narrative of the primitive origin of man altogether; and assuming, for the sake of argument, a hypothesis. I say, then, that on the hypothesis of adolescence, the primeval pair must have possessed a consciousness of their origin. They must have remembered when they first saw the sun and inhaled the air, and the first time they ate.

      Upon the atheistical premises before us, it would be difficult to prove that our first ancestors would have known what or how to eat. The philosopher is not aware of the consequences attendant upon the extinction of the lights of revelation. To these he owes many an idea, which, without them, he would never have conceived. Without the light of revelation, I do not see how the first pair of human beings [112] would have known how or what to eat. Upon what principles would they have set about the process? They might have felt the pain of hanger without knowing either the cause or the cure. And if they could have learned to eat from observation or from feeling, they might not have known what to eat. The scriptures, without speculating upon any of the causes of things, state facts, which lead us to think correctly, if we think at all. Hence, we find the revelation was immediate and direct upon this point. God said, "Of the fruit of these trees ye may eat." There is no system of philosophy except the Christian, which, without pretending to philosophize, inducts us into the reason of things, and that generally by telling us only what was done or said.

      But we have now before us this proposition, that the first man must have remembered the first time he saw the sun, ate, drank, and slept. This he could narrate, and would be most apt to relate, to his own offspring; for no information is more gratefully tendered, nor more ardently received, than that which respects the beginnings of things. Hence, we infer that nothing is more reasonable than that the origin of things would be the first and most important of all traditions; and so we do not find an ancient nation whose history has come down to us that has not some account of its own origin, and most of them some account of the origin of all things. But it is scarcely conceivable that the first pair, remembering and being conscious of the first time they saw the sun, could be ignorant of the author of their existence.

      That man was, in his first estate, designed to converse familiarly with his creator, the scriptures teach us; and not until he became a transgressor was this familiarity interrupted. Man is inferior to all other animals in instinctive powers--and this truth goes far to convince us that he was not constituted to be governed by instinct, but by reason. His being now more imbecile and helpless in his infancy than other creatures, only corroborates the account of his fall; for had he been designed to be governed by instinct, he would have exhibited it in at least as much perfection as other animals. Hence it is that, until reason is developed, the infant man is worse calculated to provide for himself than any other creature.

      None of the steps in this argument are long. The first man was an adult. When first he opened his eyes, his reason and his senses were both in meridian strength. He could not but be sensible of his Maker. He must always remember the first time he saw the sun, ate, drank, slept and awoke. He must have often reflected upon these first acts of his existence. He would delight to tell them, and his offspring would be most curious to hear them. Traditionary information upon these subjects is as natural as walking, talking, eating, or the most [113] ordinary acts of any animal. Man is, therefore, so created and circumstanced now as to be naturally and necessarily credulous. Credulity--for I know no term more expressive of the native bias to receive truth upon testimony--I say, credulity is as natural to man as breathing. This is a wise provision in the constitution of the human mind, that it must, and, with the utmost ease, does assent to testimony; for, without it, there could be no improvability in man. He would cease to be a progressive being. No child could be educated without it. Without it, the art of the linguist, the logician, the rhetorician would be unavailing. Human nature would be a metal (if I may be allowed the figure) that would not polish. But it is a law of human nature, as self-evident and as interesting as any one of Mr. Owen's code, and much more worthy of being called a "law of human nature" than any one of the twelve, that it is natural to man to be assured of truth, or to believe upon testimony. This, more than any one of his twelve laws, distinguishes and elevates man above the brutes. If I did not think it more worthy of being one of the first, I would adopt the lofty style of my opponent, and call it the thirteenth fundamental law of human nature. Being first infants, and dependent on our parents and seniors for information, we are, from a necessity of nature, susceptible of progressive improvement--but almost exclusively through faith.

      Mr. Owen himself walks by faith in human testimony. And although he may not be conscious of it, he has believed as firmly, and acted as implicitly, as any Christian was ever required to do. While in Scotland, he heard that there was one-quarter of the world called America, and he heard a great many reports concerning it. Now, although there are many falsehoods told, and many impositions practiced, and thereby faith rendered more precarious and fallible, yet Mr. Owen was able to discriminate the truth, and to rely upon the credible evidence which was presented to him. He had no experience of the climate, soil, products, government, and all the circumstances of the country. But so strong was his faith in testimony, and even on that sort of testimony which is often fallacious, that he is moved by his faith to leave his country, friends, relatives, and acquaintances, and trust his person and property upon the mighty ocean--encounter all the dangers of the sea, and deny himself of many comforts for the time being, in quest of that in which he believed. This is as much faith as ever was required of a Christian to translate him out of the kingdom of darkness, into the kingdom of God's own Son. As much faith, as much self-denial, as much perseverance, would have led Mr. Owen into a kingdom and country incomparably more desirable than Eden was, in all its virgin beauties, in all its primitive excellence, had [114] that faith reposed upon truth supernatural--truth as certain, and better documented, than was the testimony of those upon whose credibility Mr. Owen started from Lanark for New Harmony.

      Before I sit down, may I ask my opponent, for the sake of his own reputation as a logician, and a challenger of the world, to pay some attention to these arguments and topics; that the public may not read them without the form of a reply, or the semblance of a refutation.

[COD 109-115]