Mr. Chairman: I did not know that in undertaking to encounter Mr. Owen with controversial weapons I was to combat with a divinity. I did not know that his twelve laws were to be received and interpreted as divine revelations. He has claimed the power of forgiving us and himself all sins originating in his own singular and eccentric course during the whole prosecution of this argument. He has laid claim to the high attribute of understanding the secrets of all hearts. He says that his facts and premises are of a dignity and high import that none of us are able to comprehend! and seems to insinuate that there are as many mysteries and incomprehensibilities in the new revelation which he promulgates, as in the old one, which we have all been taught to receive.

      But, with all due deference to Mr. Owen's new light of revelation, I must protest against the liberties which he takes with our oracles. He seems to be very fond of quoting from them. This must proceed either from a desire to mislead us by passing off these sentences as expressive of his meaning in the commonly received sense of them, or from his conviction that there is no book so eloquent and sublime as the Bible, and thus he directly compliments the book which he opposes.

      I did expect, in this contest, to have had to encounter the much-boasted reason of the skeptics. In their zealous adoration of reason, skeptics have ridiculed us as mere dupes for revering the light of the sacred volume. I did expect that argument, deduction, reason, proof, the most exact and philosophical definitions, and the most minute analysis of the physical and intellectual man, would have been adduced by my opponent in this discussion. I was expecting to meet this formidable array of controversial forces; but to my utter astonishment, I have not yet been encountered by a single syllogism. So far, my opponent has offered us neither logical premises nor conclusions. Well, perhaps we must overlook all this, and anticipate a new order of things. I have regretted the necessity of introducing the argument which I have nearly brought to a close, because it is neither adapted [172] to the taste nor apprehension of a popular assembly. But I have been obliged to be somewhat abstract in these disquisitions because the scope of the debate seems to require it, and the debate itself is contemplated to be matter of record. It is only after the whole premises are submitted to calm and dispassionate reading, that you can form a correct estimate of the validity of each argument. I should, therefore, never have thought of introducing an argument of this abstract character before this assembly, did I not expect the whole to be published, and the grounds on which the cause of eternal truth is to be placed against the fancies and cavils of distempered minds, fairly laid before the youth of this generation.

      In introducing an argument like this in a popular assembly, we have to imitate the pedagogue who first teaches the alphabet in order to give his pupil the art of reading. We have to adduce the alphabet of mental philosophy in order to lead you to relish and apprehend the truth of our reasonings upon our external senses and mental faculties. But in purely abstract and philosophic topics this course must be pursued. I must, then, go over the ground which I have taken in this argument, so far as it has been prosecuted, with the hope that if Mr. Owen will not take notice of any issue that may be tendered to him, some other person may present me with some solid objections, in order that these premises may be tested thoroughly by fair and logical arguments. We have, then, endeavored to show by a very brief analysis of our senses, that we can have no simple ideas except those derived through sensation and reflection; that the powers of the mind in all its operations are confined to ideas and impressions, acquired by perception and consciousness, that although we may compound and remodify almost ad infinitum, we cannot originate an idea entirely new. We have shown that speech is neither natural to man, nor the invention of man; that infants must be taught to speak by a slow and regular process; that names are applied to things and ideas in consequence of the pre-existence of the ideas in the mind; that the idea must always necessarily precede the name, and that we have experimental proof from infants, from those born deaf and subsequently restored to hearing. And here I will remark, for the sake of illustration, that no infant has ever been known to speak any language but that which it has been taught, nor to attempt to give a name to anything till some mother, nurse, or other instructor, has designated that thing by its appropriate name to the child. I have stated that it was universally known that a man born deaf could never be taught to speak until his deafness was removed, because the power of speech can only be [173] acquired by the ear, and not by any other organ; that if it were natural to man to express himself in language, and give names to ideas and sensible objects, all men would attempt this, the untaught, as well as those who have been taught to speak. In the philosophical transactions of several European and American societies there are instances on record of persons born deaf, being brought to hearing after they had attained the age of twenty-five or thirty, and then taught the use of speech. These persons have been interrogated whether, previously to their restoration to the faculty of hearing, and their acquisition of the power of speech, they had ever, from their observations on the visible universe, derived any idea of an invisible Creator; and, with one voice, they have declared that such an idea never entered their imaginations. This tangible fact is to be found in the records of all the cases in which this cure has been performed.

      This is the only experiment that is possible to make in a case of this land; for we cannot find a human being possessed of a full organization, whose mind has not in some way or other been enlightened on this subject by tradition. We cannot find a man perfectly in a state of nature, who never heard the sound of any human voice but his own. If we could, he might be a fit subject to experiment upon, after teaching him the use of speech. This is all the proof that the nature of the argument requires or directs, and it must be by this time logically established in the minds of those who can appreciate the argument. It has been presumed that we might arrive at the idea of a first cause by a process of reasoning a posteriori; but there is a palpable petitio principii in this argument, since it assumes that the material world is an effect, and if an effect it must have a cause, which is the very position to be proved. So far reason and experience correspond with revelation. I rest a very important point of the argument here--for if this be argument and not fallacy, (and I wish to hear all objections to the argument), then Paul's was an axiomatic truth: "By faith we understand that the universe was made by the word of God." He does not say by reason; observe, but by faith. No Christian can demur to a mode of reasoning which has for its object the establishing a conviction of the truth of what Paul says, when he affirms that by faith we know the universe was made by the word of God, when he affirms that the world by philosophy never knew God. Thirdly, we have further proved from the analysis of our intellectual powers, that faith or belief is not more necessary or independent of our volition than knowledge and experience. This is a very capital point of the argument, and goes to subvert the whole of my opponent's theory of faith. Faith, [174] then, I say, has been proved to be as dependent on volition as knowledge or experience because all the faculties employed in examining evidence and acquiring knowledge are subject to our volitions. The moment I determine to push my investigation into any department of knowledge of which I am ignorant, that moment I summon my energies to the work. The moment testimony is presented to me, I call all my faculties to the examination of that testimony; and my volition is just as operative in my examination of testimony, as it is in my researches into any favorite department of science. Such then is the argument which I have submitted to you as deduced from these premises. We may now naturally lead you as we proposed, to the direct evidences of the positive truth of revelation, a duty which I hoped to have been called to at the onset.

      My friend and I have been sailing in company so long, and have at last arrived where we can bring our artillery to bear against each other. I have just now arrived at the point upon which I did suppose all the merits of this controversy were to rest. But while speaking on the incapacity of the human mind to originate ideas entirely new, I cannot pretermit this opportunity of illustrating a theory, common, I believe, to both Christians and skeptics, by a reference to my friend's proceedings. We have, then, asserted that the human faculties have not the power of originating anything new, and Mr. Owen's social theory corroborates the assertion. I would, therefore, ask Mr. Owen to answer this question, Did he, or did he not, some forty years ago, originate this theory from his own observation of human nature; or was it not suggested to him by the circumstances which Christianity threw around him in Scotland? That his theory originated in the religious circumstances at that time existing in Lanark, we have good reason to believe. It was the Christian benevolence of Mr. Dale which prompted him to invent a plan for the education of the children of the poor. By instituting a system of co-operation, Mr. Dale was enabled to sustain five hundred poor children at one time, who were collected in the manufactories, which he controlled, and were there maintained and educated by his philanthropy. And to these circumstances, instituted by Mr. Dale, is Mr. Owen indebted for the origination of his new views of society. And this is another proof that we can only acquire the knowledge of new things from things already known.

      We come now, in the regular prosecution of this subject, to the consideration of an innate power in human nature. I do not know that I am able to designate this power by its appropriate name; but there is a native, inherent power in human nature of believing upon [175] testimony. This power is sometimes called credulity, which is as inherent in the infant mind as any other faculty. Now, upon this credulity, are founded all systems of instruction. Were it not for this innate principle of credulity in human nature, there could be no docility in children. Were it not that they have the power of receiving instruction upon testimony from their teachers, all intellectual improvability would be impracticable. And here commences the line of demarcation between mere animal instinct and the intellectual progressiveness of man. He is by nature a progressive animal, and there is no limit to his intellectual progress. But all this boundless improvability in man has its source in his credulity. If he had not the power of believing what his parents and all others who may stand in a didactic relation to him, instruct him in, it would be as impossible to fructify his mind, as it would be to teach a goat to speak. This power, by whatever name it may be called, is, in its operations, the most gigantic moral power with which man has been endowed. Now, the theory of my opponent pretermits and keeps out of view this important faculty of human nature; he has not founded a single one of his facts upon it. Nay, he has had the temerity to affirm that the only use of authority was to give countenance and support to that which was false and erroneous. I believe my friend volunteered this eccentric affirmative proposition, because he was well aware that the faculty of believing or disbelieving the verity of facts as reported, is the principal germ of improvability in man. To this fact are we indebted for almost all we know. If Mr. Owen could erase from the tablet of his mind all that he has acquired upon the testimony of others--if it were possible for him to be deprived of a native inherent faculty, which is inalienable from his nature, and to be made dependent for his acquisitions of knowledge exclusively upon his own observation and experience, he would not have one idea for ten thousand which he now has, and for which he is indebted to his power of belief upon testimony. Here is no exaggeration. If the difference could be computed, it is probable I should be found to have fallen short of the mark. There is not a savage "running wild in the woods," untutored and untamed, who does not owe more of his information to the faculty of receiving truth upon testimony, than to all the experience of his life multiplied by thousands. What is the legitimate import of the term experience? Experience is neither more nor less than another name for memory.

      Suppose I should, by some accident, some concussion of the brain, be deprived of the faculty of memory, what would my experience be worth after I had forgotten all that I had ever heard, seen, read, or [176] acted? And yet this experience is the mighty engine by which my friend expects to overturn everything founded on testimony!!¹

[COD 172-177]