a
faith which was positive, while ours is utterly negative; theirs sprang
from want of mental power, ours from want of time. When in times past a
people felt the power of thought going from them, and became conscious
of their inability to solve the great riddle of life which was
perplexing them, they chose the best remedy for what was irremediable,
and turned to wiser men than they for direction and help. From thence
sprang faith, reverence, hero worship, which stands next in rank to
independent thought. But we, having no time to attend to these things,
have yet no faith in those to whom they are entrusted, and no hope of
their successful issue; we but shrug our shoulders at the thought, say,
'I cannot attend to it,' and let it go. So _laisser aller_ is the cry of
the age, a dead negation of thought and volition.

By proving the existence of the causes that produce it, we have shown
the presence of a mechanical tendency in our social state; the same
thing may be done in another way, by proving the existence of effects
that flow from it. The truest index of a people's condition is found in
the meaning which they attach to certain, words. A history of the word
_virtus_, manhood, is a history of the social condition of the Roman
people. If, then, we find that the conceptions which we attach to such
words as God, man, and society are mechanical, then society must have
such a tendency, for these words lie at the foundation of all
government, all social movements, and all individual actions.

First, the meaning of the word God. We, as a people, neither deny nor
pretend to deny, in words, the existence of a Being, infinite in power
and wisdom, who governs the universe according to his will; yet
practically we have ignored His existence, and deified the laws of
nature instead, given up the idea of a free volition, worshipping a
mechanical necessity of cause and effect. The cause of this dates back
to Bacon's 'Novum Organum,' the introduction of the Inductive
Philosophy. He laid down the principle that nature must be interrogated
if she would be understood, that from a careful study of the effects we
must deduce the cause, instead of presuming the cause, and explaining
the effects on this hypothesis.

This form of study and the study itself are well enough when confined to
their right proportion; but desire for wealth, in its endeavor to adapt
nature to the wants of man, has forced the study out of its proportion,
and deduce