s. The political as well as the religious fanatic appeals from
the over-weening opinion and claims of others to the highest and most
impartial tribunal, namely, his own breast. Two persons agree to
live together in Chambers on principles of pure equality and mutual
assistance--but when it comes to the push, one of them finds that the
other always insists on his fetching water from the pump in Hare-court,
and cleaning his shoes for him. A modest assurance was not the least
indispensable virtue in the new perfectibility code; and it was hence
discovered to be a scheme, like other schemes where there are all prizes
and no blanks, for the accommodation of the enterprizing and cunning, at
the expence of the credulous and honest. This broke up the system, and
left no good odour behind it! Reason has become a sort of bye-word, and
philosophy has "fallen first into a fasting, then into a sadness,
then into a decline, and last, into the dissolution of which we all
complain!" This is a worse error than the former: we may be said to have
"lost the immortal part of ourselves, and what remains is beastly!"
The point of view from which this matter may be fairly considered, is
two-fold, and may be stated thus:--In the first place, it by no means
follows, because reason is found not to be the only infallible or safe
rule of conduct, that it is no rule at all; or that we are to discard it
altogether with derision and ignominy. On the contrary, if not the sole,
it is the principal ground of action; it is "the guide, the stay and
anchor of our purest thoughts, and soul of all our moral being." In
proportion as we strengthen and expand this principle, and bring our
affections and subordinate, but perhaps more powerful motives of action
into harmony with it, it will not admit of a doubt that we advance to
the goal of perfection, and answer the ends of our creation, those ends
which not only morality enjoins, but which religion sanctions. If with
the utmost stretch of reason, man cannot (as some seemed inclined to
suppose) soar up to the God, and quit the ground of human frailty, yet,
stripped wholly of it, he sinks at once into the brute. If it cannot
stand alone, in its naked simplicity, but requires other props to
buttress it up, or ornaments to set it off; yet without it the moral
structure would fall flat and dishonoured to the ground. Private reason
is that which raises the individual above his mere animal instincts,
appetites and passio