HOPES AND DESTINIES

OF

THE HUMAN SPECIES.

WHEN a traveller enters on a voyage of adventure, what so natural, or so fitting, as that he should carefully inquire what scenes lie before him; whither leads the path into which he has struck, and what the ultimate issue of his pilgrimage.

Man is a traveller; the earth a great field of untried adventure; and human life the route that conducts us on, from prospect to prospect; now leading us under a smiling heaven, by the valley's verdant footpath, through scented meadows and by peaceful fountains; and then bidding us thread the mazes of the darkling forest, or brave the storms of the mountain, or encounter the sultry terrors of the desert sands.

But devious as is the path; changeable as are the phenomena it discloses; unexplored too, as is the great future before us; yet are we not altogether without chart or compass to take the general bearings of our course, and anticipate its leading features.

We have analogy for our guide; analogy which teaches us with all the practical certainty, if not the logical severity, of mathematics, so much that we truly believe and implicitly trust to: analogy, which alone assures us that this night will, like the nights which have preceded it, fade into morning; and that the sun will rise to-morrow, as through past centuries he has daily risen.

We have seen or learned, that the sun has regularly ushered in the dawn through all the past; and thence we rationally receive assurance, that he will rise in the future; even though some ingenious Pyrrhonean may puzzle us to explain WHY it follows, that the same regular and unvarying sequences of natural phenomena which have been hitherto, will be hereafter. In like manner we have seen or learnt the progress of mankind in the past, and thence we may rationally deduce conclusions for the future.

Every one, perhaps, unconsciously draws such conclusions for himself. The most indifferent has, now and then, looked beyond his day and generation, and marvelled whither the Great Journey tends.-But how diversified the conclusions at which the reasoners arrive!

Look abroad over the world, note the sayings and actions of men, and you may distinguish two separate and contrasting classes that divide our race. Speak of human improvement, and mark how variously your words are received. From this man, of the cold eye and sarcastic brow, you will hear expressions of despondency, perchance even of contempt. He smiles at you, for a simple soul, who will learn better some day; or else, he sneers at you for a dreaming enthusiast, who must needs trouble his brain about wild notions of perfectibility, instead of sitting quietly down, as common sense bids him, to mind his own business and fill his own purse. "The world's a great workshop,"-such are the complacent reflections with which he hugs himself in a comfortable belief of his own superiority, the world's a huge workshop, where wealth and honours and power are manufactured, wholesale and retail. Men are the tools to work with, and a cunning workman may drive a merry business, if he but once learn how to manage and use them. Men have always been dupes, are dupes now, and ever will be dupes. If I do not cheat and tickle them, my neighbour will; they cannot live without being cheated and tickled by some one. The question is not, whether the human animal is to be a fool or a sage; but whether I or another am to profit by his folly. Try to reform him, and you will be kicked for your pains. Flatter and humour him, give him pretty playthings to amuse him, and smooth his hair the right way-and he will be your pack-horse; he will kneel down and be loaded; he will get up and follow you, and step out proudly too, if you will but repeat in his ears, that to bear his load cheerfully is a noble occupation, honourable before men, pleasing to Almighty God, a holy fulfilment of the great end and aim of our being. Dream ever so long, reason ever so sagely, practical wisdom's precept is this: "The public's a goose, and a wise man's business is to pluck one of her feathers."

But speak of human improvement to the young and the guileless; to him whose aspirations after better things are yet alive; who still retains within his own breast that which belies the worldling's contemptuous estimate of mankind; speak to him of your hopes for the future; impart to him your anticipations of a long, long, endless progression towards peace, and knowledge. and happiness :-and then you will see his eye lighten, and his smooth brow expand. He hopes, he believes, because he bears about with him an earnest of those purer thoughts and nobler sentiments, which have power to create an earthly paradise.

Which of these two men is supported, in his anticipations, by analogy ?-the doubter or the believer? It is an important question; a far more important one to us, the inhabitants of this earth, than can be any inquiries regarding other worlds, which it will be time enough to examine, when we find ourselves existing in them.

The question is very simple: What are the chances of happi

ness for mankind? Is there a gradual and continued improvement in human society; or is there but the ebb and flow of a stupendous tide, that rises only to fall again; losing, during each alternate period, what it gained in the preceding?

To speak first of the general principles, which we see regulating earthly affairs:

Regard the human animal, under all his varieties, the most noble, or the most degraded; take him as the intellectual Caucasian, of symmetrical limb, and ample forehead, and graceful carriage; or as the dull, low-browed, ungainly, unawakened, Caffree; as the tall Patagonian, or the dwarf Laplander; as the gentle and indolent South Sea Islander, ripened to an early maturity under the softening glow of a tropical sun; or the hardy seal-fisher of the far Arctic Sea, creeping up to manhood through the chills and darkness of a six months' night; take man under these, and a thousand other diversities, and you find in him, savage or civilized one great motive-principle; one common feeling, born with him, living for ever within him, and departing only when sensation departs-THE DESIRE OF HAPPINESS. As simpleton or as sage, as slave or as tyrant, in the hunting-forest or the courtly saloon, amid the self-mortifications of the cloister or the false indulgences of the debauch, hoping or fearing, suffering or enjoying,-man's instinct is towards wellbeing. By a thousand diverging paths, indeed, yet unceasingly in each of these, the human being feels forward towards that something which his reason, or his imagination, persuades him will make him happy. It may be a present pleasure, it may be a future enjoyment; it may be of a selfish or of a social character; his own welfare, or the welfare of those he loves; it may be a dream of earth or of heaven-it matters not; it is still a longing for happiness; an inward, unceasing, enduring, irrepressible impulse, that can no more be extracted from the human character, than can the shadow be severed from him who walks out in the sunshine.

The proof of this is to be found in the breast of every human being. It can obtain, and can require, no other

If human beings, (being of sound and healthy mind,) knew, and distinctly felt, from infancy to manhood, the consequences of every action, no actions would be performed, but those which tend to happiness; because, previously to the formation of evil habits, man is always decided in his conduct by his conviction of the balance of enjoyment. Man has not the power to desire misery; his voluntary actions are always regulated by his will; and he cannot will two opposite things at the same time.

A being ever desiring happiness, cannot (as a general rule) learn how to be happy, without becoming so; for where the will and the power exist, the action follows, as certainly as the descent of water to a level. In other words, true knowledge cannot be increased throughout the world, without a coresponding increase of happiness. I mean by true knowledge, an

accurate perception of the various means to become and remain happy, and of the various means to escape and avoid misery; or, as we may express it, a knowledge of the precise effects on human nature of all actions whatsoever.

Now, there is but one mode of collecting this true knowledge; by observing what happens, or by appropriating to ourselves the observations of others; in a word, by experience, either our own, or that of our fellow creatures. The more numerous and just our observations, personal and adopted, (that is, the more extensive and correct our experience) the greater is our stock of true knowledge.

But it will be conceded, that the world is always growing older; further, that it cannot grow older without growing more experienced, since every day exhibits new facts, and since these facts are continually observed and frequently recorded.

It follows directly from all this, that in proportion as the would grows old does the human race acquire experience; that in proportion as the human race acquires experience has it the true knowledge of good and evil; and that in proportion to inan's true knowledge of good and evil, is man's happiness.

Thus, reasoning in the abstract, it appears, that the happiness of the world increases with its age. This will hold true of all worlds, if others there be, in which the inhabitants desire happiness, and have the power of imparting and transmitting their experience. It does not hold good of the animal races, because they cannot communicate their thoughts, nor record their observations. Their experience, therefore, accumulates only through a single lifetime, and each succeeding individual must begin at the beginning again, and must lay up, unaided, except by instinct, its own stock; which stock will, at its death, be again lost to its fellow-animals. Previously to the invention of printing, this reasoning applied less emphatically even to the human race than now it does; for then, experience was but imperfectly transmitted, chiefly by tradition, and was, in a measure, out of the reach of the mass.

The above views touching the natural tendency to human improvement, will appear in a still more striking light, if we call to mind another great pervading principle of our nature. Its character and workings have been well delineated by a modern poet :—

'Tis CURIOSITY!-Who hath not felt
Its spirit, and before its altar knelt?
In the pleas'd infant, see its power expand,
When first the coral fills his little hand;
Next, it assails him in his top's strange hum,
Breathes in his whistle, echoes in his drum;
Each gilded toy, that doting love bestows,
He longs to break, and every spring expose.
Placed by your hearth, with what delight he pores
O'er the bright pages of his pictur'd stores;
How oft he steals upon your graver task
Of this to tell you, and of that to ask:

And, when the waning hour to bedward bids
Though gentle Sleep sit waiting on his lids,
How winningly he pleads to gain you o'er,
That he may read one little story more!

Nor yet alone to toys and tales confined,
It sits, dark brooding, o'er his embryo mind:
Tell him who spoke creation into birth,

Arch'd the broad heavens, and spread the rolling earth;
Who form'd a pathway for the obedient sun,
And bade the seasons in their circles run;
Who fill'd the air, the ocean, and the flood,
And gave man all, for comfort or for food:
Tell him, they sprang at God's creating nod-

He stops you short with "Father, who made God

This restless searching after the hidden, this anxious desire to examine the unknown, this longing after unexplored facts, in a word, this LOVE OF EXPERIENCE will be acknowledged to promise much for man's improvement, when we reflect, that it is in fact, a love of the very soil, so to speak, in which, and in which alone, happiness springs up—a love of JUST KNOWLEDGE.

I know what reply misanthropy and despondency can make to arguments like these. "Is the world happy? Are men better, wiser, happier to-day than they were yesterday, or yesterday than the day before? There is the Red Man, the aboriginal sovereign of America's forests-has the gift of civilized experience been to him a gift of love and peace, bringing virtue and happiness? Regard him, in the simple majesty of his former ignorance, before the Pale Faces crossed the Great Salt Lake, in their floating dwellings; think of him as the forest philosopher, the stoic of the woods, the free, dauntless, generous warrior, the bold sagacious hunter, the faithful friend, the dignified human being: and see him now, with his new gained experience, chaffering for a dollar with some mercenary pedlar, or higgling with some government agent about the price of his father-land; or, worse than all, maddened to noisy violence, or debased to maudlin imbecility by the poison-waters which we, in our matured wisdom, have learnt to manufacture for ourselves, and to recommend, on all occasions, to our neighbours. Noble triumph of experience! Glorious example of the moralizing and enlightening effect of all the just knowledge which centuries of civilization have accumulated at our feet!

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Aye! or look back through these centuries:-was there not virtue, was there not strength of mind, was there not cultivation equal to any of which modern times can boast, hundreds, thousands of years ago? There was the rude integrity, the rational simple habits, the unostentatious and hospitable kindness of the patriarchal age: is the shilling-and-pence selfishness of modern commerce and civilized law so VERY great an improvement on these? Is there so MUCH more fellow-feeling now to relieve the wanderer and receive him into the porticoed dwelling, and at the over-loaded table of luxury, as there was then to bid him Tarry, I pray thee, with us until morning,'