Octavius Brooks Frothingham

“ There are distinctions enough among men at any rate, and to obliterate them as far as possible is the office of true religion and all real humanity; to increase love, to multiply the bonds of fraternity, to bring mankind to a social equality, to annihilate all that keeps mortals apart. Of course the safety of society must be preserved by laws, customs, prejudices, but care should be taken to make these simply protective in their function, and in no event should it be assumed that such distinctions, however radical, have any absolute value or go beyond the limits of this outward world. ”

“ Posterity—I shall care nothing for the future generations of mankind. I am one atom in the trunk of a tree, and care nothing for the roots below or the branches above; I shall sow such seed as will bear harvest to-day; I shall know no higher law; passion enacts my statutes to-day; to-morrow ambition revises the statutes, and these are my sole legislators; morality will vanish, expediency take its place; heroism will be gone, and instead of it there will be the brute valor of the he-wolf, the brute-cunning of the she-fox, the rapacity of the vulture, and the headlong daring of the wild bull ”

“ He is a sort of transfigured Paine. He has all Paine's power over the masses, being perhaps the most eloquent man in America; more than Paine's wit; more than Paine's earnestness; more than Paine's love of humanity; more than Paine's scorn of deceit and harshness,—for he extends his abhorrence of cruelty even to dumb beasts. He has great power of sympathy, a tender feeling for misery of all kinds. He is a poet, as is evident from these words:
We do not know whether the grave is the end of this life or the door of another, or whether the night here is somewhere else a dawn. ”

“ It is declared that "by Him were all things created that are in heaven and on earth; things visible and invisible; thrones, dominions, principalities, powers; by Him and for Him they were created." "He is far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion, and every name that is named, whether in this world or the world to come." He is "all in all." He is the pleroma, the fulness, the abyss of possibility. "The fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him visibly." He exhausts the divine capacity of expression. He is the reality of God. Towards mankind he is the reconciler. ”

“ The modern disciples of this doctrine of annihilation speak in a tone of lofty courage of their destiny, and disguise under shining and many-colored garments of anticipation, the fact of their personal cessation. The thinkers find refuge in the intellectual problems of the present; the workers pile up monuments that shall endure when they are gone; poets like George Eliot, make grand music on the harp-strings of the common humanity; but the fact remains that the philosophy of experience abandons, or did before the advent of spiritualism—the expectation of an existence after death. ”

“ The breadth and the limitation, the ideal beauty and the practical point were alike Jewish. The gorgeous abstractions, gathered up in one discourse, look like fresh revelations of God; as autumn leaves plucked and set in a vase seem more luminous than do myriads of the same leaves covering the mountains and the meadows, their crimson and gold blending with the brown of the soil and the infinite blue of the sky. ”

“ His vivacity did not exhilarate, his happy expressions did not create the sense of life in the mind, but were like artificial flowers that had no perfume, and reminded one more of the perfection of art than of the involuntary sweetness of nature. He was destitute of genius to inspire. It is the more wonderful that he could persevere, as he did, without the popular recognition that his talents merited, or the applause his endeavors deserved. ”

“ We shall suffer no attachment to literature, no taste for abstract discussion, no love of purely intellectual theories, to seduce us from our devotion to the cause of the oppressed, the down trodden, the insulted and injured masses of our fellow men. Every pulsation of our being vibrates in sympathy with the wrongs of the toiling millions; and every wise effort for their speedy enfranchisement will find in us resolute and indomitable advocates. ”

“ The ethics of the New Testament, like the ethics of the Old, have their root in the faith that Israel was a chosen people; in the expectation of a king in whom the faith should be crowned; in the anticipation of a judgment day, a national restoration, a celestial sun-burst, a final felicity for the faithful of Israel. The enthusiasm, the extravagance, the fanaticism, the passive trust, the active intolerance, the asceticism, the arbitrariness, bespeak in the one case as in the other, the presence of an intense but narrow spirit. They are not the ethics of this world. ”

“ The idea of Immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed into the human heart with its countless waves beating against the shores and rocks of time and faith, was not born of any book or of any creed or of any religion. ”

“ We need a philosophy like this to purify and enlighten our politics, to consecrate our industry, to cheer and elevate society. We need it for our own use in the hours of mental misgiving and gloom; when the mystery of the universe presses heavily upon our souls; when the fountains of the great deep are broken up, and the
"Intellectual power
Goes sounding on, a dim and perilous way," ”

“ The disappearance of the resplendent figure of the Christ from the heaven of our philosophy has not, therefore, come too soon; for thinking, clear-sighted, brave and resolute minds there are. Discerning eyes, bright and gentle, look out and see the fields, sown with new seed, whitening for a new harvest. To such as these Jesus is no longer necessary for faith in humanity, for enthusiasm and constancy in humanity's service. Heroic men and saintly women exist in such numbers and in such variety that they sit in judgment on the judges, and call the censors to account. ”

“ It made him too a charming feature in society, a delightful talker, an easy, graceful, delectable companion, an interested adviser and counsellor, a beloved person in his family, an excellent townsman.
We should be grateful for this, that one has lived to irradiate a somewhat sad profession, to warm the bleak spaces of mortal existence, to throw a gleam of gladness upon the sunless problems of human destiny. It is a great deal to be assured that a living heart has walked with us, and that a living voice has proclaimed the heart-side of man's lot. ”

“ Humanity has shrunk to the dimensions of an incipient Christendom. The men and women whom the Jesus of Matthew addresses, to whom Paul makes appeal, are men and women no more; not even Jews by race, not even a knot of radical Jews; they are "disciples," "believers," "brethren." Christians, not fellow men, are to love one another. "So shall ye be my disciples, if ye have love one for another." "By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples." Of the broad human love, the recognition of brotherhood on the human ground, duty to love those who are not disciples, there is not a word. ”

“ I have lived in a new world since reading the 'Critique of Pure Reason.' Principles I believed irrefragable are refuted; things I thought could never be proved—the idea of absolute freedom, of duty, for example—are demonstrated; and I am so much the happier. It is indescribable what respect for humanity, what power this system gives us. What a blessing to an age in which morality was torn up by the roots, and the word duty blotted out of the dictionary! ”

“ He was not an originator in the sphere of thought; not a discoverer of theories or facts; not an innovator on established customs. But mentally he was so quick, eager, receptive, that he seemed a pioneer, an enthusiast, a saint; his quickness passing for insight, his eagerness for a passionate love of progress, his receptivity for charitableness. He appeared to be more of an image-breaker than he really was. In fact, the propensity to iconoclasm was not part of his constitution. ”

“ Transcendentalism relies on those ideas in the mind which are laws in the life. Pantheism is said to sink man and nature in God; Materialism to sink God and man in nature, and Transcendentalism to sink God and nature in man. But the Transcendentalist at least is belied and put in jail by the definition which is so neat at the expense of truth. He made consciousness, not sense, the ground of truth; and in the present devotion to physical science, and turn of philosophy to build the universe on foundations of matter, we need to vindicate and reassert his promise. ”

“ The destruction of Jerusalem put an end to the State more completely than the overthrow of any modern city could do; for the holy city was the home of the [Pg 143] national life in a peculiar sense; it was the seat of the national worship in which the national life centred. With the temple fell the institutions that rested on the temple. When the walls were thrown down and the grand buildings levelled, it was like erasing the marks of history, tearing up the roots of tradition and setting the seal of destiny on the nation's future. ”

“ Light was let into dark places. The brightest aspects of divinity were presented. Immortality was rendered native to the soul. The life below was regarded as the portal to the life above.
In my own case, whatever of enthusiasm I may have had, whatever transports of feeling, whatever glow of hope for mankind, whatever ardor of anticipation for the future, whatever exhilaration of mind towards God, whatever elation in the presence of disbelief in the popular theology, may be fairly ascribed to this form of the ideal philosophy. ”

“ Let it be a philosophy which comprehends the soul, a soul susceptible of religion, of the sublime principle of faith, of a faith which 'entereth into that within the veil.' Let it be a philosophy which continually reminds us of our intimate relations to the spiritual world; which opens to us new sources of consolation in trouble, and new sources of life in death—nay, which teaches us that what we call death is but the dying of all that is mortal, that nothing but life may remain. ”

“ If transcendentalism did not appear as a sun illuminating the entire mental universe it was the fault of my exposition alone. Absolute faith in that form of philosophy grew weak and passed away many years since, and the assurance it gave was shaken; but the sunset flush continued a long time after the orb of day had disappeared and lighted up the earth. Gradually the splendor faded, to be succeeded by a softer and more tranquil gleam, less stimulating but not less beautiful or glorious. The world looks larger under the light of stars. ”

“ It was time for death to put an end to a situation strained to excess, to snatch him from the embarrassments of a path that had no issue, and, delivered from a trial too protracted, to introduce him, stainless, into the serenity of his heaven."
This is strong language, even shocking to minds accustomed to worship a character of ideal perfection. But it is scarcely bolder than the case warrants. The privilege to pick and choose material has its limits. We have no right to take what pleases us and leave the rest. Statements that rest on equal evidence deserve equal acceptance. ”

“ Schleiermacher could not contemplate the wretched meagreness and degradation of his age without being moved as by 'a heavenly impulse.' His spirit was stirred within him as he saw men turning from the true God to base idols. He felt himself impelled to go forth with the power of a fresh and youthful enthusiasm, for the restoration of religion; to present it in its most sublime aspect, free from its perversions, disentangled from human speculation, as founded in the essential nature of man, and indispensable to the complete unfolding of his inward being. ”

“ And if this be true, the sense of what we do not know is as essential to our religion as the impression of what we do know: the thought of the boundless, the incomprehensible, must blend in our mind with the perception of the clear and true: the little knowledge we have must be clung to as the margin of an invisible immensity; and all our positive ideas be regarded as the mere float to show the surface of the infinite deep. ”

“ How many have become the dupes of the sophists' eloquence, or the victims of the fanatics' terrors, for whom the spirit of a true philosophy—a philosophy 'baptized in the pure fountain of eternal love,' would have preserved the charm and beauty of life. ”

“ Literature and Art will take care of themselves; high education and scholarship will come in their own time; and so, thank God, will everything humanity needs. But for ourselves and the immediate generation, there is no work so worthy as confirming the faith of our people in their own principles; encouraging devotion to Liberty as the supreme interest of Man;—of man sacred in his own eyes, with duties, rights, aims, that are bounded neither by color, nationality, nor law. ”

“ Not the soul, as if that term designated a constituent part of each man's nature.
"All goes to show that the soul is not an organ, but animates and exercises all the organs; is not a function, like the power of memory, of calculation, of comparison, but uses these as hands and feet; is not a faculty, but a light; is not the intellect or the will, but the master of the intellect and the will; is the background of our being, in which they lie—an immensity not possessed, and that cannot be possessed. ”

“ But their belief was merely logical and mechanical, his was vital; he believed in the real, living, immanent Deity. They thought that religion was an imposition, a policy of the priests, who played upon the fears of mankind; he believed that religion was a working power in the world, the origin of the highest achievement, the soul of all aspiration. They had no faith in the direct communication of the "Supreme Mind" with the soul of man; he believed in the infinite genius of man, and in the direct communication of the absolute intelligence. ”

“ Emerson is faithful in applying his principle to social institutions and laws. His faith in ideal justice and love never blenches. In every emergency, political, civil, national, he has been true to his regenerating idea; true as a recreator from the inside, rather than as a reformer of the outside world. A profounder, more consistent, more uncompromising radical does not exist; a less heated, ruffled or anxious one cannot be thought of. He scarcely ever suggested measures, rarely joined in public assemblies, did not feel at home among politicians or agitators. ”

“ The stiff, upright, careful old man cannot understand the jocund pliability of the boy, who, nevertheless, simply expends the superfluity of his natural vigor, and relieves his excess of nervous excitability. On thinking it all over, remembering his appetite for life, his joy in existence, his nervous exhilaration, his love of beauty, his passionate ardor of temperament, I am surprised that he preserved, as he did, so much dignity and soberness of character. ”

“ In fact, the human race believes in reason and cannot but believe in it, in that reason which is manifested in consciousness, in a momentary relation with the me—the pure though faint reflection of that primitive light which flows from the bosom of the eternal substance, which is at once substance, cause, intelligence. Without the manifestation of reason in our consciousness, there could be no knowledge—neither psychological, nor, still less, ontological. Reason is, in some sort, the bridge between psychology and ontology, between consciousness and being ”

“ The intellect is haunted by old modes of truth; the heart lingers around the ancient places of reverence; the conscience refers to some antique authority; the soul cannot pray except in the language of a pater-noster or a psalm. A scent as of roses may hang round the human mind; but the roses will be grown in some garden of the East, not in ours. Such a theism as I am thinking of will be grounded in Ethical Law. You may call it "Christian," if you will, because the word Christian expresses the highest form of the moral sentiment, and carries a supreme authority to the human conscience ”

“ But in truth I have not much to say; for since I have had leisure to look at myself, I find that, so far from being an original genius, I have not yet learned to think to any depth, and that the utmost I have done in life has been to form my character to a certain consistency, cultivate my tastes, and learn to tell the truth with a little better grace than I did at first. ”