EDITOR’S OUTLOOK.

A DANGER FOR LOCAL CIRCLES.

We are often slow to believe that our pet institutions have points of attack. We become so enamored with their merits that we close our eyes to their dangers. Particularly is this true, we fear, in regard to the local circle. Its members rejoice so heartily in its existence that they are prone at times to forget that even a local circle is heir to the frailty of all human institutions, and that it may be threatened by dangers which, unless arrested, will destroy its usefulness. One danger at a time is sufficient to consider; certainly so when so serious a one as narrowness is announced.

The whole plan of the C. L. S. C. is broad—it is literally for all men. Any department of the work which is conducted on any other principle fails to discharge its full allegiance. We fear that the local circle is in danger of losing sight of this great principle. Most natural is it for circles to so limit themselves. When a club of ten, twenty or thirty congenial members has been formed, when a pleasant plan of work has been adopted and thoroughly organized, it is comfortable and natural to decide that the circle is large enough; that a larger number would spoil the informality, would bring in an uncongenial element, would be unmanageable. The growth of the circle is stopped in the community, and the harm done is threefold. Probably the most serious evil is that the exclusiveness of the circle has abridged the usefulness of the C. L. S. C. Intended for all men who need a course of reading it naturally asks from its members fidelity to this underlying catholicity of spirit. The original plan of its founder did not include the local circle. His idea was to ask from every reader faithfulness to the broad and inspiring principle on which he had based the plan. Every member was to lead others to the well. The local circle has grown up and is undoubtedly a wonderful help in many ways, but it is in danger of keeping the C. L. S. C. from the very people who need it most. A circle once formed, and which has closed its doors to all outsiders, naturally spreads the idea that the C. L. S. C. is a sort of a private club, that only certain kinds of people are admitted, or it is suitable for only such and such people. Utterly false and harmful in the extreme to the work, it is but a logical result from this exclusiveness.

An injury almost as deplorable is the encouragement this limitation gives to the widespread social evil of “sets.” “Our set” is the bane of church union; it breaks up the harmony of Sabbath-schools; it divides our towns into a vast number of petty, jealous cliques. This spirit is contrary to the fundamental principles of our work, yet we encourage, rather than hinder it by narrowing our borders in the local circle.

Unless we do open our lines we suffer, ourselves. We lose the greatest aid which the C. L. S. C. has to offer—the inspiration which comes from working for a good cause. Sustained zeal is possible only when fed by unselfishness. Work becomes nerveless, narrow, crotchety, which has not the inspiration of being not only a help to oneself, but a help to others. To omit this labor for others is to leave out a most important part of the course.

But perhaps, it is argued, this is not practical. We have a habit, now-a-days, of declaring “not practical” a great many ideas whose utility is evident, but whose realization is attended with self-denial and constant effort. Do not be deceived. All good things are practical, if not always easy. Catholicity in the C. L. S. C. most certainly is so. Have you a large circle and do you hesitate before extending its boundaries, then you should form a second circle. Through the efforts of your members not only one but any number might be started, until there would not be a house in your town in which the C. L. S. C., if not a member, at least would be an acquaintance. These could meet separately each week, but monthly meetings, memorial celebrations and vesper services should beheld jointly. In every city where local circles exist, at least three joint meetings should occur in the year. Each society should be represented at these meetings, and provision should be made for social converse. This plan, so easily arranged, has been successfully tried in many places. It does not hinder the great work of a small circle, and removes the danger of narrowness. It may cost you self-denial and struggle, but the broader view of your true relations to men which you will get, the inspiration of seeing the work extended, and the increased friendliness in the inhabitants of your town will more than compensate.

ELECTING A CHIEF MAGISTRATE.

Under the wholesome rule of the constitution, by which power regularly returns to the people for a new lease of it, we have just chosen a President of the United States. It is wise to remember the things which were not before the people for their decision. There is, for example, the constitution under which we live with its securities for all well-defined rights under a judiciary made as independent as possible. There is also that system of local self-government vesting in states, cities, counties and towns, the control of business which is exclusively their own. There is the general policy of leaving the people to transact private business for themselves and relieving them of infantile dependence on the government. What a contrast to that Roman empire which gave panem et circenses to the people and reduced the popular conception of government to that of a good fairy who furnished food and amusement—ran the bakeries and the theaters! But on the other hand, we may as wisely remember that a campaign may have fateful bearings on our dearest interests; highest moralities and most revered sanctities. It is conceivable that the result of an election might be the admission of polygamous Utah as a state, and the consecration of plural marriage as one of the allowable and honored modes of founding the American family. It is also conceivable that as the result of an election the laboring classes might be reduced to distress, and all of us along with them, by the establishment of free competition between our workmen and the men in blouses, and the women in wooden shoes, on the other side of the ocean. It is possible, too, that a new interpretation of the constitution which would seriously impair private rights might grow from the results of an election. Nor can we forget that the spirit of our public life is powerfully affected by the discussions and the management of political campaigns. The profuse spending of money to influence votes, the recklessness which breaks out in ballot-box stuffing and counting-out frauds is more dangerous than any proposition to alter the constitution; for it does alter it and sells out the governing of us to unscrupulous managers.

And therefore it is a happy result of our political system as our fathers gave it to us, that the people interest themselves in elections, discourage great changes in our laws, impose a conservative policy upon parties, demand respect for the sanctities of the family and of society, and frown upon corrupt practices in handling the national ballot-boxes or influencing the nation’s voters by bribes and unlawful promises.

We have for the twenty-fifth time chosen a President. The office has grown in its burdens, but it has not grown in its constitutional powers. For ten years there was a great danger that its wholesome powers would be seriously reduced by the so-called “courtesy of the Senate,” according to which the President became the clerk of the Senators for Federal appointments in each state. But since the pistol shot which killed President Garfield was fired, the so-called “courtesy” has ceased to be named except for condemnation; and the President retains the power Washington had to nominate office-holders in the several states. Probably there has never been a time when the highest office was more carefully and exactly defined by practice in harmony with the constitution. The President does not dictate to Congress, force nominations through the Senate, or interfere with the independence of the Federal courts. On the other hand one may search the newspapers in vain for a trace of distrust or criticism in any of these vital concernments. After the war there was a period during which the constitution underwent severe strain at several points. The criticisms of the times of Johnson and Grant turned mostly upon constitutional questions. The conflicts of politics bore upon that class of differences. To many it seemed doubtful whether our institutions could survive these struggles. Providence has been good to us; we have been good to ourselves and our children. The storms are overpast. The constitution exists unimpaired; it is universally accepted as the fundamental law. There has not been a breath of discussion about it in the late campaign. It is many quadrenniums since the like occurred; indeed we doubt if there ever was any such campaign in this respect. Here and there a man may be found to explain our peace as ignorant indifference; but he is profoundly wrong. The separate powers of the government are well defined, and the independence of each in its own domain is preserved. The single new machine—national supervision of congressional elections through U. S. Marshals—had in it great possibilities of danger. It might have been so handled as to vest the power to hold the ballot-boxes in the President’s hands; but it has simply created salutary checks on frauds. Here and there an isolated case of improper interference may reach the record; but there is no fear abroad that our chief magistrate abuses his powers. The errors when they occur are only the blunders of individual officers, not an organized invasion of the people’s rights. So little has been said about this piece of machinery recently, that we half fear that some readers have forgotten or never heard of the Federal election laws. The sum of what we would say is that the late election marks the subsidence of those waves of constitutional disorder or conflict which had run high from the beginning of the war to the death of President Garfield. We have evidently entered upon a new field of partisan controversy; and no constitutional questions, only questions of expediency, are before us or are likely to be. The industrial problems as related to tariff questions, perhaps also some others, such as the expediency of National savings banks and life insurance bureaus for the poor, are likely to lead the political thought into channels which were never before open to it in the line of humanitarianism and the general welfare. In becoming a manufacturing nation we have traveled to new political outlooks. We have to adjust ourselves to the results of our tariff laws, whether or not we like either the laws or its results. The results are some millions of men and women earning wages in mills, whose fate and that of their children is in our hands. We shall be tempted to follies of protection as well as follies of free trade; to follies of philanthropy as well as follies of indifference and neglect. To thoughtful men the path to safety may well seem as narrow as the edge of that scimetar along which the Moslem saint skated into Paradise. Let us hope that the conservative genius of our people will not fail in these new fields of political activity; and that the buoyant hope of this growing people may continue to lift us out of the dangers of the failure of self-confidence. It is our happiness that we feel able to govern ourselves, equal to our problems, superior to our perils. If it should ever come to pass that the mass of our citizens lost the self-assurance for which foreigners sometimes unwisely rebuke them, they would begin to transfer the government to oligarchies, aristocracies, or “the man on horseback.” The campaign has had many unpleasant incidents—political mills can not be clean and quiet any more than other mills can—but a judicious observer will have noted with satisfaction that the plain men have everywhere felt equal to forming their own judgments about grave matters concerning which the so-called wise have differed most energetically. And inasmuch as the wise could not agree, it is safe to say that the wayfaring men have displayed as much sense as “their betters,” and more courage and consistency. We have been impressed by the experience of the campaign with the belief that the average American, who knows neither Latin nor science, does understand his principal business—that of governing this country.

PRINCIPAL FAIRBAIRN’S LECTURES.

The lectures of Principal A. M. Fairbairn, of England, on the Chautauqua platform last summer, were a valuable contribution to contemporary philosophy. Their subject is Modern Philosophy in its specifically English form. Starting with Locke, and passing along through the ideas of Berkeley, Hume, the Mills, Comte, and Herbert Spenser, the learned and brilliant lecturer gave us a history of modern speculation respecting the problem, “How is knowledge possible? What are its conditions? How does man come by it?” We have lately read over again these lectures in the careful reports made for the Assembly Herald; and we believe we shall render our readers a service by calling their attention to the importance of them and reminding those who have not files of them that they are on sale at this office. There is a very remarkable unity in the empirical philosophy which is associated with the names we have just given, and this unity was developed with rare skill by Principal Fairbairn. John Locke, the English founder of the school, formulated and determined the problem of philosophy for the English and the French peoples; and though each of them was original after his kind, Berkeley, Hume, the Mills, Comte and Herbert Spenser have worked upon lines which Locke laid down. Locke asked himself, how do ideas come into the mind? and answered his question by saying, there are no ideas in the mind until the senses have conveyed them in. In other terms, he undertook to disperse as a metaphysical mist the “innate ideas” in which philosophy believed when he began to write. In varying forms, the notion that there is nothing in the mind except what the senses have put there remains the creed of the empirical philosophy. The criticism of Principal Fairbairn upon the successive statements of the doctrine that the outer world is prior, and creates the inner world, is very keen and accurate. Locke was fond of saying that the mind was like a clean table, to which the senses brought ideas. Our critic asks: “Did you ever find a table that could grasp the significance of what was graved on it?” and adds, “It is the power to read the writing and weave it into a connected and reasonable and rational whole, which is the very thing to be explained. It is not how nature through the senses comes to me, but how I through the senses read nature.” And one of his strong and luminous statements is, that “Ideas can not get into the mind unless there is a mind to get into.”

The purpose of the critic throughout these lectures was to establish the priority of thought by disposing one by one of the various attempts to post-fix mind to matter. The attempts successively made to attach mind, ideas, thought, conscience, and philosophy to the tail of the material kite, all tended, of course, to skepticism. As a theologian Dr. Fairbairn was instinctively drawn to the task of reversing this order so as to attach matter as a tail to the kite of the spiritual world. No matter how plausibly stated, the theory that our knowledge and our minds are a result of material energy reduces any possible God to the status of a product of nature. If in reasoning about ourselves we shall finally conclude that our inner totality is simply and only a product of the external world, we shall be forced to conclude that all thought in the universe is of like origin. The skeptical result is inevitable. Whatever view we take of substance in nature we are compelled to decide whether or not it is so moulded as to express the thoughts of an infinite God. If we so believe we shall find it easy to explain how thought in us finds a cosmos in nature. If the infinite mind reveals his thought in the order and harmony of the external world, the fact easily explains why we find order and harmony there. It is not necessary to reduce the external world to a phantasmagoria of the mind in order to vindicate a place for God. Rather the most subtle and dangerous of skepticisms may lie in the teaching that innate ideas construct the harmonies of nature. Berkeley said we are reading God’s thoughts in the visible world; and hegelianism, to which Principal Fairbairn evidently leans, dispenses with matter while filling the universe with thought. It is equally easy to give matter reality as a plastic thing on which God writes his thoughts so that we may read them. This question of the reality of substance may very properly be the next one to command the attention of philosophy. But it must be remembered that the science which resolves matter into motion and force conspires with the philosophy which makes matter merely the expression of divine ideas.

But we do not wish to make our readers heads ache with philosophy; only to suggest to those who are interested in it that these lectures will afford them valuable instruction. At their close on the Chautauqua platform, Chancellor Vincent expressed in happy terms the admiration of thousands who heard these lectures for their vigor and eloquence. He said: “Principal Fairbairn, in behalf of Chautauqua I desire to say a very few words. We are glad that you came. We are sorry that you must go. You have commanded our admiration by the elegance, clearness and force of your diction, but preëminently by the vigor and freshness of your thought. You stand before us a great ‘phenomenon.’ [Applause.] For we have been accustomed to vigorous thought read from manuscript, we have been accustomed to vigorous thought put into memory and recited with accuracy, but this living, present, compact, vigorous thinking on one’s feet, that has held us spell-bound, is a very remarkable occurrence at Chautauqua.” [Applause.]