states; of all the states? Does the general voice of ages affirm any
principle, or is no community of sentiment discoverable in distant
times and places? And when it shows the power of self-interest, I
accept that as a part of the divine law, and must reconcile it with
aspiration the best I can.

The word Fate, or Destiny, expresses the sense of mankind, in all
ages,--that the laws of the world do not always befriend, but often
hurt and crush us. Fate, in the shape of Kinde or nature, grows over
us like grass. We paint Time with a scythe; Love and Fortune, blind;
and Destiny, deaf. We have too little power of resistance against this
ferocity which champs us up. What front can we make against these
unavoidable, victorious, maleficent forces? What can I do against the
influence of Race, in my history? What can I do against hereditary and
constitutional habits, against scrofula, lymph, impotence? against
climate, against barbarism, in my country? I can reason down or deny
everything, except this perpetual Belly; feed he must and will, and
I cannot make him respectable.

But the main resistance which the affirmative impulse finds, and one
including all others, is in the doctrine of the Illusionists. There
is a painful rumor in circulation, that we have been practiced upon
in all the principal performances of life, and free agency is the
emptiest name. We have been sopped and drugged with the air, with food,
with woman, with children, with sciences, with events which leave us
exactly where they found us. The mathematics, 'tis complained, leave
the mind where they find it: so do all sciences; and so do all events
and actions. I find a man who has passed through all the sciences, the
churl he was; and, through all the offices, learned, civil, and social,
can detect the child. We are not the less necessitated to dedicate