Etzler, J. A. (John Adolphus). Paradise within the reach of all men
imagination, and succeed so admirably in our dreams that they give the
tone still to our waking thoughts? Already nature is serving all those
uses which science slowly derives on a much higher and grander scale to
him that will be served by her. When the sunshine falls on the path of
the poet, he enjoys all those pure benefits and pleasures which the
arts slowly and partially realize from age to age. The winds which fan
his cheek waft him the sum of that profit and happiness which their
lagging inventions supply.
The chief fault of this book is, that it aims to secure the greatest
degree of gross comfort and pleasure merely. It paints a Mahometan’s
heaven, and stops short with singular abruptness when we think it is
drawing near to the precincts of the Christian’s,—and we trust we have
not made here a distinction without a difference. Undoubtedly if we
were to reform this outward life truly and thoroughly, we should find
no duty of the inner omitted. It would be employment for our whole
nature; and what we should do thereafter would be as vain a question as
to ask the bird what it will do when its nest is built and its brood
reared. But a moral reform must take place first, and then the
necessity of the other will be superseded, and we shall sail and plough
by its force alone. There is a speedier way than the “Mechanical
System” can show to fill up marshes, to drown the roar of the waves, to
tame hyænas, secure agreeable environs, diversify the land, and refresh
it with “rivulets of sweet water,” and that is by the power of
rectitude and true behavior. It is only for a little while, only
occasionally, methinks, that we want a garden. Surely a good man need
not be at the labor to level a hill for the sake of a prospect, or
raise fruits and flowers, and construct floating islands, for the sake
of a paradise. He enjoys better prospects than lie behind any hill.
Where an angel travels it will be paradise all the way, but where Satan
travels it will be burning marl and cinders. What says Veeshnoo Sarma?
“He whose mind is at ease is possessed of all riches. Is it not the
same to one whose foot is enclosed in a shoe, as if the whole surface
of the earth were covered with leather?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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