The Sultan and His PeopleOscanyan, C. (Christopher)
History
The Sultan and His People
Oscanyan, C. (Christopher)
Turkey -- Description and travel; Turkey -- Social life and customs
But it outrides the storm of three score years and ten, until it
is engulfed in the maelstrom and eddying circles of the river of
Death. How vast, how exquisite are the sensibilities of man, whose
first emotions of pleasure and pain, are the alphabet of humanity.
The pleasure felt by a sentient being, creates the first ideas of
good, while on the other hand the sensation of pain is synonymous
with evil. As we awake into existence, each passing moment seems to
develop new desires; our grasping souls and bodily wants are constantly
re-echoing each other's cravings; unsatisfied human nature is ever
on the alert, crying, give, give. This restless search for good,
pleasure, or happiness, leads its victims astray, and thus is created
the preponderance of evil; for such hot and eager haste stays not to
discriminate. The fatal apple seemed so good and so much to be desired
to the mother of all living, that she took, and ate; but when she had
eaten her eyes were opened. Thus by such efforts to secure the good,
the limit is overstepped, and suffering and sorrow entailed. Still,
none enjoy, and none suffer in the same degree; innumerable have
been the specimens of nature's handiwork, yet never were any two
individuals alike in their natural or intellectual structure.
There is a wonderful connection between the physical and the moral
in our curious composition; and the latter is so much modified by
the former, that the variety of temperaments and dispositions may be
attributed to the reciprocal influences of these two constituents
of our being. The origin of good and evil is then embodied in our
own hearts, in the structure of the human frame, in our natural
susceptibilities to pleasure and pain.
The individuality of pleasure and pain creates an approving and
disapproving principle in every human frame, and each man is pleased
with himself, when he enjoys a personal benefit from good or pleasure,
and displeased when he suffers from the consequences of pain or
evil. The lesson is soon learned that the evil might have been avoided,
and conscience raises her silent testimony in the bosom. Apart from our
own sensations, there seems to be a superstitious principle innate in
the human breast, a deference to a supreme good, which as the Ruler
and Creator of the universe, holds all created things in awe, and to
whom the conscience or self-approving and self-condemning principle
pays all deference.
This principle has existed under every form of humanity, in every
variety of nation and blood, and has been educated, and developed by
different circumstances.
Thus are derived all religions, and the fear of retribution for
transgressing the bounds which conscience claims for the real good,
and its essence the supreme Creator, has led men to various acts of
atonement or self-recommendation.
The mind of man instinctively looked from "Nature up to Nature's God,"
and sought an embodiment for the Divine essence, as there was for
the human.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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