To Miss Jane Norton.

Philadelphia, Feb. 26, 1870.

I received your last letter only a few days before coming here, where I am happily domesticated with my friends the Lesleys; and now, after the first absorbing interests of my visit, I can turn with the greater pleasure to old times and friends far away. I cannot recall the date of my last letter; but it was some time early in January, I think, and ought to have reached you before the date of yours. Perhaps it has been miscarried or lost, or it may be at the bottom of the ocean and not so happy as my last letter to you, or as the prophet Jonah, — to survive the floods and be delivered from the deep to teach you. . . . Why didn’t you give me the promised moral lecture, instead of ironically charging me with being a Millite? For you see that I have so nearly attained that unsexed condition of mind that I have generalized like a man, and applied like a woman, your observation on not liking to appear to be a partisan of Mr. Mill. I suppose that such partisanship is as great a sin in me as it could be in you. . . . But all the personal feeling toward my philosopher of which I am conscious is founded on the fact that he is the least capable of being a partisan leader. There is the very least of personal power in his writings. He only wished, and is only fitted, to

draw with him the co-partisans of truth; for, as Mr. Goldwin Smith says, “there is reason to suspect that his intellect is the inflexible and incorruptible servant of the truth.” He had no such following as that of Comte, or other passionate and conceited lovers of what they conceive to be true. But enough of Mr. Mill. . . .

Though I did not have the pleasure of seeing Ashfield or the Curtises last fall, I had a partial substitute on Thursday evening by going with Mary, and as one of an immense audience in the great opera-house of this city listening to Mr. Curtis’s lecture. The buttoned-up frock-coat and the well-known tones and manner, and the eloquence with which he set forth the perils and the folly of our American system of civil appointments, carried me back to the pleasant old days.

I find my friends here unusually well this winter, and as happy as good people can be. Mr. Lesley, having got educated into the care and conditions of his sensitive nervous system, keeps pretty well, though his enthusiasm still tempts him to overexertion. Think of preaching eight Sundays in succession, with the week-days full of work! Still, he has learned to keep within certain limits which grim monitors set to his work. I consider myself quite a moral man, — so far as observing the laws of health is concerned, — compared with him. And the little girls, as we still call them, are as well and happy as if their parents were not the invalids they are. It is hardly a pity that ---- has grown to womanhood; for she combines most attractively the charming unconsciousness of the child with the charming consciousness of the woman, and has such grace of nature as to bridge over the awkward chasm of hobbledehoyhood. It surprises me sometimes, and makes me doubt my theory of the great dependence of human beings for their characters and powers on the moulding influences of life and circumstances, to see how completely she seems the fulfilment of infantile prophesies; but, then, I reflect that she

has always been in the same mould, strongly influenced by the same characters as those that she may have inherited. I think, certainly, that some are born good and some bad, in a certain sense; that is, the most fundamental conditions of virtue, or the absence of them, are, or may be, inherited.

Great sensitiveness or capacity for enjoyment or suffering, with a memory capable of recalling vividly past pleasures and pains, are natural endowments leading to prudence and power of sympathy. Socrates called virtue a kind of knowledge, and in one sense it is. It comes from adequately recalling past goods and evils, and therefore realizing vividly the present pleasures and pains of others through sympathy, and securing their pleasures and our own and avoiding pains through prudence. Infants in arms may show differences in these respects.

You see how cunningly I wander round to my favorite subject! I am easily persuaded that it demands a little further elucidation; and you know that it is easier to utter what flows freely from the moral consciousness than to cast about for those exceptional truths of fact that are called news; which, so far from representing the real life we lead, are, in fact, its monstrosities. “History is little more than a register of the crimes, the follies, and the misfortunes of mankind;” for in this way only does that great stranger, the past of our race, interest us in detail. We like the details, both good and bad, of our friends’ and acquaintances’ peculiar circumstances; but philosophy alone teaches us life. Let us, therefore, listen to philosophy. I will indite you a psychological lecture.

It may make the matter of our debate clearer, to state what may be admitted, according to the philosophy I profess, to be innate and heritable elements of character and mental powers. Every active and sentient being that is born has, independently of any predetermined channels of activity and sensibility, certain general capacities for them, the degrees and

proportions of which may be regarded as predeterminations of character. A certain degree of both is essential to constitute that amount of mental life which is peculiar to the human race, and probably depends on the size of its brain. Certain proportions between the original activity and sensibility will constitute varying innate capacities, which are independent of education and of special organization. The boy strikes out into the world with greater innate force of spontaneity and strength of passion, — supposing the conditions of nutrition and general health to be the same. A greater nervous sensibility than his, combined with less nervous spontaneity, will make the nature more impressionable and receptive, less aggressive, and less impertinently or idly inquisitive. They will predispose to the education or growth of the emotional nature, and especially the tender emotion in its various relations, and to greater capacities for sympathy. Persons and intimate personal relations thus become, as we may say, by nature, the objects of a predominant interest, perhaps of an engrossing one ; and objects which force themselves on the attention will constitute themselves the teachers of those who are so endowed as to be attracted by them. But it is clear that the purpose of a general and catholic education is not to exaggerate one-sidedness. It is all the more necessary that the education by inanimate things and impersonal affairs should be systematically prosecuted.

There are, no doubt, many other and more special predisposing causes to the choice of the mode of life, and the objects of study, in the original or physical constitution. But these are not to be regarded as divinely ordained or right, simply because they are inborn; for customs and circumstances of life accordant with, and constantly associated with them, must react to increase them, like other physical qualities, and render them more regularly heritable in the varieties or classes which custom thus determines. It may not be best for the human race,

with reference to its future conditions and possibilities of happiness, to be constituted as it now is at birth, — any more than it was best to be as it was when born a less intelligent and social race, with fewer arts and social acquisitions. As to what is absolutely best for the human race, in its circumstances as well as in its adaptations, — in its heaven as well as in its fitness for it, — this is not known to us; and, since the relatively best is not to be found completely revealed in the nature and inheritance of the race at any single epoch of its progress, — not at present any more than at any past time, — and since experience and experimental science is the last resort, the authority of all authorities, the largest scope should be given to their determinations. On this ground, the largest liberty consistent with the existence and the most obvious well-being of society should be left to nature; that is, to the individual choice. Individualism is thus vindicated as a means to an end, — the end of social improvement. The possibility of monstrosities in nature is also the possibility of amelioration, — when what we need is enlightenment, and not merely a more effective motive to conform to known types and prescriptions. Living Nature is a never-ending experiment in the possibilities of her laws; and I believe in regard to our race what you think, at least of the individuals, — that, in the possibilities of progress and development, natural charms can be attained which are by no means inherent in character, and qualities may become instinctive or inbred which are now only acquired through education. There is a nature above nature, a nature of infinite possibilities in which we wander, — as well as the powers that hem us in and guide our several steps.