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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 35

Mischief II.—Imposing Useless Privations

page 65

Mischief II.—Imposing Useless Privations.

It is by the endurance of voluntary pain that a man can most invincibly attest his devotion to the Deity. But there seems to have been a gradual declension of genuine and fervid piety in many countries, or at least its intensity has frequently fallen short of this first-rate excellence. In this state of comparative relaxation, it suffices only to enforce upon its votaries the greater or less immolation of earthly pleasures, without being strong enough to produce gratuitous self-torture. Public opinion, less impassioned and less exciteable on behalf of the Deity, will not reimburse the sufferer for the endurance of stripes and mutilation. The motive to the latter being thus withdrawn, he contents himself with colder and more moderate testimonies of devotion. He claims the public esteem for a voluntary resignation of all his earthly pleasures for the sake of God. To impress this conviction in the minds of his neighbours, it is necessary that his self-denial should be above all imputation of temporal recompense—and, therefore, that it should be productive of little or no benefit to any beside the Deity.

Of all the sources of pleasure, physical and mental, few can be named which have not thus become, in a greater or less degree, objects of renunciation and abhorrence. The following acts of self-denial have all, on different occasions been placed in the catalogue of religious practices:—
1.Fasting.
2.Celibacy.
3.Abstinence from repose.
4.Abstinence from cleanliness, personal decoration, and innocent comforts.
5.Abstinence from social enjoyments and mirth.
6.Abstinence from remedies to disease.
7.Gratuitous surrender of property, time, and labour.
8.Surrender of dignity and honours.

It is unnecessary to remark that none of these privations inflict that acute and immediate agony, which results from the tortures before enumerated. Some of them, perhaps, may upon the long run occasion a larger aggregate of suffering, from their constant pressure and irritation. But I think it most important to notice, that out of the whole diminution of human happiness, which natural religion page 66 originates, these intense self-inflictions constitute a portion almost infinitely small, when compared with that spreading system of privation and self-denial, which lays whole societies under contribution. Like a vicious government, the amount of its noxious effects ought to be estimated by the standing sacrifices which it extorts from the million, and which, though not strikingly oppressive in any individual case, swell into an unfathomable mass when multiplied into the countless host upon whom they are levied—not from the comparatively rare occurrences of concentrated horror and atrocity.

For public opinion, which merely encourages and provokes, by excessive admiration, the voluntary tortures of the enthusiast, acts as a compulsory force in extorting self-denial and asceticism. How it originally comes to demand and enforce these sacrifices, how each individual finds himself interested in exacting them from others, and thence obliged to pay them himself—I have attempted to elucidate in the foregoing part. The reason why the privations are thus required by the popular voice, while the self-inflictions are left optional, is because the earliest and most natural mode which occurs for conciliating the unseen misanthrope, is to consign to his use some gratifying and valuable possession. A man despoils himself of some piece of property, and bestows it to satisfy the wants of his Deity: The Ostiak, according to Pallas, takes a quantity of meat and places it between the lips of his idol—other nations present drink to the gods by throwing it out of the cup upon the ground; that is, by rendering it useless to any human being. It is these donatives, or acts of privation, which are originally conceived as recommending the performer to divine favour. Sacrifices of other sorts are subsequently super-added—and abstinences from certain enjoyments, on the plea of consecrating them to the Deity. Hence the public opinion is at the outset warmly enlisted in exacting self-denying performances for his benefit—a tone of thought industriously cherished by his ministers, as I shall hereafter explain.4

page 67

These considerations will serve to explain how the popular opinion has come to compel imperiously a certain measure of self-denial and privation, while it abandons self-inflicted penance to the kindlings of spontaneous enthusiasm.