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PUBLISHED SEMI-MONTHLY.
VOLUME I.
v - '*
For the Georgia Collegian.
"All is Well!”
“ All is well!” The nightly warden
Lets his wakeful post be known;
And in turn a sleepless cordon
Sends the answering watch-cry on.
Pledge of safety, note of promise,
Sounds it through the murky air;
Drives the dread of midnight from us,
Friends are round us watching near.
Though the foe lies close before us,
Where his camp-fires glimmer still;
Yet, to strengthen and assure us,
Comes the watch-cry, “ All is well.”
So, in life—when sorrows darken
Thickly round our trembling feet,
Oft our sinking spirits hearken
To a voice as strangely sweet.
“ All is well!” ’Ts Faith’s rejoinder
Through the tempest-laden air—
Rising o’er the breaker’s thunder,
Like a trumpet, shrill and clear.
“ All is well!” Hope sends the answer
Thro’ the gathering mist and gloom;
Lo ! she comes with golden censer,
Pouring round her, sweet perfume.
“ All is well!” ’Tis God who speaks it—
Rise o’ch’ sorrow’s bending storm ;
Life is what the creature makes it—
Only Ljliisti andjs* *1 be firm.
when me is ended,
Christian! 10, the curtain drawn—
Hope and Faith, thou God-befriended,
Lead thee to the Father’s throne !
Eoline.
■ Athens , March 9th, 1870.
LESSING’S LAOCOON.
[ Continued .]
BY PROF. F. A. LIPSCOMB.
But I digress. All I desire to es
tablish is, that among the ancients,
beauty was the highest law of the
plastic arts. And this established, it
necessarily follows, that every thing
else which can bo embraced at the
same time within their province,
must, if inconsistent with beauty,
yield entirely to it; and if not incon
sistent, must, at least, be subordinate.
1 will abide by this expression.
There are passions and degrees of
passion which are expressed by the
ugliest possible contortions of coun
tenance, and throw the whole body
into such violent postures that all of
those beautiful lines which circum
scribe it in a composed state, are lost.
From all such violent emotions the
ancient masters either abstained en-.
tirely, or reduced them to a lower
degree, in which they are capable of
some measure of beauty. Rage and
despair disfigure none of their works.
I dare assert, that they have never
painted a Fury. Anger they tem-
CLIMBING THE HEICHTS.
ATHENS, GA., MARCH 19,1870.
pered into seriousness. With the
Poet, it was the ar.gry Jupiter who
hurled the lightning ; with the Artist,
it was only the serious. Grief was
softened into sadness. And where
this moderation could find no place,
where the grief would have been as
detracting as disfiguring, what did
Timanthes ? His picture of the sac
rifice of Iphigenia, in which he has
imparted to all the bystanders that
peculiar degree of sorrow appropriate
to each, but concealed the face of the
father which should have expressed
the deepest degree of sorrow, is well
known.
Many clover criticisms have been
made on this. He had, says one, so
exhausted himself in sorrowful coun«
tenances, that he despaired of being
able to give a more sorrowful one to
the father. He acknowledged by
this, says another, that the pain of a
father under such circumstances, is
beyond all expression. For my own
part, I see in this, neither the inabiU
ity of the artist, nor the incapacity
of art. With the degree of a passion
the corresponding lines of the face
are also strengthened ; in the high
est degree thef- are the most iiistineV
ly marked, and nothing is easier for
art than to express them. But Ti
mantbes knew the limits which the
Graces had set to his art. He knew
that the grief which became Agas
memnon as a father, was expressed
by contortions, which are at all times
agly. So far as beauty and dignity
could be united in the expression of
sorrow, so far ho carried it. He
would, indeed, willingly have passed
over the ugly, willingly have modi*
fied it, but since his conception ad
mitted neither of its omission nor of
its modification, what else was left
for him to do, but to conceal it?
What ho dared not paint, he left to
be conjectured. In short, this con
cealment is a sacrifice which the art
ist made to beauty. It is an in
stance, not how expression may be
carried beyond the limits of art, but
how it should be subjected to the
first law of art, the law of beauty.
And this, now, applied to the L&o
--coon, the principle I seek, is clear.
The master aimed at the highest
beauty under the accepted conditions
of bodily pain. The latter, in all its
disfiguring violence, could not be
combined with the former, he was
therefore compelled to modify it, to
soften shrieks into sighs— not be
cause a shriek would have betrayed
an ignoble soul, but because it would
have disfigured the face in a hand
some manner. For, only imagine
the mouth of Laocoon forced open,
and then judge ! Let him shriek and
see ! Before, it was a form which
inspired compassion, because it show
ed, at the same time, beauty and
pain ; now it has become an ugly and
disgusting figure, from which we
gladly turn our eyes; for the sight
of pain excites displeasure, unless the
beauty of the suffering object is such
that it can change this displeasure
into the sweet feeling of compassion.
For the Georgia Collegian.
Dr. Paley.
[CON TIN U ED.]
I now propose to consider briefly,
Paley’s doctrine of Utility; prefa
cing my remarks with this, that
nothing that I or any one else could
say would go so far to place this
doctrine in a clear light, and to dis
robe it of that dress of sordid sensu
alism in the uncongruous folds of
which, the deluded high priests of a
false philosophy have so dextrously
concealed its splendid truth ; noth*,
ing so far to disrobe it of
a perusal cf
the work itself. But now it is gen
erally not read at all, or read with a
predetermination to place the worst
possible construction upon every
thing it contains; as if it were not
an universal law, that when the mind
is predetermined to judge harshly, it
transcends the bounds of truth and
justice. For does not difference
make greater difference ? If you be
gin to read a book, or to study a doc
trine with a pre-existing antipathy
towards it, whether it have any foun
dation or not, will not the mind of
itself go on and form a thousand that
have only a subjective existence, and
not one of which would over have
had any existence at all had it not
been for that pre-existing.
Dos Cartes never said a wiser or
truer thing, than that all error pro
ceeds from hence—that the judging
faculty does not keep within the
same bounds as the understanding.
And yet, to say nothing of that large
class who condemn our author with
out having over read a philosophy in
their lives,l venture to say that even
among students of philosophy, not
one in fifty ever begins to read Paley
without some prejudice against him,
founded either upon popular opinion,
or upon the arguments of Idealists
made generally against the Lockian
metaphysics.
In discussing this doctrine of util
ity, it will be necessary, first, to give
the popular conception of what it is
TERMS---$2.50 PER ANNUM.
NUMBER 3.
and then to give it as conceived by
the author himself. The difference
between ihem cannot be told. For the
poles of the universe are not farther
apart than popular belief and truth.
Utilitarianism, according to modern
acceptation, has become to mean a
low, groveling philosophy which
makes every thing material. A phi
losophy which regards mind as noth
ing more than matter in a high state
of differentiation; and God as the
unity of the laws of nature, without
will, power, or even a proper exist**
ence. A philosophy in which the
present reigns supreme; which wil
lingly sacrifices the repose of eterni
ty to the pleasure of an hour. A phi
losophy which denying all objective
existence to right and wrong, makes
pleasure and pain the only rule of
morality. A philosophy which, re
cognizing no god but convenience,
looks with the same favor upon the
hero who drives the foreign oppres
sor from his country, and the assas
sin who plunges his dagger into the
heart of the domestic tyrant. A
philosophy that denies all existence
to disinterested virtue, patriotism,
friendship-, devotion, lo\*o, and closes
forever the portals of the soul that
front the universe of God. Finally,
in the language of J. D. Morrell, “ A
philosophy in which man is wholly
material; his pleasure on earth is
but tho result of nervous affections;
and it is hard to give any reason why
the capacity of thought itself should
not pass away forever when the bo
dily structure is dissolved by death.”
Is this the doctrine that Paley labor
ed to teach ? Let us see.
Paley’s doctrine of utility is briefly
as follows ; “ When God created the
human species, either He wished
their happiness, or He wished their
misery—or He was indifferent and
unconcerned about both.”
If He had wished our misery Ho
would have made our senses to be so
many sources of pain to us, as they
are now sources of pleasure. Indif
ference is inconsistent with the na
ture of God. Therefore God wishes
the happiness of bis creatures. Now
then, outside of revelation, how aro
we to estimate actions? By their
utility. Wo are to inquire whether
or not they contribute to the general
good. It they do, then they are
right; if not, wrong. Why? Be
cause God wishes tho happiness of
his creatures. Hence, if they contri
bute to the general happiness, they
meet with His approbation, and are,
therefore, right; if not, they are
against His will, and are, therefore,
wrong. Whatever is oxpodient is
