The Flesh and the Spirit in American Literature - Essay Example

The Unified Force Since ancient times, religion has been a dominant factor in society determining its values, principles and traditions. For the American nation, religion becomes the main unified factors which linked people from different backgrounds together. The works of literature shows that the nature of man and the nature of things occur in securing to all those who are sharers with one another in the same language: and this, with or without those other points of identity which are common to you and them -- the same customs, the same religion, and in their origin, and in a necessarily and everlastingly large part of their texture, the same laws. Thesis Religion is one of the main unified factors which helped the American nation to survive and level cultural and social differences inside the nation. John Smith in “The General History of Virginia” depicts the role and impact on religious beliefs on the first settlers. Smith writes: “everything of worth is found full of difficulties: but nothing so difficult as to establish a commonwealth so far remoate from men and means, and where men's minds are so untoward as neither do well themselves, nor suffer others” (105). Yes: no two objects can in their own nature be more intimately connected, than are the interests of the two great parties: nothing more perfect and identical than the interest they both have, in being, in respect of Government, separate. Forced under one and the same Government, the two families have been, are, and never can cease to be, enemies: enemies -- not only each to the other, but each to itself: separate, they will be, each in harmony with itself -- each to the other, a nearest and dearest friend. One form of government there is in which, to any considerable extent, the sinister sacrifice is constantly impracticable. The work The Flesh and the Spirit by A. Bradstreet describes the role of religion in life of ordinary citizens and the role of Puritan values in national identity. If, on finding his intimations or protestations to this effect disbelieved, a man's thirst for vengeance should be inflamed to such a pitch, as to render him eager to destroy the life of this or that individual, to whom the provocation is attributed, -- and, for the purchase of a chance of affording to the malevolent appetite its disastrous gratification, content to expose his own life to equal hazard, -- by no such dissocial passion would the truth of the assertion be rendered in any degree the more probable. As little would it, if, in the same view, he were to call God to witness, shedding, at the same time, tears in ever so large a quantity: all that would thus be proved, is -- that he had that secretion at command, and that as, in the mouths of profane cursers the word God is an instrument of boisterous nonsense, his expectation is that in his mouth, by the weakness of his hearers, it will be converted into an instrument of delusion -- of privately profitable, and publicly mischievous, imposture. Anna Bradstreet writes: "Be still, thou unregenerate part,/ Disturb no more my settled heart” (268). Using these unique elements of religion, the immigrants learnt not only how to perform but also how to judge the performance of others and accommodate to new environment. It is possible to add that this experience and challenged shaped Americans and reflected in such values as hospitality, warm family relations and openness. The usefulness of this part of the official establishment to the whole nation taken together were the only consideration to be adverted to, here is a mass of constant expenditure, from which not merely might ample retrenchment be made, but of which, according to the above principles, were these the only ones that bore upon the subject, the entire aggregate might be struck off with indisputable advantage, and without detriment in any shape. But, the welfare of the individuals, of whom that class is composed, forms as large a portion of the welfare of the whole community as does the welfare of the same number of individuals taken together from any other class: and, to those whose situations stand visibly exhibited upon the list of offices, require to be added all such individuals belonging to any of the productive classes, in so far as their subsistence is in such sort dependent upon the consumption of these consuming classes that, upon the cessation of such consumption, their means of subsistence would either altogether, or to a degree more or less considerable, be extinct. Nathaniel Hawthorne in the novel “The Scarlet Letter” depicts the impact on religion on society, its values and relations between people. True it is -- that of that which would in case of the retrenchment in question be lost to this part of the community, a great part would be gain to the whole of which they form a part. But, where the sum of money or money's worth is the same and the number of sharers the same, the good produced by gain is far from being equal to the evil produced by loss. Moreover, of all sudden transfers of capital from one branch of production to others, one consequence is -- a quantity more or less considerable of dead loss. That of the regular Clergy has this for its distinctive character: namely, that by none of its Members as such is religious service rendered, in any shape, to any living individual or assemblage of individuals in particular, to the exclusion of any other. . “Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. To Hester Prynne it might have been a mode of expressing, and therefore soothing, the passion of her life. Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin” (Hawthorne 2007, Chapter 5). Accordingly, these have not, properly speaking, a place upon the list of functionaries. In regard to the secular Clergy, no other assumption can, I suppose, on this occasion, be proceeded upon, than that of the necessity of the demand for the services of a number correspondent to that of the official situations at present in existence. Whatever labor has been destined to the production of the wealth employed in defraying the personal expense of any Member of the Clerical order, over and above what is voluntarily bestowed upon him for professional service, has been destined to a purpose not merely useless, but much worse than useless. It has moreover been accepted by him in contempt and defiance of the precepts of Him by whom it. As general security increases, this ratio lessens. By the same established arrangements and habits by which a certain degree of security has been given to the universal interest and each man's share in it, a correspondent degree of security will have been given to every particular and sinister interest: at least to every sinister interest which has not originally and generally been seen, and understood, to be incompatible with the universal interest. Let but the state of things be such that in the eyes of the man in question his share in the universal interest is, without need of any further sacrifice on his part, sufficiently secured, -- no such thought as that of making any ulterior sacrifice of any particular and sinister interest belonging to him will now be endurable to him. In his speeches and writing, Abraham Lincoln describes impact on religion on the society and relations between religion and the state. Whatsoever quantity of power which, in those several shapes, a man is or has been in possession of, profit in the subtle and refined shapes thus designated, which, howsoever indeterminate in its amount, is not the less real or the less perceptible in its effects, attaches itself of course to profit in that more substantial shape. By being a succedaneum, it is a substitute, and by being a substitute, this instrument of factitious and spurious exclusion, a bar operating to the exclusion of natural, genuine and real worth. It is an efficient cause of whatsoever qualities in human conduct stand opposite to such natural dignity: it operates as a reward, a premium, a bounty, upon the possession and manifestation of those pernicious qualities -- it operates as an inducement to a man to cherish and nourish in himself those pernicious qualities to the exclusion of the opposite useful ones. Those useful ones are not capable of being manifested and possessed without sacrifice of personal interest -- sacrifice of the interest of the moment at least -- to an amount more or less considerable. But for that which he is in possession of or can obtain without sacrifice, man does not make sacrifice. Instruments of factitious dignity the man who possesses, possesses in every instance without sacrifice. As it is an instrument of injury to all men together in their collective capacity, so is it to each man in particular in his individual capacity. Of two boys see-sawing upon a board, the one can not rise but in proportion as the other is depressed. Of two men sitting together in an assembly room, the one with the title can not be more respected but in proportion as the other without the title is less respected. Altogether unaccompanied with power, with any such situation as affords opportunity of displaying merit by public service, the title of baronet is as mere and empty a title as any title can be. It affords, according to any theory respecting merit, not the slightest presumptive evidence of merit in any shape -- it affords not any evidence whatsoever of service in any shape rendered to any human being by the possessor: without so much as the pretence of enquiring into title on the ground of merit, it was even in its first origin sold to any man who could pay the price. In sum, the works under analysis show that religion was a unified force which helped to join people from different cultures and backgrounds and form a nation. If in this case the desire of producing suffering in the breast of another be to be termed vengeance, it may be termed vengeance produced by mere antipathy. It is however evidence of something: it is received as such, or it would not possess the value which every body sees it to possess. It is evidence of opulence: it is therefore evidence of the habit of associating with men of opulence. It is therefore evidence of a sort of education and opportunities superior to that which is within the reach of the lower or even of the middling orders. Works Cited Hawthorne, Nathaniel The Scarlet Letter. 2007. Bradstreet, A. The Flesh and the Spirit. in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, ed. N. Baym. Volume A. W. W. Norton & Company; 5th edn, Shorter Version. 1998. 268. Lincoln, A. Abraham Lincoln: His Speeches and Writings. ed. by R.P. Basler World Publishing, 1946. Smith, John. The General History of Virginia. in The Norton Anthology of American Literature, ed. N. Baym. Volume A. W. W. Norton & Company; 5th edn, Shorter Version. 1998. 105. Read More