Congressman Horace Mann, September 1, 1850

SEPT. 1, 1850.

"Oh that we could see the end of crime from the beginning!" was the ejaculation that broke spontaneously from me on reading the account of ———’s last day. It has always struck me that the cultivation of causality would be a mighty aid to morals, because it would connect consequences with actions in our minds so indissolubly; and the least reflection would always show that there must be more suffering from unlawful indulgence than there can be enjoyment: so that every man would know that he would be the loser by not suppressing his passion. A starving man knows the difference between bread and a rock. Can any circumstances be supposed in which he would prefer the rock to the bread, when eager to gratify his appetite? Suppose the conviction to be just as clear in the human mind, that all wrong-doing will bring pain, and vastly more pain, too, than it can bring pleasure, because to suppose that a man can violate any law of God, and get more, or as much, from the enjoyment, as he must suffer from the punishment, would be to suppose that he could outwit or circumvent the All-knowing and All-powerful, suppose, I say, this conviction to be perfectly clear and strong, and I cannot see how a man could deliberately choose the evil, and refuse the good. It may be replied, that most men, in their sober senses, will acknowledge that they must lose more by pain than they can gain by gratification for all transgressions of the divine law. Grant that they may do so in their sober moments; yet when the temptation comes, and passion arises, this conviction is darkened: it is, at last, temporarily lost sight of; and, in its oblivion, the evil triumphs. But no passion can make us love pain rather than pleasure; and if we ever come to see that offences will bring pain and will destroy pleasure, as clearly as we see that two and two make four, or that fire will consume, or water will drown, then how can we choose to incur the pain by committing the wrong? In some

things, we see this now. Why can we not in more? Why, eventually, can we not in all?

SOURCE: Mary Tyler Peabody Mann, Life of Horace Mann, p. 306-7