Benjamin Rush (1746
1813)
While historians of corrections assign
a founder's image to Rush,
his participation in the actual meetings of the Pennsylvania Prison
Society were minimal. This is so, his Autobiography reveals,
because by 1787 he
had decided to relinquish "public pursuits" and lead "a
retired life." He even commented that from 1789 1793 he
kept himself ignorant of political affairs. However, his writings
on
public punishments and on capital punishment do appear to have been the standards upon which the Prison Society was formed and against which its
prison
discipline developed.
Rush's religious thought is as difficult to clearly label as were
the general religious trends of the day. He integrated a variety
of contemporary religious trends, and appears from his writings to have
had a synthetic mind, without, however, having either the time or the
discipline to be systematic in his writing. His thoughts upon religion,
as his thoughts on crimes and punishments, are put into essay form.
These were never expanded nor edited into a comprehensive expression
of his beliefs. Thus, in looking at his works, one sees strands of
thoughts which do not always follow their own logic to a conclusion,
nor confront problems raised by conflicting notions contained within
the self same system of ideas.
When Rush attended Jersey College it was staffed by
the Presbyterians. His uncle, Rev. Samuel Finley, was, at that time,
the schoolmaster
and a leader of the "New Lights" within Presbyterianism. After this educational period, Rush went to England
and Paris where
he met dissenters, philosophes, and the leading atheistic
thinkers of his times. Who was the greatest influence
upon Rush, his autobiography does not reveal. However, it is
clear that he embraced a Christian
worldview and rejected the extremes characterized by deism, and
from that it can be inferred also by atheism.
Rush felt that, "All
that is just in principle or conduct in a Deist is taken from his previous
knowledge of the Christian Religion or the influence of Christian company.
A man not educated under such circumstances would know nothing of what
is good." Thus, not only did Christianity permeate culture
such that even its extremists and despisers had to invoke its
knowledge in order to reject it, but Christianity in his own
tine was in
a
unique situation and condition. Rush gathered from his travels
and conversations
that the age in which he lived was one of a new enlightenment.
This enlightenment enabled the Christian believer to
know more than Christians
in other times. He stated,
"However strange may it appear, it
is highly probable that an
enlightened
and inquiring Christian knows more of the Will of God,
and of the subjects
of the Gospel than any one of the historians,
prophets or Apostles,
whose writings are recorded in the Old and New Testaments."
Thus, one must not be surprised to find Christians
articulating views which do not seem in accordance with past
traditions.
The new light
made manifest in the present age endows Christians
with a truer insight into God’s truth.
When he wrote about crime and punishment, Rush exhibited
the method and courage of this new light. As to method, he invokes
the usefulness
and necessity of the faculty of reason. “God reveals some truths to our sense and to our first perceptions, but
many errors are conveyed
into the mind through both, which are to be corrected
only by reason.
Thus the Sun appears to our eyes to revolve around the earth. Astronomy
corrects this error. Endless punishment is obvious to first perception
or apprehension in the Bible. Reason corrects this error, from comparing
the whole tenor of Scripture together.” The key phrase here is
the last one, "from comparing the whole tenor of Scripture together." From
the historical and scientific works of his times, Rush felt that one
must take the total message of the Scriptures as the foil against which
to test an idea which arose from a single section or verse. It is characteristic
of his intellectual confidence that he felt that he could assay the
total message. This confidence lead him to form societies which would
carry his enlightened ideas into effects. Rush believed that, with
God’s help and the right use of reason, a Christian society
could be built.
For Rush, no particular sect carried the full light.
Society was to be governed by a general religious sense, rather than
by a set
religious
formula. The religious experience, as it comes through his autobiography,
is an experimental experience. What this meant was that while
there are givens to human nature, e.g. "We are all necessarily Religious
as we are reasoning and musical animals." The actual living from
day to day necessitates confronting a world which is "governed
alternately by and contrary" to men's wills. In this
world, individuals should strive to come in contact with the
proper stimuli.
These stimuli would help re order the individuals internal constitution
which had been disarranged at the Fall.
Stimuli
The notion of stimuli appears as one of the connecting links between
Rush's varied interests and activities. In describing his understanding
of moral evil and in his explanation of the reason for applying solitude
to criminals, Rush utilizes this notion in both a theoretical and practical
manner. As to moral evil he states,
As cold is the effect of the absence of heat, as darkness is the
effect
of the absence of light, as ignorance is the effect of the
absence
of knowledge, and as bodily pains and sickness, numerous,
diversified
and compounded as they are, arise from the
absence of certain stimuli,
so may not moral evil be nothing positive,
but an absence only of moral
good?
The proper stimuli for curing moral evil come, as the stimuli for
curing illness, from an external agent.
Sin, like disease, is weakness. It is destroyed by power, or strength,
as disease is by stimuli. Nothing is annihilated therefore in the destruction
of sin. Good, in the form of power and love, fills its space. It is
conveyed into the human mind by means of the holy Spirit. This Spirit
expels nothing. It only restores strength to weakness and order to
disorder, as stimuli cure weakness and convulsions in the human body.
In like manner, solitude is the environment
for punishment since it
permits of the influence of an external agent which restores and reorders.
"The powers of the human mind appear to be arranged
in a certain order like the strata of the earth. They are thrown
out of their order by
the Fall of man. The moral powers appear to have occupied the
highest and first place. They recover in solitude, and after
sleep,
hence the
advantage of solitary punishment, and of consulting our morning
pillow in cases where there is a doubt of what is right, or duty.
The first
thought in a morning if followed seldom deceives or misleads
us. They are generally seasoned by the moral powers."
While prisoners were to benefit by Rush's plan, so
was he to benefit by following his own advice, as, it seems, were
others. Rush
must have suggested to the solitude/meditation practicing Quakers that
they also
think about capital punishment, as he surely did, early in the
morning. For he states that, "My opinion upon the latter subject subjected
me to some abuse and ridicule in the public newspapers." Indeed,
he met with "but three persons in Philadelphia who agreed with
me in denying the right of human laws over human life, when my publication
against capital punishment first made it appearance." However,
with the Doctor’s prescription, in "less than two
years I had the satisfaction of observing that opinion to be
adopted by many kindred people, more especially among the Society
of Friends.”
While it is unclear from the Prison Society's Minutes as to how far
the members followed Rush's thoughts in details, it appears that understanding
their commitment to the prison discipline is assisted by grasping this
notion of stimuli. For the prison discipline was not merely, then,
a form of sanitation, of institutional management, nor a haphazard
architectural experiment. Rather, the prison discipline was a thought
out and religiously based practice of a religiously theoretical
system. At least, it appears to be such in the thought of Rush, who, in this
instance, seems to have influenced the Quakers more then they influenced
him.
The language used in the Memorials arose from a broader
context of thought which understood that gaining an understanding
of and
control
over the stimuli of the environment was a necessary religious
task, and as such, a task which would necessitate practical changes
in
social practice. The language of the Memorials is a rationalistic,
non Biblical
language. However, the larger theoretical structure, of which
that language is but a practical sub system, is grounded in a theological
system. This theological system is less Biblical than the system
encountered in the Puritan pamphlets of the time, but it is, nevertheless,
a system
which bases itself upon interpreting Biblical events, such as
the
Fall, as primary tasks for beginning the development of one’s
thoughts on such practical matters as crime and punishment.
Key quotes:
Rush and the other pamphleteers shared a belief that "the
obligations of Christianity upon individuals, to promote repentance,
to forgive
injuries, and to discharge duties of universal benevolence, are
equally binding upon states."
Rush view on the harmony of Reason and God's will
are seen in his essay on capital punishment. There he cites the passage, "Vengeance
is mine, saith the Lord, I will repay." Clearly, that means
that, "The
punishment of murder by death is contrary to divine revelation." For "there
are many things in scripture above, but nothing contrary
to reason." In like manner, he champions the general principle
that "the order and happiness of society cannot fail of
being agreeable to the will of God." Since this principle
is clear to Rush, and since capital punishment destroys
the order and happiness
of society: "it must be contrary to the will of God."
Note: Most of the Memorials of the Pennsylvania
Prison Society including all from 1788-1880 in Negley
K. Teeters, They Were In Prison (John C. Winston Company,
1937)
Appendix I, pp. 447-486.
