HD WIDENER
HW JVC s





publ
si
the
of
ed


NOTICE.
The series of Treatises, of which the present is one, is
published under the following circumstances :
The Right HONOURABLE and REVEREND FRANCIS
HENRY, EARL OF BRIDGEWATER, died in the month of
February, 1829; and by his last Will and Testament, bear-
ing date the 25th of February, 1825, he directed certain
Trustees therein named to invest in the public funds the
sum of Eight thousand pounds sterling ; this sum, with
the accruing dividends thereon., to be held at the disposal
of the President, for the time being, of the Royal Society
of London, to be paid to the person or persons nominated by
him. The Testator further directed, that the person or per-
sons selected by the said President should be appointed to
write, print, and publish one thousand copies of a work on
the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifest-
ed in the Creation ; illustrating such work by all reason-
able arguments, as for instance the variety and forma-
tion of God's creatures in the animal, vegetable, and mi-
neral kingdoms; the effect of digestion, and thereby of
conversion ; the construction of the hand of man, and an
infinite variety of other arguments; as also by discove-
ries ancient and modern, in arts, sciences, and the whole
extent of literature. He desired, moreover, that the pro-
fits arising from the sale of the works so published should
be paid to the authors of the works.
The late President of the Royal Society, Davies Gilbert,
Esq. requested the assistance of his Grace the Archbishop
of Canterbury and of the Bishop of London, in determining
upon the best mode of carrying into effect the intentions of
the Testator. Acting with their advice, and with the con-
currence of a nobleman immediately connected with the de-
ceased, Mr. Davies Gilbert appointed the following eight
gentlemen to write separate Treatises on the different
branches of the subject as here stated :


NOTICE
THE REV. THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D.
Professor of Divinity in the University of Edinburgh.
ON THE ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO THE MO-
RAL AND INTELLECTUAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN
JOHN KIDD, M. D, F. R. S.
Regius Professor of Medicine in the University of Oxford.
ON THE ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO THE PHY-
SICAL CONDITION OF MAN.
THE REV, WILLIAM WHEWELL, M. A. F. R. S.
Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.
ON ASTRONOMY AND GENERAL PHYSICS.
SIR CHARLES BELL, K. H. F. R. S.
THE HAND; ITS MECHANISM AND VITAL ENDOWMENTS
AS EVINCING DESIGN.
PETER MARK ROGET, M, D.
Fellow of and Secretary to the Royal Society.
ON ANIMAL AND VEGETABLE PHYSIOLOGY.
THE REV. WILLIAM BUCKLAND, D. D. F. R. S.
Canon of Christ Church, and Professor of Geology in the Uni-
versity of Oxford.
ON GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY.
THE REV. WILLIAM KIRBY, M. A. F. R. S.
ON THE HISTORY, HABITS, AND INSTINCTS OF ANIMALS.
WILLIAM PROUT, M. D. F. R. 8.
ON CHEMISTRY, METEOROLOGY, AND THE FUNCTION OF
DIGESTION,
POR LA
His ROYAL HIGHNESS THE DUKE OF Sussex, Presi-
dent of the Royal Society, having desired that no unneces-
sary delay should take place in the publication of the above
mentioned treatises, they will appear at short intervals, as
they are ready for publication.


ofiteza Minions
ON THE
Loulie
ON THE
1887
POWER, WISDOM,
AND
GOODNESS OF GOD,
AS MANIFESTED IN THE
ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE
TO THE
· MORAL AND INTELLECTUAL
- CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
BY THE
REV. THOMAS CHALMERS, D. D.,
PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDIN-
BURGH.
NEW-YORK
A. SHERMAN, 61 FULTON-STREET.
1834.


ZIŁ 3707 Phil 2657.2
1786 Via, 18
risus, eties,
HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY
hlah
a


TO THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND
CHARLES JAMES,
LORD BISHOP OF LONDON.
My LORD,
Your Lordship's personal kindness to myself would
alone have inclined me to solicit for this work the honour
of your patronage and name.
But I must further confess the peculiar satisfaction which
· I feel, in offering it as a tribute and a public acknowledge-
ment of my admiration for an order of men, who, more
than all others, have enriched by their labours the moral
and theological literature of England.
In the prosecution of that arduous and hitherto almost
unattempted theme which the late President of the Royal
Society has, by your Lordship's recommendation, assigned
to me, I have derived greater aid from the views and rea-
sonings of Bishop Butler, than I have been able to find be-
sides, in the whole range of our existent authorship.
With his powerful aid I commenced the high investiga-
tion to which your Lordship has called me. To imagine that
I have completed it, would be to forget at once the fulness
of the Creation, and the finitude of the Creature. Whate-
ver the department of nature may be which we explore, in


DEDICATION.
quest of evidence for the perfections of its Author, there is
no inquirer, though even of the most transcendent powers,
who shall ever attain the satisfaction of having traversed
the whole length and breadth of the land. He will have
but entered and proceeded a certain way, within the margin
of a territory whose riches are inexhaustible.
That your Lordship may long continue, by your zeal,
and talents, and lofty erudition, to sustain the honours, and
to promote the vital good of our Religious Establishments
in this empire, is the fervent desire and prayer of
My Lord,
Your Lordship's most obliged
.. . and obedient Servant,
THOMAS CHALMERS.
Edin. May 13, 1833.


CONTENTS
PART II.
ON TAE ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO THE
INTELLECTUAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
CHAP. I. Chief Instances of this Adaptation. . 243
II. On the Connexion between the Intellect and ...
the Emotions . . . . . 272
III. On the Connexion between the Intellect and
the Will . . . . . . 294
IV. On the Defects and the Uses of Natural The-
ology. . . . . . . . 316


viji
PREFACE.
the evidence afforded by the relations which the mind bore
to the external world. In the adaptation of external nature
· to man's physical constitution, there are many beautiful
and decisive indications of a God. But prior to these, there
is a multitude of distinct indications, both in the human
anatomy, and the human physiology, viewed by themselves,
and as separate objects of contemplation. And accordingly,
in this joint undertaking, there have been specific labourers
assigned to each of these departments. But we have not
had the advantage of any previous expounder for the ana-
tomy of the mind, or the physiology of the mind; and we
felt that to have left unnoticed all the vivid and various in-
scriptions of a divinity, which might be collected there,
would have been to withhold from view some of the best at-
testations in the whole range and economy of nature, for the
wisdom and benevolence of its great architect.
But to construct a natural theology on any subject, it is
not necessary to make of that subject a full scientific expo-
sition. The one is as distinct from the other, as the study
of final is from the study of efficient causes-the former of-
ten lying patent to observation, while the latter may be still
involved in deepest obscurity. It were a manifest injury to
our cause, it were to bedim the native lustre of its evidences
-did we enter with it among the recondite places of the
mental philosophy, and there enwrap it in the ambiguity
of questions yet unresolved, in the mist of controversies yet
unsettled. Often, though not always, the argument for a
God in some phenomenon of nature depends upon its re-
ality, and not upon its analysis, or the physical mode of its
organization on the undoubted truth that so it is, and not
on the undetermined, perhaps interminable question of how
it is. We should not have shrunk from the obscurer investi-
gation, had it been at all necessary. But that is no reason
why time must be consumed on matters which are at once


PREFACE
IX
ubscure and irrelevant. It is all the more fortunate that
we are not too long detained from an entry on our proper
task, among the depths or the difficulties of any preliminary
disquisition which comes before it-and that the main
strength of the argument which our mental constitution,
taken by itself, furnishes to the cause of theism, lies not in
those subtilties which are apprehended only by few, but in
certain broad and palpable generalities which are recognized
by all men.
But there is another explanation which we deem it neces-
sary to make, in order fully to reconcile the actual topics of
our essay, with the designation which has been prefixed
to it.
If by external nature be meant all that is external to
mind, then the proper subject of our argument is the adapt-
ation of the material to the mental world. But if by exter-
nal nature be meant, all that is external to one individual
mind, then would the subject be very greatly extended; for
beside the reciprocal influence between that individual
mind, and all sensible and material things, we should con-
sider the reciprocal influence between it and all other minds.
By this contraction of the idea from the mental world to but
one individual member of it; and this proportional extension
in the idea of external nature from the material creation to
the whole of that living, as well as inanimate creation, by
which any single man is surrounded; we are introduced
not merely to the action and reaction which obtain between
mind and matter; but which is far more prolific of evidence
for a Deity, to the action and reaction which obtain between
mind and mind. We thus find access to a much larger ter-
ritory, which should otherwise be left unexplored and
have the opportunity of tracing the marks of a divine intelli-
ligence in the mechanism of human socieety, and in the
frame-work of the social and economical systems to which


PREFACE.
men are conducted, when they adhere to that light, and
follow the impulse of those affections which God has be-
stowed on them.
But in the progress of our argument, we come at length
to be engaged with the adaptations of external nature, even
in the most strict and limited sense of the term. In the ori-
gin and rights of property, as well as in the various econo-
mic interests of society, we behold the purest exemplifica-
tion of that adjustment which obtains between the material
system of things and man's moral nature and when we
proceed to treat of his intellectual constitution, it will be
found that the harmonies between the material and the men-
tal worlds are still more numerous, and more palpably in
dicative of that wisdom which originated both, and conform-
ed them with exquisite and profound skill to each other. ,


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
GENERAL AND PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS.
1. EXTERNAL nature, when spoken of in contradistinction
to mind, suggests chiefly, if not solely, the idea of the mate-
rial universe. Even though restricted to this limited and
proper sense of the term, we should still behold the proofs
of beneficent design in the fitnesses of the one to the other;
but far more abundantly and decisively, it must be confess-
ed, in the adaptation of external nature to the physical, than
in its adaptation to the moral and intellectual constitution
of man. For fully developing our peculiar argument, an
enlargement of the meaning commonly affixed to external
nature seems indispensable,-an enlargement that we should
not have ventured on, if in so doing we crossed the legiti-
mate boundaries of our own assigned subject; and that, for
the mere purpose of multiplying our topics, or possessing
ourselves of a wider field of authorship. But the truth is,
that we did confine our notice to the relations which obtain
between the world of mind and the world of matter. we
should be doing injustice to our own theme, by spoiling it of
greatly more than half its riches—beside leaving unoccu-
pied certain fertile tracts of evidence, which, if not entered
upon in our division of the general work, must, as is ob-
vious from the nature of the respective tasks, be altogether
omitted in the conjunct demonstration that is now being of-
fered to the public, of the Goodness and Wisdom of the Deity.
2. It is true that, with even but one solitary human mind
of the material creation, certain relations could be
traced between them that would indicate both skill and a
benevolent purpose on the part of Him who constructed the
frame-work of nature, and placed this single occupier within
its confines. And, notwithstanding this limitation, there
would still be preserved to us certain striking adaptations
in the external system of things to the intellectual, and some
too, though fewer and less noticeable, to the moral consti-
tution of man. But, born as man obviously is for the
companionship of his fellows, it must be evident that the


12
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
main tendencies and aptitudes of his moral constitution should
be looked for in connection with his social relationships,
with the action and reaction which take place between man
and the brethren of his species. We therefore understand
external nature to comprehend in it, not merely all that is ex-
ternal to mind, but all that is external to the individual pos-
sessor of a human mind, who is surrounded not only by an
economy of complex and extended materialism, but who is
surrounded by other men and other minds than his own.
Without this generalized view of external nature, we should
be left in possession of but scanty materials for evincing its
adaptation to the moral constitution of man, though an am-
ple field of observation would still lie open to us in unfold.
ing the aptitude of the human understanding, with its various
instincts and powers, for the business of physical investiga-
. For the purpose then of enhancing our argument, or
rather of doing but justice to it, we propose to consider not
merely those relations between mind and matter, but those
relations between mind and mind, the establishment of which
attests a wise and beneficent contrivance. We shall thus be
enabled to enter on a department of observation distinct from
that of all the other labourers in this joint enterprise, and
while their provinces respectively are to trace the hand of a
great and good Designer in the mechanism of the heavens,
or the mechanism of the terrestrial physics, or the mechanism
of various organic structures in the animal and vegetable
kingdoms; it will be part of ours, more especially, to point
out the evidences of a forming and presiding, and withal be-
nevolent intelligence in the mechanism of human society.
3. We conceive of external nature then that it compre-
hends more than the mute and unconscious materialism, and
the objective truth-it comprehends also the living society
by which the possessor of a moral and intellectual constitu-
tion is surrounded. Did we exclude the latter from our re-
gards, we should be keeping out of view a number of as
wise, and certainly, in the degree that mind is of higher con-
sideration than body, of far more beneficial and important
adaptations than any which are presented to our notice in
the mechanical, or chemical, or physiological departments
of creation. Both in the reciprocities of domestic life, and
in those wider relations, which bind large assemblages of
men into political and economical systems, we shall discern
the incontestible marks of a divine wisdom and care; prin-


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
mind in addressing itself to these respective objects of con-
templation ?" as distinct, indeed, as the question of “ Quid
est" is from “Quid oportet ;" or as the question of " what
is" from "what ought to be."* A sound objective system
of ethics may be framed, irrespective of any attention that
we give to man's moral constitution. A sound system of
logic may be framed, irrespective of any attention that we
give to man's intellectual constitution. And on the other
hand, however obscure or unsettled these sciences may still
be; and more especially, whatever controversies may yet
obtain respecting the nature and the elementary principles
of virtue, -such notwithstanding, may be the palpable and
ascertained facts in the nature and history of subjective man,
that, both on his mental constitution, and on the adaptation
thereto of external nature, there might remain a clear and
unquestionable argument for the power, and wisdom, and
goodness of God.
5. Having thus referred our argument, not to the consti-
tution of morality in the abstract, but to the constitution of
man's moral nature--a concrete and substantive reality,
made up of facts that come within the domain of observa-
tion; let us now consider how it is that natural theology
proceeds with her demonstrations, on other constitutions
and other mechanisms in creation, that we may learn from
this in what manner we should commence and prosecute
our labours, on that very peculiar, we had almost said, un-
tried field of investigation which has been assigned to us.
6. The chief then, or at least the usual subject-matter of
the argument for the wisdom and goodness of God, is the
obvious adaptation wherewith creation teems, throughout
all its borders, of means to a beneficial end. And it is mani-
fest that the argument grows in strength with the numb
and complexity of these means. The greater number of in-
dependent circumstances which must meet together for the
production of a useful result then, in the actual fact of their
See the introduction to Sir James MacIntosh's Ethical Disser-
tation. "The purpose of the physical sciences, throughout all
their provinces, is to answer the question, “What is ?" The
purpose of the moral sciences is to answer the question, "What
ought to be?"--It should be well kept in view, that mental phi.
losophy is one province of the physical sciences, and belongs to
the first of these two departments, being distinct from moral
philosophy, which forms the second of them.


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
15
concurrence, is there less of probability for its being the effect .
of chance, and more of evidence for its being the effect of
. A benefice
three independent ele-
ments is not so impressive or so strong an argument for a
divinity, as a similar combination of six or ten such ele-
ments. And every mathematician, conversant in the doc-
trine of probabilities, knows how with every addition to the
number of these elements, the argument grows in force and
intensity, with a rapid and multiple augmentation-till at
length, in some of the more intricate and manifold conjunc-
tions, those more particularly having an organic character
and structure, could we but trace them to an bistorical com-
mencement, we should find, on the principles of computa-
tion alone, that the argument against their being fortuitous
products, and for their being the products of a scheming
and skilful artificer, was altogether overpowering.
7. We might apply this consideration to various depart-
ments in nature. "In astronomy, the independent elements
seem but few and simple, which must meet together for the
composition of a planetarium. One uniform law of gravi-
tation, with a force of projection impressed by one impulse
on each of the bodies, could suffice to account for the re-
volutions of the planets round the sun, and of the satellites
around their primaries, along with the diurnal revolution of
each, and the varying inclinations of the axes to the planes
of their respective orbits. Out of such few contingencies,
the actual orrery of the heavens has been framed. But in
anatomy, to fetch the opposite illustration from another sci-
ence, what a complex and crowded combination of indi-
vidual elements must first be effected, ere we obtain the
composition of an eye, -for the completion of which mechan-
ism, there must not only be a greater number of separate
laws, as of refraction and muscular action and secretion :
but a vastly greater number of separate and distinct parts,
as the lenses, and the retina, and the optic nerve, and the
eye-lid and eye-lashes, and the various muscles wherewith
this delicate organ is so curiously beset, and each of which
is indispensable to its perfection, or to the right performance
of its functions. It is passing marvellous that we should
have more intense evidence for a God in the construction of
an eye, than in the construction of the mighty planetarium
or that, within less than the compass of a handbreadth, we
should find in this lower world a more pregnant and legible


16
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
inscription of the Divinity, than can be gathered from a
broad and magnificent survey of the skies, lighted up though
they be, with the glories and the wonders of astronomy.
8. But while nothing can be more obvious than that the
proof, for design in any of the natural formations, is the
stronger, in proportion to the number of separate and indepen-
dent elements which have been brought together, and each
of which contributes essentially to its usefulness—we have
long held it of prime importance to the theistical argument,
that clear exhibition should be made of a distinction not gene-
rally adverted to, which obtains between one set of these ele.
ments and another. We shall illustrate this by a material,
ere we apply it to a mental workmanship. .
9. There is, then, a difference of great argumentative im-
portance in this whole question, between the Laws of Matter
and the Dispositions of Matter. In astronomy, for example,
when attending to the mechanism of the planetary system,
we should instance at most hut two laws--the law of gravi-
tation; and perhaps the law of perseverance, on the part of
all bodies, whether in a state of rest or of motion, till inter-
rupted by some external cause. But had we to state the
dispositions of matter in the planetary system, we should in-
stance a greater number of particulars. We should describe
the arrangement of its various parts, whether in respect to
situation, or magnitude, or figure—as the position of a large
and luminous mass in the centre, and of the vastly smaller
but opaque masses which circulated around it but at such
distances as not to interfere with each other, and of the still
smaller secondary bodies which revolved about the planets :
And we should include in this description the impulses in one
direction, and nearly in one plane, given to the different mo-
ving bodies; and so regulated, as to secure the movement
of cach, in an orbit of small eccentricity. The dispositions
of matter in the planetary system were fixed at the original
setting up of the machine. The laws of matter were ordained
for the working of the machine. The former, that is the dis-
positions, make up the frame-work, or what may be termed
the apparatus of the system. The latter, that is the laws,
uphold the performance of it. .
10. Now the tendency of atheistical writers is to reason
exclusively on the laws of matter, and to overlook its dispo-
sitions. Could all the beauties and benefits of the astrono-
mical system be referred to the single law of gravitation, it


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
17
would greatly reduce the strength of the argument for a de-
signing cause. La Place, as if to fortify still more the athe-
ism of such a speculation, endeavoured to demonstrate of this
law that in respect of its being inversely proportional to the
square of the distance from the centre, it is an essential pro-
perty of matter. La Grange had previously established -
that but for such a proportion, or by the deviation of a thou-
sandth part from it, the planetary system would go into de-
rangement-or, in other words, that the law, such as it is,
was essential to the stability of the present mundane consti-
tution. La Place would have accredited the law, the un-
conscious and unintelligent law, that thing according to hin
of blind necessity, with the whole of this noble and beautiful
result-overlooking what La Grange held to be indispensable
as concurring elements in his demonstration of it-certain
dispositions along with the law-such as the movement of
all the planets, first in one direction, second nearly in one
plane, and then in nearly circular orbits. We are aware that
according to the discoveries, or rather perhaps to the guesses
of some later analysts, the three last circumstances might
be dispensed with; and yet notwithstanding, the planetary
system, its errors still remaining periodical, would in virtue
of the single law oscillate around a mean state that should
be indestructible and everlasting. Should this come to be a
conclusively settled doctrine in the science, it will extenuate,
we admit, the argument for a designing cause in the forma-
tion of the planetarium. But it will not annihilate that ar-
gument-for there do remain certain palpable utilities in the
dispositions as well as laws of the planetary system, acknow-
leuged by all the astronomers; such as the vastly superior
weight and quantity of matter accumulated in its centre, and
the local establishment there of that great fountain of light
and heat from which the surrounding worlds receive through-
out the whole of their course an equable dispensation. What
a mal-a ljustment would it have been, had the luminous and
the opaq'ie matter changed places in the firmament; or the
planets, by the eccentricity of their orbits, been subject to
sich vicissitudes of temperature, as would certainly, in our
own at least, have entailed destruction both on the animal
and vegetable kingdoms.
11. But whatever defect or doubtfulness of evidence there
may be in the mechanism of the heavens—this is amply made
up for iri it inore accessible mechanism, near at hand. If


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
either the dispositions of matter in the former mechanism be
so few, or the demonstrable results of its single law be so
independent of them, that the agency of design rather than
of necessity or chance be less manifest than it otherwise
would be in the astronomical system; nothing on the other
hand can exceed the force and concentration of that proof,
which is crowded to so marvellous a degree of enhancement
within the limits of the anatomical system. It is this which
enables us to draw so much weightier an argument for a God,
from the construction of an eye than from the construction of
a planetarium. And here it is quite palpable, that it is in the
dispositions of matter more than in the laws of matter, where
the main strength of the argument lies, though we hear much
more of the wisdom of Nature's laws, than of the wisdom of
her collocations.* Now it is true that the law of refraction
is indispensable to the faculty of vision; but the laws indis-
pensable to this result are greatly outnumbered by the dis-
positions which are indispensable to it-such as the rightly
sized and shaped lenses of the eye; and the rightly placed
retina spread out behind them, and at the precise distance
where the indispensable picture of external nature might be
formed, and presented as it were for the information of the
occupier within; and then, the variety and proper situation
of the numerous muscles, each entrusted with an important
• This distinction between the laws and collocations of matter
is overlooked by atheistical writers, as in the following specimen
from the Systeme de la Nature' of Mirabaud. These prejudiced
dreamers,' speaking of believers in a God, 'are in an extacy at
the sight of the periodical motion of the planets; at the order of
the stars ; at the various productions of the earth; at the aston.
ishing harmony in the component parts of animals. In that mo-
ment however, they forget the laws of motion ; the powers of gra.
vitation; the forces of attraction and repulsion; they assign all
these striking phenomena to unknown causes, of which they
have no one substantive idea.'
When Professor Robinson felt alarmed by the attempted de.
monstration of La Place, that the law of gravitation was an es-
sential property of matter, lest the cause of natural theology
should be endangered by it-he might have recollected that the
main evidence for a Divinity lies not in the laws of matter, but
in their collocations-because of the utter inadequacy in the ex-
isting laws to have originated the existing collocations of the ma-
terial world. So that if ever a time was, when these collocations
were not-there is no virtue in the laws that can account for their
commencement, or that supersedes the fiat of a God..


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER
19
function, and all of them contributing to the power and per.
fection of this curious and manifoldly complicated organ. It
is not so much the endowinent of matter with certam proper-
ties, as the arrangement of it into certain parts, that bespeaks
here the hand of an artist; and this will be found true of the
anatomical structure in all its departments. It is not the mere
chemical property of the gastric juice that impresses the he-
lief of contrivance; but the presence of the gastric juice, in
the very situation whence it comes forth to act with advan-
tage on the food, when received into the stomach, and there
submitted to a digestive process for the nourishment of the
animal economy. It is well to distinguish these two things.
If we but say of matter that it is furnished with such powers
as make it subservient to many useful results, we keep bark.
the strongest and most unassailable part of the argument for
a God. It is greatly more pertinent and convincing to say
of matter, that it is distributed into such parts as to ensure a
right direction and a beneficial application for its powers,
It is not so much in the establishment of certain laws for
matter, that we discern the aims or the purposes of intelli-
gence, as in certain dispositions of inatter, that put it in the
way of being usefully operated upon by the laws. Insomuch,
that though we conceded to the atheist, the eternity of mat-
ter, and the essentially inherent character of all its laws--we
could still point out to him, in the manifold adjustments of
matter, its adjustments of place, and figure, and magnitule,
the most impressive signatures of a Deity. And what a
countless variety of such adjustments within the compass of
an animal, or even a vegetable frame-work. In particular.
what an amount and condensation of evidence for a God in
the workmanship of the human body. What bright and
convincing lessons of theology might man, (would he but
open his eyes,) read on his own person—that microcosm of
divine art, where as in the sentences of a perfect epitome, he
might trace in every lineament or member the finger and
authorship of the Godhead.
12 In the performances of human art, the argument for
design that is grounded on the useful dispositions of matter,
stands completely disentangled from the argument that is
grounded on the useful laws of matter-for in every imple-
ment or piece of mechanism constructed by the hands of man,
it is in the latter apart from the former, that the indications
of contrivance wholly and exclusively lie. We do not ac-


20
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
credit man with the establishment of any laws for matter
yet he leaves enough by which to trace the operations of his
intelligence in the collocations of matter. He does not give
to matter any of its properties; but he arranges it into parts;
and by such arrangement alone, does he impress upon his
workinanship the incontestable marks of design; not in that
he has communicated any powers to matter, but in that he
has intelligently availed himself of these powers, and direct-
ted them to an obviously beneficial result. The watch-maker
did not give its elasticity to the main-spring, nor its regula-
rity, to the balance-wheel, nor its transparancy to the glass,
nor the momentum of its varying forces to the levers of his
mechanism,-yet is the whole replete with the marks of in-
• telligence notwithstanding, announcing throughout the hand
of a maker who had an eye on all these properties, and as-
signed the right place and adjustment to each of them, in
fashioning and bringing together the parts of an instrument
for the measurement and the indication of time. Now, the
same distinction can be observed in all the specimens of na-
tural mechanism. It is true that we accredit the author of
these with the creation and laws of matter, as well as its
dispositions; but this does not hinder its being in the latter
and not in the former, where the manifestations of skill are
most apparent, or where the chief argument for a divinity
lies. The truth is, that mere laws, without collocations,
would have afforded no security against a turbid and disor-
derly chaos. One can imagine of all the substantive things
which enter into the composition of a watch, that they may
have been huddled together, without shape, and without col-
location, into a little chaos, or confused medley ;-where, in
full possession of all the properties which belong to the matter
of the instrument, but without its dispositions, every evidence
of skill would have been wholly obliterated. And it is even
80 with all the substantive things which enter into the com-
position of a world. Take but their forms and collocations
away from them, and this goodly universe would instantly
lapse into a heaving and disorderly chaos-yet without strip-
ping matter of any of its properties or powers. There might
still, though operating with random and undirected activity,
be the laws of impulse, and gravitation, and magnetism, and
temperature, and light, and the forces of chemistry, and even
those physiological tendencies which, however abortive in
a state of primitive rudeness, or before the spirit of a God


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
21
moved on the face of the waters, waited but a right distri-
bution of the parts of matter, to develope into the full effect
and establishment of animal and vegetable kingdoms. The
thing wanted for the evolution of this chaos into an orderly
and beneficial system is not the endowing of matter with
right properties; but the forming of it into things of right
shape and magnitude, and the marshalling of these into right
places. This last alone woull suffice for bringing harmony
out of confusion; and, apart altogether from the first, or,
without involving ourselves in the metaphysical obscurity
of those questions which relate to the origination of matter
and to the distinction between its arbitrary and essential pro-
perties, might we discern, in the mere arrangement of mat-
ter, the most obvious and decisive signatures of the artist
hand which has been employed on it.
13. That is a fine generalization by the late Professor
Robison, of Edinburgh, which ranges all philosophy into
two sciences--one the science of contemporaneous nature;
the other, the science of successive nature. When the ma-
terial world is viewed according to this distinction, the
whole science of its contemporaneous phenomena is compre-
hended by him under the general name of Natural History,
which takes cognizance of all those characters in external
nature that exist together at the instant, and which may be
described without reference to time-as smell, and colour,
and size, and weight, and form, and relation of parts, whe-
ther of the simple inorganic or more complex organic struc-
tures. But when the elements of time and motion are
introduced, we are then presented with the phenomena of
successive nature; and the science that embraces these is,
in contradistinction to the former, termed Natural Philoso-
s latter science may be separated or subdivided
further into natural philosophy, strictly and indeed usually
so called, whose province it is to investigate those changes
which take effect in bodies by motions that are sensible and
measurable ; and chemistry, or the science of those changes
which take effect in bodies by motions which are not sensi-
ble or, at least, not measurable, and which cannot therefore
be made the subjects of mathematical computation or rea-
Boning. This last, again, is capable of being still further
partitioned into the science which investigates the changes
effected by means of insensible motion in all organic mat-
ter, or chemistry strictly and usually so called ; and the sci-


22
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
ence of physiology, whose province it is to investigate the
like changes that take place in organic bodies, whether of
the animal or vegetable kingdoms.
14. Or, the distinction between these two sciences of con-
temporaneous and successive nature may otherwise be stated
thus. The one, or natural history, is conversant with ob-
jects-the other, or natural philosophy in its most compre-
hensive meaning, is conversant with events. It is obvious
that the dispositions of matter come within the province of
the former science—while the laws of matter, or the va-
rious moving forces by which it is actuated, fall more pro-
perly under the enquiries of the latter science. Now, adopt-
ing this nomenclature, we hold it a most important assertion
for the cause of natural theology, that should all the pre-
sent arrangements of our existing natural history be de-
stroyed, there is no power in the laws of our existing natural
philosophy to replace them. Or, in other words, if ever a
time was, when the structure and dispositions of matter, un-
der the present economy of things were noi-there is no
force known in nature, and no combination of forces that can
account for their commencement. The laws of nature may
keep up the working of the machinery--but they did not
and could not set up the machine. The human species, for
example, may be upholden, through an indefinite series of
ages
the established law of transmission-but were the
species destroyed, there are no observed powers of nature
by which it could again be originated. For the continuance
of the system and of all its operations, we might imagine a
sufficiency in the laws of nature; but it is the first construc-
tion of the system which so palpably calls for the interven
tion of an artificer, or demonstrates so powerfully the fial
and finger of a God.
15. This distinction between nature's laws and nature's
collocations is mainiy lost sight of in those speculations of
geology, the object of which is to explain the formation of
new systems emerging from the wreck of old ones. They
proceed on the sufficiency of nature's laws for building up
the present economy of things out of the ruins of a former
economy, which the last great physical catastrophe on the
face.of our earth had overthrown. Now, in these ruins,
viewed as materials for the architecture of a renovated
world, there did reside all those forces, by which the pro-
cesses of the existing economy are uphulden; but the geolo-
CIL


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
23
gists assign to them a function wholly distinct from this,
when they labour to demonstrate, that by laws, and laws
alone, the frame-work of our existing economy was put to-
gether. It is thus that they would exclude the agency of a
God from the transition between one system, or one
tion, and another, although it be precisely at such transition
when this agency seems most palpably and peculiarly called
for. We feel assured that the necessity for a divine inter-
vention, and, of course, the evidence of it would have been
more manifest, had the distinction between the laws of mat-
ter and its collocations been more formally announced, or
more fully proceeded on by the writers on natural theism.
And yet it is a distinction that must have been present to
the mind of our great Newton, who expressly affirms that a
mechanism of wonderful structure could not arise by the
mere laws of nature. In his third printed letter to Beniley,
he says, that "the growth of new systems out of old ones,
without the mediation of a divine power, seems to me ap-
parently absurd;" and that "the system of nature was set
in order in the beginning, with respect to size, figure, pro-
portions, and properties, by the counsels of God's own intel-
ligence. In the last extracts, by his admission of the pro-
perties along with the dispositions of matter, he somewhat
confounds or disguises again the important distinction, which
at times, he had clearly in his view.*
16. But one precious fruit of the recent geological disco-
veries may be gathered from the testimony which they af-
ford to the destruction of so many terrestrial economies now
gone by, and the substitution of the existing one in their
ce. If there be truth at all in the speculations of this sci-
ence, there is nothing which appears to have been more con-
plac
Towards the end of the third book of Newton's Optics, we
have the following very distinct testimony upon this subject;
" For it became Him who created them to set them in order. And
if he did so, it is unphilosophical to seek for any other origin of
the world, or to pretend that it might arise out of a chaos by the
mere laws of nature; though being once formed, it may con-
tinue by those laws for many ages."
This disposition to resolve the collocations into the laws of na.
ture proves, in the expressive language of Granville Penn, how
strenuously, not “physical science, but only some of its disci-
ples have laboured to exclude the Creator from the details of
his own creation; straining every nerve of ingenuity to ascribe
them all to secondary causes.”


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
26
mer, at least greater to all human observation. Into that
system of means which has been formed for the object of
seeing, there enter at least twenty separate contingencies, the
absence of any one of which would either derange the proper
function of the eye, or altogether destroy it. We have no
access to aught like the observation of a mental structure,
and all of which our consciousness informs us is a succes-
sion of mental phenomena. Now in these we are sensible
of nothing but a very simple antecedent followed up, and that
generally on the instant, by a like simple consequent. We
have the feeling and still more the purpose of benevolence,
followed up by complacency. We have the feeling or pur-
pose, and still more the execution of malignity, or rather
the recollection of that execution, followed up by remorse.
However manifold the apparatus may be which enables us
to see an external object, when the sight itself, instead of
the consequent in a material succession, becomes the ante-
cedent in a mental one; or, in other words, when it passes
from a material to a purely mental process; then as soon,
does it pass from the complex into the simple; and, accord-
ingly, the sight of distress is followed up, without the inter-
vention of any curiously elaborated mechanism that we are
at all conscious of, by an immediate feeling of compassion.
These examples will, at least, suffice to mark a strong dis-
tinction between the two enquiries, and to show that the se-
veral arguments drawn from each must at least be formed
of very different materials.
19. There are two distinct ways in which the mind can be
viewed, and which constitute different modes of conception,
rather than diversities of substantial and scientific doctrine.
The mind may either be regarded as a congeries of different
faculties ; or as a simple and indivisible substance, with the
susceptibility of passing into different states. By the former
mode of viewing it, the memory, and the judgment, and the
conscience, and the will, are conceived of as so many distinct
but co-existent parts of mind, which is thus represented to
us somewhat in the light of an organic structure, having se-
parate members, each for the discharge of its own appropri-
ate mental function or exercise. By the latter, which we
deem also the more felicitous mode of viewing it, these dis-
tinct mental acts, instead of being referred to distinct parts of
the mind, are conceived of as distinct acts of the whole mind,
insomuch that the whole mind remembers, or the whole mind


9.6
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
judges, or the whole mind wills, or, in short, the whole mind
passes into various intellectual states or states of emotion,
according to the circumstances by which at the time it is be-
set, or to the present nature of its employment. We might
thus either regard the study of mind as a study in contem-
poraneous nature ; and we should then, in the delineation of
its various parts, be assigning to it a natural history, -or we
might regard the study of mind as a study in successive na-
ture; and we should then, in the description of its various
states, be assigning to it a natural philosophy. When such
a phrase as the anatomy of the human mind is employed by
philosophers, we may safely guess that the former is the
conception which they are inclined to form of it.* When
such a phrase again as the physiology of the human mind
is made use of, the latter is the conception by which, in all
probability, it has been suggested. It is thus that Dr. Tho
mas Brown designates the science of mind as mental physi-
ology. With him, in fact, it is altogether a science of se-
quences, his very analysis being the analysis of results, and
not of compounds.
20. Now, in either view of our mental constitution there
is the same strength of evidence for a God. It matters not
for this, whether the mind be regarded as consisting of so
many useful parts, or as endowed with as many useful pro-
perties. It is the number, whether the one or other, of these
out of which the product is formed of evidence for a design-
ing cause. The only reason why the useful dispositions of
matter are so greatly more prolific of this evidence than the
useful laws of matter, is, that the former so greatly outnumber
the latter. Of the twenty independent circumstances which
enter into beneficial concurrence in the formation of an eye,
that each of them should be found in a situation of optimism,
and none of them occupying either an indifferent or a hurtful
position-it is this which speaks so emphatically against the
hypothesis of a random distribution, and for the hypothesis
of an intelligent order. Yet this is but one out of the many
like specimens, wherewith the animal economy thickens and
teems in such marvellous profusion. By the doctrine of
probabilities, the mathematical evidence, in this question
between the two suppositions of intelligence or chance, will
be found, even on many a single organ of the human frame-
• It is under this conception too that writers propose to lay
down a map of the human faculties


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
27
work, to preponderate vastly more than a million-fold on the
side of the former. We do not affirm of the human mind
that it is so destitute of all complication and variety, as to be
deficient altogether in this sort of evidence. Let there be but
six laws or ultimate facts in the mental constitution, with
the circumstance of each of them being beneficial; and this
of itself would yield no inconsiderable amount of precise and
calculable proof, for our mental economy being a formation
of contrivance, rather than one that is fortuitous or of blind
necessity. It will at once be seen, however, why mind, just
from its greater simplicity than matter, should contribute so
much less to the support of natural theism, of that definite
and mathematical evidence which is founded on combina-
tion.
21. But, although in the mental department of creation,
the argument for a God that is gathered out of such mate-
rials, is not so strong as in the other great department-yet
it does furnish a peculiar argument of its own, which, though
not grounded on mathematical data, and not derived from a
lengthened and logical process of reasoning, is of a highly
effective and practical character notwithstanding. It has not
less in it of the substance, though it may have greatly less
in it of the semblance of demonstration, that it consists of
but one step between the premises and the conclusion. It
is briefly, but cannot be more clearly and emphatically ex-
pressed than in the following sentence." He that formed
the eye, shall he not see? He that planted the ear, shall he
not hear? He that teacheth man knowledge, shall he not
know ?" That the parent cause of intelligent beings shall
be itself intelligent is an aphorism, which if not demonstrable
in the forms of logic, carries in the very announcement of it
a challenging power over the acquiescence of all spirits. It
is a thing of instant conviction, as if seen in the light of its
own evidence, more than a thing of lengthened and laborious
proof. It may be stigmatized as a mere impression--never-
theless the most of intellects go as readily along with it, as
they would from one contiguous step to another of many a
stately argumentation. If it cannot be exhibited as the con-
clusion of a syllogism, it is because of its own inherent right
to be admitted there as the major proposition. To proscribe
every such truth, or to disown it from being truth, merely
because incapable of deduction, would be to cast away the
first principles of all reasoning. It would banish the autho-


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
29
and torture might furnish as clear an indication of design,
though a design of cruelty, as does an apparatus for the mi.
nistration of enjoyment furnish the indication also of design
but a design of benevolence. Did we confine our study to
the material constitution of things, we should meet with the
enigma of many perplexing and contradictory appearances.
We hope to make it manifest, that in the study of the mental
constitution, this enigma is greatly alleviated, if not wholly
done away; and, at all events, that within our peculiar pro-
vince there lie the most full and unambiguous demonstrations,
which nature hath any where given to us, both of the bene-
volence and the righteousness of God.
24. If, in some respects, the phenomena of mind tell us
less decisively thian the phenomena of matter, of the exist-
ence of God, they tell us far more distinctly and decisively
of His attributes. We have already said that, from the sim-
plicity of the mental system, we met with less there of that
evidence for design which is founded on combination, or on
that right adjustment and adaptation of the numerous par-
ticulars, which enter into a complex assemblage of things,
and which are essential to some desirable fulfilment. It is
not, therefore, through the medium of this particular evi-
dunce the evidence which lies in combination; that the phe-
nomena and processes of mind are the best for telling us of
the Divine existence. But if otherwise, or previously told
of this, we hold them to be the best throughout all nature for
telling us of the Divine character. For if once convinced,
on distinct grounds, that God is, it matters not how simple
the antecedents or the consequents of any particular succes-
sion may be. It is enough that we know what the terms
of the succession are, or what the effect is wherewith God
wills any given thing to be followed up. The character of
the ordination, and so the character of the ordainer, depends
on the terms of the succession; and not on the nature of that
intervention or agency, whether more or less complex, by
which it is brought about. And should either term of the
succession, either the antecedent or consequent, be some
moral feeling, or characteristic of the mind, then the inference
comes to be a very distinct and decisive one. That the sight
of distress, for example, should be followed up by compas-
sion, is an obvious provision of benevolence, and not of cru-
elty, on the part of Him who ordained our mental constitii.
tion, Again, that a feeling of kindness in the heart should


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER,
in our peculiar department, is meagre, as afforded by the sub
jective mind, when compared with the evidence of its various
adjustments and fitnesses to the objective universe around it,
whether of man's moral constitution to the state of human
society, or of his intellectual to the various objects of physi-
cal investigation.
27. The great object of philosophy is to ascertain the sim-
ple or ultimate principles, into which all the phenomena of
nature may by analysis be resolved. But it often happens
that in this attempt she stops short at a secondary law, which
might be demonstrated by further analysis to be itself a com-
plex derivative of the primitive or elementary laws. Until
this work of analysis be completed, we shall often mistake
what is compound for what is simple, both in the philosophy
of mind and the philosophy of matter---being frequently ex.
posed to intractable substances or intractable phenomena in
both, which long withstand every effort that science makes
for their decomposition. It is thus that the time is not yet
come, and may never come, when we shall fully understand,
what be all the simple elements or simple laws of matter;
and what be all the distinct elementary laws, or, as they have
sometimes been termed, the ultimate facts in the constitution
of the human mind. But we do not need to wait for this
communication, ere we can trace, in either department, the
wisdom and beneficence of a Deity-for many are both the
material and the mental processes which might be recognised
as pregnant with utility, and so, pregnant with evidence for
a God, long before the processes themselves are analyzed.
The truth is, that a secondary law, if it do not exhibit any
additional proof of design, in a distinct useful principle, ex-
hibits that proof in a distinct and useful disposition of parts,
for, generally speaking, a secondary law is the result of an
operation by some primitive law, in peculiar and new cir-
cumstances. For example, the law of the tides is a secon-
dary law, resolvable into one more general and elementary-
even the law of grayitation. But we might imagine a state
of things, in which the discovery of this connection would
have been impossible, -as a sky perpetually mantled with
a cloudy evelopement, which, while it did not intercept the
light either of the sun or moon, still hid these bodies from
strength and copiousness of his argument lie in the anatomy of
the frame work itself.


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
33
our direct observation. In these circumstances, the law of
the tides and the law of gravitation, though identical in them-
selves, could not have been identified by us; and so, we
might have ascribed this wholesome agitation of the sea and
of the atmosphere to a distinct power or principle in nature-
affording the distinct indication of both a kind and intelligent
Creator. Now this inference is not annihilated it is not even
enfeebled by the discovery in question; for although the good
arising from tides in the ocean and rides in the air, is not
referable to a peculiar law-it is at least referable to a pecu-
liar collocation. And this holds of all the useful secondary
laws in the material world. If they cannot be alleged in
evidence for the number of beneficial principles in nature-
they can at least be alleged in evidence for the number of
nature's beneficial arrangements. If they do not attest the
multitude of useful properties, they at the least attest the
multitude of useful parts in nature ; and the skill, guided by
benevolence which has been put forth in the distribution of
them. So that long ere the philosophy of matter is perfected,
or all its phenomena and its secondary laws have been re-
solved into their originaland constituent principles, may we,
in their obvious and immediate utility alone detect as many
separate evidences in nature as there are separate facts in
nature, for a wise and benevolent Deity.
28. And the same will be found true of the secondary
laws in the mental world, which, if not as many distinct be-
neficial principles in the constitution of the mind, are the ef-
fect of as many distinct and beneficial arrangements in the
objects or circumstances by which it is surrounded. We
have not to wait the completion of its still more subtle and
difficult analysis, ere we come within sight of those varied
indications of benevolent design which are so abundantly to
be met with, both in the constitution of the mind itself, and
in the adaptation thereto of external nature. Some there
are, for example, who contend that the laws of taste are not
primitive but secondary : that our admiration of beauty in
material objects is resolvable into other and original emo-
tions, and more especially, by means of the associating prin-
ciple, into our admiration of moral excellence. Let the
justness of this doctrine be admitted ; and its only effect on
our peculiar argument is, that the benevolence of God in
thus multiplying our enjoyments, instead of being indicated
by a distinct law for suiting the human mind to the objects


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
which surround it, is indicated both by the distribution of
these objects and by their investment with such qualities as
suit them to the previous constitution of the mind that he
hath pencilled them with the very colours, or moulded them
into the very shapes which suggest either the graceful or
the noble of human character; that he hath imparted to the
violet its hue of modesty, and clothed the lily in its robe of
purest innocence, and given to the trees of the forest their
respective attitudes of strength or delicacy, and made the
whole face of nature one bright reflection of those virtues
which the mind and character of man had originally radiat-
ed. If it be not by the implantation of a peculiar law in
mind, it is at least by a peculiar disposition of tints and
forms in external nature, that he hath spread so diversified
a loveliness over the panorama of visible things; and thrown
so many walks of enchantment around us; and turned the
sights and the sounds of rural scenery into the ministers of so
much and such exquisite enjoyment; and caused the outer
world of matter to image forth in such profusion those va-
rious qualities, which at first had pleased or powerfully af-
fected us in the inner world of consciousness and thought.
It is by the modifying operation of circumstances that a pri-
mary is transmuted into a secondary law; and if the bles-
sings which we enjoy under it cannot be ascribed to the in-
sertion of a distinct principle in the nature of man, they can
at least be ascribed to a useful disposition of circumstances
in the theatre around him.
29. It is thus that philosophical discovery, which is felt by
many to enfeeble the argument for a God, when it reduces
two or more subordinate to simpler and anterior laws, does
in fact leave that argument as entire as before-for it, by
analysis, it diminish the number of beneficial properties in
matter, it replaces the injury which it may be supposed to
have done in this way to the cause of theism, by presenting
us with as great an additional number of beneficial arrang
ments in nature. And further, it may not be out of place to
observe, that there appear to be two distinct ways by which
an artificer might make manifest the wisdom of his contri-
vances. He may either be conceived of, as forming a sub.
stance and endowing it with the fit properties; or as finding
a substance with certain given properties, and arranging it
into fit dispositions for the accomplishment of some desirable
end. Both the former and the latter of these we ascribe to


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
35
the divine artificer-of whom we imagine, that He is the
Creator as well as the Disposer of all things. It is only
the latter that we can ascribe to the human artificer, who
creates no substance, and ordains no property ; but finds the
substance with all its properties ready made and put into
his hands, as the raw material out of which he fashions and
rears his structures of various design and workmanship:
Now it is a commonly received, and has indeed been raised
into a sort of universal maxim, that the highest property of
wisdom is to achieve the most desirable end, or the greatest
amount of good, by the fewest possible means, or by the
simplest machinery. When this test is applied to the laws
of nature, then we esteem it, as enhancing the manifesta-
tion of intelligence, that one single law, as gravitation, should,
as from a central and commanding eminence, subordinate
to itself a whole host of most important phenomena; or that
from one great and parent property, so vast a family of be-
neficial consequences should spring. And when the same
test is applied to the dispositions, whether nature or art-
then it enhances the manifestation of wisdom, when some
great end is brought about with a less complex or cumber-
some instrumentality, as often takes place in the simpli-
fication of machines, when, by the device of some inge-
nious ligament or wheel, the apparatus is made equally,
perhaps more effective, whilst less unwieldy or less intri-
cate than before. Yet there is one way in which, along
with an exceeding complication in the mechanism, there
might be given the impression, of the very highest skill and
capacity having been put forth on the contrivance of it. It
is when, by means of a very operose and complex instru-
mentality, the triumph of art has been made all the more
conspicuous, by a very marvellous result having been ob-
tained out of very unpromising materials. It is true, that,
in this case too, à still higher impression of skill would be
given, if the same or a more striking result were arrived at,
even after the intricacy of the machine had been reduced, by
some happy device, in virtue of which, certain of its parts
or circumvolutions had been superseded; and thus, with-
out injury to the final effect, so much of the complication
had been dispensed with. Still, however, the substance,
whether of the machine or manufacture, may be conceived
so very intractable as to put an absolute limit on any fur-
ther simplification, or as to create an absolute necessity for


36
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
all the manifold contrivance which had been expended on it.
When this idea predominates in the mind-- then all the
complexity which we may behold does not reduce our ad-
miration of the artist, but rather deepens the sense that we
have, both of the reconditeness of his wisdom, and of the
wondrous vastness and variety of nis resources. It is the
extreme wideness of the contrast, between the sluggishness
of matter and the fineness of the results in physiology, which
so enhances our veneration for the great Architect of Na-
ture, when we behold the exquisite organizations of the ani-
mal and vegetable kingdoms.* The two exhibitions are
wholly distinct from each other—yet each of them may be
perfect in its own way. The first is held forth to us, when
one law of pervading generality is found to scatter a my-
riad of beneficent consequences in its train. The second is
held forth, when, by an infinite complexity of means, a
countless variety of expedients with their multiform combi-
nations, some one design, such as the upholding of life in
plants or animals is accomplished. Creation presents us in
marvellous profusion with specimens of both these-at once
confirining the doctrine, and illustrating the significancy of
the expression in which Scripture hath conveyed it to us,
when it tells of the manifold wisdom of God.'
30. But while, on a principle already often recognised,
this multitude of necessary conditions to the accomplishment
of a given end, enhances the argument for a God, because
each separate condition reduces the hypothesis of chance to
a more violent improbability than before ; yet it must not be
disguised that there is a certain transcendental mystery
which it has the effect of aggravating, and which it leaves
unresolved. We can understand the complex machinery
and the circuitous processes to which a human artist must
resort, that he might overcome the else uncomplying obsti-
nacy of inert matter, and bend it in subserviency to his spe-
cial designs. But that the Divine artist who first created
the matter and ordained its laws, should find the same com-
plication necessary for the accomplishment of his purposes;
that such an elaborate workmanship, for example, should
be required to establish the functions of sight and hearing
in the animal economy, is very like the lavish or ostensible
Dr. Paley would state the problem thas. The laws of matter
heing given, so to organize it, as that it shall produce or sustain
the phenomena, whether of vegetation or of life.


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER.
ingenuity of a Being employed in conquering the difficulty
which himself had raised. It is true, the one immediate
purpose is served by it which we have just noticed, that
of presenting, as it were, to the eye of enquirers a more
manifold inscription of the Divinity. But if, instead of be-
ing the object of inference, it had pleased God to make him.
self the object of a direct manifestation, then for the mere
purpose of becoming known to his creatures, this reflex or
circuitous method of revelation would have been altogether
uncalled for. That under the actual system of creation,
and with its actual proofs, he has made his existence most
decisively known to us, we most thankfully admit. But
when question is made between the actual and the conceiv.
able systems of creation which God might have emanated,
we are forced to confess, that the very circumstances which,
in the existing order of things, have brightened and enhance
ed the evidence of His being, have also cast a deeper se-
crecy over what may be termed the general policy of His
government and ways. And this is but one of the many
difficulties, which men of unbridled speculation and unob-
servant of that sound philosophy that keeps within the li-
mits of human observation, will find it abundantly possible
to conjure up on the field of natural theism. It does look
an impracticable enigma that the Omnipotent God, who
could have grafted all the capacities of thought and feeling
on an elementary atom, should have deemed fit to incorpo-
rate the human soul in the midst of so curious and compli.
cated a frame-work. For what a variegated structure is
man's animal economy. What an apparatus of vessels and
bones and ligaments. What a complex mechanism, What
an elaborate chemistry. What a multitude of parts in the
anatomy, and of processes in the physiology of this mar-
vellous system. What a medley, we had almost said, what
a package of contents. What an unwearied play of secre.
tions and circulations and other changes incessani and innu.
merable. In short, what a laborious complication, and all
to uphold a living principle, which, one might think, could
by a simple fiat of omnipotence, have sprung forth at once
from the great source and centre of the spiritual system, and
mingled with the world of spirits-just as each new particle
of light is sent forth by the emanation of a sunbeam, to play
and glisten among the fields of radiance
31. But to recall ourselves from this digression among the


INTRODUCTORY CHAPTEÅ.
possibilities of what might have been, to the realities of the
mental system, such as it actually is. Ere we bring the very
general observations of this chapter to a close, we would
briefly notice an analogy between the realities of the mental
and those of the corporeal system. The enquirers into the
latter have found it of substantial benefit to their science, to
have mixed up with the prosecution of it a reference to final
causes. Their reasoning on the likely uses of a part in anato-
my, has, in some instances, suggested or served as a guide
to speculations, which have been at length verified by a dig.
covery. We believe, in like manner, that reasoning on the
likely or obvious uses of a principle in the constitution of the
human mind, might lead, if not to the discovery, at least to
the confirmation of important truth-not perhaps in the
science itself, but in certain of the cognate sciences which
stand in no very distant relation to it. For example, we
think it should rectify certain errors which have been com-
mitted both in jurisprudence and political economy, if it can
be demonstrated that some of the undoubted laws of human
nature are traversed by them; and so, that violence is there-
by done to the obvious designs of the Author of Nature. We
shall not hold it out of place, though we notice one or two
of these instances, by which it might be seen that the mental
philosophy, when studied in connection with the palpable
views of Him by whom all its principles and processes were
ordained, is fitted to enlighten the practice of legislation, and
more especially to determine the wisdom of certain arrange-
ments which have for their object the economic well-being
of society..
32. We feel the arduousness of our peculiar task, and the
feeling is not at all alleviated by our sense of its surpassing
dignity. The superiority of mind to matter has often been
the theme of eloquence to moralists. For what were all the
wonders of the latter and all its glories, without a spectator
mind that could intelligently view and that could tastefully
admire them? Let every eye be irrevocably closed, and this
were equivalent to the entire annihilation in nature of the
element of light; and in like manner, if the light of all con-
sciousness were put out in the world of mind, the world of
matter, though as rich in beauty, and in the means of bene-
volence as before, were thereby reduced to a virtual nonen-
tity. In these circumstances, the lighting up again of even
but one mind would restore its being, or at least its signifi-


ISTROVOCTORY CHAPTER.
39
cancy to that system of materialism, which, untouched it-
self, had just been desolated of all those beings in whom it
could kindle reflection, or to whom it could minister the
sense of enjoyment. It were lantamount to the second cre-
ation, of it, or, in other words, one living intelligent spirit
is of higher reckoning and mightier import than a dead uni-
verse.





PART 1.
ON TAK ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO THE NO.
RAL CONDITION OF MAN.
CHAPTER I.
On the Supremacy of Conscience.
1. An abstract question in morals is distinct from a ques.
tion respecting the constitution of man's moral nature ; and
the former ought no more to be confounded with the latter,
than the truths of geometry with the faculties of the reason-
ing mind which comprehends them. The virtuousness of
justice was a stable doctrine in ethical science, anterior to
the existence of the species; and would remain so, though
the species were destroyed—just as much as the properties
of a iriangle are the enduring stabilities of mathematical
science; and that, though no matter had been created to
exemplify the positions or the figures of geometry. The ob-
jective nature of virtue is one thing. The subjective nature
of the human mind, by which virtue is felt and recognized,
is another. It is not from the former, any more than from
the eternal truths of geometry, that we can demonstrate the
existence or attributes of God—but from the latter, as be-
Jonging to the facts of a création emanating from His will,
and therefore bearing upon it the stamp of His character.
The nature and constitution of virtue form a distinct subject
of enquiry from the nature and constitution of the human
mind." Virtue is not a creation of the Divine will, but has
had everlasting residence in the nature of the Godhead.
The mind of man is a creation; and therefore indicates, by
its characteristics, the character of Aim, to the fiat and the
forthgoing of whose will it owes its existence. We must
frequently, in the course of this discussion, advert to the
Trinciples of ethics : but it is not on the system of ethical
doctrine that our argument properly is founded. It is on the
phenomena and the laws of actual human nature, which il-
Belf, one of the great facts of creation, may be regarded li


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
all its facts, as bearing on it the impress of that mind which
gave birth to creation.
2. But further. It is not only not with the system of
ethical doctrine--it is not even with the full system of the
philosophy of our nature that we have properly to do. On
this last there is still a number of unsettled questions ; but
our peculiar argument does not need to wait for the conclu-
sive determination of them. For example, there is many a
controversy among philosophers respecting the primary and
secondary laws of the human constitution. Now, if it be
an obviously beneficial law, it carries evidence for a God,
in the mere existence and operation of it, independently of
the rank which it holds, or of the relation in which it stands
to the other principles of our internal mechanism. It is thus
that there may, at one and the same time, be grounded on
the law in question a clear theological inference; and yet
there may be associated with it an obscure philosophical
speculation. It is well that we seperate these two; and,
more especially, that the decisive attestation given by any
part or phenomenon of our nature to the Divine goodness,
shall not be involved in the mist and metaphysical perplexi-
ty of other reasonings, the object of which is altogether dis-
tinct and separate from our own. The facts of the human
constitution, apart altogether from the philosophy of their
causation, demonstrate the wisdom and benevolence of Him
who framed it; and while it is our part to follow the light
of this philosophy, as far as the light and the guidance of it
are sure, we are not, in those cases, when the final cause is
obvious as day, though the proximate efficient cause should
be hidden in deepest mystery,--we are not, on this account,
to confound darkness with light, or light with darkness.
3. By attending throughout to this observation, we shall
be saved from a thousand irrelevancies as well as obscurities
of argument; and it is an observation peculiarly applicable,
in announcing that great fact or phenomenon of mind, which,
for many reasons, should hold a foremost place in our de-
monstration, we mean the felt supremacy of conscience.
Philosophers there are, who have attempted to resolve this
fact into ulterior or ultimate ones in the mental constitu-
tion; and who have denied to the faculty a place among
its original and uncompounded principles. Sir James
Macintosh tells us of the generation of human conscience;
and, not merely states, but endeavours to explain the phe-


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.

the constitution of morality, viewed objectively, as a system
or theory of doctrine, that we have properly to do; but with
the constitution of man's spirit, viewed as the subject of cer-
tain phenomena and laws--and, more particularly, with a
great psychological fact in human nature, namely the hom-
age rendered by it to the supremacy of conscience. In a
word, it is not of a category, but of a creation that we are
speaking. The one can tell us nothing of the divine cha.
racter, while the other might afford most distinct and decisive
indications of it. We could found no demonstration what-
ever of the divine purposes, on a mere ethical, any more than
we could, on a logical or mathematical category. But it is
very different with an actual creation, whether in mind or
in matter-a mechanism of obvious contrivance, and whose
workings and tendencies, therefore, must be referred to the
design, and so to the disposition or character of that Being,
whose spirit hath devised and whose fingers have framed it.
5. And neither do we urge the proposition that conscience
has in every instance, the actual direction of human affairs,
for this were in the face of all experience. It is not that every
man obeys her dictates, but that every man feels he ought
to obey them. These dictates are often in life and practice
disregarded : so that conscience is not the sovereign de facto.
Still there is a voice within the hearts of all which asserts
that conscience is the sovereign de jure; that to her belongs
the command rightfully, even though she do not possess it
actually. In a season of national anarchy, the actual power
and the legitimate authority are often disjoined from each
other. The lawful monarch may be dethroned, and so lose
the might; while he continues to possess nay, while he
may be acknowledged throughout his kingdom to possess
the right of sovereignty. The distinction still is made, even
under this reign of violence, between the usurper and the
lawful sovereign; and there is a similar distinction among
the powers and principles of the human constitution, when
an insurrection takes place of the inferior against the supe.
rior; and conscience, after being dethroned from her place
of mastery and control, is still felt to be the superior, or ra.
ther supreme faculty of our nature notwithstanding. She
may have fallen from her dominion, yet still wear the bad-
ges of a fallen sovereign, having the acknowledged right of
authority, though the power of enforcement has been wrested
away from her. She may be outraged in all her preroga.


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
45
tives by the lawless appetites of our nature, but not with-
out the accompanying sense within of an outrage and a
wrong having been inflicted, and a reclaiming voice from
thence which causes itself to be heard and which remon-
strates against it. The insurgent and inferior principles of
our constitution may, in the uproar of their wild mutiny, lift
a louder and more effective voice than the small still voice
of conscience. They have the might but not the right.
Conscience, on the other hand, is felt to have the right
though not the might the legislative office being that which
properly belongs to her, though the executive power should
be wanting to enforce her enactments. It is not the reigning
· but the rightful authority of conscience that we, under the
name of her supremacy, contend for; or, rather the fact that,
by the consent of all our higher principles and feelings, this
rightful authority is reputed to be hers; and, by the general
concurrence of mankind awarded to her.
6. And here it is of capital importance to distinguish be-
tween an original and proper tendency, and a subsequent
aberration. This has been well illustrated by the regulator
of a watch, whose office and primary design, and that ob-
viously announced by the relation in which it stands to the
other parts of the machinery, is to control the velocity of
its movements. And we should still perceive this to have
been its destination, even though, by accident or decay, it
had lost the power of command which at the first belonged
to it. We should not misunderstand the purpose of its maker,
although, in virtue of some deterioration or derangement
which the machinery had undergone, that purpose were
now frustrated. And we could discern the purpose in the
very make and constitution of the mechanism. We might
even see it to be an irregular watch; and yet this needs not
prevent us from seeing, that, at its original fabrication, it
was made for the purpose of moving regularly. The mere
existence and position of the regulator might suffice to indi-
cate this, although it had become powerless, either from
the wearing of the parts, or from some extrinsic disturbance
to which the instrument had been exposed. The regulator,
in this instance, may be said to have the right, though not
the power of command, over the movements of the time-
piece; yet the loss of the power has not obliterated the ves.
tiges of the right; so that, by the inspection of the machin-
cry alone, we both learn the injury which has been done to


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.

it, and the condition in which it originally came from the
hand of its maker--a condition of actual as well as rightful
supremacy, on the part of the regulator, over all its move-
ments. And a similar discovery may be made, by exami-
nation of the various parts and principles which make up
the moral system of man: for we see various parts and prin-
ciples there. We see Ambition, having power for its ob-
ject, and without the attainment of which it is not satisfied ;
and Avarice, having wealth for its object, without the attain-
ment of which it is not satisfied; and Benevolence, having
for its object the good of others, without the attainment of
which it is not satisfied; and the love of Reputation, having
for its object their applause, without which it is not satisfi-
ed; and lastly, to proceed no further in the enumeration,
Conscience, which surveys and superintends the whole man,
whose distinct and appropriate object it is to have the entire
control both of his inward desires and outward doings, and
without the attainment of this it is thwarted from its proper
aim, and remains unsatisfied. Each appetite, or affection
of our nature, has its own distinct object ; but this last is
the object of Conscience, which may be termed the moral
affection. The place which it occupies, or rather which it
is felt that it should occupy, and which naturally belongs
to it, is that of a governor, claiming the superiority, and ta-
king to itself the direction over all the other powers and pas-
sions of humanity. If this superiority be denied to it, there
is a felt violence done to the whole economy of man. The
sentiment is, that the thing is not as it should be: and even
after conscience is forced, in virtue of some subsequent de-
rangement, from this station of rightful ascendency, we can
still distinguish between what is the primitive design or ten-
dency, and what is the posterior aberration. We can per-
ceive, in the case of a deranged or distempered watch, that
the mechanism is out of order; but even then, on the bare
examination of its workmanship, and more especially from
the place and bearing of its regulator, can we pronounce
that it was made for moving regularly. And in like m
ner, on the bare inspection of our mental economy alone, and
more particularly from the place which conscience has there,
can we, even in the case of the man who refuses to obey its
dictates, affirm that he was made for walking conscientiously.
7. The distinction which we now labour to establish be-
tween conscience and the other principles of our nature,


OY THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
47
does not respect the actual force or prevalence which may,
or may not, severally belong to them. It respects the uni-
versal judgment which, by the very constitution of our na.
ture, is passed on the question of rightness on the question,
which of all these should have the prevalence, whenever
there happens to be a contest between them. All which we
affirm is, ihat if conscience prevail over the other principles,
then every man is led by the very make and mechanism of
his internal economy, to feel that this is as it ought to be ;
or, if these others prevail over conscience, that this is not as
it ought to be. One, it is generally felt, may be too ambi-
tious, or too much set on wealth and fame, or too resentful
of injury, or even too facile in his benevolence, when carried
to the length of being injudicious and hirtful; but no one is
ever felt. If he have sound and enlightened views of morali.
ty, to be too conscientious. When we affirm this of con-
science, we hut concur in the homage rendered to it by all
men, as being the rightful, if not the actual superior, among
all the feelings and faculties of our nature." It is a truth,
perhaps, too simple for being reasoned ; but this is because,
like many of the most important and undoubted certainties
of human belief, it is a truth of instant recognition. When
stating the supremacy of conscience, in the sense that we
have explained it, we but state what all men feel; and our
only argument, in proof of the assertion, is our only argu-
ment can be, an appeal to the experience of all men.
8: Bishop Butler has often been spoken of as the first dis-
coverer of this great principle in our nature; though, per-
haps, no man can properly be said to discover what all
men are conscious of. But certain it is, that he is the first
who hath made it the subject of a full and reflex cognizance.
It forms the argument of his three first sermons, in a vo-
lume which may safely be pronounced, the most precious
renository of sound ethical principles extant in any lan-
guage. The authority of conscience, says Dugald Stewart,
although beautifully described by many of the ancient mo-
ralists, was not sufficiently attended to by modern writers,
as a fundamental principle m the science of ethics, til
time of Dr. Butler.” It belongs to the very essence of the
principle, that we clearly distinguish, between what we find
to be the actual force of conscience, and what we feel to be
its rightful authority. These two may exist in a state of
separation from each other just as in a'Civil Government,


48
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
the reigning power may, in seasons of anarchy, be dissever:
ed from that supreme court or magistrate to whom it right
fully belongs. The mechanism of a political fabric is not
adequately or fully described by the mere enumeration of
its parts. There must also enter into the description, the re-
lation which the parts bear to each other; and more espe-
cially, the paramount relation of rightful ascendency and
direction, which that part, in which the functions of Go-
vernment are vested, bears to the whole. Neither is the me-
chanism of man's personal constitution fully or adequately
described, by merely telling us in succession the several
parts of which it is composed as the passions, and the ap-
petites, and the affections, and the moral sense, and the in-
tellectual capacities, which make up this complex and va-
riously gifted creature. The particulars of his mental sys.
tem must not only be stated, each in their individuality;
but the bearing or connexion which each has with the rest
else it is not described as a system at all. In making out
this description, we should not only not overlook the indi.
vidual faculty of conscience, but we must not overlook its
relative place among the other feelings and faculties of our
nature. That place is the place of command. What con-
science lays claim to is the mastery or regulation over the
whole man. Each desire of our nature rests or terminates
in its own appropriate object, as the love of fame in applause,
or hunger in food, or revenge in the infliction of pain upon
its object, or affection for another in the happiness and com-
pany of the beloved individual. But the object of the mo.
ral sense is to arbitrate and direct among all these propen-
sities. It claims the station and the prerogative of a mis-
tress over them. Its peculiar office is that of superinten.
dlence, and there is a certain feeling of violence or disorder,
when the mandates which it issues in this capacity, are not
carried into effect. Every affection in our nature is appeased
by the object that is suited to it. The object of conscience
is the subordination of the whole to its dictates.Without
this it remains unappeased, and as if bereft of its rights,
It is not a single faculty, taking its own separate and un-
connected place among the other feelings and faculties
which belong to us. lis proper place is that of a guide or
a governor. It is the ruling power in our nature ; and its
proper, its legitimate business, is to prescribe that man shall
be as he ought, and do as he ought. But instead of expa-


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
tiating any further at present in language of our own, let
us here admit a few brief sentences from Butler himself, that
great and invaluable expounder both of the human constitu-
tion, and of moral science. "That principle by which we
survey, and either approve or disapprove our own heart,
temper, and actions, is not only to be considered as what in
its turn is to have some influence, which may be said of
every passion, of the basest appetites : but likewise as being
superior; as from its very nature manifestly claiming supe-
riority over all others : insomuch that you cannot form a no-
tion of this faculty conscience, without taking in judgment
direction and superintendency. This is a constituent part
of the idea, that is of the faculty itself: and to preside and
govern, from the very economy and constitution of man, be- !
longs to it. Had it strength, as it has right; had it power,
as it has manifest authority ; it would absolutely govern the
world.” “This faculty was placed within us to be our pro-
per governor ; to direct and regulate all under principles,
passions, and motives of action. This is its right and office.
Thus sacred is its authority. And how often soever men
violate and rebelliously refuse to submit to it, for supposed
interest which they cannot otherwise obtain, or for the sake
of passion which they cannot otherwise gratify; this makes
no alteration as to the natural right and office of conscience.
9. Now it is in these phenomena of Conscience that Na-
ture offers to us, far her strongest argument, for the moral
character of God. Had He been an unrighteous Being him-
self, would He have given to this the obviously superior fa-
culty in man, so distinct and authoritative a voice on the side
of righteousness? Would He have so constructed the crea-
tures of our species, as to have planted in every breast a re-
claiming witness against himself? Would he have thus
inscribed on the tablet of every heart the sentence of his own
condemnation; and is not this just as unlikely, as that He
should have inscribed it in written characters on the forehead
of each individual? Would He so have fashioned the work-
manship of His own hands : or, if a God of cruelty, injustice,
and falsehood, would He have placed in the station of mas-
ter and judge that faculty whichi, felt to be the highest in our
nature, would prompt a generous and high-minded revolt of
all our sentiments against the Being who formed us! From
a God possessed of such characteristics, we should surely
have expected a differently-moulded humanity; or, in other


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
51
unce the legislator and the judge in the moral system, though
the executive forces of the system have made insurrection
against it, and thrown the whole into anarchy. T'here is a
depth of mystery in every thing connected with the exist.
ence or the origin of evil in creation; yet even in the fiercest
uproar of our stormy passions, Conscience, though in her
softest whispers, gives to the supremacy of reciicude the
voice of an undying testimony; and her light still shining
12 a dark place, her unquelled accents still heard in the loud-
est outcry of Nature's rebellious appetites, form the strongest
argument within reach of the human faculties, that, in spite
of all partial or temporary derangements, Supreme Power
and Supreme Goodness are as one. It is true that rebellious
man haih, with daring footstep, trampled on the lessons of
Conscience; but why, in spite of man's perversity, is con-
science, on the other hand, able to lift a voice so piercing
and so powerful, by which to remonstrate against the wrong,
and to reclaim the honours that are due to her? How comes
it that, in the mutiny and uproar of the inferior faculties,
that faculty in man, which wears the stamp and impress of
the highest, should remain on the side of truth and holiness?
Would humanity have thus been moulded by a false and evil
spirit; or would he have committed such impolicy against
himself, as to insert in each member of our species a prin-
ciple which would make him feel the greatest complacency
in his own rectitude, when he feels the most high-minded
revolt of inlignation and dislike against the Being who gave
him birth? It is not so much that Conscience takes a part
among the other faculties of our nature; but that Conscience
takes among them the part of a governor, and that man, if
he do not obey her suggestions, still, in despite of himself,
acknowledges her rights. It is a mighty argument for
virtue of the governor above, that all the laws and injunc-
tions of the governor below are on the side of virtue. It seems
as if He had left this representative, or remaining witness,
for Himself, in a world that had cast off its allegiance; and
that, from the voice of the judge within the breast, we may
learn the will and the character of Him who hath invested
with such authority his dictates. It is this which speaks as
much more demonstratively for the presidency of a righteous
God in human affairs, than for that of impure or unrighteous
demons, as did the rod of Aaron, when it swallowed the rods
of the enchanters and magicians in Egypt. In the wildest


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
anarchy of man's insurgent appetites and sins, there is still
a reclaiming voice-a voice which, even when in practice
disregarded, it is impossible not to own; and to which, at the
very moment that we refuse our obedience, we find that we
cannot refuse the homage of what ourselves do feel and
acknowledge to be the best, the highest principles of our
nature.
10. However difficult from the very simplicity of the sub-
ject it may be, to state or to reason the argument for a God,
which is founded on all the supremacy of conscience-still,
historically and experimentally, it will be found, that it is of
more force than all other arguments put together, for origi-
nating and upholding the naturaltheism which there is in the
world. The theology of conscience is not only of wider dif-
fusion, but of far more practical influence then the theology
of academic demonstration. The ratiocination by which
this theology is established, is not the less firm or the less
impressive, that, instead of a lengthened process, there is
but one step between the premises and the conclusion-or,
that the felt presence of a judge within the breast, powerful-
ly and immediately suggests the notion of a Supreme Judge
and Sovereign, who placed it there. Upon this question,
the mind does not stop short at mere abstraction; but pas.
sing at once from the abstract to the concrete, from the law
of the heart, it makes the rapid inference of a lawgiver. It
is the very rapidity of this inference which makes it appear
like intuition; and which has given birth to the mystic theo-
logy of innate ideas. Yet the theology of conscience dis-
claims such mysticism, built, as it is, on a foundation of
sure and sound reasoning; for the strength of an argu-
mentation in nowise depends upon the length of it. The
sense of a governing principle within, begets in all men the
sentiment of a living governor without and above them, and
it does so with all the speed of an instantaneous feeling: vet
it is not an impression, it is an inference notwithstanding-
and as much so as any inference from that which is seen,
to that which is unseen. There is, in the first instance,
cognizance taken of a fact-if not by the outward eve, vet
as good, by the eye of consciousness which has been termed
the faculty of internal observation. And the consequent
belief of a God, instead of being an instinctive sense of the
Divinity, is the fruit of an inference grounded on that foct.
There is instant transition made, from the sense of a Moni-


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
53
tor within to the faith of a living Sovereign above; and this
argument, described by all, but with such speed as almost
to warrant the expression of its being felt by all, may be re-
garded, notwithstanding the force and fertility of other con-
siderations, as the great prop of natural religion among men.
11. And we mistake, if we think it was ever otherwise,
even in the ages of darkest and most licentious pagan-
ism. This theology of conscience has often been greatly
obscured, but never, in any country or at any period in the
history of the world, has it been wholly obliterated. We
behold the vestiges of it in the simple theology of the desert;
and, perhaps, more distinctly there, than in the complex
superstitions of an artificial and civilized heathenism. In
confirmation of this, we might quote the invocations to the
Great Spirit from the wilds of North America. But, indeed,
in every quarter of the globe, where missionaries have held
converse with savages, even with the rudest of nature's chil-
dren—when speaking on the topics of sin and judgment,
they do not speak to them in vocables unknown. And as
this sense of a universal law and a Supreme Lawgiver
never waned into total extinction among the tribes of fero-
cious and untamed wanderers—so neither was it altogether
stified by the refined and intricate polytheism of more en-
lightened nations. The whole of classic authorship teems
with allusions to a supreme Governor and Judge: And
when the guilty Emperors of Rome were tempest driven by
remorse and fear, it was not that they trembled before a
spectre of their own imagination. When terror mixed,
which it often did, with the rage and cruelty of Nero, it was
the theology of conscience which haunted him. It was not
the suggestion of a capricious fancy which gave him the
disturbance-but a voice issuing from the deep recesses of
a moral nature, as stable and uniform throughout the spe-
cies as in the material structure of humanity; and in the
lineaments of which we may read that there is a moral regi.
men among men, and therefore a moral Governor who hath
instituted, and who presides over it. Therefore it was that
these imperial despots, the worst and haughtiest of recorded
monarchs, stood aghast at the spectacle of their own worth-
lessness. It is true, there is a wretchedness which naturally
and essentially belongs to a state of great moral unhinge-
ment; and this may account for their discomforts, but it will
not account for their fears. They may, because of this,
5*


54
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
have felt the torments of a present misery. But whence
their fears of a coming vengeance? They would not have
trembled at nature's law, apart from the thought of nature's
lawgiver. The imagination of an unsanctioned law would
no more have given disquietude, than the imagination of a
vacant throne. But the law, to their guilty apprehensions,
bespoke a judge. The throne of heaven, to their troubled"
eye, was filled by a living monarch. Righteousness, it was
felt, would not have been so enthroned in the moral system
of man, had it not been previously enthroned in the system
of the universe; nor would it have held such a place and pre-
eminence in the judgment of all spirits, had not the father
of spirits been its friend and ultimate avenger. This is not
a local or geographical notion. It is a universal feeling
to be found wherever men are to be found, because interwo-
ven with the constitution of humanity. It is not, therefore,
the peculiarity of one creed, or of one country. It circulates
at large throughout the family of man. We can trace it in
the theology of savage life ; nor is it wholly overborne by
the artificial theology of a more complex and idolatrous pa-
ganism. Neither crime nor civilization can extinguish it;
and, whether in the conscientia scelerum" of the fierce and
frenzied Cataline, or in the tranquil contemplative musings
of Socrates and Cicero, we find the impression of at once a
righteous and a reigning Sovereign.
12. And it confirms still more our idea of a government
that conscience not only gives forth her mandates with the
one and authority of a Superior ; but, as if on purpose to
enforce their observance, thus follows them up with an ob-
vious discipline of rewards and punishments. It is enough
but to mention, on the one hand, that felt complacency which
is distilled, like some precious elixir, upon the heart by the
recollection of virtuous deeds and virtuous sacrifices; and,
on the other hand, those inflictions of remorse, which are
attendant upon wickedness, and wherewith, as if by the
whip of a secret tormentor, the heart of every conscious sin-
ner is agonized. We discern in these the natural sanctions
of morality, and the moral character of Him who hath or-
dained them. We cannot otherwise explain the peace and
triumphant satisfaction which spring from the conscious-
ness of well doing-nor can we otherwise explain the de.
gradation as well as bitter distress, which a sense of deme-
rit bringe along with it. Our only adequate interpretation


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
55
of these phenomena is, that they are the present remune-
rations or the present chastisements of a God who loveth
righteousness, and who hateth iniquity, Nor do we view
them as the conclusive results of virtue and vice, but rather
as the tokens and the precursors either of a brighter re-
ward or of a heavier vengeance, that are coming. It is thus
that the delight of self-approbation, instead of standing alone,
bringg hope in its train; and remorse, instead of standing
alone, brings terror in its train. The expectations of the fu-
ture are blended with these joys and sufferings of the pre-
sent; and all serve still more to stamp an impression, of
which traces are to be found in every quarter of the earth-
that we live under a retributive economy, and that the God
wno reigns over it takes a moral and judicial cognizance of
the creatures whom He hath formed.
13. What then are the specific injunctions of conscience?
for on this question essentially depends every argument that
we can derive from this power or property of our nature, for
the moral character of God. If, on the one hand, the lessons
given forth by a faculty, which so manifestly claims to be
the pre-eminent and ruling faculty of our nature, be those of
deceit and licentiousness and cruelty-then, from the cha-
racter of such a law, should we infer the character of the
lawgiver; and so feel the conclusion to be inevitable, that
we are under the government of a malignant and unrighteous
God, at once the patron of vice and the persecutor of virtue
in the world. If on the other hand, temperance, and chas-
tity, and kindness, and integrity, and truth, be the mandates
which generally, if not invariably proceed from her--then,
on the same principles of judgment, should we reckon that
He who is the author of conscience, and who gave it the
place of supremacy and honour, which it so obviouely pos-
sesses in the moral system of man, was himself the friend
and the exemplar of all those virtues which enter into the
composition of perfect moral rectitude. In the laws and the
lessons of human conscience, would we study the character
of the Godhead, just as we should study the views and dis-
positions of a monarch, in the instructions given by him to
The viceroy of one of his provinces. If, on the one hand,
virtue be prescribed by the authority of conscience, and fol-
lowed up by her approval, in which very approval there is
felt an inward satisfaction and serenity of spirit, that of itself
torms a most delicious reward; and if, on the other hand, the


56
ON THË SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE,
perpetrations of wickedness are followed up by the voice of
her rebuke, in which, identical with remorse, there is a sting
of agony and discomfort, amounting to the severest penalty-
tben, are we as naturally disposed to infer of Him who or-
dained such a mental constitution that He is the righteous
Governor of men, as, if seated on a visible throne in the midst
of us, He had made the audible proclamation of His law,
and by His own immediate hand, had distributed of His gifts
to the obedient, and inflicted chastisements on the rebellious.
The law of conscience may be regarded as comprising all
those virtues which the hand of the Deity hath inscribed on
the tablet of the human heart, or on the tablet of natural ju.
risprudence; and an argument for these being the very vir-
tues which characterize and adorn Himself, is that they
must have been transcribed from the prior tablet of His own
nature.
14. We are sensible that there is much to obscure this in-
ference in the actual circumstances of the world. More es-
pecially—it has been alleged, on the side of scepticism, that
ihere is an exceeding diversity of moral judgments among
men; that, out of the multifarious decisions of the human
conscience, no consistent code of virtue can be framed; and
that, therefore, no consistent character can be ascribed to
Him, who planted this faculty in the bosom of our species,
and bade it speak so uncertainly and so variously.* But to
this it may be answered, in the first place, that the apparent
diversity is partly reducible into the blinding, or, at least,
the distorting effect of passion and interest, which sometimes
are powerful enough to obscure our perception, even of ma-
thematical and historical truths, as well as of moral distinc-
tions; and without therefore affecting the stability of either.
On the uniformity of our moral judgments, we would refer
to the 74th and 75th of Dr. Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy
of the Human Mind. "If we bear in mind' says Sir James Mack.
intosh, that the question relates to the coincidence of all men
in considering the same qualities as virtues, and not to the pre-
ference of one class of virtues by some, and of a different class
by others, the exceptions from the agreement of mankind, in
their systems of practical morality, will be reduced to absolute
insignificance; and we shall learn to view them as no more aſ.
fecting the harmony of the moral faculties, than the resemblance
of the limbs and features is affected by monstrous conformations,
or by the unfortunate eficcts of accident and disease in a very few
individuals."


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE
57
it is thus, for example, that mercantile cupidity has blinded
many a reckless adventurer to the enormous injustice of the
slave trade; that passion and interest together have trans-
muted revenge into a virtue; and that the robbery, which,
if prosecuted only for the sake of individual gain, would have
appeared to all under an aspect of most revolting selfishness,
puts on the guise of patriotism, when a whole nation delib-
erates on the schemes, or is led by a career of daring and
lofty heroism, to the spoliations of conquest. In all such
cases, it is of capital importance to distinguish between the
real character of any criminal action, when looked to calmly,
comprehensively, and fully; and what that is in ihe action
which the perpetrator singles out and fastens upon as his
plea, when he is either defending it to others, or reconciling
it to his own conscience. In as far as he knows the deed to
be incapable of vindication, and yet rushes on the perform-
ance of it, there is but delinquency of conduct iucurred, not
a diversity of moral judgment; nor does Conscience, in this
case, at all betray any caprice or uncertainty in her deci-
sions. It is but the conduct, and not the conscience which
is in fault; and to determine whether the latter is in aught
chargeable with fluctuation, we must look not to the man's
performance, but to his plea. Two men may differ as to the
moral character of an action; but if each is resting the sup-
port of his own view on adifferent principle from the other,
were may still be a perfect uniformity of moral sentiment
between them. They own the authority of the same laws;
they only disagree in the application of them. In the first
place, the most vehement denouncer of a guilty commerce
that one with the most strenuous of its advocates, on the duty
which each man, owes to his family, and again, neither of
them would venture to maintain the lawfulness of the trade,
because of the miseries inflicted by it on those wretched suf-
ferers who were its victims. The defender of this ruthless
and rapacious system disowns not, in sentiment at least,
however much he may disown in practice, the obligations
of justice and humanity-nay, in all the palliations which he
attempts of the enormity in question, he speaks of these as
undoubted virtues, and renders the homage of his moral ac-
knowledgments to them all. In the sophistry of his vindi-
ation, the principles of the ethical system are left untouched
and entire. He meddles not with the virtuousness either of
humanity or justice; but he tells of the humanity of slavery,


58
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.

and the justice of slavery. It is true, that he heeds not the
representations which are given of the atrocities of his trade-
that he does not attend because he wills not to attend; and
in this there is practical unfairness. Still it but resolves it-
self into perversity of conduct, and not into perversity of sen-
timent. The very dread and dislike he has for the informa-
tions of the subject, are symptons of a feeling that his con-
science cannot be trusted with the question; or in other
words, prove him to be possessed of a conscience which is
just like that of other men. The partialities of interest and
feeling may give rise to an infinite diversity of moral judg.
ments in our estimate of actions; while there may be the
most perfect uniformity and stability of judgment in our es-
timate of principles : and, on all the great generalities of the
ethical code, Conscience may speak the same language, and
own one and the same moral directory all the world over.
15. When consciences then pronounce differently of the
same action, it is for the most part, or rather, it is almost al-
ways, because understandings view it differently. It is ei-
ther because the controversialists are regarding it with une-
qual degrees of knowledge; or, each, through the medium
of his own partialities. The consciences of all would come
forth with the same moral decision, were all equally enlight-
ened in the circumstances, or in the essential relations and
consequences of the deed in question; and what is just as
essential to this uniformity of judgment, were all viewing
it fairly as well as fully. It matters not, whether it be ig-
norantly or wilfully, that each is looking at this deed, but
in the one aspect, or in the one relation that is favourable to
his own peculiar sentiment. In either case, the diversity of
judgment on the moral qualities of tne same action, is just
as little to be wondered at as a similar diversity on the ma-
terial qualities of the same object-should any of the spec-
tators labour under an involuntary defect of vision, or vol-
untarily persist either in shutting or in averting his eyes. It
is thus that a quarrel has well been
ding, in which each of the combatants may consider, and
often honestly consider, himself to be in the right; and that
on reading the hostile memorials of two parties in a litiga-
tion, we can perceive no difference in their moral principles,
but only in their historical statements, and that, in the pub-
lic manifestoes of nations when entering upon war, we can
discover no trace of a contrariety of conflict in their ethical


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
59
systems, but only in their differently put or differently co-
loured representations of fact; all proving, that with the ut-
most diversity of judgment among men respecting the moral
qualities of the same thing, there may be a perfect identity
of structure in their moral organs notwithstanding; and that
Conscience, true to her office, needs but to be rightly infor-
med, that she may speak the same language, and give forth
the same lessons in all the countries of the earth.
16. It is this which explains the moral peculiarities of
different nations. It is not that justice, humanity, and grati-
tade are not the canonized virtues of every region; or ibat
falsehood, cruelty, and fraud would not, in their abstract
and unassociated nakedness, be viewed as the objects of mo-
ral antipathy and rebuke. It is, that, in one and the same
material action, when looked to in all the lights of which,
whether in reality or by the power of imagination, it is sus-
ceptible, various, nay, opposite moral characteristics may
be blended; and that while one people look to the good only
without evil, another may look to the evil only without the
good. And thus the identical acts which in one nation are
The subjects of a most reverent and religious observance,
may, in another be regarded with a shuddering sense of
abomination and horror. And this, not because of any dif-
ference in what may be termed the moral categories of the
two people, nor because, if moral principles in their únmix-
ed generality were offered to the contemplation of either,
either would call evil good or good evil. When theft was
publicly honoured and rewarded in Sparta, it was not be-
cause theft in itself was reckoned a good thing; but be-
cause patriotism, and dexterity, and those services by which
the interests of patriotism might be supported, were reck-
oned to be good things. When the natives of Hindostan
assemble with delight around the agonies of a human sacri-
fice, it is not because they hold it good to rejoice in a spec-
tacle of pain; but because they hold it good to rejoice in a
spectacle of heroic devotion to the memory of the dead.
When parents are exposed, or children are destroyed, it ig
not because it is deemed to be right that there should be the
infliction of misery for its own sake; but because it is deem-
ed to be right that the wretchedness of old age should be
curtailed, or that the world should be saved from the mise-
ries of an over-crowded species. In a word, in the very
worst of these anomalies, some form of good may be de-


60
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.

tected, which has led to their establishment; and still, some
universal and undoubted principle of morality, however per-
verted or misapplied, can be alleged in vindication of them.
A people may be deluded by their ignorance; or misguided
by their superstition; or, not only hurried into wrong deeds,
but even fostered into wrong sentiments, under the influ-
ences of that cupidity or revenge, which are so perpetually
operating in the warfare of savage or demisavage nations.
Yet, in spite of all the topical moralities to which these have
given birth, there is an unquestioned and universal morality
notwithstanding. And in every case, where the moral sense
is unfettered by these associations; and the judgment is un-
cramped, either by the partialities of interest or by the in-
veteracy of national customs which habit and antiquity
have rendered sacred-Conscience is found to speak the
same language, nor, to the remotest ends of the world, is
there a country or an island, where the same uniform and
consistent voice is not heard from her. Let the mists of ig-
norance and passion and artificial education be only cleared
away; and the moral attributes of goodness and righteous-
ness and truth be seen undistorted, and in their own proper
guise; and there is not a heart or a conscience throughout
earth's teeming population, which could refuse to do them
homage. And it is precisely because the Father of the hu-
man family has given such hearts and conscience, to all his
children, that we infer these to be the very sanctities of the
Godhead, the very attributes of his own primeval nature.
17. There is a countless diversity of tastes in the world, be-
cause of the infinitely various circumstances and associations
of men. Yet is there a stable and correct standard of taste
notwithstanding, to which all minds, that have the benefit
of culture and enlargement, are gradually assimilating and
approximating. It holds far more emphatically true, that
in spite of the diversity of moral judgments, which are vast-
ly less wide and numerous than the former, there is a fixed
standard of morals, rallying around itself all consciences,
to the greater principles of which, a full and unanimous
homage is rendered from every quarter of the globe; and
even to the lesser principles and modifications of which,
there is a growing and gathering consent, with every on-
ward step in the progress of light and civilization. In pro-
portion as the understandings of men become more enlight-
ened, do their consciences become more accordant with each


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
other. Even now there is not a single people on the face
of the earth, among whom barbarity and licentiousness and
fraud are deified as virtues,—where it does not require the
utmost strength, whether of supersition or of patriotism in
its most selfish and contracted form, to uphold the delusion.
Apart from these local and, we venture to hope, these tem-
porary exceptions, the same moralities are recognized and
honoured; and, however prevalent in practice, in sentiment
at least, the same vices are disowned and execrated all the
world over. In proportion as superstition is dissipated, and
prejudice is gradually weakened by the larger intercourse
of nations, these moral peculiarities do evidently wear away,
till at length, if we may judge from the obvious tendency of
things, conscience will, in the full manhood of our species
assert the universality and the unchangeableness of her de-
cisions. There is no speech nor language, where her voice
is not heard; her line is gone out through all the earth; and
her words to the ends of the world. I
18. On the whole, then, conscience, whether it be an origi-
nal or a derived faculty, yet as founded on human nature,
if not forming a constituent part of it, may be regarded as
a faithful witness for God the author of that nature, and as
rendering to his character a consistent testimony. It is no
necessary, for the establishment of our particular lesson, that
we should turn that which is clear into that which is con-
troversial by our entering into the scientific question respect-
ing the physical origin of conscience, or tracing the imagined
pedigree of its descent from simpler or anterior principles in
the constitution of man. For, as has been well remarked
by Sir James Mackintosh-"If conscience be inherent, that
circumstance is, according to the common mode of thinking
a sufficient proof of its title to veneration. But if provision
he made, in the constitution and circumstances of all men for
uniformity, producing it by processes similar to those which
produce other acquired sentiments, may not our reverence be
augmented by admiration of that supreme wisdom, which,
in such mental contrivances, yet more highly than in the
lower world of matter, accomplish mighty purposes by in-
struments so simple ?! It is not therefore the physical ori-
gin, but the fact, of the uniformity of conscience, where with
is concerned the theological inference that we attempt to
draw froin it. This ascendant faculty of our nature, which
has been sb often termed the divinity within us, notwith-


ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE.
standing the occasional sophistry of the passions, is on the
whole, representative of the Divinity above us; and the
righteousness and goodness and truth, the lessons of which
it gives forth every where, may well be regarded, both as
the laws which enter into the juridical constitution, and
as the attributes which enter into the moral character of
God.
19. We admit a considerable diversity of moral observa-
tion in the various countries of the earth, but without ad-
mitting any correspondent diversity of moral sentiment be-
tween them. When human sacrifices are enforced and ap-
plauded in one nation-this is not because of their cruelty,
but notwithstanding of their cruelty. Even there, the uni-
versal principle of humanity would be acknowledged, that
it were wrong to inflict a wanton and uncalled for agony on
any of our fellows--but there is a local superstition which
counteracts the universal principle, and overbears it. When
in the republic of Sparta, theft, instead of being execrated
as a crime, was dignified into an art and an accomplishment
and on that footing admitted into the system of their youth
ful education it was not because of its infringement on the
rights of property, but notwithstanding of that infringement,
and only because a local patriotism made head against the
universal principle, and prevailed over it. Apart from such
disturbing forces as thesc, it will be found that the senti-
mients of men gravitate towards one and the same standard
all over the globe; and that, when once the obscurations of
superstition and selfishness are dissipated, there will be found
the same moral light in every mind, a recognition of the same
moral law, as the immutable and eternal code of righteous-
ness for all countries and all ages. The following is the
noble testimony of a heathen, who tells us with equal elo-
quence and truth, that, even amid all the perversities of a
vitiated and endlessly diversified creed, conscience sat mis-
tress over the whole earth, and asseried the supremacy of
her own unalterable obligations. “Est quidem vera lex,
recta ratio, naturæ congruens, diffusa in omnes, constans,
sempiterna, quæ vocet ad officium jubendo, vetando a fraude
deterreat ; quæ tamen neque probos frustra jubet aut vetat,
nec improbos jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic legi nec
obrogari fas est, neque derogari ex hac aliquid licet, neque
tota abrogari potest. Nec vero, aut per senatum aut per
populuin solvi hac lege possumus. Neque est quærendus


ON THE SUPREXACY OF CONSCIENCE.

explanator aut interpres ejus alius. Nec erit alia lex Romæ,
alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac ; sed et omnes gentes,
et omni tempore, una lex et sempiterna et immortalis conti-
nebit; unusque erit communis quasi magister, et imperator
omnium Deus ille, legis hujus inventor, disceptator. lator :
cui qui non parebit, ipse se fugiet, ac naturum hominus ag-
pernabitur, atque hoc ipso luet maximas pænas, etiam si
cætera supplicia quæ putantur effugerit.”
20. Such then is our first argument for the moral cha-
racter of God-even the moral character of the law of con-
science; that conscience which he hath inserted among the
faculties of our nature; and armed with the felt authority
of a master; and furnished with sanctions for the enforce-
ment of its dictates; and so framed, that, apart from local
perversities of the understanding or the habits, all its decis-
ions are on the side of righteousness. The inference is nei-
thur a distant nor an obscure one, from the character of such
a law to the character of its law-giver. Neither is it an in-
ference, destroyed by the insurrection which has taken place
on the part of our lower faculties, or by the actual prevalence
of vice in the world. For this has only enabled conscience
to come forth with another and additional demonstration of
its sovereignty-just as the punishment of crime in society
bears evidence to the justice of the goverment which is es-
tablished there. In general the inward complacency felt
by the virtuous, does not so impressively bespeak the rea.
purpose and character of this the ruling faculty in man, as
do the remorse, and the terror, and the bitter dissatisfaction,
wherewith the hearts of the wicked are exercised. It is true,
that by every act of iniquity, outrage is done to the law of
conscience; but there is a felt reaction within which tells
that the outrage is resented; and then it is, that conscience
makes most emphatic assertion of its high prerogative, when,
instead of coming forth as the benign and generous dispen.
ser of its rewards to the obedient, it comes forth like an of-
fended monarch in the character of an avenger. Were we
endowed with prophetic vision, so as to behold, among the
yet undisclosed secrets of futurity, the spectacle of a judge,
and a judgment-seat, and an assembled world, and the retri-
butions of pleasure and pain to the good and to the evil;
this were fetching from afar an argument for the righteous
ness of God. But the instant pleasure and the instant pain
wherewith conscience follows up the doings of man, brings


64
PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND
this very argument within the limits of actual observation. +
Only, instead of being' manifested by the light of a preter-
natural revelation, it is suggested to us by one of the most
familiar certainties of experience, for in these phenomena
and feelings of our own moral nature, do we behold not only
a present judgment, but a present execution of the sentence.
CHAPTER II.
:
SECOND GENERAL ARGUMENT
On the inherent Pleasure of the Virtuous, and Misery
of the Vicious Affections.
1. We are often told by moralists, that there is a native and
essential happiness in moral worth; and a like native and
essential wretchedness in moral depravity-insomuch that
the one may be regarded as its own reward, and the other
as its own punishment. We do not always recollect that
this happiness on the one hand, and this misery on the other,
are each of them made up, severally of distinct ingredients;
and that thus, by mental analysis, we might strengthen our.
argument both for the being and the character of God. When
we discover, that, into this alleged happiness of the good
there enter more enjoyments than one, we, thereby obtain
two or more testimonies of the divine regard for virtue ; and
the proof is enhanced in the same peculiar way, that the
evidence of design is, in any other department of creation,
when we perceive the concurrence of so many separate and
independent elements, which meet together for the production
of some complex and beneficial result.*
2. We have already spoken of one such ingredicnt. There
is a felt satisfaction in the thought of having done what we
know to be right; and, in counterpart to this complacency
of self-approbation, there is a felt discomfort, amounting often
to bitter and remorseful agony, in the thought of having done
what conscience tells us to be wrong. This implies a sense
of the rectitude of what is virtuous. But without thinking
of its rcctitude at all, without viewing it in reference either
to the law of conscience or to the law of God, with no regard
See Chap. L. 6.


MIBERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS.
to jurisprudence in the matter there is, in the virtuous af-
fection itself, another and a distinct enjoyment. We ought
to cherish and to exercise benevolence; and there is a plea-
sure in the consciousness of doing what we ought: but be-
side this moral sentiment, and beside the peculiar pleasure
appended to benevolence as moral, there is a sensation in the
merely physical affection of benevolence; and that sensation
of itself, is in the highest degree pleasurable. The primary
or instant gratification which there is in the direct and im-
mediate feeling of benevolence is one thing : the secondary
or reflex gratification which there is in the consciousness of be-
nevolence as moral is another thing. The two are distinct
of themselves; but the contingent union of them, in the case
of every virtuous affection, gives a multiple force to the con-
clusion, that God is the lover, and, because so, the patron
or the rewarder of virtue. He hath so constituted our na-
ture, that in the very flow and exercise of the good affections,
there shall be the oil of gladness. There is instant delight
in the first conception of benevolence. There is sustained
delight in its continued exercise. There is consummated
delight in the happy smiling and prosperous result of it.
Kindness, and honesty, and truth, are, of themselves, and ir-
respective of their rightness, sweet unto the taste of the inner
man. Malice, envy, falsehood, injustice, irrespective of their
wrongness, have of themselves, the bitterness of gall and
wormwood. The Deity hath annexed a high mental enjoy-
ment, not to the consciousness only of good affections, but
to the very sense and feeling of good affections. However
closely these may follow on each other-nay, however im-
plicated or blended together they may be at the same mo-
ment into one compound state of feeling; they are not the
less distinct on that account, of themselves. They form two
pleasurable sensations, instead of one; and their apposition,
in the case of every virtuous deed or virtuous desire, exhi-
bits to us that very concurrence in the world of mind,
which obtains with such frequency and fulness in the world
of matter-affording in every new part that is added, not a
simply repeated only, but a vastly multiplied evidence for
design, throughout all its combinations. There is a plea-
bure in the very sensation of virtue; and there is a pleasure
attendant on the sense of its rectitude. These two phenome-
na are independent of each other. Let there be a certain
number of chances against the first in a random economy of


66
PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND
things, and also a certain number of chances against the sea
cond. In the actual economy of things, where there is the
conjunction of both phenomena--it is the product of these two
numbers which represents the amount of evidence afforded
by them, for a moral government in the world, and a moral
Governor over them.
3. In the calm satisfactions of virtue, this distinction may
not be so palpable, as in the pungent and more vividly felt
disquietudes which are attendant on the wrong affections of
our nature. The perpetual corrosion of that heart, for ex-
ample, which frets in unhappy peevishness all the day long.
is plainly distinct from the bitterness of that remorse which
is felt, in the recollection of its harsh and injurious outbreak-
ings on the innocent sufferers within its reach. It is saying
much for the moral character of God, that he has placed a
conscience within us, which administers painful rebuke on
every indulgence of a wrong affection. But it is saying still
more for such being the character of our Maker- go to have
framed our mental constitution, that in the very working of
these bad affections there should be the painfulness of a felt
discomfort and discordancy. Such is the make or mechan-
ism of our nature, that it is thwarted and put out of sorts, by
rage and envy, and hatred; and this, irrespective of the ad-
verse moral judgments which conscience passes upon them.
Of themselves, they are unsavoury; and no sooner do they
enter the heart, than they shed upon it an immediate distil-
lation of bitterness. Just as the placid smile of benevolence
bespeaks the felt comfort of benevolence ; so, in the frown
and tempest of an angry countenance, do we read the un
happiness of that man who is vexed and agitated by his own
malignant affections-eating inwardly as they do on the vi-
tals of his enjoyment. It is, therefore, that he is often sty.
led, and truly, a self tormentor; or, his own worst enemy.
The delight of virtue in itself, is a separate thing from the
delight of the conscience which approves it. And the pain
of moral evil in itself, is a separate thing from the pain in.
flicted by conscience in the act of condemning it. They offer
to our notice two distinct ingredients, both of the present re-
ward attendant upon virtue, and of the present penalty at-
tendent upon vice; and so. enhance the evidence that is be-
fore our eyes, for the moral character of that administrations
under which the world has been placed by its author. The
appetite of hunger is rightly alleged, in evidence of the care,


MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS.

wherewith the Deity hath provided for the well-being of our
natural constitution; and the pleasurable taste of food is
rightly alleged as an additional proof of the same. And so
if the urgent voice of conscience within, calling us to virtue
be alleged in evidence of the care, wherewith the Deity hath
provided for the well-being of our moral constitution; the
pleasurable taste of virtue in itself, with the bitterness of its
opposite, may well be alleged as additional evidence thereof.
They alike afford the present and the sensible tokens of a
righteous administration, and so of a righteous God.
4. Our present argument is grounded, neither on the rec-
titude of virtue, nor on its utility in the grosser and more
palpable sense of that term-but on the immediate sweetness
of it. It is the office of conscience to tell us of its rectitude,
It is by experience that we learn its utility. But the sweet-
ness of it-the dulce of virtue, as distinguished from its utile,
is a thing of instant sensation, it may be decomposed into
two ingredients, with one of which conscience has to do--
even the pleasure we have, when any deed or any affection
of ours receives from her a favourable verdict. But it has
another ingredient which forms the proper and the distinct
argument that we are now urging-even the pleasure we
have in the mere relish of the affection itself. If it be a proof
of benevolence in God, that our external organs of taste
should have been so framed, as to have a liking for whole-
some food; it is no less the proof both of a benevolent and a
righteous God, so to have framed our mental economy, as
that right and wholesome morality should be palatable to
the taste of the inner man. Virtue is not only seen to be right
it is felt to be delicious. There is happiness in the very wish
to make others happy. There is a heart's ease, or a heart's
enjoyment, even in the first purposes of kindness, as well as
in its subsequent performances. There is a certain rejoicing
sense of clearness in the consistency, the exactitude of jus-
tice and truth. There is a triumphant elevation of spirit in
magnanimity and honour, In perfect harmony with this,
there is a placid feeling of serenity and blissful contentment
in gentleness and humility. There is a noble satisfaction in
those victories, which, at the bidding of principle, or by the
power of self-command, may haye been achieved over the
propensities of animal nature. There is an elate indepen-
dence of soul, in the consciousness of having nothing to hide,
and nothing to be ashamed of. In a word, by the constitu-


68
PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND
tion of our nature, each virtue has its appropriate charm;
and virtue, on the whole, is a fund of varied, as well as of
perpetual enjoyment, to him who hath imbibed its spirit, and
is under the guidance of its principles. He feels all to be
health and harmony within; and without he seems as if to
breathe in an atmosphere of beauteous transparency-pro-
ving how much the nature of man and the nature of virtue
are in unison with each other. It is hunger which urges to
the use of food; but it strikingly demonstrates the care and
benevolence of God, Bo to have framed the organ of taste, as
that there shall be a superadded enjoyment in the use of it.
It is conscience which urges to the practice of virtue; but it
serves to enhance the proof of a moral purpose, and there.
fore of a moral character in God, so to have framed our men-
tal economy, that, in addition to the felt obligation of its
rightness, virtue should of itself, be so regaling to the taste
of the inner man,
5. In counterpart to these sweets and satisfactions of vir-
tue, is the essential and inherent bitterness of all that is mo-
rally evil. We repeat, that, with this particular argument,
we do not mix up the agonies of remorse. It is the wretch-
edness of vice in itself, not the wretchedness which we suf-
fer because of its recollected and felt wrongness that we now
speak of. It is not the painfulness of the compunction felt
because of our anger, upon which we at this moment insist;
but the painfulness of the emotion itself; and the same re-
mark applies to all the malignant desires of the human heart.
True, it is inseparable from the very nature of a desire, that
there must be some enjoyment or other, at the time of its
gratification ; but, in the case of these evil affections, it is
not unmixed enjoyment. The most ordinary observer of
his own feelings, however incapable of analysis, must be
sensible, even at the moment of wreaking, in full indulgence
of his resentment, on the man who has provoked or injured
him, that all is not perfect and entire enjoyment within; but
that, in this, and indeed in every other malignant feeling,
there is a sore burden of disquietude-an unhappiness tu.
multuating in the heart, and visibly pictured on the counte-
nance. The ferocious tyrant who has only to issue forth his
mandate, and strike dead at pleasure the victim of his wrath,
with any circumstance too of barbaric caprice and cruelty,
which his fancy in the very waywardness of passion unre-
strained and power unbounded "might suggest to him-ha


NISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS.
69
may be said to have experienced through life a thousand
gratifications, in the solaced rage and revenge, which, though
ever breaking forth on some new subject, he can appease
again every day of his life by some new execution. But we
mistake it if we think otherwise than that, in spite of these
distinct and very numerous nay daily gratifications if he so
choose, it is not a life of fierce and internal agony notwith-
standing. It seems indispensable to the nature of every de-
sire, and to form part indeed of its very idea, that there should
be a distinctly felt pleasure, or at least, a removal at the time
of a distinctly felt pain, in the act of its fulfilment- yet, what-
ever recreation or relief may have thus been rendered, with-
out doing away the misery often in the whole amount of it
the intense misery, inflicted upon man by the evil propensi-
ties of his nature. Who can doubt for example the unhap.
piness of the habitual drunkard ! And that, although the
ravenous appetite, by which he is driven, along a stormy
career, meets every day, almost every hour of the day, with
the gratification that is suited to it. The same may be equally
affirmed of the voluptuary, or of the depredator, or of the
extortioner, or of the liar. Each may succeed in the attain.
ment of his specific object; ani we cannot possibly disjoin
from the conception of success the conception of some sort
of pleasure-yet in perfect consistency, we affirm, with a sad
and heavy burthen of unpleasantness or unhappiness on the
whole. He is little conversant with our nature who does
not know of many a passion belonging to it, that it may be
the instrument of many pleasurable, nay delicious or exqui-
site sensations, and yet be a wretched passion still; the do-
mineering tyrant of a bondsman, who at once knows himself
to be degraded, and feels himself to be unhappy. A sense
of guilt is one main ingredient of this misery-yet physical-
ly, and notwithstanding the pleasure or the relief insepara-
ble at the moment from every indulgence of the passions,
there are other sensations of bitterness, which of themselves,
and apart from remorse, would cause the suffering to pre-
ponderate.
6. There is an important discrimination made by Bishop
Butler in his sermons; and, by the help of which, this phe-
nomenon, of apparent contradiction or mystery in our nature
may be satisfactorily explained. He distinguishes between
the final object of any of our desires, and the pleasure atten-
cant on or rather inseparable from its gratification. The


PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND
object is not the pleasure, though the pleasure be an unfail-
ing and essential accompaniment on the attainment of the
object. This is well illustrated by the apperite of hunger, of
which it were more proper to say that it seeks for food, than
that it seeks for the pleasure which there is in eating the food.
The food is the object; the pleasure is the accompaniment
We do not here speak of the distinct and secondary pleasure
which there is in the taste of food, but of that other pleasure
which strictly and properly attaches to the gratification of
the appetite of hunger. This is the pleasure, or relief, which
accompanies the act of eating; while the ultimate object, the
object in which the appetite rests and terminates, is the food
itself. The same is true of all our special affections. Each
has a proper and peculiar object of its own, and the mere
pleasure attendant on the prosecution or the indulgence of
the affection is not, as has been clearly established by But-
ler and fully reasserted by Dr. Thomas Brown, is not that
object. The two are as distinct from each other, as a thing
loved is distinct from the pleasure of loving it. Every spe-
cial inclination has its special and counterpart object. The
object of the inclination is one thing; the pleasure of grati-
fying the inclination is another; and, in most instances, it
were more proper to say, that it is for the sake of the object
than for the sake of the pleasure that the inclination is gra-
tified, The distinction that we now urge, though felt to be
a subtle, is truly a substantial one; and pregnant, both with
important principle and important application. The disco-
very and clear statement of it by Butler may well be regard-
ed as the highest service rendered by any philosopher to
moral science; and that from the light which it casts, both
on the processes of the human constitution and on the theory
of virtue. As one example of the latter service, the princi-
ple in question, so plainly and convincingly unfolded by this
great Christian philosopher in his sermon on the love of our
neighbour, strikes, and with most conclusive effect, at the
root of the selfish system of morals; a system which pro-
fesses that man's sole object, in the practice of all the vari-
ous moralities, is his own individual advantage. Now, in
most cases of a special, and inore particularly of a virtuous
affection, it can be demonstrated, that the object is a some-
thing out of himself and distinct from himself. Take com-
· passion for one instance out of the many. The object of this
affection is the relief of another's misery, and, in the fulfil-


MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS.
ment of this, does the affection meet with its full solace and
gratification; that is in a something altogether external from
himself. It is true, that there is an appropriate pleasure in
the indulgence of this affection, even as there is in the indul.
gence of every other; and in proportion, too, to the strength of
the affection, will be the greatness of the pleasure. The man
who is doubly more compassionate than his fellow, will have
doubly a greater enjoyment in the relief of misery; yet that,
most assuredly, not because he of the two is the more intent-
ly set on his own gratification, but because he of the two is
the more intently set on an outward accomplishment, the re-
lief of another's wretchedness. The truth is, that, just be-
cause more compassionate than his fellow, the more intent
is he than the other on the object of this affection, and the
less intent is he than the other on himself the subject of this
affection. His thoughts and feelings are more drawn away
to the sufferer, and therefore more drawn away from him.
self. He is the most occupied with the object of this affec-
tion: and, on that very account, the least occupied with the
pleasure of its indulgence. And it is precisely the objec-
tive quality of these regards, which stamps upon com-
passion the character of a disinterested affection. 'He sure-
ly is the most compassionate whose thoughts and feel-
ings are most drawn away to the sufferer, and most drawn
away from self; or, in other words, most taken up with the
direct consideration of him who is the object of this affection,
and least taken up with the reflex consideration of the plea-
sure that he himself has in the indulgence of it. Yet this
prevents not the pleasure from being actually felt; and felt,
too, in very proportion to the intensity of the compassion;
or, in other words, more felt the less it has been thought of
at the time, or the less it has been pursued for its own sake.
It seems unavoidable in every affection, that, the more a
thing is loved, the greater must be the pleasure of indulging
the love of it : yet it is equally unavoidable, that the greater
in that case will be our aim towards the object of the affec-
tion, and the less will be our aim towards the pleasure which
accompanies its gratification. And thus, to one who reflects
profoundly and carefully on these things, it is no paradox
ihat he who has had doubly greater enjoyment than another
in the exercise of compassion, is doubly the more disinter-
ested of the two; that he has had the most pleasure in this
affection who has been the least careful to please himselt


PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND
with the indulgence of it; that he whose virtuous desires,
as being the strongest, have in their gratification ministered
to self the greatest satisfaction, has been the least actuated
of all his fellows by the wishes, and stood at the greatest
distance from the aims of selfishness.*
7. And moreover, there is a just and philosophical sense,
in which many of our special affections, besides the virtuous,
are alike disinterested with these ; even though they have
been commonly ranked among the selfish affections of our
nature. The proper object of self-love is the good of self;
and this calm general regard to our own happiness may be
considered, in fact, as the only interested affection to which
our nature is competent. The special affections are, one
and all of them, distinct from self-love, both in their objects,
and in their real psychological character of the affections
themselves. The object of the avaricious affection is the
acquirement of wealth; of the resentful, the chastisement of
an offender; of the sensual, something appropriate or suited to
that corporeal affection which forms the reigning appetite
at the time. In none of these, is the good of self the proper
discriminative object of the affection; and the mind of him
who is under their power, and engaged in their prosecution,
is differently employed, from the mind of him, who, at the
tidie, is either devising or doing aught for the general or
abstract end of his own happiness. None of these special
affections is identical with the affection which has happi-
negg for its object. So far from this, the avaricious man
often, conscious of the strength of his propensity, and at
the moment of being urged forward by it to new specula-
tions, acknowledges in his heart, that he would be happier
far; could he but moderate its violence, and he satisfied with
a humbler fortune than that to which his aspirations would
carry him. And the resentful man, in the very act of being
tempest driven to some furious onset against the person who
has affronted or betrayed him, may yet be sensible that in-
stead of seeking for any benefit to himself, he is rushing on
the destruction of his character, or fortune, or even life.
And many is the drunkard who under the goadings of an
appetite which he cannot withstand, in place of self-love be-
ing the principle, and his own greatest happiness the object,
knows himself to be on the road to inevitable ruin. There
• The purely disinterested character of a right religious affec-
tion might be proved by these considerations,


MISERY OF VICIOUS ADFECTION8.
is an affection which has happiness for its object; but
this is not the affection which rules and has the ascendancy
in any of these instances. These are all special affections
grounded on the affinities which obtain between certain ob
jects and parts of human nature; and which cannot be in-
dulged beyond a given extent, without distemper and dis-
comfort to the whole nature; so that, in spite of all the par-
ticular gratifications which follow in their train, the man
over whom they tyrannize may be unhappy upon the whole.
The very distinction between the affection of self-love and
the special affections proves that there is a corresponding
distinction in their objects; and this again, that many of the
latter may be gratified, while the former is disappointed, -
or, in other words, that, along with many particular enjoy-
ments the general state of man may be that of utter and
extreme wretchedness. It is therefore a competent ques-
tion, what those special affections are, which most consist
with the general happiness of the mind; and this, notwith-
standing that they all possess one circumstance in oom-
mon--the unavoidable pleasure appendant to the gratifica-
tion of each of them.*
• The following are the clear and judicious observations of Sir
James Mackintosh on this subject:-
“In contending, therefore, that the benevolent affections are
disinterested, no more is claimed for them than must be granted
to mere animal appetites and to malevolent passions. Each of
these principles alike secks its own object, for the sake siinply
of obtaining it. Pleasure is the result of the obtainment, but no be-
parate part of the aim or the agent. The desire that another
person may be gratified, seeks that outward object alone, accord-
ing to the general course of human desire. Resentment is as
disinterested as gratitude or pity, but not more so. llunger or
thirst may be as much as the purest benevolence, at vari-
ance with self love. A regard to our own general happiness
is not a vice, but in itself an excellent quality. It were well if
it prevailed more generally over craving and shortsighted appe.
tites. The weakness of the social affections, and the strength
of the private desires, properly constitute selfishness ; a vice
utterly at variance with the happiness of him who harbours it,
and as such, condemned by self-love. There are as few who
attain the greatest satisfaction to themselves, as who do the
greatest good to others. It is absurd to say with some, that the
pleasure of benevolence is selfish, because it is felt by self. Un-
terstanding and reasoning are acts of sell, for no inan can think
by proxy; but no man ever called thein selfish, why? Evidently
because they do not regard selí. Precisely the same reason an.


PLEAEURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND
8. This explanation will help us to understand wherein it
is that the distinction in point of enjoyment, hetween a good
and an evil affection of our nature properly lies. For there is
a certain species of enjoyment common to them all. It were
a contradiction in terms to affirm otherwise ; for it were tan-
tamouut to saying, that an affection may be gratified, with-
out the actual experience of a gratification. There must be
some sensation or other of happiness, at the time when a
nan obtains that which he is seeking for; and if it be not a
positive sensation of pleasure, it will at least be the sensa
tion of relief from pain, as when one meets with the oppor-
tunity of wreaking upon its object, that indignation which
had long kept his heart in a tumult of disquietude. We
therefore would mistake the matter, if we thought, that a
state even of thorough and unqualified wickedness was ex-
clusive of all enjoyment-for even the vicious affections
must share in that enjoyment, which inseparably attaches
to every affection, at the moment of its indulgence. And
thus it is, that even in the veriest Pandemonium, might there
be lurid gleams of ecstacy, and shouts of fiendish exulta-
tion--the merriment of desperadoes in crime, who send forth
the outcries of their spiteful and savage delight, when some
deep-laid villany has triumphed; or when in some dire per-
petration of revenge, they have given full satisfaction and
discharge to the malignity of their accursed nature. The
assertion therefore may be taken too generally, when it is
stated, that there is no enjoyment whatever in the veriest
hell of assembled outcasts; for even there might there be
many separate and specific gratifications. And we must
abstract the pleasure essentially involved in every affection,
at the instant of its indulgence, and which cannot possibly
be disjoined from it, ere we see clearly and distinctively
wherein it is that, in respect of enjoyment, the virtuous and
vicious affections differ from each other. For it is true, that
there is a common resemblance between them; and that, by
the universal law and nature of affection, there must be
some sort of agreeable sensation, in the act of their obtaining
plies to benevolence, Such an argument is a gross confusion of
self, as it is a subject of feeling or thought, with self considered
as the object of either. It is no more just to refer the private ap-
petites to self-love because they commonly promote happiness,
Than it would be to refer them to self-hatred, in thone frequent
cases where their gratification obstructs it."


MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS.
75
that which they are seeking after. Yet it is no less true,
that, did the former affections bear supreme rule in the
heart, they would brighten and tranquilize the whole of hu-
man existence-whereas, had the latter the entire and prac-
tical ascendency, they would distemper the whole man, and
make him as completely wretched as he were completely
worthless.
9. There is one leading difference then between a virtuous
and a vicious affection-that there is always a felt sweetness
in the very presence and contact of the former; whereas, in
the presence and contact of the latter, there is generally or
very often at least, a sensation of bitterness. Let them agree
as they may in the undoubted fact of a gratification in the
attainment of their respective ends, the affections themselves
inay be long in existence and operation before their ends are
arrived at; and then it is, we attirm, that if compared, there
will be found a wide distinction and dissimilarity between
thern. The very feeling of kindness is pleasant to the heart;
and the very feeling of anger is a painful and corrosive one.
The latter, we know, is often said to be a mixed feeling-
because of both the pleasure and the pain which are said to
enter into it. But it will be found that the pleasure, in this
case, lies in the prospect of a full and final gratification; and
very often, in a sort of current or partial gratification which
one may experience beforehand, in the mere vent or utterance
by words, of the labouring violence that is within-seeing
that words of bitterness, when discharged on the object of
our wrath, are sometimes the only, and even the most effec-
tive executioners of all the vengeance that we meditate ; be-
sides that by their means, we may enlist in our favour the
grateful sympathy of other men-thus obtaining a solace to
ourselves, and aggravacing the punishment of the offender,
by exciting against him, in addition to our own hostility, the
hostile indignation of his fellows. And thus too is it, that,
in the case of anger, there may not only be a completed gra-
tifioation at the last, by the infliction of a full and satisfac-
tory chastisement; but a gratification, as it were by instal.
ments, with every likely purpose of retaliation that we may
form in our bosoms, and every sentence of keen and re-
proachful eloquence that may fall from our lips. And so
anger has been affirmed to be a mixed emotion, from con-
founding the pleasure that lies in the gratification of the
cmotion, with the pleasure that is supposed to lie in the feel.


76
PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND
ing of the emotion. But the truth is, that, apart from the
gratification, the emotion is an exceedingly painful one-in-
somuch that the gratification mainly lies in the removal of a
pain, or in the being ridded of a feit uneasiness. Compas
sion may in the same way be termed a mixed feeling. But
on close attention to these two affections and comparison
between them, it will be found, that all the pleasure of anger
lies in its gratification, and all the pain of it in the feeling
itself-whereas all the pain of compassion lies in the disap-
pointment of its gratification, while in the feeling itself there
is nought but pleasure. Let the respective gratifications of
these two affections--the one, by the fulfilled retaliation of
a wrong; the other, by the fulfilled relief of a suffering-let
these gratifications be put out of notice altogether, that we
might but attend to the yet ungratified feelings themselves ;
and we cannot imagine a greater difference of state between
two minds, than that of one which luxuriates in the tender-
ness of compassion, and that of another which breathes and
is infuriated with the dark passions and the still darker pur-
poees of resentment. Or we may appeal to the experience
of the same mind, which at one time may have its hour of
meditated kindness, and at another its hour of meditated re-
venge. We speak of these two, not in the moment of their
respective triumphs, not of the sensations attendant on the
success of each—but of the direct and instant sensations
which lie in the feelings themselves. They form two as dis-
tinct states in the moral world, as sunshine and tempest are
in the physical world. We have but to name the elements
which enter into the composition of each, in order to suggest
the utter contrariety which obtains between them between
the calm and placid cheerfulness on the one hand of that
heart which is employed in conceiving the generous wislies,
or in framing the liberal and fruitful devices of benevolence
and, on the other hand, the turbulence and fierce disorder of
the same heart, when burning disdain, or fell and implacable
hatred has taken possession of it—the reaction of its own al-
fronted pride, or aggrieved sense of the injury which has
been done to it.
10. But perhaps the most favourable moment for compa.
rison between them, is when each is frustrated of its pecu-
liar aim; and so each is sent back upon itself, with that
common suffering to which all the affections are liable the
suffering of a disappointment. We shall be at no loss to de-


MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS.
mine on which side the advantage lies, if we have either
or witnessed benevolence in tears, because of the misery
which it cannot alleviate ; and rage in the agonies of its de
moted impotence, because of the haughty or successful de-
fance of an enemy, whom with vain hostility it has tried to
assail, but cannot reach. We have the example of a good
affection under disappointment, in the case of virtuous grief
or virtuous indignation ; and of a bad affection under disap-
pointment, in the case of envy, when, in spite of every at-
tempt to calumniate or depress its object, he shines forth to
universal acknowledgment and applause, in all the lustre of
his vindicated superiority. It marks how distinct these two
sets of feelings are from each other, that, with the former,
even under the pain of disappointment, there is a something
in the very taste and quality of the feelings themselves,
which acts as an emollient or a charm, and mitigates the
painfulness-while, with the latter, there is nought to miti-
gate, but every thing to exasperate, and more fiercely to
agonize. The malignant feelings are no sooner turned in-
wardly, by the arrest of a disappointment from without, than
they eat inwardly; and when foiled in the discharge of their
purposed violence upon others, they recoil --and, without one
soothing ingredient to calm the labouring effervescence, they
kindle a hell in the heart of the unhappy owner. Internal-
ly, there is a celestial peace and satisfaction in virtue, even
though in the midst of its outward discomfiture, it be com-
pelled to weep over the unredressed wrongs and sufferings
of humanity. On the other hand, the very glance of disap-
pointed malevolence, bespeaks of this evil affection, that, of
itself it is a fierce and fretting distemper of the soul, an exe-
cutioner of vengeance for all the guilty passions it may have
fanned into mischievous activity, and for all the crimes it
may have instigated.
11. And this contrast between a good and an evil affection,
this superiority of the former to the latter is fully sustained,
when, instead of looking to the state of mind which is left
by the disappointment of each, we look to the state of mind
which is left by their respective gratifications the one a
state of sated compassion, the other of sated resentment.
There is one most observable distinction between the states
of feeling, by which an act of compsssion on the one hand,
and of resentment on the other, are succeeded. It is seldom
that man feasts his eyes on that spectacle of prostrate sufi


78
PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND
fering which, in a moment of fury, he hath laid at his feet;
in the same way that he feasts his eyes on that picture of
family comfort which smiles upon him from some cottage
home, that his generosity had reared. This looks as if the
sweets of benevolence were lasting, whereas the sweets of
revengeful malice, such as they are, are in general but mo-
mentary. An act of compassion may extinguish for a time
the feeling of corapassion, by doing away that suffering
which is the object of it; but then it generally is followed
up by a feeling of permanent regard. An act of revenge,
when executed to the full extent of the desire or purpose,
does extinguish and put an end to the passion of revenge ;
and is seldom, if ever, followed up by a feeling of permanent
hatred. An act of kindness but attaches the more, and aug-
ments a friendly disposition towards its object. It were both
untrue in itself, and unfair to our nature to say, that an act
of revenge but exasperates the more, and always augments,
or even often augments, a hostile disposition towards its ob-
ject. It has been said that we hate the man whom we have
injured; but whatever the truth of this observation may be,
certain it is, that we do not so hate the man of whom we
have taken full satisfaction for having injured us; or, if we
could imagine aught so monstrous, and happily so rare, as
the prolonged, the yet unquelled satisfaction of one, who
could be regaled for hours with the sighs of him whom
his own hands had wounded; or, for months and years,
with the pining destitution of the household whom himself
had impoverished and brought low; this were because the
measure of the revenge had not equalled the measure of the
felt provocation, only perhaps to be appeased and satiated
by death. This, at length, would terminate the emotion.
And here a new insight opens upon us into the distinction
between a good and a bad affection.' Benevolence, itself of
immortal quality, would immortalize its objects : malignity,
if not appeased by an infliction short of death, would destroy
them.* The one is ever strengthening itself upon old ob-
jects, and fastening upon new ones; the other is ever ex.
tinguishing its resentment towards old objects by the pettier
acts of chastisement, or, if nothing short of a capital punish-
ment will appease it, by dying with their death. The ex-
terminating blow, the death which “clears all scores”--this
So true it is, that he who hateth his brother with implacable
hatred is a murderer.


MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS.
79
forms the natural and necessary limit oven to the fiercest
revenge; whereas, the outgoings of benevolence are quite
indefinite. In revenge the affection is successively extin-
guished; and, it returned, it is upon new objects. In bene-
volence, the affection is kept up for old objects, while ever
open to excitement from new ones; and hence a living and
a multiplying power of enjoyment, which is peculiarly its
own, On the same principle that we water a shrub just be-
cause we had planted it, does our friendship grow and ripen
the more towards him on whom we had formerly exercised
it. The affection of kindness for each individual object sur-
vives the act of kindness, or, rather, is strengthened by the
act. Whatever sweetness may have been originally in it,
is enhanced by the exercise ; and, so far from being stifled
by the first gratification, it remains in greater freshness than
ever for higher and larger gratifications than before. It is
the perennial quality of their gratification, which stamps that
superiority on the good affections, we are now contending
for. Benevolence both perpetuates itself upon its old objects,
and expands itself into a wider circle as it meets with new
ones. "Not 80 with revenge, which generally disposes of the
old object by one gratification, and then must transfer itself
to a new object, ere it can meet with another gratification.
Let us grant that each affection has its peculiar walk of en-
joyment. The history of the one walk" presents us with a
series of accumulations; the history of the other with a se-
ries of extinctions.
12. But in dwelling on this beautiful peculiarity, by which
a good affection is distinguished from a bad one, we are in
danger of weakening our immediate argument. We bring
forward the matter a great deal too favourably for the ma-
lignant desires of the human heart, if while reasoning on the
supposition of an enjoyment, however transitory in their gra-
tification, we give any room for the imagination that even
this is unmixed enjoyment. We have already stated, that,
of themselves and anterior to their gratification, there is a
painfulness in these desires; and that when by their gratifi-
cation we get quit of this painfulness, we might after all ob-
tain little more than a relief from misery. But the truth is,
that, generally speaking, we obtain a great deal less on the
side of happiness than this; for, in most cases, all that we
obtain by the gratification of a malignat passion, is but the
exchange of one misery for another; and this apart still from


PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS AND
the remorse of an evil perpetration. There is one familiar
instance of it, which often occurs in conversation-when,
piqued by something offensive in the remark or manner af
our fellows, we react with a severity which humbles and
overwhelms him. In this case, the pain of the resentment
is succeeded by the pain we feel in the spectacle of that dis-
tress which ourselves have created : and this, too aggrava-
ted perhaps by the reprobation of all the by-standers, affor-
ding thereby a miniature example of the painful alternations
which are constantly taking place in the history of moral
evil; when the misery of wrong affections is but replaced,
to the perpetrator himself, by the misery of the wrong ac-
tions to which they have hurried him. It is thus that a life
of frequent gratification may, notwithstanding, be a life of
intense wretchedness. It may help our imagination of such
a state, to conceive of one, subject every hour to the agonies
of hunger, with such a mal-conformation at the same time
in his organ of taste, that, in food of every description, he
felt a bitter and universal nausea. There were here a con-
stant gratification, yet a constant, and severe endurance-a
mere alternation of cruel sufferings—the displacement of one
set of agonies, by the substitution of other agonies in their
room. This is seldom, perhaps never realized in the physi-
cal world ; but in the moral world it is a great and general
phenomenon. The example shows at least the possibility of
a constitution, under which a series of incessant gratifications
may be nothing better than a restless succession of distress
and disquietude ; and that such should be the constitution of
our moral nature as to make a life of vice a life of vanity
and cruel vexation, is strong experimental evidence of Him
who ordained this constitution, that He hateth iniquity, that
He loveth righteousness.
13. But the peculiarity which we have been incidentally
led to notice, is, in itself, pregnant with inference also. We
should augur hopefully of the final issues of our moral con-
stitution, as well as conclude favourably of Him who hath
ordained it when we find its workings to be such, that, on
the one hand, the feeling of kindness towards an individual
object not only survives, but is indefinitely strengthened by
the acts of kindness; and, on the other hand, that, not only
does an act of revenge satiate and put an end to the feeling
of revenge, but even, that certain acts of hostility towards
the individual object of our hatred will make us relent from


MISERY OF VICIOU8 AFFECTIONS.
81
this hatred, and at length extinguish it altogether. May we
not perceive in this economy a balance in point of tendency,
And at length of ultimate effect on the side of virtue ? May
it not warrant the expectation, that, while benevolence, that
great conservative principle of being, has in it a principle
conservative of itself as well as of its objects, the outbreak-
ings of evil are but partial and temporary; and that the mo-
ral world, viewed as a progressive system and now only in
its transition state, has been so constructed as to secure both
the perpetuity of all the good affections and the indefinite
expansion of them to new objects and over a larger and
ever-widening territory? At all events, whatever reason
there may be to fear, that, in the future arrangements of na-
ture and providence, both virtue and vice will be capable of
immortality-we might gather from what passes under our
eyes, in this rudimental and incipient stage of human exis-
tence, that even with our present constitution virtue alone
is capable of a blissful immortality. For malice and false-
hood carry in them the seeds of their own wretchedness, if
not of their own destruction. Only grant the soul to be im-
perishable ; and if the character of the governor is to be
gathered from the final issues of the government over which
he presides-it says much for the moral character of Him
who framed us, that, unless there be an utter reversal of the
nature which Himself has given, then, in respect to the pow-
er of conferring enjoyment or of maintaining the soul in its
healthiest and happiest mood, it is righteousness alone which
endureth for ever, and charity alone which never faileth.
14. And beside taking account of the special enjoyments
which attach to the special virtues we might observe on the
general state of that mind, which, under the consistent and
comprehensive principle of being or doing what it ought,
studies rightly lo acquit itself of all the moral obligations.
Beside the perpetual feast of an approving conscience, and
the constant recurrence of those particular gratifications
which attach to the indulgence of every good affection,-is
it not quite obvious of every mind which places itself under
a supreme regimen of morality, that then, it is in its best
possible condition with regard to enjoyment: like a well
strung instrument, in right and proper tone, because all its
parts are put in right adjustment with each other? If
conscience be indeed the superior faculty of our nature, then,
every time it is cast down from this pre-eminence, there must


82
PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, &c.
be a sensation of painful dissonance; and the whole man
feels out of sorts, as one unhinged or denaturalized. This
perhaps is the main reason that a state of well-doing stands
associated with a state of well-being; and why the special
virtue of temperance is not more closely associated with the
health of the body, than the general habit of virtue is with a
wholesome and well-conditioned state of the soul. There is
then no derangement as it were in the system of our nature
all the powers, whether superior or subordinate, being in
their right places, and all moving without discord and with-
out dislocation. It were anticipating our argument, did we
refer at present to the confidence and regard wherewith a
virtuous man is surrounded in the world. We have not yet
spoken of the adaptations to man's moral constitution from
without, but only of the inward pleasures and satisfactions
which are yielded in the workings of the constitution itself.
And surely when we find it to have been so constructed and
attuned by its maker, that, in all the movements of virtue
there is a felt and grateful harmony, while a certain jarring
sense of violence and discomposure ever attends upon the
opposite—we cannot imagine how the moral character of
that being who Himself devised this constitution and estab-
lished all its tendencies, can be more clearly or convincingly
read, than in phenomena like these.
15. We have already said thđt the distinction so well es-
tablished by Butler, between the object of our affection and
its accompanying, nay, inseparable pleasure, was the most
effectual argument that could be brought to bear against the
selfish system of morals. The virtuous affection that is in
a man's breast simply leads him to do what he ought; and
in that object he rests and terminates. Like every other af-
fection, there must be a pleasure conjoined with the prose-
cution of it; and at last a full and final gratification in the
attainment of its object. But the object must be distinct from
the pleasure, which itself is founded on a prior suitablenessa
between the mind and its object. When a man is actuated
by a virtuous desire; it is the virtue itself that he is seeking,
and not the gratification that is in it. His single object is
to be or to do rightly-though, the more intent he is upon
this object, the greater will, the greater must be his satis-
faction if he succeed in it. Nevertheless, it is not the satis-
faction which he is seeking; it is the object which yields the
satisfaction-the object too for its own sake, and not for the


POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
sake of its accompanying or its resulting enjoyment. Nay,
the more strongly and therefore the more exclusively set
non virtue for its own sake; the less will he think of its
rioyment, and yet the greater will his actual enjoyment be.
In other words, virtue, the more disinterested it is, is the
more prolific of happiness to him who follows it; and then
it is, that, when freed from all the taints of mercenary sel-
fishness, it yields to its votary the most perfect and supreme
enjoyment. Such is the constitution of our nature, that vir-
tue loses not its disinterested character ; and yet man loses
not his reward; and the author of this constitution, He who
hath ordained all its laws and its consequences, has given
signal proof of his own Supreme regard for virtue, and
therefore, of the supreme virtue of His own character, in that
He hath so framed the creatures of His will, as that their per-
fect goodness and perfect happiness are at one. Yet the union
of these does not constitute their unity. The union is a con-
tingent appointment of the Deity; and so is at once the evi-
dence and the effect of the goodness that is in His own nature.
16. This then is our second general argument for the mo-
ral character of God, grounded on the moral constitution of
man; and prior, as yet, to any view of its adaptation to ex.
ternal nature. It is distinct from the first argument, as
grounded on the phenomena of conscience, which assumes
the office of judge within the breast, all whose decisions are
on the side of benevolence and justice; and which is ever
armed with a certain power of enforcement, both in the pains
of remorse and the pleasures of self-approbation. These,
however, are distinct and ought to be distinguished from the
direct pleasures of virtue in itself, and the direct pains of
vice in itself, which form truly separate ingredients, on the
one hand of a present and often very painful correction, on
the other hand, of a present and very precious reward.
CHAPTER III.
THIRD GENERAL ARGUMENT.
The Power and Operation of Habit.
1. We have as yet been occupied with what may be ter-
med the instant sensations, wherewith morality is beset in
the mind of man--with the voice of conscience which goes


POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
immediately before or with the sentence whether of appro.
val or condemnation, which comes immediately after it; and
latterly, with those states of feeling which are experienced
at the moment when under the power of those affections, to
which any moral designation, be it of virtue or vice, is ap-
plicable the pleasure which there is in the very presence
and contact of the one, the distaste, the bitterness which there
is in the presence and contact of the other.
2. These phenomena of juxtaposition, as they may be ter-
med; these contiguous antecedents and consequents of the
moral and the immoral in man, speak strongly the purpose
of Him who ordained our mental constitution, in having in-
serted there such a constant power of command and encou-
ragement on the side of the former, and a like constant op-
eration of checks and discouragement against the latter.
But, perhaps, something more may be collected of the design
and character of God, by stretching forward our observation
prospectively in the history of man, and so extending our
regards to the more distant consequences of virtue or vice,
both on the frame of his character and the state of his en-
joyments. By studying these posterior results, we approxi-
mate our views towards the final issues of that administration
linder which we are placed. That defensive apparatus,
wherewith the embryo seed of plants is guarded and protec-
ted, might indicate a special care or design in the preserver
of it. What that design particularly is comes to be clearly
and certainly known, when, in the future history of the plant,
we learn what the functions of the seed are, after it has come
to maturity; and then observe, that, had it been suffered
universally to perish, it would have led, not to the morta
lity of the individual, for that is already an inevitable law,
but to the extinction and inortality of the species.
3. For cracing forward man's moral history, or the chan-
ges which take place in his moral state, it is necessary that
we should advert to the influence of habit. Yet it is not
properly the philosophy of habit wherewith our argument is
concerned, but with the leading facts of its practical opera-
tion. A beneficial effect might still remain an evidence of
the divine goodness, by whatever steps it should be efficient-
ly or physically brought about its power in this way de-
pending not on the question how it is, but on the fact that so
it is. It were really, therefore, deviating from our own strict
and pertinent line of enquiry did we stop to discuss the phi-


POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
losophic theory of habit, or suspend our own independent
reasoning till that theory was settled beside most unwisely
and unnecessarily attaching to our theme, all the discredit
of an obscure or questionable speculation. It is with palpa-
ble and sure results both in the material and mental world.
more than with the recondite processes in either, that theism
has chiefly to do; and it is by the former more than by the
latter that the cause of theism is upholden.
4. We might only observe, in passing, that the modifica-
tion introduced by Dr. Thomas Brown into the theory of
habit, was perhaps uncalled for, even for the accomplish-
ment of his own purpose, which was to demonstrate that it
required no peculiar or original law of the human constitu-
tion to account for its phenomena. He resolves, and we are
disposed to think rightly, the whole operation of habit into
the law of suggestion only, he would extend that law to
states of feelings, as well as to thoughts or states of thoughts.*
We are all aware that if two objects have been seen or
thought of together on any former occasion, then the thought
of one of them is apt to suggest the thought of the other,
and the more apt the more frequently that the suggestion
has taken place-insomuch, that, if the suggestion have
taken place very often, we shall find it extremely difficult, if
not inpossible, to break the succession between the thought
which suggests and the thought which is suggested by it.
Now Dr. Brown has conceived it necessary to extend this
principle to feelings as well as thoughts-insomuch, that, if
on a former occasion a certain object have been followed up
by a certain feeling, or even if one feeling have been fol-
lowed up by another, then the thought of the object intro-
•The following is the passage taken from his forty third lecture,
in which Dr. Brown seems to connect feeling with feeling by the
game mental law which connects thought with thought." To ex-
plainthe influence of habit in increasing the tendency to certain
actions I must remark-what I have already more than once re.
peated--that the suggesting influence which is usually express-
ed in the phrase association of ideas, thongh that very improper
phrase would seem to limit it to our ideas or conceptions only,
and has unquestionably produced a mistaken belief of this par.
tial operation of a goneral influence-is not limited to those more
than to any other states of mind, but occurs also with equal force
in other feelings, which are not commonly termed ideas or con-
ceptions ; that our desires or other emotions, for example, may,
like them, form a part of our trains of suggestion, &c. See an.
other equally ambiguous passage in his sixty-fourth lecture.


86
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.' .
duces the feeling, or the one feeling introduces the other
feeling into the mind, on the same principle that thought in-
troduces thought. Now we should rather be inclined to
hold that thought introduces feeling, not in consequence of
the same law of suggestion whereby thought introduces
thought, but in virtue of the direct power which lies in the
object of the thought to excite that feeling. When a vo-
luptuous object awakens a voluptuous feeling, this is not by
suggestion, but by a direct influence of its own. When the
picture of that voluptuous object awakens the same volup-
tuous feeling, we would not ascribe it to suggestion, but
still put it down to the power of the object, whether present-
ed or only represented, to awaken certain emotions. And as
little would we ascribe the excitement of the feeling to sug-
gestion, but still to the direct and original power of the ob-
ject-though it were pictured to us only in thought, instead
of being pictured to us in visible imagery. In like manner,
when the thought of an injury awakens in us anger, even
as the injury itself did at the moment of its infliction, we
should not ascribe this to that peculiar law which is termed
the law of suggestion, and which undoubtedly connects
thought with thought. But we should ascribe it wholly to
that law which connects an object with its appropriate emo-
tion-whether that object be present to the senses, or have
only been recalled by the memory and is present to the
thoughts. We sustain an injury, and we feel resentment
in consequence, without, surely, the law of suggestion hav-
ing had 'aught to do with the sequence. We see the ag.
gressor afterwards, and our anger is revived against him.
and with this particular succession the law of suggestion has
certainly had to do--not, however, in the way of thought
suggesting feeling, hut only in the way of thought suggest-
ing thought. In truth it is a succession of three terms.
The sight of the man awakens a recollection of the injury;
and the thought of the injury; and the thought of the injury
awakens the emotion. The first sequence, or that which
obtains between the first and second term, is a pure instance
of the suggestion of thought by thought, or to speak in the
old language, of the association of ideas. The second se-
quence, or that which obtains between the middle and last
term, is still, Dr. Brown would say, an instance of sugges-
tion, but of thought suggesting the feeling wherewith it was
formerly accompanied. Whereas, in our apprehension it is


POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
87
due, not to the law of suggestion but to the law which con-
nects an object, whether present at the time or thought upon
afterwards, with its counterpart emotion. Stili the result
is the same, however differently accounted for. One can
think, surely of the resentment which now occupies him,
as well as he can think of a past resentment-indeed it is
difficult to imagine how he can feel a resentment without
thinking of it. Let some one thought, then, by ihe proper
law of suggestion, have introduced the thought of an injury
that had been done to us; this second thought introduces
the feeling of resentment, not by the law of suggestion, but
by the law which relates an object, whether present or
thought upon, to its appropriate emotion; this emotion is
thought upon, and, not the emotion, but the thought of the
emotion recalls the thought of the first emotion that was
felt at the original infliction of the injury; and this thought
again recalls to us the thought of the injury itself, and per-
haps the thought of other or similar injuries, which, as at
the first, excites anew the feeling of anger, but, at this par-
ticular step, by means of a law different from that of sug-
gestion, even the law of our emotions, in virtue of which,
certain objects, when present in any way to the cognizance
of the understanding, awaken certain sensibilities in the
heart. It is thus that thoughts and feelings might recipro-
cally introduce each other, not by means of but one law of
suggestion extending in common to them both, but by the
intermingling of two laws in this repeating or circulating
process, even the law of suggestion, acting only upon the
thoughts; and the law of emotion, by which certain objects,
when presented to the senses or to the memory, have the
power to awaken certain correspondent emotions. We in
this way get quit of the mysticism which attaches to the
notion of mere feelings either suggesting or being suggest-
ed by other feelings, separately from thoughts-more espe-
cially when, by the association of thoughts or of ideas alone,
and the direct power which lies in the objects of these ideas
to awaken certain emotions, all the phenomena are capable
of being explained. A certain thought or object may sug-
gest the thought of a former provocation : this thought
might excite a feeling of resentment; the resentment, thus
felt or thought upon, might send back the mind to a still more
vivid impression of its original cause; and this again might
prolong or woken the resentment anew, and in greater fresh-
ness than before. The ultimate effect might be a fierce and


3
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
fiery effervescence of irascible feeling. Yet not by the ope.
ration of one law, but of two distinct laws in the human con-
stitution; the first that, in virtue of which, thoughts suggest
thoughts; the second that, in virtue of which, the object
thus thought upon awakens the emotion that is suited to it.
5. But though for once we have thus adverted to the strict
philosophy of the subject, it will be apparent, that, in this
instance, it is of no practical necessity for the purposes of
our argument; and it is truly the same in many other in-
stances, where, if instead of reasoning theologically on the
palpable operations of the mechanism, we should reason
scientifically on the modus operandi, we would run into
really irrelevant discussions. The theme of our present
chapter is the effect of Habit, in as far as these effects serve
to indicate the design or character of Him who is the author
of our mental constitution. It matters not to any conclusion
of ours, by what recondite, or, it may be, yet undiscovered
process these effects are brought about; and whether the
common theory, or that of Dr. Brown, or that again as mo-
dified and corrected by ourselves, is the just one. It is enough
to know, that, if any given process of intermingled thought
and feeling have been described by us once, there are laws
at work, which, on the first step of that process again recur-
ring, would incline us to describe the whole of the procese
over again; and with the greater power and certainty, the
more frequently that process has been repeated. We are
perfectly sure that the more frequently any particular se-
quence between thought and thought may have occurred, the
more readily will it recur ;- so that when once the first
thought has entered the mind, we may all the more confi-
dently reckon on its being followed up by the second. This
we hold enough for explaining the ever recurring force and
facility, wherewith feelings also will arise and be followed
up by their indulgence and that, just in proportion to the
frequency wherewith in given circumstances they have been
awakened and indulged formerly. In as far as the objects
of gratification are the exciting causes which stimulate and
awaken the desires of gratification : then, any process which
ensures the presence and application of the causes, will also
ensure the fulfilment of the effects which result from them.
If it be the presence or perception of the wine that stands
before us which stirs up the appetite ; and if, instead of ac-
ting on the precept of looking not unto the wine when it is


POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
89
red, we continue to look till the appetite be so enflamed that
the indulgence becomes inevitable-then, as we looked at it
continuously when present, will we, by the law of suggestion,
be apt to think of it continuously when absent. If the one
continuity was not broken by any considerations of principle
or prudence—so the less readily will the other continuity be
broken in like manner. When we revisit the next social
company, we shall probably resign ourselves to the very or-
der of sensations that we did formerly; and the more sure-
ly, the oftener that that order has already been described by
us. And as the order of objects with their sensations when
present, so is the order of thoughts with their desires when
absent. This order forces itself upon the mind with a strength
proportional to the frequency of its repetition; and desires,
when not evaded by the mind shifting its attention away
from the objects of them, can only be appeased by their in-
dulgence.
6. It is thus that he who enters on a career of vice, enters
on a career of headlong degeneracy. Ifeven for once we have
described that process of thought and feeling, which leads,
whether through the imagination or the senses, from the first
presentation of a tempting object to a guilty indulgence-this
of itself establishes a probability, that, on the recurrence of
that object, we shall pass onward by the same steps to the
same consummation. And it is a probability ever strengthen-
ing with every repetition of the process, till at length it advan-
ces towards the moral certainty of a helpless surrender to
the tyranny of those evil passions, which we cannot resist,
just because the will itself is in thraldom, and we chooee not
to resist them. It is thus that we might trace the progress of
intemperance and licentiousness, and even of dishonesty,
to whose respective solicitations we have yielded at the first
till, by continuing to yield, we become the passive, the pros-
trate subjects of a force that is uncontrollable, only hecause we
have seldom or never in good earnest tried to control it. It is not
that we are struck of a sudden with moral impotency; but we
are gradually benumbed into it. The power of temptation has
not made instant seizure upon the faculties, or taken them
by storm. It proceeds by an influence that is gently and al-
most insensibly progressive—just as progressive in truth, as
the association between particular ideas is strengthened by
the frequency of their succession. But even as that associa-
tion may at length become inveterate, insomuch that when
8*


90 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
the first idea finds entry into the mind, we cannot withstand
the importunity wherewith the second insists upon following
it; so might the moral habit become alike inveterate
thoughts succeeding thoughts, and urging onward their
counterpart desires, in that wonted order, which had hitherto
connected the beginning of a temptation with its full and fi-
nal victory. At each repetition, would we find it more dif-
ficult to break this order, or to lay an arrest upon it-till at
length, as the fruit of this wretched regimen, its unhappy
patient is lorded over by a power of moral evil, which pos-
sesses the whole man, and wields an irresistible or rather an
unresisted ascendency over him.
7. But this melancholy process, leading to a vicious in.
dulgence, may be counteracted by an opposite process of re-
sistance, though with far greater facility at the first-yet a
facility ever augmenting, in proportion as the effectual re-
sistance of temptation is persevered in. That balancing mo-
ment, at which pleasure would allure, and conscience is
urging us to refrain, may be regarded as the point of depar-
ture or divergency, whence once or other of the two processes
will take their commencement. Each of them consists in a
particular succession of ideas with their attendant feelings;
and whichever of them may happen to be described once,
has, by the law of suggestion, the greater chance, in the same
circumstances, of being described over again. Should the
mind dwell on an object of allurement, and the considera-
tions of principle not be entertained-it will pass onward
from the first incitement to the final and guilty indulgence
by a series of stepping stones, each of which will present it-
self more readily in future, and with less chance of arrest or
interruption by the suggestions of conscience than before.
But should these suggestions be admitted, and far more
should they prevail-then, on the principle of association,
will they be all the more apt to intervene, on the repetition
of the same circumstances; and again break that line of con-
tinuity, which but for this intervention, would have led from
a temptation to a turpitude or a crime. If on the occurrence
of a temptation formerly, conscience did interpose, and re-
present the evil of a compliance, and so impress the man with
a sense of obligation, as led him to dismiss the fascinating
ect from the presence of his mind, or to hurry away from
it the likelihood is, that the recurrence of a similar temp-
tation will suggest the same train of thoughts and feelings


92
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
elv to
the obstacles of selfishness and passion-the less will it give
way to these adverse forces, themselves weakened by the
repeated defeats which they have sustained in the warfare
or moral discipline : Or, in other words, the oftener that con-
science makes good the supremacy which she claims the
greater would be the work of violence, and less the strength
for its accomplishment, to cast her down from that station
of practical guidance and command which of right belongs
to her. It is just because, in virtue of the law of suggestion,
those trains of thought and feeling, which connect her first
biddings with their final execution, are the less exposed at
every new instance to be disturbed, and the more likel
be repeated over again, that every good principle is more
strengthened by its exercise, and every good affection is
more strengthened by its indulgence than before. The acts of
virtue ripen into habits; and the goodly and permanent result
is, the formation or establishment of a virtuous character.
'9. This then forms the subject of our third general argu-
ment. The voice of authority within, bidding us to virtue ;
and the immediate delights attendant on obedience, certainly,
speak strongly for the moral character of that administration
under which we are placed. But, by looking to posterior
and permanent results, we have the advantage of viewing
the system of that administration in progress. Instead of
the insulated acts, we are led to regard the abiding and the
accumulating consequences—and by stretching forward our
observation through larger intervals and to more distant
points in the moral history of men ; we are in likelier cir-
cumstances for obtaining a glimpse of their final destination;
and so of seizing on this mighty and mysterious secret-the
reigning policy of the divine government, whence we might
collect the character of Him who hath ordained it. And
surely, it is of prime importance to be noted in this exami-
nation, that by every act of virtue we become more powerful
for its service; and by every act of vice we become more
helplessly its slaves. Or, in other words, were these respec.
tive moral regimens fully developed into their respective
consummations, it would seem, as if by the one, we should
be conducted to that state, where the faculty, within, which
is felt to be the rightful, would also become the reigning so
vereign, and then we should have the full enjoyment of all
the harmony and happiness attendant upon virtue-whereas,
by the other, those passions of our nature felt to be interior,


POWER AND OPULATION OF HABIT. 93
would obtain the lawless ascendency, and subject their
wretchod bondsmen to the turbulence, and the agony, and
the sense of degradation, which, by the very constitution of
our being, are inseparable from the reign of moral evil.
10. We might not fully comprehend the design or meaning
of a process, till we have seen the end of it. Had there been
no death, the mystery of our present state might have been
somewhat alleviated. We might then have seen, in bolder
relief and indelible character, the respective consummations
of vice and virtue-perhaps the world partitioned into dig-
tinct moral territories, where the habit of many centuries had
given fixture and establishment, first, to a society of the up-
right, now in the firm possession of all goodness, as the well-
earned result of that wholesome discipline through which
they had passed; and, second, to a society of the reprobate,
now hardened in all iniquity, and abandoned to the violence
of evil passions no longer to be controlled and never to be
eradicated. We might then have witnessed the peace, the
contentment, the universal confidence and love, the melody
of soul, that reigned in the dwellings of the righteous; and
contrasted these with the disquietudes, the strifes, the fell
and fierce collisions of injustice and mutual disdain and hate
implacable, the frantic bacchanalian excesses with their
dreary intervals of remorse and lassitude, which kept the
other region in perpetual anarchy, and which, constituted as
we are, must trouble or dry up all the well-springs of enjoy.
ment, whether in the hearts of individuals or in the bosom
of families. We could have been at no loss, to have divined,
from the history and state of such a world, the policy of its
ruler. We should have recognised in that peculiar economy,
by which every act whether of virtue or vice, made its per-
tuous or more vicious than before, a mo-
ral remuneration on the one hand and a moral penalty on
the other with an enhancement of all the consequences,
whether good or evil, which flowed from each of them. We
could not have mistaken the purposes and mind of the Deity
when we saw thus palpably, and through the demonstrations
of experience, the ultimate effects of these respective proces-
ses; and, in this total diversity of character, with a like to-
tal diversity of condition; were made to perceive, that righ-
teousness was its own eternal reward, and that wickedness
was followed up and that for ever, with the bitter fruit of its
own ways,


94
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT'.
11. Death so far intercepts the view of this result, that it
is not here the object of sight or of experience. Still, how-
ever, it remains the object of our likely anticipation. The
truth is, that the process which we are now contemplating,
the process by which character is formed and strengthened
and perpetuated, suggests one of the strongest arguments
within compass of the light of nature, for the immortality of
the soul. In the system of the world we behold so many
adaptations, not only between the faculties of sentient be
ings, and their counterpart objects in external nature ; but
between every historical progression in nature, and a fulfil-
ment of corresponding interest or magnitude which it ulti-
mately lands in that we cannot believe of man's moral his-
tory, as if it terminated in death. More especially when we
think of the virtuous character, how laboriously it is reared,
and how slowly it advances to perfection; but, at length,
how indefinite its capabilities of power and of enjoyment are,
after this education of habits has been completed-it seems
like the breach of a great and general analogy, if man is to
be suddenly arrested on his way to the magnificent result,
for which it might well be deemed that the whole of his life
was but a preparation; having just reached the full capa-
city of an enjoyment, of which he had only been permitted,
in this evanescent scene, a few brief and passing foretastes.
It were like the infliction of a violence on the continuity of
things, of which we behold no similar example, if a being so
gifted were thus left to perish in the full maturity of his
powers and moral acquisitions. The very eminence that
he has won, we naturally look upon as the guarantee and
the precursor of some great enlargement beyond it-warrant-
ing the hope therefore, that death but transforms without
destroying him, or, that the present is only an embryo or
rudimental state, the final developement of which is in ano-
ther and future state of existence.
12. This is not the right place for a full exposition of this
argument. We might only observe, that there is an evidenoe
of man's immortality, in the moral state and history of the
bad upon earth, as well as of the good. The truth is, that
nature's most vivid anticipations of a conscious futurity on
the other side of death, are the forebodings of guilty fear
not the bright anticipations of confident and rejoicing hope.
We speak not merely of the unredressed wrongs inflicted by
the evil upon the righteous, and which seem to demand an


POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 96
afterplace of reparation and vengeance. Beside those un-
settled questions between man and man, which death breaks
off at the middle, and for the adjustment of which one feels
as if it were the cry of eternal justice that there should be
a reckoning afterwards-beside these, there is felt, more di-
rectly and vividly still, the sense of a yet unsettled contro-
versy, between the sinner and the God whom he has offen-
ded." The notion of immortality is far more powerfully and
habitually suggested by the perpetual hauntings or misgi-
vings of this sort of undefined terror, by the dread of a co-
ming penalty rather than by the consciousness of merit, or
of a yet unsatisfied claim to a well-earned reward. Nor is
the argument at all lessened by that observed phenomenon
in the history of guilt, the decay of conscience; a hebetude,
if it may be so termed, of the moral sensibilities, which keep
pace with the growth of a man's wickedness, and, at times,
becomes quite inveterate towards the termination of his mor-
tal career. The very torpor and tranquillity of such a state
would only appear all the more emphatically to tell, that a
day of account is yet to come, when, instead of rioting, as
heretofore, in the impunity of a hardihood that shields him
alike from reproach and fear, conscience will at length re-
awaken to upbraid him for his misdoings; at once the as-
serter of its own cause, and the executioner of its own sen-
tence. And even the most desperate in crime, do experience,
at times, such gleams and resuscitations of moral light, as
themselves feel to be the precursors of a revelation still more
tremendous when their own conscience, fully let loose upon
them, shall, in the hands of an angry God, be a minister of
fiercest vengeance. Certain it is, that, if death, instead of
an entire annihilation, be but a removal to another and a dif-
ferent scene of existence, we see in this, when combined with
the known laws and processes of the mind, the possibility,
at least, of such a consummation. There is much in the bu-
siness, and entertainments, and converse, and day-light of
that urgent and obtruding world by which we are surroun-
ded, to carry of the attention of the mind from its own guil-
tiness, and so, to suspend that agony, which, when thrown
back upon itself and dissevered from all its objects of grati-
fication, will be felt, without mitigation and without respite.
In the busy whirl of life, the mind, drawn upon in all direc-
tions, can find, outwardly and abroad the relief of a constant
diversion from the misery of its own internal processes. But


POWIR AND OPERATION OF HABIT.
a slight change in its locality or its circumstances, would
deliver it up to the full burthen and agony of these ; nor can
we imagine a more intense and intolerable wretchedness,
than that which would ensue, simply by rescinding the con-
nexion which obtains in this world between a depraved mind
and its external means of gratification-when, forced inward-
ly on its own haunted tenement, it met with nothing there
but revenge unsatiated, and raging appetites, that never rest
from their unappeased fermentation; and withal, to this per-
petual sense of want, a pungent and pervading sense of
worthlessness. It is the constant testimony of criminals,
that, in the horrors, and the tedium of solitary imprisonment,
they undergo the most appalling of all penalties-a penalty,
therefore, made up of moral elements alone; as neither pain,
nor hunger, nor sickness, necessarily forms any of its in-
gredients. It strikingly demonstrates the character of Him
who so constructed our moral nature, that from the work-
ings of its mechanism alone, there should be evolved a suf-
fering so tremendous on the children of iniquity, insomuch
that a sinner meets with sorest vengeance when simply left
to the fruit of his own ways—whether by the death which
carries his disembodied spirit to its Tartarus; or by a resur-
rection to another scene of existence, where, in full posses-
sion of his earthly habits and earthly passions, he is neverthe-
less doomed to everlasting separation from their present
counterpart and earthly enjoyments.
13. There is a distinction sometimes made between the na-
tural and arbitrary rewards of virtue, or between the natural
and arbitrary punishments of vice. The arbitrary is exem-
plified in the enactments of human law; there in general
being no natural or necessary connection between the crimes
which it denounces, and the penalties which it ordains for
them--as between the fine or the imprisonment, or the death,
upon the one hand; and the act of violence, whether more or
less outrageous, upon the other. The natural again is ex-
emplified in the workings of the human constitution; there
being a connexion, in necessity and nature, between the tem-
per which prompted the act of violence, and the wretchedness
which it inflicts on him who is the unhappy subject, in his
own bosom, of its fierce and wrestless agitations. It is thus
that not only is virtue termed its own reward, but vice its
own greatest plague or self-tormentor. We have no infor.,
mation of the arbitrary rewards or punishments in a future


ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE, &c. 97

state, but from revelation alone. But of the natural, we have
only to suppose, that the existing constitution of man, and
his existing habits, shall be borne with him to the land of
eternity; and we may inform ourselves now of these, by the
experience of our own felt and familiar nature. Our own
experience can tell that the native delights of virtue, unaided
by any high physical gratifications, and only if not disturbed
by grievous physical annoyances, were enough of themselves
to constitute an elysium of pure and perennial happiness :
and again, that the native agonies of vice, unaided by any
inflictions of physical suffering, and only if unalleviated by
a perpetual round of physical enjoyments, were enough of
themselves to constitute a dire and dreadful Pandemonium.
They are not judicially awarded, but result from the work-
ings of that constitution which God hath given to us, and
they speak as decisively the purpose and character of Him
who is the author of that constitution—as would any code
of jurisprudence proclaimed from the sanctuary of heaven,
and which assigned to virtue on the one hand, the honours
and rewards of a blissful immortality, to vice on the other a
place of anguish among the outcasts of a fiery condemnation.
CHAPTER IV.
On the General Adaptation of External Nature to the
Moral Constitution of Man.
1. It needs but a cursory observation of life to be made
sensible, that man has not been endowed with a conscience,
without, at the same time, being placed in a theatre which
afforded the most abundant scope and occasion for its exer-
cise. The truth is, that, in the multitude of fellow-beings
by whom he is surrounded, and in the manifold variety of
his social and family relations, there is a perpetual call on
his sense of right and wrong insomuch, that to the doings
of every hour throughout his waking existence, one or oth-
er of these moral designations is applicable. It might have
been stigmatized as the example of a mal-adjustment in the
circumstances of our species, had man been provided with a
waste feeling or a waste faculty, which remained dormant
and unemployed from the want of counterpart objects that


98
ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
were suited to it. The wisdom of God admits of a glorious
vindication against any such charge in the physical depart-
ment of our nature, where the objective and subjective have
been made so marvellously to harmonize with each other ;
there being, in the material creation, sights of infinitely va-
ried loveliness, and sounds of as varied melody, and many
thousand tastes and odours of exquisite gratification, and
distinctions innumerable of touch and feeling, to meet the
whole compass and diversity of the human senses-multi-
plying without end, both the notice that we receive from
external things, and the enjoyments that we derive from
them. And as little in the moral department of our nature,
is any of its faculties, and more especially the great and
master faculty of all, left to languish from the want of occu-
pation. The whole of life, in fact, is crowded with oppor-
iunities for its employment—or, rather, instead of being repre-
sented as ihe subject of so many distinct and ever-recurring
calls, conscience may well be represented as the constant
guide and guardian of human life; and, for the right dis-
charge of this its high office, as being kept on the alert per-
petually. The creature on whom conscience hath laid the
obligation of refraining from all mischief, and rendering to
society all possible good, lives under a responsibility which
never for a single moment is suspended. He may be said
to possess a continuity of moral being; and morality whe-
ther of a good or evil hue, tinges the whole current of his
history. It is a thing of constancy as well as a thing of fre-
qnency--for, even when not carried forth into action, it is
ot dormant; but possesses the mind in the form of a cher-
ished purpose or cherished principle, or, as the Romans ex-
pressed it, of a perpetual will either to that which is good or
evil. But over and above this, the calls to action are in-
numerable. In the wants of others; in their powers of en-
joyment; in their claims on our equity, our protection, or
our kindness; in the various openings and walks of useful.
ness ; in the services, which even the humblest might ren-
der to those of their own family, or household, or country;
in the application, of that comprehensive precept, to do good
unto all men as we have opportunity--we behold a prodi-
gious number and diversity of occasions for the exercise of
moral principle. It is possible that the lessons of a school
may not he arduous enough nor diversified enough for the
capacity of a learner. But this cannot be affirmed of that


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
99
school of discipline, alike arduous and unremitting, to which
the great author of our being hath introduced us. Along
with the moral capacity by which He hath endowed us,
He hath provided a richly furnished gympasium for its
exercises and its trials—where we may earn, if not the tri-
umphs of virtue, at least some delicious foretastes of that
full and final blessedness for which the scholarship of hu-
man life, with its manifold engagements and duties, is so
obviously fitted to prepare us.
2. But let us now briefly state the adaptation of external
nature to the moral constitution of man, with a reference to
that three-fold generality which we have already expounded.
We have spoken of the supremacy of conscience, and of the
inherent pleasures and pains of virtue and vice, and of the
law and operation of habitas forming three distinct argu-
ments for the moral goodness of Him, who hath so con-
structed our nature, that by its workings alone, man should
be so clearly and powerfully warned to a life of righteous-
ness-should in the native and immediate joys of rectitude,
earn so precious a reward-and, finally should be led on-
ward to such a state of character, in respect of its confirmed
good or confirmed evil, as to afford one of the likeliest prog-
nostications which nature offers to our view of an immortal-
ity beyond the grave, where we shall abundantly reap the
consequence of our present doings, in either the happiness
of established virtue, or the utter wretchedness and woe of
our then inveterate depravity.-But hitherto we have viewed
this nature of man, rather as an individual and insulated
constitution, than as a mechanism actuated upon by any
forces or influences from without. It is in this latter aspect
that we are henceforth to regard it; and now only it is that
we enter on the proper theme of our volume, or that the
adaptations of the objective to the subjective begin to open
upon us. It will still be recollected, however,* that in
our view of external nature, we comprehend, not merely
all that is external to the world of mind--for this would
have restricted us to the consideration of those reciprocal
actings which take place between mind and matter. We
further comprehend all that is external to one individual
mind, and therefore the other minds which are around it;
and so we have appropriated, as forming a part of our legi-
* See Introductory Chapter, 1, 2, 3


100 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
timate subject, the actings and reactings that take place
between man and man in society.
3. And first, in regard to the power and sensibility of con-
science, there is a most important influence brought to bear
on each individual possessor of this faculty from without,
and by his fellow men. It will help us to understand it
aright, if we reflect on a felt and familiar experience of all
men-even the effect of a very slight notice, often of a single
word from one of our companions, to recall some past scene
or transaction of our lives, which had long vanished from
our remembrance; and would, but for this reawakening,
have remained in deep oblivion to the end of our days. The
phenomenon can easily be explained by the laws of sugges-
tion. Our wonted trains of thought might never have con-
ducted the mind to any thought or recollection of the event
in question-whereas, on the occurence of even a very par-
tial intimation, all the associated circumstances come into
vivid recognition; and we are transported back again to the
departed realities of former years, that had lain extinct with-
in us for so long a period, and might have been extinct for
ever, if not lighted up again by an extraneous application.
How many are the days since early boyhood, of which not
one trace or vestige now abides upon the memory. Yet
perhaps there is not one of these days, the history of which
could not be recalled, by means of some such external or
foreign help to the remembrance of it. Let us imagine, for
example, that a daily companion had, unknown to us, kept
a minute and statistical journal of all the events we person-
ally shared in ; and the likelihood is, that, if permited to the
perusal of this document, even after the lapse of half a life
čime, our memory would depone to many thousand events
which had else escaped into utter and irrecoverable forget-
fulness. It is certainly remarkable, that, on some brief ut-
terance by another, the stories of former days should sudden-
ly reappear, as if in illumined characters, on the tablet from
which they had so totally faded ; that the mention of a sin-
gle circumstance, if only the link of a train, should conjure
to life again a whole host of sleeping recollections: And so, in
cach of our fellow men, might we have a remembrancer, who
can vivify our consciousness anew, respecting scenes and
transactions of our former history which had long gone by
and, which, after having vanished once from a solitary mind
left to its own processes, would have vanished everlastingly.


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
101
4. It is thus, that, not only can one man make instant
translation of his own memory; but on certain subjects, he
can even make instant translation of his own intelligence
into the mind of another. A shrewd discerner of the heart,
when laying upon its heretofore unrevealed mysteries, makes
mention of things which at the moment we feel to be novel-
ties; but which, almost at the same moment, are felt and
recognized by us as truths-and that, not because we receive
them upon this authority, but on the independent view that
purselves have of their own evidence. His utterance, in fact,
has evoked from the cell of their imprisonment, remem-
brances, which but for him, might never have been awak-
ened; and which, when thus summoned into existence, are
so many vouchers for the perfect wisdom and truth of what
he tells. A thousand peculiarities of life and character, till
then unnoticed, are no sooner heard by us, although for the
first time in our lives, then they shine before the mind's eye,
in the light of a satisfying demonstration. And the reason
is, that the materials of their proof have been actually stored
up within us, by the history and experience of former years,
though in chambers of forgetfulness -whence, however,
they are quickly and vividly called forth, as if with the pow-
er of a talisman, by the voice of him, who no sooner an-
nounces his proposition, than he suggests the by-gone re-
collection of our own which serve to confirm it. The pages
of the novelist, or the preacher, or the moral essayist,
though all of them should deal in statements alone, without
the formal allegation of evidence, may be informed through-
out with evidence, noiwithstanding; and that, because each
of them speaks to the consciousness of his reapers, unlock-
ing a treasury of latent recollections, which no sooner start
again into being, than they become witnesses for the saga-
city and admirable sense of him with whom all this lumi-
nous and satisfying converse is held. It is like the holding
up of a mirror, or the response of an echo to a voice. What
the author discovers, the reader promptly and presently di
cerns. The one utters new things; but that light of imme-
diate manifestation in which the other beholds them, is
struck out of old materials which hin.self too had long since
appropriated, but laid up in a dormitory, where they might
have slumbered for ever- had it not been for that voice
which charmed them anew into life and consciousness.
This is the only way in which the instant recognition of
9*


102 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE
truths before unheard of and unknown can possibly be ex.
plained. It is because their evidence lies enveloped in the
reminiscences of other days, which had long passed into
oblivion ; but are again presented to the notice of the mind
by the power of association
5. This is properly a case of intellectual rather than of
moral adaptation; and is only now adverted to for the pur-
pose of illustration. For a decayed conscience is suscepti-
ble of like resuscitation with a decayed memory. In treat-
r of the effects of habit. we brieiiy noticed the gradual
weakening of conscience, as the indulgences of vice were
persisted in. Its remonstrances, however ineffectual, may,
at the first, have had a part in that train of thought and
feeling, which commences with a temptation, and is con
summated in guilt ; but in proportion to the frequency,
wherewith the voice of conscience is hushed, or overborne,
or refused entertainment by the mind, in that proportion
does it lift a feebler and a fainter voice afterwards till at
length it may come to be unheard ; and any suggestions
from this faculty may either pass unheeded, or perhaps drop
out of the train altogether. It is thus that many a foul or
horrid immorality may come at length to be perpetrated
without the sense of feeling of its enormity. Conscience,
with the repeated stiflings it has undergone, may, as if on
the eve of extinction, have ceased from its exercises. This
moral insensibility forms, in truth, one main constituent in
the hardihood of crime. The conscience is cradled into a
state of stupefaction; and the criminal, now a desperado in
guilt, may prosecute his secret depravities, with no relent-
ings from within, and no other dread upon his spirit, than
that of discovery by his fellow men.
6. And it is on the event of such discovery, that we meet
with the phenomenon in question. When that guilt, to
which he had himself become co profoundly insensible, is
at length beheld in the light of other minds it is then that
the scales are made to fall from the eyes of the offender; and
he, as if suddenly awoke from lethargy, stands aghast before
che spectacle of his own worthlessness. It is not the shame
of detection, nor the fear of its consequences, which forms the
whole of this distress. These may aggravate the suffering ;
but they do not altogether compose it for often besides, 18
there a resurrection of the moral sensibilities within the bo-
* See Chap. iii. 6. of this Section.


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 103
Bom of the unhappy criminal, as if relumed at the touch of
sympathy, with the pronounced judgments and fcelings of
other men. When their unperverted and unwarped con-
sciences, because free from the delusions which encompass
his own, give forth a righteous sentence-chey enlist his con-
science upon their side, which then reasserts its power, and
again speaks to him in a voice of thunder. When that con-
tinuous train between the first excitement of some guilty
passion, and its final gratification, from which the sugges-
tions of the moral faculty had been so carefully excluded, is
thus arrested and broken-then does conscience, as if eman-
cipated from a spell, at times recover from the infatuation
which held it; and utter reproaches of its own, more terri-
ble to the sinner's heart, than all the execrations of general
society. And whatever shall forcibly terminate the guilty
indulgence, may, by interrupting the accustomed series of
thoughts and purposes and passions, also dissipate and put
an end to the inveteracy of this moral or spiritual blindness.
The confinement of a prison-house may do it. The con-
finement of a death-bed may do it. And accordingly, on
these occasions, does conscience, after an interval it would
seem, not of death but only of suspended animation, come
forth witht he might of an avenger, and make emphatic re-
presentation of her wrongs.
7. But this influence which we have attempted to exhibit
in bold relief, by means of rare and strong exemplification,
is in busy and perpetual operation throughout society-and
that, more to prevent crime than to punish it; rather, to
maintain the conscience in freshness and integrity, than to
reanimate it from a state of decay, or to recall its aberrations.
Indeed its restorative efficacy, though far more striking, is
not so habitual, nor in the whole amount so salutary, as its
counteractive efficacy. The truth is, that we cannot frequent
the companionships of human life, without observing the
constant circulation and reciprocal play of the moral judg-
ments among men with whom there is not a more favour-
ite or familiar exercise, than that of discussing the conduct
and pronouncing on the deserts of each other. It is thus
that every individual, liable in his own case to be misled or
blinded by the partialities of interest and passion, is placed
under the observation and guardianship of his fellows--who,
exempted from his personal or particular bias, give forth a
righteous sentence and cause it to be heard, A pure moral


104
ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
light is by this reans kept up in society, composed of men
whose thoughts are ever employed in accusing or else ex-
cusing one another-so that every individual conscience
receives an impulse and a direction from sympathy with the
consciences around it. We are aware that the love of an
plause intervenes at this point as a distinct and auxiliary
influence. But the primary influence is a moral one. Each
man lives under a consciousness of the vigilant and discern-
ing witnesses who are on every side of him; and his con-
science, kept on the alert and kept in accordance with theirs,
acts both more powerfully and more purely, than if left to
the decay and the self-deception of its own withering solitude.
The lamp which might have waxed dim by itself, revives
its fading lustre, by contact and communication with those
which burn more brightly in other bosoms than its own;
and this law of interchange between mind and mind, forms
an important adaptation in the mechanism of human society.
8. But, to revert for a moment to the revival of conscience
after that its sensibilities had become torpid for a season ;
and they are quickened anew, as if by sympathy, with the
moral judgments of other men. This phenomenon of con-
science seems to afford another glimpse or indication of fu-
turity. It at least tells with what facility that Being, who
hath all the resources of infinity at command, could, and
that by an operation purely mental, inflict the vengeance of
a suffering the most exquisite, on the children of disobedi-
ence. He has only to re-open the fountains of memory and
conscience; and this will of itself cause distillation within
the soul of the waters of bitterness. And if in the voice of
earthly remembrancers and earthly judges, we observe such
a power of re-awakening-we might infer, not the possibi-
lity alone, but the extreme likelihood of a far more vivid re-
awakening, when the offended lawgiver himself takes the
judgment into His own hands. If the rebuke of human
tongues and human eyes be of such force to revive the sleep
ing agony within us, what may we not feel, when the ad-
verse sentence is pronounced against us from the throne of
God, and in the midst of a universal theatre? If, in this our
little day the condemnation is felt to be unsupportable, that
twinkles upon us from the thousand secondary and subordi-
nate lustres by which we are surrounded-what must it he,
when He, by whose hand they have all been lighted up,
turns towards us the strength of his own countenance; and,


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
105
with His look of reprobation sends forth trouble and dismay
over the hosts of the rebellious.*
9. But besides the pleasures and pains of conscience, there
is, in the very taste and feeling of moral qualities, a pleasure
or a pain. This formed our second general argument in fa-
vour of God's righteous administration; and our mental
constitution, even when viewed singly, furnishes sufficient
materials on which to build it. But the argument is greatly
strengthened and enhanced by the adaptation to that consti-
tution of external nature, more especially as exemplified in
the reciprocal influences which take place between mind and
mind in society : for the effects of this adaptation is to mul-
tiply both the pleasures of virtue and the sufferings of vice.
The first, the original pleasure, is that which is felt by the
virtuous man himself; as, for example, by the benevolent,
in the very sense and feeling of that kindness whereby his
heart is actuated. The second is felt by him who is the ob-
ject of this kindness-for merely in the conscious possession
of another's good-will, there is a great and distinct enjoy-
ment. And then the manifested kindness of the former awa-
kens gratitude, in the bosom of the latter : and this, too. is
a highly pleasurable emotion. And lastly, gratitude sends
back a delicious incense to the benefactor who awakened it.
By the purely mental interchange of these affections, there
is generated a prodigious amount of happiness; and that,
altogether independent of the gratifications which are yielded
by the material gifts of liberality on the one hand, or by the
material services of gratitude on the other. Insomuch, that
we have only to imagine a reign of perfect virtue; and then,
in spite of the physical ills which essentially and inevitably
attach to our condition, we should feel as if we had approxi-
mated very nearly to a state of perfect enjoyment among
men-or, in other words, that the bliss of paradise would be
alniost fully realized upon earth, were but the moral graves
and charities of paradise firmly established there, and in full
operation. Let there be honest and universal good-will in
every bosom, and this be responded to from all who are the
• Dr. Abercromby, in his interesting work on the intellectual
powers, stater some remarkable cases of resuscitated and enlar.
ged meinory, which remind one of the explanation given by Mr.
Coleridge of the opening of the books in the day of judgment. It
is on the opening of the book of conscience that the sinner is
made to feel the truth and righteousness of his condemnaticn.


106
ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
objects of it by an honest gratitude back again ; let kindness,
in all its various effects and manifestations, pass and repass
from one heart and countenance to another; let there be a
universal courteousness in our streets, and let fidelity and
affection and all the domestic virtues take up their secure
and lasting abode in every family: let the succour and suma
pathy of a willing neighbourhood be ever in readiness to
meet and to overpass all the want and wretchedness to which
humanity is liable ; let truth, and honour, and inviolable
friendship between man and man, banish all treachery an
injustice from the world; in the walks of merchandise, let
an unfailing integrity on the one side, have the homage done
to it of unbounded confidence on the other, insomuch, that
each man reposing with conscious safety on the uprightness
and attachment of his fellow, and withal rejoicing as much
in the prosperity of an acquaintance, as he should in his
own, there would come to be no place for the harassments
and the heart-burnings of mutual suspicion or resentment or
envy: who does not see, in the state of a society thus con-
stituted and thus harmonized, the palpable evidence of a na-
ture so framed, that the happiness of the world and the right-
eousness of the world keep pace the one with the other? And
it is all important to remark of this happiness, that, in respect
both to quality and amount, it mainly consists of moral ele-
ments so that while every giver who feels as he ought,
experiences a delight in the exercise of generosity which
rewards him a hundred-fold for all its sacrifices; every re-
ceiver who feels as he ought, rejoices infinitely more in the
sense of the benefactor's kindness, than in the physical gra-
tification or fruit of the benefactor's liberalit
much for the virtuousness of Him who haih so moulded and
so organized the spirit of man, that, apart from sense and
from all its satisfactions, but from the ethereal play of the
good affections alone, the highest felicity of our nature should
be generated ; that, simply by the interchange of cordiality
between man and man, and one benevolent emotion re-echo-
ing to another, there should be yielded to human hearts, so
much of the truth and substance of real enjoyment--so that
did justice, and charity, and holiness, descend from heaven
to earth, taking full and universal possession of our species,
the happiness of heaven would be sure to descend along with
them. Could any world be pointed out, where the univer
sality and reign of vice effected the same state of blissful and


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
107
secure enjoyment that virtue would in ours-we should in-
fer that he was the patron and the friend of vice, who had
dominion over it. But when assured, on the experience we
have of our actual nature, that in the world we occupy, a per-
fect morality would, but for certain physical calamities, be
the harbinger of a perfect enjoyment-we regard this as an
incontestable evidence for the moral goodness of our own
actual Deity.
10. And in such an argument as ours, although the main
beatitudes of virtue are of a moral and spiritual character,
its subserviency to the physical enjoyments of life ought not
to be overlooked, though, perhaps, too obvious to be dwelt
upon. The most palpable of these subserviencies is the effect
of benevolence in diffusing abundance among the needy, and
80 alleviating the ills of their destitution. This is so very
patent as not to require being expatiated on. Yet we might
notice here one important adaptation, connected with the
exercise of this morality-realized but in part, so long as
virtue has only a partial occupation in society ; but destin-
ed, we hope, to receive its entire and beautiful accomplish-
ment, when virtue shall have become universal. It is well
known that certain collateral but very serious mischiefs at-
tend the exercise of a profuse and capricious and indiscri-
minate charity; that it may, in fact, augment and aggra-
vate the indigence which it tries to relieve, beside working
a moral deterioration among the humbler classes, by minis-
tering to the reckless improvidence of the dissipated and the
idle; an operation alike injurious 10 the physical comfort of
the one party, and to the moral comfort of the other. These
effects are inevitable, so long as the indiscriminate benevo-
lence of the rich meets with an indefinite selfishness and
rapacity on the part of the poor. But this evil will be miti-
gated and at length done away, with the growth of principle
among mankind; and more especially, when, instead of be-
ing confined to one of these classes, it is partitioned among
both. Let the wealthy be as generous as they ought in
their doings, and the poor be as moderate as they ought in
their expectations and desires; and then will that problem,
which has so baffled the politicians and economists of Eng-
land, find its own spontaneous, while, at the same time, its
best adjustment. Let an exuberant yet well directed libe-
rality on the one side come into encounter, instead of a sor-
did and insatiable appetency, with the recoil of delicacy and


THE NORAL CONSTITÖTION OF MAN. 209

tains between a state of general depravity, and a state of ge-
neral wretchedness and disorder. And the counterpart obser-
vation holds true, that, as the beatitudes of the one condition
so the sufferings of the other are chiefly made up of moral ele-
ments. If, in the former, there be a more precious and heart-
felt enjoyment in the possession of another's kindness, than in
all the material gifts and services to which that kindness has
prompted him-so in the latter, may it often happen, that the
agony arising from simple consciousness of another's malig
nity, will greatly exceed any physicalhurt, whether in person
or property that we ever shall sustain from him. A loss
that we suffer from the dishonesty of another is far more se
verely felt, than a ten-fold loss occasioned by accident or mis-
fortuneor, in other words, we find the moral provocation to
be greatly more pungent and intolerable than the physical ca-
lamity. So that beside the material damage, too palpable to
be insisted on at any length, which vice and violence in-
flict upon society, there should be taken into account the
soreness of spirit, the purely mental distress and disquietude
which follow in their train-of which we have already seen,
how much is engendered even in the workings of one in-
dividual mind; but susceptible of being inflamed to a des
gree indefinitely higher, by the reciprocal working of minds,
all of them hating and all hateful to each other. In this
mere antipathy of the heart, more especially when aided by
nearness and the opportunities of mutual expression, there
are sensations of most exquisite bitterness. There is a
wretchedness in the mere collision of hostile feelings them.
selves though they should break not forth into over-acts of
hostility; in the simple demonstrations of malignity, apart
from its doings; in the war but of words and looks and
fierce gesticulations, though no violence should be inflicted
on the one side or sustained upon the other. To make the
aggressor in these purely mental conflicts intensely misera-
ble, it is enough that he should experience within him the
agitations and the fires of a resentful heart. To make the
recipient intensely miserable, it is enough that he should be
demoniacally glared upon by a resentful eye. Were this
power which resides in the emotions by themselves suffi-
ciently reflected on, it would evince how intimately connect-
ed, almost how identified, wickedness and wretchedness are
with each other. To realize the miseries of a state of war,
it is not necessary that there should be contests of personal
10


110
ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
strength. The mere contests of personal reening will suffice.
Let there be mutual rage and mutual revilings; let there
be the pangs and the outcries of fierce exasperation; let
there be the continual droppings of peevishness and discon-
tent; let disdain meet with equal disdain; or even, instead
of scorn from the lofty, let there be but the slights and the
insults of contempt from men, who themselves are of the
most contemptible ; let there be haughty defiance, and spite-
ful derision, and the mortifications of affronted and irritated
pride—in the tumults of such a scene, though tumults of the
mind alone, there were enough to constitute a hell of as-
sembled maniacs or of assembled malefacters. The very
presence and operation of these passions would form their
own sorest punishment. To have them perpetually in our
selves is to have a hell in the heart. To meet with them
perpetually in others is to be compassed about with a society
of fiends, to be beset with the miseries of a Pandemonium.
12. Whether we look then to the separate or the social
constitution of humanity, we observe abundant evidence for
the mind and meaning of the Deity, who both put together
the elements of each individual nature, and the elements
which enter into the composition of society. We cannot im-
agine a more decisive indication of His favour being on the
side of moral good, and His displeasure against moral evily
than that, by the working of each of these constitutions,
virtue and happiness on the one hand, vice and wretched-
ness on the other, should be so intimately and inseparably
allied. Such sequences or laws of nature as these, speak
as distinctly the character of him who established them, as
any laws of jurisprudence would the character of the mo-
narch by whom they were enacted. And to learn this les-
son; we do not need to wait for the distant consequences of
vice or virtue. We at once feel the distinction put upon them
by the hand of the Almighty, in the instant sensations which
He hath appended to each of them-implicated as their ef-
fects are with the very fountain-head of moral being, and
turning the hearts which they respectively occupy, into the
seats either of wildest anarchy, or of serene and blissful en-
joyment.
13. The law and operation of habit, as exemplified in one
individual mind formed the theme of our third general ar-
gument. The only adaptation which we shall notice to this
cual constitution in the frame-work of society,


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 111
is that afforded by the changes which it undergoes in the
Aux of its successive generations-in virtue of which, the
tender susceptibilities of childhood are placed under the in-
fluence of that ascendant seniority which precedes or goes
hefore it. At first sight it may be thought of this peculiari-
ty, that it tells equally in both directions that is, either in
the transmission and accumulation of vice, or in the trans-
mission and accumulation of virtue in the world. But there
is one circumstance of superiority in favour of the latter,
which bids us look hopefully onward to the final prevalence
of the good over the evil. We are aware of the virulence
wherewith, in families, the crime and profligacy of a de-
praved parentage must operate on the habits of their off-
spring; and of the deadly poison which, in crowded cities,
passes with quick descent from the older to the younger,
along the links of youthful companionship; and even of
those secret, though we trust rare and monstrous societies,
which, in various countries and various ages, were held for
the celebration of infernal orgies, for the initiation of the yet
unknowing or unpractised in the mysteries of vice. Bus
after every deduction has been made for these, who does not
see that the systematic and sustained effort, the wide and
general enterprize, the combination of numbers in the face
of day and with the sympathies of an approving public,
give a prodigious balance on the side of moral education
The very selfishness of vice and expansiveness of virtue
give rise to this difference between them the one concen-
tered on its own personal enjoyments, and, with a few ca-
sual exceptions, rather heedless of the principles of others
than set on any schemes or speculations of proselytism;
the other, by its very nature, aspiring after the good of
the whole species, and bent on the propagation of its
own likeness, till righteousness and truth shall have be-
come universal among men. Accordingly, all the osten-
sible countenance and exertion, in the cause of learning,
whether by governments or associations, is on the side of
yirtue; while no man could dare to front the public eye,
with a scheme of discipleship in the lessons whether of
fraud or profligacy. The clear tendency then is to im-
rress a right direction on the giant power of education; and
when this is brought to bear, more systematically and gen-
erally than heretofore, on the pliant boyhood of the land
we behold, in the operation of habit, a guarantee for the pre-


113
ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATUBE TO
gressive conquests, and at length the ultimate and univer-
sal triumph of good over evil in society. Our confidence in
this result is greatly enhanced, when we witness the influ-
ence even of but one mind among the hundreds of any giv-
en neighbourhood if zealously and wisely directed to the
object of moral and economical improvement. Let that most
prolific of all philanthropy then be fully and fairly set on
foot, which operates, by means of education, on the early
germs of character; and we shall have the most effective
of all agency engaged, for the production of the likeliest of
all results. The law of habit, when looked to in the manage-
able ductility of its outset, presents a mighty opening for
the production of a new era in the moral history of man,
kind; and the same law of habit, when looked to in the
maturity of its fixed and final establishment, encourages the
expectation of a permanent as well as universal reign of
virtue in the world.
14. Even in the yet chaotic and rudimental state of the
world, we can observe the powers and the likelihoods of
such a consummation; and what gives an overbearing su-
periority to the chances on the side of virtue is, that parents,
although the most sunken in depravity themselves, welcome
the proposals, and receive with gratitude, the services of
Christian or moral philanthropy in behalf of their families,
However hopeless then of reformation among those whose
vicious habits have become inveterate, it is well that there
should be so wide and unobstructed an access to those,
among whom the habits have yet to be formed. It is this
which places education on such firm vantage-ground, if not
for reclaiming the degeneracy of individuals, yet for reclaim-
ing after the lapse of a few generations the degeneracy of
the species; and, however abortive many of the scheme
and enterprizes in this highest walk of charity may hitherta
have proved, yet the manifest and growing attention to the
cause does open a brilliant moral perspective for the ages
that are to come. The experience of what has been done
locally by a few zealous individuals, warrants our most
cheering anticipations of what may yet be done universally
- when the powers of that simple but mighty instrument
which they employ, if brought to bear on that most mallea-
ble of all subjects, the infancy of human existence, come to
be better understood, and put into busy operation over the
whole length and breadth of the land. In the grievous doo


THE MOR AL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
113
fect of our national institutions, and the wretched abandon-
ment of a people left to themselves, and who are permitted
to live recklessly and at random as they list-we see enough
to account both for the profligacy of our crowded cities, and
for the sad demoralization of our neglected provinces. But
on the other hand we feel assured, that, in an efficient syg-
tem of wise and well principled instruction, there are ca.
pabilities within our reach for a great and glorious revival.
We might not know the reason, why, in the moral world,
so many ages of darkness and depravity should have been
permitted to pass by-any more than we know the reason,
why, in the natural world, the trees of a forest, instead of
starting all at once into the full efflorescence and stateliness
of their manhood, have to make their slow and laborious
advancement to maturity, cradled in storms, and alternately
drooping or expanding with the vicissitudes of the seasons.
But, though unable to scan all the cycles either of the moral
or natural economy, yet may we recognize such influences
at work, as when multiplied and developed to the utiermost,
are abundantly capable of regenerating the world. One of
the likeliest of these influences is the power of education
to the perfecting of which so many minds are earnestly di-
rected at this moment; and for the general acceptance of
which in society, we have a guarantee, in the strongest af-
fections and fondest wishes of the fathers and mothers of
families.
CHAPTER V.
On the special and subordinate Adaptations of external
Nature to the moral Constitution of Man.
1. We have hitherto confined our attention to certain great
and simple phenomena of our moral nature, which, though
affording a different sort of evidence for the being of God
from the organic and complicated structures of the material
world-yet, on the hypothesis of an existent Deity, are
abundantly decisive of His preference for virtue over vice,
and so of the righteousness of His own character. That he
should have inserted a great master faculty in every human
bosom all whose decisions are on the side of justice, beneve.
10*


114
ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
lence, and truth, and condemnatory of their opposites; that
He should have inserted this conscience with such powers
of instant retribution, in the triumphs of that complacency
wherewith he so promptly rewards the good, and the hor-
rors of that remorse wherewith He as promptly chastises
the evil; that beside these, He should have so distinguished
between virtue and vice, * as that the emotions and exercises
of the former should all be pleasureable, and of the latter
painful to the taste of the inner man ; that he should have
Bo ordained the human constitution, as that by the law of
habit, virtuous and vicious lives, or series of acts having
these respective moral qualities, should issue in the fixed
and permanent results of virtuous and vicious characters
these form the important generalities of our moral nature:
And while they obviously and immediately announce to us
a present demonstration in favour of virtue; they seem to
indicate a preparation and progress towards a state of things,
when, after that the moral education of the present life has
been consummated, the great Ruler of men will manifest the
eternal distinction which he puts between the good and the
evil,
2. Now in these few simple sequences, however strongly
and unequivocally they evince the character of a God already
proved or already presupposed, we have not the same intense
evidence for design, which is afforded by the distinct parts
or the distinct principles of a very multifarious combination.
Yet the constitution of man's moral nature is not defective
in this evidence—though certainly neither so prolific nor so
* Butler. in Part 1, Chapter 3d of his Analogy, makes the fol-
lowing admirable discrimination between actions themselves
and that quality ascribed to them which we call virtuous or vi.
cious._"An action by which any natural passion is gratified, or
fortune acquired, procures delight or advantage, abstracted from
all consideration of the morality of such action, consequently the
pleasure or advantage in this case is gained by the action itself,
not by the morality, the virtuousness,or viciousness of it, though it
may be, perhaps, virtuous or vicious. Thus to say, such an action
or course of behaviour, procured such pleasure or advantage, or
brought on such inconvenience and pain, is quite a different
thing from saying that such good or bad effect was owing to the
virtue or yice of such action or behaviour. In one case, an ac-
tion abstracted from all moral consideration, produced its effect.
In the other case, for it will appear that there are such cases, the
morality of the action, the action under a moral consideration, i.
, the virtuousness or viciousness of it, produced the effect.


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
116
palpable in our mental, as in our anatomical system. Still,
however, there is a mechanism in mind as well as body,
with a diversity of principles, if not a diversity of parts, con
sisting of so many laws, grafted it may be on a simple and
indivisible substance, yet yielding in the fact of their benefi-
cial concurrence, no inconsiderable argument for the wisdom
and goodness of Him who framed us. Nor does it matter,
as we have already said, whether these are all of them orie
ginal, or some of them, as the analysts of mind have labour
ed to manifest, only derivative laws in the human constitu-
tion. If the former, we have an evidnce grounded on the be-
neficial conjunction of a greater number of independent laws.
Įf the latter, we are reduced to fewer independent laws.but
these all the more prolific of useful applications, each of
which applications, is grounded on a beneficial adaptation
of some peculiar circumstances, in the operation of which
it is, that the primary is transmuted into a secondary law.*
But whether the one or the other, they exhibit phases of
humanity distinct from any that we have yet been employed
in contemplating; a number of special affections, each cha-
racterized by its own name, and pointing to its own separate
yet all of the
them performing an important subsidiary
part, for the moral good both of the individual and of the
species; and presenting us, therefore, with the materials of
additional evidence for a moral and beneficent design m the
formation of our race,
3. When we look to the beauty which overspreads the
face of nature, and the exquisite gratification which it min-
isters to the senses of man we cannot doubt, either the taste
for beauty which resides in the primeval mind that emana.
ted all this gracefulness; or the benevolence that endowed
man with a kindred taste and
taste, and so fitted him for a kindred
enjoyment. This conclusion, however, like any moral con-
clusion we have yet come to respecting the pertections or
the purposes of God, is founded on generalities, on the ge-
neral amount of beauty in the world, and the delight where-

yet been employed
racterized by its own number of special
And besides this, would it not bespeak a more comprehen.
sive wisdom on the part of a human artificer, that by means of
one device, or by the application of one principle, he affected not
a few, but many distinct and beneficial purposes; and does it
not in like manner enhance the exibition of divine skill in the
Workmanship of nature, when a single law is found to subseryo
a vast and manifold variety of important uses?


116
ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
with men behold and admire it. Yet, beside this, we may
draw a corroberative evidence for the same, from the machi-
nery of certain special contrivances as the construction of
the calyx in plants, for the defence of the tender blossom
previous to its expansion; and the apparatus for scattering
Beeds, whereby the earth is more fully invested with its
mantle of rich and varied garniture. And notwithstanding
the blight which has so obviously passed over the moral
world, and defaced many of its original lineaments, while it
has left the materialism of creation, the loveliness of its
scenes and landscapes, in a great measure untouched-still
we possess very much the same materials for a Natural
Theology, in reasoning on the element of virtue, as in rea-
soning on the element of beauty. We have first those ge-
neralities of argument which are already expounded by us
at sufficient length; and we have also the evidence, now to
be unfolded, of certain special provisions for the preservation
and growth of the immortal plant, in the study of which,
we shall observe more of mechanism than we have yet con-
templated; and more, therefore, of that peculiar argument
for design, which lies in the adaptation of varied means, in
the concurrence of distinct expedients, each helping the other
orward to a certain beneficial consummation.
4. But we must here premise an observation extensively ap-
plicable in mental science. When recognising the obvious
subserviency of some given feeling or principle in the mind to
a beneficial result-we are apt to imagine that it was some-
how or other, in the contemplation of this result, that the prin-
ciple was generated; and that therefore, instead of a distinct
and original part of the human constitution, it is but a de-
rivative from an anterior process of thought or calculation
on the part of man, in the act of reflecting on what was
most for the good of himself, or the good of society. In this
way man is conceived to be in some measure the creator of
his own mental constitution; or, at least, there are certain
parts of it regarded as secondary, and the formation of which
is ascribed to the wisdom of man, which, if regarded as in-
stinctive and primary, would have been directly ascribed
to the wisdom of God. There are many writers, for ex:
ample, on the origin and rights of property, who, instead of
admitting what may be termed an instinct of appropriation,
would hold the appropriating tendency to be the result of
human intelligence, after experience had of the convenience


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 117
and benefits of such an arrangement. Now on this subject,
we may take a lesson from the physical constitution of man.
It is indispensable to the preservation of our animal system,
that food should be received at certain intervals into the sto-
mach. Yet, notwithstanding all the strength which is as-
cribed to the principle of self-preservation, and all the vene-
ration which is professed by the expounders of our nature
for the wisdom and foresight of man—the author of our frame
has not left this important interest merely to our care, or our
consideration. He has not so trusted us to ourselves; but
has inserted among the other affections and principles where-
with He has endowed us, the appetite of hunger- a strong
and urgent and ever-recurring desire for food, which, it is
most certain, stands wholly unconnected with any thought
on our part, of its physical or posterior uses for the suste-
nance of the body; and from which it would appear, that
we need to be not only reminded at proper intervals of this
incumbent duty, but goaded on to it. Could the analysts of
our nature have ascertained of hunger, that it was the pro-
duct of man's reflection on the necessity of food, it might
have been quoted as an instance of the care which man takes
of himself. But it seems that he could not be thus confided,
either with his own individual preservation, or with the
preservation of his species; and so, for the security of both
these objects, strong appetites had to be given him, which,
incapable of being resolved into any higher principles, stand
distinctly and unequivocally forth, as instances of the care
that is taken of him by God.
5. Now this, though it does not prove, yet may prepare
us to expect similar provisions in the constitution of our
minds. Indeed the operose and complicated system, which
the great Architect of nature hath devised for our bodies,
carries in it a sort of warning to those, who, enamoured of
the simplifications of theory, would labour to reduce all our
mental phenomena to one or two principles. There is no
warrant for this in the examples which Anatomy and Phy-
siology, those sciences that have to do with the animal eco-
pomy of man, have placed before our eyes. Now, though
we admit not this as evidence for the actual complexity of
man's moral economy-it may at least school away those
prepossessions of the fancy or of the taste, that would lead
us to resist or to dislike such evidence when offered. We
hold it not unlikely that the same being, who, to supplement


118
ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
the defects of human prudence, hath furnished us with disa
tinct corporeal appetites, that might prompt us to operations,
of the greatest subservient benefit both to the individual and
the species-might also, to supplement the defects of hum
wisdom and principle, have furnished us with distinct men-
tal affections or desires, both for our own particular good and
the good of society. If man could not be left to his own
guidance, in matters which needed but the anticipation of a
few hours; but to save him from the decay and the death
which must have otherwise ensued, had so powerful a re-
membrancer and instigator given to him as the appetite of
hunger-we ought not to marvel, should it be found that
nature, in enllowing him mentally, hath presumed on his in-
capacity, either for wisely devising or for regularly acting,
with a view to distant consequences and amid the compli-
cated relations of human society. It may, on the one hand,
have inserted forces, when the mere consideration of good
effects would not have impelled; or, on the other hand, may
have inserted checks, when the mere consideration of evil ef-
fects would not have arrested. Yet so it is, that, because of
the good that is thereby secured and of the evil that is there-
by shunned - we are apt to imagine of some of the most
useful principles of our nature, that they are, somehow, the
product of human manufacture; the results of human intel-
ligence, or of rapid processes of thought by man, sitting in
judgment on the consequences of his actions, and wisely
providing either for or against them. Now it is very true,
that the anger, and the shame, and the emulation, and the
parental affection, and the compassion, and the love of re-
putation, and the sense of property, and the conscience or
moral sense-are so many forces of a mechanism, which if
not thus furnished, and that too within certain proportions,
would run into a disorder that might have proved destruc-
tive both of the individual and of the species. For reasons
already hinted at, we hold it immaterial to the cause of na-
tural theism, whether these constitutional propensities of the
human mind are its original or its secondary laws; but, at
all events, it is enough for any argument of ours, that they
are not so generated by the wisdom of man, as to supersede
the inference which we draw from them, in favour botn 01
the wisdom and goodness of God.
6. The common definition given of anger, is an instance
of the tendenoy on the part of philosophers, if not to derive,


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
119
at least to connect the emotions of which we have been made
susceptible with certain anterior or higher principles of our
nature. Dr. Reid tells us that the proper object of resent-
ment is an injury; and that as “no man can have the no-
tion of injustice, without having the notion of justice," then,
“if resentment be natural to man, the notion of justice must
be no less natural."* And Dr. Brown defines anger to be
" that emotion of instant displeasure, which arises from the
feeling of injury done or the discovery of injury intended, or,
in many cases, from the discovery of the mere omission of
good offices to which we conceived ourselves entitled, though
this very omission may, of itself, be regarded as a species
of injury." Now the sense of injury implies a sense of its
opposite—a sense of justice, therefore, or the conception of
a moral standard from which the injury that has awakened
the resentment, is felt to be a deviation. But as nothing ought
to form part of a definition, which is not indispensable to the
thing defined, it would appear, as if, in the judgment of both
these philosophers, all who were capable of anger must also
have, to a certain degree, a capacity of moral judgment or mo-
ral feeling. The property of resenting a hurt inflicted upon
ourselves, would, at this rate, argue, in all cases, a perception
of what the moral and equitable adjustment would be be-
tween ourselves and others. Now, that these workings of
a moral nature are essential to the feeling of anger, is an
idea which admits of most obvious and decisive refutation-
it being an emotion to which not only infants are competent
anterior to the first dawnings of their moral nature ; but even
idiots, with whom this nature is obliterated, or still more the
inferior animals who want it altogether. There must be a
sense of annoyance to originate the feeling; but a sense of
injury, implying, as it does, a power of moral judgment or
sensibility, can be in no way indispensable to an emotion,
exemplified in its utmost force and intensity by sentient crea-
• In glaring contradiction to this, is Dr. Reid's own affirmation
regarding the brutes. He says, “ that conscience is peculiar to
man, we see no vestige of it in the brute animals. It is one of
those prerogatives by which we are raised above them." But
animals are most abundantly capable of anger-even of that
which, by a very general definition, is said to be the einotion
that is awakened by a sense of injury, which sense of injury
must imply in it the sense of its opposite, even of justice, and so
Jand us in the conclusion that brutes are capable of moral colt-
ception, or that they have a conscience.


120
ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
tures, in whom there cannot be detected even the first rúdi.
ments of a moral nature. Two dogs, when fighting for a
bone, make as distinct and declared an exhibition of their
anger, as two human beings when disputing about the boun-
dary of their contiguous fields. The emotion flashes as unes
quivocally from any of the inferior, as it does from the only
rational and moral species on the face of our globe; as in the
vindictive glare of an infuriated bull, or of a lioness robbed
of her whelps, and who as if making proclamation of het
wrongs, gives forth her deep and reiterated cry to the echoes
of the wilderness. It is an emotion, in fact, which seems
coextensive, not only with moral, but with physical sensa-
tion. And, if any faith can be placed in the physiognomy,
or the natural signs, by which irrational creatures represent
what passes within them; this passion announces itself as
vividly and discernibly in the outcries of mutual resentment
which ring throughout the amplitudes of savage and solitary
nature, as in the contests of civilized man.
7. The truth, then, seems to be, that the office of the mou
ral faculty is, not to originate, but rather to confine and qua-
lify and regulate this emotion. Anger, if we but study its
history and actual exhibitions, will be found the primary
and the natural response to a hurt or harm or annoyance
of any sort inflicted on us by others; and, as such, may be
quite expansive and unrestrained and open to excitation
from all points of the compass-anterior to and apart from
any consideration of its justice, or whether in the being who
called it forth, there have been the purpose or not of violat-
ing our rights. Infants are fully capable of the feeling,
long before they have a notion of equity, or of what is right-
fully their own and rightfully another's. The anger of ani-
mals, too, is, in like manner, destitute of that moral ingre-
dient, which the definitions we have quoted suppose indis-
pensable to the formation of it. And yet their emitted sounds
have the very expression of fierceness, that we meet with
so often among the fellows of our own species. The pro-
vocation, the resentment, the kindling glance of hostility,
the gradual heightening of the wrath, its discharge in acts
of mutual violence, and lastly, its glutted satisfaction in the
flight and even the death of the adversary-these are all in-
dicative of kindred workings within, that have their out-
ward vent in a common and kindred physiognomy, between
him who is styled the lord of the creation, and those beneath


TAB MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAK.
121
his feet, who are conceived to stand at a distance that scarce-
by admits of comparison in the phenomena of their nature,
Even man, in the full growth of his rational and moral na-
Ture, will often experience the outbreakings of an anger
merely physical; as, to state one instance out of the many,
may be witnessed in the anger wreaked by him on the in-
ferior animals, when, all unconscious of injury to him, they
enter upon his fields, or damage the fruit of his labours.
The object of a just resentment toward others, is the pur-
posed injustice of others towards us, and, so far from pur-
poging the injustice, animals have not even the faculty of
conceiving it. The moral consideration, then, does not en-
ter as a constituent part into all resentment. It is rather a
superadded quality which designates a species of it. It is
not the epithei which characterizes all ang
facterizes all anger, but is limited
to a certain kind of it. It may be as proper'to say of one
anger that it is just, and of another that justice or morality
has had nothing to do with it—as it is to say of one blow
by the hand that it has been rightfully awarded, and of an-
those blow that such a moral characteristic is wholly inap-
plicable. Morality may at times characterize both the men-
tal feeling, and the muscular performance; but it should be
as little identified with the one as with the other. And how-
ever much'analysts may have succeeded on other occasions,
in reducing to sameness what appeared to be separate con-
stituents of our nature, certain it is, that anger cannot thus
be regarded as a resulting manufacture from any of its
higher principles. It forms a distinct and original part of
our constitution, of which morality, whenever it exists and
has the predominance, might take the direction, without be-
ing at all essential to the presence or operation of it. So far
from this, it is nowhere exhibited in greater vivacity and
distinctness than by those creatures who possess but an ani-
mal, without so much as the germ, or the rudest elements
of a moral nature. .
8. Anger then is an emotion that may rage and tumul-
tuate in a bosom into which one moral conception has never
entered. For its excitement nothing more seems necessary
than to thwart any desire however unreasonable, or to dis-
appoint any one object which the heart may chance to be set
upon. So far from a sense of justice being needful to ori-
ginate this emotion-it is the man who, utterly devoid of
justice, would monopolize to himself all that lies within the
11


122
ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURD TO
visible horizon, who is most exposed to its visitation. Ho
is the most vulnerable to wrath from every point of the vast
circumference around him—who, conceiving the Universe to
be made for himself alone, is most insensible to the rights
and interests of other men. It is in fact because he is so
unfurnished with the ideas of justice, that he is so unbridled
in resentment. Justice views the world and at its in-
terests as already partitioned among the various mem-
bers of the human population, each occupying his own
little domain; and, instead of permitting anger to expatiate
at random over the universal face of things, justice would
curb and over-rule its ebullitions in the bosom of every in-
dividual, till a trespass was made within the limits of that
territory which is properly and peculiarly his own..
other words, it is the office of this virtue, not to inspire an-
ger, but to draw landmarks and limitations around it; and,
so far from a high moral principle originating this propen-
sity, it is but an animal propensity, restrained and kept
within check and confinement at the bidding of principle.
9. The distinction between reflective and unreflective an-
ger did not escape the notice of the sagacious Butler, as may
be seen in the following passages of a sermon upon resent-
ment.—"Resentment is of two kinds-hasty and sudden,
or settled and deliberate. The former is called anger and
often passsion, which, though a general word, is frequently
appropriated and conåned to the particular feeling, sudden
anger, as distirict from deliberate resentment malice and re-
venge." "Sudden anger upon certain occasions is mere
instinct, as merely so, as the disposition to close our eyes
upon the apprehension of something falling into them, and
no more necessarily implies any degree of reason. I say
necessarily, for, to be sure, hasty as well as deliberate an-
ger, may be occasioned by injury, or contempt, in which
cases reason suggests to our thoughts the injury and con-
tempt which is the occasion of the emotion : But I'am speak-
ing of the former, only in so far as it is to be distinguished
from the latter. The only way in which our reason and un-
derstanding can raise anger, is by representing to our mind
an injustice or injury of some kind or other. Now momentary
anger is frequently raised, not only without any rule, but
without any reason; that is, without any appearance of in-
jury as distinct from hurt or pain. It cannot, I suppose, be
thought that this passion in infants and the lower species of


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 123
animals, and which is often seen in man towards them, it
cannot, I say, be imagined that these instances of this emo-
tion are the effect of reason: no, they are occasioned by
mere sensation and feeling. It is opposition, sudden hurt.
violence which naturally excites this passion; and the real
demerit or fault of him who offers that violence, or is the
cause of that opposition or hurt, does not in many cases so
much as come into thought." "The reason and end for
which man was made thus liable to this emotion, is that he
might be better qualified to prevent, and likewise or perhaps
chiefly to resist and defeat sudden force, violence, and op-
position, considered merely as such, and without regard to
the fault or demerit of him who is the author of them ;a yet
since violence may be considered in this other and further
view, as implying fault, and since injury as distinct from
harm may raise sudden anger, sudden anger may likewise
accidentally serve to prevent or remedy such fault and in-
jury. But considered as distinct from settled anger, it stands
in our nature for self-defence, and not for the administration
of justice. There are plainly cases, and in the uncultivated
parts of the world, and where regular governments are not
formed, they frequently happen, in which there is no time
for considering, and yet to be passive is certain destruction,
in which sudden resistance is the only security."--It is an
exceeding good instance that Bishop Butler gives of the
distinction between instinctive and what may be called ra-
tional anger, when he specifies the anger that we often fee!
towards the inferior animals. There is properly no injury
done, where there is no injury intended. And he who is
incapable of conceiving what an injury is, is not a rightful
object for at least any moral resentment. But that there
is what may be called a physical as well as a moral resent-
ment, is quite palpable from the positive wrath which is felt
when any thing untoward or hurtful is done to us even by
the irrational creatures. The men who use them as instru.
ments of service often discharge the most outrageous wrath
upon them-acting the part of ferocious tyrants towards
these wretched victims of their cruelty. When a combat
takes place between man and one of the inferior animals, there
is a resentment fel: by the former just as keen and persever-
ing, as if it were between two human combatanis. This
makes it quite obvious that therc may be anger without any
sense of designed injury on the part of him who is the obi


124 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO
ject of it. Even children, idiots, lunatics, might all be the
objects of such a resentment.
10. The final cause of this emotion in the inferior animals
is abundantly obvious. It stimulates and ensures resistance
to that violence, which, if not resisted, would often terminate
in the destruction of its object. And it probably much of-
tener serves the purpose of prevention than of defence. The
first demonstration of a violence to be offered on the one
hand, when met by the preparation and the counter-menace
of an incipient resentment on the other, not only repels the
aggression after it has begun, but still more frequently, we
believe, through the reaction and restraint of fear on the
otherwise attacking party, prevents the aggression from
being made. The stout and formidable antagonists eye each
other with a sort of natural respect; and, as if by a common
though tacit consent, wisely abstain on either side from mo-
lestation, and pass onward without a quarrel. It is thus
that many a fierce contest is forborne, which, but for the
operation of anger on the one side and fear upon the other,
would most certainly have been entered upon. And so by
a system, or machinery of reciprocal checks and counterac-
tives, and where the mental affections too perform the part
of essential forces, there is not that incessant warfare of ex-
termination which might have depopulated the world. And
here we might observe, that, in studying that balance of
powers and of preserving influences, which obtains even in
a commonwealth of brutes, the uses of a mental are just as
palpable as those of a material collocation. The anger
which prompts to the resistance of aggression is as obvious-
ly inserted by the hand of a contriver, as are the horns or
the bristles or any other defensive weapons wherewith the
body of the animal is furnished. The fear which wings the
flight of a pursued animal is as obviously intended for its
safety, as is its muscular conformation or capacity for speed.
The affection of a mother for her young points as intelligi-
bly to a designer's care for the preservation of the species,
as does that apparatus of nourishment wherewith nature hath
endowed her. The mother's fondness supplies as distinct
and powerful an argument as the mother's milk, or, in other
words, a mental constitution might, as well as a physical
constitution, be pregnant with the indications of a God.
11. But to return to the special affection of anger, with &
reference more particularly to its working in our own ape:


THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
125
cies, where we have the advantage of nearer and distincter
observation. We must be abundantly sensible of the pain
which there is, not merely in the feeling of resentment, when
it burns and festers within our own hearts, but also in be-
ing, the objects of another's resentment. They are not the
effects only of his anger that we are afraid of; we are afraid
of the anger itself, of but the looks and the words of angry
violence, though we should be perfectly secure from all the
deeds of violence. The simple displeasure of another is for-
midable, though no chastisment whatever shall follow upon
it. We are so constituted, that we tremble before the frown
of an offended countenance, and perhaps as readily as we
would under the menace of an uplifted arm; and would of-
ten make as great a sacrifice to shiun the moral discomfort
of another's wrath, as to shun the physical infliction which
his wrath might impel him to lay upon us. It is thus that
where there is no strength for any physical infliction, still
there may be a power of correction that amply makes up for
it, in the rebuke of an indignant eye or an indignant voice,
This goes far to repair the inequalities of muscular force
among men; and forms indeed a most important mound of
defence against the effervescence and the outbreakings of
brute violence in society. It is incalculable how much we
owe to this influence for the peace and courteousness that
obtain in every neighbourhood. The more patent view of
anger is, that it is an instrument of defence against the ag-
gressions of violence or injustice; and by which they are
kept in check, from desolating, as they otherwise would, the
face of society. But it not only operates as a corrective
against the outrages that are actually made. It has a pre-
ventive operation also; and we are wholly unable to say,
in how far the dread of its forth-breaking, serves to soften
and to subdue human intercourse into those many thousand
decencies of mutual forbearance and complaisance, by which
it is gladdened and adorned. There is a recoil from anger
in the heart of every man when directed against himself;
and many who would disdain to make one sacrifice by
which to appease it, after it had thrown down the gauntlet
of hostility, will in fact make one continued sacrifice of their
tone and manner and habit, that it may not be awakened out
of its slumbers. It were difficult to compute how much we
are indebted, for the blandness and the amenity of human
companionships, to the consciousness of so many sleeping


128
ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURB TO
13. There is another special affection which we feel more
particularly induced to notice, from its palpable effoct in re-
straining the excess of one of nature's strongest appetites.
Its position in the mental system reminds one of the very
obvious adaptation to each other of the antagonist muscles
in anatomy. We allude to the operation of shame between
the sexes, considered as a check or counteractive to the in-
dulgence of passion between the sexes. The former is as
clear an instance of moral, as the latter is of physical adap-
tation. And in their adjustment the one to the other, we ob-
serve that sort of exquisite balancing, which, perhaps more
than any thing else, indicates the wisdom and the hand of
a master- as if when, in the execution of some very nice
and difficult task, he is managing between contrary ex.
tremes, or is devising in just proportion for contrary interests,
one of the final causes for the inplantation of this principle in
our constitution.-“What human wants required, that all-fore-
seeing Power, who is the guardian of our infirmities, has sup
plied to human weakness. There is a principle in our mind,
which is to us like a constant protector, which may slumber, in.
deed, but which slumbers only at seasons when its vigilance
would be useless, which awakes therefore, at the first appear-
ance of unjust intention, and which becomes more watchful and
more vigorous, in proportion to the violence of the attack which
it has to dread. What should we think of the providence of na-
ture, if, when aggression was threatened against the weak and
unarmed, at a distance from the aid of others, there were in
stantly and uniformly, by the intervention of some wonder.
working pwer, to rush into the hand of the defenceless a sword
or other weapon of defence ? And yet this would be but a feeble
assistance, if compared with that which we receive from the
simple emotions which Heaven has caused to rush, as it were,
into our mind for repelling every attack. What would be a
sword in the trembling hand of the infirm, of the aged, of him
whose pusillanimous spirit shrinks at the very appearance, not
of danger merely, but even of the arms by the use of which dan.
ger might be averted, and to whom consequently, the very sword,
which he sc:rcely knew how to grasp, would be an additional
cause of terror, not an instrument of defence and safety? The
instant anger which arises does more than many such weapons.
It gives the spirit, which knows how to make a weapon of every
thing, or, which of itself does, without a weapon, what even a
thunderbolt would be powerless to do in the shuddering grasp
of the coward. When anger arises, fear is gone: there is no
coward, for all are brave Even bodily infirmity seems to yield
to it, like the very infirmities of the mind. The old are, for the
proment, young again; the weakest, vigorous." Lect. lxiji.


THB MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
129
We might better comprehend the design of this srikingly
peculiar mechanism, by imagining of the two opposite in-
stincts, that either of them was in excess, or either of them
in defect. Did the constitutional modesty prevail to a cer-
tain conceivable extent--it might depopulate the world. Did
the animal propensity preponderate, on the other hand-it
might land the world in an amarchy of unblushing and uni-
versal licentiousness-to the entire breaking up of our pre-
Bent blissful economy, by which society is partitioned into
separate families; and, with the interests of domestic life to
provide for, and its affections continually to recreate the
heart in the midst of anxieties and labours, mankind are
kept in a state both of most useful activity and of greatest
enjoyment. We cannot conceive a more skilful, we had al-
most said a more delicate or dexterous adjustment, than the
one actually fixed upon by which, in the first instance,
through an appetency sufficiently strong the species is up-
holden ; and, in the second instance, through the same ap-
petency sufficiently restrained, those hallowed decencies of
life are kept unviolate, which are so indispensable to all or-
der and to all moral gracefulness among men. We have
only to conceive the frightful aspect which society would put
on, did unbridled licentiousness stalk at large as a destroyer
and rifle every home of those virtues which at once guard
and adorn it. The actual and the beautiful result, when
viewed in connextion with that moral force, by the insertion
of which in our nature it is accomplished, strongly bespeaks
a presiding intellect which in framing the mechanism of
the human mind, had respect to what was most beneficent
and best for the mechanism of human society.
14. It is well that man is so much the creature of a con-
stitution which is anterior to his own wisdom and his own
will, and of circumstances which are also anterior to his
wisdom and his will. It would have needed a far more com-
prehensive view than we are equal to, both of what was
best for men in a community and for man as an indivi.
dual, to have left a creature so short-sighted or of such brief
and narrow survey, with the fixing either of his own prin-
ciples of action or of his relation with the external world.
That constitutional shame, that quick and trembling delicacy,
& prompt and ever-present guardian, appearing as it does in
v early childhood. is most assuredly not a result from
any anticipation by us, either of future pr distant congo-
very


130
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
quences. Even the moral sense within us, does not speak
so loudly or so distinctly the evil of this transgression as it
does of falsehood, or of injurious freedom with the proper-
ty of a neighbour, or of personal violence. Other forces
than those of human prudence or human principle seem to
have been necessary, for resisting a most powerful and de-
structive fascination, which never is indulged, without de-
terioration to the whole structure of the moral character
and constitution; and which, when once permitted to lord
it over the habits, so often terminates in the cruel disruption
of families, and the irretrievable ruin and disgrace of the
offender. It is not by any prospective calculation of ours,
that this natural modesty, acting as a strong precautionary
check against evils which however tremendous, we are too
heedless to reflect upon, has been established within us. It
is directly implanted by one, who sees the end from the be-
ginning, and so forms altogether a most palpable instance,
in which we have reason to congratulate ourselves, that
the well-being of man, instead of being abandoned to him-
self, has been placed so immediately under the management
of better and higher hands.
15. There are many other gpecial affections in our natira
-the principle of which will fall to be noticed in succeed-
ing chapters; and the interests to which they are respec-
tively subservient form a natural ground of division, in our
treatment of them. Certain of these affections stand related
to the civil, and certain of them to the economic well-being
of society; and each of these subserviencies will form the
subject of a separate argument.
CHAPTER VL
On those special Affections which conduce to the civil and
political Well-being of Society
1. The first step towards the aggregation of men into a
community, or the first departure from a state of perfect iso-
lation, could that state ever have subsisted for a single day,
is the patriarchal arrangement. No sooner indeed is the in-
fant creature ushered into being, than it is met by the cares
and the caresses of those who are around it, and who have


THE WELL-BEING ON SOCIETY.
131
either attended or welcomed its entry on this scene of exis
tence--as if, in very proportion to the extremity of its utter
helplessness, was the strength of that security which nature
nath provided, in the workings of the human constitution,
for the protection of its weakness and the supply of all its
little wants. That there should be hands to receive and to
manage this tender visitant, is not more obviously a benevo-
lent adaptation, than that there should be hearts to sympa-
thise with its cries of impotency or distress. The maternal
affection is as express an instance of this as the maternal
nourishment-nor is the inference at all weakened, by the
attempts, even though they should be successful, of those
who would demonstrate of this universal fondness of mo-
thers, that, instead of an original instinct, it is but a derived
or secondary law of our nature. Were that analysis as
distinct and satisfactory as it is doubtful and obscure, which
would resolve all mental phenomena into the single ,irinciple
of association-still the argument would stand. A secondary
law, if not the evidence of a distinct principle, requires at least
distinct and peculiar circumstances for its developement; and
the right ordering of these for a beneficial result, is just as de-
cisively the proof and the characteristic of a plan, as are the
collocations of Anatomy. It might not have been necessary to
endow matter with any new property for the preparation of a
child's aliment in the breast of its mother-yei the frame-
work of that very peculiar apparatus by which the milk is se-
creted, and the suckling's mouth provided with a duct of con-
veyance for the abstraction of it. is, in the many fitnesses of
time and place and complicated arrangement, pregnant with
the evidence of a designer's contrivance and a designer's
care. And in like manner, though it should be established,
that the affection of a mother for her young from the mo-
ment of their birth, instead of an independent principle
in her nature, was the dependent product of remembran-
ces and feelings which had accumulated during the period
of gestation, and were at length fixed, amidst the agonies
of parturition, into the strongest of all her earthly regards,
the argument for design is just as entire, though, instead of
connecting it with the peculiarity of an original law, we
connect it with the peculiarity of those circumstances which
favour the developement of this maternal feeling, in the form
of a secondary law. There is an infinity of conceivable me-
thods, by which the successive generations of men might


AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
have risen into being ; and our argument is entire, if, out of
these, that method has been selected, whereof the result is
an intense affection on the part of mothers for their offspring.
It matters not whether this universal propensity of theirs be
a primary instinct of nature, or but a resulting habit which
can be traced to the process which they have been actually
made to undergo, or the circumstances in which they have
actually been placed. The ordination of this process, the
mandate for the assemblage and collocation of these circum-
stances, gives as distinct and decisive indication of an or-
daining mind, as would the establishment of any peculiar
law. Let it suffice once for all to have said this for if in the
prosecution of our inquiry, we stopped at every turn to enter-
tain the question, whether each beneficial tendency on which
we reasoned, were an original or only a secondary principle
in nature we should be constantly rushing uncalled into the
mists of obscurity; and fastening upon our cause an ele-
nt of doubt and weakness, which in no wise belongs to it.
2. The other affections which enter into the composition,
or rather, form the cement of a family, are more obviously
of an instinctive character, than is that strong maternal af-
finity which meets so opportunely with the extreme help-
lessness of its objects, that but for the succour aad sympathy
of those whose delight it is to cherish and sustain them,
would perish in the infancy of their being. However ques-
tionable the analysis might be, which would resolve the uni-
versal fondness of mothers for their young into something
anterior—the paternal and brotherly and filial affections seem,
on surer grounds, and which are accessible to observation,
not to be original but originated feelings. Inquirers, accor-
ding to their respective tastes and tendencies, have deviated
on both sides of the evidence—that is, either to an excessive
and hypothetic simplification of nature, or to an undue mul-
tiplication of her first principles. And certain it is, that when
told of the mystic ties which bind together into a domestic
community, as if by a sort of certain peculiar attraction, all
of the same kindred and the same blood-we are reminded
of those occult qualities, which, in the physics both of mat-
ter and of mind, afforded so much of entertainment, to the
scholastics of a former age. But with the adjustment of this
philosophy we properly have no concern. It matter
our argument whether the result in question be due to the
force of instincts or to the force of circumstances, -any more


THB WELL-BEING OF BOCIETY.
133
than whether in the physical system, a certain beneficial re-
mult may be ascribed to apt and peculiar laws, or to apt ana
peculiar collocations. In virtue of one or other or both of
these causes, we behold the individuals of the species group-
ed together—or, as it may be otherwise expressed, the ag-
gregate mass of the species, broken asunder into distinct fa-
milies, and generally living by themselves, each family under
one common roof, but apart from all the rest in distinct ha-
bitations ; while the members of every little commonwealth
are so linked by certain affections, or by certain feelings of
reciprocal obligation, that each member feels almost as in-
tensely for the wants and sufferings of the rest as he would
for his own, or labours as strenuously for the sustenance of all
as he would for bis own individual sustenance. There is very
generally a union of hearts, and still oftener a union of hands,
for the common interest and provision of the household.
3. The benefits of such an arrangment are too obvious to be
enumerated. Even though the law of self-preservation had
sufficed in those cases where the individual has adequate
wisdom to devise, and adequate strength to provide for his
own maintenance of itself, it could not have availed, when
this strength and this wisdom are wanting. It is in the ho-
Bom of families, and under the touch and impulse of family
affections, that helpless infancy is nurtured into manhood,
and helpless disease or age have the kindliest and most ef-
fective succour afforded to them. Even when the strength
for labour, instead of being confined to one, is shared
among several of the household, there is often an incal-
culable benefit, in the very concert of their forces and
community of their gains so long, for example, as a
brotherhood, yet advancing towards maturity, continue to
live under the same roof and to live under the direction
of one authority, or by the movement of one will.
shall not expatiate, either on the enjoyment that might be
had under such an economy, while it lasts, in the sweets of
mutual affection; or minutely explain how, after the eco-
nomy is dissolved, and the separate members betake them-
selves each to his own way in the world—the duties and the
friendships of domestic life are not annihilated by this dis-
persion; but, under the powerful influence of a felt and ac-
knowledged relationship, the affinities of kindred spread and
multiply beyond their original precincts, to the vasi increase
of mutual sympathy and aid and good offices in general 60-
12


134 * AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCÉ TO
ciety. It will not, we suppose, be questioned that a vastly
greater amount of good is done by the instrumentality of
others, and that the instrumentality itself is greatly more
available, under the family system, to which we are prompt-
ted by the strong afffections of nature, than if that sys-
tem were dissolved. But the remarkable thing is, that
these affections had to be provided, as so many impel.
lent forces--guiding men onward to an arrangement the
most prolific of advantage for the whole, but which no
care or consideration of the general good would have led
them to form. This provision for the wants of the so-
cialeconomy, is analogous to that, which we have alrea-
dy observed, for the wants of the animal economy. Neither
of these interests was confided to any cold generality, whe-
ther of principle or prudence. In the one, the strong appe-
tite of hunger supplements the deficiency of the rational
principle of self-preservation. In the other, the strong fa-
inily affections supplement the deficiency of the moral priri-
ciple of general benevolence. Without the first, the requisite
measures would not have been taken for the regular suste-
nance of the individual. Without the other, the requisite
measures would not have been taken for the diffused suste.
nance of the community at large.
4. Such is the mechanism of human society, as it comes
direct, from the hand of nature or of nature's God. But
many have been the attempts of human wisdom to mend
and to meddle with it.. Cosmopolitism, in particular, has
endeavoured to substitute a sort of universal citizenshin, in
place of the family affections regarding these as so many
disturbing forces; because, operating only as incentives to
a partial or particular benevolence, they divert the aim from
hat which should, it is contended; be the object of every en-
lightened philanthropist, the general and greatest good of the
whole. It is thus that certain transcendental speculatists
would cut asuinder all the special affinities of our nature, in
order that men, set at large from the ties and the duties of
the domestic relationship, might be at liberty to prosecute a
more magnificent and god-like career of virtue; and, in
every single action, have respect, not to the well-being of the
individual, but to the well-being of the species. And thus
also, friendship and patriotism have been stigmatized, along
with the family affections, as so many narrow minded-vir-
tues, which, by their distracting influence, seduce men from
that whic


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 135

that all-comprehensive virtue, whose constant study being
the good of the world—a happy and regenerated world, it is
the fond imagination of some, would be the result of its uni-
versal prevalence among men.
5. Fortunately, nature is too strong for this speculation,
which, therefore, has only its full being, in the reveries or
the pages of those who, in authorship, may well be termed
the philosophical novelists of our race. But, beside the actual
strength of those special propensities in the heart of man,
which no generalization can overrule, there is an utter im-
potency in human means or human expedients, for carrying
ihis hollow, this heartless generalization into effect. It is
easy to erect into a moral axiom, the principle of greatest
happiness; and then, on the strength of it, to denounce all
the special affections, and propose the substitution of a uni-
versal affection in their place. But in prosecuting the ob-
ject of this last affection, what specific and intelligible thing
are they to do? How shall they go about it? What con-
ventional scheme shall men fall upon next for obtaining the
maximum of utility, after they have broken loose, each from
his own little home, and have been emancipated from those
intense regards, which worked so effectively and with such
force of concentration there? It has never been clearly
shown, how the glorious simplifications of those cosmopo-
lites admit of being practically realized--whether by a com-
bination, of which the chance is that all men might not agree
upon it; or by each issuing quixotically forth of his own
habitation, and labouring the best he may to realize the
splendid conception by which he is fired and actuated, And
it does not occur to those who would thus labour to extirpate
the special affections from our nature, that it is in the indul-
gence of them that all conceivable happiness lies; and that,
in being bereft of them, we should be in truth bereft of all
the means and materials of enjoyment. And there is the
utmost difference in point of effect, as well as in point of
feeling, between the strong love wherewith nature hath en-
dued us for a few particular men, and the general love
wherewith philosophers would inspire us for men in the ab-
stract-the former philanthropy leading to a devoted and
sustained habit of well directed exertion, for supplying the
wants and multiplying the enjoyments of every separate
household; the latter philanthropy, at once indefinite in ita
eim and intangible in its objects, overlooking every man just


136 AFFECTIONS WHICH COXDUOR TO
because charging itself with the oversight of all men. It is
by a summation of particular utilities which each man, under
the impulse of his own particular affections, contributes to
the general good, that nature provides for the happiness of
the world. But ambitious and aspiring man would take the
charge of this happiness upon himselt; and his first step
would be to rid the heart of all its special affections—or, in
other words, to unsettle the moral dynamics which nature
hath established there, without any other moral dynamics,
either of precise direction or of operative force, to establish
in their room. After having paralyzed all the ordinary prin-
ciples of action, he would, in his newly modelled system of
humanity, be able to set up no principle of action whatever.
His wisdom, when thus opposed to the wisdom of nature, is
utterly powerless to direct, however much, in those seasons
of delusion when the merest nonentities and names find a
temporary sway, it may be powerful to destroy,
6. Now there is nothing which so sets off the superior
skill of one artist, as the utter failure of every other artist in
his attempts to improve upon it. And so the failure of eve-
ry philanthropic or political experiment which proceeds on
the distrust of nature's strong and urgent and general affec-
tions, may be regarded as an impressive while experimental
demonstration for the matchless wisdom of nature's God.
The abortive enterprises of wild yet benevolent Utopianism:
the impotent and hurtful schemes of artificial charity which
80 teem throughout the cities and parishes of our land; the
pernicious legislation, which mars instead of medicates,
whenever it intermeddles with the operations of a previous
and better mechanism than its own-have all of them mig.
given only because, instead of conforming to nature, they
have tried to divert her from her courses, or have thwarted
and traversed the strongest of her implanted tendencies. It
is thus that every attempt for taking to pieces, whether to-
tally or partially, the actual frame-work of society, and re-
constructing it in a new way or on new principles—is al.
together fruitless of. good; and often fruitful of sorest evil
both to the happiness and virtue of the commonwealth. That
economy by which the family system would have been en-
tirely broken up; and associated men, living together in
planned and regulated villages, would have laboured for the
common good, and given up their children wholly undomes.
ticated to a common education could not have been carried


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
137
into effect, without overbearing the parental affection, and
other strong propensities of nature besides ; and so it was
stified in embryo, by the instant revolt of nature against it.
That legislation, which, instead of overbearing, would but
seduce nature from her principles, may subsist for genera-
tions--yet not without such distemper' to society, as may at
length amount to utter disorganization. And this is precisely
the mischief which the pauperism of England hath inflicted
on the habits of English families. It hath, by the most per-
nicious of all bribery, relaxed the ties and obligations of mu-
tual relationship-exonerating parents on the one hand from
the care and maintenance of their own offsping ; and tempt-
ing children on the other to cast off the parents who gave
them birth, and, instead of an asylum gladdened by the as-
sociations and sympathies of home, consigning them for the
last closing years of weakness and decrepitude to the dreary
imprisonment of a poor house. Had the beautiful arrange-
ments of nature not been disturbed, the relative affections
which she herself has implanted would have been found
strong :
ug, as in other countries, to have secured, through
the means of a domestic economy alone, a provision both for
young and old, in far greater unison with both the comfort
and the virtue of families. The corrupt and demoralizing
system of England might well serve as a lesson to philan-
tnropists and statesmen, of the hazard, nay of the positive
and undoubted mischief, to which the best interests of hu.
manity are exposed-when they traverse the processes of a
better mechanism instituted by the wisdom of God, through
the operation of another inechanism devised by a wisdom of
their own.
7. And those family relations in which all men necessarily
find themselves at the outset of life, serve to strengthen, if
they do not originate certain other subsequent affections of
wider operation, and which bear with most important effect
on the state and security of a commonwealth. Each man's
house may be regarded as a preparatory school, where he
acquires in boyhood, those habits of subordination and de-
pendence and reverence for superiors, by which he all the
more readily conforms in after-life, to the useful gradations
of rank and authority and wealth which obtain in the order
of general society. We are aware of a cosmopolitism tha:
would unsettle those principles which bind together the
larger commonwealth of a state ; and that too with still
12


138
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
greater force and frequency, than it would unsettle those
affections which bind together the little commonwealth of &
fam ily. It is easier to undermine in the hearts of subjects,
their reverence for rank and station; than it is to dissolve
the ties of parentage and brotherhood, or to denaturalize the
hearts of children. Accordingly we may remember those
seasons, when, in the form of what may be termed a moral
epidemic, a certain spirit of lawlessness went abroad upon
the land, and the minds of men were set at large from the
habit of that homage and respect, which in more pacific
times, they, without pusillanimity and in spite of themselves,
do render to family or fortune or office in society. We know
that in specific instances, an adequate cause is too often given
why men should cast off that veneration for rank by which
they are naturaliy and habitually actuatedas, individually,
when the prince or the noble, however elevated, may have
disgraced himself by his tyranny or his vices; or, generally,
when the patrician orders of the state may have entered in-
to some guilty combination of force and fraud against the
liberties of mankind, and outraged nature is called forth to
a generous and wholesome re-action against the oppressors
of their species. This is the revolt of one natural principle
against the abuse of another. But the case is very different
-when, instead of an hostility resting on practical grounds
and justified by the abuses of a principle, there is a sort of
theoretical yet withal virulent and inflamed hostility abroad
in the land against the principle itself—when we
rank without having abused their privileges, are made per
se the objects of a jealous and resentful malignity-when
the people all reckless and agog, because the dupes of de.
signing and industrious agitators, have been led to regard
every man of affluence or station as their natural enemy
and when, with the bulk of the community in this attitude
of stout and sullen defiance, authority is weakened and all
the natural influences of rank and wealth are suspended.
Now nature never gives more effectual demonstration of her
wisdom, than by the mischief which ensues on the adjura-
tion of her own principles; and never is the lesson thus held
forth more palpable and convincing, than when respect for
station and respect for office cease to be operating principles
in society. We are abundantly sensible that both mighty
possessions and the honours of an industrious ancestry may
be disjoined from individual talent and character, -nay


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
139
that they may meet in the person of one so utterly weak or
worthless, as that our reverence because of the adventitious
circumstances in which he is placed, may be completely
verborne by our contempt either for the imbecility or the
moral turpitude by which he is deformed. But this is only
the example of a contest between two principles, and of a
victory by the superior over the inferior one." We are not,
however, because of the inferiority of a principle to lose
sight of its existence; or to betray such an imperfect dis-
cernment and analysis of the human mind, as to deny the
reality of any one principle, because liable to be modified, or
kept in check, or even for the time rendered altogether
powerless, by the interposition and the conflict of another
principle. If, on the one hand, rank may be so disjoined
from righteousness as to forfeit all its claims to respect-on
the other hand, to be convinced that these claims are the ob-
jects of a natural and universal acknowledgment, and have
therefore a foundation in the actual constitution of human
nature, let us only consider the effect, when pre-eminent
rank and pre-eminent or even but fair and ordinary righte
ousness, meet together in the person of the same individual,
The effects of such a composition upon human feelings may
well persuade us that, while a respect for righteousness ad-
mitted by all enters as one ingredient, a respect for rank has
its distinct and substantive being also as another ingredient.
We have the former ingredient by itself in a state of separa-
tion, and are therefore most sensible of its presence, when
the object of contemplation is a virtuous man. But we are
distinctly sensible to the superaddition of the latter ingredi-
ent, when, instead of a virtuous man, the object of contem-
plation is a virtuous monarch-though it becomes more pal-
pable still, when it too is made to exist in a state of separa-
tion, which it does, when the monarch is neither hateful for
his vices nor very estimable for his virtues; but stands forth
in the average possession of those moralities and of that in.
tellect which belong to comn.on and every day humanity,
Even such a monarch has only to appear among his sub-
jects; and, in all ordinary times, he will be received with
the greetings of an honest and heartfelt loyalty, while any
unwonted progress through his dominions is sure to be met
all over the land, by the acclamations of a generous enthu-
siasm. Even the sturdiest demagogue, if he come within
the sphere of the royal presence, cannot resist the infection


112
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
of that common sentiment by which all are actuated; but,
as if struck with a moral impotency, he also, carried away
by the fascination, is constrained to feel and to acknowledge
its influence. Some there are, who might affect to despise
human nature for such an exhibition, and indignantly ex-
claim that men are born to be slaves. But the truth is, that
there is nothing prostrate, nothing pusillanimous in the emo-
tion at all. Instead of this, it is a lofty chivalrous emotion,
of which the most exalted spirits are the most susceptible,
and which all might indulge without any forfeiture of their
native or becoming dignity. We do not affirm of this re-
spect either for the sovereignty of an empire, or for the chief-
tainship of a province—that it forms an original or consti-
tuent part of our nature. It is enough for our argument, if
it be a universal result of the circumstances in every land,
where such gradations of power and property are establish-
ed. In a word, it is the doing of nature, and not of man;
and if man, in the proud and presumptuous exercise of his
own wisdom, shall lift his rebel hand against the wisdom of
nature, and try to uproot this principle from human hearts
he will find that it cannot be accomplished, without tearing
asunder one of the strongest of those ligaments, which bind
together the component parts of human society into a har-
monious and well-adjusted mechanism. And it is then that
the wisdom which made nature, will demonstrate its vast
ty over the wisdom which would mend it when the
desperate experiment of the latter has been tried and found
wanting. There are certain restraining forces and reve-
rence for rank and station is one of them) which never so con-
vincingly announce their own importance to the peace and
stability of the commonwealth, as in those seasons of popular
frenzy, when, for a time, they are slackened or suspended.
For it is then that the vessel of the state, as if slipped from
her moorings, drifts headlong among the surges of insurrec-
tionary violence, till, as the effect of this great national ef-
fervescence, the land mourns over its ravaged fields and de-
solated families; when, after, the sweeping anarchy has
blown over it, and the sore chastisement has been undergone
the now schooled and humble people seek refuge anew in
those very principles, which they had before traduced and
discarded: And it will be fortunate if, when again settled
down in the quietude of their much needed and much longed-
for, repose, there be not too vigorous a re-action of those


AFFÈCTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
slightest apprehension, on their part, of its vast importance
to the social economy of the world. It is the provision, not
of man, but of God.
9. That is my property, to the use and enjoyment of which
1, without the permission of others, am free, in a manner
that no other is : and it is mine and mine only, in as far as
this use and enjoyment are limited to myself and others,
apart from any grant or permission by me, are restrained
from the like use and the like enjoyment. Now the first
tendency of a child, instead of regarding only certain things,
as those to the use and enjoyment of which it alone is free,
is to regard itself as alike free to the use and enjoyment of
all things. We should say that it regards the whole of ex-
ternal nature as a vast common, but for this difference that,
instead of regarding nature as free to all, it rather regards
it as free to itself alone. When others intermeddle with any
one thing, in a way that suits not its fancy or pleasure, it
resents and storms and exclaims like one bereft of its rightem
so that, instead of regarding the universe as a common, it
were more accurate to say, that it regarded the whole as its
own property, or itself as the universal proprietor of all on
which it may have cast a pleased or a wishful eye. What-
ever it grasps, it feels to be as much its own as it does the
fingers which grasp it. And not only do its claims extend
to all within its reach, but to all within the field of its vision
insomuch, that it will even stretch forth its hands to the
moon in the firmament; and wreak its displeasure on the
nurse, for not bringing the splendid bauble within its grasp.
Instead then of saying, that, at this particular stage, it
knows not how to appropriate any thing, it were more ac
curate to say that a universal tyrant and monopolist.
it would claim and appropriate all things-exacting from
the whole of nature a subserviency to its caprices; and, the
little despot of its establishment, giving forth its intimations
and its mandates, with the expectation, and often with the
real power and authority of instant obedience. We before
said that its anger was coextensive with the capacity of sen-
sation; and we now say that, whatever its rectified notion
of property may be, it has the original notion of an unlimited
range over which itself at least may expatiate, without let
or contradiction-the self-constituted proprietor of a do-
main wide as its desires, and on which none may inter-
fere against its will, without awakening in its bosom some-


TAR WELL-BEING OF BOCIETY. 143
what like the sense and feeling of an injurious molesta-
tion.*
10. And it is instructive to observe the process, by which
this original notion of property is at length rectified'into the
subsequent notion, which obtains in general society. For
this purpose we must enquire what the circumstances are
which limit and determine that sense of property, which was
quite general and unrestricted before, to certain special things,
of which the child learns to feel that they are peculiarly its
own and that too, in a manner which distinguishes them
from all other things, which are not so felt to be its own.
The child was blind to any such distinction before-its first
habit being to arrogate and monopolize all things; and the
question is, what those circumstances are, which serve 10
signalize some things, to which, its feelings of property, now
withdraw from wide and boundless generality, are exclu-
sively and specifically directed. It will make conclusively
for our argument, if it shall appear, that this sense of pro-
perty even in its posterior and rectified form, is the work of
nature, operating on the hearts of children; and not the
work of man, devising, in the maturity of his political wis-
dom, such a regulated system of things, as might be best
for the order and well being of society.
11. This matter then might be illustrated by the contests
of very young children, and by the manner in which these
are adjusted to the acquiescence and satisfaction of them all.
We might gather a lesson even from the quarrel which
sometimes arises among them, aboạt a matter so small as
their right to the particular chairs of a room. If one for
example, have just sat on a chair, though only for a few
minutes, and then left it for a moment-it will feel itself in,
From what has been already said of resentment, it would
appear, that the instinctive feeling of property, and instinctive
anger are in a state of co-relation with each other. It is by of.
fence being rendered to the former, that the latter is called forth,
Anterior to a sense of justice, our disposition is to arrogate every
thing-and it is then that wo are vulnerable to anger from all
points of the compass. Let another meddle, to our anoyance,
with any thing whatever, at this early stage, and we shall feel
the very emotion of anger, which in a higher stage of moral and
mental cultivation, is only called forth by its meddling with that
which really and rightfully belongs to us. The sense of justice,
instead of originating either the emotion of anger, or a sense of
property, has the effect to limit and restrain both


144 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
jured, if, on returning, it shall find the chair in the possese
sion of another occupier. The brief occupation which it has
already had, gives it the feeling of a right to the continued
Occu pation of it-insomuch, that, when kept out by an in-
truder, it has the sense of having been wrongously dispos-
sessed. The particular chair of which it was for some time
the occupier, is the object of a special possessory affection
or feeling, which it attaches to no other chair; and by which
it stands invesled in its own imagination, as being, for the
time, the only rightful occupier. This then may be regarded
as a very early indication of that possessory feeling, which
is afterwards of such extensive influence in the economy of
social life-a feeling so strong, as often of itself to constitute
a plea, not only sufficient in the apprehension of the claim-
but sufficient in the general sense of the community,
for substantiating the right of many a proprietor.
12. But there is still another primitive ingredient which
enters into this feeling of property; and we call it primitive,
because anterior to the sanctions or the application of law.
Let the child in addition to the plea that it had been the re-
cent occupier of the chair in question, be able further to ad-
vance in argument for its right-that, with its own hands,
it had just placed it beside the fire, and thereby given addi-
tional value to the occupation of it. This reason is both felt
by the child itself, and will be admitted by other children
even of a very tender age, as a strengthener of its claim.
It exemplifies the second great principle on which the na-
tural right of property rests-even that every man is pro-
prieter of the fruit of his own labour; and that to whatever
extent he may have impressed additional value on any given
thing by the work of his own hands, to that extent, at least,
he should be held the owner of it.
13. This then seems the way, in which the sense of his
right to any given thing arises in the heart of the claimant ;
but something more must be said to account for the manner
in which this right is deferred to by his companions. It
accounts for the manner, in which the possessory feeling
arises in the hearts of one and all of them, when similarly
circumstanced; but it does not account for the manner in
which this possessory feeling, in the heart of each, is re-
spected by all his fellows, so that he is suffered to remain,
in the secure and unmolested possession of that which he
rightfully claims. The circumstances which originate the


146
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
principle that could guide her initial movements. Justice
did not create property ; but found it already created her
only office being to decide between the antecedent claims of
one man and another : And, in the discharge of this office,
she but compares the rights which each of them can allege,
as founded either on the length of undisputed and undisposed
of possession, or on the value they had impressed on the
thing at issue by labour of their own. In other words, she
bears respect to those two great primitive ingredients by
which property is constituted, before that she had ever be-
stowed any attention, or given any award whatever regard-
ing it. The matter may be illustrated by the peculiar r
tion in which each man stands to his own body, as being, in
a certain view, the same with the peculiar relation in which
each man stands to his own property. His sensitive feelings
are hurt, by the infliction of a neighbour's violence upon the
one; and his proprietary feelings are hurt by the encroach-
ment of a neighbour's violence upon the other. But the jus-
tice no more originated the proprietary, than it did the sen-
sitive feelings no more gave me the peculiar affection
which I feel for the property I now occupy as my own, than
it gave me my peculiar affection for the person which I now
occupy as my own. Justice pronounces on the iniquity of
any hurtful infiction by us on the person of another-seeing
that such an infliction upon our own person, to which we
stand similarly related, would be resented by ourselves.
And Justice, in like manner, pronounces on the inequality or
iniquity of any hurtful encroachment by us on the property
of another-also seeing, that such encroachment upon our
own property, to which we stand similarly related, would
be felt and resented by ourselves. Man feels one kind of
pain, when the hand which belongs to him is struck by ano-
iher; and he feels another kind of pain, when some article
which it holds, and which he conceives to belong to him, is
wrested by another from its grasp. But it was not justice
which instituted either the animal economy in the one case
or the proprietary economy in the other. Justice found them
both already instituted. Property is not the creation of jus-
tice; but is in truth a prior creation. Justice did not form this
material, or command it into being; but in the course of mis-
understanding or controversy between man and man, proper-
ty, a material pre-existent or already made, forms the sub-
ject of many of those questions which are put into her hands.


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
147

14. But, recurring to the juvenile controversy which we
have already imagined for the purpose of illustration, there
is still a third way in which we may conceive it to be con-
clusively and definitively settled. The parents may inter-
pose their authority, and assign his own particular chair to
each member of the household. The instant effect of such
a decree, in fixing and distinguishing the respective proper-
ties, in all time coining, has led, we believe, to a misconception
regarding the real origin of property, in consequence of a
certain obscure analogy between this act of parents or legisla-
tors over the family of a household, and a supposed act of ru-
lers or legislators over the great family of a nation. Now, not
only have the parents this advantage over the magistrates-
that the property which they thus distribute is previously
their own; but there is both a power of enforcement and
a disposition to acquiescence within the limits of a home,
which exist in an immeasurably weaker degree within the
limits of a kingdom. Still, with all this superiority on the
part of the household legislators, it would even be their wis-
dom, to conform their decree as much as possible to those
natural principles and feelings of property, which had been
in previous exercise among their children—Lo have respect,
in fact, when making distribution of the chairs, both to their
habits of previous occupation, and to the additional value
which any of them may have impressed upon their favour-
ite seats, by such little arts of upholstery or mechanics, as
they are competent to practice. A wise domestic legislator
would not thwart, but rather defer to the claims and expec-
tations which nature had previously founded. And still
more a national legislator or statesman, would evince his
best wisdom, by, instead of traversing the constitution of
property which nature had previously established, greatly
deferring to that sense of a possessory right, which long
and unquestioned occupation so universally gives;
greatly deferring to the principle, that, whatever the fruit
of each man's labour may be, it rightfully, and therefore
should legitimately belong to him. A government could,
and at the termination of a revolutionary storm, often do
traverse these principles; but not without the excitement
of a thousand heart-burnings, and so the establishment of a
strong counteraction to its own authority in the heart of its
dominions. It is the dictate of sound policy—that the na-
tural, on the one hand, and the legal or political on the other


148 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
should quadrate as much as possible. And thus, instead of
saying with Dr. Paley that property derived its constitution
and being from the law of the land, we should say that law ne-
ver exhibits a better understanding of her own place and func-
tions, than when, founding on materials already provided she
feels that her wisest part is but to act asanauxiliary and to rati-
fy that prior constitution which nature had put into her hands.
15. In this exposition which we have now attempted of
the origin and rights of property, we are not insensible to the
mighty use of law. By its power of enforcement, it perpe-
tuates or defends from violation that existent order of things
which itself had established, or, rather which itself had ra-
tified. Even though at its first ordinations it had contra-
vened those natural principles which enter into the foundation
of property, these very principles will, in time, re-appear in
favour of the new system, and yield to it a firmer and a
stronger support with every day of its continuance. What-
ever fraud or force, may have been concerned at the histo-
rical commencement of the present and actual distribution
of property-the then new possessors have at length become
old; and, under the canopy and protection of law, the na-
tural rights have been superadded to the factitious or the
political. Law has guaranteed to each proprietor a long
continued occupation, till a strong and inveterate possessory
feeling has taken root and arisen in every heart. And secure
of this occupation, each may, in the course of years, have
mixed up to an indefinite amount, the improvements of his
own skill and labour with those estates—which, as the fruit
whether of anarchy or of victorious invasion, had fallen into
his hands. So that these first and second principles of na-
tural jurisprudence, whatever violence may have been dor
to them at the overthrow of a former regime, are again fos-
tered into all their original efficacy and strength during the
continuance of a present one. Insomuch, that if, at the end
of half a century, those outcasts of a great revolutionary
hurricane, the descendants of a confiscated noblesse, were
to rally and combine for the recovery of their ancient do-
mains they would be met in the encounter, not by the
force of the existing government only, but by the outraged
and resentful feelings of the existing proprietors, whose
possessory and prescriptive rights, now nurtured into full
and firm establishment, would, in addition to the sense of
interest, enlist even the sense of justice upon their side.


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
149
Apart from the physical, did we but compute to moral forces
which enter into such a conflict, it will often be found that
the superiority is in favour of the actual occupiers. Those
feelings on the one hand which are associated with the re-
collection of a now departed ancestry and their violated
rights, are found to be inoperative and feeble, when brought
into comparison or collision with that strength which nature
has annexed to the feelings of actual possession. Regarded
as but a contest of sentiment alone, the disposition to re-
cover is not so strong as the disposition to retain. The re-
collection that these were once my parental acres, though
wrested from the hand of remote ancesters by anarchists and
marauders, would not enlist so great or so practical a moral
force on the aggressive side of a new warfare, as the retlec-
tion that these are now my possessed acres, which, though
left but by immediate ancestors, I have been accustomed
from infancy to call my own, would enlist on the side of the
defensive. In the course of generations, those sedative in-
fluences, which tend to the preservation of the existing or-
der wax stronger and stronger; and those disturbing influ-
ences, which tend to the restoration of the ancient order,
wax weaker and weaker till man at last ceases to charge
himself with a task so infinitely above his strength, as the
adjustment of the quarrels and the accumulated wrongs of
the centuries which have gone by. In other words, the
constitution of law in regard to property, which is the work
of man, may be so framed as to sanction, and, therefore, to
encourage the enormities which have been perpetrated by
the force of arms--while the constitution of the mind in re-
gard to property, which is the work of nature, is so framed,
as, with conservative virtue, to be altogether on the side of
perpetuity and peace.
16. Had a legislator of supreme wisdom and armed with
despotic power been free to establish the best scheme for
augmenting the wealth and the comforts of human society
- he could have devised nothing more effectual than that
existing constitution of property, which obtains so generally
throughout the world; and by which, each man, secure
within the limits of his own special and recognized' posses-
sion, might claim as beilig rightly and originally his, the
fruit of all the labour which he may choose to expend upon
it. But this was not left to the discovery of man, or to any
ordinations of his consequent upon that discovery. He was
13*


150 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
not led to this arrangement by the experience of its conse-
quences ; but prompted to it by certain feelings, as much
prior to that experience, as the appetite of hunger is prior to
our experience of the use of food. In this matter, too, the
wisdom of nature has anticipated the wisdom of man, by
providing him with original principles of her own. Man was
not left to find out the direction in which his benevolence
might be most productive of enjoyment to others; but he
has been irresistibly, and as far as he is concerned, blindly
impelled thereto by means of a fainily affection—which, con-
centrating his efforts on a certain few, has made them a
hundred times more prolific of benefit to mankind than if
all had been left to provide the best they may for the whole,
without a precise or determinate impulse to any. And in
like manner, man was not left to hnd out the direction in
which his industry might be made most productive of the
materials of enjoyment; but, with the efforts of each con:
centrated by means of a special possessory affection on a
certain portion of the territory, the universal produce is in-
calculably greater than under a medley system of indiffer-
ence, with every field alike open to all, and, therefore, alike
unreclaimed from the wilderness—unless one man shall
consent to labour it in seed time, although another should
reap the fruit of his labour in the harvest. It is good
that man was not trusted with the whole disintanglement
of this chaos--but that a natural jurisprudence, founded on
the constitution of the human mind, so far advances and
facilitates the task of that artificial jurisprudence, which
frames the various codes or constitutions of human law. It
is well that nature has connected with the past and actual
possession of any thing, so strong a sense of right to its
continued possession; and that she has so powerfully back-
ed this principle, by means of another as strongly and uni-
versally felt as the former, even that each man has a right
to possess the fruit of his own industry. The human le-
gislator has little more to do than to conform, or rather to
promulgate and make known his determination to abide by
principles already felt and recognized by all men. Want-
ing these, he could have fixed nothing, he could have per-
petuated nothing. The legal constitution of every state, in
its last and furnished form, comes from the hand of man,
But the great and natural principles, which secure for these
constitutions the acceptance of whole communities-implant,


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
151
ed in man from his birth, or at least evincing their presence
and power in very early childhood-these are what bespeak
the immediate hand of God.
17. But these principles, strongly conservative though
they be, on the side of existing property do not at all times
prevent a revolution-which is much more frequently, how.
ever, a revolution of power than of property. But when
such is the degree of violence abroad in society, that even
the latter is effected this most assuredly, does not arise
from any decay or intermission of the possessory feelings,
that we have just been expounding; but from the force and
fermentation of other causes which prevail in opposition to
these, and in spite of them. And, after that such revolu-
tion has done its work and ejected the old dynasty of pro-
prietors, the mischief to them may be as irrecoverable, as if
iheir estates had been wrested from them, by an irruption
from the waters of the ocean, by earthquake, or the sweep-
ing resistless visitation of any other great physical calamity.
The moral world has its epochs and its transitions as well
as the natural, during which the ordinary laws are not sus-
pended but only for the time overborne ; but this does not
hinder the recurrence and full reinstatement of these laws
dnring the long eras of intermediate repose. And it is mar-
vellous, with what certainty and speed, the conservative in-
fluences, of which we have treated, gather around a new
system of things, with whatever violence, and even injustice,
it may have been ushered into the world-insomuch that,
under the guardianship of the powers which be, those links
of a natural jurisprudence, now irretrievably torn from the
former, are at length transferred in all their wonted tenacity
to the existing proprietors; riveting each of them to his own
several property, and altogether establishing a present or-
der, of as great firmness and strength as ever belonged to
the order which went before it, but which is now suspersed-
ed and forgotten. It is well that nature hath annexed so
potent a charm to actual possession; and a charm which
strengthens with cvery year and day of its continuance,
This may not efface the historical infamy of many ancient
usurpations. But the world cannot be kept in a state of per-
petual effervescence; and now that the many thousand
wrongs of years gone by, as well as the dead on whom they
have been inflicted, are fading into deep oblivion—it is weil
for the repose of its living generations, that, in virtue of the


152
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
strong possessory feelings which nature causes to arise in
the hearts of existing proprietors and to be sympathized with
by all other men, the possessors de facto have at length the
homage done to them of possessors de jure; strong in their
own consciousness of right, and strong in the recognition
thereof by all their contemporaries.
18. But ere we have completed our views upon this sub-
ject, we must shortly dwell on a principle of very exten-
sive application in morals; and which itself forms a strik-
ing example of a most beauteous and beneficent adaptation
in the constitution of the human mind to the needs and the
well-being of human society. It may be thus annou:nced,
briefly and generally ;-however strong the special affections
of our nature may be, yet, if alung with them there be but
a principle of equity in the mind, then, these affections, so
far from concentrating our selfish regards upon their several
objects to the disregard and injury of others, will but en-
hance our respect and our sympathy for the like affections
in other men.
19. This may be illustrated, in the first instance, by the
equity observed between man and man, in respect to the
bodies which they wear-endowed, as we may suppose them
to be, with equal, at least with like capacities of pain and
suffering from external violence. To inflict that very pain
upon another which I should resent or shrink from in
agony, if inflicted upon myself—this to all sense of justice
appears a very palpable iniquity. Let us now conceive then,
that the sentient frame-work of each of the parties was
made twice more sensitive, or twice more alive to pain and
pungency of feeling than it actually is. In one view it may
be said that each would become twice more selfish than be-
fore, Each would feel a double interest in warding off ex-
ternal violence from himself; and so be doubly more anxious
for his own protection and safety. But, with the very same
moral nature as ever, each, now aware of the increased sen-
sibility, not merely in himself but in his fellows, would feel
doubly restrained from putting forth upon him a hand of
violence. So, grant him to have but a sense of equity-and,
exactly in proportion as he became tender of himself, would
he become tender of another also. If the now superior ex-
quisiteness of his own frame afforded him a topic, on which,
what may be called his selfishness would feel more intensely
than before the now superior exquisiteness of another's


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
153
frame would, in like manner, afford a topic, on which his
sense of justice would feel more intensely than before. It
is even as when men of very acute sensibilities company
together-each has, on that very account, a more delicate
and refined consideration for the feelings of all the rest; and
it is only among men of tougher pellicle and rigid fibre,
where coarseness and freedom prevail, because their coarse-
ness and freedom are not felt to be offensive. Grant me but
a sense of equity-and the very fineness of my sensations
which weds me so much more to the care and the defence
of my own person, would also, on the imagination of a simi-
lar fineness in a fellow-man, restrain me so much more from
the putting forth of any violence upon his person. If I had
any compasion at all, or any horror at the injustice of in-
flicting upon another, that which I should feel to be a cruelty,
if inflicted upon myself-I would experience a greater recoil
of sympathy from the blow that was directed to the surface
of a recent wound upon another, precisely as I would feel
a severer agony in a similar infliction upon myself. So,
there is nothing in the quickness of my physical sensibilities,
and by which I am rendered more alive to the care and the
guardianship of my own person, there is nothing in this to
blunt, far less to extinguish my sensibilities for other men.
Nay, it may give a quicker moral delicacy to all the sym-
pathies which I before felt for them. And especially, the
more sensitive I am to the hurts and the annoyances which
others bring upon my own person, the more scrupulous may
I be of being in any way instrumental to the hurt or the an-
noyance of others.
* 20. The same holds true between man and man; not
merely of the bodies which they wear, but of the families
which belong to them. Each man, by nature, hath a strong
affection for his own offspring—the young whom he hath
reared, and with whom the daily habit of converse under
the same roof, hath strengthened all the original affinities
that subsisted between them. But one man a parent knows
that another man, also a parent, is actuated by the very
same appropriate sensibilities towards his offspring; and
nought remains but to graft on these separate and special
affections, in each, a sympathy between one neighbour and
another; that there might be a mutual respect for each
other's family affections. After the matter is advanced thus
far, we can be at no loss to perceive, that, in proportion to


156
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
the prompter will be his recognition of the second man's
right to his own. If each man sat more loosely to his own
portion, each would have viewed more loosely the right of
his neighbour to the other portion. The sense of property,
anterior to justice, exists in the hearts of all; and the princi-
ple of justice, subsequent to property, does not extirpate
these special affections, but only arbitrates between them.
In proportion to the felt strength of the proprietary affection
in the hearts of each; will be the strength of that deference
which each, in so far as justice has the mastery over him,
renders to the rights and the property of his neighbour.
These are the principles of the histoire raisonnee, that has
been more or less exemplified in all the countries of the
world ; and which might still be exemplified in the appro-
priation of a desert island. If we had not had the prior and
special determinations of nature, justice would have felt the
work of appropriation to be an inextricable problem. If we
had not had justice, with each man obeying only the im-
pulse of his own affections and unobservant of the like af.
fection of others, we should have been kept in a state of
constant and interminable war. Under the guidance of na-
ture and justice together, the whole earth might have been
parcelled out, without conflict and without interference.
23. If a strong self-interest in one's person may not only
be consistent with, but, by the aid of the moral sense, may
be conducive to a proportionally strong principle of forbear-
ance from all injury to the persons of other men why may
not the very same law be at work in regard to property as
to person? The fondness wherewith one nourishes and
cherishes his own flesh, might, we have seen, enhance his
sympathy and his sense of justice for that of other men ; and
so, we affirm, might it be of the fondness wherewith one
nourishes and cherishes his own field. The relation in
which each man stands to his own body, was anterior to the
first dawnings of his moral nature; and his instinctive sen-
sibilities of pain and suffering, when any violence is inflic-
ted, were also anterior, But as his moral perceptions ex-
pand, and he considers others beside himself who are simi-
larly related to their bodies—these very susceptibilities not
only lead him to recoil from the violence that is offered to him-
self; but they lead him to refrain from the offering of vio-
lence to other men. They may have an air of selfishness at
the first; yet so far from being obstacles in the way of justice


THE WELL-BEING OF BOCIETY.
157
they are indispensable helps to it. And so may each man
stand related to a property as well as to a person ; and by
ties that bind him to it, ere he thought of his neighbour's
property at all-by instinctive affections, which operated
previously to a sense of justice in his bosom; and yet which,
so far from acting as a thwart upon his justice to others,
give additional impulse to all his observations of it. He feels
what has passed within his own bosom, in reference to the
field that he has possessed, and has laboured, and that has
for a time been respected by society as his; and he is aware
of the very same feeling in the breast of a neighbour in re-
lation to another field; and in very proportion to the strength
of his own feeling, does he defer to that of his fellow-men.
It is at this point that the sense of justice begine to operate
not for the purpose of leading him to appropriate his own,
for this he has already done; but for the purpose of leading
him to respect the property of others. It was not justice
which gave to either of them at the first that feeling of pro-
perty, which each has in his own separate domain; any
more than it was justice which gave to either of them that
feeling of affection which each has for his own children. It
is after, and not before these feelings are formed, that jus-
tice steps in with her golden rule, of not doing to others as
we would not others to do unto us; and, all conscious as we
are of the dislike and resentment we should feel on the in-
vasion of our property, it teaches to defer to a similar dis-
like and a similar resentment in other men. And, so far
from this original and instinctive regard for this pro-
perty which is my own serving at all to impair, when
once the moral sense comes into play, it enhances my equi-
table regard for the property of others. It is just with me
the proprietor, as it is with me the parent. My affection for
my own family does not prompt me to appropriate the family
of another; but it strengthens my sympathetic consideration
for the tenderness and feeling of their own parent towards
them. My affection for my own field does not incline me
to seize upon that of another man; but it strengthens my
equitable considerations for all the attachments and the
claims which its proprietor has upon it. In proportion to
the strength of
the strength of that instinct which binds me to my own off-
spring, is the sympathy I feel with the tenderness of other
parents. In proportion to the strength of that instinct which
binds me to my own property, is the sense of equity I feel
the prol family does not pronomy sympathetic
ot towards


158 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
towards the rights of all other proprietors. It was not jusi
tice which gave either the one instinct or the other ; but
justice teaches each man to bear respect to that instinct in
another, which he feels to be of powerful operation in his
own bosom.
24. It is in virtue of my sentient nature that I am so pain.
fully alive to the violence done upon my own body, as to
recoil from the infliction of it upon myself. And it is in vir.
tue of my moral nature, that, alive to the pain of other bo-
dies than my own, I refrain from the infliction of it upon
them. It is not justice which gives the sensations ; but jus-
tice pronounces on the equal respect that is due to the sen-
sations of all. Neither does justice give the sensations of
property, but it finds them; and pronounces on the respect
which each owes to the sensations of all the rest. It was
not justice which gave the personal feeling; neither is it
justice which gives the possessory feeling. Justice has no-
thing to do with the process by which this body came to be
my own; and although now, perhaps, there is not a proper-
ty, at least in the civilized world, which may not have pas-
sed into the hand of their actual possessors, by a series of
purchases, over which justice had the direction-yet there
was a time when it might have been said, that justice has
had nothing to do with the process by which this garden
came to be my own; and yet, then as well as now, it would
have been the utterance of a true feeling, that he who touches
this garden, touches the apple of mine eye. And it is as
much the dictate of justice, that we shall respect the one
sensation as the other. He, indeed, who has the greatest
sensitiveness, whether about his own person or his own pro-
perty, will, with an equal principle of justice in his consti-
tution, have the greatest sympathy, both for the personal and
the proprietary rights of others. This view of it saves all
the impracticable mysticism that has gathered around the
speculations of those, who conceive of justice, as presiding
over the first distributions of property, and so have fallen
into the very common mistake, of trying to account for that
which had been provided for by the wisdom of nature, as if
it had been provided by the wisdom and the principle of
man. At the first allocations of property, justice may have
had no hand in them. They were altogether fortuitous.
One man set himself down, perhaps on a better soil than his
neighbour, and chalked out for himself a larger territory at


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
169
a time when there was none who interfered or who offered
to share it with him; and so he came to as firm a posses-
sory feeling in reference to his wider domain, as the other
has in reference to his smaller. Our metaphysical jurists
are sadly puzzled to account for the original inequalities of
property, and for the practical acquiescence of all men in the
actual and very unequal distribution of it-having recourse
to an original social compact, and to other fictions alike vi-
sionary. But if there be truth in our theory, it is just as easy
to explain, why the humble proprieior, would no more think
of laying claim to certain acres of his rich neighbour's es-
tate because it was larger than his own, than he would
think of laying claim to certain children of his neighbour's
family because it was larger
fer--or even of
claim to
certain parts of his neighbour's person because it was larger.
He is sufficiently acquainted with his own nature to be
aware, that, were the circumstances changed, he should feel
precisely as his affluent neighbour does; and he respects
the feeling accordingly. He knows that, if himself at the
head of a larger property, he would have the same affection
for all its fields that the actual proprietor has; and that, if
at the head of a larger family, he would have the same af-
fection with the actual parent for all its children. It is by
making justice come in at the right place, that is, not prior
to these strong affections of nature but posterior to them,
that the perplexities of this inquiry are done away. The
principle on which it arbitrates, is, not the comparative
magnitude of the properties, but the relative feelings of each
actual possessor towards each actual property; and if it find
these in every instance, to be the very feelings which all
men would have in the circumstances belonging to that in-
stance it attempts no new distribution, but gives its full
sanction to the distribution which is already before it. This
is the real origin and upholder of that conservative influence,
which binds together the rich and the poor in society; and
thus it is that property is respected throughout all its gra-
dations.
25. It is from the treatment of an original as if it were
a derived affection, that the whole obscurity on this topci
has arisen. It is quite as impossible to educe the possessory
feeling from an anterior sense of justice, or from a respect
Tor law-as it is to educe the parental feeling from a previ-
ous and comprehensive regard for the interests of humanity,


160 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
There is no doubt that the general good is best promoted by
the play of special family affections, but this is the work
of nature, and not the work of man. And there is no doubt
that the wealth and comfort of society are inconceivably
augmented by those influences, which bind each individual
nearly as much to his own property, as he is bound to his
own offspring. But in the one case as well as the other,
there were certain instinctive regards that came first, and
the office of justice is altogether a subsequent one; not to
put these regards into the breast of any, but to award the
equal deference that is due to the regards of all-insomuch
that the vast domain of one individual, perhaps transmitted
to him from generation, to generation, throughout the length-
ened series of an ancestry, whose feet are now upon the
earth, but whose top reaches the clouds and is there lost in
distant and obscure antiquity-is, to the last inch of its mar-
gin, under a guardianship of justice as unviolable, as that
which assures protection and ownership to the humble pos-
sessor of one solitary acre. The right of property is not the
less deferred to, either because its divisions are unequal, or
because its origin is unknown. And,'even when history tells
us that it is founded on some deed of iniquitous usurpation,
there is a charm in the continued occupation, that prevails
and has the mastery over our most indignant remembrance
of the villany of others days. It says much for the strength
of the possessory feeling, that, even in less than half a cen-
tury, it will, if legal claims are meanwhile forborne, cast
into obliteration, all the deeds, and even all the delinquencies,
which attach to the commencement of a property. At length
the prescriptive right bears every thing before it, as by the
consuetude of English, by the use and wont of Scottish law.
And therefore, once more, instead of saying, with Dr. Paley
that it is the law of the land which constitutes the basis of
property-the law exhibits her best wisdom, when she
founds on the materials of that basis, which nature and the
common sense of mankind have laid before her.
26. Dr. Thomas Brown, we hold to have been partly
right and partly wrong upon this subject. He evinces a
true discernment of what may be termed the pedigree of our
feelings in regard to property, when he says and says ad-
mirably well--that, * * Justice is not what constitutes pro-
" Lectura lxxxiii.


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
161
perty; it is a virtue which presupposes property and respects
it however constituted.” And further, that justice as a
moral virtue is not the creation of property, but the con-
formity of our actions to those views of property, which
vary in the various states of society.” But it is not as he
would affirm, it is not because obedience to a system of law,
of which the evident tendency is to the public good, is the
object of our moral regard-it is not this, which moralizes,
if we may be allowed such an application of the term, or
rather, which constitutes the virtuousness of our respect to
another man's property. This is the common mistake of
those moralists, who would ascribe every useful direction
or habitude of man to some previous and comprehensive
view taken by himself of what is best for the good of the
individual or the good of society; instead of regarding such
habitude as the fruit of a special tendency impressed direct by
the hand of nature, on a previous and comprehensive view
taken by its author, and therefore bearing on it a palpable
indication both of the goodness and the wisdom of nature's
God-even as hunger is the involuntary result of man's
physical constitution, and not of any care or consideration
by man on the uses of fool. The truth is--when, deferring
to another's right of property, we do not think of the public
good in the matter at all. But we are glad, in the first in-
stance, each to possess and to use and to improve all that
we are able to do without molestation, whether that freedom
from molestation has been secured to us by law or by the
mere circumstances of our state ; and, in virtue of principles,
not resulting from any anticipations of wisdom or any views
of general philanthropy, (because developed in early child-
hood and long before we are capable of being either phil.
anthropists or legislators) we feel a strong link of owner-
ship with that which we have thus possessed and used, and
on which we have bestowed our improvements; and we
are aware that another man, in similar relation with another
property, will feel towards it in like manner; and a sense
of justice. or its still more significant and instructive name.
of equity, suggests this equality between me and him that,
in the same manner as I would regard his encroachment
on myself as injurious, so it were alike injurious in me to
make a similar encroachment upon my neighbour.
27. We have expatiated thus long on the origin and rights
of property because of all subjects, it is the one, regarding


102 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
which our writers on jurisprudence have sent forth the
greatest amount of doubtful and unsatisfactory metaphysics.
They labour and are in great perplexity to explain even the
rise of the feeling or desire that is in the mind regarding it.
They reason, as if the very conception of property was that,
which could not have entered into the heart of man without
a previous sense of justice. In this we hold them to have
antedated matters wrong. The conception of property is
aboriginal; and the office of justice is not put to it into any
man's head; but to arbitrate among the rival feelings of
cupidity, or the arrogant and overpassing claims that are
api to get into all men's heads-not to initiate man into the
notion of property ; but, in fact, to limit and restrain his no-
tion of it-not to teach the creatures who at first conceive
themselves to have nothing, what that is which they might
call their own; but to teach the creatures whose first and
earliest tendency is to call every thing their own, what
that is which they must refrain from and concede to others.
When justice rises to authority among men, her office is,
not to wed each individual by the link of property to that
which he formerly thought it was not competent for him to
use or to possess; but it is to divorce each individual from
that, which it is not rightly competent for him to use or to
possess and thus restrict each to his own rightful portion.
Its office in fact is restrictive, not dispensatory. The use
of it is, not to give the first notion of property to those who
were destitute of it, but to limit and restrain the notion
with those among whom it is apt to exist in a state of
overflow. The use of law, in short, the great expounder and
enforcer of property, is not to instruct the men, who but for
her lessons would appropriate none; but it is to restraint
men who, but for her checks and prohibitions, would mono. ,
polize all.
28. Such then seems to have been the purpose of nature
in so framing our mental constitution, that we not only ap-
propriate from the first; but feel, each, such a power in those
circumstances, which serve to limit the appropriation of
every one man and to distinguish them from those of others,
that all, as if with common and practical consent, sit side by
side together, without conflict and without interference, on
their own respective portions, however unequal, of the ter-
ritory in which they are placed. On the uses, the indispen.
lable uses of such an arrangement, we need not expa.


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY
163
tiate. The hundred-fold superiority, in the amount of produce
for the subsistence of human beings, which an appropriated
country has over an equal extent of a like fertile but unap-
propriated, and, therefore, unreclaimed wilderness, is too
obvious to be explained. It may be stated however; and
when an economy so beneficial, without which even a few
stragglers of our race could not be supported in comfort;
and a large human family, though many times inferior to
that which now peoples our globe, could not be supported at
all-when the effect of this economy, in multiplying to a
degree inconceivable the aliment of human bodies, is viewed
in conuexion with those prior tendencies of the human mind
which gave it birth, we cannot but regard the whole as an
instance, and one of the strongest which it is possible to al-
lege, of the adaptation of external nature to that mental con-
stitution, wherewith the Author of nature hath endowed us.
29. In connexion with this part of our subject, there is
one especial adaptation, the statement of which we more
willingly bring forward, that, beside being highly important
1." The effect (of the abolition of property) would be as instant
as inevitable. The cultivation of the fields would be abandoned.
The population would be broken up into straggling bands each
prowling in quest of a share in the remaining subsistence for
themselves, and in the mutual contests of rapacity, they would
anticipate, by deaths of violence, those still crueller deaths that
would ensue, in the fearful destitution which awaited them.
Yet many would be left whom the sword had spared, but whom
famine would not spare-that overwhelming calamity under
which a whole nation might ultimately disappear.--But a few
miserable survivors would dispute the spontaneous fruits of the
earth with the beasts of the field, who now multiplied and over-
ran that land which had been desolated of its people. And so
by a series, every step of which was marked with increasing
wretchedness, the transition would at length be made to a thinly
scattered tribe of hunters, cn what before had been a peopled
territory of industrious and cultivated men. Thus, on the abo-
lition of this single law, the fairest and most civilized region of
the globe, which at present sustains its millions of families, out
of a fertility that now wayes over its cultivated, because its ap-
propriated acres, would, on the simple tie of appropriation be-
ing broken, lapse in a very few years into a frightful solitude,
or, if not bereſt of humanity altogether, Would at last become as
desolate and dreary as a North American wilderness.”—Polili-
cal Economy in connexion with the Moral State and Moral Pros.
pects of Society.


164
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDOCE TO
- in itself, it forms an instance of adaptation in the pure and
limited sense of the term*-even the influence of a circum-
stance strictly material on the state of the moral world, in
all the civilized, and indeed in all the appropriated countries
on the face of the earth. We advert to the actual fertility
of the land, and to the circumstances purely physical by
which the degree or measure of that fertility is determined.
It has been well stated by some of the expounders of geolo-
gical science, that, while the vegetable mould on the earth's
surface is subject to perpetual waste, from the action both
of the winds and of the waters, either blowing it away in
dust, or washing it down in rivers to the ocean—the loss
thus sustained, is nevertheless perpetually repaired by the
operation of the same material agents on the uplands of the
territory--whence the dust and the debris, produced by a
disintegration that is constantly going on even in the hardest
rocks, is either strewed by the atmosphere, or carried down
in an enriching sediment by mountain streams to the lands
which are beneath them. It has been rightly argued, as
the evidence and example of a benevolent design, that the
opposite causes of consumption and of supply are so adjust-
ed to each other, as to have ensured the perpetuity of our
soils.t But even though these counteracting forces had been
* See the first paragraphs of the introductory chapter.
"It is highly interesting to trace up, in this manner, the ac-
tion of causes with which we are familiar, to the production of
effects, which at first seem to require the introduction of un-
known and extraordinary powers; and it is no less interesting
to observe, how skilfully nature has balanced the action of a#
the minute causes of waste and rendered them conducive to the
general good. of this we have a most remarkable instance, in
the provision made for preserving the soil, or the coat of vegeta.
ble mould, spread ont over the surface of the earth. This coat,
as it consists of loose materials, is easily washed away by the
rains, and is continually carried down by the rivers into the sea.
this effect is visible to every one : the earth is removed not only
in the form of sand and gravel, but its finer particles suspended
in the waters, tinge those of some rivers continually, and those
of all occasionally, that is, when they are flooded or Swollen with
rains. The quantity of earth thus carried down, varies accord,
ing to circumstances ; it has been computed in some instances,
that the water of a river in a flood, contains earthly matter sus-
pended in it, amounting to more than the two bundred and fif.
fieth part of its own bulk. The soil therefore, is continually di.
mipished, its parts being delivered from higher to lower levels.


THE WELL-BEING OF BOCIETY.
165
somewhat differently balanced; though the wasting opera-
tion had remained as active and as powerful, while a more
difficult pulverization of the rocks had made the restorative
operation slower and feebler than before still we might have
had our permanent or stationary soils, but only all of less
fertility than that in which we now find them. A somewhat
different constitution of the rocks ; or a somewhat altered
proportion in the forces of that machinery which is brought
to bear upon them in the cohesion that withstands, or in the
impulse and the atmospherical depositions and the grinding
frosts and the undermining torrents that separate and carry
off the materials a slight change in one or all of these
ses, might have let down each of the various soils on the
face of the world to a lower point in the scale of productive-
ness than at present belongs to them. And when we think
of the mighty bearing which the determination of this single
element has on the state and interests of human society, we
cannot resist the conclusion that depending as it does on so
many influences, there has, in the assortment of these, been
a studied adaptation of the material and the mental worlds
to each other. For only let us consider the effect, had the
fertility been brought so low, as that on the best of soils, the
produce extracted by the most strenuous efforts of human
toil, could no more than repay the cultivation bestowed on
then-or that the food, thus laboriously raised would barely
suffice for the maintenance of the labourers. It is obvious
that a fertility beneath this point would have kept the whole
earth in a state of perpetual barrenness and desolation-
when, though performing as now its astronomical circuit in
and finally delivered into the sea. But it is a fact, that the soil,
notwithstanding, remains the same in quantity, or at least near-
ly the same, and must have done so, ever since the earth was
the receptacle of animal or vegetable life. The soil therefore is
augmented from other causes, just as much, at an average, as it
is diminished by those now mentioned ; and this augmentation
evidently can proceed from nothing but the constant and slow
disintegration of the rocks. In the permanence, therefore, of a
coat of vegetable mould on the surface of the earth, we have &
demonstrative proof of the continual destruction of the rocks;
and cannot but admire the skill, with which the powers of the
many chemical and mechanical agents employed in this compli.
cated work, are so adjusted, as to make the supply and the waste
of the soil exactly equal to one another."-Playfair's Illustrations
of the Huttonian Theory. Section iil, Art. 13


166
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
the heavens, it would have been a planet bereft of life, or
at least unfit for the abode and sustenance of the rational
generations by whom it is at present occupied. But even
with a fertility at this point, although a race of men might i
have been upholden, the tenure by which each man held his
existence behoved to have been a life of unremitting drud-
gery; and we should have beheld the whole species en-
gaged in a constant struggle of penury and pain for the
supply of their animal necessities. And it is because of a
fertility above this point, the actual fertility of vast portions
of land in most countries of the earth—that many and ex.
tensive are the soils which yield a large surplus produce,
over and above the maintenance of all, who are engaged,
whether directly or indirectly, in the work of their cultiva-
tion. The strength of the possessory feelings on the one
hand, giving rise to possessory rights recognised and acqui-
esced in by all men ; these rights investing a single indivi-
dual with the ownership of lands, that yield on the other
hand a surplus produce, over which he has the uncontrolled
disposal- make up together, such a constitution of the moral,
combined with such a constitution of the material system,
as demonstrates that the gradation of wealth in human so-
ciety has its deep and its lasting foundation in the nature
of things. And that the construction of such an economy,
with all the conservative influences by which it is upholden, *
attests both the wisdom and the benevolence of Him who
is the Author of nature, may best be evinced by the mo-
mentous purposes, to which this surplus produce of land,
(the great originator of all that can be termed affluence in
the world) is subservient.--"Had no ground yielded more in
return for the labour expended on it, than the food of the
cultivators and their secondaries, the existence of one and
all of the human race would have been spent in mere labour.
Every man would have been doomed to a life of unremitting
toil for his bodily subsistence; and none could have been
supported in a state of leisure, either for idleness, or for
other employments than those of husbandry, and such coar-
ser manufactures as serve to provide society with the second
necessaries of existence. The species would have risen but
a few degrees, whether physical or moral, above the condi-
tion of mere savages. It is just because of a fertility in the
- See Art. 7 of this Chapter,


THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
167
earth, by which it yields a surplus over and above the food
of the direct and secondary labourers, that we can command
the services of a disposable population, who, in return for
their maintenance, minister to the proprietors of this surplus,
all the higher comforts and elegancies of life. It is precise-
ly to this surplus we owe it, that society is provided with
more than a coarse and a bare supply for the necessities of
animal nature. It is the original fund out of which are paid
the expenses of art, and science, and civilization, and luxury,
and law, and defence, and all, in short, that contributes ei-
ther to strengthen or to adorn the commonwealth. Without
this surplus, we should have had but an agrarian popula-
tion-consisting of husbandmen, and those few homely and
rustic artificers, who, scattered in hamlets over the land,
would have given their secondary services to the whole poo
pulation. It marks an interesting connexion between the
capabilities of the soil, and the condition of social life, that
to this surplus we stand indispensably indebted for our
crowded cities, our thousand manufactories for the supply
of comforts and refinements to society, our wide and diver-
sified commerce, our armies of protection, our schools and
colleges of education, our halls of legislation and justice,
even our altars of piety and temple services. It has been
remarked by geologists, as the evidence of a presiding de-
sign in nature, that the waste of the soil is so nicely balan-
ced by the supply from the disintegration of the upland
rocks, which are worn and pulverized at such a rate, as to
keep up a good vegetable mould on the surface of the earth.
But each science teems with the like evidences of a devising
and intelligent God; and when we view aright the many
beneficent functions, to which, through the instrumentality
of its surplus produce, the actual degree of the earth's fer-
tility is subservient, we cannot imagine a more wondrous
and beautiful adaptation between the state of external na-
ture and the mechanism of human society."*
• Political Economy in connexion with the moral State and
Moral Prospects of Society. C. ii. Art. 10. In the appendix to
this work on the subject of rent, there are further observations
tending to prove that “there is an optimism in the actual con.
stitution of the land, as in every thing else that has procecded
from the hand of the Almighty.
stitution or the anhat "there is there are furth


168
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
CHAPTER VII.
On those special Affections which conduce to the economic
well-being of Society,
1. We now proceed to consider the economic, in contra-dis-
tinction to the civil and political well-being of society, to the
extent that this is dependent on certain mental tendencies
whether these can be demonstrated by analysis to be only
secondary results or in themselves to be simple elements of
the human constitution. We may be said indeed, to have
already bordered on this part of our argument when con-
sidering the origin and the rights of property; or the man-
ner in which certain possessory affections, that appear even
in the infancy of the mind and anticipate by many years
the exercise of human wisdom, lead to a better distribution,
both of the earth and of all the valuables which are upon it,
than human wisdom could possibly have devised, or at least
than human power without the help of these special affec-
tions could have carried into effect. For there might be a
useful economy sanctioned by law, yet which law could
not have securely established, unless it had had a foundation
in nature. For in this respect, there is a limit to the force
even of the mightiest despotism-insomuch that the most
absolute monarch on the face of the earth must so far con-
form himself, to the indelible human nature of the subjects
over whom he proudly bears the sway; else, in the reaction
of their outraged principles and feelings, they would hurt
him from his throne. And thus it is well, that, so very
generally in the different countries of the world, law, both
in her respect for the possessory and acquired rights of
property and in her enforcement of them, has, instead of
chalking out an arbitrary path for herself, only followed
where nature beforehand' had pointed the way. It is far
better, that, rather than devise à jurisprudence made up of
her own capricious inventions-she should, to so great an
extent, have but ratified a prior jurisprudence, founded on
the original or at least the universal affections of humanity.
We know few things more instructive than a study of the
mischievous effects, which attend a deviation from this
course of which, we at present shall state two remarkable


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
169
instances. The evils which ensue when law traverses any
of those principles, that lie deeply seated in the very make
and constitution of the mind, bring out into more striking
exhibition the superior wisdom of that nature from which
she has departed even as the original perfection of a me-
chanism is never more fully demonstrated, than by the con-
trast of those repeated failures, which shows of every
change or attempted improvement, that it but deranges or
deteriorates the operations of the instrument in question.
And thus too it is, that a lesson of sound theology may be
gathered, from the errors with their accompanying evils of
unsound legislation on those occasions when the wisdom
of man comes into conflict and collision with the wisdom of
God.
2. Of the two instances that we are now to produce, in
which law hath made a deviation from nature, and done
in consequence a tremendous quantity of evil, the first is the
the Tythe System of England. We do not think that the
provision of her established clergy is in any way too liberal
but very much the reverse. Still we hold it signally un-
fortunate that it should have been levied so, as to do most
unnecessary violence to the possessory feeling, both of the
owners and occupiers of land all over the country. Had
the tythe, like some other of the public burthens, been com-
muted into a pecuniary and yearly tax on the proprietors-
the possessory feeling would not have been so painfully or
80 directly thwarted by it. But it is the constant intromis-
sion of the tythe agents or proctors with the fields, and
the ipsa corpora that are within the limits of the property
which exposes this strong natural affection to an annoy-
ance that is felt to be intolerable.* But far the best method
• The following example of the thousands which might be al-
leged will show how apt the possessory feeling is to revolt against
the legal right, and at length to overbear it.
The fee-simple of the Church property of the Dean and Chap-
ter of Durham is in the Dean and Chapter of Durham.
The custom for ages has been to let houses on leases of forty
years, and lands on leases of twenty-one years, at small reserved
rents, these leases being renewable at the end of seven years,
at the pleasure of the Dean and Chapter on the payment of ar-
bitrary fines-which fines however as actually levied are ex.
ceedingly moderate, one year and a quarter being asked for
houses, and one and a half for lands.
Several of the families of the occupiers of lands and houses
15


170 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
of adjusting the state of the law to those principles of owner-
ship which are anterior to law, and which all its authority
is unable to quench-would be a commutation into land.
Let the church property in each parish be disse vered in this
way from its main territory; and then, both for the lay and
the ecclesiastical domain, there would be an accordance of
the legal with the possessory right. It is because these are
in such painful dissonance, under the existing state of things,
that there is so much exasperation in England, connected
with the support and maintenance of her clergy. No doubt
law can enforce her own arrangements, however arbitrary
and unnatural they might be; but it is a striking exhibition,
we have always thought, of the triumph of the possessory
over the legal, that, in the contests between the two parties,
the clergy have constantly been losing ground. And, in
resistance to all the opprobrium which has been thrown upon
them, do we affirm, that, with a disinterestedness which is
almost heroic, they have, in deed and in practice, forborne
to the average extent of at least one half, the assertion of
their claims. The truth is, that the felt odium which at-
taches to the system ought never to have fallen upon them.
It is an inseparable consequence of the arrangement itself,
by which law hath traversed nature-so as to be constantly
rubbing, as it were, against that possessory feeling, which
may be regarded as one of the strongest of her instincts.
There are few reformations that would do more to sweeten
the breath of English society, than the removal of this sore
annoyance-the brooding fountain of so many heartburnings
and so many festerments, by which the elements of an un-
appeasable warfare are ever at work between the landed
interest of the country, and far the most important class of
its public functionaries; and what is the saddest perversity
of all, those, whose office it is by the mild persuasions of
Christianity, to train the population of our land in the les-
sons of love and peace and righteousness—they are forced
by the necessities of a system which many of them deplore,
into the attitude of extortioners; and placed in that very
current, along with a people's hatred and a people's obloquy
so leased have been in possession for generations and long pos.
session has given to some of these occupiers such a strength of
possessory feeling, that they have the sense of being aggrieved,
it they do not get the renewals on their own terms.


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 171
are wholly unavoidable.* Even under the theocracy of the
Jews, the gystem of tithes was with difficulty unholden: and
many are the remonstrances which the gifted seers of Israel,
held with its people, for having brought of the lame and
the diseased as offerings. Such, in fact, is the violence done
by this system to the possessory feelings, that a conscientious
submission to its exactions, may be regarded as a most de-
cisive test of religious obedience-such an obedience, in.
deed, as was but ill maintained, even in the days of the
Hebrew polity, although it had the force of temporal sanc.
tions, with the miracles and manifestations of a presiding
deity to sustain it. Unless by the express appointment of
heaven, this yoke of Judaism, unaccompanied as it now is
by the peculiar and preternatural enforcements of that
pensation, ought never to have been perpetuated in the days
of Christianity. There are distinct, and, we hold, valia
reasons, for the national maintenance of an order of men in
the capacity of religious instructors to the people. But
maintenance in a way so obnoxious to nature, is a like ad-
verse to a sound civil and a sound Christian policy. Both
the cause of religion and the cause of loyalty have suffered
by it. The alienation of the church's wealth, were a deadly
blow to the best and highest interests of England; but there
are few things which would conduce more to the strength
and peace of our nation, than a fair and right commutation
of it.
• 3. Our next very flagrant example of a mischievous col-
lision between the legal and the possessory, is the English
system of poor laws. By law each man who can make
good his plea of necessity, has a claim for the relief of it,
from the owners or occupiers of the soil, or from the owners
and occupiers of houses; and, never till the end of time, will
all the authority, and all the enactments of the statute-book,
be able to divest them of the feeling, that their property is
* There is often the utmost injustice in that professional odium
which is laid upon a whole order, and none have suffered more
under it, than the clergy of England have, from the sweeping
and indiscriminate charges, which have been preferred against
them, by the demagogues of our land. We believe that no.
thing has given more of edge and currency to these invectives,
than the very unfortunate way in which their maintenance has
been provided for; and many are the amiable and accomplished
individuals among themselves to whom it is a matter of down-
right agony.


172
ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL RATURE TO
invaded. Law never can so counterwork the strong por
sessory feeling, as to reconcile the proprietors of England
to this'legalized enormity, or rid them of the sensation of a
perpetual violence. It is this mal-adjustment between the
voice that nature gives forth on the right of property, and
the voice that arbitrary law gives forth upon it-it is this,
which begets something more than a painful insecurity as
to the stability of their possessions. There is besides, a posi-
tive and what we should call, a most natural irritation.
That strong possessory feeling, by which each is wedded to
his own domain in the relation of its rightful proprietor;
and which they can no more help, because as much a part
of their original constitution, than the parental feeling by
which each is wedded to his own family in the relation of
its natural protector-this strong possessory feeling, we say,
is, under their existing economy, subject all over England
to a perpetual and most painful annoyance. And accor-
dingly we do find the utmost acerbity of tone and temper,
among the upper classes of England, in reference to their
poor. We are not sure, indeed, if there be any great differ-
ence, with many of them, between the feeling which they
have towards the poor, and the feeling which they have to
wards poachers. It is true that the law is on the side of the
one, and against the other. Yet it goes most strikingly to
prove, how impossible it is for law to carry the acquiescence
of the heart, when it contravenes the primary and urgent
affections of nature-that paupers are in any degree assi-
milated to poachers in the public imagination; and that the
inroads of both upon property should be resented, as if both
alike were a sort of trespass or invasion.
4. And it is further interesting to observe the effect of
this unnatural state of things on the paupers themselves,
Even in their deportment, we might read an unconscious
homage to the possessory right. And whereas, it has been
argued in behalf of a poor-rate, that, so far from degrading,
it sustains an independence of spirit among the peasantry,
by turning that which would have been a matter of beg-
gary into a matter of rightful and manly assertion there is
none who has attended the meeting of a parish vestry, that
will not readily admit, the total dissimilarity which obtains
between the assertion to a right of maintenance, and the
assertion of any other right whatever, whether in the field
of war or of patriotism. There may be much of the ingo


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
173

lence of beggary; but along with this, there is a most dis-
cernible mixture of its mean, and crouching, and ignoble
sordidness. There is no common quality whatever betwee
the clamorous onset of this worthless and dissipated crew,
and the generous battle-cry pro aris et focis, in which the
humblest of our population will join-when paternal acres,
or the rights of any actually holden property are invaded.
In the mind of the pauper, with all his challenging and all
his boisterousness, there is still the latent impression, that,
after all, there is a certain want of firmness about his plea.
He is not altogether sure of the ground upon which he is
standing; and, in spite of all that law has done to pervert
his imagination, the possessory right of those against whom
be prefers his demand, stares him in the face, and disturbs
him not a little out of that confidence, wherewith a man re-
presents and urges the demands of unquestionable justice.
In spite of himself, he cannot avoid having somewhat the
look and the consciousness of a poacher. And so the effect of
England's most unfortunate blunder, has been to alienate
on the one hand her rich from her poor; and on the other to
debase into the very spirit and sordidness of beggary, a large
and ever-increasing mass of her population."
lation. There is but
one way, we can never cease to affirm, by which this griey-
ous distemper of the body politic can be removed. And that
is, by causing the law of property to harmonize with the
strong and universal instincts of nature in regard to it; by
making the possessory right to be at least as inviolable as
the common sense of mankind would make it; and as to
the poor, by utterly recalling the blunder that England
made, when she turned into a matter of legal constraint,
that which should ever be a matter of love and liberty,
and when she aggravated ten-fold the dependence and mi-
sery of the lower classes, by divorcing the cause of human-
ity from the willing generosities, the spontaneous and un-
forced sympathies of our nature.
5. But this brings into view another of our special affec-
tions--our compassion for the distress, including, as one of
is most prominent and frequently recurring objects, our
compassion for the destitution of others. We have already
seen, how nature hath provided, by one of its implanted af-
fections, for the establishment of property; and for the re-
spect in which, amid all its inequalities, it is held by so-
ciety, But helpless destitution forms one extreme of this
15*


174
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
inequality, which a mere system of property appears to
leave out; and which if not otherwise provided for by the
wisdom of nature in the constitution of the human mind,
would perhaps justify an attempt by the wisdom of man to
provide for it in the constitution of human law. We do not
instance, at present, certain other securities which have been
instituted by the hand of nature, and which, if not traversed
and enfeebled by a legislation wholly uncalled for, would
of themselves, prevent the extensive prevalence of want in
society. These are the urgent law of self-preservation,
prompting to industry on the one hand and to economy on
The other; and the strong law of relative affection, which
laws if not tampered with and undermined in their force and
efficacy by the law of pauperism, would not have relieved,
but greatly better, would have prevented the vast majority
of those cases which fill the work-houses, and swarm around
the vestries of England. Still these, however, would not
have prevented all poverty. A few instances, like those
which are so quietly and manageably, but withal effectu-
ally met in the country parishes of Scotland, would still oc-
cur in every little community, however virtuous or well re-
gulated. And in regard to these, there is another law of the
mental constitution, by which nature hath made special pro-
vision for them- even the beautiful law of compassion, in
virtue of which the sight of another in agony, (and most of
all perhaps in the agony of pining hunger,) would, if unre-
lieved, create a sensation of discomfort in the heart of the
observer, scarcely inferior to what he should have telt, had
the suffering and the agony been his own.
6, But in England, the state, regardless of all the indices
which nature had planted in the human constitution, hath
taken the regulation of this matter into its own hands. By
its law of pauperism, it hath, in the first instance, ordained
for the poor a legal property in the soil; and thereby run-
ning counter to the strong possessory affection, it hath done
violence to the natural and original distribution of the land,
and loosened the secure hold of each separate owner, on the
portion which belongs to him. And in the second instance,
distrustful of the efficacy of compassion, it, by way of help-
ing forward its languid energies, hath applied the strong
hand of power to it. Now it so happens, that nothing more
effectually stifles compassion, or puts it to flight, than to be
thus meddled with. The spirit of kindness utterly refuses


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 175
the constraints of authority; and law in England, by taking
the business of charity upon itself, instead of supplement-
ing. hath well nigh destroyed the anterior provision my
for it by nature-thus leaving it to be chiefly provided for,
interior provision made
by methods and by a machinery of its own. The proper
function of law is to enforce the rights of justice, or to de
fend against the violation of them; and never does it make
a more flagrant or a more hurtful invasion, beyond the con-
fines of its own legitimate territory-than, when confound-
ing humanity with justice, it would apply the same enforce-
ments to the one virtue as to the other. It should have
taken a lesson from the strong and evident distinction which
nature hath made between these two virtues, in her con-
struction of our moral system; and should have observed a
corresponding distinction in its own treatment of them-re-
senting the violation of the one; but leaving the other to
the free interchanges of good will on the side of the dis.
penser, and of gratitude on the side of the recipient. When
law, distrustful of the compassion that is in all hearts,
enacted a system of compulsory relief, lest, in our neglect
of others, the indigent should starve ; it did incomparably
worse, than if, distrustful of the appetite of hunger, it had
enacted for the use of food a certain regimen of times and
quantities, lest neglectful of ourselves, our bodies might have
perished. Nature has made a better provision than this
for both these interests; but law has done more mischief
by interference with the one, than it could ever have done
by interference with the other. It could not have quelled
the appetite of hunger, which still, in spite of all the law's
officiousness, would have remained the great practical impel.
lent to the use of food, for the well being of our physical
economy. But it has done much to quell and to overbear
the affection of compassion, that never-failing impellent, in
a free and natural state of things, to deeds of charity, for
the well being of the social economy. The evils which have
engued are of too potent and pressing a character to require
description. They have placed England in a grievous di-
lemma, from which she can only be extricated, by the new-
modelling of this part of her statute-book, and a nearer con-
formity of its provisions to the principles of natural jurispru-
dence. Meanwhile they afford an emphatic demonstration
for the superior wisdom of nature, which is never so deci-
sively or so triumphantly attested, as by the mischief that


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
177
and incorrect in the expression of it. If a man can do vir-
tuously, when not aiming at the useful, and not so much as
thinking of it-then to design and execute what is useful,
may be and is a virtue; but it is not all virtue.*
8. There is one way in which a theorist may take refuge
from this conclusion. It is quite palpable, that a man often
feels himself to be doing virtuously-when, to all sense, he
is not thinking of the utilities which follow in its train. But
then it may be affirmed, that he really is so thinking-al-
though he is not sensible of it. There can be little doubt of
such being the actual economy of the world, such the exist-
ing arrangement of its laws and its sequences that virtue
and happiness are very closely associated; and that, no
less in those instances, where the resulting happiness is not
at all thought of, than in those where happiness is the di-
rect and declared object of the virtue. Who can doubt that
truth and justice bear as manifold and as important a sub-
serviency to the good of the species as beneficence does ?--
yet it is only with the latter, that this good is the object
of our immediate contemplation. But then it is affirmed,
that when two terms are constantly associated in nature,
there must be as constant an association of them in the mind
of the observer of nature an association at length so habit-
ual, and therefore so rapid, that we become utterly uncon-
scious of it. Of this we have examples, in the most fre-
quent and familiar operations of human life. In the act of
reading, every alphabetical letter must have been present to
the mind-yet how many thousands of them, in the course
of a single hour, must have passed in fleeting succession,
without so much as one moment's sense of their presence,
which the mind has any recollection of. And it is the same
in listening to an acquaintance, when we receive the whole
• If our moral judgment tell that some particular thing is right,
without our adverting to its utility-then though all that we hold
to be morally right should be proved by observation to yield the
maximum of utility, utility is not on that account the mind's
criterion for the rightness of this particular thing. God hath
given us the sense of what is right; and He hath besides so or-
dained the system of things, that what is right is generally that
which is most useful-yet, in many instances, it is not the per-
ceived usefulness, which makes us recognize it to be right. We
agree too with Bishop Butler in not venturing to assume that
God's sole end in creation was the production of the greatest
happiness.


178
, AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
meaning and effect of his discourse, without the distinct
consciousness of very many of those individual words
which still were indispensable to the meaning. Nay, there
are other and yet more inscrutable mysteries in the human
constitution; and which relate, not to the thoughts that we
conceive without being sensible of them, but even to the vo-
litions that we put forth, and to very many of which we
are alike insensible. We have only to reflect on the num-
ber and complexity of those muscles which are put into ac-
tion, in the mere processes of writing or walking, or even
of so balancing ourselves as to maintain a posture of stabi-
lity. It is understood to be at the bidding of the will, that
each of our muscles performs its distinct office; and yet, out
of the countless volitions, which had their part and their
play, in these complicated, and yet withal most familiar and
easily practicable operations-how many there are which
wholly escape the eye of consciousness. And thus too re-
course may be had to the imagination of certain associating
processes, too hidden for being the objects of sense at the
time, and too fugitive for being the objects of remembrance
afterwards. And on the strength of these it may be asked-
how are we to know, that the utility of truth and justice is
not present to the mind of man, when he discharges the ob-
ligation of these virtues; and how are we to know, that it
is not the undiscoverable thought of this utility, which forms
the impellent principle of that undiscoverable volition by
which man is urged to the performance of them?
9. Now we are precluded from replying to this question
in any other way, than that the theory which roquires such
an argument for its support, may be said to fetch all its ma-
terials from the region of conjecture. It ventures on the
affirmation of what is going on in a terra incognita; and
we have not the means within our reach, for meeting it in
the terms of a positive contradiction. But we can at least
say, that a mere argumentum ab ignorantia is not a suffi-
cient basis on which to ground a philosophic theory; and
that thus to fetch an hypothesis from among the inscruta-
bilities of the mind, to speak of processes going on there
80 quick and so evanescent that the eye of consciousness
cannot discover them is to rear a superstruoture not upon
the facts which lie within the limit of separation between
the known and the unknown, but upon the fancies which lie
without this limit. A great deal more is necessary for the


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
179
establishment of an assertion, than that an adversary cannot
disprove it. A thousand possibilities may be affirmed which
are susceptible neither of proof nor of disproof; and surely
it were the worst of logic to accept as proof, the mere cir-
cumstance that they are beyond the reach of disproof.
They, in fact, lie alike beyond the reach of both; in whic
case they should be ranked among the figments of mere ima-
gination, and not among the findings of experience. How
are we to know but that, in the bosom of our great planet-
y amplitude, there do not float, and in eliptic orbits round
the sun, pieces of matter vastly too diminutive for our tele-
scopes; and that thus the large intermediate spaces between
the known bodies of the system, instead of so many deso-
late blanks, are in fact peopled with little worlds—all of
them teeming, like our own, with busy and cheerful ani-
mation. Now, in the powerlessness of our existing tele-
scopes, we do not know but it may be so. But we will not
believe that it is so, till a telescope of power enough be in-
vented, for disclosing this scene of wonders to our observa-
tion. And it is the same of the moral theory that now en-
gages us. It rests, not upon what it finds among the ar-
cana of the human spirit, but upon what it fancies to be
there; and they are fancies too which we cannot deny, but
which we will not admit-till, by some improved power of
internal observation, they are turned into findings. We
are quite sensible of the virtuousness of truth ; but we have
not yet been made sensible, that we always recognize this
virtuousness, because of a glance we have had of the uti-
lity of truth-though only perhaps for a moment of time,
too minute and microscopical for being noticed by the naked
eye of consciousness. We can go no further upon this ques-
tion than the light of evidence will carry us. And, while
we both feel in our own bosoms and observe in the testimony
of those around us, the moral deference which is due to
truth and justice-we have not yet detected this to be the
same with that deference, which we render to the virtue of
benevolence. Or, in other words, we do vcnerate and re-
gard these as virtues-while, for aught we know, the utility
of them is not in all our thoughts. We agree with Dugald
Stewart in thinking, that, "considerations of utility do not
seem to us the only ground of the approbation we bestow on
this disposition." He further observes, that, abstracting
from all regard to consequences, there is something pleasing


180
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDOCB TO
and amiable in sincerity. openness, and truth: gomething
disagreeable and disgusting in duplicity, equivocation, and
falsehood. Dr. Hutcheson himself, the great patron of that
theory which resolves all moral qualities into benevolence,
confesses this--for he speaks of a sense which leads us to
approve of veracity, distinct from the sense which approves
of qualities useful to mankind."*
10. However difficult it may be, to resolve the objective
question which respects the constitution of virtue in itself-
in the subjective question, which respects the constitution
of the mind, we cannot but acknowledge the broad and
palpable distinction, which the author of our moral frame
hath made, between justice and truth on the one hand, and
benevolence on the other. And it had been well, it law-
givers had discriminated, as nature has done, between jus-
tice and humanity-although the mischief of their unfortu-
nate deviation serves, all the more strikingly, to prove the
adaptation of our moral constitution to the exigencies of
human society. The law of pauperism hath assimilated
beneficence to justice, by enacting the former, in the very
way that it does the latter; and enforcing what it has thus
enacted by penalties. Beneficence loses altogether its pro-
per and original character, when, instead of moving on the
impulse of a spontaneous kindness that operates from
within, it moves on the impulse of a legal obligation from
without. Should law specify the yearly sum that must
pass from my hands to the destitute around me- then, it is
not beneficence which has to do with the matter. What
I have had to surrender, law hath already ordained to be
the property of another; and I, in giving it up, am doing
an act of justice and not an act of liberality. To exercise
the virtue of beneficence, I must go beyond the sum that is
specified by law; and thus law in her attempts to seize
upon beneficence, and to bring her under rule, hath only
forced her to retire within a narrower territory, on which
alone it is that she can put forth the free and native charac-
teristics which belong to her. Law, in fact, cannot, with
any possible ingenuity, obtain an imperative hold on benefi.
cence at all--for her very touch transforms this virtue into
another. Should law go forth on the enterprise of arresting
beneficence upon her own domain, and there laying upon
Stewart's " Outlines of Moral Philosophy,” Art. Veracity.


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETT. 181
her its authoritative dictates-it would find that beneficence
had eluded its pursuit; and that all which it could possi-
bly do, was to wrest from her that part of the domain of
which it had taken occupation, and bring it under the au-
thority of justice. When it thought to enact for beneficence,
it only, in truth, enacted a new division of property; and
in so doing, it contravenes the possessory, one of nature's
special affections-while, by its attempts to force what
should have been left to the free exercise of compassion, it
has done much to supersede or to extinguish another of
these affections. It hath so pushed forward the line of de-
marcation--as to widen the space which justice might call
na to contract the space which beneficence
call her own. But never will law be able to make a cap-
tive of beneficence, or to lay personal arrest upon her. It
might lessen and limit her means, or even starve her into
utter annihilation. But never can it make a living captive
of her. It is altogether a vain and hopeless undertaking to
legislate on the duties of beneficence; for the very nature
of this virtue, is to do good freely and willingly with its
own. But on the moment that law interposes to any given
extent with one's property, to that extent it ceases to be his
own; and any good that is done by it is not done freely.
The force of law and the freeness of love cannot amalga-
mate the one with the other. Like water and oil they are
immiscible. We cannot translate beneficence into the sta-
tute-book of law, without expunging it from the statute-
book of the heart; and, to whatever extent we make it the
object of compulsion, to that extent we must destroy it.
11. And in the proportion that beneficence is put to flight
is gratitude put to flight along with it. The proper object
of this emotion is another's good will. But I do not hold
as from the good will of another, that which law hath ena-
bled me to plea as my own right-nay to demand, with a
front of hardy and resolute assertion. It is this which
makes it the most delicate and dangerous of all ground
when law offers to prescribe rules for the exercise of bene-
ficence, or to lay its compulsory hand on a virtue, the very
freedom of which is indispensable to its existence. And it
not only extinguishes the virtue; but it puts an end to all
those responses of glad and grateful emotion, which its pre-
sence and its smile and the generosity of its free-will of-
ferings awaken in society. It is laying an arrest on all the
16


182 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
music of living intercourse, thus to forbid those beautiful
and delicious echoes, which are reflected, on every visit of
unconstrained mercy, from thoee families that are gladdened
by her footsteps. And what is worse, it is substituting in
their place the hoarse and jarring discords of the challerige
and the conflict and the angry litigation. We may thus
see, that there is a province in human affairs, on which
law should make no entrance-a certain department of hu-
man virtue wherein the moralities should be left to their
own unfettered play, else they shall be frozen into uiter
apathy-a field sacred to liberty and good will that should
ever be kept beyond the reach of jurisprudence; or on
which, if she once obtain a footing, she will spoil it of all
those unbought and unbidden graces that natively adorn it.
So that while to law we would commit the defence of soci-
ety from all the aggressions of violence, and confide the
strict and the stern guardianship of the interests of justice-
we should tremble for humanity lest it withered and ex.
pired under the grasp of so rough a protector; and lest be-
fore a countenance grave as that of a judge, and grim as
of a messenger-at-arms, this frail but loveliest of the
virtues should be turned, as if by the head of Medusa, into
stone.
12. But there are other moral ills in this unfortunate
perversion, beside the extinction of good will in the hearts of
the affluent and of gratitude in the hearts of the poor-
though it be no slight mischief to any community, that the
tie of kindliness between these two orders should have been
broken; and that the business of charity, which when left
spontaneous is so fertile in all the amenities of life, should
be transformed into a fierce warfare of rights, from its very
pature incapable of adjustment, and, whether they be the en-
croached upon or the repelled, subjecting both parties to the
sense of a perpetual violence. But over and above this,
there are other distempers, wherewith it hath smitten the
social economy of England, and of which experience will
supply the English observer with many a vívid recollec-
tion. The reckless but withal most natural improvidence
of those whom the state has undertaken to provide for, see-
ing that law hath proclaimed in their favour a discharge
from the cares and the duties of self-preservation, the
headlong dissipation in consequence the dissolution of fa-
mily ties, for the same public and proclaimed charity


THE BOONOMIC WELL-BEING OF BOCIETY. 183
which absolves a man from attention to himself will ab-
solve him also from attention to his relatives—the decay and
interruption of sympathy in all the little vicinities of town
and country, for each man under this system of an assured
and universal provision feels himself absolved too from at-
tention to his neighbours-These distempers both social and
economic have a common origin; and the excess of them
above what taketh place in a natural state of things may all
be traced to the unfortunate aberration, which, in this in-
stance, the constitution of human law hath made from the
constitution of human nature.
· 13. In our attempts to trace the rise of the possessory.
affection and of a sense of property, we have not been able
to discover any foundation in nature, for a sentiment that
we oiten hear impetuously urged by the advocates of the
system of pauperism—that every man has a right to the
means of subsistence. Nature does not connect this right
with existence; but with continued occupation, and with
another principle to which it also gives the sanction of its
voice-chat, each man is legitimate owner of the fruits of
his own industry. These are the principles on which na-
ure hath drawn her landmarks over every territory
that is peopled and cultivated by human beings. And
the actual distribution of property is the fruit, partly of
man's own direct aim and acquisition, and partly of cir-
cumstances over which he had no control. The right of
man to the means of existence on the sole ground that he
exists has been loudly and vehemcently asserted; yet is a
factitious sentiment notwithstanding-iending to efface the
distinctness of nature's landmarks, and to traverse those ar-
rangements, by which she hath provided far better for the
peace and comfort of society, nuy for the more sure and
liberal support of all its members. It is true that nature, in
fixing the principles on which man has a right to the fruits
of the earth, to the materials of his subsistence, has left out
certain individuals of the human family some outcast
stragglers, who, on neither of nature's principles, will be
found possessed of any right or of any property. It is for
their sake that human law hath interposed, in some coun-
tries of the world ; and, by creating or ordaining a right for
them, has endeavoured to make good the deficiency of na-
ture. But if justice alone could have ensured a right distri-
bution for the supply of want, and if it must be through


184
ATTEOTIONS WHICH CONDUCK TO
the medium of a right that the destitute shall obtain their
maintenance-then, would there have been no need for an-
other principle, which stands out most noticeably in our
nature; and compassion would have been a superfluous
part of the human constitution. It is thus that nature pro-
vides for the improvided not by unsettling their limits
which her previous education had established in all minds
not by the extension of a right to every man; but by esta-
blishing in behalf of those some men, whom accident or the
necessity of circumstances or even their own misconduct
had left without a right, a compassionate interest in the bo-
som of their fellows. They have no advocate to plead for
them at the bar of justice; and therefore nature hath fur-
nished them with a gentler and more persuasive advocate,
who might solicit for them at the bar of mercy; and, for
their express benefit, hath given to most men an ear for
pity, to many a hand open as day for melting charity. But
it is not to any rare, or romantic generosity, that she hath
confided the relief of their wants. She hath made compas-
sion one of the strongest, and in spite of all their depravations
to which humanity is exposed, one of the steadiest of our
universal instincts. It were an intolerable spectacle even to
the inmates of a felon's cell, did they behold one of their fel-
lows in the agonies of hunger; and rather than endure it,
would they share their own scanty meal with them.* It
were still more intolerable to the householders of any neigh-
bourhood insomuch that, where law had not attempted to
supersede nature, every instance of distress or destitution
would, whether in town or country, give rise to an internal
operation of charity throughout every little vicinity of the
land. The mischief which law hath done, by trying to
• The certainty of this operation is beautifully exemplified in
a passage of Mr. Buxton's interesting book on prisons-from
which it appears that there is no allowance of food to the debt.
ors, and a very inferior allowance of food to the criminals, who
are confined in the gaol at Bristol. The former live on their
own means or the casual charity of the benevolent. Instances
have occurred when both of these resources failed them; and
starvation would have ensued, had not the criminals, rather
than endure the neighbourhood of such a suffering, shared their
own scanty pittance along with them-thus affording an argu.
mentum a fortiore for a like strength of compassion throughout
the land seeing that it had survived the depraving process
which leads to the malefactor's cell..


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 185
mend the better mechanism which nature had instituted, is
itself a most impressive testimony to the wisdom of nature.
he perfection of her arrangements, is never more strikingly
exhibited, than by those evils which the disturbance of
them brings upon society—as when her law in the heart
has been overborne by England's wretched law of pauper-
ism; and this violation of the natural order has been fol-
lowed up, in consequence, by a tenfold increase both of po-
verty and crime.
14. It is interesting to pursue the outgoings of such a
system; and to ascertain whether nature hath vindicated
her wisdom, by the evil consequences of a departure from
her guidance on the part of man- for if so, it will supply
another proof, or furnish us with another sight of the ex-
quisite adaptation which she hath established between the
moral and the physical, or between the two worlds of mind
and matter. Certain, then, of the parishes of England have
afforded a very near exemplification of the ultimate state
to which one and all of them are tending—a state which
is consummated, when the poor rates form so large a de-
duction from the rents of the land, that it shall at length
cease to be an object to keep them in cultivation.* It is
thus that some tracts of country are on the eve of being ac-
tually vacated by their proprietors; and as their place of
superintendance cannot be vacated by others, who have no
right of superintendance-the result might be, that whole
estates shall be as effectually lost to the wealth and re-
sources of the country, as if buried by an earthquake under
• The following is an extract from the report of a select
committee on the poor law printed in 1817. “The consequences
which are likely to result from this state of things, are clearly
set forth in the petition from the parish of Wombridge in Salop.
which is fast approaching to this state. The petitioners state
that the annual value of lands, mines and houses in this pa-
rish, is not sufficient to maintain the numerous and increasing
poor, even if the same were set free of rent; and that these
circumstances will inevitably compel the occupiers of lands and
mines to relinquish them; and the poor will be without relief,
or any known mode of obtaining it, unless some assistance bé
speedily afforded to them. And your committee apprehend.
from the petition before them, that this is one of many parishes
that are fast approaching to a state of dereliction."
The inquiries of the present Poor law Commission have led
to a still more aggravated and confirmed view of the eyils of
the system
16*


186 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
water, or, as if some blight of nature had gone over them
and bereft them of their powers of vegetation. Now we
know not, if the whole history of the world furnishes a
more striking demonstration than this, of the mischief that
may be done, by attempting to carry into practice a theo
retical speculation, which, under the guise and even with
the real purpose of benevolence, has for its plausible object,
to equalize among the children of one common humanity,
the blessings and the fruits of one common inheritance.
The truth is, that we have not been conducted to the pre-
sent state of our rights and arrangements respecting pro-
perty, by any artificial process of legislation at all. The
state of property in which we find ourselves actually
landed, is the result of a natural process, under which all
that a man earns by his industry is acknowledged to be his
own-or, when the original mode of acquisition is lost sight
of, all that a man retains by long and undisturbed posses-
sion is felt and acknowledged to be his own also. Legis.
lation ought to do no more than barely recognize these prin-
ciples, and defend its subjects against the violation of them.
And when it attempts more than this when it offers to
tamper with the great arrangements of nature, by placing
the rights and the securities of property on a footing different
from that of nature when, as in the case of the English
poor-laws, it does so, under the pretence and doubtless too
with the honest design of establishing between the rich and
the poor a nearer equality of enjoyment; we know not in what
way violated nature could have inflicted on the enterprise a
more signal and instructive chastisement, than when the
whole territory of this plausible but presumptuous experi-
ment is made to droop and to wither under it as if struck
by a judgment from heaven-till at length that earth out of
which the rich draw all their wealth and the poor all their
subsistence, refuses to nourish the children who have aban-
doned her; and both parties are involved in the wreck of
one common and overwhelming visitation.
Hi 15. But we read the same lesson in all the laws and
movements of political economy. The superior wisdom of
nature is demonstrated in the mischief which is done by any
aberration therefrom-when her processes are disturbed or
intermeddled with by the wisdom of man. The philosophy
of free trade is grounded on the principle, that society is
most enriched or best served, when commerce is left to its


THE ECONOMIO WELL-BEING OF BOCIETY.
187
own spontaneous evolutions; and is neither fostered by the
artificial encouragements, nor fettered by the artificial re-
straints of human policy. The greatest economic good is
rendered to the community, by each man being left to con-
sult and to labour for his own particular good or, in other
words, a more prosperous result is obtained by the sponta-
neous play and busy competition of many thousand wills,
each bent on the prosecution of its own selfishness, than by
the anxious superintendance of a government, vainly at-
tempting to medicate the fancied imperfections of nature, or
to improve on the arrangements of her previous and better
mechanism. It is when each man is left to seek, with con-
centrated and exclusive aim, his own individual benefit
it is then, that markets are best supplied ; that commo-
dities are furnished for general-use, of best quality, and in
greatest cheapness and abundance; that the comforts of
life are most multiplied; and the most free and rapid aug.
mentation takes place in the riches and resources of the
commonwealth. Such a result, which at the same time not
a single agent in this vast and complicated system of trade
contemplates or cares for, each caring only for himself-
strongly bespeaks a higher agent, by whose transcendental
wisdom it is, that all is made to conspire so harmoniously
and to terminate so beneficially. We are apt to recognize
no higher wisdom than that of man, in those mighty con-
certs of human agency-a battle, -or a revolution, or the
accomplishment of some prosperous and specific scheme of
universal education; where each who shares in the under-
taking is aware of its object, or acts in obedience to some
master-mind who may have devised and who actuates the
whole. But it is widely different, when, as in political
economy, some great and beneficent end both unlooked and
unlaboured for, is the result, not of any concert or general
purpose among the thousands who are engaged in it-but
is the compound effect, nevertheless, of each looking seve-
rally, and in the strenuous pursuit of individual advan-
tage, to some distinct object of his own. When we behold
the working of a complex inanimate machine, and the use.
fulness of its products-we infer, from the unconsciousness
of all its parts, that there must have been a planning and a
presiding wisdom in the construction of it. T'he conclusion
is not the less obvious, we think it emphatically more 80,
when, instead of this, we behold in one of the animate man


188
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO

chines of human society, the busy world of trade, a benefi-
cent result, an optimism of public and economical advan-
tage, wrought out by the free movements of a vast multi-
tude of men, not one of whom had the advantage of the pub-
lic in all his thoughts. When good is effected by a com.
bination of unconscious agents incapable of all aim, we
ascribe the combination to an intellect that devised and gave
it birth. When good is effected by a combination of con-
scious agents capable of aim, but that an aim wholly dif-
ferent with each from the compound and general result of
their united operations—this bespeaks a higher will and a
higher wisdom than any by which the individuals, taken
separately, are actuated. When we look at each, striving
to better his own condition, we see nothing in this but the
selfishness of man. When we look at the effect of this uni-
versal principle, in cheapening and multiplying to the ut-
termost all the articles of human enjoyment, and establishing
a thousand reciprocities of mutual interest in the world-
we see in this the benevolence and comprehensive wisdom
of God.
16. The whole science of Political Economy is full of
those exquisite adaptations to the wants and the comforts
of human life, which bespeak the skill of a master-hand, in
the adjustment of its laws, and the working of its pro-
foundly constructed mechanism. We shall instance, first,
that speciality in the law of prices, by which they oscillate
more largely with the varieties in the supply of the neces-
saries, than they do in the mere comforts or luxuries of hu-
man life. The deficiency of one tenth in the imports of su-
gar, would not so raise the price of that article, as a simi-
lar deficiency in the supply of corn, which might rise even
a third in price, by the diminution of a tenth from the usual
quantity brought to market. It is not with the reason, but
with the beneficial effect of this phenomenon, that we at
present have to do--not with its efficient, but with its final
cause; or the great and obvious utilities to which it is
subservient. Connected with this law of wider variation in
the price than in the supply of first necessaries, is the rea-
son why a population survive so well those years of fa-
mine, when the prices perhaps are tripled. This does not
argue that they must be therefore three times worse fed
than usual. The food of the country may only, for aught
we know, have been lessened by a fourth part of its usual


THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY.
169
supply-or, in other words, the families may at an average
be served with three-fourths of their usual subsistence, at
the very time that the cost of it is three times greater
than usual. And to make out this large payment, they
have to retrench for the year in other articles-altogether,
it is likely, to give up the use of comforts; and to limit
themselves more largely in the second, than they can pos-
bibly do in the first necessaries of life-to forego perhaps
many of the little seasonings, wherewith they wont to im-
part a relish to their coarse and humble fare-to hus-
band more strictly their fuel; and be satisfied for a time
with vestments more threadbare, and even more tattered,
than what in better times they would choose to appear in.
It is thus that even although the first necessaries should be
tripled in price for a season, and although the pecuniary in-
come of the labouring classes should not at all be increased
yet they are found to weather the hardships of such a
visitation. The food is still served out to them at a much
larger proportion than the cost of it would in the first in-
stance appear to indicate. And in the second instance they
are enabled to purchase at this cost--because, and more
especially if they be a well-habited and well-conditioned
peasantry, with a pretty high standard of enjoyment
in ordinary years, they have more that they can save
and retrench upon in a year of severe scarcity. They
can disengage much of that revenue which before went to
the purchase of dress, and of various luxuries that might
for a season be dispensed with ; and so have the more to
expend on the materials of subsistence. It is this which
explains how roughly a population can bear to be handled,
both by adverse seasons and by the vicissitudes of trade;
and how after all there is a stability about a people's
means, which will keep its ground against many checks,
and amidst many fluctuations. It is a mystery and a mar-
vel to many an observer, how the seemingly frail and pre-
carious interest of the labouring classes should after all,
have the stamina of such endurance as to weather the most
fearful reverses both of commerce and of the seasons; and
that, somehow or other, we find after an interval of gloomy
suffering and still gloomier fears, that the families do
emerge again into the same state of sufficiency as before.
We know not a fitter study for the philanthropist than the
working of that mechanism, by which a process so gratify.


190
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
ing is caused, or in which he will find greater reason to
admire the exquisite skill of those various adaptations that
must be referred to the providence of Him who framed so-
ciety, and suited so wisely to each other the elements of
which it is composed.
17. There is nought which appears more variable than
the operation of those elements by which the annual sup-
ply of the national subsistence is regulated. How unlike
in character is one season to another; and between the ex-
tremes of dryness and moisture, how exceedingly different
may be the amount of that produce on which the suste-
nance of man essentially depends. Even after that the
promise of abundance is well nigh realized, the hurricane
of a single day, passing over the yet uncut but ripened
corn; or the rain of a few weeks to drench and macerate
the sheaves that lie piled together on the harvest-field,
were enough to destroy the food of millions. We are aware
of a compensation, in the varieties of soil and exposure, so
that the weather which is adverse to one part of the coun-
try might be favourable to another; besides that the mis-
chief of a desolating tempest in autumn must only be par.
tial, from the harvest of the plains and uplands falling
upon different months. Still, with all these balancing
causes, the produce of different years is very far from be-
ing equalized; and its fluctuations would come charged
with still more of distress and destitution to families-were
there not a counterpoise to the laws of nature, in what may
be termed the laws of political economy.
18. The price of human food does not immediately de-
pend on the quantity of it that is produced, but on the quan-
tity of it that is brought to market; and it is well that, in
every year of scarcity, there should be instant causes put
into operation for increasing the latter quantity to the ut-
termost-80 as to repair as much as possible the deficien-
cies of the former. It is well that even a small short-com-
ing in the crop should be so surely followed by a great
advance of prices; for this has instantly the effect of put-
ting the families of the land upon that shortness of allow-
ance, which might cause the supply, limited as it is, to
serve throughout the year. But, besides the wholesome re-
straint which is thus imposed on the general consumption
of families, there is encouragement given by this dearness
to abridge the consumption upon farms, and by certain


192
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
merce, this is just a provision for a securer and readier fill-
ing up of the deficiency by a movement from abroad-
thing of far greater importance with the necessaries than
with the mere comforts or luxuries of life. That law of wider
and more tremulous oscillation in the price of corn, which
we have attempted to expound, is in itself a security for a
more equal distribution of it over the globe by man, in
those seasons when nature has been partial-so as to dif-
fuse the more certainly and the more speedily through the
earth that which has been dropped upon it unequally from
Heaven. It is well that greater efficacy should thus be given
to that corrective force, by which the yearly supplies of
food are spread over the world with greater uniformity
than they at first descend upon it; and, however much
it may be thought to aggravate a people's hardships, that
a s!ight failure in their home supply should create such a
rise in the cost of necessaries—yet certainly it makes the
impulse all the more powerful, by which corn flows in from
lands of plenty to a land of famine." But what we have
long esteemned the most beautiful part of this operation, is
the instant advantage, which a large importation from
abroad gives to our export manufactures at home. There
is a limit in the rate of exchange to the exportation of arti-
cles from any country; but up to this limit, there is a class
of labourers employed in the preparation of these articles.
Now the effect of an augmented importation upon the ex-
change is such as to enlarge this limit--so that our ex-
port traders can then sell with a larger profit, and carry
out a greater amount of goods than before, and thus enlist
a more numerous population in the service of preparing
them. An increased importation always gives an impulse
to exportation, so as to make employment spring up in one
quarter, at the very time that it disappears in another. Or,
rather, at the very time when the demand for a particular
commodity is slackened at home, it is stimulated abroad.
We have already adverted to the way in which families
shift their expenditure
far greater proportion of it than usual to the first neces-
daries of life, and withdrawing it proportionally from the
comforts, and even second necessaries of life. Cloth may
be regarded as one of the second necessaries; and it were
woful indeed, if on the precise year when food was dearest,
the numerous workmen engaged in this branch of industry
recting &


194
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
tion as beautiful as that which obtains in the planetary
system, and by which amid all disturbances and errors, it
is upheld in its mean state indestructible and inviolate
does capital, in like manner, constantly tend to a condition
of optimism, and is never far from it, amid all the varia-
tions, whether of defect, or redundancy, to which it is ex-
posed. When in defect, by the operation of high prices, it
almost instantly recovers itself-when in excess, it, by the
operation of low profits, or rather of losing speculations,
almost instantly collapses into a right mediocrity. In the
first case, the inducement is to trade, rather than to spend;
and there is a speedy accumulation of capital. In the
second case, the inducement is to spend rather than to
trade; and there is a speedy reduction of capital. It is thus
that capital ever suits itself, in the way that is best possible,
to the circumstances of the country-so as to leave uncalled
for, any economic regulation by the wisdorn of man; and
tnat precisely because of a previous moral and mental
regulation by the wisdom of God.
21. But if any thing can demonstrate the hand of a righ-
teous Deity in the nature and workings of what may well
be termed a mechanism the very peculiar mechanism
trade; it is the healthful impulse given to all its move-
ments, wherever there is a reigning principle of sobriety
and virtue in the land—as to insure an inseparable con-
nexion between the moral worth and the economic comfort
of a people. Of this we should meet with innumerable ve-
rifications in political economy-did we make a study of the
science, with the express design of fixing and ascertaining
them. There is one very beautiful instance in the effect,
which the frugality and foresight of workmen would have
to control and equalize the fluctuations of commerce-act-
ing with the power of a fly in mechanics; and so as to
save, or at least indefinitely to shorten, those dreary inter-
vals of suspended work or miserable wages, which now
occur so often, and with almost periodic regularity in the
trading world. What constitutes a sore aggravation to the
wretchedness of such a season, is the necessity of overwork-
ing--so as, if possible, to compensate by the amount of la-
bour for the deficiency of its remuneration; and yet the in-
verse effect of this in augmenting and perpetuating that
glut, or overproduction, which is the real origin of this
whole calamity. It would not happen in the hands of a


196
AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO
species. But over and against this, man is gifted with a
moral and a mental power by which the inadequacy might
be fully countervailed; and the species in virtue of their re-
strained and regulated numbers, be upholden on the face of
our world, in circumstances of large and staple sufficiency.
even to the most distant ages. The first origin of this bliss-
ful consummation is in the virtue of the people; but car-
ried into sure and lasting effect by the laws of political
economy, through the indissoluble connexion which obtains
between the wages and the supply of labour-so that in
every given state of commerce and civilization, the amount
of the produce of industry and of the produce of the soil,
which shall fall to the share of the workmen, is virtually at
the determination of the workmen themselves, who, by dint
of resolute prudence and resolute principle together, nay
rise to an indefinitely higher status than they now occupy,
of comfort and independence in the commonwealth. This
opens up a cheering prospect to the lovers of our race; and
not the less so, that it is seen through the medium of popu-
lar intelligence and virtue-the only medium through which .
it can ever be realized. And it sheds a revelation, not only on
the hopeful destinies of man, but on the character of God
in having instituted this palpable alliance between the mo.
ral and the physical; and so assorted the economy of out-
ward nature to the economy of human principles and pas-
sions. The lights of modern science have made us appre-
hend more clearly, by what steps the condition and the cha-
racter of the common people rise and fall with each other
insomuch, that, while on the one hand their general desti.
tution is the inevitable result of their general worthless-
ness, they, on the other, by dint of wisdom and moral
strength, can augment indefinitely, not the produce of the
earth, nor the produce of human industry, but that propor-
tion of both which falls to their own share. Their econo-
mic is sure to follow by successive advances in the career
of their moral elevation; nor do we hold it impossible, or
even unlikely—that gaining, every generation, on the dis-
tance which now separates them from the upper classes of
society, they shall, in respect both of decent sufficiency and
dignified leisure, make perpetual approximations to the fel
lowships and the enjoyments of cultivated life.


197
CHAPTER VIII.
On the Relation in which the special Affections of our
Nature stand to Virtue ; and on the Demonstration
given forth by it, both to the Character of Man and the
Character of God.
1. THERE are certain broad and decisive indications of
moral design, and so of a moral designer, in the constitu-
tion of our world, which instead of expounding at great
length, we have only stated briefly or incidentally-because,
however effective as proofs, they possess a character of
such extreme obviousness, as to require no anxious or for-
mal explanation; but, on the instant of being presented to
their notice, are read and recognized by all men. One pa-
tent example of this in the constitution of man, is the force
and prevalence of compassion-an endowment which could
not have proceeded from a malignant being; but which
evinces the Author of our nature to be himself compassionate
and generous. Another example may be given alike patent
and recognizable, if not of a virtuous principle in the human
constitution, at least of such an adaptation of the external
world to that constitution—that, with the virtuous practice
which that principle would both originate and sustain, the
outward and general prosperity of man is indispensably con-
nected. We mean the manifest and indispensable subser-
viency of a general truth in the world, to the general well
being of society. It is difficult to imagine, that a God of in-
finite power, and consummate skill of workmanship, but
withal a lover of falsehood, would have devised such a
world; or rather, that he would not, in patronage to those
of his own likeness, have ordered the whole of its system
differently-30 reversing its present laws and sequences, as
that, instead of honour and integrity, duplicity, disingenious-
ness and fraud, should have been the usual stepping-stones
to the possession both of this world's esteem and of this
worlds enjoyments. How palpably opposite this is to the
actual economy of things, the whole experience of life abun-
dantly testifies—making it evident, of individual examples,
that the connexion between honesty and success in the
world is the rule; the connexion between dishonesty and
success is the exception. But perhaps, instead of attempt
17*


198
RELATION OF THE SPECIAL AFFECTIONS
ing the induction of particular cases, we should observe a
still more distinct avowal of the character of God, of his fa.
your for truth, and of the discountenance which he has laid
upon falsehood, by tracing, which could be easily done in
imag
ination, the effect it would have in society, it, all things
else remaining unaltered, there should this single difference
be introduced, of a predominant falsehood, instead of a pre-
dominant truth in the world. The consequences of a uni-
versal distrust, in the almost universal stoppage that would
ensue of the usual interchanges of life, are too obvious to
be enumerated. The world of trade would henceforth
break up into a state of anarchy, or rather be paralyzed into
a state of cessation and stillness. The mutual confidence
between man and man, if not the mainspring of commerce,
is at least the oil, without which its movements were iin-
practicable. And were truth to disappear, and all depend.
ence on human testimony to be destroyed, this is not the
only interest which would be ruined by it. It would viti.
ate, and that incurably, every social and every domestic
relationship; and all the charities as well as all the com-
forts of life would take their departure from the world.
2. Seeing then that the observation of honesty and truth
is of such vital importance to society, that without it society
would cease to keep together-it might be well to ascertain,
by what special provision it is in the constitution of man,
that the practice of these virtues is upheld in the world.
Did it proceed in every instance, from the natural power
and love of integrity in the heart-we should rejoice in
contemplating this alliance between the worth of man's
character, on the one hand; and the security, as well as
the abundance of his outward comforts upon the other.
And such, in fact, is the habitual disposition co truth in the
world-that, in spite of the great moral depravation into
which our species has obviously fallen, we probably do not
overrate the proportion, when we affirm, thai ac least a hun.
dred truths are uttered among men for one falsehood. But
then, in the vast majority of cases, there is no temptation to
struggle with, nothing by which to try or to estimate the
strength of the virtue so that, without virtue being at all
concerned-in it, man's words. might spontaneously flow
in the natural current of his ideas, of the knowledge or the
convictions which belong to him. But more than this.
Instead of selfishness seducing man, which it often does,


OF OUR NATURE TO VIRTUE.
199
from the observations of truth and honesty-it vastly of-
tener is on the side of these observations, Generally speak-
ing, it is not more his interest that he should have men of
integrity to deal with-than that he himself should, in his
own dealings, be strictly observant of this virtue. To be
abandoned by the confidence of his fellows, he would find
to be not more mortifying to his pride, than ruinous to his
prosperity in the world. We are aware that many an oc-
casional harvest is made from deceit and injustice; but, in
the vast majority of cases, men would cease to thrive when
they ceased to be trusted. A man's actual truth is not more
beneficial to others, than the reputation of it is gainful to
himself. And therefore it is, that throughout the mercan-
tile world, men are as sensitive of an aspersion on their
name, as they would be of an encroachment on their pro-
perty. The one, in fact, is tantamount to the other. It is
thus, that, under the constraints of selfishness alone, fidelity
and justice may be in copious and current observation
among men; and while, perhaps, the principle of these vir.
tues is exceedingly frail and uncertain in all hearts--human
society may still subsist by the literal and outward observa-
tion of them
3. Here then is the example, not of a virtue in principle,
but of a virtue in performance, with all the indispensable
benefits of that performance, being sustained on the soil of
selfishness. Were a profound observer of human life to
take account of all the honesties of mercantile intercourse,
he would find, that, in the general amount of them, they
were mainly due to the operation of this cause; or that they
were so prevalent in society, because each man was bound
to their observance, by the tie of his own personal interest
-insomuch, that if this particular tie were broken, it would
as surely derange or break up the world of trade, as the
world of matter would become an inert or turbid chaos, on
the repeal or suspension of the law of gravitation. Confi-
dence, the very soul of commercial enterprize, and without
which the transactions of merchandize were impossible, is
the goodly result, not of that native respect which each man
has for another's rights, but of that native regard which
each man has for his own special advantage. This forms
another example of a great and general good wrought out
for society, while each component member is intently set,
only on a distinct and specific good for himself- a high intee


200
RELATION OF THE SPECIAL AFFECTIONS
rest, which could not have been confided to human virtue ;
but which has been skilfully extracted from the workings
of human selfishness. In as far as truth and justice pre-
vail in the world, not by the operation of principle, but of
policy, in so far the goodness of man has no share in it;
but so beneficent a result out of such unpromising materi-
als, speaks all the more emphatically both for the wisdom
and the goodness of God.
4. But in this there is no singularity. Other examples
can be named, of God placing us in such circumstances, as
to enlist even our selfishness on the side of virtuous con-
duct; or implanting such special affections, as do, by their
own impulse, lead to that conduct, although virtuousness is
not in all our thoughts. We are often so actuated, as to do
what is best for society, at the very time that the good
of society is forming no part of our concern; and our
footsteps are often directed in that very path, which a
moral regard to the greatest happiness of the species
would dictate-without any moral purpose having been
conceived or any moral principle been in exercise within
us. It is thus that our resentment operates as a check
on the injuriousness of others, although our single aim be
the protection of our own interests-not the diminution of
violence or injustice in the world: And thus to our own
dread of resentment from others, works the same outward
effect, which honour or a respect for their rights would have
had upon our transactions, which delicacy or a respect for
their feelings would have had upon our converse with those
around us. It is in this way that God makes the wrath of
man to praise Him; and the same is true of other affections
of our nature, which have less the character of selfishness,
than either anger or fear. It is not because prompted by
a sense of duty, but under the force of a mere natural prone-
ness, that mothers watch so assiduously over the helpless-
ness, and fathers toil so painfully for the subsistence of
their children. Even compassion, with the speed and the
discrimination of its movements, does for human life, more
than man is capable of doing with his highe
ing with his highest efforts of mo-
rality and reason-yet, not in the shape of a principle, but
in the shape of a strong constitutional propensity. The good
is rendered, not by man acting as he thinks that he ought,
or under the force of a moral suggestion ; but man acting
because he feels himself constrained, as if by the force of a


OF OUR NATURE TO VIRTUE.
201
physical necessity-not surely because, in the exercise of a
sovereign liberty, he hath assumed a lordly ascendant over
all the inferior passions of his nature ; but because himself
is lorded over by a law of his nature, having in it all the
might and mastery of a passion. It is when, in the con-
templation of phenomena like these, we are enabled to view
man as an instrument, that we are also led more clearly to
perceive who the agent is--not the being who is endowed, but
the Being who has endowed him. The instinct of animals is
a substitute for their wisdom; but at the same time, a palpa-
ble demonstration of the wisdom of God. Man also has his
instincts, which serve as the substitutes of moral good-
ness in him; but which therefore mark all the more
strongly, by their beneficial operation the goodness of his
Maker.*
5. To see how widely these gifts or endowments of our
nature by the hand of God, may stand apart from aught like
proper goodness or virtue in the heart of man-we have
only to witness the similar provision which has been made
for the care and preservation of the inferior animals. The
anger which arouses to defence against injury, and the fear
which prompts to an escape from it, and the maternal affec-
tion which nourishes and rears forward the successive young
into a condition of strength and independence for the protec-
tion of themselves—these all have their indispensable uses,
for upholding and perpetuating the various tribes of living
creatures, who at the same time are alike incapable of mo-
rality and reason. There is no moral purpose served by these
implantations, so far at least as respects the creatures
themselves, with whom virtue is a thing utterly incompe-
tent and unattainable. In reference to them, they may be
viewed simply as beneficent contrivances, and as bespeak-
ing no other characteristic on the part of the Deity than
• Dr. Smith in his Theory of Moral Sentiments has well re.
marked that-"Though in accounting for the operations of bo.
dies, we never fail to distinguish the efficient from the final
cause, in accounting for those of the mind, we are very apt to
confound these two different things with one another. When
by natural principles we are led to advance those ends wliich a
refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are
very to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the
sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to
imagine that to be the wisdom of man, which in reality is tho
wisdom of God.


202
RELATION OF THE SPECIAL AFFECTIONS
that of pure kindness, or regard for the happiness and
safety, throughout their respective generations, of the crea-
tures whom He has made. This might help us to distin.
guish between those mental endowments of our own spe
cies, which have but for their object the comfort and protec-
tion; and those which have for their object the character
of man. The former we have in common with the inferior
animals; and so far they only discover to us the kindness of
the divine nature, or the parental and benevolent concern
which God takes in us. The latter are peculiar to our
race, and are indicated by certain phenomena of our mental
nature, in which the beasts of the field and the fowls of the
air have no share with us-by the conscience within us,
asserting its own rightful supremacy over all our affections
and doings; by our capacities for virtue and vice, along
with the pleasures or the pains which are respectively
blended with them; and finally by the operation of habit,
whose office, like that of a schoolmaster, is to perfect our
education, and to fix, in one way or other, but at length un-
moveably, the character of its disciples. These present us
with a distict exhibition of the Deity, or a distinct and addi-
tional relation in which he stands to us-revealing to us, not
Him only as the affectionate Father, and ourselves only as
the fondlings of His regard; but Him also as the great mo-
ral Teacher, the Lawgiver and moral Governor of man, and
ourselves in a state of pupillage and probation, or as the
subjects of a moral discipline.
6. And here it may be proper to remark, that we under-
stand by the goodness of God, not His benevolence or His
kindness alone. The term is comprehensive of all moral
excellence. Truth, and justice, and that strong repugnance
to moral evil which has received the peculiar denomination
of Holiness-these are all good moral properties, and so
enter into the composition of perfect moral goodness,
There are some who have analysed, or, in the mere force
of their own wishfulness, would resolve the whole charac-
ter of the Deity into but one attribute that of a placid un-
distinguishing tenderness; and, in virtue of this tasteful
or sentimental but withal meagre imagination, would they
despoil Him of all sovereignty and of all sacredness-hold-
ing Him forth as but the indulgent father, and not also as
the righteous Governor of men. But this analysis is as im-
practicable in the character of God, as we have already


OF OUR NATURE TO VIRTUE.
203
found it to be in the character of man.* Unsophisticated
conscience speaks differently. The forebodings of the hu-
man spirit in regard to futurity, as well as the present phe-
nomena of human life, point to truth and righteousness, as
distinct and stable and independent perfections of the di-
vine nature however glossed or disguised they may have
been, by the patrons of a mild and easy religion. In the
various provisions of nature for the defence and security of the
inferior animals, we may read but one lesson-the benevo-
lence of its Author. In the like provisions, whether for the
defence and prolongation of human life, or the maintenance
of human society-we read that lesson too, but other les-
sons in conjunction with it. For in the larger capacities
of man, and more especially in his possession of a moral
nature, do we regard him as born for something ulterior
and something higher than the passing enjoyments of a
brief and ephemeral existence. And so when we witness in
the provisions, whether of his animal or mental economy,
a subserviency to the protection, or even to the enjoyments
of his transition state-we cannot disconnect this with sub-
serviency to the remoter objects of that ultimate state whi-
ther he is going. In the instinctive fondness of parents,
and the affinities of kindness from the fellows of our species,
and even the private affections of anger and fear-we he-
hold so many elements conjoined into what may be termed
an apparatus of guardianship; and such an apparatus
has been reared by Providence in behalf of every creature
that breathes. But in the case of man, with his larger ca-
pacities and prospects, the terminating object, even of such
an intermediate and temporary apparatus, is not to secure
for him, the safety or happiness of the present life. It is to
fulfil the period, and subserve the purposes of a moral
discipline. For meanwhile character is ripening; and,
whether good or bad, srttling by the power and operation of
habit into a state of inveteracy-and so, as to fix and pre-
pare the disciples of a probationary state for their final
destinations. What to the inferior animals are the provi-
sions of a life, are to man the accommodations of a jour-
ney. In the one we singly behold the indications of a di-
vine benevolence. With the other, we connect the pur-
poses of a divine administration; and beside the love and
* Chap. vii. Art. 7.


OF OUR NATURN TO VIRTUE.
205
ties of his nature, have been so adapted both to the mate-
rial world and to human society, that a great accompanying
or great resulting usefulness, is the effect of that particular
constitution which God hath given to him. And when do
ing what he feels that he ought, it is far from always be-
cause of its perceived usefulness, that he so feels. But God
hath so formed our mental constitution, and hath so adapted
the whole economy of external things to the stable and ever.
lasting principles of virtue, that, in effect and historical ful.
filment, the greatest virtue and the greatest happiness are
at one. But the union of these two does not constitute their
unity. Virtue is not right, because it is useful; but God
hath made it useful, because it is right. He both loves
virtue, and wills the happiness of his creatures--this bene-
volence of will, being itself, not the whole, but one of the
brightest moralities in the character of the Godhead. He
wills the happiness of man, but wills his virtue more; and
accordingly, hath so constructed both the system of hu.
manity, and the system of external nature, that, only
through the medium of virtue, can any substantial or last-
ing happiness be realized. The utilitarians have con-
founded these two elements, because of the inseparable yet
contingent alliance, which a God of virtue hath established
between them. The Cosmopolites are for merging all the
particular affections into one and would substitute in their
place a general desire for the greatest posssible amount of
good to others, as the alone guide and impellent of human
conduct. And the Utilitarians are for merging all the parti-
cular virtues into one; and would substitute in their place
the greatest usefulness, as the alone principle to which
every question respecting the morality of actions should be
referred. The former would do away friendship, and pa-
triotism, and all the partialities or even instincts of relation-
ship, from the system of human nature. The latter would
at least degrade, if not do away, truth and justice from the
place which they now hold in the system of Ethics. The
desolating effect of such changes on the happiness and
security of social life, would exhibit the vast superiority of
the existent economy of things, over that speculative eco-
nomy into which these theorists would transform it ;, or, in
other words, would prove by how mighty an interval, the
goodness and the wisdom of God transcended both the good-
ness and the wisdom of man.
18


CHAPTER IX.
Miscellaneous Evidences of virtuous and benevolent Design,
in the Adaption of External Nature to the Moral Constitu-
tion of Man.
1. It will be enough, if, after having led the way on a
new territory of investigation, we shall select one or two
out of the goodly number of instances, as specimens of the
richness and fertility of the land. We have already en-
deavoured to prove, why a number of distinct benefits, even
though reducible by analysis into one principle or law, stiil
affords not a solitary, but a multiple of evidence, of the
wise and benevolent Creator.* This evidence, in fact, is
proportioned to the number, not of efficient but final causes
in nature--so that each separate example of a good render-
ed to humanity, in virtue of its actual constitution, may be
regarded as a separate and additional evidence, of its having
been formed by an artificer, at once of intelligent device
and kind purposes. The reduction of these examples into
fewer laws does not extenuate the argument for His good.
ness; and it may enhance the argument for His wisdom.
2. The first instance which occurs to us is that law of
affection, by which its intensity or strength is proportioned
to the helplessness of its obiect. It takes a direction down-
wards ; descending, for example, with much greater force
from parents to children, than ascending from children to
parents back again-save when they lapse again into se-
cond infancy, and the duteous devoted attendance by the
helpful daughters of a family, throughout the protracted
ailments and infirmity of their declining years, instead of
an exception, is in truth a confirmation of the law-as
much so, as the stronger attraction of a mother's heart
towards the youngest of the family; or, more impressive
still, her more special and concentrated regard towards her
sickly or decrepit or even idiot boy. It is impossible not to
recognize in this beautiful determination of nature, the be-
nevolence of nature's God,
3. Such instances could be greatly multiplied; and we
* Introductory Chapter. Art. 27, 28, 29,


208
MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
invite the future explorers of this untrodden field to the
task of collecting them. We hasten to instances of ano-
ther kind, which we all the more gladly seize upon, as be-
ing cases of purest and strictest adaptation, not of the exter-
na) mental, but of the external material world, to the moral
constitution of man.
4. The power of speech is precisely such an adaptation.
Whether we regard the organs of utterance and hearing in
man, or the aerial medium by which sounds are conveyed
- do we behold a pure subserviency of the material to che
mental system of our world. It is true that the great object
subserved by it, is the action and reaction between mind
and mind-nor can we estimate this object too highly, when
we think of the mighty influence of language, both on the
moral and intellectual condition of our species. Still it is
by means of an elaborate material construction that this
pathway has been formed, from one heart and from one un-
derstanding to another. And therefore it is that the faculty
of communication by words, with all the power and flexi-
bility which belong to it, by which the countless benefits of
human intercourse are secured, and all the stores of senti-
ment and thought are turned into a common property for
the good of mankind, may well be ranked among the high-
est of the examples that we are now in quest of-it being
indeed as illustrious an adaptation as can be named of Ex-
ternal Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of
Man. Of the converse of disembodied spirits we know no-
thing. But to man cased in materialism, certain material
passages or ducts of conveyance, for the interchange of
thought and feeling between one mind and another seem
indispensable. The exquisite provision which has been
made for these, both in the powers of articulation and hear-
ing, as also in that intermediate element, by the pulsations of
which ideas are borne forward, as on so many winged mes-
sengers from one intellect to another-bespeaks, and per-
haps more impressively than any other phenomena in na-
ture, the contrivance of a supreme artificer, the device and
finger of a Deity.*
"It will at once be seen that the same observations may be
extended to written language, and to the fitness of those mate-
rials which subserve through its means, the wide and rapid
communication of human thoughts. We in truth could have
multipuod indefinitely such instances of adaptation as we are


MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONA. 209
: 5. But articulate and arbitrary sound is not the only ve-
hicle either of meaning or sentiment. There is a natural
as well as artificial language, consisting chiefly of ex-
pressive tones—though greatly reinforced both by express-
ive looks and expressive gestures. The voice by its intona-
tions alone, is a powerful instrument for the propagation of
sympathy between man and man; and there is similarity
enough between us and the inferior animals, in the natural
signs of various of the emotions, as anger and fear and
grief and cheerfulness, for the sympathy being extended
beyond the limits of our own species, and over a great part
of the sentient creation. We learn by experience and asso-
ciation the significancy of the merely vocal apart from vo-
cables; for almost each shade of meaning, at least each
distinct sensibility, has its own appropriate intonation-so
that, without catching one syllable of the utterance, we
can, from its melody alone, often tell what are the workings
of the heart, and even what are the workings of the intel-
lect. It is thus that music, even though altogether apart
from words, is so powerfully fitted, both to represent and to
awaken the mental processes insomuch that, without the
aid of spoken characters, many a story of deepest interest
is most impressively told, many a noble or tender sentiment
is most emphatically conveyed by it. It says much for the na-
tive and original predominance of virtue—it may be deemed
another assertion of its designed pre-eminence in the world,
that our best and highest music is that which is charged
with loftiest principle whether it breathes in orisons of sa-
credness, or is employed to kindle the purposes and to ani-
mate the struggles of resolved patriotism; and that never
does it fall with more exquisite cadence on the ear of the
delightful listener, than when attuned to the home sympa-
thies of nature, it tells in accents of love or pity, of its woes
and its wishes for all humanity. The power and express-
iveness of music may well be regarded as a most beaute-
ous adaptation of external nature to the Moral Constitution
of Man-for what can be more adapted to his moral consti-
tution, than that which is so helpful as music eminently is,
to his moral culture? Its sweetest sounds are those of
now giving-but we judge it better to have confined ourselves
throughout the volume, to matters of a more rudimental and
general character leaving the manifold detail and fuller deve.
lopements of the argument to future labourers in the field,
leaving the manifol more rudimental
Jopements of the
18*


210
MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
kind affection. Its sublimest sounds are those most er.
pressive of moral heroism; or most fitted to solemnize the
devotions of the heart, and prompt the aspirations and re-
solves of exalted piety.
6. A philosophy of taste has been founded on this con-
templation; and some have contended that both the beauty
and the sublimity of sounds are derived from their associa-
tion with moral qualities alone. Without affirming that ag.
sociation is the only, or the universal cause, it must at least
be admitted to have a very extensive influence over this
class of our emotions. If each of the mental affections have
its own appropriate intonation ; and there be the same or
similar intonations given forth, either by the inanimate cre-
ation or by the creatures having life which are inferior to
manthen, frequent and familiar on every side of him,
must be many of those sounds by which human pas-
sions are suggested, and the memory of things awakened
which are fitted to affect and interest the heart. And
thus it is, that, to the ear of a poet, all nature is vocal with
sentiment; and he can fancy a genius or residing spi-
rit, in the ocean, or in the tempest, or in the rushing wa-
terfall, or in the stream whose softer murmurs would lull
him to repose-or in the mighty forest, when he hears the
general sigh omitted by its innumerable leaves as they rus-
tle in the wind, and from whose fitful changes he seems to
catch the import of some deep and mysterious soliloquy.
But the imagination will be still more readily excited by the
notes and the cries of animals, as when the peopled grove
awakens to harmony; or when it is figured, that, amid the
amplitudes of savage and solitary nature the lioness robbed
· of her whelps, calls forth the echoes of the wilderness
making it to ring with the proclamation of her wrongs.
But, without conceiving any such rare or extreme sensibi
lity as this, there is a common, an every-day enjoyment
which all have in the counds of nature; and, as far as sym-
pathy with human emotions is awakened by them, and this
forms an ingredient of the pleasure, it affords another fine
example, of an adaptation in the external world to the men-
tal constitution of its occupiers.
7. But the same philosophy has been extended to sights
as well as sounds. The interchange of mind with mind is
not restricted to language. There is an interchange by
looks also; and the ever-varying hues of the mind are re-


MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
211
presented, not by the complexion of the face alone or the
composition of its features, but by the attitude and gestures
of the body.* It is thus that human sentiment or passion
may come to be expressed by the colour and form and even
the motion of visible things; by a kindred physiognomy
for all the like emotions on the part of the inferior animals
-nay, by a certain countenance or shape in the objects of
mute and unconscious nature. It is thus that a moral in-
vestment sits on the aspects of the purely material world;
and we accordingly speak of the modesty of the violet, the
innocence of the lily, the commanding mountain, the smil-
ing landscape. Each material object has its character, as
is amply set forth in the beautiful illustrations of Mr. Ali-
son; and so to the poet's eye, the whole panorama of na-
ture is one grand personification, lighted up throughout by
consciousness and feeling. This is the reason why in all
languages, material images and moral characteristics are
80 blended and identified. It is the law of association
which thus connects the two worlds of sense and of senti-
ment. Sublimity in the one is the counterpart to moral
greatness in the other; and beauty in the one is the coun-
terpart to moral delicacy in the other. Both the graceful
and the grand of human character are as effectually embo-
died in the objects and scenery of nature, as in those im-
mortal forms which have been transmitted by the hand of
sculptors to the admiration of distant ages. . It is a noble
testimony to the righteousness of God, that the moral and the
external loveliness are thus harmonized—as well as to the
wisdom which has so adapted the moral and the material
system to each other, that supreme virtue and supreme
beauty are at one.
"Mind, mind alone, bear witness earth and heaven !
The living fountain, in itself contains
Of beauteous and sublime,
• We may here state that as the air is the medium by which
sounds are conveyed-so light may be regarded as standing in
the game relation to those natural signs whether of colour, ges.
tare or attitude, which are addressed to the eye. Much could
be said respecting the adaptation of light to the moral constitu.
tion of man-arising from the power which the very observa.
tion of our fellow-men has in repressing, so long as we are
under it, indecency or crime. The works of iniquity are called
works of darkness.


212
MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
There hand in hand sit paramount the graces ;
There enthroned, celestial Venus with divinest airs
Invites the soul to never fading joys.
Akenside.
8. And we may here remark a certain neglect of exter-
nal things and external influences, which, however en-
lightened or transcendantly rational it may seem, is at va-
riance with truth of principle and sound philosophy. We
would instance the undervaluing of the natural signs in
eloquence, although their effect makes all the difference
in point of impression and power between spoken and
written language-seeing that superadded to articulate
utterance, the eye and the intonations and the gestures
also serve as so many signals of conveyance for the
transmission of sentiment from one mind to another. It is
thus that indifference to manner or even to dress, may be
as grievous a dereliction against the real philosophy of
social intercourse-as indifference to the attitude and the
drapery of figures would be against the philosophy of the
fine arts. Both proceed on the forgetfulness of that adapt-
ation, in virtue of which materialism is throughout instinct
with principle, and both in its colouring and forms, gives
forth the most significant expressions of it. On this
ground too we would affirm, both of state ceremonial and
professional costume, that neither of them is insignificant ;
and that he who is in the spirit of rash and restless innova-
tion would upset them, as if they were the relics of a gross
and barbaric age, may be doing violence not only to u
usages of venerable antiquity, but to the still older and more
venerable constitution of human nature weakening in
truth the bonds of social union, by dispensing with certain
of those influences which the Great Author of our consti-
tution designed for the consolidation and good order of so-
ciety. This is not accordant with the philosophy of But-
ler, who wrote on the “use of externals in maiters of reli-
gion,”-nor with the philosophy of those who prefer the
indings of experience, however irreducible to system they
may be, to all the subtleties or simplifications of unsup-
ported theory.*
• The perusal of those works which treat scientifically of the
fine arts, as Sir Joshna Reynolds' Discourses, is well adapted to
rebuke and rectify the light estimation, in which all sensible
accompaniments are apt to be held by us.


MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS. 213
Before quitting this subject, we remark, that it is no
proof against the theory which makes taste a derivative
from morality, that our emotions of taste may be vivid and
powerful, while our principles of morality are so weak as
to have no ascendant or governing influence over the con-
duct. This is no unusual phenomenon of our mysterious
nature. There is a general homage rendered to virtue in
the world; but it is the homage, more of a
of an obedient and practical devotee. This is not more
surprising, than that the man of profligate habits should
have a tasteful admiration of sacred pictures and sacred
melodies; or that, with the heart of a coward, he should
nevertheless catch the glow of at least a momentary inspi-
ration from the music of war and patriotism. It seems the
effect and evidence of some great moral derangement, that
there should be such an incongruity in subjective man
between his taste and his principles, and the evidence
is not lessened but confirmed, when we observe a like
incongruity in the objective nature by which he is rur-
rounded—we mean, between the external mental and
external material world. We have only to open our eyes
and see how wide, in point of loveliness, the contrast or
dissimilarity is, between the moral and the material of
our actual contemplation—the one coming immediately
from the hand of God; the other tainted and trans-
formed by the spirit of man. We believe with Alison and
others, that, to at least a very great extent, much of the
beauty of visible things lies in association; that it is this
which gives its reigning expression to every tree and lake
and waterfall, and which may be said to have impregnated
with character the whole of the surrounding landscape.
How comes it then, that in the midst of living society,
where we might expect to meet with the originals of ali
this fascination we find scarcely any other thing than a
tame and uninteresting level of the flat and the sordid and
the ordinary-whereas, in that inanimate scenery, which
yields but the faint and secondary reflection of moral quali-
ties, there is, on every line and on every feature, so'vivid
an impress of loveliness and glory? One cannot go forth of
the crowded city to the fresh and the fair of rural nature.
without the experience, that, while in the moral scene.
there is so much to thwart and to revolt and to irritate-in
the natural scene all is gracefulness and harmony. It re-


214
MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS
minds us of the contrast which is sometimes exhibited, be-
tween the soft and flowery lawn of a cultivated domain,
and the dark or angry spirit of its owner-of whom we
might almost imagine, that he scowls from the battlements
of his castle, on the intrusion of every unlicensed visiter.
And again the question may be put-whence is it that the
moral picturesque in our world of sense, as it beams upon us
from its woods and its eminences and its sweet recesses of
crystal stream or of grassy sunshine, should yield a de-
light so unqualified-while the primary moral character-
isticts, of which these are but the imagery or the visible re-
presentation, should, in our world of human spirits, be so
wholly obliterated, or at least so wofully deformed ? Does
it not look as if a blight had come over the face of our ter-
restrial creation, which hath left its materialisın in a great
measure untouched, while it hath inflicted on man a sore
and withering leprosy? Do not the very openness and be-
nignity which sit on the aspect of nature reproach himn, for
the cold and narrow and creeping jealousies that be at work
in his own selfish and suspicio 13 bosom; and most im-
pressively tell the difference between what man is, and
what he ought to be
10. Tnere are certain other adaptations; but on wnich we
forbear to expatiate.* Some of them indeed border on a
It must be obvious that we cannot exhaust the subject, but
only esemplify it, by means of a few specimens. There is an
adaptation, which, had it occurred in time, might have been
stated in the text -suggested by the celebrated question respect.
ing the liberty of the human will. We cannot but admit how
much it would have deteriorated the constitution of humanity, or
rather destroyed one of its noblest and most essential parts, had it
been so constructed, as that either man was not accountable
for his own actions, or that these actions were free in the
sense contended for by one of the parties in the controversy
that is, were so many randoin contingencies which had no pa-
rentage in any events or influencies that went before then, or
occupied no place in a train of causation. of the reasoners on
the opposite sides of this sorely agitated question--the one con.
tending for the inoral liberty, and the other for the physical neces.
pity of human actions-it is clear that there are many who hold the
one to be destructive of the other. But what the wisdom of man
cannot argumentatively harmonize in the world of specu-
Jation, the power and wisdom of God have executively. harmo-
nized in the world of realities : so tha: man, on the one hand.
irresistibly feels himself to be an accountable creature ; and


MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
216
territory distinct from our own, if they do not altogether
belong to it. The relation between food and hunger, be-
tween the object and the appetite, is an instance of the
adaptation between external nature and man's physical
constitution, yet the periodical recurrence of the appetite
itself with its imperious demand to be satisfied, viewed as
an impellent to labour even the most irksome and severe,
has an important effect both on the moral constitution of
the individual and on the state of society. The superfices
of the human body, in having been made so exquisitely
alive at every pore to the sensationsof pain, may be re-
garded as nature's defensive covering against those ex-
posures from without, which else might injure or destroy
it. This is purely a physical adap
ut it involves
a moral adaptation also; for this shrinking and sensitive
avoidance, at the first approaches of pain affords a similar
protection against certain hazards from within the self-
mutilation in the moment of the spirit's wantonness, or
even self-destruction in the moment of its despair. But,
without enlarging further on specific instances, we shall
now advert to one subject, furnished by the history of
moral science; and replete, we have long thought, with the
materials of a very strong and comprehensive argument.
11. We have already adverted to the objective nature of
virtue, and the subjective nature of man, as forming two
wholly distinct objects of contemplation. It is the latter
and not the former which indicates the moral character of
God. The mere system of ethical doctrine is no more fit.
ted to supply an argument of this character, than would
yet, on the other, his doings are as much the subject of calcu.
lation and of a philosophy, as many of those classes of pheno-
mena in the material world, which, fixed and certain in them-
selves, are only uncertain to us, not because of their contingency,
but because of their complication. We are not sure if the evo-
lutions of the will are more beyond the reach of prediction than
the evolutions of the weather. It is this union of the moral cba.
racter with the historical certainty of our volitions, which has
proved so púzzling, to many of our controversialists; but in
proportion to the difficulty felt by us in the adjustment of these
two elements, should be our admiration of that profound and
exquisite skill which has mastered the apparent incongruity
so that while every voluntary action of man is, in point of reck-
oning, the subject of a moral, it is, in point of result, no less the
subject of a physical law.


216
MIECELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONE,
the system of geometry. It is not geometry in the abstract,
but geometry as embodied in the Heavens, or in the ex-
quisite structures of the terrestrial physics-- which bespeaks
the skill of the artificer who framed them. In like manner
it is not moral science in the abstract-but the moral con-
stitution of beings su circumstanced and so made, that vir-
tue is the only element in which their permanent individual
or social happiness can be realized, which bespeaks the
great Parent of the human family to be Himself the lover
and the exemplar of righteousness. In a word, it is not
from an abstraction, but from the facts of a creation, that
our lesson respecting the divine character, itself a fact, is
to be learned ; and it is by keeping this distinction in view,
that we obtain one important help for drawing from the
very conflict and diversity of moral theories on the nature
of virtue, a clear, nay a cumulative argument for the vir-
tuous nature of the Godhead.
12. The painful suspicion is apt to intrude upon us, that
virtue may not be a thing of any substance or stability at
all-when we witness the confusion or the controversy into
which moralists have fallen, on the subject of its elementary
principles. But, to allay this feeling, it should be observed,
in the first place, that, with all the perplexity which obtains
on the question of what virtue in the abstract or in its own
essential and constituting quality, is- there is a pretty ge-
neral agreement among moralists, as to what the separate
and specific virtues of the human character are. Accord-
ing to the selfish system, temperance may be a virtue, be-
cause of its subservience to the good of the individual;
while by the system of utility it is a virtue, because through
its observation, our powers and services are kept entire for
the good of society. But again, beside this controversy
which relates to the nature of virtue in itself, and which
may be terined the objective question in morals--there is
a subjective or an organic question which relates, not to the
existence, but to the origin and formation of the notion
or feeling of virtue in the human mind. The question, for
example, whether virtue be a thing of opinion or a thing of
sentiment, belongs to this class. Now, in regard to all
those questions which respect the origin or the pedigree of
our moral judgments, it should not be forgotten, that, while
the controversialsits are at issue upon this, they are nearly
unanimous, as to morality itself being felt by the mind as a


MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
217
matter of supreme obligation. They dispute about the
moral sense in man, or about the origin and constitution ofthe
court of conscience; but they have no dispute about the su-
preine authority of conscience-even as, in questions of civil
polity and legislation, there may be no dispute about the right-
ful authority of some certain court, while there may be anti-
quarian doubts and differences on the subject of its origin
and formation. Dr. Smith, for example, while he has his
own peculiar views on the origin of our moral principles,
never questions their authority. He differs from others. in
regard to the rationale, or the anterior steps of that process,
which at length terminates in a decision of the mind, on
the merit or demerit of a particular action. The right-
ness and the supremacy of that decision are not in the least
doubted by him. There may be a metaphysical contro-
versy about the mode of arriving at our moral judgment,
and at the same time a perfect concurrence in it as the
guide and the regulator of human conduct—just as there
may be an anatomical controversy about the structure of
the eye or the terminations of the optic nerve, and a per-
fect confidence with all parties, in the correctness of those
intimations which the eye gives, of the position of external
objects and their visible properties. By attending to this
we obtain a second important help for eliciting from the
diversity of theories on the nature of virtue, a cumulative
argument for the virtuous nature of the Godhead.
13. When the conflict then of its opposing theories, would
seem to bring fearful insecurity on the moral science, let it
not be forgotten, that the very multitude of props and se-
curities, by which virtue is upholden, is that which has
given rise to the conflict. There is little or no scepticism.
in regard to the worth or substantive being of morality, but
chiefly in regard to its sustaining principle; and it is be-
cause of so much to sustain it, or of the many distinct and
firm props which it rests upon, that there has been such an
amount of ethical controversy in the world. There has
been many a combat, and many a combatant-not because
of the baselessness of morality, but because it rests on a ba-
sis of so many goodly pillars, and because of such a var
convenience and beauty in the elevation of the noble fabric.
The reason of so much controversy is, that each puny con-
troversialist, wedded to his own exclusive view of an edi-
fice too mighty and majestic for his grasp, has either ne-
19


218
MICELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
lected but one of the upholding props, and affirmed it to be
the only support of the architecture; or attended to but one
of its graces and utilities, and affirmed it to be the alone
purpose of the magnificent building. The argument of
each, whether on the foundation of virtue or on its nature,
when beheld aright, will be found a distinct trophy to its
worth-for each can plead some undoubted excellence or
good effect of virtue in behalf of his own theory. Each
may have so magnified the property which himself had se-
lected as that those properties of virtue which others had
selected, were thrown into the shade, or at most but admitted
as humble attendants, in the retinue of his own great prin-
ciple. And so the controversy is not, whether morality be
a solidly constituted fabric; but what that is which consti-
tutes its solidity, which should be singled out as the key-
stone of the fabric. Each of the champions in this warfare
has fastened on a different key-stone; and each pushes the
triumph against his adversary by a demonstration of its
firmness. Or in other words, virtue is compassed about
with such a number of securities, and possesses such a
superabundance of strength, as to have given room for the
question that was raised about Samson of old—what that
is, wherein its great strength lies. It is like the contro-
versy which sometimes arises about a building of perfect
symmetry-when sides are taken and counter-explanations
are advanced and argued, about the one characteristic or
constituting charm, which hath conferred upon it so much
gracefulness. It is even so of morality. Each partisan
hath advocated his own system; and each, in doing so,
hath more fully exhibited some distinct property or perfec-
tion of moral rectitude. Morality is not neutralized by this
conflict of testimonies; but rises in statelier pride, and with
augmented security, from the foam and the turbulence
which play around its base. To her this conflict yields,
not a balance, but a summation of testimonies; and, in-
stead of an impaired, it is a cumulative argument, that may
be reared out of the manifold controversies to which she
has given rise. For when it is asserted by one party in the
strife, that the foundation of all morality is the right of God
to the obedience of his creatures—let God's absolute right
be fully conceded to them. And when others reply, that,
apart from such right, there is a native and essential right-
ness in morality, let this be conceded also. There is indeed


220
MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
this prove nothing else, it at least proves, that the Author
of our constitution hath stamped there, a clear and legible
impress on the side of virtue. We should not exclude from
this argument even the degrading systems of Hobbes and
Mandeville; the former representing virtue as the creation of
human policy, and the latter representing its sole principle to
be the love of human praise--for even they tell thus much,
the one that virtue is linked with the well being of the com-
munity, the other that it has an echo in every bosom. We
would not dissever all these testimonies; but bind them to-
gether into the sum and strength of a cumulative argument.
The controversialists have lost themselves, but it is in a wil-
derness of sweets-out of which the materials might be ga-
thered, of such an incense at the shrine of morality, as should
be altogether overpowering. Each party hath selected but
one of its claims; and, in the anxiety to exalt it, would
shed a comparative obscurity over all the rest. This is the
contest between them-not whether morality be destitute
of claims; but what, out of the number that she possesses,
is the great and pre-eminent claim on which man should
do her homage. Their controversy perhaps never may be
settled; but to make the cause of virtue suffer on this ac-
count, would be to make it suffer from the very force and
abundance of its recommendations.
14. But this contemplation is pregnant with another in-
ference, beside the worth of virtue-even the righteous cha-
racter of Him, who, for the sake of upholding it hath
brought such a number of contingencies together. When
we look to the systems of utility and selfishness, let us look
upwardly to Him, through whose ordination alone it is,
that virtue hath such power to prosper the arrangements of
life and of society. Or when told of the principle that vir-
tue is its own reward, let us not forget Him, who so con-
Atituted our moral nature, as to give the feeling of an ex,
quisite charm, both in the possession of virtue and in
the contemplation of it. Or when the theory of a moral
sense offers itself to our regards, let us bear regard along
with it to that God, who constructed this organ of the in-
ner man, and endowed it with all its perceptions and all its
feelings. In the utility wherewith He hath followed up the
various observations of moral rectitude; in the exquisite
relish which he hath infused into the rectitude itself; in the
law of conformity thereto which He hath written on the


MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
221
hearts of all men; in the aspect of eternal and unchangea-
ble fitness, under which he hath made it manifest to every
conscience-in these, we behold the elements of many a
controversy on the nature of virtue ; but in these, when
viewed aright, we also behold a glorious harmony of at-
testations to the nature of God. It is thus that the perplex-
ities of the question, when virtue is looked to as but a thing
of earthly residence, are all done away, when we carry the
speculation upward to heaven. They find solution there;
and cast a radiance over the character of Him who hath
not only established in righteousness His throne, but, by
means of a rich and varied adaptation, hath profusely
shed over the universe that He hath formed, the graces by
which He would adorn, and the beatitudes by which He
would reward it.
15. Although the establishment of a moral theory is not
now our proper concern, we may nevertheless take the op.
portunity of expressing our dissent from the system of those,
who would resolve virtue, not into any native or independ-
ent rightness of its own, but unto the will of Him who has
a right to all our services. Without disparagement to the
Supreme Being, it is not His law which constitutes virtue;
but, far higher homage both to Him and to His law, the
law derives all its authority and its being from a virtue of
anterior residence in the character of the Divinity. It is
not by the authority of any law over Him, that truth and
justice and goodness and all the other perfections of supreme
moral excellence. have, in His person, had their everlast-
ing residence. He had a nature, before that He uttered it
forth into a law. Previous to creation, there existed in His
mind, all those conceptions of the great and graceful, which
He hath embodied into a gorgeous universe; and of which
every rude sublimity of the wilderness, or every fair and
smiling landscape, gives such vivid representation. And
in like manner, previous to all government, there existed in
His mind, those principles of righteousness, which after-
wards, with the right of an absolute sovereign, He pro-
claimed into a law. Those virtues of which we now read
on a tablet of jurisprudence were all transcribed and taken
off from the previous tablet of the divine character. The
law is but a reflection of this character. In the fashioning
of this law, He pictured forth Himself; and we, in the act
of observing His law, are only conforming ourselves to His
19*


222
MISCELLANEOUS ADAPTATIONS.
likeness. It is there that we are to look for the primeral
Beat of moral goodness. Or, in other words, virtue has an
inherent character of her own-apart from law, and ante-
rior to all jurisdiction.
16. Yet the right of God to command, and the rightness
of His commandments, are distinct elements of thought,
and should not be merged into one another. We should
not lose sight of the individuality of each, nor identify
these two things because, instead of antagonists, they do
in fact stand side by side, and act together in friendly co-
operation. Because two influences are conjoined in agency,
that is no reason why they should be confounded in thought.
Their union does not constitute their unity-and though,
in the conscience of man, there be an approbation of all rec-
titude; and all rectitude, be an obligation laid upon the
conduct of man by the divine law-yet still, the appro-
bation of man's moral nature is one thing, and the obliga-
tion of God's authority is another.
17. That there is an approval of rectitude, apart from all
legal sanctions and legal obligations, there is eternal and
unchangeable demonstration in the character of God Him.
self. He is under no law, and owns the authority of no
superior. It is not by the force of sanctions, but by the
force of sentiment that the divinity is moved. Morality
with Him is not of prescription, but of spontaneous princi-
ple alone; and He acts virtuously, not because He is bid-
den; but because virtue hath its inherent and eternal resi.
dence in His own nature. Instead of deriving morality
from law, we should derive law, even the law of God, from
the primeval morality of His own character; and so far
from looking upwardly to His law as the fountain of morali-
ty, do we hold it to be the emanation from a higher fountain
that is seated in the depths of His unchangeable essence,
and is eternal as the nature of the Godhead.
18. The moral hath antecedency over the juridical, God
acts righteously, not because of jurisdiction by another, but
because of a primary and independent justice in himself.
It was not law which originated the moralities of the di-
vine character; but these moralities are self-existent and
eternal as is the being of the Godhead. The virtues had
all their dwelling place in the constitution of the Divinity-
ere He stamned the impress of them on a tablet of juris-
prudence. There was an inherent, before there was a pree


224
THE CAPACITIES OF THE WORLD FOR
rated in the theological question. It falls in with a still
more urgent affection than the taste of man; it falls in with
his hope and his sense of personal interest, that the truth
and justice of the Divinity should be removed, as it were,
to the back-ground of his perspective. And accordingly,
this inclination to soften, if not to suppress, the sterner al-
lections of righteousness and holiness, appears, not merely
in the pleasing and poetic effusions of the sentimental, but
also in the didactic expositions of the academic theism. It
is thus that Paley, so full and effective, and able in his de-
monstrations of the natural, is yet so meagre in his demon-
strations of the moral attributes. It is, in truth, the general
defect, not of natural theology in itself-but of natural theo-
logy, as set forth at the termination of ethical courses, or as
expounded in the schools. In this respect, the natural
theology of the heart. is at variance, with the natural theo-
logy of our popular and prevailing literature. The one
takes its lesson direct from conscience, which depones to the
authority of truth and justice, as distinct from benevolence;
and carries this is
? carries this lesson upwards, from that tablet of virtue
which it reads on the nature of man below, to that higher
tablet upon which it reads the character of God above. The
oner again, of more lax and adventurous speculation, would
fain amalgamate all the qualities of
ligamate all the qualities of the Godhead into one:
and would make that one the beautiful and undistinguishing
quality of tenderness. It would sink the venerable or the
awful into the lovely: and to this it is prompted, not merely
for the sake of theoretic simplicity-but in order to quell
the alarms of nature, the dread and the disturbance which
sinners feel, when they look to their sovereign in heaven,
as a God of judgment and of unspotted holiness. Never-
theless the same conscience which tells what is sound in
ethics, is ever and anon suggesting what is sound in theo-
logy—that we have to do with a God of truth, that we have
to do with a God of righteousness; and this lesson is never
perhaps obliterated in any breast, by the imagery, however
pleasing, of a universal parent, throned in soft and smiling
radiance, and
ance, and whose supreme delight is to scatter beatitudes
innumerable through
ole through a universal family. We cannot for-
get, although we would, that justice and judgment are the
habitation of His throne; and that His dwelling-place is
not a mere blissful elysium or paradise of sweets, but an
august and inviduelysium or paradise qvelling-place is
august and inviolable sanctuary. It is an elysium, but only
mere bi is thrould, that ju


MAKING A VIRTUOUS SPECIES HAPPY.
225
to the spirits of the holy; and this sacredness, we repeat, is
immediately forced upon the consciousness of every bosom,
by the moral sense which is within it-however fearſul a
topic it may be of recoil to the sinner, and of reticence in
the demonstrations of philosophy. The sense of heaven's
sacredness is not a superstitious fear. It is the instant sug-
gestion of our moral nature. What conscience apprehends
virtue to be in itself, that also it will apprehend virtue to be
in the Author of conscience; and if iruth and justice be
constituent elements in the one, these it will regard as con-
stituent elements in the other also. It is by learning direct
of God from the phenomena of human conscience; or taking -
what it tells us to be virtues in themselves, for the very
virtues of the Godhead. realized in actual and living ex-
emplification upon His character-it is thus that we escape
from the illusion of poetical religionists, who, in the incense
which they offer to the benign virtues of the parent, are so
apt to overlook the virtues of the Lawgiver and Judge.
2. When we take this fuller view of God's moral nature
-when we make account of the righteousness as well as
the benevolence-when we yield to the suggestion of our
own hearts, that to Him belongs the sovereign state, and,
if needful, the severity of the lawgiver, as well as the fond
affection of the parent--when we assign to Him the charac-
ter, which, instead of but one virtue, is comprehensive of
them all-we are then on firmer vantage ground for the es-
tablishment of a natural Theology, in harmony, both with
the lessons of conscience, and with the phenomena of the
external world. Many of our academic theists have greatly
crippled their argument, by confining themselves to but one
feature in the character of the Divinity-as if His only
wish in reference to the creatures that He had made, was
a wish for their happiness; or as if, instead of the subjects of
a righteous and moral government, they were but the nurs-
lings of His tenderness. They have exiled and put forth
y thing like jurisprudence from the relation in which
God stands to man; and by giving the foremost place in
their demonstrations to the mere beneficence of the Deity,
they have made the difficulties of the subject far more per-
plexing and unresolvable then they needed to have been.
For with benevolence alone we cannot even extenuate and
much less extricate ourselves, from the puzzling difficulty
of those physical sufferings to which the sentient creation,
every


MAKING A VIRTUOUS PEOPLE HAPPY.
227
death upon its corporeal framework among the glories of
the upper Elysium. It is this immortality which is sup-
posed to unriddle all the difficulties that attach to our pre-
sent condition ; which converts the evil that is in the world,
into the instrument of a greatly over-passing good; and
affords a scene for the imagination to rest upon, where all
the anomalies which now exercise us shall be rectified, and
where, from the larger prospects we shall then have of the
whole march and destiny of man, the ways of God to His
creatures shall appear in all the lustre of their full and noble
vindication.
5. But as the superiority of the happiness over the misery
of the world, affords insufficient premises on which to con-
clude the benevolence of God, so long as God is conceived
of under the partial view of possessing but this as his
alone moral attribute_when that benevolence is er
as the argument for some ulterior doctrine in Natural Theo-
logy, it must impart to this latter the same inconclusiveness
by which itself is characterized. The proof and the thing
proved must he alike strong or alike weak. If the excess
of enjoyment over suffering in the life that now is, be a
matter of far too doubtful calculation, on which to rest a
confident inference in favour of the divine benevolence;
then, let this benevolence have no other prop to lean upon,
and in its turn, it is far too doubtful a premise, on which to
infer a coming immortality. Accordingly, to help out the
argument, many of our slender and sentimental theists, who
will admit of no other moral attribute for the divinity, than
the paternal attribute of kind affection for the creatures who
have sprung from Him do, in fact, assume the thing to be
proved, and reason in a circle. The mere balance of the
pleasures and pains of the present life is greatly too uncertain,
or what may be called an initial footing to this argument.
But let a future life be assumed, in which all the defects and
disorders of the present are to be repaired; and this may
reconcile the doctrine of the benevolence of God, with the
otherwise stumbling fact of the great actual wretchedness
that is now in the world. · Out of the observed phenomena
of life and an assumel immortality together, a tolerable ar-
gument may be raised for this most pleasing and amiable
of all the moral characteristics; but it is obvious that the
doctrine of immortality enters into the premises of this first
argument. But how is the immortality itself proved ? not


228
THE CAPACITIES OF THE WORLD FOR
by the phenomena of life alone, but by these phenomena
taken in conjunction with the divine benevolence—which
benevolence, therefore, enters into the premise of the second
argument. In the one argument, the doctrine of immortality
is required to prove the benevolence of God. In the other
this benevolence is required to prove the immortality. Each
is used as an assumption for the establishment of the other:
and this nullifies the reasoning for both. Either of these
terms-that is, the divine benevolence, or a future state of
compensation for the evils and inequalities of the present one
either of them, if admitted, may be held a very sufficient,
or, at least, likely consideration on which to rest the other.
But it makes very bad reasoning to vibrate between both
first to go forth with the assumption that God is benevolent,
and therefore it is impossible that a scene so dark and dis-
ordered as that immediately before us can offer to our con-
templation the full and final developement of all his designs
for the human family; and then, feeling that this scene does
not afford a sufficient basis on which to rest the demonstra-
tion of this attribute, to strengthen the basis and make it
broader by the assertion, that it is not from a part of his
ways, but from their complete and comprehensive whole,
as made up both of time and eternity, that we draw the in-
ference of a benevolent Deity. There is no march of argu-
ment. We swing as it were between two assumptions. It
is like one of those cases in geometry, which remains inde-
terminate for the want of data. And the only effectual me-
thod of being extricated from such an ambiguity, would be
the satisfactory assurance either of a benevolence independ.
ent of all considerations of immortality, or of an immortality
independent of all the considerations of the benevolence
6. But then it should be recollected that it is the partiality
of our contemplation, and it alone which incapacitates this
whole argument. There is a sickly religion of taste which
clings exclusively to the parental benevolence of God; and
will not, cannot brave the contemplation of His righteous-
ness. It is this which makes the reasoning as feeble, as
the sentiment is Alimsy. It, in fact, leaves the system of
natural theology without a ground-work-first to argue for
immortality on the doubtful assumption of a supreme be-
nevolence, and then to argue this immortality in proof of the
benevolence. The whole fabric, bereft of argument and
strength, is ready to sink under the weight of unresolved


MAKING A VIRTUOUS SPECIES HAPPY.
229
difficulties. The mere benevolence of the Deity is not so
obviously or decisively the lesson of surrounding phenomena,
as, of itself to be the foundation of a solid inference regarding
either the character of God or the prospects of man. If we
would receive the full lesson-if we would learn all which
these phenomena, when rightly and attentively regarded,
are capable of teaching-it along with the present indica-
tions of a benevolence, we take the present indications of a
righteousness in God-out of these blended characteristics,
we should have materials for an argument of firmer texture.
It is to the leaving out of certain data, even though placed
within the reach of observation, that the infirmity of the ar-
gument is owing—whereas, did we employ aright all the
data in our possession, we might incorporate them together
into the solid ground-work of a solid reasoning. It is by
our sensitive avoidance of certain parts in this contempla-
tion, that we enfeeble the cause. We should find a stable
basis in existing appearances, did we give them a fair and
full interpretation-as indicating not only the benevolence
of God, but, both by the course of nature and the laws of
man's moral economy, indicating his love of righteousness
and hatred of iniquity. It might not resolve, but it would
alleviate the mystery of things, could we within the sphere
of actual observation, collect notices, not merely of a God
who rejoiced in the physical happiness of His creatures, but
of a God who had respect unto their virtue. Now the great
evidence for this latter characteristic of the Divinity, lies
near at hand-even among the intimacies of our own felt
and familiar nature. It is not fetched by imagination from
a distance, for every man has it within himself. The supre-
macy of conscience is a fact or phenomenon of man's moral
constitution; and from this law of the heart, we pass, by
direct and legitimate inference, to the character of Him who
established it there. In a law, we read the character of the
law-giver; and this, whether it be a felt or a written law,
We learn from the phenomena of conscience, that, however
God may will the happiness of his creatures, His para-
mount and peremptory demand is for their virtue. He is
the moral governor of a kingdom, as well as the father of a
family; and it is a partial view that we take of Him, unless,
along with the kindness which belongs to Him as a parent,
we have respect unto that authority which belongs to Him
as a sovereign and a judge. We have direct intimation of
20


FOR MAKING A VIRTUOUS SPECIES HAPPY.
231
must be taken into account, as well as the influences which
play upon it from the surrounding world; and what we
affirm is, that, to a rightly conditioned mind, the misery
would be reduced and the happiness augmented tenfold.
When disappointment agonizes the heart; or a very slight,
perbaps unintentional neglect, lights up in many a soul the
fierceness of resentment; or coldness, and disdain, and the
mutual glances of contempt and hatred, circulate a prodi.
gious mass of infelicity through the world—these are to be
ascribed, not to the untowardness of outward circumstances,
but to the untowardness of man's own constitution, and are
the fruits of a disordered spiritual system. And the same
may be said of the poverty which springs from indolence or
dissipation; of the disgrace which comes on the back of
misconduct; of the pain or uneasiness which festers in every
heart that is the prey, whether of licentious or malignant
passions ; in short, of the general restlessness and unhinge-
ment of every spirit, which, thrown adrift from the restraints
of principle, has no well-spring of satisfaction in itself, but
precariously vacillates, in regard to happiness, with the
hazard and the casual fluctuation of outward things. There
are, it is true, sufferings purely physical, which belong to
the sentient and not to the moral nature-as the maladies
of infant disease, and the accidental inflictions wherewith the
material frame is sometimes agonized. Still it will be found,
that the vast amount of human wretchedness, can be di-
rectly referred to the waywardness and morbid state of the
human will—to the character of man, and not to the condi-
tion which he occupies.
8. Now what is the legitimate argument for the character
of God, not from the mere existence of misery, but from
the existence of misery thus originated? Wretchedness,
of itselt, were fitted to cast an uncertainty, even a suspicion,
on the benevolence of God. But wretchedness as the re-
sult of wickedness, may not indicate the negation of this one
attribute. It may only indicate the reality or the presence
of another. Suffering without a cause and without an ob-
ject, may be the infliction of a malignant being. But suffer-
ing in alliance with sin, should lead to a very different con-
clusion. When thus related it may cast no impeachment
on the benevolence, and only bespeak the righteousness
God. it tell us that however much He may love the hap-
piness of His creatures, He loves their virtue more. So that,


MAKING A VIRTUOUS SPECIES HAPPY.
233
into the cup of tribulation from the feeling and the friend-
ship of all the good who were around us on this single
transition from vice to virtue among men, does there not
hinge the alternative between pandæmonium and a paradise?
If the moral elements were in place and operation among
us, should we still continue to fester and be unhappy from
the want of the physical ? Or, is it not rather true, that all
nature smiles in beauty, or wantons in bounteousness for our
enjoyinent-were but ihe disease of our spirits medicated,
were there but moral soundness in the heart of man!
10. And what must be the character of the Being who
formed such a world, where the moral and the physical
economies are so adjusted to each other, that virtue, if uni-
versal, would bring ten thousand blessings and beatitudes
in its train, and turn our earth into an elysium-whereas
nothing so distempers the human spirit, and so multiplies
distress in society, as the vice and the violence and the va-
rieties of moral turpitude wherewith it is infested. Would
a God who loved iniquity and who hated righteousness
have created such a world? Would He have so attuned the
organism of the human spirit, that the consciousness of
worth should be felt through all its recesses, like the oil of
gladness? Or would He have so constructed the mechan-
ism of human society, that it should never work prosper-
ously for the general good of !he species, but by means of
truth and philanthropy and uprightness? Would the friend
and patron of falsehood have let such a world out of his
hands? Or would an unholy being have so fashioned the
heart of man-that, wayward and irresolute as he is, he
never feels so ennobled, as by the high resolve that would
spurn every hase allurement of sensuality away from him;
and never breathes so etherially, as when he maintains that
chastity of spirit which would recoil even from one unhal-
lowed imagination; and never rises to such a sense of
grandeur and godlike elevation, as when principle hath
taken the direction, and is vested with full ascendency over
the restrained and regulated passions ? What other infer-
ence can be drawn from such sequences as these, but that
our moral architect loves the virtue He thus follows up with
the delights of a high and generous complacency; and ex-
ecrates the vice He thus follows up with disgust and degra-
dation ? If we look but to misery unconnected and alone,
we may well doubt the benevolence of the Deity. But
20*


231
THE CAPACITIES OF THE WORLD FOR
should it not modify the conclusion, to have ascertained
that, in proportion as virtue made entrance upon the world
misery would retire from it? There is nothing to spoil Him
of this perfection, in a misery so originated; but, leaving this
perfection untouched, it attaches to Him another, and we in-
fer, that He is not merely benevolent but benevolent and holy.
After that the moral cause has been discovered for the unhap-
piness of man, we feel Him to be a God of benevolence still ;
that He wills the happiness of his creatures, but with this
reservation, that the only sound and sincere happiness He
awards to them, is happiness through the medium of virtue ;
that still He is willing to be the dispenser of joy substantial
and unfading, but of no such joy apart from moral excel-
lence; that he loves the gratification of His children, but He
loves their righteousness more; that dear to Him is the
happiness of all His offspring, but dearer still their worth:
and that therefore He, the moral governor, will so conduct
the affairs of His empire, as that virtue and happiness, or
that vice and misery shall be associated.
11. We have already said, that, by inspecting a mechan-
ism, we can infer, boih the original design of Him who
framed it, and the derangement it has subsequently under-
gone-even as by the inspection of a watch, we can infer,
from the place of command which its regulator occupies,
that it was made for the purpose of moving regularly ; and
that, notwithstanding the state of disrepair and aberration
into which it may have fallen. And so, from the obvious
place of rightful supremacy which is occupied by the con-
science of man in his moral system, we can infer that vir-
tue was the proper and primary design of his creation; and
that, notwithstanding the actual prevalence of obviously in-
ferior principles, over the habits and history of his life. Con-
nect this with the grand and general adaptation of Exter-
nal Nature for which we have now been contending-even
the capacity of that world in which we are placed for mak-
ing a virtuous species happy; and it were surely far juster
in arguing for the divine character, that we founded our
interpretation on the happiness which man's original con-
stitution is fitted to secure for him, than on the misery
which he suffers by that constitution having been in some
way perverted. It is from the native and proper tendency
of aught which is made, that we conclude as to the mind
and disposition of the maker; and not from the actual ef-


MAKING A VIRTUOUS SPECIES HAPPY. 235
fect, when that tendency has been rendered abortive, by the
extrinsic operation of some disturbing force on an else
goodly and well-going mechanism. The original design of
the Creator may be read in the natural, the universal ten-
dency of things; and surely, it speaks strongly both for
His benevolence and His righteousness that nothing is so
fitted to ensure the general happiness of society as the ge.
neral virtue of them who compose it. And if, instead of
this, we behold a world, ill at ease, with its many heart-burn-
ings and many disquietudes—the fair conclusion is, that
the beneficial' tendencies which have been established
therein, and which are therefore due to the benevolence of
God, have all been thwarted by the moral perversity of
man. The compound lesson to be gathered from such a
contemplation is, that God is the friend of human happi-
ness but the enemy of human vice-seeing, he hath set up
an economy in which the former would have grown up
and prospered universally, had not the latter stepped in and
overborne it.
12. We are now on a ground-work of more firm texture,
for an argument in behalf of man's immortality. But it is
only by a more comprehensive view both of the character
of God, and the actual state of the world that we obtain as
much evidence both for His benevolence and His righteous.
ness, as might furnish logical premises for the logical infer-
ence of a future state.
13. We have already stated that the miseries of life, in
their great and general amount, are resolvable into moral
causes; and did each man suffer here, accurately in pro-
portion to his own sins, there might be less reason for the
anticipation of another state hereafter. But this proportion
is, in no individual instance perhaps, ever realized on this
side of death. The miseries of the good are still due to a
moral perversity--though but to the moral perversity of
others, not of his own. Ae suffers from the injustice and ca-
lumny and violence and evil tempers of those who are around
him.' On the large and open theatre of the world, the cause
of oppression is often the triumphant one; and, in the bosom
of families, the most meek and innocent of the household
are frequently the victims for life, of a harsh and injurious
though unseen tyranny. It is this inequality of fortune, or
rather of enjoyment, between the good and the evil, which
forms the most popular and enters as a constituent part at


236
THE CAPACITIES OF THE WORLD FOR
least, into the most powerful argument, which nature fur-
nishes, for the immortality of the soul. We cannot imagine of
a God of righteousness, that He will leave any question of
justice unsettled; and there is nothing which more power-
fully suggests to the human conscience the apprehension
of a life to come, than that in this life, there should be so
many unsettled questions of justice first between man and
man, se
ween man and his Maker.
14. The strength of the former consideration lies in the
multiplicity, and often the fearful aggravation, of the un-
redressed wrongs inflicted every day by man upon his fel-
lows. The history of human society teems with these ; and
the unappeased cry, whether for vengeance or reparation,
rises to heaven because of them. We might here expa-
tiate on the monstrous, the wholesale atrocities, perpe-
trated on the defenceless by the strong; and which cus-
tom has almost legalized_having stood their ground
against the indignation of the upright and the good for
many ages. Perhaps for the most gigantic example of
this, in the dark annals of our guilty world, we should
turu our eyes upon injured Africa-that devoted region,
where the lust of gain has made the fiercest and the
fellest exhibition of its hardihood; and whose weeping
families are broken up in thousands every year, that the
families of Europe might the more delicately and luxu-
riously regale themselves. It is a picturesque, and seems
a powerful argument for some future day of retribution
when we look, on the one hand, to the prosperity of the
lordly oppressor, wrung from the sufferings of a captive
and subjugated people; and look, on the other, to the tears
and the untold agony of the hundreds beneath him, whose
lives of dreariness and hard labour are ten fold embittered, by
the imagery of that dear and distant land, from which they
have been irrecoverably torn. But, even within the confines
of civilized society, there do exist materials for our argu-
ment. There are cruelties and wrongs innumerable, in the
conduct of business; there are even cruelties and wrongs, in
the bosom of families. There are the triumphs of injustice;
the success of deep-laid and malignant policy on the one side,
on the other ruin and the overthrow of unprotected weak-
ness. Apart from the violence of the midnight assault, or
the violence of the high way-there is, even under the forms
of law, and amid the blandness of social courtesies a moral


238
THE CAPACITIES OF THE WORLD FOR
ing of a felt and a present conscience within, to the more
awful reckoning of a God who is the author of conscience
and who knoweth all things. Now, it is thus, ihat men
are led irresistibly to the anticipation of a future state-not
by their hopes, we think, but by their fears; not by a
sense of unfulfilled promises, but by the sense and the ter-
ror of unfulfilled penalties; by their sense of a judgment
not yet executed, of a wrath not yet discharged upon them.
Hence the impression of a futurity upon all spirits, whither
ar: carried forward the issues of a jurisprudence, which
bears no marks but the contrary of a full and final consum-
mation on this side of death. The prosperity of many
wicked who spend their days in resolute and contemptu.
cus irreligion: the practical defiance of their lives to the
biriding of conscience, and yet a voice of remonstrance and
of warning from this sad conscience which they are unable
wholly to quell; the many emphatic denunciations, not ut-
tered in audible thunder from above, but uttered in secret
and impressive whispers from within—these all point to
accounts between God and His creatures that are yet unfi-
nished. If there be no future state, the great moral ques.
tion between heaven and earth, broken off at the middle, is
frittered into a degrading mockery. There is violence done
to the continuity of things. The moral constitution of man is
stript of its significancy and the Author of that constitution
is stript of His wisdom and authority and honour. Toat
consistent march which we behold in all the cycles, and
progressive movements of the natural economy, is, in the
moral economy, brought to sudden arrest and disruntion-
if death annihilate the man, instead of only transforming
him. And it is only the doctrine of his immortality by
which all can be adjusted and harmonized.*
16. And there is one especial proof for the immortality of
the soul, founded on adaptation; and therefore so identical
in principle with the subject and main argument of our essay
that we feel its statement to be our best and most appro-
priate termination of this especial enquiry. The argument
is this, For every desire or every faculty, whether in man or
• It is well said by Mr. Davison, in his profound and original
work on Prophecy--that “Conscience and the present constitu-
tion of things are not corresponding terms. The one is not the
object of perception to the other. It is conscience and the issue
of things which go together."


MAKING A VIRTUOUS SPECIES HAPPY.
239
in the inferior animals, there seems a counterpart object in
external nature. Let it be either an appetite or a power;
and let it reside either in the sentient or in the intel-
lectual or in the moral economy-still there exists a some-
thing without that is altogether suited to it, and which
seems to be expressly provided for its gratification. There
is light for the eye; there is air for the lungs; there is food
for the ever-recurring appetite of hunger; there is water for
the appetite of thirst; there is society for the love, whether
of fame or of fellowship; there is a boundless field in all
the objects of all the sciences for the exercise of curiosity-
in a word, there seems not one affection in the living crea-
ture, which is not met by a counterpart and a congenial ob-
ject in the surrounding creation. It is this, in fact, which
forms an important class of those adaptations, on which the
argument for a Deity is founded. The adaptation of the
parts to each other within the organic structure, is distinct
from the adaptatation of the whole to the things of circum-
ambient nature; and is well unfolded in a separate
chapter by Paley, on the relation of inanimate bodies to
animated nature. But there is another chapter on prospect-
ive contrivances, in which he unfolds to us other adapta-
tions, that approximate still more nearly to our argument.
They consist of embryo arrangements or parts, not of im-
mediate use, but to be of use eventually-preparations go-
ing on in the animal economy, whereof the full benefit is
not 10 be realized, till some future and often considerably
distant development shall have taken place; such as the
teeth buried in their sockets, that would be inconvenient
during the first months of infancy, but come forth when it
is sufficiently advanced for another and a new sort of nou-
rishment; such as the manifold preparations, anterior to
the birth, that are of no use to the fetus, but are afterwards
to be of indispensable use in a larger and freer state of ex-
istence; and as the instructive tendencies to action that
appear before even the instruments of action are provided,
as in the calf of a day old to butt with its head before it has
been furnished with horns. Nature abounds not merely in
present expedients for an immediate use, but in providen-
tial expedients for a future one; and as far as we can ob-
serve we have no reason to believe, that either in the first or
second sort of expedients, there has ever aught been noticed,
which either bears on no object, now or lands in no result


MAKING A VIRTUOUS SPECIES HAPPY.
241
exception to this law. He would stand forth as an anomaly
in nature-with aspirations in his heart for which the universe
had no antity pe to offer, with capacities of understanding and
thought that never were to be followed, by objects of corres-
ponding greatness, through the whole history of his being. It
were a violence to the harmony of things, whereof no other
example can be given ; and, in as far as an argument can be
founded on this harmony for the wisdom of Him who made
all things it were a reflection on one of the conceived, if
not one of the ascertained attributes of the Godhead. To
feel the force of this argument we have only to look to the
obvious adaptation of his powers to a larger and more en-
during theatre-to the dormant faculties which are in him
for the mastery and acquisition of all the sciences, and
the partial ignorance of all, and the profound or total igno-
rance of many, in which he spends the short-lived years of
his present existence to the boundlese, but here, the uno-
pened capabilities which lie up in him, for the comprehen-
sion of truths that never once craw his attention on this
side of death, for the contemplative enjoyment both of mo-
ral and intellectual beauties which have never here revealed
themselves to his gaze. The whole labour of this mortal
life would not suffice, for traversing in full extent any one
of the sciences; and yet, there may lie undeveloped in his
bosom, a taste and talent for them all-none of which he
can even singly overtake ; for each science, though defi-
nite in its commencement, has its out-goings in the infinite
and the eternal. There is in man, a restlessness of ambi-
tion; an interminable longing after nobler and higher
things, which nought but immortality and the greatness of
immortality can satiate; a dissatisfaction with the present,
which never is appeased by all that the world has to offer;
an impatience and distaste with the felt littleriess of all that
he finds, and an unsated appetency for something larger
and better, which he fancies in the perspective before him-
to all which there is nothing like among any of the inferior
animals, with whom, there is a certain squareness of adjust.
ment, if we may so term it, between each desire and its
correspondent gratification. The one is evenly met hy the
other; and there is a fulness and definiteness of enjoyment,
up to the capacity of enjoyment. Not so with man, who
both from the vastness of his propensities and the vastness
of his powers, feels himself straitened and beset in a field
21


242 THE CAPACITIES OF THE WORLD, &c.
too narrow for him. He alone labours under the discom-
fort of an incongruity between his circumstances and his
powers; and, unless there be new circumstances awaiting
him in a more advanced state of being, he, the noblest of
Nature's products here below, would turn out to be the
greatest of her failures.


PART 11.
ON THE ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO THE IN- .
TELLECTUAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
. CHAPTER I.
Chief Instances of this Adaptation.
1. (1.) THE law of most extensive influence over the
phenomena and processes of the mind, is the law of Associ-
ation, or, as denominated by Dr. Thomas Brown, the law
of suggestion. If two objects have been seen in conjunc-
tion, or in immediate succession, at any one time- then the
sight or thought of one of them afterwards, is apt to
suggest the thought of the other also; and the same is true
of the objects of all the senses. The same smells or sounds
or lastes which have occurred formerly, when they occur
again, will often recall the objects from which they then
proceeded, the occasions or other objects with which they
were then associated. When one meets with a fragrance
of a particular sort, it may often instantly suggest a fra-
grance of the game kind experienced months or years
ago; the rose-bush from which it came; the garden where
it grew; the friend with whom we then walked; his fea-
tures, his conversation, his relatives, his history. When
two ideas have been once in juxta-position, they are apt to
present themselves in juxta-position over again-an apti-
iude which ever increases the oftener that the conjunction
has taken place, till, as if by an invincible necessity, the
antecedent thought is sure to bring its usual consequent
along with it; and, not only single sequences, but length-
ened trains or progressions of thought, may in this mannet
be explained.
2. And such are the great speed and facility of these
successions, that many of the intermediate terms, i
nough all
of them undoubtedly present to the mind, flit so quickly and
evanescently, as to pass unnoticed. This will the more


244
THE INTELLECTUAL
certainly happen, if the antecedents are of no further use
than to introduce the consequents; in which case, the con-
sequents remain as the sole objects of attention, and the an-
tecedents are forgotten. In the art of reading, the ultimate
object is to obtain possession of the author's sentiments or
meaning; and all memory of the words, still more of the
component letters, though each of them must have been
present to the mind, pass irrecoverably away from it. In
like manner, the anterior steps of many a mental process
may actually be described, yet without consciousness-the
attention resting, not on the fugitive means, but on the im-
portant end in which they terminate. It is thus that we
seem to judge, on the instant, of distances, as if under a
guidance that was immediate and instinctive, and not by
the result of a derivative process because insensible to the
rapid train of inference which led to it. The mind is too
much occupied with the information itself, for looking back
on the light and shadowy footsteps of the messenger who
brought it, which it would find difficult if not impossible to
trace-and besides, having no practical call upon it for
making such a retrospect. It is thus that, when looking in-
tensely on some beautiful object in Nature, we are so much
occupied with the resulting enjoyment, as to overlook the
intermediate train of unbidden associations, which connects
the sight of that which is before us, with the resulting and
exquisite pleasure, that we feel in the act of beholding it.
The principle has been much resorted to, in expounding
that process by which the education of the senses is carried
forward ; and, more especially, the way in which the inti-
mations of sight and touch are made to correct and to mo-
dify each other. It has also been employed with good ef-
fect, in the attempt to establish a philosophy of taste. But
these rapid and fugitive associations, while they form a
real, form also an unseen process; and we are not therefore
to wonder, if, along with many solid explanations, they
should have been so applied in the investigation of mental
phenomena, as occasionally to have given rise to subtle and
fantastic theories.
3. But our proper business at present is with results, ra-
ther than with processes; and instead of entering on the
more recondite inquiries of the science, however interesting
and however beautiful or even satisfactory the conclusions
may be to which they lead-it is our task to point out those


246
THE INTELLECTUAL
again of the antecedent, we should believe that the conse-
quent will occur also. That the thought of the antecedent
should suggest the thought of the consequent, is one mental
phenomenon. That the knowledge of the antecedent hav-
ing anew taken place, should induce the certainty, that the
consequent must have taken place also, is another mental
phenomenon. We cannot confound these two; without
being involved in the idealism of Hume or Berkeley. Were
the mere thought of the consequent all that was to be ac-
counted for, we need not go farther than to the law of assc-
ciation. But when to the existence of this thought, there is
superadded a belief in the reality of its archetype, a distinct
mental phenomenon comes into view, which the law of as-
gociation does not explain; and which, for aught that the
analysts of the mind have yet been able to trace or to dis-
cover, is an ultimate principle of the human understanding.
This belief, then, is one thing. But ere we can make out an
adaptation, we must be able to allege at least two things.
And they are ready to our hands-for, in addition to the be-
lief in the subjective mind, there is a correspondent and
counterpart reality in objective nature. If we have formerly
observed that a given antecedent is followed by a certain
consequent, then, not only does the idea of the antecedent
suggest the idea of the consequent; but there is a belief,
that, on the actual occurrence of the same antecedent, the
same consequent will follow over again. And the conse-
quent does follow ; or, in other words, this our instinctive
faith meets with its unexpected fulfilment, in the actual
course and constancy of nature. The law of association
does of itself, and without going further, secure this general
convenience that the courses of the mind are thereby con-
formed, or are made to quadrate and harmonize with the
courses of the outer world. It is the best possible construc-
tion for the best and most useful guidance of the mind, as
in the exercise of memory for exampie, that thought should
be made to follow thought, according to the order in which
the objects and events of nature are related to each other.
But a belief in the certainty and uniformity of this order.
with the counterpart verification of this belief in the actual
history of things is that which we now are especially regard-
ing. It forms our first instance, perhaps the most striking
and marvellous of all, of the adaptation of external nature
to the intellectual constitution of man.


CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
247
5. This disposition to count on the uniformity of Nature,
or even to anticipate the same consequents from the same
antecedents—is not the fruit of experience, but anterior to
it : or at least anterior to the very earliest of those of her
lessons, which can be traced backward in the history of an
infant mind. Indeed it has been well observed by Dr. Tho-
mas Brown, that the future constancy of Nature, is a lesson,
which no observation of its past constancy, or no experience
could have taught us. Because we have observed A a
thousand times to be followed in immediate succession by
B, there is no greater logical connexion between this propó-
sition and the proposition that A will always be followed by
B; than there is between the propositions ihat we have seen
A followed once by B, and therefore A will always be fol-
lowed by B. At whatever stage of the experience, the in-
ference may be made, whether longer or shorter, whether
oftener or seldomer repeated the conversion of the past into
the future seems to require a distinct and independent prin-
ciple of belief; and it is a principle which, to all appearance,
is as vigorous in childhood, as in the full maturity of the
human understanding. The child who strikes the table
with a spoon for the first time, and is regaled by the noise,
will strike again, with as confident an expectation of the
same result, as if the succession had been familiar to it for
vears. There is the expectation before the experience of
Nature's constancy; and still the topic of our wonder and
gratitude is, that this instinctive and universal faith in the
heart, should be responded to by objective nature, in one
wide and universal fulfilment.
6. The proper office of experience, in this matter, is very
generally misapprehended; and this has mystified the real
principle and philosophy of the subject. Her office is not to
tell, or to reassure us of the constancy of Nature ; but to tell,
what the terms of her unalterable progressions actually are.
The human mind from its first outset, and in virtue of a con-
stitutional bias coeval with the earliest dawn of the under.
standing, is prepared, and that before experience has begun
her lessons, to count on the constancy of nature's sequences.
But at that time, it is profoundly ignorant of the sequences in
themselves. It is the proper business of experience to give
this information; but it may require many lessons before
that her disciples be made to understand, what be the dis-
tinct terms even but of one sequence. Nature presents us


CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
249
but, In order to ascertain what the actual footsteps of her
progressions are, so as to connect each effect in the history
of Nature's changes with its strict and proper cause. Mean-
while, amid all the suspense and the frequent disappoint-
ments which attend this search into the processes of nature,
our confidence in the rigid and inviolable uniformity of these
processes remain unshaken-a confidence not learned from
experience, but amply confirmed and accorded to by experi-
ence. For this instinctive expectation is never once refuled,
in the whole course of our subsequent researches. Nature
though stretched on a rack, or put to the torture by the in-
quisitions of science, never falters from her immutability ; but
persists, unseduced and unwearied, in the same response to
The same question; or gives forth by a spark, or an explo-
sion, or an effervescence, or some other definite phenome-
non, the same result to the same circumstances or combina-
tion of data. The anticipations of infancy meet with their
glorious verification, in all the findings of manhood; and a
truth which would seem to require Omniscience for its
grasp, as coextensive with all Nature and all History, is
deposited by the hand of God, in the little cell of a nursling's
cogitations.
7. Yet the immutability of Nature has ministered to the
atheism of some spirits, as impressing on the universe a
character of blind necessity, instead of that spontaneity,
which might mark the intervention of a willing and a living
God. To refute this notion of an unintelligent fate, as being
the alone presiding Divinity, the common appeal is to the
infinity and exquisite skill of nature's adaptations. But to
attack this infidelity in its' fortress, and dislodge it thence,
the more appropriate argument would be the very, the in-
dividual adaptation on which we have now insisted the i
mutability of Nature, in conjunction with the universal sense
and expectation, even from earliest childhood, that all men
have of it; being itself one of the most marvellous and
strikingly beneficial of these adaptations. When viewed
aright, it leads to a wiser and sounder conclusion than that
of the fatalists. In the instinctive, the universal faith of
Nature's constancy, we behold a promise. In the actual
constancy of Nature, we behold its fulfilment. When the
two are viewed in connexion, then, to be told that Nature
never recedes from her constancy, is to be told that the God
of Nature never recedes from his faithfulness. If not by a


250
THE INTELLECTUAL
whisper from His voice, at least by the impress of His hand,
He hath deposited a silent expectation in every heart; and
He makes all Nature and all History conspire to realize it.
He hath not only enabled man to retain in his memory a
faithful transcript of the past; but by means of this consti-
tutional tendency, this instinct of the understanding as it has
been termed, to look with prophetic eye upon the future. It
is the link by which we connect experience with anticipa-
tion-a power or exercise of the mind coeval with the first
dawnings of consciousness or observation, because obviously
at to which we owe the confidence so early acquired and
so firmly established, in the information of our senses.*
* It is from our tactual sensations that we obtain our first ori.
ginal perceptions of distance and magnitude ; and it is only be-
cause of the invariable connexion which subsists between the
same tactual and the same visual sensations, that by means of
the latter we obtain secondary or acquired perceptions of dis-
tance and magnitude. It is obvious that without a faith in the
uniformity of nature, this rudimental education could not have
taken effect; and from the confidence where with we proceed
in very early childhood on the intimations of the eye, we may
infer how strongly this principle must have been at work
throughout the anterior stage of our still earlier infancy.
The lucid and satisfactory demonstration upon this subject
iu that delightful little work, the Theory of Vision, by Bishop
Berkeley, has not been superseded, because it has not been
improved upon, by the lucubrations of any subsequent au-
thor. The theology which he would found on the beautiful
process which he has unfolded so well, is somewhat tinged
with the mysticism of that doctrine which represents our
seeing all things in God. Certain it is, however, that the pro-
cess could not have been advanced or consummated, with-
out an aboriginal faith on the part of the infant mind in the uni.
formity of nature's sequences, a disposition to expect the same
consequents from the same antecedents-an inference which is
at length made, and that in very carly childhood, with such ra-
pidity as well as confidence, that it leads all men to conſound
their acquired with their original perceptions ; and it requires a
subtle analysis to disentangle the two from each other. Without
partaking in the metaphysics of Berkeley, we fully concur in
the strength and certainty of those theistical conclusions which
are expressed by him in the following sentences-"something
there is of divine and admirable in this language addressed
to our eyes, that may well awaken the mind, and deserve its
utmust attention; it is learned with so little pains, it expresses
the difference of things so clearly and aptly, it instructs with
such facility and dispatch, by one glance of the eye conveying
a greater variety of advices, and a more distinct knowledge of


CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
251
This disposition to presume on the constancy of nature,
commences with the faculty of thought, and keeps by it
through life, and enables the mind to convert its stores of
memory into the treasures of science and wisdom; and so
to elicit from the recollections of the past, both the doctrines
of a general philosophy, and the lessons of daily and familiar
conduct-and that, by means of prognostics, not one of
which can fail, for, in respect of her steadfast uniformity,
Nature never disappoints, or, which is equivalent to this, the
Author of Nature never deceives us. The generality of
Nature's laws is indispensable, both to the formation of any
system of truth for the understanding, and to the guidance
of our actions. But ere we can make such use of it, the
sense and the confident expectation of this generality must
be previously in our minds; and the concurrence, the con-
tingent harmony of these two elements; the exquisite adap-
tation of the objective to the subjective, with the manifest
utilities to which it is subservient; the palpable and perfect
meetness which subsists, between this intellectual propen-
sity in man, and all the processes of the outward universe
-while they afford incontestable evidence to the existence
and unity of that design, which must have adjusted the
mental and the material formations to each other, speak
things, than could be got by a discourse of several hours; and,
while it informs, it amuses and entertains the mind with such
singular pleasure and delight; it is of such excellent use in giv
ing a stability and permanency to human discourse, in record.
ing sounds and bestowing life on dead languages, enabling us to
converse with men of remote ages and countries; and it answers
so apposite to the uses and necessities of mankind, informing us
more distinctly of those objects, whose nearness or magnitude
qualify them to be of greatest detriment or benefit to our bodies.
and less exactly in proportion as their littleness or distance
make them of less concern to us. But these things are not
strange, they are familiar, and that makes them to be overlooked.
Things which rarely happen strike; whereas frequency lessens
the admiration of things, though in themselves ever so admira.
ble. Hence a common man who is not used to think and make
reflections, would probably be more convinced of the being of a
God by one single sentence heard once in his life from the sky,
than by all that experience he has had of this visual language,
contrived with such exquisite skill, so constantly addressed to
his eyes, and so plainly declaring the nearness, wisdom, and
providence of Him with whom we have to do." Minute Philo,
sopher. Dialogue I. Art. XV.


252
THE INTELLECTUAL
most decisively in our estimation both for the truth and the
wisdom of God.
8. We have long felt this close and unexpected, while at
the same time, contingent harmony, between the actual con-
stancy of Nature and man's faith in that constancy, to be
an effectual preservative against that scepticism, which
would represent the whole system of our thoughts and per-
ceptions to be founded on an illusion. Certain it is, ihat
beside an indefinite number of truths received by the under-
standing as the conclusions of a proof more or less length-
ened, there are truths recognized without proof by an in-
stant act of intuition--not the results of a reasoning process.
but themselves the first principles of all reasoning. At every
step in the train of argumentation, we affirm one thing to
be true, because of its logical connexion with another thing
known to be true ; but as this process of derivation is not
eternal, it is obvious, that, at the commencement of at least
some of these trains, there must be truths, which, instead
of borrowing their evidence from others, announce them-
selves immediately to the mind in an original and independ-
ent evidence of their own. Now they are these primary
convictions of the understanding, these cases of a belief
without reason, which minister to the philosophical infidel-
ity of those, who, professing to have no dependence on an
instinctive faith, do in fact alike discard all truth, whether
demonstrated or undemonstrated-seeing that underived or
unreasoned truth must necessarily form the basis, as well
as the continuous cement of all reasoning. They'challenge
us to account for these native and original convictions of the
mind; and affirm that they may be as much due to an arbis
trary organization of the percipient faculty, as to the objec-
tive trueness of the things which are perceived. And we
cannot dispute the possibility of this. We can neither esta-
blish by reasoning those truths, whose situation is, not any
where in the stream, but at the fountain of ratiocination ;
nor can we deny that beings might have been so differently
constituted, as that, with reverse intuitions to our own, they
might have recognized as truths what we instantly recoil
from as falsehoods, or felt to be absurdities our first and
foremost principles of truth. And when this suspicion is
once admitted, so as to shake our confidence in the judg-
ments of the intellect, it were but consistent that it should
be extended to the departments both of morality and taste.


CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
253
Our impressions of what is virtuous or of what is fair, may
be regarded as alike accidental and arbitrary with our im-
pressions of what is true--being referable to the structure of
the mind, and not to any objective reality in the things
which are contemplated. It is thus that the absolutely true,
or good, or beautiful, may be conceived of, as having no
stable or substantive being in nature; and the mind, adrift
from all fixed principle, may thus lose itself in universal
pyrrhonism.
9. Nature is fortunately too strong for this speculation;
but still there is a comfort in being enabled to vindicate the
confidence which she has inspired as in those cases, where
some original principle of hers admits of being clearly and
decisively tested. And it is so of our faith in the constancy
of nature, met and responded to, thoughout all her domi.
nions by nature's actual constancy-the one being the ex-
pectation, the other its rigid and invariable fulfilment. This
perhaps is the most palpable instance which can be quoted,
of a belief anterior to experience, yel of which experience
affords a wide and unexcepted verification. It proves at
least of one of our implanted instincts, that it is unerring;
and that, over against a subjective tendency in the mind,
there is a great objective reality in circumambient nature to
which it corresponds. This may well convince us, that we
live, not in a world of imaginations—but in a world of
realities. It is a noble example of the harmony which ob.
tains, between the original make and constitution of the
human spirit upon the one hand, and the constitution of ex-
ternal things upon the other; and nobly accredits the faith-
fulness of Him, who, as the Creator of both, ordained this
happy and wondrous adaptation. The monstrous suspicion
of the sceptics is, that we are in the hands of a God, who,
by the insertion of falsities into the human system, sports
himself with a laborious deception on the creatures whom
He has made. The invariable order of nature, in conjunc-
tion with the apprehension of this invariableness existing in
all hearts; the universal expectation with its universal ful-
filment, is a triumphant refutation of this degrading mock-
ery-evincing, that it is not a phantasmagoria in which we
dwell, but a world peopled with realities. That we are
never misled in our instinctive belief of nature's uniformity,
demonstrates the perfect safety wherewith we may commit
ourselves to the guidance of our original principles, whether
22


254
THE INTELLECTUAL
intellectual or moral-assured, that instead of occupying a
land of shadows, a region of universal doubt and derision,
they are the stabilities, both of an everlasting truth and an
everlasting righteousness with which we have to do
10. This lesson obtains a distinct and additional confir-
mation from every particular instance of adaptation, which
can be found, of external nature, either to the moral or in-
tellectual constitution of man.
11. (2.) To understand our second adaptation we must
advert to the difference that obtains between those truths
which are so distinct and independent, that each can only
be ascertained by a separate act of observation; and those
truths which are either logically or mathematically involv-
ed in each other.* For example, there is no such depend-
ence between the colour of a flower and its smell, as that
the one can be reasoned from the other; and, in every dif-
ferent specimen therefore, we, to ascertain the two facts of
the colour and the smell, must have recourse to two obser-
vations. On the other hand, there is such a dependence
between the proposition that self-preservation is the strong-
est and most general law of our nature, and the proposition
that no man will starve if able and in circumstances to
! See this distinction admirably expounded in Whately's logic
--a work of profound judgment, and which effectually vindi-
cates the honours of a science, that since the days of Bacon, or
rather (which is more recent) since the days of his extravagant
because exclusive authority, it has been too much the fashion
to depreciate. The author, if I might use the expression with-
out irreverence, has given to Bacon the things which are Ba-
con's, and to Aristotle the things which are Aristotle's. He has
strengthened the pretensions of logic by narrowing them-that
is, instead of placing all the intellectual processes under its di-
rection, by assigning to it as its proper subject the art of deduction
alone. He has made most correct distinction between the in-
ductive and the logical; and it is by attending to the respective
provinces of each, that we come to perceive the incompetency
of mere logic for the purpose of discovery strictly so called. The
whole chapter on discovery is particularly valuable leading us
clearly to discriminate between that which logic can, and that
which it cannot achieve. It is an instrument, not for the disco-
very of truth properly new, but for the discovery of truths
which are enveloped or virtually contained in propositions al-
ready known. It instructs, but does not inform; and has
nought to do in syllogism with the truth of the premises, but
only with the truth of the connexion between the premises and
the conclusion.


258
THE INTELLECTUAL
contemplates a subserviency of this sort fetched to us from
afar, it is difficult not to imagine of it as being the fruit of
some special adjustment, that came within the purpose of
Him, who, in constructing the vast mechanism of Nature,
overlooked not the humblest of its parts--but incorporated
the good of our species, with the wider generalities and
laws of a universal system.* The conclusion is rather en-
• The author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm, in his edhe
tion of Edwards' treatise on the will, presents us with the fol-
lowing energetic sentences on this subject.
Every branch of modern science abounds with instances of
remote correspondence between the great system of the world,
and the artificial (the truly natural) condition to which know-
ledge raises him. If these correspondences were single or rare
they might be deemed merely fortuitous; like the drifting of a
plank athwart the track of one who is swimming from a wreck.
But when they meet us on all sides and invariably, we must be
resolute in atheism not to confess that they are emanations from
one and the same centre of wisdom and goodness. Is it nothing
more than a lucky accommodation which makes the polarity of
the needle to subserve the purposes of the mariner? or may it
not safely be affirmed, both that the magnetic influence (whate-
ver its primary intention may be) had reference to the business
of navigation--a reference incalculably important to the spread
and improvement of the human race; and that the discovery and
the application of this influence arrived at the destined moment
in the revolution of human affairs, when in combination with
other events, it would produce the greatest effect? Nor should
we scruple to affirm that the relation between the inclination of
the earth's axis and the conspicuous star which, without a near
rival, attracts even the eye of the vulgar, and shows the north
to the wanderer on the wilderness or on the ocean, is in like
manner a beneficent arrangement. Those who would spurn the
supposition that the celestial locality of a sun immeasurably re.
mote from our system, should have reference to the accommo.
dation of the inhabitants of a planet so inconsiderable as our
own, forget the style of the Divine Works, which is, to serve
some great or principal end, compatibly with ten thousand lesser
and remote interests. Man if he would secure the greater, must
neglect or sacrifice the less ; not so the Omnipotent Contriver.
It is a fact full of meaning, that those astronomical phenomena
(and so others) which offer themselves as available for the pur.
poses of art, as for instance of navigation, or geography, do not
fully or effectively yield the end they promise, until after long
and elaborate processes of calculation have disentangled them
from variations, disturbing forces and apparent irregularities.
To the rude fact, if so we might designate it, a mass of recon.
dite science must be appended, before it can be brought to bear


262
THE INTELLECTUAL
ority of mere affluence and station, should be strengthened
in a way that would command the willing homage of all
spirits, that is, by the mental superiority which their op-
portunities of lengthened and laborious education enabled
them to acquire. By a wise ordination of Nature, the pos-
sessors of rank and fortune, simply as such, have a certain
ascendant power over their fellows; and, by the same ordi-
nation, the possessors of learning have an ascendancy also
and it would mightily conduce to the strength and stability
of the commonwealth, if these influences were conjoined, or,
in other words, if the scale of wealth and the scale of intel-
ligence, in as far as that was dependent on literary culture,
could be made to harmonize. The constitution of science,
or the adaptation which obtains between the objects of know-
ledge and the knowing faculties, is singularly favourable to
the alliance for which we now plead-insomuch that, to
sound the depths of philosophy, time and independence and
exemption from the cares and labours of ordinary life seem
indispensable; and, on the other hand, profound discove-
ries, or a profound acquaintance with them, are sure to
command a ready deference even from the multitude, whe-
ther on account of the natural respect which all men feel
derstanding, or on account of the palpa-
ble utilities to which, in a system of things so connected
as ours, even the loftiest and most recondite science is found
to be subservient. On the same principle that, in a ship,
the skilful navigation of its captain will secure for him the
prompt obedience of the crew to all his directions ;* or that,
• We have before us an anecdote communicated to us by a na.
val officer, (Captain Basil Hall,) distinguished for the extent and
yariety of his attainments, which shows how impressive such
results may become in practice. He sailed from San Blas on the
west coast of Mexico, and after a voyage of 8000 miles, occupy.
ing eighty-nine days, arrived off Rio Janelro, having in this in..
terval passed through the Pacific Ocean, rounded Cape Horn,
and crossed the South Atlantic, without making any land, or
even seeing a single sail, with the exception or an American
whaler off Cape Horn. Arrived within a week's sail of Rio, he
set seriously about determining, by lunar observations, the pre-
cise line of the ship's course, and its situation in it at a determi-
nate moment, and having ascertained this within from five to
ten miles, ran the rest of the way by those more ready and com
pendious methods, known to navigators, which can be safely
employed for short trips between one known point and another,


CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
263
in an army, the consummate generalship of its commander
will subordinate all the movements of the immense host, to
the power of one controlling and actuating will—so, in ge-
neral society, did wealth by means of a thorough scholarship
on the part of the higher classes, but maintain an intimate
fellowship with wisdom and sound philosophy-then, with
the same conservative influence as in these other examples,
would the intellectual ascendency thus acquired, be found of
mighty effect, to consolidate and maintain all the gradations
of the commonwealth.
15. It is thus that a vain and frivolous aristocracy, averse
to severe intellectual discipline, and beset with the narrow
prejudices of an crder, let themselves down from that high
vantage-ground on which fortune hath placed them-where,
by a right use of the capabilities belonging to the state in
which they were born, they might have kept their firm for
ing to the latest generations. Did all truih lie at the sur-
face of observation, and it was alike accessible to all men,
they could not with such an adaptation of external nature
but which cannot be trusted in long voyages, where the moon is
their only guide. The rest of the tale we are enabled by his
kindness to state in his own words:-“We steered towards Rio
Janeiro for some days after taking the lunars above described,
and having arrived within fifteen or twenty miles of the coast,
I hove-to till four in the morning when the day should break,
and then bore up; for although it was very hazy, we could see
before us a couple of miles or so. About eight o'clock it became
so foggy that I did not like to stand in farther, and was just
bringing the ship to the wind again before sending the people
to breakfast, when it suddenly cleared off, and I had the satis-
faction of seeing the great sugar-loaf peak, which stands on one
side of the harbour's mouth, so nearly right a-head that we had
not to alter our course above a point, in order to hit the entrance
of Rio. This was the first land we had seen for three months,
after crossing so many seas, and being set backwards and for
wards by innumerable currents and foul winds.” “The effect
on all on board might well be conceived to have been electric;
and it is needless to remark how essentially the authority of a
commanding officer over his crew may be strengthened by the
occurrence of such incidents, indicative of a degree of know.
ledge and consequent power beyond their reach." Herschell's
Discourse, p. 28, 29.
It is an extreme instance of the connexion between mental
power and civil or political ascendency, though often verified
'n the history of the world--that military science has often led
to the establishment of a military despotism.


264
THE INTELLECTUAL
to man's intellectual constitution, have realized the peculiar
advantage on which we are now insisting. But it is be-
cause there is so much of important and applicable truth,
which lies deep and hidden under the surface, and which
can only be appropriated by men, who combine unbounded
leisure with the habit or determination of strenuous mental
effort—it is only because of such an adaptation, that they
who are gifted with property are, as a class, gifted with the
means, if they would use it, of a great intellectual superi-
ority over the rest of the species. There is a strong natural
veneration for wealth, and also a strong natural veneration
for wisdom. It is by the union of the two that the horrors
of revolutionary violence, might for ever be averted from
the land. Did our high-born children of affluence, for every
ten among them, the mere loungers of effeminacy and fa-
shion, or the mere lovers of sport and sensuality and splen-
dour--did they, for every ten of such, furnish but one ena-
moured of higher gymnastics, the gymnastics of the mind;
and who accomplished himself for the work and warfare of
the senate, by his deep and comprehensive views in all the
proper sciences of a statesman, the science of government,
and politics, and commerce, and economics, and history, and
human nature,- by a few gigantic men among them, thus
girded for the services of patriotism, a nation might be saved
--because arrested on that headlong descent, which, at the
impulse of the popular will, it might else have made, from
one measure of fair but treacherous promise, from one ruin-
ous plausibility to another. The thing most to be dreaded,
is that hasty and superficial legislation, into which a go-
vernment may be hurried by the successive onsets of public
impatience, and under the impulse of a popular and pre-
vailing cry. Now the thing most needed, as a counteractive
to this evil, is a thoroughly intellectual parliament, where
shall predominate that masculine sense which has been
trained for act and application by masculine sludies; and
where the silly watch-word of theory shall not be employed,
as heretofore, to overbear the lessons of soundly general.
ized truth-because instead of being discerned at a glance-
they are fetched from the depths of philosophic obscrvation,
or shone upon by lights from afar, in the accumulated ex-
perience of ages. We have infinitely more to apprehend from
the demagogues than from the doctrinaires of our present
crisis ; and it will require a far profounder attention to the


CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
265
principles of every question than many deem to be neces.
sary, or than almost any are found to bestow, to save us
from the crudities of a blindfold legislation.*
16. And it argues portentiously for the coming destinies
of our land, that in the present rage for economy, such an
This mental superiority which the higher classes might and
ought to cultivate, is not incompatible, but the contrary, with
a general ascent in the scholarship of the population at large.
On this subject we have elsewhere said that "there is a bigotry
on the side of endowed seminaries which leads those whom it
actuates to be jealous of popular institutions. And, on the other
hand, there is a generous feeling towards these institutions,
which is often accompanied with a certain despite towards the
endowed and established seminaries. We think that a more
comprehensive consideration of the actings and reactings
which take place in society, should serve to abate the heats
of this partizanship, and that what in one view is regard.
ed as the conflict of jarring and hostile elements, should, in
another, be rejoiced in as a luminous concourse of influences,
tending to accomplish the grand and beneficent result of an en-
lightened nation. It is just because we wish so well to colleges,
that we hail the prosperity of mechanic institutions. The lat.
ter will never outrun the former, but so stimulate them onwards
that the literature of our higher classes shall hold the same re.
lative advancement as before over the literature of our artizang.
It will cause no derangement and no disproportion. The light
which shall then overspread the floor of the social edifice, will
only cause the lustres which are in the higher apartments to
blaze more gorgeously. The basement of the fabric will be
greatly more elevated, yet without violence to the symmetry
of the whole architecture; for the pinnacles and upper stories
of the building will rise as proudly and as gracefully as ever
above the platform which sustains them. There is indefinite
room in truth and science for an ascending movement, and the
taking up of higher positions, and if, in virtue of a popular
philosophy now taught in schools of art, we are to have more
lettered mechanics, this will be instantly followed up by a higher
philosophy in colleges than heretofore, and in virtue of which
we shall also have a more accomplished gentry, a more intel.
lectual parliament, a more eruditc clergy, and altogether a
greater force and fulness of mind throughout all the departments
of the commonwealth. The whole of society will ascend to-
gether, and therefore without disturbance to the relation of its
parts. But, in every stage of this progress, the endowed colleges
will continue to be the highest places of intellect; the country's
richest lore and its most solid and severest phoilosophy will al.
ways be found in them." Use and Abuse of Literary and Ec.
clesiastical Endowments.
23


CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
267
throwing off from it, the dregs and the degeneracy of an
iron age."*
17. (5.) We shall do little more than state two other
adaptations, although more might be noticed, and all do admit
of a much fuller elucidation than we can bestow upon
them. And first there is a countless diversity of sciences,
and correspondent to this, a like diversity in the tastes and
talenis of men, presenting, therefore, a most beneficial adapta-
tion, between the objects of human knowledge and the powers
of human knowledge. Even in one science there are often
many subdivisions, each requiring a separate mental fit-
ness, on the part of those, who might select it as their own
favourite walk, which they most love, and in which they
are best qualified to excel. In most of the physical sciences,
how distinct the business of the observation is from that of
the philosophy, and how important to their progress, that, for
each appropriate work, there should be men of appropriate
faculties or habits, who in the execution of their respective
tasks, do exceedingly multiply and enlarge the products of
the mind-even as the grosser products of human industry
are multiplied by the subdivision of employment. It is
well, that, for that infinite variety of intellectual pursuits,
necessary to explore all the recesses of a various and com-
plicated external nature, there should be a like variety of
intellectual predilections and powers scattered over the spe-
cies--a congruity between the world of mind and the world
of matter of the utmost importance, both to the perfecting
of art, and to the progress and perfecting of science. Yet
it is marvellous of these respective labourers, though in ef-
fect they work simultaneously and to each other's hands,
how little respect or sympathy, or sense of importance they
have for any department of the general field, for any sec-
tion in the wide encyclopædia of human learning, but that
on which their own faculties are concentrated and absorbed.
* The same effect is still more likely to ensue from the spolia-
tion and secularization of ecclesiastical property.
+ There is no accounting for the difference of minds or inclina-
tions, which leads one man to observe with interest the deve-
lopement of phenomena, another to speculate on their causes :
but were it not for this happy disagreement, it may be doubted
whether the higher sciences could ever have attained even their
present degree of perfection." Sir John Herschell's Discourses,
p. 131.


268
THE INTELLECTUAL
We cannot imagine aught more dissimilar and uncongenial,
than the intentness of a mathematician on his demonstra-
tions and diagrams, and the equal intentness, nay, delight,
of a collector or antiquarian on the faded manuscripts and
uncial characters of other days. Yet in the compound re-
sult of all these multiform labours, there is a goodly and sus-
tained harmony, between the practitioners and the theorists
of science, between the pioneers and the monarchs of lite-
rature-even as in the various offices of a well arranged
household, although there should be no mutual intelligence
between the subordinates who fill them, there is a supreme
and connecting wisdom which presides over and animates
the whole. The goodly system of philosophy, when
viewed as the product of innumerable contributions, by
minds of all possible variety and men of all ages-bears
like evidence to the universe being a specious household,
under the one and consistent direction of Him who is at
once the Parent and the Master of a universal family.*
18. And here it is not out of place to remark, that it is the
very perfection of the Divine workmanship, which leads eve-
ry enquirer to imagine a surpassing worth and grace and
dignity in his own special department of it. The fact is alto-
gether notorious, that in order to attain a high sense of the
importance of any science, and of the worth and beauty of
the objects which it embraces- nothing more is necessary
than the intent and persevering study of them. Whatever
the walk of philosophy may be on which man shall enter,
that is the walk which of all others he conceives to be most
enriched, by all that is fitted to entertain the intellect, or
arrest the admiration of the enamoured scholar. The as-
tronomer who can unravel the mechanism of the heavens,
or the chemist who can trace the atomic processes of mato
ter upon earth, or the metaphysician who can assign the
laws of human thought, or the grammarian who can dis-
crimate the niceties of language, or the naturalist who can
classify the flowers and the birds and the shells and the
minerals and the insects which so teem and multiply in this
world of wonders-each of these respective enquirers is apt
"The benefit of subdivision in science should lead to the mul.
prication of professorships in our literary institutes, and at als
events should prevent the parsimonivus suppression of them,
or we parsimonious amalgamation of the duties of two or more
into one.


270
THE INTELLECTUAL
of too great a sensibility in the organ of hearing, giving
rise to an excess in the faculty, which amounted to disease,
by exposing the patient to the pain and disturbance of too
many sounds, even of those so faint and low, as to be in-
audible to the generality of men. In like manner we can
gine the excess of a property purely mental, of memory
for example, amounting io a malady of the intellect, by ex-
posing the victim of it to the presence and the perplexity of
ioo many ideas, even of those which are so insignificant,
that it would lighten and relieve the mind, if they had no
place there at all.* Certain it is that the more full and cir-
cumstantial is the memory, the more is given for the judg-
ment to do-its proper work of selecting and comparing be-
coming the more oppressive, with the number and dis-
traction of irrelevant materials. It would have been bet-
ter that these had found no original admittance within the
chamber of recollection; or that only things of real and suf-
ficient importance had left an enduring impression on its
tablet. . In other words, it would have been better, that the
memory had been less susceptible or less retentive than it
is; and this may enable us to perceive the exquisite ba-
lancing that must have been requisite, in the construction of
the mind when the very defect of one faculty is thus made
to aid and to anticipate the operations of another. He who
alone knoweth the secrets of the spirits, formed them with
a wisdom to us unsearchable.
20. Certain it is however that variety in the proportion
of their faculties, is one chief cause of the difference be-
tween the minds of men. And whatever the one faculty
may be. in any individual, which predominates greatly be
yond the average of the rest—that faculty is selected as the
characteristic by which to distinguish him; and thus he
may be designed as a man of judgment, or information, or
fancy, or wit, or oratory. It is this variety in their respect-
ive gifts, which originates so beautiful dependence and re-
ciprocity of mutual services among men; and, more espe-
• It has been said of Sir James Mackintosh. that the excess of
his memory was felt by him as an incumbrance in the writing
of history-adding as it did to the difficulty of selection. It is
on the saine principle that the very multitude of one's ideas and
words may form an obstacle to extemporaneous speaking, as
has been illustrated by Dean Swift under the comparison of a
thin church emptying faster than a crowded one.


272
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
complex object which had both beauty and truth for its in-
gredients. Thus it was that the very exuberance of his
genius, injured the man, in the estimation of the. pigmies
around him; and the splendour of his imagination detracted
from the credit of his wisdom. Fox had the sagacity to
see this; and posterity now see it. Now that, instead of a
passing meteor, he is fixed by authorship in the literary he-
misphere, mien can make a study of him; and be at once
regaled by the poetry, and instructed by the profoundness
of his wondrous lucubrations.
CHAPTER II.
On the Connexion between the Intellect and the
Emotions.
1. The intellectual states of the mind, and its states of
emotion, belong to distinct provinces of the mental con-
stitution—the former to the percipient, and the latter to
what Sir James Mackintosh would term the emotive or
tic part of our nature. Bentham a
pathology to the mind in somewhat the same sense-not
expressive, as in medical science, of states of disease, un
der which the body suffers; but expressive, in mental sci.
ence, of states of susceptibility, under which the mind is in
any way affected, whether painfully or pleasurably. Had
it not been for the previous usurpation or engagement of
this term by medical writers, who restrict the application of
it to the distempers of our corporeal frame, it might have
been conveniently extended to all the susceptibilities of the
mental constitution-even when that constitution is in its
healthful and natural state. According to the medical use
of it the Greek naoxw from which it is derived, is under-
stood in the sense of the Latin translation, patior, to suffer.
According to the sense which we now propose for it,
in treating of mental phenomena, the Greek Traoxw would be
understood in the sense of the Latin translation afficior to be
affected. When treating of the mental pathology, we treat,
not of mental sufferings, but, more general, of mental sus-
ceptibilities. The raoxw of the Greek, whence the term
comes, is equivalent either to the “patior" or the "affi-


INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS. 273
cior” of Latin,--the former signifying "to suffer," and the
latter simply is to be affected, the former sense being the
one that is retained in medical, and the latter in mental pa-
thology. The two differ as much the one from the other as
passion does from affection, or the violence of a distempered
does from the due and pacific effect of a natural influence.
Even the Latin patior might be translated, not merely into
* suffer” but into the being acted upon” or into “the being
passive.” Medical pathology is the study of those diseases
under which the body suffers. Mental pathology is the
study of all those phenomena that arise from influences
acting upon the mind viewed as passive, or as not putting
forth any choice or activity at the time. Now, when thus
defined, it will embrace all that we understand by sensa-
tions, and affections, and passions. It is not of my will
that certain colours impress their appropriate sensations
upon my eye, or that certain sounds impress their sensa-
tions upon my ear. It is not of my will, but of an organi.
zation which I often cannot help, that I am so nervously
irritable, under certain disagreeable sights and disagreea-
ble noises. It is not of my will, but of an aggressive
influence which I cannot withstand, that, when placed
on an airy summit, I forthwith swim in giddiness, and
am seized with the imagination, that if I turn not my
feet and my eyes from the frightful precipice's margin,
I shall topple to its base. Neither is it of my will that
I am visited with such ineffable disgust at the sight of
some loathsome animal. But these are strong instances,
and perhaps evince a state bordering upon disease. Yet we
may gather from them some general conception of what is
meant by mental pathology, whose design it is to set forth
all those states of feeling, into which the mind is thrown, by
the influence of those various objects that are fitted to ex-
cite, either the emotions or the sensitive affections of our
nature. And, to keep the subject of mental pathology pure,
we shall suppose these states of feeling to be altogether
unmodified by the will, and to be the very states which result
from the law of the external senses, or the laws of emotion
operating upon us at the time, when the mind is either
wholly powerless or wholly inactive. To be furnished with
one comprehensive term, by which to impress a mark on so
large an order of phenomena, must be found very common
dious ; and though we have adverted to the etymology of


INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS.
278
principle of curiosity had to be provided for the other.
Each of them bears the same evidence of a special contriv-
ance for a special object—and that by one who took a more
comprehensive view of our welfare, than we are capable of
taking for ourselves; and made his own additions to the
mechanism for the express purpose of supplementing the
deficiency of human foresight. The resemblance between
the two cases goes strikingly to demonstrate, how a mental
constitution might as effectually bespeak the hand of an in-
telligent maker, as does a physical or material constitution.
It is true, that, with the great majority of men, the intel-
lectual is not so urgent or imperious, as is the animal
craving. But even for this difference, we can perceive a
reason, which would not have been found under a random
economy of things. Each man's hunger would need to be
alike strong, or at least strong enough to ensure the taking
of food for himself, for to this effect, he will receive no be-
nefit from another man's hunger. But there is not the
same reason why each man's curiosity should be alike
strong—for the curiosity of one man might subserve the sup-
ply of information and intellectual food to the rest of the spe-
cies. To enlarge the knowledge of the world, it is not needed,
that all men should be endowed with such a strength of
desire for it, as to bear them onward through the toils of
original investigation. The dominant, the aspiring curosity,
which impels the adventurous traveller to untrodden regions,
will earn discoveries, not for himself alone, but for all men
- if their curiosity bé but strong enough for the persual of
his agreeable record, under the shelter, and amid the com-
forts of their own home. And it is so in all the sciences.
The unquenchable thirst of a few, is ever drawing supplies
of new truth, which are shared in by thousands. There is
an obvious meaning in this variety, between the stronger cu-
riosity of the few who discover truth, and the weaker curi-
osity of the many who acquire it. The food which hun-
ger impels man to take, is for his own aliment alone. The
fruit of that study to which the strength of his own curiosity
impels him, may become the property of all men.
4. But, apart from this singularity, we behold in curi-
osity, viewed as a general attribute, a manifest adaptation
to the circumstances in which man is placed. If, on the
one hand, we look to the rich and exhaustless variety of
truth, in a universe fraught with the materials of a most


276
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
stupendous and evergrowing philosophy, and each depart-
ment of which is fitted to stimulate and regale the curiosity
of the human mind-we should say of such an external na
ture as this, that, presenting a most appropriate field to the
inquisitive spirit of our race, it was signally adapted to the
intellectual constitution of man. Or if, on the other hand,
besides looking to the world as a theatre for the delightful
entertainment of our powers, we behold it, in the intricacy
of its phenomena and laws, in its recondite mysteries, in its
deep and difficult recesses yet conquerable to an indefinite
extent by the perseverance of man, and therefore as a befit-
ting theatre for the busy and most laborious exercise of his
powers—we should say of such an intellectual constitution
as ours, that it was signally adapted to the system of ex-
ternal nature. It would require a curiosity as strong and
steadfast as Nature hath given us, to urge us onward,
through the appalling difficulties of a search so laborious.
Hunger is the great impellent to corporeal labour, and the
gratification of this appetite is its reward. Curiosity is a
great impellent to mental labour, and, whether we look to
the delights or the difficulties of knowledge, we cannot fail
to perceive, that this mental appetency in man, and its coun-
terpart objects in nature, are suited with marvellous ex-
actness to each other.
5. But the analogy between the mental and the corpo-
real affections does not stop here. The appetite of hunger
would, of itself, impel to the use of food-although no ad-
ditional pleasure had been annexed to the use of it, in the
gratification of the palate. The sense of taste, with its vari-
ous pleasurable sensations, has ever been regarded, as a dis-
tinct proof of the benevolence and care of God. And the
same is true of the delights which are felt by the mind, in
the acquisition of knowledgeas when truth discloses her
high and hidden beauties to the eye of the enraptured stu-
dent; and he breathes an ethereal satisfaction, having in it
the very substance of enjoyment, though the world at large
cannot sympathize with it. The pleasures of the intellect,
though calm, are intense ; insomuch, that a life of deep phi-
losophy, were a life of deep emotion, when the understand-
ing receives of its own proper aliment-having found its way
to those harmonies of principle, those goodly classifications
of phenomena, which the disciples of science love to gaze
upon. And the whole charm does not lie in the ultimate


INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS.
277
there is
in the final att renteinber, not only the delight he
discovery. There is a felt triumph in the march, and along
the footsteps of the demonstration which leads to it; in the
successive evolutious of the reasoning, as well as its suc-
cessful conclusion. Like every other enterprize of man,
there is happiness in the current and continuous pursuit,
as well as in the final attainment-us every student in geo-
metry can tell, who will remember, not only the delight he
felt on his arrival at the landing place, but the delight he
feit when guided onward by the traces and coucatenations
of the pathway. Even in the reinotest abstractions of con-
templative trinth, there is a glory aud a transcendental plea-
sure, which the world kuoweth not; but which becomes
more intelligible, because more embodied, when the atten-
tion of the enquirer is directed to the realities of substantive
nature. And thoigh there be few who comprehend or fol-
low Newton in his gigantic walk, yet all may participate
in his triumpliant feeling, when lic reached that lofty sum-
mit, where the whole mystery and magnificence of Nature
stood submitted to his gaze-in eminence won by him
through the power and the patience of intellect alone; but
from which he descriel a scene more glorious far than ima-
gination could have forined, or than ever had been pictured
and set forth, in the sublinest visions of poetry.
6. It is thus that while the love of beauty, operating upon
the susceptible imagination of the theorist, is one of those
seducing influences which lead men astray from the pur-
suit of experimental truth-he, in fact, who at the outset
resists her fascinations, because of his supreme respect for
the lessons of observation, is at length repaid by the disco-
veries and sights of surpassing loveliness. The inductive
philosophy began its career, by a renunciation, painful we
have no doubt at first to many of its disciples, of all the sys-
tems and harmonies of the schoolmen. But in the assiduous
prosecution of its labours it worked its way to a far nobler
and more magnificent harmony at the last to the real sys-
tem of the universe, more excellent than all the schemes of
human conception—not in the solidity of its evidence alone,
but as an object of tasteful contemplation. The self-de-
nial which is laid upon us by Bacon's philosophy, like
all other self-denial, whether in the cause of truth or virtue,
hath its reward. In giving ourselves up to its guidance,
we have often to quit the fascinations of beautiful theory ;
but in exchange for these, are at length regaled by the bigher
24


278
CONNEXION EETWEEN THE
and substantial beauties of actual nature. There is a stub-
bornness in facts before which the specious ingenuity is com-
pelled to give way; and perhaps the mind never suffers
more painful laceration, than when, after having vainly at-
tempted to force nature into a compliance with her own
splendid generalizations, she, on the appearance of some re-
bellious and impracticable phenomenon, has to practise a
force upon herself, when she thus finds a goodly specula-
tion superseded by the homely and unwelcome experience.
It seemed at the outset a cruel sacrifice, when the world of
speculation, with all its manageable and engaging simplici-
ties had to be abandoned ; and, on becoming the pupils of ob-
servation, we, amid the varieties of the actual world around
us, felt as if bewildered, if not lost among the perplexities
of a chaos. This was a period of greatest sufferance, but
it has had a glorious termination, In return for the assi-
duity wherewith the study of nature hath been prosecuted,
she hath made a more abundant revelation of her charms.
Order hath arisen out of confusion; and in the ascertained
structure of the universe, there are now found to be a state
and a sublimity, beyond all that ever was pictured by the
mind, in the days of her adventurous and unfettered ima-
gination. Even viewed in the light of a noble and engag-
ing spectacle for the fancy to dwell upon, who would ever
think of comparing with the system of Newton, either that
celestial machinery of Descartes, which was impelled by
whirlpools of ether, or that still more cumbrous machinery
of cycles and epicycles which was the progeny of a re-
moter age ! It is thus that at the commencement of this ob-
servational process, there is an abjuration of beauty. But
it soon reappears in another form, and brightens as we ad-
vance; and there at length arises, on solid foundation, a
fairer and goodlier system, than ever floated in airy ro-
mance before the eye of genius.* Nor is it difficult to per-
* In the " Essays of John Sheppard."-a work very recently
published, and alike characterised by the depth of its Christian
intelligence and feeling, and the beauty of its thoughts—there
occurs the following passage, founded on the Manuscript Notes
taken by the author, of Playfair's Lectures. It was impress.
ively stated in a preliminary lecture by a late eminent Scottish
Professor of Natural Philosophy, that the actual physical won.
ders of creation far transcend the boldest and most hyperbolical
imaginings of poetic minds;" "that the reason of Newton and
Gallileo took a sublimer flight than the fancy of Milton and


INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS. 283
OBI
vite na
9. We deem it no exception to the invariableness of that
relation, which subsists between an object and its counter-
part emotion, that, in many instances, a certain given ob-
ject may be present and in full view of the observer, with-
out awakening that sensibility which is proper to it. A
spectacle of pain does generally, but not always, awaken
compassion. " It would always, we think, if a creature in
agony were the single object of the mind's contemplation.
But the person, now in suffering, may be undergoing the
chastisement of some grievous provocation; and the emo-
tion is different, because the object is really different an
offender who has excited the anger of our bosoms, and, in
the view of whose inflicted sutferings, this indignant feeling
receives its gratification. Or the pain way be inflicted by
our own hand on an unoffending animal in the prosecution
of some cruel experiment. If compassion be wholly unfelt,
it is not because in this instance the law has been repealed
which connects this emotion with the view of pain; but it
is because the attention of the mind to this object is dis-
placed by another object; even the discovery of truth- and
80 what but for this might have been an intense compas-
sion, is overborne by intenser c'riosity. And so witli all
the other emotions. Were danger singly the object of the
mind's contemplation, fear, we think, would be thie univer-
sal feeling ; but it may be danger connected with the sight
or the menaces of an insulting enemy who awakens burn-
ing resentment in the heart, and when anger rises fear is
gone; or it may be danger shared with fellow combatants,
whose presence and observation kindle in the bosom the
love of glory and impel to deeds of heroism-not because
any law which connects, and connects invariably, certain
emotions with certain objects, is in any instance reversed or
suspended; but because, in this conflict and composition of
moral forces, one emotion displaced another from the feel.
ings, only, however, because one object displaced another
from the thoughts. Still, in every instance, the object is the
stepping-stone to the emotion-insomuch, that if we want to
recall a certain emotion, we must recall to the mind that cer-
tain object which awakens it; if we want to cease from the
emotion, we must cease from thinking of its object, we
must transfer the mind to other objects, or occupy it with
other thoughts.
10. This connexion between the percipient faculties of the


284
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
mind and its feelings, reveals to us a connexion between
the intellectual and the moral departments of our nature.
How the one is brought instrumentally to bear upon the
other, will be afterwards explained. But meanwhile it is
abundantly obvious, that the presence or the absence of cer-
tain feelings stands connected with the presence or the ab-
sence of certain thoughts. We can no mare break up the
connexion between the thought of any object that is viewed
mentally, and the feeling which it impresses on the heart,
than we can break up the connexion between the sight of
any object that is viewed materially, and the sensation
which it impresses upon the retina. If we look singly and
steadfastly to an object of a particular colour, as red, there
is an organic necessity for the peculiar sensation of redness,
which we cannot escape, but by shutting our eyes, or turn-
ing them away to objects that are differently coloured. If
we think singly and steadfastly on an object of a particular
character, as an injury, there seems an organic necessity
also for thc peculiar emotion of resentment, from which there
appears to be no other way of escaping, than by stilling the
thought, or turning the mind away to other objects of con.
templation. Now we hear both of virtuous emotions and of
vicious emotions; and it is of capital importance to know how
to retain the one and to exclude the other which is by
dwelling in thought on the objects that awaken the latter.
And so it is by thinking in a certain way that wrong sen-
sibilities are avoided, and right sensibilities are upholden,
It is by keeping up a remembrance of the kindness, that we
keep up the emotion of gratitude. It is by forgetting the
provocation, that we cease from the emotion of anger. It
is by reflecting on the misery of a fellow creature in its vi-
vid and affecting details, that pity is called forth. It is by
meditating on the perfections of the Godhead, that we che-
rish and keep alive our reverence for the highest virtue and
our love for the highest goodness. In one word, thought
is at once the harbinger and the sustainer of feeling; and
this, of itself, forms an important link of communication
between the intellectual and the moral departments of our
nature.
11. We shall not be able to complete our views, either on
the moral character of the emotions, or their dependence on
the percipient faculties of the mind, until we have established
a certain ulterior principle which comes afterwards into no-


INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS. 286
tice. Neither do we now expatiate on their uses, of which
we have already given sufficient specimens, in our treat-
ment of the special affections. We would only remark at
present, on their vast importance to human happiness
seeing that a state of mental happiness cannot even be so
much as imagined without a state of emotion. They are
the emotions, in fact, and the external affections together,
which share between them the whole intercet, whether plea-
surable or paioful, of human existence. And what a vivid
and varied interest that is, may be rendered evident by a
mere repetition of those words which compose the nomen-
clature of our feelings—as hope, and fear, and grief, and
joy, and love diversified into so many separate affections to-
wards wealth, famne, power, knowledge, and all the other
objects of human desire, besides the tasteful and benevolent
emotions which altogether keep their unremitting play in
the heart, and sustain or keep up the continuity of our sen.
sible being. It says enough for the adaptation of external
nature to a mental constitution so complexly and variously
endowed, that numerous as these susceptibilities are, the
world is crowded with objects, that keep them in full and
busy occupation. The details of this contemplation are in-
exhaustible; and we are not sure but that the general les-
son of the Divine care or Divine benevolence, which may
be founded upon these, could be more effectually learned
by a close attention of the mind upon one specific instance,
than by a complete enumeration of all the instances, with at
the same time only a briefer and slighter notice of each of
them.
12. And it would make the lesson all the more impress-
ive, if, instead of selecting as our example, an emotion of
very exalted character, and of which the influence on human
enjoyment stood forth in bright daylight to the observation
of all, such as the sensibility of a heart that was feelingly
alive to the calls of benevolence, or feelingly alive to the
beauties of nature we should take for our case some other
kind of emotion, so cominon perhaps as to be ignobly fa-
miliar, and on which one would scarcely think of constructing
aught so dignified or so serious as a theological argument.
Yet we cannot help thinking, that it most emphatically tells
us of the teeming, the profuse benevolence of the Deity-
when we reflect on those homelier and those every-day
pources out of which, the whole of human life, through the


286
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
successive hours of it, is seasoned with enjoyment; and a
most agreeable zeal is imparted from them, to the ordinary
occasions of converse and companionship among men. When
the love of novelty finds in the walks of science the gratifi-
cation that is suited to it, we can reason gravely on the
final cause of the emotion, and speak of the purpose of Na-
ture, or rather of the Author of Nature, in having instituted
such a reward for intellectual labour. But we lose sight of
all the wisdom and all the goodness that are connected with
this mental ordination-when the very same principle which,
in the lofty and liberal savant, we call the love of novelty,
becomes, in the plain and ordinary citizen, the love of news.
Yet in this humbler and commonplace form, it is needless
to say, how prolific it is of enjoyment-giving an edge as it
were to the whole of one's conscious existence, and its prin-
cipal charm to the innocent and enlivening gossip of every
social party. Perhaps a still more effective exemplification
may be had in another emotion of this class, that which
arises from our sense of the ludicrous—which so often mi-
nisters to the gaiety of man's heart, even when alone; and
which, when he congregates with his fellows, is ever and
anon breaking forth into some humourous conception, that
infects alike the fancies of all, and finds vent in one com-
mon shout of ecstacy. Like every other emotion, it stands
allied with a perception as its antecedent, the object of the
perception in this instance being the conjunction of things
that are incongruous with each other on the first disco-
very or conception of which, the mirth begins to tumultu-
ate in the heart of some one; and on the first utterance of
which, it passes with irrepressible sympathy into the hearts
of all who are around him-whence it obtains the same
ready discharge as before, in a loud and general efferves-
cence. To perceive how inexhaustible the source of this
enjoyment is, we have only to think of it in connexion with
its cause; and then try to compute, if we can, all the pos-
sibilities of wayward deviation, from the sober literalities
of truth and nature, whether in the shape of new imagina-
tions by the mind of man, or of new combinations and
events in actual history. It is thus that th asure con-
nected with our sense of the ludicrous, forms one of the
most current gratifications of human life; nor is it essen-
tial that there should be any rare peculiarity of mental colle
formation in order to realize it. We findit the perennialsource


INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS.
287
of a sort of gentle and quiet delectation, even to men of the
most sober temperament, and whose habit is as remote as
possible from that of fantastic levity, or wild and airy ex-
travagance. When acquaintances meet together in the
street, and hold colloquy for a few minutes, they may look
grave enough, if business or politics or some matters of se-
rious intelligence be the theme-yet how seldom do they
part before some coruscation of playfulness has been struck
out between them; and the interview, though begun per-
haps in sober earnest, but seldom passes off without
some pleasantry or other to enliven it. We should not
dwell so long on this part of the human constitution, were
there not so much of happiness and so much of benevolence
allied with it—as is obvious indeed from the very syno-
nimes, to which the language employed for the expression
of its various phenomena and feeling has given rise. To
what else but to the pleasure we have in the ludicrous is it
owing, that a ludicrous observation has been termed a
pleasantry; or how but to the affinity between happiness
and mirth can we ascribe it, that the two terms are often
employed as equivalent to each other; and whence but
from the strong connexion which subsists between benevo-
lence and humour can it be explained, that a man is said to
be in good humour, when in a state of placidness and cor-
diality with all who are around him? We are aware
that there is not a single disposition wherewith Nature hath
endowed us which may not be perverted to evil; but when
we see so much both of human kindness and of human en-
joyment associated with that exhilaration of heart to which
this emotion is so constantly giving rise-ministering with
such copiousness, both to the smiles of the domestic hearth,
and the gaieties of festive companionship—we cannot but
regard it as the provision of an indulgent Father, who hath
ordained it as a sweetener or an emolient amid the annoy-
ances and the ills which flesh is heir to.
13. It were difficult to compute the whole effect of this
ingredient, in alleviating the vexations of life; but certain
it is that the ludicrous is often blended with the annoyances
which befall us; and that its operation, in lightening the
pressure of what might have otherwise been viewed as
somewhat in the light of a calamity, is far from inconsider-
able. This balancing of opposite emotions, suggested by
different parts of the same complex event or object, and the


288
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
effect of the one if a pleasant emotion, in assuaging the
painfulness of the other, is pot an uncommon phenomenon
in the exhibitions of human teeling. A very obvious speci-
men of this is afforded by an acquaintance in the act of fall-
ing. There is no doubt an incongruity bei ween the mo-
ment of his walking uprightly, and with the full anticipa-
tion of getting forward in that attitude to the object whither
he is bending- and the next moment of his floundering in
the mud, and fastening with all his might to gather him-
self up again. They who philosophize upon the laws of
succession in the events of Nature, have a great demand
for such successions as are immediate. They go bu-
sily in quest of the coutiguous lills, and properly conceive
that if any one binder step be yet interpureil, between the
two which they regularly observe to follow each other,
they have 110l completed thiciurestigation, till that step also
have been ascerta ned. It is therefore so far an advantage
in regard to ihe above phenomenon, that there does not ap-
pear to be live even for ile niost rapid and fugitive inter-
vention for only let it occur in ihe presence of lookers on,
and with the speed of lighting, will it be followed up by
the instant and olistreperous glee of a whole host of specta-
torship.
14. But this very exhibition may give rise to a wholly
different emction. The provocative io lavighter lies in the
awkwardness of the fall. Let the awkwardness be conceived
lo abide as it was, and this other ingredient to be added, the
severity of the fall-that a limb is fractured, or that a swoon.
a convulsion, or a strcam of blood is the immediate con-
sequence. In proportion to the hurt that was sustained.
would be the sympathy of far the greater number of the by-
standers; and inis might be so heightened by the palpable
sufferings of him to whom the accident has befallen, that
the sense of the ludicrous might be entirely overborné.
15. The two provocatives are the awkwardness of the
fall and its severity. The two emotions are the mirth and
e compassion. The one of these may so predominate
over the other as to leave the mind under its entire and sin-
gle ascendency. A mathematician would require the point,
at which, by a gradual increase or diminution upon either
of the two elements, they were mutually neutralized-or the
transition was made from the one to the other of them.
In this we may not be able to satisfy him. But all may


290
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
this humbler part of the constitution of man, as a palpablo
testimony both to the wisdom and goodness of Him who
framed us.*
18. Before quitting this department of the subject, we
may advert, not to an individual peculiarity, but to the re-
spective characters by which two classes of intellect are
distinguished, and to the effect of their mutual action and
reaction on the progress of opinion in the world.
19. The first of these intellectual tendencies may be seen
in those who are distinguished by their fond and tenacious
adherence to the existing philosophy, and by their indispo-
sition to any changes of it. They feel it painful to relin-
quish their wonted and established habits of thought-as if
the mind were to suffer violence by having to quit its an-
cient courses, and to unlearn the opinions of other days. We
throw many brightenliven what would hand less pretending
mbition is ur varire as foto be linhapt
* The advantages which we derive from our susceptibility of
this species of emotion, are, in their immediate influence on the
cheerfulness, and therefore on the general happiness of society,
sufficiently obvious. How many hours would pass wearily along,
but for those pleasantries of wit, or of easier and less pretending
gaiety which would enliven what would have been dull, and
throw many bright colours on what would have been gloomy.
We are not to estimate these accessions of pleasure lightly, be.
cause they relate to objects that may seem trifling, when consi.
dered together with those more serious concerns, by which our
ambition is occupied, and in relation to which, in the success or
failure of our various projects, we look back on the past months
or years of our life as fortunate or unfortunate. If these seri-
ous concerns alone were to be regarded, we might often have
been very fortunate and very unhappy, as in other circiim-
stances we might often have had much happiness in the hours
and days of years, which terminated at last in the disappoint-
ment of sorre favourite scheme. It is good to travel with pure and
balmy airs, and cheerful sunshine, though we should not find,
at the end of our journey, the friend whom we wished to see ;
and the gaieties of social converse, though they are not, in our
journey of life, what we travel to obtain, are during the conti.
nuance of our journey at once a freshness which we breathe,
and a light that gives every object to sparkle to our eye with a
radiance that is not its own." Broion's Lectures-Lecture 59.
But this emotion is allied with benevolence as well as with en.
joyment. There is perhaps not a more welcome topic at the ta-
bles of the great, than the characteristic peculiarities or oddities
of human life-and we have no doubt that along with the amuse-
ment which is felt in the cottage anecdotes of a domain, there is
often awakened, by them a most benevolent interest in the well
boing of the occupiers.
fortunate and to be regarded. Tunate. If the
ment which is and we have aracteristic peccome topic at the


INTELLECT AND THE EMOTIONS.
293
the frame work, and throughout the whole mechanism of
human society.
22. But this property in the machine of a government to
which we now advert, does not preclude that steady and
sober-minded improvement which is all that is desirable. It
only restrains the advocates of improvement from driving
too rapidly. It does not stop, it only retards their course,
by a certain number of defeats and disappointments, which,
if their course be indeed a good one, are but the stepping-
stones to their ultimate triumph. Ere that the victory is
gotten, they must run the gauntlet of many reverses and
many mortifications; and they are not to expect by one, but
by several and successive blows of the catapulta, that in-
veterate abuses and long established practices can possibly
be overthrown. It is thus in fact, that every weak cause
is thrown back into the nonentity whence it sprung, and
that every cause of inherent goodness or worth is ultimately
carried-rejected, like the former, at its first and earliest
overtures; but, unlike the former, coming back every time
with a fresh weight of public feeling and public demonstra-
tion in its favour, till, like the abolition of the slave trade or
that of commercial restrictions, causes which had the ardu-
ous struggle of many long years to undergo, it at length
obtains the conclusive seal upon it of the highest authority
in the land, and a seal by which the merits of the cause are
far better authenticated, than if the legislature were apt to
fluctuate at the sound of every new and seemly proposal.
We have therefore no quarrel with a certain vis inertiæ in
a legislature. Only let it not be an absolute fixture; and
there is the hope, with perseverance, of all that is really
important or desirable in reformation. The sluggishness
that has been ascribed to great corporations is, in the pre-
sent instance, a good and desirable property-as being the
means of separating the chaff from the wheat of all those
overtures, that pour in upon representatives from every
quarter of the land; and, so far from any feeling of annoy-
ance at the retardation to which the best of them is sub-
jected, it should be most patiently and cheerfully acquiesced
in, as being in fact the process, by which it brightens into
prosperity, and at length its worth and its excellence are
fully manifested.
23. It is not the necessary effect of this peculiar mecha.
nism, it is but the grievous perversion of it, when the cor-
25*


294
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
rupt inveteracy has withstood improvement so long, that
ere it could be carried, the assailing force had to gather
into the momentum of an energy that might afterwards
prove mischievous, when the obstacle which provoked it
into action had at length been cleared away. It is then that
the vessel of the state which might have been borne safely
and prosperously onward in the course of ages, by a steady
breeze and with a sufficiency of ballast, as if slipped from
her moorings is drifted uncontrollably along, and precipi-
tated from change to change with the violence of a hur-
ricane.
CHAPTER III.
On the Connexion between the Intellect and the Will.
1. THERE is distinction made between a mental suscepti-
bility and a mental power. Should we attempt to define it, we
might say of the power, that it implies a reference to some-
thing consequent and of the susceptibility that it implies a
reference to something antecedent. It is thus that a volition
is conceived to indicate the form.er, and an emotion to indicate
the latter. Anger would be spoken of rather as a susceptibili-
ty of the mind than as a power; and will rather as a power
than as a susceptibility. We view anger in connexion
with the provocatives which went before it; and so regard-
ing it as an effect, we conceive of the mind in which this
effect has beeen wrought, as being at the time in a state of
subject passiveness. We view the will in connexion with
the deeds which follow on its determination; and so regard-
ing it as a cause, we conceive of the mind when it wills as
being in a state of active efficiency. And yet a determina-
tion of the will may be viewed not merely as a prior term
to the act which flows from it, but also as the posterior term
to the influence which gave it birth-or in other words,
either as the forthgoing of a power or as the result of a sus-
ceptibility. It is thus that desire, which on looking back-
ward to the cause from whence it sprung, we should call a
susceptibility-on looking forward to ihe effect which it
prompts for the attainment of its object, we should call an
impellent; and thus depth of feeling is identical, or at least,
in immediate contact with decision and intensity of purpose.


INTELLECT AND THE WILL.
295
2. But in our intent prosecution of this analysis, and use
of those appropriate terms which are employed for express-
ing the results of it, we have often to desert the common
language, and are apt to lose sight of certain great and
palpable truths, of which that language is the ordinary ve-
hicle. When tracing the intermediate steps, between the
first exposure of the mind to a seducing influence, and the
deed or perpetration of enormity into which it is hurried,
we are engaged in what may properly be termed a physical
inquiry-as much so as, when passing from cause to conse-
quent, we are attending to any succession or train of phe-
nomena in the material world. But it is when thus em.
ployed that we are so apt to lose sight of the moral charac-
ter of that which we are contemplating; and to forget when
or at what point of the series it is that the designation whe-
ther of virtuous or vicious, the charge whether of merit or
demerit, comes to be applicable.* It is well that amid all
which is to be
• Dr. Brown has well distinguished between the two inquiries
in the following sentences. "In one very important respect,
however, the inquiries, relating to the physiology of mind, differ
from those which relate to the physiology of our animal frame,
If we could render ourselves acquainted with the intimate struc-
ture of our bodily organs, and all the changes which take place
in the exercise of their various functions, our labour with re-
spect to them, might be said to terminate. But though our in-
tellectual analysis were perfect, so that we could distinguish, in
our most complex thought or emotion, its constituent elements,
aud trace with exactness the series of simplar thoughts which
have progressively given rise to them, other inquiries, equally
or still more important, would remain. We do not know all
which is to be known of the mind when we know all its pheno-
mena, as we know all which can be known of matter, when we
know the appearances which it presents, in every situation in
which it is possible to place it, and the manner in which it then
acts or is acted upon by other bodies. When we knrw that man
has certain affections and passions, there still remains the great
inquiry, as to the propriety or impropriety of these passions,
and of the conduct to which they lead. We have to consider,
not only how he is capable of acting, but also, whether, acting
in the manner supposed, he would be fulfilling a duty or perpe-
trating a crime. Every enjoyment which man can con fer on
man, and every evil which he can reciprocally inflict or suffer,
thus become objects of two sciences-first of that intellectual
analysis which traces the happiness and misery, in their various
forms and sequences, as mere phenomena or states of the sub-
stance mind;-and secondly, of that ethical judgment which
call which can be kunts in every situationen


296
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
the difficulties attendant on the physiological inquiry, there
should be such a degree of clearness and uniformity in the
moral judgments of men, insomuch that the peasant can,
with a just and prompt discernment equal to that of the
philosopher, seize on the real moral characteristics of any ac-
tion submitted to his notice, and pronounce on the merit or
demerit of him who has performed it. It is in attending to
these popular or rather universal decisions, that we learn
those phenomena which are of main importance to our ar-
gument-now that, after having bestowed a separate at-
tention on the moral and intellectual constitutions of human
nature, we are investigating the connexion which is between
them.
3. The first of those popular or rather universal decisions,
which we shall at present notice, is, that nothing is moral
or immoral which is not voluntary. A murderer may be
conceived, instead of striking with the dagger in his own
hand, to force it, by an act of refined cruelty, into the band
of him, who is the dearest relative or friend of his devoted
victim; and, by his superior strength, to compel the strug-
gling and the reluctant instrument to its grasp. He may
thus confine it to the hand, and give impulse to the arm of
one, who recoils in utmost horror from that perpetration, of
which he has been made as it were the material engine;
and could matters be so contrivell, as that the real murderer
should be invisible, while the arm and the hand that en-
closed the weapon, and the movements of the ostensible one,
should alone be patent to the eye of the senses-then he
and not the other would be held by the by-stander as charge.
able with the guilt. But so soon as the real nature of the
transaction came to be understood, this imputation would
be wholly and instantly transferred. The distinction
would at once be recognized between the willing agent in
this deed of horror, and the unwilling instrument. There
would no more of moral blame be attached to the latter, than
to the weapon which inflicted the mortal blow; and on the
former exclusively, the whole burthen of the crime and its
measures our approbation and disapprobation, estimating, with
more than judicial scrutiny, not merely what is done, but what is
scarcely thought in secrecy and silence,and discriminating some
element of moral good or evil, in all the physical good and evil,
which it is in our feeble power to execute, or in our still frailer
heart to conceive or desire." Brown's Lectures, Lecture 1,


300
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
that simplification by Dr. Brown, in virtue of which we re-
gard the mind not as a congeries of different faculties, but
as itself, one and indivisible, having the capacity of pass.
ing into different states; and without conceiving any dis-
tinction of faculties, we only affirm that it is in a different
state when it wills, from that in which it is when it simply
desires. Notwithstanding the high authority both of Dr.
Brown and Mr. Mill, we think that in confounding these
two, they have fallen into an erroneous simplification ; and
we abide by the distinction of Dugald Stewart and the older
writers upon this subject.*
• Hume says very well of desire, that-" It arises from good
considered simply and aversion from evil. The will again ex-
erts itself, when either the presence of the good or absence of the
evil may be attained by any action of the mind or body." This
is the definition of Hume, and it is a very good one. And it tal.
lies with the sensible remark of Dr. Reid, that the object of eve.
ry volition is some action of our own. And upon this he founds
some very clear illustrations of the difference that there is be.
tween a desire and a volition. “A man desires that his child.
ren may be happy, and that they may behave well. Their being
happy is no action at all; and their behaving well is not his ac.
tion but theirs." "A man athirst has a strong desire to drink;
but for some particular reason he determines not to gratify his
desire." Here the man has the desire but not the will. In other
cases he may have the will but not the desire. “A man for
health may take a nauseous drug, for which he has no desire,
but a great aversion." Desire, therefore, is not will; but only
one of the incitements that often leads to it-though it may at all
times be, and actually sometimes is withstood. It is, however,
because desire is so often accompanied by will, that we are apt
to overlook the distinction between them.
I may here observe that to frame a volition is sometimes ex-
pressed more shortly by the phrase to will. I will put forth my
hand, is different from, I desire to put it forth. There may be
reasons why I should restrain the desire-so that though I desire
it, I may not will it. For this application of the verb to will, we
have the authority of the best English writers. “Whoever,"
says Dr. South, “wills the doing of a thing, if the doing of it be
in his power, he will certainly do it; and whoever does not do
the thing which he has in his power to do, does not properly will
it." And Locke says, "the man that sits still is said to be at li.
berty, because he can walk if he wills it.” Dr. South makes a
happy discrimination, which serves to throw light uron the pre.
cise nature of a volition as opposed to other things that may or
may not lead to a volition when he says “that there is as
much difference between the approbation of the judgment and
the actual volitions of the will, as between a ma:i's viewing a


INTELLECT AND THE WILL.
301
7. But the point of deepest interest is that step of the pro-
cess, at which the character of right or wrong comes to be
applicable. It is not at that point when the appetites or af.
fections of our nature solicit from the will à particular
movement; neither is it at that point, when either a rational
self love or a sense of duty remonstrates against it. It is
not at that point when the consent of the will is pleaded for,
on the one side or other but all-important to be borne in
mind, it is at that point when the consent is given. When
we characterize a court at law for some one of its deeds
it is not upon the urgency of the argument on one
side of the question, or of the reply upon the other, that we
found our estimate; but wholly upon the decision of the
bench, which decision is carried into effect by a certain or-
der given out to the officers who execute it. And so, in cha-
racterizing an individual for some one of his doings, we
found our estimate, not upon the desires of appetite that may
have instigated him on the one hand, or upon the dictates
of conscience that may have withstood these upon the other
-not upon the elements that conflicted in the struggle, but
on the determination that put an end to it-even that deter-
mination of the will, which is carried into effect by those voli.
tions, on the issuing of which, the hands, and the feet, and the
other instruments of action are put into instant subserviency.
8. To prove how essentially linked together, the morality
of any act is with its wilfulness, it is of no consequence,
whether the volition that gave rise to the act, be the one
which preceded it immediately as its proximate cause, or
be a remote and anterior volition-in which latter case, it
is termed a purpose, conceived at some period which may
have long gone by, but which was kept unalterable till the
opportunity for its execution came round.* There may be
desirable thing, and reaching after it with his hand." He u
ther says of a wish, which is nought but a longing desire, that,
"a wish is properly the desire of a man who is sitting or lying
still; but an act of the will is a man of business vigorously go.
ing about his work."
" It is true that if the desire were to cease for the object to be
attained by the proposed act, the purpose would cease along with
it, but it were confounding the things which in reality are
distinct from each other, to represent on this account the desire
and the purpose as synonymous. The one respects the object
that is wished for; the other respects the action, by which the
object is to be attained.
26


802
CONNEXIOX BETWEEN THE
an interval of time, between that resolution of the will which
is effective, and that performance by which it is carried into
effect. One may resolve to-day, with full consent and pur-
pose of the will, on some criminal enterprise for to-morrow.
It is to-day that he has become the criminal, and has incur-
red a guilt to which even the per formance of the morrow
may bring no addition and no enhancement. The perform-
ance of to-morrow does not constitute the guilt, but only in-
dicates it. It may prove what before the execution of the
will was still an uncertainty. It may prove the strength
of that determination which has been already taken-how
it can stand its ground through all the hours which inter-
vene between the desire and its fulfilment; how meanwhile
the visitations of reflection and remorse have been kept at a
distance, or all been disregarded; how with relentless de-
pravity, the purpose has been adhered to, and the remon-
strances of conscience or perhaps the entreaties of virtuous
friendship have all been set at nought; how, with a hardi-
hood that could brave alike the disgrace and the condemna-
tion which attach to moral worthlessness, he could proceed
with unfaltering step from the reprobate design to its full and
final accomplishment-nor suffer all the suggestions of his
leisure and solitude, however affecting the thought of that
innocence which he is now on the eve of forfeiting, or a ten-
derness for those relatives who are to be deeply wounded
by the tidings of his fall, or the authority of a father's part-
ing advice, or the remembrance of a mother's prayers, to
stay his hand.
9. That an action then be the rightful object, either of
moral censure, or approval, it must have had the consent of
the will to go along with it. It must be the fruit of a voli-
tion- else it is utterly beyond the scope, either of praise for
its virtuousness or of blame for its criminality. If an ac-
tion be involuntary, it is as unfit a subject for any moral
reckoning, as are the pulsations of the wrist. Something
ludicrous might occur, which all of a sudden sets one irre-
sistibly on the action of laughing; or a tale of distress might
be told, which whether he wills or not, forces from him the
tears of sympathy, and sets him as irresistibly on the ac-
tion of weeping; or, on the appearance of a ferocious ani-
mal, he might struggle with all his power for a serene and
manly firmness, yet struggle in vain against the action of
trembling; or if instead of a formidable a loathsome animal


304
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
that the will has had some concern in that which we thus
characterize-if neither actions nor affections are, without
volitions, susceptible of any moral reckoning-it may re-
quire some consideration to perceive, how far the element
of moral worth is at all implicated in an emotion. If
the emotions of sympathy be as much the result of an or-
ganic frame-work as the emotions of taste, and if this be
true of all the emotions--it remains to be seen, why either
praise or censure should be awarded to any of them.
Whether an emotion of taste arises within me at the sight
of beauty, or an emotion of pity at the sight of distress
the mind may have been as passive, or there may have
been as much of the strictly pathological in the one emotion
as in the other.
11. Now it may be very true, that the will has as little to
do with that pathological law, by which the sight of distress
awakens in my bosom an emotion of pity, as with that
other pathological law by which the sight of a red object
impresses on my retina the sensation peculiar to that colour.
Yet the will, though not the proximate, may have been the
remote and so the real cause, both of the emotion and sen-
sation notwithstanding. It may have been at the bidding
of my will, that, instead of hiding myself, from my own
flesh, I visited a scene of wretchedness, and entered within
the confines, as it were of that pathological influence, in virtue
of which, after that the spectacle of suffering was seen the
compassion was unavoidable. And it is also at the bidding
of my will, that I place myself within view of an object of
sense ; that I direct my eye towards it, and keep it open to
that sensation, which, after the circumstances that I have
voluntarily realized, is equally unavoidable. I might have
escaped from the emotion, had I so willed, by keeping aloof
from the spectacle which awakened it. And I might escape
from the sensation, if I so will, hy shutting my eyes, or
turning them away from the object which is its cause ; or,
in other words, by the command which I have over the
looking faculty that belongs to me. And perhaps the mind
has a looking faculty as well as the body, in virtue of
which, as by the one objects are either removed from, or
made present to the sight, so by the other, objects may
be either removed from, or made present to the thoughts.
Could we ascertain the existence and operations of such
& faculty this would explain how it is that the emotions


INTELLECT AND THE WILL.
305
are subordinated not immediately but mediately to the
will-that the mind by the direction of its looking faculty
towards the counterpart objects, could, on the one hand,
will these emotions into being; or by the direction of it.
away from these objects, could, on the other hand, will
them again into extinction. Such we hold to be the fa-
culty of attention. It forms the great link between the
intellectual and moral departments of our nature; or be-
tween the percipient and what has already been named
the pathematic departments. It is the control which the
will has over this faculty that makes man responsible for
the objects which he chooses to entertain, and so responsible
for the emotions which pathologically result from them.
12. If it be by a voluntary act that he comes to see cer.
tain objects, then, whatever the emotions are which are
awakened by these objects, he may be said to have willed
them into being. In líke manner, it it be by a voluntary act
that he comes to think of certain objects, then, may it also
be said, that he wills all the emotions which follow in their
train. It is admitted on all hands, that, by the power which
the will has over the muscles of the human frame, it can
either summon into presence or bid away certain objects of
sight. And notwithstanding the effect which the exposi-
tions of certain metaphysical reasoners have had, in obscur-
ing the process, it is also admitted, almost universally, that,
by the power which the will has over the thinking pro-
cesses, it can either summon into presence, or bid away
certain objects of thought. The faculty of attention we re-
gard as the great instrument for the achievement of this,
the ligament which binds the one department of our consti-
tution to the other--the messenger, to whose wakefulness
and activity we owe all those influences, which pass and
repass in constant succession between our moral and intel-
lectualin nature.
13. Dr. Reid, in his book on the active powers, has a
most important chapter on those operations of the mind
that are called voluntary. Among these, he gives a fore-
most place to attention-where, instead however, of any
profound or careful analysis, he presents us with a number
of very sensible remarks; and from the undoubted part
which the will has in the guidance and exercise of this fa-
culty, be comes to the sound conclusion, that a great part
26.


306
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
tion to it.
of wisdom and virtue consists in giving the proper direc-
14. Dugald Stewart ranks attention among the intellect-
ual faculties;-and seems to regard it as an original power,
which had very much escaped the notice of former observa
ers. But Dr. Brown, we hold to have been far the most
successful in his expositions of this faculty ; and by which
he makes it evident, that it is not more distinct from the
mental perception of any object of thought, than the faculty
of looking to any object of sight, as distinct from the faculty
of seeing it.
15. In this chapter on the external affections combined
with desire, he institutes a beautiful analysis; in the con-
duct of which, he has thrown the magic tints of poetry over
a process of very abstract but conclusive reasoning. We
fear, that, in this age of superficial readers, the public are
far from being adequately aware of that wondrous combi-
nation of talent, which this singularly gifted individual re-
alized in his own person; and with that facility, yet ele-
gance, he could intersperse the graces of fancy, among the
demonstrations of a most profound and original metaphy-
sics. The passage to which we now refer, is perhaps the
finest exemplification of this in all his volumes; and though
we can hardly hope, that the majority, even of the well
educated, will ever be tempted to embark on his adventur-
ous speculations-yet many, we doubt not, have been led by
the fascination of his minor accomplishments, to brave the -
depths and the difficulties of that masterly course which he
has given to the world. For among the steeps and the ar-
duous elevations of that high walk which he has taken, he
kindly provides the reader with many a resting place-
some enchanted spot over which the hand of taste hath
thrown her choicest decorations; or where, after the fa- -
rigues and the triumphs of successful intellect, the traveller
may from the eminence that he has won, look abroad on
some sweet or noble perspective, which ihe great master
whose footsteps he follows hath thrown open to his gaze.
It is thus that there is a constant relief and refreshment
afforded along that ascending way, which but for this
would be most severely intellectual; and if never was phi-
losophy more abstruse, yet never was it seasoned 60 exqui-
Bitely, or spread over a page so rich in all those attic delica.


308
CONNEXION BETWEEN THU
the faculty of internal observation, the mental states of de-
siring and willing seem just as distinguishable as any other
mental states whatever. At the time when the mind de-
sires, it bears a respect towards the desirable object; at the
time when it wills, it hears a respect towards something
different from this, to that act of its own which is put forth
for the purpose of attaining the object. The desire that is
felt towards the object is specifically a distinct thing from the
volition which prompts or precedes the action. The desire
may have caused the volition; but this is no reason why it
should be confounded with the volition. And in like man-
ner, a feeling of interest in an idea, or rather in the object of
an idea, is quite distinguishable from that volition which re-
spects a something different from this object-which re-
spects an act or exercise of the mind, even the attention that
we shall give to it. The interest that in felt in any object of
thought may have been the cause, and the sole cause of the
attention which we give to it. But the necessary connexion
which obtains between the parts of a process, is no reason
why we should overlook any part, or confound the different
parts with each other. In this instance, Mr. Hume seems
to have observed more accurately than either of the philoso-
phers whom we have now named, when he discriminates
between the will and the desire, and tells us of the former,
that it exerts itself when the thing desired is to be attained
by any action of the mind or body. A volition is as dis-
tinctly felt in the mental as in the bodily process, although
it be in the latter only, that the will first acts on some one
of the muscles as its instrument, and issues in a visible
movement as its required service. The power of the will
over an intellectual process is marked by the difference, the
palpable difference which there is, between a regulated train
of thought and a passive reverie. And there is nothing in
the intervention of the will to contravene, or even to modify
the general laws of associa:ion. Neither does the wish to
recover a particular idea, involve in it the incongruity of
that idea being both present with and absent from the mind
at the same time. We may not have an idea that is absent,
and yet have the knowledge of its being related to some
other idea that is present; and we therefore attend to this
latter idea and dwell upon it, for the purpose, as is well ex-
pressed by Mr. Mill, o-"giving it the opportunity of ex-
citing all the ideas with which it is associated; for by not


INTELLECT AND THE WILL.
311
that the moral distemper is cleared away. If he be rescued
from his delusions to sobriety and virtue, ideas will be the
stepping-stones of his returning path-the sirens that will
recall him to himself, by chasing away the fascination's
wherewith he is encompassed. Could the percipient part
of his nature be set right, the pathological part of it would
become whole. He would yet behave himself aright, did
he only bethink himself aright; and noble recoveries have
been effected even from the most deep and hopeless infatu-
ation, simply by the power of thoughts—when made to
dwell on the distress of friends, the poverty and despair of
children, the ruin of health as well as fortune, the displea-
sure of an angry God, the horrors of an unprovided death-
bed or an undone eternity,*
21. Actions are voluntary in themselves, in that the mind
can will them directly into being. Emotions, though not
voluntary in themselves, are so far voluntary in their proxi-
mate or immediate causes—in that the mind, to a certain
extent, and by the control which it has over the faculty of
attention, can will those ideas into its presence by which
the emotions are awakened. It is well that man is thus
vested, not only with a control over his actions ; but also
in a great degree with a control over his emotions, these
powerful impellents to action—and it required an exquisite
fitting of the intellectual to the moral' in man's mental
system, ere such a mechanism could be framed. But we
not only behold in the relation between the will and the
emotions, a skilful adaptation in the parts of the human con-
stitution to each other; we also behold a general and mani-
fold adaptation to this peculiarity in the various objects of
• A strict confinement to our assigned objects has hitherto
prevented any allusion to Christianity, from which indeed we
purposely abstain, till we approach more nearly towards the
conclusion of this essay. Still we may here remark how strik.
ingly accordant the philosophy of our nature is with the lessons
of the Gospel in regard to the reciprocal acting of its moral and
intellectual parts on each other-and that not merely in what
Scripture enjoins on the management of temptations ; but in its
frequent affirmation, as a general and reigning principle of the
power which its objective doctrines have in transforming the
subjective mind which receives them-exemplified in such
phrases, as "being sanctified by the truth,” and “keeping our
hearts in the love of God, by building ourselves up on our most
holy faith.”


312
CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
external nature. Man can, by means of these objects,
either kindle the right emotions in his bosom, or make his
escape from those emotions that trouble and annoy him.
By an entry into an abode of destitution, he can effectu.
ally soften his heart; by an entry into an abode of still
deeper suffering, where are to be found the dead or the
ing, he can effectually solemnize it. But a still more pal-
pable use of that indefinite number of objects wherewith the
world is so filled and variegated, is, that by creating an in-
cessant diversion of the thoughts from such objects as are
of malignant influence, it may rid the inner man of the
grief, or the anger, or the wayward licentiousness of feeling,
which might otherwise have lorded over him; and to the
urgent calls of business or duty or amusement, do we owe
such lengthened periods of exemption both from the emo-
tions that pain, and from the emotions that would vitiate
and deprave us.
22. But there is another application, of at least as high
importance, to which this peculiarity of our mental structure
is subservient. By the command which the will has over the
attention, we become responsible, not only for our states of
emotion, but also in a great degree for our intellectual
states. The imagination that there is neither moral worth
nor moral delinquency in the state of a man's belief, pro-
ceeds on the voluntary having had no share in the process
which leads to it. Now through the intermedium of the
very same faculty, the faculty of attention, the will stands
related to the ultimate convictions of the understanding, pre-
cisely as it stands related to the ultimate emotions of the
heart. It is true that as the object in view of the mind is, so
the motion is. And it is as true that as the evidence in view
of the mind is, so the belief is. In neither case has the will
to do with the concluding sequence; but in both cases it has
equally to do with the sequences that went before it. There
may be a pathological necessity beyond our control, in that
final step of the succession, which connects the object that
is perceived with its counterpart emotion, or the evidence
that is perceived with its counterpart belief. But in like
manner as it is by the attention, which we might or might
not have exercised, that the object is perceived by us, so it
is by the attention, which we might or might not have ex-
ercised, that the evidence is perceived by us. It is thus
that on innumerable questions, and these of vital import-


316
ON THE DEFECTS AND USES
lineaments, and lastly to impress the right conviction upon
the understanding. In other words, the man, on such an
occasion as this, is intellectually right, but just because he
is morally right. He becomes sound'in faith; but only in
virtue of having become sound in principle. The true be-
lief in which he ultimately lands, is not all at once forced
upon him, hy the credentials wherewith it was associated ;
but he had the patience and the candour to wait the unroll-
ing of these credentials; or rather he helped to unrol them
with his own hand. He fastened his regard upon some
proposition which involved in it the interests or the obliga-
tions of humanity: because there sat upon it, even at the
first, a certain creditable aspect, which had he had the hardi-
hood to withstand or to turn from, it would have made him
chargeable, not with a mental alone, but with a moral per-
versity—not with the error that springs from a mistaken
judgment, but with the guilt that springs from the violation
of an incumbent duty. Many are the truths which do not
carry an instant and overpowering evidence along with
them; and which therefore, at their first announcement,
are not entitled to demand admittance for themselves as the
articles of a creed. Nevertheless they may be entitled to a
hearing; and, by the refusal of that hearing, man incurs,
not the misfortune of an involuntary blunder, but the turpi-
tude of a voluntary crime.
CHAPTER IV.
On the Defects and the Uses of Natural Theology.
1. We behold in the influence which the will has over the
intellectual states, the same adaptations which we did in
the influence of the will over the emotions. In the first
place, it is well that the will should have a certain overrul-
ing power over the conclusions of the understanding-see-
· ing that if emotions supply the great impellent forces; doc-
trines, or the truths which are believed, supply the great
principles of action. And secondly, there is a striking
adaptation, in this part of our constitution, to the things and
the objects which be around us. For although there be


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.
317
much of truth, having that sort of immediate and resistless
evidence, which forces itself upon our convictions whether
we will or not, there is also much, and that too practi-
cally the most momentous, of which we can only attain the
conviction and the knowledge, by a lengthened, often a la-
borious process of enquiry. In like manner as of material
objects, they may be seen but imperfectly at the first; and
we become fully and minutely acquainted with their visible
properties, only by a prolonged look, which is a sustained
and voluntary act--so, many are, the objects of thought,
both the reality and the nature of which, are but dimly ap-
prehended on the first suggestion of them; and of which,
we can only be made firmly to believe and thoroughly to
know, by ineans of a prolonged attention, which is a sus
tained and voluntary act also. It is thus that the moral
state determines the intellectual—for it is by the exercise of
a strong and continuous will, upholding or perpetuating the
attention, that what at the outset were the probabilities of
a subject are at length brightened into its proofs, and the
verisimilitudes of our regardful notice become the verities of
our confirmed faith.
2. Of all the subjects to which the attention of the hus
man mind can be directed, this principle admits of pre,
eminent application to the subject of theology-as involving
in it, both the present duties and the final destinies of our
race. In no other track of inquiry, are the moral and the
intellectual more thoroughly blended, -as might be evinced
by tracing the whole progress, from the first or incipient
disposition of mind towards the theme, to the devotedness
of its confirmed assurance.
3. Going back then to the very earliest of our mental con-
ceptions on this subject, we advert first to the distinction in
point of real and logical import, between unbelief and disbe.
lief. The former we apprehend, to be the furthest amount
of the atheistical verdict on the question of God. The
atheist does not labour to demonstrate that there is no God.
But he labours to demonstrate that there is no adequate
proof of there being one. He does not positively affirm the
position, that God is not; but he affirms the lack of evi-
dence for the position, that God is. His verdict on the
doctrine of a God is only that it is not proven. It is not
that it is disproven. He is but an Atheist. He is not an
Antitheist,
27*


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.
319
there; and we must have gotten intimacy with every ex-
istent spirit in the universe, and learned from each, that
never did a revelation of the Deity visit him; and we must
have searched, not into the records of our solitary planet,
but into the archives of all worlds, and thence gathered, that
throughout the wide realms of immensity, not one exhibi-
tion of a reigning and living God ever has been made.
Atheism might plead a lack of evidence within its own
field of observation. But antitheism pronounces both upon
the things which are, and the things which are not within
that field. It breaks forth and beyond all those limits, that
have been prescribed to man's excursive spirit, by the sound
philosophy of experience; and by a presumption the most
emendous, even the usurpation of all space and of all
time, it affirms that there is no God. To make this out, we
should need to travel abroad over the surrounding universe
till we had exhausted it, and to search backward through
all the hidden recesses of eternity ; to traverse in every di.
rection the plains of infinitude, and sweep the outskirts of
that space which is itself interminable ; and then bring
back to this little world of ours, the report of a universal
blank, wherein we had not met with one manifestation or
one movement of a presiding God. For man not to know
of a God, he has only to sink beneath the level of our com-
mon nature. But to deny him, he must be a God himself.
He must arrogate the ubiquity and omniscience of the God.
head.*
tre
This idea has been powerfully rendered by Foster in the fol.
lowing passage extracted from one of his essays.-
" The wonder turns on the great process, by which a man
could grow to the immense intelligence that can know there is
no God. What ages and what lights are requisite for this attain.
ment? This intelligence involves the very attributes of Divi.
nity, while a God is denied. For unless this man is omni.
present, unless he is at this moment in every place in the Uni.
verse, he cannot know but there may be in sorne place manifes.
tations of a Deity by which even he would be overpowered. If
he does not absolutely know every agent in the Universe, the
one that he does not know may be God. If he is not himself
the chief agent in the Universe, and does not know what is so,
that which is so may be God. If he is not in absolute posses-
sion of all the propositions that constitute universal truth, the
one which he wants inay be that there is a God. If he cannot
with certainty assign the cause of all that he perceives to exist,
that cause may be a God. If he does not know every thing that


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.
323
ledge of that God, whom he was bound by every tie of
gratitude to seek after-a duty not founded on the proofs
that may be exhibited for the being of a God, but a duty
to which even the most slight and slender of presump-
tions shouid give rise. And who can deny that, ante-
cedent to all close and careful examination of the proofs,
there are at least many presumptions in behalf of a God, to
meet the eye of every observer? Is there any so hardy as
to deny, that the curious workmanship of his frame may
have had a designer and an architect, that the ten thousand
independent circumstances which must be united ere he
can have a moment's ease, and the failure of any one of
which would be agony, may not have met at random, but
that there may be a skilful and unseen hand to have put them
together into one wondrous concurrence, and that never
ceases to uphold it; that there may be a real and living art-
ist, whose fingers did frame the economy of actual ihings,
and who hath so marvellously suited all that is around us
to our senses and our powers of gratification? Without
affirming aught which is positive, surely the air that we
breathe, and the beautiful light in which we expatiate, these
elements of sight and sound so exquisitely fitted to the or-
gans of the human frame-work, may have been provided
by one who did benevolently consult in them our special
accommodation. The graces innumerable that lie widely
spread over the face of our world, the glorious concave of
heaven that is placed over us, the grateful variety of sea-
sons that like Nature's shifting panorama ever brings new
entertainment and delight to the eye of spectators—these
y, for aught we know. be the emanations of a creative
mind, that originated our family and devised such a unia
verse for their habitation. Regarding these, not as proofs,
but in the humble light of presumptions for a God, they are
truly enough to convict us of foulest ingratitude-if we go
not forth in quest of a yet unknown, but at least possible or
Jikely benefactor. They may not resolve the question of a
God But they bring the heaviest reproach on our listless
ness to the question: and show that, anterior to our assured
belief in his existence, there lies upon us a most imperious
obligation to stir ourselves up that we may lay hold of Him.'
11. Such presumptions as these, if not so many demands
on the belief of man, are at least so many demands upon his
attention; and then, for aught he knows, the presumptions


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.
327
the elements of their moral nature might respond-so that
to them, there is not the same exemption from all responsi-
bility, which will be granted to the man who is sunk in
hopeless idiotism, or to the infant of a day old. Even with
the scanty materials of a heathen creed, a pure or a perverse
morality might be grounded thereupon-whether, in those
longings of a vague and undefined earnestness that arise
from him who feels in his bosom an affinity for God and
godliness; or, in the heedlessness of him, who, careless of
an unknown benefactor, would have been alike careless al-
though he had stood revealed to his gaze, with as much
light and evidence as is to be had in Christendom. These
differences attest what man is, under the dark economy of
Paganism; and so give token to what he would be, under
the bright economy of a full and finished revelation. It is
thus that the Searcher of the heart will find out data for a
reckoning, even among the rudest of nature's children, or
among those whose spiritual light glimmers most feebly.
Even the simple theology of the desert can supply the ma-
terials of a coming judgment-so that the Discerner of the
inner man will be at no loss for a principle, on which He
might clearly and righteously try all the men of all the ge-
nerations that be upon the face of the earth.
16. The second important bearing of this principle is on
the subject of religious education. For what is true of a
savage is true of a child. Its moral may outrun its argu-
mentative light. Long anterior to the possibility of any
sound conviction as to the character or existence of a God,
it may respond with sound and correct feeling to the mere
conception of Him. We hold, that, on this principle, the
practice of early, nay even of infantine religious education,
may, in opposition to the invectives of Rosseau and others,
be fully and philosophically vindicated. For the effect of
this anticipative process is, that though it do not at once
enlighten the mind on the question of a God, it at least
awakens to the question. It does not consummate the pro-
cess; but, in as far as the moral precedes the intellectual, it
makes good the preliminary steps of the process - insomuch
that, in every Christian land, the youth and the manhood
are accountable for thcir belief, because accountable for
their use or their neglect of that enquiry, by which the
belief ought to have been determined. They have all from
their infancy heard of God. Many have been trained to


328
ON THE DEFECTS AND USES
think of him, amidst a thousand associations of reverence,
Some under a roof of piety, have often lisped the prayers of
early childhood to this unseen Being; and, in the often re-
peated sound of morning and evening orisons, they have be-
come familiar to his name. Even they who have grown up
at random through the years of a neglected boyhood, are
greatly within the limits of that responsibility for which we
plead. They are fully possessed if not with the certainty,
at least with the idea, of a great eternal Sovereign. The
very imprecations of profaneness may have taught it to
them. The very Sabbath they spend in riot and blasphemy
at least remind them of a God. The worship-bell of the
church they never enter conveys to them, if not the truth.
at least an imagination of the truth, which, if it do not ar-
rest them by a sense of obligation, will leave guilt upon their
souls—though it be guilt against a God who is unknown.
17. But lastly, we may now perceive what that is, on
which a teacher of religion finds an introduction for his topic,
even into the minds of the people in the lowest state both of
moral and intellectual debasement. They have not that in
them, at the outset of his ministrations, which can enable
them to decide the question of a God; but they have at least
that in them, which should summon all their faculties to the
respectful entertainment of it. They have at least such a
sense of the divinity, as their own consciences will tell,
should put them on the regards and the enquiries of moral
earnestness. This is a clear principle which operates at the
very commencement of a religious course; and causes the
first transition, from the darkness and insensibility of alien-
ated nature, to the feelings and attentions of seriousness.
The truth is, that there is a certain rudimental theology
every where, on which the lessons of a higher theology may
be grafted as much as to condemn, if not to awaken the
apathy of nature. What we have already said of the rela-
tion in which the father of a starving household stands to the
giver of an anonymous donation, holds true of the relation
in which all men stand to the unseen or anonymous God.
Though in a state of absolute darkness, and without one
token or clue to a discovery, there is room for the exhibition
of moral differences among men-for even then, all the ele-
ments of morality might be at work, and all the tests of mo-
ral propriety might be abundantly verified; and still more,
after that certain likelihoods had arisen, or some hopeful


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.
329
opening had occurred for investigating the secret of a God.
There is the utmost moral difference that can be imagined
between the man who would gaze with intense scrutiny upon
these likelihoods, and the man who either in heedlessness or
aversion would turn his eyes from them; between the man
who would seize upon such an opening and prosecute such
an investigation to the uttermost, and the man who either
retires or shrinks from the opportunity of a disclosure that
might burden him both with the sense and with the services
of some mighty obligation.
18. And the same moral force which begins this enquiry,
also continues and sustains it. If there be power in the very
conception of a God to create and constitute the duty of seek-
ing after Him, this power grows and gathers with every
footstep or advancement in the high investigation. If the
thought of a merely possible Deity have rightfully awak-
ened a sense of obligation within us to entertain the ques-
tion; the view of a probable Deity must enhance the feel-
ing, and make the claim upon our attention still more ur-
gent and imperative than at the first. Every new likelihood
makes the call louder, and the challenge more incumbently
binding than before. In proportion to the light we had al-
tained, would be the criminality of resisting any further no-
tices or manifestations of that mighty Being with whom we
had so nearly and so emphatically to do. Under the im-
pulse of a right principle, we should follow on to know God
-till, after having done full justice both to our opportunities
and our powers, we had made the most of all the available
evidence that was within our reach, and possessed ourselves
of all the knowledge that was accessible,
19. We can conceive how, under the influence of these
considerations, one should begin and prosecute the study of
Natural Theology, till he had exhausted it. But an inte-
resting inquiry remains. We have already endeavoured to
estimate what the proper leadings of the mind are, at the
commencement and along the progress of the study. The
remaining questior. is, what were the proper leadings of the
mind at the termination of it.
20. And first it will be seen, on the principle which we
have already endeavoured to establish, that no alleged de-
fect of evidence in Natural Theology can extinguish the use
of it a use which might still remain, under every conceiv.
able degree, whether of dimness or of distinctness in its
29*


334
ON THE DEFECTS AND USES
that we might witness and admire the tiny lustre of a glow.
worm.
26. The two positions are perfectly reconcileable-first of
the insufficiency of natural religion; and secondly, the
great actual importance of it. It is the wise and profound
saying of D'Alembert, that, man has too little sagacity to
resolve an infinity of questions, which he has yet sagacity
enough to make! Now this marks the degree, in which
natural theology is sagacious-being able, from its own
resources, to construct a number of cases, which at the
same time it is not able to reduce, These must be handed
up for solution to a higher calculus; and thus it is, that the
theology of nature and of the schools, the theology of the
ethical class-though most unsatisfactory, when treated as
a terminating science—is most important, and the germ of
developements at once precious and delightful, when treated
as a rudimental one. It is a science, not so much of dicta
as of desiderata; and, from the way in which these are
met by the counterpart doctrines of the gospel, the light of a
powerful and most pleasing evidence is struck out by the
comparison between them. It is that species of evidence
which arises from the adaptation of a mould to its counter-
part form; for there is precisely this sort of fitting, in the
adjustment which obtains, between the questions of the na-
tural and the responses of the supernatural theology. For
the problem which natural theology cannot resolve, the pre-
cise difficulty which it is wholly unable to meet or to over-
come, is the restoration of sinners to acceptance and fayour
with a God of justice. All the resources and expedients of
natural theology are incompetent for this solution-it be.
ing, in fact, the great desideratum which it cannot satisfy.
Still it performs an important part in making us sensible
of the desideratum. It makes known to us our sin: but
it cannot make known to us salvation. Let us not over-
look the importance of that which it does, in its utter help
lessness as to that which it does not. It puts the question,
though it cannot answer the question; and no where so
much as at this turning point, are both the uses and the de-
fects of natural theology so conspicuously blended.
27. Natural theology then, however little to be trusted as
an informer, yet as an enquirer, or rather as a prompter to
enquiry, is of inestimable service. It is a high function that
she discharges, for though not able to satisfy the search


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY
335
she impels to the search. We are apt to undervalue, if not
to set her aside altogether, when we compare her obscure
and imperfect notices with the lustre and the fulness of re-
velation. But this is because we overlook the virtue that
lies in the probabilities of a subject-a virtue, either, on the
one hand, to fasten the attention; or, on the other hand, to
condemn the want of it. This we hold to be the precise of-
fice of natural theology-and an office too, which she per-
forms, not merely as the theology of science among those
who listen to her demonstrations in the academic hall; but
which she also performs with practical and powerful effect,
as the theology of conscience, throughout all the classes of
our general population. It is this initial work which makes
her so useful, we should say so indispensable, as a prelimi-
nary to the gospel. Natural theology is quite overrated by
those who would represent it as the foundation of the edi-
fice. It is not that, but rather the taper by which we must
grope our way to the edifice. The stability of a fabric is
not greater than the stability of that upon which it rests ;
and it were inscribing a general infirmity to revelation, to
set it forth, as leaning upon natural theism, in the way that
a mathematical doctrine leans upon the axioms or first prin-
ciples of the science. Christianity rests on its own proper
evidence; and if, instead of this, she be made to rest on an
antecedent natural religion, she becomes weak throughout
because weak radically. It is true that in theology, the na-
tural goes before the revealed, even as the cry of weakness
or distress goes before the relief to which it aspires, and
which it is prompted to seek after. It goes before, not
synthetically in the order of demonstration, but histori.
cally in the mind of the enquirer. It is not that na-
tural religion is the premises, and Christianity the con-
clusion; but it is that natural religion creates an appe-
tite which it cannot quell; and he who is urged thereby,
seeks for a rest and a satisfaction which he can only obtain
in the fulness of the gospel. Natural theology has been
called the basis of Christianity. It would accord better
with our own views of the place which it occupies, and of
the high purpose which it undoubtedly serves-if it were
called the basis of Christianization,
28. The most important exemplification of the way in
which natural religion bears upon Christianity, is furnished
by the question of a sinner's acceptance with God. Na.


336
ON THE DEFECTE AND USES
tural religion can suggest to man the apprehension of his
guilt; for however dim her objective view of the Deity,
there is no such dimness in her ethical notion of what is due
even to an uncertain God. Without having seriously re-
solved the question, we may stand convicted to our owa
minds of a hardened and habitual carelessness of the ques-
tion. If our whole lives long have been spent in the midst
of created things, without any serious or sustained effort
of our spirits in quest of a Creator-if, as our con-
sciences can tell, the whole drift and practical earnestness
of our thoughts are towards the gifts, with but rare and oc-
casional anxiety towards the Giver-if the sense of Him
touch but lightly on our spirits, and we, by our perpetual
lapses from the sacred to the secular, prove that our gravi-
tation is to earth, and that in truth our best-loved element
is atheism-if the notices of a God, however indistinct
where with we are surrounded, instead of fastening our re-
gards on this high contemplation, do but disturb without at
all influencing the general tenor of our engagements—these
are things of which the light of Nature can take cogni-
zance; and these are things because of which, and of their
felt unworthiness, nature is visited by the misgivings both
of remorse and of terror. She has data end
which
to found the demonstration and the sense of her own un-
worthiness; and hence a general feeling of insecurity among
all spirit, a secret but strong apprehension that all is not
right between them and God.
29. This is not a matter of mere sensitive and popular
impression; but in strict accordance with the views of a
calm and intelligent jurisprudence. It enters into the very
essence of our conception of a moral government, that it must
have sanctions--which could not have place, were there
either to be no dispensation of rewards and punishments :
or were the penalties, though denounced with all the pa-
rade and proclamation of law, to be never executed. It is
not the lesson of conscience, that God would, under the
mere impulse of a parental fondness for the creatures whom
He has made, let down the high state and sovereignty
which belong to Him; or that He would forbear the inflic-
tion of the penalty, because of any soft or timid shrinking
from the pain it would give to the objects of His displea-
sure. There is nothing either in history or nature, which
countenances such an imagination of the Deity, as that, in


338
ON THE DEFECTS AND USES
are apt to fear lest before the holiness of God, vice should
appear to be more worthy of punishment, than the weakness
and imperfection of human virtue can ever seem to be of re-
ward. Man when about to appear before a Being of infi-
nite perfection, can feel but little confidence in his own me-
rit, or in the imperfect propriety of his own conduct. In
the presence of his fellow creatures he may often justly ele-
vate himself, and may often have reason to think highly of
his own character and conduct, compared to the still greater
imperfection of theirs. But the case is quite different, when
about to appear before his infinite Creator. To such a Being,
he can scarcely imagine, that his littleness and weakness
should ever appear to be the proper objects either of esteem
or of reward.But he can easily consider how the number-
less violations of duty, of which he has been guilty, should
render him the proper object of aversion and punish-
ment; neither can he see any reason why the divine indig.
nation should not be let loose, without restraint, upon so
vile an insect as he is sensible that he himself must appear
to be. If he would still hope for happiness, he is conscious
that he cannot demand it from the justice ; but he must en-
treat it from the mercy of God. Repentance, sorrow, hu-
miliation, contrition at the thought of his past misconduct,
are upon this account the sentiments which become him,
and seem to be the only means which he has left, for ap-
peasing that wrath which he knows he has justly provoked.
He even distrusts the efficacy of all these, and naturally
fears lest the wisdom of God should not, like the weakness
of man, be prevailed upon to spare the crime by the most
importunate lamentations of the criminal. Some other in.
tercession, some other sacrifice, some other atonement, he
imagines must be made for him, beyond what he himself is
capable of making, before the purity of the divine justice
can be reconciled to his manifold offences. The doctrines of
revelation coincide in every respect with these original an-
ticipations of nature; and as they teach us how little we
can depend upon the imperfection of our own virtue, so
they show us at the same time that the most powerful in-
tercession has been made, and that the most dreadful atone-
ment has been paid for our manifold transgressions and
iniquities.''
31. This interesting passage seems to have been written
by its author, under a true apprehension of that dilemma, in


OF NATURAL THEOLOGY.
339
which the world is involved. He admits a moral govern-
ment on the part of God. He admits a universal delin-
quency on the part of man. And his feeling is, that the go-
vernment would be nullified by a mere act of indemnity,
which rendered no acknowledgement to the justice which
had been violated, or to the authority of that law which had
been trampled on. In these circumstances, he casts about
him as it were for an adjustment; and puts forth a conjec.
tural speculation; and guesses what the provision should
be, which, under a new economy, might be adopted for re-
pairing a defect, that is evidently beyond all the resources
of natural theism ; and proposes the very expedient of our
profest revelation, for the resolving of a difficulty which
had been else impracticable. We deem it a melancholy
fact, that this noble testimony to the need of a gospel, should
have disappeared in the posterior editions of his work-re-
vised and corrected as they were by his own hand. It is
not for men to sit in the chair of judgment; and never
should they feel a greater awe or tenderness upon their
spirits, than when called to witness or to pronounce upon
the aberrations of departed genius. Yet when one compares
the passage he could at one time have written, with the me-
moir that, after an interval of many years, he gave to the
world of David Hume, that ablest champion of the infidel
cause--one fears lest, under the contagion of a near and
withering intimacy with him, his spirit may have imbibed
of the kindred poison ; and he at length have become
ashamed, of the homage that he once had rendered to the
worth and importance of Christianity.
32. This notwithstanding remains one of the finest exam-
ples of the way in which the Natural bears upon the Chris-
iian theology, and of the outgoings, by which, the one con-
ducts to a landing-place in the other. We hold that there
are many such outgoings; that at the uttermost margin of
the former there is a felt want, and that in accurate coun-
terpart to this, the latter has something to offer in precise
and perfect adaptation thereto. Now the great error of
our academic theism, as commonly treated, is that it ex-
presses no want; that it reposes in its own fancied sufficiency;
and all its landing-places are within itself, and along the
uttermost limits of its own terrritory. It is no reproach
against our philosophical moralists, that they have not step-
ped beyond the threshold of that peculium, which is striotly


340
ON THE DEFECTS AND USES
and appropriately theirs; or not made incursion into ano.
ther department than their own. The legitimate complaint
is, that, on taking leave of their disciples, they warn them
not, of their being only yet at the outset or in the prosecu-
tion of a journey, instead of having reached the termination
of it. They in fact take leave of them in the middle of an un-
protected highway-when they should have reared a finger
post of direction to the places which lie beyond. The para-
graph which we have now extracted, was just such a finger
post-though taken down, we deeply regret to say, by the
very hand that had erected it. Our veneration for his name
must not restrain the observation, that, by this, he undid
the best service which a professor of moral science can ren-
der to humanity. Along the confines of its domain, there
should be raised, in every quarter, the floating signals of
distress, that its scholars, instead of being lulled into the
imagination that now they may repose as in so many se-
cure and splendid dwelling places, should be taught io re-
gard them only as towers of observation-whence they
have only to look for their ulterior guidance and their ulte-
rior supplies, to the region of a conterminous theology.
33. There is a difficulty here in the theism of nature,
within the whole compass of which, no solution for it
can be found. It will at least afford a specimen of the way
in which the one bears upon the other, if we state the me-
thod of escape from this difficulty that has been provided
in the theism of Christianity. The great moral problem
which under the former waits to be resolved, is to find ac.
ceptance in the mercy of God, for those who have braved
His justice, and done despite to the authority of His law,
and that, without any compromise of truth or dignity. By
the offered solution of the New Testament, a channel has
been opened up, through a high mediatorship between God
and man, for the descent of a grace and a mercy the most
exuberant on a guilty world; and through it, the overtures
of reconciliation are extended unto all; and a sceptre of for-
giveness, but of forgiveness consecrated by the blood of a
great atonement, has been stretched forth, even to the most
polluted and worthless outcasts of the human family, and
Thus the goodness of the divinity obtained its fullest vindica-
tion, yet not a goodness at the expense of justice-for the
affront done to an outraged law, has been amply repaired
by the homage to its authority of an illustrious sufferer,
tion we goodness of the outcasts of the bus even to the most


342
ON THE DEFECTS AND USES.
made by this world's rebellion, and yet the honour of hea-
ven's high Sovereign be untarnished by the compromise.
The one science lands us in the difficulty; and by the other
alone it is, that we are extricated. The one presents us
with the case; but, for the solution of it, we must refer to a
higher calculus, to an instrument of more powerful disco-
very and of fuller revelation. The one starts a question
which itself cannot untie ; and the other furnishes the satis-
factory response to it. The desideratum of the former meets
with the doctrine of the latter; and it is this frequent ad-
justment, as of a mould to its counterpart die; it is this
close and manifold adaptation between the wants of nature
and the overtures of a profest revelation; it is this fitting
of the supernal application to the terrestrial subject upon
which it is laid; it is the way, more especially, in which
the disruption between heaven and earth has been restored,
and the frightful chasm that sin had made on the condition
and prospects of our species is wholly repaired to all who
will through the completeness of an offered Saviour; it is
this mingled harmony of the greater and lesser lights, which
gives evidence that both have been kindled by the same
hand, and that it is He who put the candle which glimmers
so feebly into my heart, it is He also who poured the noon-
day effulgence of Christianity around me.
36. It were foreign to our prescribed subject to attempt an
exposition, in however brief and rapid a sketch, of the cre-
deutials of Christianity. We only remark, that amid the lustre
and variety of its proofs, there is one strikingly analagous,
and indeed identical in principle, with our own peculiar ar-
gument. If in the system of external nature, we can recog-
nize the evidence of God being its author, in the adaptations
wherewith it teems to the Moral and Intellectual Constitu-
tion of Man-there is room and opportunity for this very
evidence in the book of an external revelation. What ap-
pears in the construction of a world might be made to ap-
pear as manifestly in the construction of a volume, whose
objective truths may present as obvious and skilful an ac-
commodation to our mental economy, as do the objective
things of a created universe. And it is not the less favour-
able, for an indication of its divine original that whereas
Nature, as being the original system, abounds with those
fitnesses which harmonize with the mental constitution in
a state of health-Christianity, as being a restorative sys-






This book should be returned to
the Library on or before the last date
stamped below.
A fine of five cents a day is incurred
by retaining it beyond the specified
time.
Please return promptly.
MAR 24 75 H
4197863
WIDEN
OOK DUET
2148842