Cibrarjp of Che theological ^eminar^ 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 Dr. Earl A. Pope 
 
 Manson Professor of Bible 
 
 Lafayette College 
 
 The Earl A. Pope Collection 
 
 3L 182 .C42 1833 v.l 
 Chalmers, Thomas, 1780-1847. 
 On the power, wisdom, and 
 goodness of God 
 
/^l^Ci^-i^^^^^^^^ 
 
ON THE 
 
 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 UNIVr.RSITY 
 OF KDINRURGII 
 
 VOL I 
 
 ^M OF PRlNCEf^ 
 
 2000 
 
 LONDON <ifOiOG!CftLSE*^ 
 
 WILLIAM PICKERING 
 
 1833 
 
c. wnrniNOiiAM, tooks court, chancery lane. 
 
RIGHT HONOURABLE AND RIGHT REVEREND 
 CHARLES JAMES, 
 
 LORD BISHOP OF LONDON. 
 
 MY LORD, 
 
 Your Lordship's personal kindness to my- 
 self 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 acknowledgment 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. 
 
vi DEDICATION. 
 
 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 reasonings of Bishop 
 Butler, than I have been able to find 
 besides, in the whole range of our existent 
 authorship. 
 
 With his powerful aid I commenced the 
 high investigation 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. Whatever the department 
 of Nature may be which we explore, in 
 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 tra- 
 versed the whole length and breadth of 
 the land. He will have but entered and 
 proceeded a certain way, within the margin 
 
DEDICATION. Vli 
 
 of a territory, whose riches are inexhaus- 
 tible. 
 
 That your Lordship may long continue, 
 by your zeal, and talents, and lofty eru- 
 dition, to sustain the honours, and to pro- 
 mote the vital good of our Religious Es- 
 tablishments 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. 
 
NOTICE, 
 
 The series of Treatises, or" which the present is one, is 
 pubhshed under the following circumstances : 
 
 The Right HoNouiiABLE and Reverend Francis 
 Henry, Earl of Bridgewatek, 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 
 persons selected by the said President should be appointed 
 to write, print, and publish one thousand copies of a work 
 On the Power, Wisdo}n, and Goodness of God, as mani- 
 Jested in the Creation ; illustrating such work hy all reason- 
 able arguments, as for instance the variety and formation of 
 God's creatures in the animal, vegetable, and mineral king- 
 doms ; the effect of digestion, and thereby of conversion ; 
 the construction of the hand of man, and an infnite variety 
 of other arguments ; as also by discoveries ancient and 
 modern, in arts, sciences, and the ivhole extent of literature. 
 He desired, moreover, that the profits 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 
 deceased, Mr, Davies Gilbert appointed the following eight 
 gentlemen to write separate Treatises on the different 
 branches of the subject as here stated : 
 
 THE REV. THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. 
 
 PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH. 
 
 ON THE POWER, WISDOM, AND GOODNESS OF GOD 
 
 AS MANIFESTED IN THE ADAPTATION 
 
 OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO THE MORAL 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 
 PHYSICAL CONDITION OF MAN. 
 
 THE REV. WILLIAM WHEWELL, M.A. F.R.S. 
 
 FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 
 
 ASTRONOMY AND GENERAL PHYSICS CONSIDERED WITH 
 REFERENCE TO NATURAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 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 VEGETAKLE PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
XI 
 THE REV. WILLIAM BUCKLAND, D. D. E. R. S. 
 
 CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH, AND PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY IN THE 
 UNIVERSITY 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. S. 
 
 ON CHEMISTRY, METEOROLOGY, AND THE FUNCTION 
 OF DIGESTION. 
 
 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 inter- 
 vals, as they are ready for publication. 
 
CONTENTS 
 TO THE FIRST VOLUME. 
 
 Page 
 
 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER 7 
 
 PART I. 
 
 On the Adaptation of External Nature to the 
 Moral Constitution of Man. 
 
 Chap. I. First General Argument. 
 
 On the Supremacy of Conscience 57 
 
 II. Second General Argument. 
 
 On the Inherent Pleasure of the Virtuous, and 
 Misery of the Vicious Affections 9S 
 
 III. Third General Argument. 
 
 The Power and Operation of Habit 133 
 
 IV. On the General Adaptation of Extei-nal Nature 
 
 to the Moral Constitution of Man 1 58 
 
 V. On the Special and Subordinate Adaptations of 
 External Nature to the Moral Constitution of 
 Man 1S7 
 
 VT, On those Special Affections which conduce to the 
 
 Civil and Political Well-being- of Society . . . 218 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 It is an incongruous thing, when there is 
 any want of conformity between the subject 
 matter of an essay, and its title. The object 
 of this explanatory preface is to shew that it 
 is an incongruity into which we have not 
 fallen. 
 
 In the first place we were not in fair cir- 
 cumstances for expounding the adaptation 
 of external nature to the mental constitution 
 of man, till we had made manifest in some 
 degree what that constitution is. There is 
 no distinct labourer in that conjunct demon- 
 stration of the divine attributes which is now 
 being offered to the world, to whom this 
 essentially preliminary topic had been as- 
 signed as the subject of a separate work. 
 It was therefore unavoidable, that, to a cer- 
 tain extent we should undertake it ourselves, 
 else, in proceeding to the construction of our 
 argument, we might have incurred the charge 
 
 c. B 
 
Z PREFACE. 
 
 of attempting to rear a superstructure, with- 
 out a foundation to rest upon. 
 
 But in the execution of this introductory- 
 part of our subject, we could scarcely have 
 refrained from noticing the indications of 
 divine wisdom and goodness in our mental 
 constitution itself, even though our strictly 
 proper, because our assigned task, was to 
 point out these indications in the adaptation 
 of this constitution to external nature. We 
 could not forget that the general purpose of 
 the work was to exhibit with all possible 
 fulness the argument for the character of the 
 Deity, as grounded on the laws and appear- 
 ances of nature. But we should have left 
 out a very rich and important track of 
 argument, had we forborne all observation 
 on the evidence for the divine perfections, in 
 the structure and processes of the mind itself, 
 and confined ourselves to the evidence af- 
 forded by the relations which the mind bore 
 to the external world. In the adaptation of 
 external nature to man's physical constitu- 
 tion, there are many beautiful and decisive 
 indications of a God. But prior to these, 
 there is a multitude of distinct indications, 
 both in the hum-an anatomy, and the human 
 
PREFACE. 3 
 
 physiology, viewed by themselves, and as 
 separate objects of contemplation. And ac- 
 cordingly, 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 anatomy of the mind, or the physio- 
 logy 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 attestations 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 exposition. The 
 one is as distinct from the other, as the study 
 of final is from the study of efficient causes — 
 the former often 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 am- 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 biguity 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 reality, and not upon its analysis, or the 
 physical mode of its origination — on the un- 
 doubted truth that so it is, and not on the 
 undetermined, perhaps indeterminable ques- 
 tion of how it is. We should not have 
 shrunk from the obscurer investigation, had 
 it been at all necessary. But that is no 
 reason why time must be consumed on mat- 
 ters which are at once obscure 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 diffi- 
 culties of any preliminary disquisition which 
 comes before it — and that the main strength 
 of the argument which our mental constitu- 
 tion, 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 
 recognised by all men. 
 
 But there is another explanation which 
 we deem it necessary to make, in order fully 
 to reconcile the actual topics of our essay, 
 
PREFACE. a 
 
 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 adaptation of the 
 material to the mental world. But if by 
 external nature be meant all that is external 
 to one individual mind, then would the sub- 
 ject be very greatly extended ; for beside 
 the reciprocal influence between that indi- 
 vidual mind, and all sensible and material 
 things, we should consider 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 ob- 
 tain between mind and matter ; but, which 
 is far more prolific of evidence for a Deity, 
 to the action and reaction which obtain be- 
 tween mind and mind. We thus find access 
 to a much larger territory, which should 
 otherwise be left unexplored — -and have the 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 opportunity of tracing the marks of a divine 
 intelligence in the mechanism of human 
 society, and in the frame-work of the social 
 and economical systems to which men are 
 conducted, when they adhere to that light, 
 and follow the impulse of those affections 
 which God has bestowed on them. 
 
 But in the progress of our argument, we 
 come at length to be engaged with the adap- 
 tations of external nature, even in the most 
 strict and limited sense of the term. In the 
 origin and rights of property, as well as in 
 the various economic interests of society, we 
 behold the purest exemplification of that 
 adjustment which obtains between the ma- 
 terial 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 mental worlds are still more numerous, 
 and more palpably indicative of that wisdom 
 which originated both, and conformed them 
 with exquisite and profound skill to each 
 other. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 GENERAL AND PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 1 . External nature, when spoken of in contra- 
 distinction to mind, suggests chiefly, if not solely, 
 the idea of the material universe. Even though 
 restricted to this limited and proper sense of the 
 term, we should still behold the proofs of benefi- 
 cent design in the fitnesses of the one to the other; 
 but far more abundantly and decisively, it must 
 be confessed, 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 en- 
 largement of the meaning commonly affixed to 
 external nature seems indispensable, — an enlarge- 
 ment that we should not have ventured on, if in 
 so doing we crossed the legitimate boundaries of 
 our 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 did we confine our notice to the 
 relations which obtain between the world of mind 
 and the world of matter, we should be doing 
 
8 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 injustice to our own theme, by spoiling it of 
 greatly more than half its richness, — beside leav- 
 ing unoccupied certain fertile tracts of evidence, 
 which, if not entered upon in our division of the 
 general work, must, as is obvious from the nature 
 of the respective tasks, be altogether omitted in 
 the conjunct demonstration that is now being 
 offered to the public, of the Goodness and Wis- 
 dom of the Deity. 
 
 2. It is true that, with even but one solitary 
 human mind in midst 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 oc- 
 cupier 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 
 constitution of man. But, born as man obviously 
 is for the companionship of his fellows, it must 
 be evident that the 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 there- 
 fore understand external nature to comprehend in 
 it, not merely all that is external to mind, but all 
 that is external to the individual possessor of a 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 human mind, — who is surromided 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 pos- 
 session of but scanty materials for evincing its 
 adaptation to the moral constitution of man, 
 though an ample field of observation would still 
 lie open to us, in unfolding the aptitude of the 
 human understanding, with its various instincts 
 and powers, for the business of physical investi- 
 gation. 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 depart- 
 ment of observation distinct from that of all the 
 other labourers in this joint enterprize, — 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 terres- 
 trial 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 benevolent intelligence in the me- 
 chanism of human society. 
 
 3. We conceive of external nature then that it 
 
10 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 comprehends more than the mute and uncon- 
 scious materialism, and the objective truth — it 
 comprehends also the living society by which 
 the possessor of a moral and intellectual consti- 
 tution is surrounded. Did we exclude the latter 
 from our regards, we should be keeping out of 
 view a number of as wise, and certainly, in the 
 degree that mind is of higher consideration than 
 body, of far more beneficial and important adap- 
 tations than any which are presented to our 
 notice in the mechanical, or chemical, or physio- 
 logical 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 incontestable marks of a divine wis- 
 dom and care; principles or laws of human nature 
 in virtue of which the social economy moves rightly 
 and prosperously onward, and apart from which 
 all would go into derangement; affinities between 
 man and his fellows, that harmonize the indi- 
 vidual with the general interests, and are ob- 
 viously designed as provisions for the well-being 
 both of families and nations. 
 
 4. It might help to guard us against a possible 
 misconception , if now, at the outset of our argu- 
 ment, we shall distinguish between the moral 
 constitution of man, and that moral system of 
 doctrine which embodies in it the outer truths or 
 principles of ethical science. The two are as 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 11 
 
 distinct from each other, as are the objective and 
 subjective in any quarter of contemplation what- 
 ever, and ought no more to be confounded than, 
 in optics, the system of visible things with the 
 anatomical structure of the eye. The organ 
 which perceives or apprehends truth is separate 
 in reality, and should be kept separate in thought, 
 from the truth which is apprehended ; and thus 
 it is that we should view the moral constitution 
 of man and the moral system of virtue as diverse 
 and distinct from each other. The one belongs 
 to the physiology of the mind, and is collected, 
 like all other experimental truth, by a diligent 
 observation of facts and phenomena. The other, 
 involving, as it does, those questions which relate 
 to the nature of virtue, or to the origin and prin- 
 ciples of moral obligation, directs the attention of 
 the mind to another quarter than to its own pro- 
 cesses, and presents us with a wholly distinct 
 matter of contemplation. The acts of moral 
 judgment or feeling should not be confounded 
 with the objects of moral judgment or feeling, 
 any more, in fact, than the rules of logic should 
 be confounded with the laws which govern the pro- 
 cedure of the human understanding. The ques- 
 tion, '* what is virtue?" or " what is that which 
 constitutes virtue?" is one thing. The question, 
 " what is the mental process by which man 
 takes cognizance of virtue?" is another. They 
 are as distinct from each other as are the prin- 
 
12 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 ciples of good reasoning from the processes of the 
 reasoning faculty. It is thus that the mental 
 philosophy, whose proper and legitimate pro- 
 vince is the physics of the mind, should be kept 
 distinct from logic and ethics, and the philosophy 
 of taste. The question, " what is beautiful in 
 scenery?" or *' what is right in character?" or 
 *' what is just in argument ?" is distinct from the 
 question, " what is the actual and historical pro- 
 cedure of the mind in addressing itself to these 
 respective objects of contemplation ?" 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 consti- 
 tution. 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 contro- 
 versies may yet obtain respecting the nature and 
 the elementary principles of virtue, — such not- 
 
 * See the Introduction to Sir James Macintosh's Ethical 
 Dissertation. "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 
 philosophy is one province of the physical sciences, and belong-s to 
 the first of these two departments, being distinct from moral 
 philosophy, which forms the second of them. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 13 
 
 withstanding, may be the palpable and ascer- 
 tained facts in the nature and history of sub- 
 jective 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 good- 
 ness of God. 
 
 5. Having thus referred our argument, not to 
 the constitution 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 observation ; 
 let us now consider how it is that natural theology 
 proceeds with her demonstrations, on other con- 
 stitutions 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, untried 
 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 good- 
 ness of God, is the obvious adaptation where- 
 with creation teems, throughout all its borders, of 
 means to a beneficial end. And it is manifest 
 that the argument grows in strength with the 
 number and complexity of these means. The 
 greater the number of independent circumstances 
 which must meet together for the production of 
 a useful result — then, in the actual fact of their 
 
14 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 concurrence, is there less of probability for its 
 being the effect of chance, and more of evidence 
 for its being the effect of design. A beneficent 
 combination of three independent elements is not 
 so impressive or so strong an argument for a 
 divinity, as a similar combination of six or ten 
 such elements. And every mathematician, con- 
 versant in the doctrine of probabilities, knows 
 how with every addition to the number of these 
 elements, the argument grows in force and in- 
 tensity, with a rapid and multiple augmentation 
 — till at length, in some of the more intricate and 
 manifold conjunctions, those more particularly 
 having an organic character and structure, could 
 we but trace them to an historical commence- 
 ment, we should find, on the principles of com- 
 putation 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 
 departments in nature. In astronomy, the in- 
 dependent elements seem but few and simple, 
 which must meet together for the composition of 
 a planetarium. One uniform law of gravitation, 
 with a force of projection impressed by one im- 
 pulse on each of the bodies, could suffice to 
 account for the revolutions of the planets round 
 the sun, and of the satellites around their 
 primaries, along with the diurnal revolution of 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 15 
 
 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 
 science, what a complex and crowded combina- 
 tion of individual elements must first be effected, 
 ere we obtain the composition of an eye, — for 
 the completion of which mechanism, there must 
 not only be a greater number of separate laws, 
 as of refraction and muscular action and secre- 
 tion ; 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 plane- 
 tarium — or that, within less than the compass of 
 a handbreadth, we should find in this lower 
 world a more pregnant and legible 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 
 
16 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 formations, is the stronger, in proportion to the 
 number of separate and independent 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 generally 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 work- 
 manship. 
 
 9. There is, then, a difference of great argu- 
 mentative importance 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 but two 
 laws — the law of gravitation ; 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 instance a greater number of 
 particulars. We should describe the arrange- 
 ment 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 aroimd it, but at such distances as not 
 to interfere with each other, and of the still 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 17 
 
 smaller secondary bodies which revolved about 
 the planets : And we should include in this des- 
 cription the impulses in one direction, and nearly 
 in one plane, given to the different moving bodies; 
 and so regulated, as to secure the movement of 
 each, in an orbit of small eccentricity. The dis- 
 positions 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 dispo- 
 sitions, 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 dispositions. Could all the beauties 
 and benefits of the astronomical system be re- 
 ferred to the single law of gravitation, it would 
 greatly reduce the strength of the argument for 
 a designing cause. La Place, as if to fortify 
 still more the atheism of such a speculation, en- 
 deavoured 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 property of matter. La Grange had 
 previously established — that but for such a pro- 
 portion, or by the deviation of a thousandth part 
 from it, the planetary system would go into 
 derangement — or, in other words, that the law, 
 
18 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 such as it is, was essential to the stabiHty of the 
 present mundane constitution. La Place would 
 have accredited the law, the unconscious and 
 unintelligent law, that thing according to him 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 peri- 
 odical, would in virtue of the single law oscillate 
 around a mean state that should be indestructible 
 and everlasting. Should this come to be a con- 
 clusively settled doctrine in the science, it will 
 extenuate, we admit, the argument for a design- 
 ing cause in the formation of the planetarium. 
 But it will not annihilate that argument- — for 
 there do remain certain palpable utilities in the 
 dispositions as well as laws of the planetary 
 system, acknowledged 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 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 19 
 
 receive throughout the whole of their course an 
 equable dispensation. What a mal- adjustment 
 would it have been, had the luminous and the 
 opaque matter changed places in the firmament ; 
 or the planets, by the eccentricity of their orbits, 
 been subject to such 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 in a more 
 accessible mechanism, near at hand. If either 
 the dispositions of matter in the former mecha- 
 nism 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 concentra- 
 tion of that proof, which is crowded to so mar- 
 vellous a degree of enhancement within the limits 
 of the anatomical system. It is this which en- 
 ables 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 dispo- 
 sitions 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 
 
20 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 Nature's laws, than of the wisdom of her collo- 
 cations.* Now it is trne that the law of refrac- 
 tion is indispensable to the faculty of vision ; but 
 the laws indispensable to this result are greatly 
 outnumbered by the dispositions which are indis- 
 pensable 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 ex- 
 ternal 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 impor- 
 
 * This distinction between the laws and collocations of matter 
 is overlooked by atheistical wTiters, as in the following specimen 
 from the " Systeme de la Nature" of Mirabaud. " These pre- 
 judiced 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 
 astonishing harmony in the component parts of animals. In that 
 moment how^ever, they forget the laws of motion ; the power of 
 gravitation ; 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 Robison felt alarmed by the attempted demon- 
 stration of La Place, that the law of gravitation w^as an essential 
 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 colloca- 
 tions — because of the utter inadequacy in the existing laws to have 
 originated the existing collocations of the material 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. 21 
 
 tant function, and all of them contributing to the 
 power and perfection of this curious and mani- 
 foldly complicated organ. It is not so much the 
 endowment of matter with certain properties, 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 
 belief of contrivance ; but the presence of the 
 gastric juice, in the very situation whence it 
 comes forth to act with advantage on the food, 
 when received into the stomach, and there sub- 
 mitted 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 sub- 
 servient to many useful results, we keep back 
 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 dis- 
 tributed 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 intelligence, as in certain 
 dispositions of matter, that put it in the way of 
 being usefully operated upon by the laws. In- 
 somuch, that though we conceded to the atheist, 
 the eternity of matter, and the essentially inherent 
 
22 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 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 magni- 
 tude, the most impressive signatures of a Deity. 
 And what a countless variety of such adjustments 
 within the compass of an animal, or even a vege- 
 table 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 im- 
 plement 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 accredit 
 man with the establishment of any laws for 
 matter — yet he leaves enough by which to trace 
 the operations of his intelligence in the colloca- 
 tions 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 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 23 
 
 upon his workmanship 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 directed 
 them to an obviously beneficial result. The 
 watchmaker did not give its elasticity to the 
 main-spring, nor its regularity to the balance- 
 wheel, nor its transparency 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 intelligence notwithstanding, an- 
 nouncing throughout the hand of a maker who 
 had an eye on all these properties, and assigned 
 the right place and adjustment to each of them, 
 in fashioning and bringing together the parts of 
 an instrument for the measurement and the in- 
 dication of time. Now, the same distinction can 
 be observed in all the specimens of natural me- 
 chanism. 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 ap- 
 parent, 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 disorderly 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 
 
24 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 without collocation, into a little chaos, or con- 
 fused 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 ob- 
 literated. And it is even so with all the sub- 
 stantive things which enter into the composition 
 of a world. Take but their forms and colloca- 
 tions away from them, and this goodly universe 
 would instantly lapse into a heaving and dis- 
 orderly chaos — yet without stripping matter of 
 any of its properties or powers. There might 
 still, though operating with random and un- 
 directed 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 moved on the face of the waters, waited 
 but a right distribution of the parts of matter, to 
 develope into the fidl 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 endow- 
 ing of matter with right properties ; but the 
 forming of it into things of right shape and mag- 
 nitude, and the marshalling of these into right 
 places. This last alone would suffice for bring- 
 ing harmony out of confusion ; and, apart alto- 
 gether from the first, or, without involving our- 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 25 
 
 selves in the metaphysical obscurity of those 
 questions which relate to the origination of mat- 
 ter and to the distinction between its arbitrary 
 and essential properties, might we discern, in the 
 mere arrangements of matter, 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 material world 
 is viewed according to this distinction, the whole 
 science of its contemporaneous phenomena is 
 comprehended 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, whether of the simple inorganic 
 or more complex organic structures. 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 Philosophy. This 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 
 
26 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 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 sensible or, at 
 least) not measurable, and which cannot therefore 
 be made the subjects of mathematical computa- 
 tion or reasoning. 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 inorganic matter, or 
 chemistry strictly and usually so called ; and 
 the science of physiology, whose province it is 
 to investigate the like changes that take place in 
 organic bodies, whether of the animal or vege- 
 table kingdoms. 
 
 14. Or, the distinction between these two 
 sciences of contemporaneous and successive na- 
 ture may otherwise be stated thus. The one, or 
 natural history, is conversant with objects — 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 various moving forces 
 by which it is actuated, fall more properly under 
 the enquiries of the latter science. Now, adopt- 
 ing this nomenclature, we hold it a most im- 
 portant assertion for the cause of natural theology, 
 that should all the present arrangements of our 
 existing natural history be destroyed, there is no 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 27 
 
 power in the laws of our existing natural philo- 
 sophy to replace them. Or, in other words, if 
 ever a time was, when the structure and dis- 
 positions of matter, under the present economy 
 of things were not — 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 
 — bat they did not and could not set up the 
 machine. The human species, for example, may 
 be upholden, through an indefinite series of ages, 
 by 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 construction of the system which so palpably 
 calls for the intervention of an artificer, or 
 demonstrates so powerfully the fiat and finger of 
 a God. 
 
 15. This distinction between nature's laws and 
 nature's collocations is mainly lost sight of in 
 those speculations of geology, the object of which 
 is to explain the formation of new systems emerg- 
 ing 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 physi- 
 cal catastrophe on the face of our earth had over- 
 
28 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 thrown. 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 upholden ; 
 but the geologists 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 
 together. It is thus that they would exclude the 
 agency of a God from the transition between one 
 system, or one formation, 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 
 intervention, and, of course, the evidence of it 
 would have been more manifest, had the dis- 
 tinction between the laws of matter and its collo- 
 cations 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 Bentley, he says, that *' the growth of new 
 systems out of old ones, w ithout the mediation of a 
 divine power, seems to me apparently absurd;" 
 and that " the system of nature was set in order 
 in the beginning, with respect to size, figure, 
 proportions, and properties, by the counsels of 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 29 
 
 God's own intelligence." In the last extracts, 
 by his admission of the properties 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 geo- 
 logical discoveries may be gathered from the 
 testimony which they afford to the destruction 
 of so many terrestrial economies now gone by, 
 and the substitution of the existing one in their 
 place. If there be truth at all in the specula- 
 tions of this science, there is nothing which 
 appears to have been more conclusively es- 
 tablished by them, than a definite origin or 
 commencement for the present animal and vege- 
 table races. Now we know what it is which 
 upholds the whole of the physiological system 
 that is now before our eyes, — even the successive 
 derivation of each individual member from a 
 
 * 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 continue 
 by those laws for many ages." 
 
 This disposition to resolve the collocations into the laws of 
 nature proves, in the expressive language of Granville Penn, 
 how strenuously, not " physical science," but only some of its 
 disciples 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/' 
 
30 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 parent of its own likeness ; but we see no force in 
 nature, and no complication of forces which can 
 tell us what it was that originated the system. 
 It is at this passage in the history of nature, 
 where we meet with such pregnant evidence for 
 the interposition of a designing cause, — an evi- 
 dence, it will be seen, of prodigious density and 
 force, when we compute the immense number 
 and variety of those aptitudes, whether of form or 
 magnitude or relative position, which enter into 
 the completion of an organic structure. It is in 
 the numerical superiority of the distinct collo- 
 cations to the distinct laws of matter, that the 
 superior evidence of the former lies. We do not 
 deny that there is argument for a God in the 
 number of beneficial, while, at the same time, 
 distinct and independent laws wherewith matter 
 is endowed. We only affirm a million-fold in- 
 tensity of argument in the indefinitely greater 
 number of beneficial, and at the same time dis- 
 tinct and independent number of collocations 
 whereinto matter has been arranged. In this 
 respect the human body may be said to present 
 a more close and crowded and multifarious in- 
 scription of the divinity, than any single object 
 within the compass of visible nature. It is in- 
 stinct throughout with the evidence of a builder's 
 hand ; and thus the appropriate men of science 
 who can expound those dispositions of matter 
 which constitute the anatomy of its frame-work, 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 31 
 
 and which embrace the physiology of its various 
 processes, are on secure and firm vantage ground 
 for an impressive demonstration. 
 
 17. Now there are many respects in which the 
 evidence for a God, given forth by the constitu- 
 tion of the human body, differs from the evidence 
 given forth by the constitution of the human 
 spirit. It is with the latter evidence that we 
 have more peculiarly to deal ; but at present we 
 shall only advert to a few of its distinct and 
 special characteristics. The subject will at length 
 open into greater detail, and developement before 
 us, — yet a brief preliminary exposition may be 
 useful at the outset, should it only convey some 
 notion of the difficulties and particularities of the 
 task which has been put into our hands. 
 
 18. A leading distinction between the material 
 and the mental fabrications is, the far greater 
 complexity of the former, 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 tvv enty separate contingencies, 
 the absence of any one of which would either de- 
 range 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. Noav in these we are 
 sensible of nothing but a very simple antecedent 
 followed up, and that generally on the instant. 
 
32 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 by a like simple consequent. We have the feel- 
 ing and still more the purpose of benevolence, 
 followed up by complacency. We have the feel- 
 ing or purpose, and still more the execution of 
 malignity, or rather the recollection of that exe- 
 cution, followed up by remorse. However mani- 
 fold the apparatus may be wliich enables us to 
 see an external object — when the sight itself, 
 instead of the consequent in a material succes- 
 sion, becomes the antecedent 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, 
 accordingly, the sight of distress is followed up, 
 without the intervention of any curiously elabo- 
 rated mechanism that we are at all conscious of, 
 by an immediate feeling of compassion. These 
 examples will, at least, suffice to mark a strong 
 distinction between the two enquiries, and to show 
 that the several 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 differ- 
 ent 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 sub- 
 stance, with the susceptibility of passing into 
 different states. By the former mode of viewing 
 it, the memory, and the judgment, and the con- 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 33 
 
 science, 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 separate members, 
 each for the discharge of its own appropriate 
 mental function or exercise. By the latter, which 
 we deem also the more felicitous mode of viewing 
 it, these distinct mental acts, instead of being 
 referred to distinct parts of the mind, are con- 
 ceived of as distinct acts of the whole mind, — 
 insomuch that the whole mind remembers, or 
 the whole mind judges, or the whole mind wills, 
 or, in short, the Avhole mind passes into various 
 intellectual states or states of emotion, according 
 to the circumstances by which at the time it is 
 beset, or to the present nature of its employment. 
 We might thus either regard the study of mind 
 as a study in contemporaneous 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 nature ; 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 phy- 
 
 * It is under this conception too that writers propose to lay 
 down a map of the human faculties. 
 
 C. D 
 
34 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 siology of the human mind is made use of, the 
 latter is the conception by which, in all pro- 
 bability, it has been suggested. It is thus that 
 Dr. Thomas Brown designates the science of 
 mind as mental physiology. With him, in fact, 
 it is altogether a science of sequences, his very 
 analysis being the analysis of results, and not of 
 compounds. 
 
 20. Now, in either view of our mental con- 
 stitution 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 use- 
 ful parts, or as endowed with as many useful 
 properties. It is the number, whether the one 
 or other, of these — out of which the product is 
 formed of evidence for a designing 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 in- 
 dependent circumstances which enter into bene- 
 ficial 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 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 35 
 
 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-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 con- 
 tribute so much less to the support of natural 
 theism, of that definite and mathematical evi- 
 dence which is founded on combination. 
 
 21. But, although in the mental department of 
 creation, the argument for a God that is gathered 
 out of such materials, 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 reason- 
 ing, is of a highly effective and practical charac- 
 ter notwithstanding. It has not less in it of the 
 
36 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 substance, though it may have greatly less in it 
 of the semblance of demonstration, that it con- 
 sists of but one step between the premises and 
 the conclusion. It is briefly, but cannot be more 
 clearly and emphatically expressed 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 
 almost all spirits. It is a thing of instant con- 
 viction, 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 im- 
 pression — nevertheless 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 
 conclusion 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 authority of intuition, and so reduce 
 all philosophy and knowledge to a state of uni- 
 versal scepticism — for what is the first departure 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 37 
 
 of every argument but an intuition, and what but 
 a series of intuitions are its successive stepping- 
 stones ? We should soon involve ourselves in 
 helpless perplexity and darkness, did we insist 
 on every thing being proved and on nothing being 
 assumed — for valid assumptions are the materials 
 of truth, and the only office of argument is to 
 weave them together into so many pieces of 
 instruction for the bettering or enlightening of 
 the species. 
 
 22. That blind and unconscious matter can- 
 not, by any of her combinations, evolve the phe- 
 nomena of mind, is a proposition seen in its own 
 immediate light, and felt to be true with all the 
 sj)eed and certainty of an axiom. It is to such 
 truth, as being of instant and almost universal 
 consent, that, more than to any other, we owe the 
 existence of a natural theology among men : yet, 
 because of the occult mysticism wherewith it is 
 charged, it is well that ours is a cause of such 
 rich and various argument ; that in her service 
 we can build up syllogisms, and expatiate over 
 wide fields of induction, and amass stores of evi- 
 dence, and, on the useful dispositions of matter 
 alone, can ground such large computations of 
 probability in favour of an intelligent cause or 
 maker for all things, as might silence and satisfy 
 the reasoners. 
 
 23. But we forget that the object of the joint 
 compositions which enter into this work, is not 
 
38 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 properly to demonstrate the being but the attri- 
 butes of God, and more especially His power, 
 and wisdom, and goodness. We start from that 
 point at which the intuitions and proofs of the 
 question have performed their end of convincing 
 man that God is ; and from this point, we set 
 forth on an enquiry into the character which 
 belongs to him. Now this is an enquiry which 
 the constitution of the mind, and the adaptation 
 of that constitution to the external world, are 
 pre-eminently fitted to illustrate. We hold that 
 the material universe affords decisive attestation 
 to the natural perfections of the Godhead, but 
 that it leaves the question of his moral perfec- 
 tions involved in profoundest mystery. The 
 machinery of a serpent's tooth, for the obvious 
 infliction of pain and death upon its victims, 
 may speak as distinctly for the power and intel- 
 ligence of its Maker as the machinery of those 
 teeth which, formed and inserted for simple 
 mastication, subserve the purposes of a bland 
 and beneficent economy. An apparatus of suffer- 
 ing and torture might furnish as clear an indica- 
 tion of design, though a design of cruelty, as 
 does an apparatus for the ministration of enjoy- 
 ment 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 perplex- 
 ing and contradictory appearances. We hope 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 39 
 
 to make it manifest, that in the study of the 
 mental constitution, this enigma is greatly alle- 
 viated, if not wholly done away ; and, at all 
 events, that within our peculiar province there 
 lie the most full and unambiguous demonstra- 
 tions, which nature hath any where given to us, 
 both of the benevolence and the righteousness 
 of God. 
 
 24. If, in some respects, the phenomena of 
 mind tell us less decisively than the phenomena 
 of matter, of the existence of God, they tell us far 
 more distinctly and decisively of His attributes. 
 We have already said that, from the simplicity 
 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 particulars, 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 evidence — the evidence which lies in 
 combination ; that the phenomena 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 antece- 
 dents or the consequents of any particular suc- 
 cession may be. It is enough that we know 
 
40 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 what the terms of the succession are, or what the 
 effect is Avherewith God wills any given thing to 
 be followed np. The character of the ordina- 
 tion, and so the character of the ordainer, de- 
 pends 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 
 compassion, is an obvious provision of benevo- 
 lence, and not of cruelty, on the part of Him 
 who ordained our mental constitution. Again, 
 that a feeling of kindness in the heart should be 
 followed up by a feeling of complacency in the 
 heart, that in every virtuous affection of the 
 soul there should be so much to gladden and 
 harmonize it, that there should always be peace 
 within when there is conscious purity or recti- 
 tude within ; and, on the other hand, that malig- 
 nity and licentiousness, and the sense of any 
 moral transgression whatever, should always 
 have the effect of discomforting, and sometimes 
 even of agonizing the spirit of man— that such 
 should be the actual workmansliip and working 
 of oar nature, speaks most distinctly, we appre- 
 hend, for the general righteousness of Him who 
 
 I 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 41 
 
 constructed its machinery and established its 
 laws. An omnipotent patron of vice would have 
 given another make, and a moral system with 
 other and opposite tendencies to the creatures 
 whom he had formed. He would have estab- 
 lished different sequences ; and, instead of that 
 oil of gladness which now distils, as if from a 
 secret spring of satisfaction, upon the upright ; 
 and, instead of that bitterness and disquietude 
 which are now the obvious attendants on every 
 species of delinquency, we should have had the 
 reverse phenomena of a reversely constituted 
 species, whose minds were in their state of 
 wildest disorder when kindling with the resolves 
 of highest excellence ; or were in their best and 
 happiest, and most harmonious mood, when 
 brooding over the purposes of dishonesty, or 
 frenzied with the passions of hatred and revenge. 
 25. In this special track of observation, we 
 have at least the means or data for constructing 
 a far more satisfactory demonstration of the 
 divine attributes, tlian can possibly be gathered, 
 we think, from the ambiguous phenomena of the 
 external world. In other words, it will be found 
 tliat the mental phenomena speak more dis- 
 tinctly and decisively for the character of God 
 than do the material phenomena of creation. 
 And it should not be forgotten that whatever 
 serves to indicate the character, serves also to 
 confirm the existeuce of the Divine Being. For 
 
42 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 this character, whose signatures are impressed 
 on Nature, is not an abstraction, but must have 
 residence on a concrete and substantive Being, 
 who hath communicated a transcript of Himself 
 to the workmanship of His own hands. It is 
 thus, that, although in our assigned department 
 there is greater poverty of evidence for a God, in 
 as far as that evidence is grounded on a skilful 
 disposition of parts, — yet, in respect of another 
 kind of evidence, there is no such poverty ; for, 
 greatly more replete as we hold our special de- 
 partment to be with the unequivocal tokens of a 
 moral character, we, by that simple but strong 
 ligament of proof which connects a character with 
 an existence, can, in the study of mind alone, 
 find a firm stepping-stone to the existence of 
 a God. Our universe is sometimes termed the 
 mirror of Him who made it. But the optical re- 
 flection, whatever it may be, must be held as 
 indicating the reality which gave it birth ; and, 
 whether we discern there the expression of a 
 reigning benevolence, or a reigning justice, these 
 must not be dealt with as the aerial or the fan- 
 ciful personifications of qualities alone, but as the 
 substantial evidences of a just and benevolent, 
 and, withal, a living God. 
 
 26. But, in the prosecution of our assigned 
 task, we shall, after all, meet with much of that 
 evidence, which lies in the manifold, and, withal, 
 happy conjunction of many individual things, 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 43 
 
 by the meeting together of which, some dis- 
 tinctly beneficial end is accomplished, brought 
 about in that one way and in no other. For it 
 ought further to be recollected, that, simple as 
 the constitution of the human mind is, and pro- 
 portionally unfruitful, therefore, as it may be of 
 that argument for a God, which is founded on 
 the right assortment and disposition of many 
 parts, or even of many principles ; yet, on stu- 
 dying the precise terms of the commission which 
 has been put into our hands, it will be found that 
 the materials even of this peculiar argument lie 
 abundantly within our province. For it is not 
 strictly the mental constitution of man which 
 forms the subject of our prescribed essay, but 
 the adaptation to that constitution of external 
 nature. We have to demonstrate, not so much 
 that the mind is rightly constituted in itself, as 
 that the mind is rightly placed in a befitting 
 theatre for the exercise of its powers. It is to 
 demonstrate that the world and its various objects 
 are suited to the various capacities of this inha- 
 bitant — this moral and intelligent creature, of 
 whom we have to prove that the things which 
 are around him bear a fit relation to the laws 
 or the properties which are within him. There 
 is ample room here for the evidence of collocation. 
 Yet there remains this distinction between the 
 mental and the corporeal economy of man, that 
 whereas the evidence is more rich and manifold 
 
44 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 in the bodily structure itself, than even in its 
 complex and numerous adaptations to the outer 
 world ;* the like evidence, in our peculiar depart- 
 ment, is meagre, as afforded by the subjective 
 mind, when compared with the evidence of its 
 various adjustments and fitnesses to the objective 
 universe around it, whether of man's moral con- 
 stitution to the state of human society, or of his 
 intellectual to the various objects of physical 
 investigation. 
 
 27. The great object of philosophy is to ascer- 
 tain the simple 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 complex derivative of the primitive 
 or elementary laws. Until this Avork of analysis 
 be completed, we shall often mistake what is 
 compound for what is simple, both in the philo- 
 sophy of mind and the philosophy of matter — 
 being frequently exposed to intractable sub- 
 stances 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 
 
 * Yet Paley has a most interesting chapter on the adaptations 
 of external nature to the human frame-work, though the main 
 strength and copiousness of his aigument lie in the anatomy of 
 the frame-Avork itself. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 45 
 
 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 recognized as pregnant with utility, and so, 
 pregnant w^ith 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 use- 
 ful principle, exhibits that proof in a distinct and 
 useful disposition of parts— for, generally speak- 
 ing, 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 secondary law, resolvable into one more general 
 and elementary — even the law of gravitation. 
 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 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 ; 
 
46 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 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 in- 
 telligent 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 tides in the 
 air, is not referable to a peculiar law — it is at 
 least referable to a peculiar 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 multi- 
 tude 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 resolved into their original and constituent 
 principles — may we, in their obvious and imme- 
 diate 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 beneficial principles in the 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 47 
 
 constitution of the mind, are the effect of as 
 many distinct and beneficial arrangements in 
 the objects or circumstances by which it is sur- 
 rounded. We have not to wait the completion 
 of its still more subtle and difficult analysis, 
 ere we come within sight of those varied indica- 
 tions of benevolent design which are so abun- 
 dantly to be met with, both in the constitution 
 of the mind itself, and in the adaptation thereto 
 of external nature. Some there are, for ex- 
 ample, 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 emotions, and, more espe- 
 cially, by means of the associating principle, 
 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 dis- 
 tinct law for suiting the human mind to the 
 objects 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 sug- 
 gest 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 
 
48 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 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 radiated. 
 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 pano- 
 rama 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 enjoy- 
 ment ; and caused the outer world of matter to 
 image forth in such profusion those various qua- 
 lities, which at first had pleased or powerfully 
 affected us in the inner world of consciousness 
 and thought. It is by the modifying operation 
 of circumstances that a primary is transmuted 
 into a secondary law ; and if the blessings 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 subordi- 
 nate to simpler and anterior laws, does in fact 
 leave that argument as entire as before — for if, 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 49 
 
 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 arrange- 
 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 contrivances. 
 He may either be conceived of, as forming a 
 substance and endowing it with the fit properties ; 
 or as finding a substance with certain given pro- 
 perties, and arranging it into fit dispositions for 
 the accomplishment of some desirable end. Both 
 the former and the latter of these we ascribe to 
 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 his* implements 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 desir- 
 able end, or the greatest amount of good, by the 
 fewest possible means, or by the simplest ma- 
 chinery. When this test is applied to the laws of 
 
50 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 nature— then we esteem it, as enhancing the 
 manifestation of intelHgence, that one single law, 
 as gravitation, should, as from a central and com- 
 manding eminence, subordinate to itself a whole 
 host of most important phenomena ; or that from 
 one great and parent property, so vast a family 
 of beneficial consequences should spring. And 
 when the same test is applied to the dispositions, 
 whether of nature or art — then it enhances the 
 manifestation of wisdom, when some great end is 
 brought about with a less complex or cumbersome 
 instrumentality, as often takes place in the sim- 
 plification of machines, when, by the device of 
 some ingenious ligament or wheel, the apparatus 
 is made equally, perhaps more effective, whilst 
 less unwieldly or less intricate than before. Yet 
 there is one way in which, along with an exceed- 
 ing complication in the mechanism, there might 
 be given the impression, of the very highest skill 
 and capacity having been put forth on the con- 
 trivance of it. It is when, by means of a very 
 operose and complex instrumentality, the tri- 
 umph of art has been made all the more con- 
 spicuous, by a very marvellous result having 
 been obtained out of very unpromising materials. 
 It is true, that, in this case too, a 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 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 51 
 
 of its parts or circumvolutions had been super- 
 seded ; and thus, without injury to the final 
 effect, so much of the complication had been 
 dispensed with. Still, however, the substance, 
 whether of the machine, or the manufacture, may 
 be conceived so very intractable as to put an 
 absolute limit on any further simplification, or 
 as to create an absolute necessity for 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 admiration 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 his resources. 
 It is the extreme wideness of the contrast, be- 
 tween the sluggishness of matter and the fineness 
 of the results in physiology, which so enhances 
 our veneration for the great Architect of Nature, 
 when we behold the exquisite organizations of 
 the animal 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 generally is found to scatter a myriad 
 of beneficent consequences in its train. The 
 second is held forth, when, by an infinite com- 
 
 * Dr. Paley would state the problem thus. The laws of matter 
 behig given, so to organize it, as that it shall produce or sustain 
 the phenomena, whether of vegetation or of life. 
 
o2 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 plexity of means, a countless variety of expedi- 
 ents with their multiform combinations, 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 confirming 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 condi- 
 tions 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 over- 
 come the else uncomplying obstinacy of inert 
 matter, and bend it in subserviency to his 
 special designs. But that the Divine artist 
 who first created the matter and ordained its 
 laws, should find the same complication neces- 
 sary for the accomplishment of his purposes; 
 that such an elaborate workmanship, for ex- 
 ample, should be required to estabhsh the func- 
 tions of sight and hearing in the animal economy, 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 53 
 
 is very like the lavish or ostensible 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 being the 
 object of inference, it had pleased God to make 
 himself 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 un- 
 called 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 conceivable 
 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 enhanced the 
 evidence of His being, have also cast a deeper 
 secrecy 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 unobservant of that 
 sound philosophy that keeps within the limits 
 of human observation, will find it abundantly 
 possible to conjure up on the field of natural 
 theism. It does look an impracticable enigma 
 
54 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 that the Omnipotent God, who conld have grafted 
 all the capacities of thought and feeling on an 
 elementary atom, should have deemed fit to 
 incorporate the human soul in the midst of 
 so curious and complicated 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 mecha- 
 nism. What an elaborate chemistry. What a 
 multitude of parts in the anatomy, and of pro- 
 cesses in the physiology of this marvellous 
 system. What a medley, we had almost said, 
 what a package of contents. What an unwea- 
 ried play of secretions and circulations and other 
 changes incessant and innumerable. 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 fields of radiance. 
 
 3 1 . But to recall ourselves from this digression 
 among the possibilities of what might have been, 
 to the realities of the mental system, such as it 
 actually is. Ere we bring the very general ob- 
 servations of this chapter to a close, we wovdd 
 briefly notice an analogy between the realities 
 of the mental and those of the corporeal system. 
 
INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 55 
 
 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 anatomy, has, in some in- 
 stances, suggested or served as a guide to specu- 
 lations, which have been at length verified by a 
 discovery. We believe, in like manner, that 
 reasoning on the likely or obvious uses of a prin- 
 ciple 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 committed 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 thereby 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 arrangements which have 
 
56 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. 
 
 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 supe- 
 riority 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 consciousness were put out in the 
 world of mind, the world of matter, though as 
 rich in beauty, and in the means of benevolence 
 as before, were thereby reduced to a virtual 
 nonentity. In these circumstances, the lighting 
 up again of even but one mind would restore its 
 being, or at least its significancy, to that system 
 of materiahsm, which, untouched itself, 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 tan- 
 tamount to the second creation of it,^ — or, in other 
 words, one living intelligent spirit is of higher 
 reckoning and mightier import than a dead 
 universe. 
 
PART I. 
 
 ON THE ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 
 
 Chapter I. 
 
 FIRST GENERAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 On the Supremacy of Conscience. 
 
 1. An abstract question in morals is distinct 
 from a question 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 rea- 
 soning 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 spe- 
 cies were destroyed — just as much as the pro- 
 perties of a triangle are the enduring stabilities 
 of mathematical science ; and that, though no 
 matter had been created to exemplify the posi- 
 tions or the figures of geometry. The objective 
 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 
 
58 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 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 belonging to the facts of a creation 
 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 resi- 
 dence in the nature of the Godhead. The mind 
 of man is a creation; and therefore indicates, 
 by its characteristics, the character of Him, 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 principles 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 itself, one of the great 
 facts of creation, may be regarded like 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 
 conclusive determination of them. For example, 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 59 
 
 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 theolo- 
 gical inference ; and yet there may be associated 
 with it an obscure philosophical speculation. 
 It is well that we separate 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 perplexity of other rea- 
 sonings, 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. 
 
60 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 3. By attending throughout to this observa- 
 tion, we shall be saved from a thousand irrele- 
 vancies as well as obscurities of argument ; and 
 it is an observation peculiarly applicable, in an- 
 nouncing that great fact or phenomenon of mind, 
 which, for many reasons, should hold a foremost 
 place in our demonstration — 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 prin- 
 ciples. Sir James Macintosh tells us of the ge- 
 neration of human conscience ; and, not merely 
 states, but endeavours to explain the phenome- 
 non of its felt supremacy within us. Dr. Adam 
 Smith also assigns a pedigree to our moral 
 judgments ; but, with all his peculiar notions 
 respecting the origin of the awards of conscience, 
 he never once disputes their authority ; or, that, 
 by the general consent of mankind, this authority 
 is, in sentiment and opinion at least, conceded 
 to them.* It is somewhat like an antiquarian 
 
 * " Upon whatever," observes Dr. Adam Smith, '' we suppose 
 our moral faculties to be founded, whether upon a certain modifi- 
 cation of reason, upon an original instinct called a moral sense, or 
 upon some other principle of our nature, it cannot be doubted that 
 they were given us for the direction of our conduct in this life. 
 They carry along with them the most evident badges of this 
 authority, which denote that they were set up within us to be the 
 supreme arbiters of all our actions, to superintend all our senses, 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 61 
 
 controversy respecting the first formation and 
 subsequent historical changes of some certain 
 court of government, the rightful authority of 
 whose decisions and acts is, at the same time, 
 fully recognised. And so, philosophers have dis- 
 puted regarding the court of conscience — of what 
 materials it is constructed, and by what line of 
 genealogy from the anterior principles of our 
 nature it has sprung. Yet most of these have 
 admitted the proper right of sovereignty which 
 belongs to it ; its legitimate place as the master 
 and the arbiter over all the appetites and desires 
 and practical forces of human nature. Or, if 
 any have dared the singularity of denying this, 
 they do so in opposition to the general sense and 
 general language of mankind, whose very modes 
 of speech compel them to affirm that the biddings 
 of conscience are of paramount authority — its 
 peculiar office being to tell what all men should, 
 or all men ought to do. 
 
 4. The proposition, however, which we are now 
 urging, is not that the obligations of virtue are 
 binding, but that man has a conscience which 
 tells him that they are so — not that justice and 
 truth and humanity are the dogmata of the 
 
 passions and appetites, and to judge how far each of them was 
 either to be indulged or restrained. It is the pecuHar office of 
 these faculties to judge, to bestow censure or applause upon all 
 the other principles of our nature." 
 
 Theory of Moral Sentiments^ Part iii. chap. v. 
 
62 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 abstract moral system, but that they are the 
 dictates of man's moral nature — not that m them- 
 selves they are the constituent parts of moral 
 rectitude, but that there is a voice within every 
 heart which thus pronounces on them. It is not 
 with the constitution of morality, viewed objec- 
 tively, 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 certain 
 phenomena and laws — and, more particularly, 
 with a great psychological fact in human nature, 
 namely, the homage rendered by it to the supre- 
 macy 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 whatever 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 con- 
 trivance, 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 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 63 
 
 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 legi- 
 timate 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 superior ; 
 and conscience, after being dethroned from her 
 place of mastery and control, is still felt to be 
 the superior, or rather supreme faculty of our 
 nature notwithstanding. She may have fallen 
 from her dominion, yet still wear the badges 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 prerogatives by the lawless 
 
64 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 appetites of our nature, — but not without 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 remonstrates against it. The insur- 
 gent and inferior principles of our constitution 
 may, in the uproar of their Avild 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 enact- 
 ments. 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 prin- 
 ciples and feelings, this rightful authority is 
 reputed to be hers ; and, by the general con- 
 currence of mankind awarded to her. 
 
 6. And here it is of capital importance to dis- 
 tinguish between an original and proper ten- 
 dency, 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 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 65 
 
 destination, even though, by accident or decay, 
 it had lost the power of command which at the 
 first belonged to it. We should not misunder- 
 stand the purpose of its maker, although, in 
 virtue of some deterioration or derangement 
 which the machinery had undergone, that pur- 
 pose 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 pre- 
 vent us from seeing, that, at its original fabrica- 
 tion, it was made for the purpose of moving 
 regularly. The mere existence and position of 
 the regulator might suffice to indicate 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 obliter- 
 ated the vestiges of the right; so that, by the 
 inspection of the machinery alone, we both learn 
 the injury which has been done to 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 regu- 
 lator, over all its movements. And a similar 
 discovery may be made, by examination of the 
 various parts and principles which make up the 
 c. r 
 
66 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 moral system of man : for we see various parts 
 and principles there. We see Ambition, having 
 power for its object, and without the attainment 
 of which it is not satisfied ; and Avarice, having 
 wealth for its object, without the attainment 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 satisfied ; 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 taking to itself the 
 direction over all the other powers and passions 
 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 derangement, 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 07 
 
 from this station of rightful ascendency, we can 
 still distinguish between what is the primitive 
 design or tendency, and what is the posterior 
 aberration. We can perceive, in the case of 
 a deranged or distempered watch, that the me- 
 chanism 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 manner, 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 between conscience, and the other 
 principles of our nature, does not respect the 
 actual force or prevalence which may, or may 
 not, severally belong to them. It respects the 
 universal judgment which, by the very constitu- 
 tion of our nature, is passed on the question of 
 rightness — on the question, which of all these 
 should have the prevalence, whenever there hap- 
 pens to be a contest between them. All which 
 we affirm is, that if conscience prevail over the 
 other principles, then every man is led, by the 
 very make and mechanism of his internal eco- 
 nomy, to feel that this is as it ought to be ; or, 
 if these others prevail over conscience, that this 
 
OS ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 is not as it ought to be. One, it is generally 
 felt, may be too ambitious, 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 hurtful ; 
 but no one is ever felt, if he have sound and 
 enlightened views of morality, to be too conscien- 
 tious. When we affirm this of conscience, we 
 but 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 cer- 
 tainties 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 
 argument can be, an appeal to the experience of 
 all men. 
 
 8. Bishop Butler has often been spoken of as 
 the first discoverer of this great principle in our 
 nature ; though, perhaps, 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 volume which may safely be 
 pronounced, the most precious repository of 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 69 
 
 sound ethical principles extant in any language. 
 The authority of conscience, says Dugald Stewart, 
 '' although beautifully described by many of the 
 ancient moralists, was not sufficiently attended 
 to by modern writers, as a fundamental principle 
 in the science of ethics, till the 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, 
 the reigning power may, in seasons of anarchy, 
 be dissevered from that supreme court or magis- 
 trate to whom it rightfully belongs. The me- 
 chanism of a political fabric is not adequately 
 or fully described by the mere enumeration of 
 its parts. There must also enter into the de- 
 scription, the relation which the parts bear to 
 each other ; and more especially, 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 mechanism 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 appetites, 
 and the affections, and the moral sense, and the 
 intellectual capacities, which make up this com- 
 plex and variously gifted creature. The par- 
 
70 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 ticulars of his mental system must not only be 
 stated, each in their individuality ; but the bear- 
 ing or connection 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 individual 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 
 conscience lays claim to is the mastery or regu- 
 lation 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 happi- 
 ness and company of the beloved individual. 
 But the object of the moral sense is to arbitrate 
 and direct among all these propensities. It claims 
 the station and the prerogative of a mistress over 
 them. Its peculiar office is that of superin- 
 tendence, and there, is a certain feeling of vio- 
 lence 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 con- 
 science 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 unconnected 
 place among the other feehngs and faculties 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 71 
 
 which belong to us. Its 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 expatiating 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 constitution, 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 superiority over all 
 others : insomuch that you cannot form a notion 
 of this faculty conscience, without taking in 
 judgment direction and superin tendency. This 
 is a constituent part of the idea, that is of the 
 faculty itself: and to preside and govern, from 
 the very oeconomy 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 proper governor ; 
 to direct and regulate all under principles, pas- 
 sions, and motives of action. This is its right 
 and office. Thus sacred is its authority. And 
 how often soever men violate and rebellioiisly 
 
72 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 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 rioht 
 and office of conscience. 
 
 9. Now it is in these phenomena of Conscience 
 that Nature offers to us, far her strongest argu- 
 ment, for the moral character of God. Had He 
 been an unrighteous Being himself, would He 
 have given to this the obviously superior faculty 
 in man, so distinct and authoritative a voice on 
 the side of righteousness ? Would He have so 
 constructed the creatures of our species, as to 
 have planted in every breast a reclaiming 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 indi- 
 vidual ? 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 master and judge that 
 faculty which, 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 words, from the actual constitution of 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 73 
 
 man, from the testimonies on the side of all 
 righteousness, given by the vicegerent within 
 the heart, do we infer the righteousness of the 
 Sovereign who placed it there. He would never 
 have established a conscience in man, and in- 
 vested it with the authority of a monitor, and 
 given to it those legislative and judicial functions 
 which it obviously possesses; and then so framed 
 it, that all its decisions should be on the side of 
 that virtue which he himself disowned, and con- 
 demnatory of that vice which he himself exem- 
 plified. This is an evidence for the righteousness 
 of God, which keeps its ground, amid all the 
 disorders and aberrations to which humanity is 
 liable ; and can no more, indeed, be deafened or 
 overborne by these, than is the rightful authority 
 of public opinion, by the occasional outbreakings 
 of iniquity and violence which take place in 
 society. This public opinion may, in those 
 seasons of misrule when might prevails over 
 right, be deforced from the practical ascendency 
 which it ought to have ; but the very sentiment 
 that it so ought, is our reason for believing the 
 world to have been originally formed, in order 
 that virtue might have the rule over it. In like 
 manner, when, in the bosom of every individual 
 man, we can discern a conscience, placed there 
 with the obvious design of being a guide and a 
 commander, it were difficult not to believe, that, 
 whatever the partial outrages may be which the 
 
74 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 cause of virtue has to sustain, it has the public 
 mind of the universe in its favour ; and that 
 therefore He, who is the Maker and the Ruler 
 of such a universe, is a God of righteousness. 
 Amid all the subsequent obscurations and errors, 
 the original design, both of a deranged watch 
 and of a deranged human nature, is alike mani- 
 fest ; first, of the maker of the watch, that its 
 motions should harmonize with time ; second, of 
 the maker of man, that his movements should 
 harmonize with truth and righteousness. We 
 can, in most cases, discern between an aberration 
 and an original law ; between a direct or primi- 
 tive tendency and the effect of a disturbing force, 
 by which that tendency is thwarted and over- 
 borne. And so of the constitution of man. It 
 may be now a loosened and disproportioned 
 thing, yet we can trace the original structure — 
 even as from the fragments of a ruin, we can 
 obtain the perfect model of a building from its 
 capital to its base. It is thus that, however 
 prostrate conscience may have fallen, we can 
 still discern its place of native and original pre- 
 eminence, as being at once the legislator and 
 the judge in the moral system, though the exe- 
 cutive forces of the system have made insur- 
 rection against it, and thrown the whole into 
 anarchy. There is a depth of mystery in every 
 thing connected with the existence or the origin 
 of evil in creation ; yet, even in the fiercest 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 75 
 
 uproar of our stormy passions, Conscience, 
 though in her softest whispers, gives to the 
 supremacy of rectitude the voice of an undying 
 testimony ; and her light still shining in a dark 
 place, her unquielled accents still heard in the 
 loudest 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 at one. It is true that re- 
 bellious man hath, with daring footstep, trampled 
 on the lessons of Conscience ; but why, in spite 
 of man's perversity, is conscience, 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 
 principle which would make him feel the greatest 
 complacency in his own rectitude, when he feels 
 the most high-minded revolt of indignation and 
 dislike against the Being who gave him birth ? 
 It is not so much that Conscience takes a part 
 amon^ the other faculties of our nature; but 
 
76 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 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, acknow- 
 ledges her rights. It is a mighty argument for 
 the virtue of the governor above, that all the laws 
 and injunctions 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 oiF 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 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 subject it may be, to state or to reason 
 the argument for a God, which is founded on 
 the supremacy of conscience— still, historically 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 77 
 
 and experimentally, it will be found, that it is of 
 more force than all other arguments put together, 
 for originating and upholding the natural theism 
 which there is in the world. The theology of 
 conscience is not only of wider diffusion, but of 
 far more practical influence than 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 be- 
 tween the premises and the conclusion — or, that 
 the felt presence of a judge within the breast, 
 powerfully 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, passing 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 in- 
 ference which makes it appear like intuition ; 
 and which has given birth to the mystic theology 
 of innate ideas. Yet the theology of conscience 
 disclaims such mysticism, built, as it is, on a 
 foundation of sure and sound reasoning ; for the 
 strength of an argumentation 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 ; yet it is not an impression, it is an in- 
 
78 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE, 
 
 ference notwithstanding — and as much so as any 
 inference from that which is seen, to that which 
 is unseen. There is, in the first instance, cog- 
 nizance taken of a fact — if not by the outward 
 eye, yet as good, by the eye of consciousness 
 which has been termed the facuky of internal 
 observation. And the consequent beUef of a 
 God, instead of being an instinctive sense of the 
 Divinity, is the fi^iit of an inference grounded 
 on that fact. There is instant transition made, 
 from the sense of a Monitor 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 regarded, notwithstanding the force and 
 fertility of other considerations, 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 paganism. This theology of con- 
 science has often been greatly obscured, but 
 never, in any country or at any period in the 
 history of the world, has it been wholly oblite- 
 rated. We behold the vestiges of it in the 
 simple theology of the desert ; and, perhaps, 
 more distinctly there, than in the complex super- 
 stitions of an artificial and civilized heathenism. 
 In confirmation of this, we might quote the in- 
 vocations to the Great Spirit from the wilds of 
 North America. But, indeed, in every quarter 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 79 
 
 of the globe, where missionaries have held con- 
 verse with savages, even with the rudest of 
 nature's children — when speaking on the topics 
 of sin and judgment, they did 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 
 ferocious and untamed wanderers — so neither 
 was it altogether stifled by the refined and in- 
 tricate polytheism of more enlightened 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 species as 
 is the material structure of humanity ; and in 
 the lineaments of which we may read that there 
 is a moral regimen 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 worthlessness. It is true, there is a 
 
80 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 wretchedness which naturally and essentially 
 belongs to a state of great moral unhingement ; 
 and this may account for their discomforts, but it 
 will not account for their fears. They may, 
 because of this, have felt the torments of a pre- 
 sent 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. Righteous- 
 ness, it was felt, would not have been so enthroned 
 in the moral system of man, had it not been pre- 
 viously enthroned in the system of the universe ; 
 nor would it have held such 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 found, because interwoven 
 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 ido- 
 latrous paganism. Neither crime nor civiliza- 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 81 
 
 tion can extinguish it ; and, whether in the 
 "conscientia sceleriim" of the fierce and frenzied 
 Cataline, or in the tranquil contemplative mus- 
 ings of Socrates and Cicero, we find the im- 
 pression 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 tone and authority of a 
 Superior ; but, as if on purpose to enforce their 
 observance, thus follows them up with an obvious 
 discipline of rewards and punishments. It is 
 enough but to mention, on the one hand, that felt 
 complacency which is distilled, like some pre- 
 cious 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 tor- 
 mentor, the heart of every conscious sinner is 
 asronized. We discern in these the natural 
 sanctions of morality, and the moral character 
 of Him who hath ordained them. We cannot 
 otherwise explain the peace and triumphant 
 satisfaction which spring from the consciousness 
 of well doing — nor can we otherwise explain the 
 degradation as well as bitter distress, which a 
 sense of demerit brings along with it. Our only 
 adequate interpretation of these phenomena is, 
 that they are the present remunerations or the 
 
 c. G 
 
82 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 present chastisements of a God who loveth righ- 
 teousness, 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 reward or of a heavier 
 vengeance, that are coming. It is thus that the 
 delight of self-approbation, instead of standing 
 alone, brings hope in its train ; and remorse, 
 instead of standing alone, brings terror in its 
 train. The expectations of the future are blended 
 with these joys and sufferings of the present; 
 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 who 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 de- 
 pends 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 
 character of such a law, should we infer the 
 character of the lawgiver ; and so feel the con- 
 clusion to be inevitable, that we are under the 
 government of a malignant and unrighteous God, 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 83 
 
 at once the patron of vice and the persecutor of 
 virtue in the world. If on the other hand, tem- 
 perance, and chastity, and kindness, and in- 
 tegrity, and truth, be the mandates which gene- 
 rally, 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 obviously possesses 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 dispositions 
 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 followed up by her approval, 
 in which very approval there is felt an inward 
 satisfaction and serenity of spirit, that of itself 
 forms a most delicious reward ; and if, on the 
 other hand, the 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 — then, are we as naturally disposed to 
 infer of Him who ordained such a mental consti- 
 tution that He is the righteous Governor of men, 
 as, if seated on a visible throne in the midst of 
 
84 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 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 com- 
 prising all those virtues which the hand of the 
 Deity hath inscribed on the tablet of the human 
 heart, or on the tablet of natural jurisprudence ; 
 and an argument for these being the very virtues 
 which characterise 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 ob- 
 scure this inference in the actual circumstances 
 of the world. More especially — it has been 
 alleged, on the side of scepticism, that there 
 is an exceeding diversity of moral judgments 
 among men ; that, out of the multifarious deci- 
 sions of the human conscience, no consistent 
 code of virtue can be framed ; and that, there- 
 fore, 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 
 
 * 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 
 Mackintosh, " that the question relates to the coincidence of all 
 men in considering the same qualities as virtues, and not to the 
 preference of one class of virtues by some, and of a different class 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 85 
 
 partly reducible into the blinding, or, at least, the 
 distorting eft'ect of passion and interest, which 
 sometimes are powerful enough to obscure our 
 perception, even of mathematical and historical 
 truths, as well as of moral distinctions ; and with- 
 out therefore affecting the stability of either. 
 It is thus, for example, that mercantile cupidity 
 has blinded many a reckless adventurer to the 
 enormous injustice of the slave-trade ; that pas- 
 sion and interest together have transmuted 
 revenge into a virtue ; and that the robbery, 
 which, if prosecuted only for the sake of indi- 
 vidual gain, would have appeared to all under an 
 aspect of most revolting selfishness, puts on the 
 guise of patriotism, when a whole nation deliber- 
 ates 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 im- 
 portance to distinguish between the real character 
 of any criminal action, when looked to calmly, 
 comprehensively, and fully ; and what that is in 
 the action which the perpetrator singles out and 
 fastens upon as his plea, when he is either de- 
 fending it to others, or reconciling it to his own 
 conscience. In as far as he knows the deed to 
 
 by others, the exceptions from the agreement of mankind, in their 
 systems of practical morality, will be reduced to absolute insignifi- 
 cance ; and we shall learn to view them as no more affecting the 
 hai-mony of the moral faculties, than the resemblance of the limbs 
 and features is affected by monstrous conformations, or by the un- 
 fortunate effects of accident and disease in a very few individuals." 
 
86 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 be incapable of vindication, and yet rushes on 
 the performance of it, there is but deUnquency 
 of conduct incurred, not a diversity of moral 
 judgment ; nor does Conscience, in this case, at 
 all betray any caprice or uncertainty in her 
 decisions. 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 per- 
 formance, but to his plea. Two men may differ 
 as to the moral character of an action ; but if 
 each is resting the support of his own view on a 
 different principle from the other, there may still 
 be a perfect uniformity of moral sentiment be- 
 tween 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 is at 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 sufferers who 
 were its victims. The defender of this ruthless 
 and rapacious system disowns not, in sentiment 
 at least, however much he may disown in prac- 
 tice, 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 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 87 
 
 his moral acknowledgments to them all. In the 
 sophistry of his vindication, 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, 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 itself into perversity of conduct, and not 
 into perversity of sentiment. The very dread 
 and dislike he has for the informations of the 
 subject, are symptoms 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 judgments 
 in our estimate of actions ; while there may be 
 the most perfect uniformity and stability of 
 judgment in our estimate 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 differ- 
 ently of the same action, it is for the most part, 
 or rather, it is almost always, because under- 
 standin2:s view it differently. It is either because 
 
88 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 the controversialists are regarding it with unequal 
 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 enlightened 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 ignorantly or wilfully, 
 that each is looking to 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 the same action, is just as little to be wondered 
 at as a similar diversity on the material qualities 
 of the same object — should any of the spectators 
 labour under an involuntary defect of vision, or 
 voluntarily persist either in shutting or in avert- 
 ing his eyes. It is thus that a quarrel has well 
 been termed a misunderstanding, in which each 
 of the combatants may consider, and often ho- 
 nestly consider, himself to be in the right ; and 
 that, on reading the hostile memorials of two 
 parties in a litigation, we can perceive no diffe- 
 rence in their moral principles, but only in their 
 historical statements; and that, in the public 
 manifestoes of nations when entering upon war, 
 we can discover no trace of a contrariety of con- 
 flict in their ethical systems, but only in their 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 89 
 
 i 
 
 differently put or differently coloured represen- 
 tations of fact — all proving, that, with the utmost 
 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 in- 
 formed, that she may speak the same language, 
 and give forth the same lessons in all the coun- 
 tries of the earth. 
 
 16. It is this which explains the moral pecu- 
 liarities of different nations. It is not that justice, 
 humanity, and gratitude are not the canonized 
 virtues of every region ; or that falsehood, cruelty, 
 and fraud would not, in their abstract and unas- 
 sociated nakedness, be viewed as the objects of 
 moral 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 susceptible, vari- 
 ous, nay, opposite moral characteristics may 
 be blended ; and that while one people look to 
 the good only without the 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 difference in what may be termed the 
 moral categories of the two people, nor be- 
 
90 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 cause, if moral principles in their unmixed gene- 
 rality 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 because theft in itself was 
 reckoned a good thing ; but because patriotism, 
 and dexterity, and those services by which the 
 interests of patriotism might be supported, were 
 reckoned to be good things. When the natives 
 of Hindostan assemble with delight around the 
 agonies of a human sacrifice, it is not because 
 they hold it good to rejoice in a spectacle 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 is not because it is deemed to 
 be right that there should be the infliction of 
 misery for its own sake ; but because it is deemed 
 to be right that the wretchedness of old age 
 should be curtailed, or that the world should be 
 saved from the miseries of an over- crowded 
 species. In a word, in the very worst of these 
 anomalies, some form of good may be detected, 
 which has led to their establishment ; and still, 
 some universal and undoubted principle of mo- 
 rality, however perverted 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 senti- 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 91 
 
 ments, under the influences 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 
 uncramped, either by the partialities of interest 
 or by the inveteracy of national customs which 
 habit and antiquity have rendered sacred — Con- 
 science 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 ignorance and passion and artificial 
 education be only cleared away ; and the moral 
 attributes of goodness and righteousness and 
 truth be seen undistorted, and in their own 
 proper guise ; and there is not a heart or a con- 
 science throughout earth's teeming population, 
 which could refuse to do them homage. And it 
 is precisely because the Father of the human 
 family has given such hearts and consciences to 
 all his children, that we infer these to be the 
 very sanctities of the Godhead, the very attri- 
 butes of his own primeval nature. 
 
 17. There is a countless diversity of tastes in 
 the world, because of the infinitely various cir- 
 cumstances and associations of men. Yet is 
 
92 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 there a stable and correct standard of taste not- 
 withstanding, to which all minds, that have the 
 benefit of culture and enlargement, are gradu- 
 ally assimilating and approximating. It holds 
 far more emphatically true, that, in spite of the 
 diversity of moral judgments, which are vastly 
 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 onward step in the progress of light and 
 civilization. In proportion as the understand- 
 ings of men become more enlightened, do their 
 consciences become more accordant with each 
 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 vir- 
 tues, — where it does not require the utmost 
 strength, whether of superstition or of patriotism 
 in its most selfish and contracted form, to uphold 
 the delusion. Apart from these local and, we 
 venture to hope, these temporary exceptions, the 
 same moralities are recognised and honoured ; 
 and, however prevalent in practice, in sentiment 
 at least, the same vices are disowned and execra- 
 ted all the world over. In proportion as super- 
 stition is dissipated, and prejudice is gradually 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 93 
 
 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 
 decisions. 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. 
 
 18. On the whole, then, conscience, whether it 
 be an original 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 ren- 
 dering to his character a consistent testimony. 
 It is not necessary, for the establishment of our 
 particular lesson, that we should turn that which 
 is clear into that which is controversial by our 
 entering into the scientific question respecting 
 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 be made, in the 
 constitution and circumstances of all men for 
 uniformity, producing it by processes similar to 
 
94 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 those which produce other acquired sentiments, 
 may not our reverence be augmented by admi- 
 ration of that supreme wisdom, which, in such 
 mental contrivances, yet more highly than in the 
 lower world of matter, accomplish mighty pur- 
 poses by instruments so simple?" It is not 
 therefore the physical origin, but the fact, of the 
 uniformity of conscience, wherewith is concerned 
 the theological inference that we attempt to draw 
 from it. This ascendant faculty of our nature, 
 which has been so often termed the divinity within 
 us, notwithstanding 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 Avhere, 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 observation in the various countries of the 
 earth, but without admitting any correspondent 
 diversity of moral sentiment between 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 universal 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 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 95 
 
 counteracts the universal principle, and over- 
 bears it. When in the republic of Sparta, theft, 
 instead of being execrated as a crime, was dig- 
 nified into an art and an accomplishment, and 
 on that footing admitted into the system of their 
 youthful education — it was not because of its 
 infringement on the rights of property, but not- 
 withstanding of that infringement, and only be- 
 cause a local patriotism made head against the 
 universal principle, and prevailed over it. Apart 
 from such disturbing forces as these, it will be 
 found that the sentiments of men gravitate to- 
 wards 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 righteousness 
 for all countries and all ages. The following is 
 the noble testimony of a heathen, who tells us 
 with equal eloquence and truth, that, even amid 
 all the perversities of a vitiated and endlessly 
 diversified creed, conscience sat mistress over 
 the whole earth, and asserted the supremacy of 
 her own unalterable obligations. " Est quidem 
 vera lex, recta ratio, naturae congruens, diffusa 
 in omnes, constans, sempiterna, quae vocet ad 
 officium jubendo, vetando a fraude deterreat ; 
 quae tamen neque probos frustra jubet aut vetat, 
 nee im probos jubendo aut vetando movet. Huic 
 
96 ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 legi nee obrogari fas est, neque derogari ex hac 
 aliquid licet, neque tota abrogari potest. Nee 
 vero, aut per senatum aut per populum solvi hac 
 lege possumus. Neque est quserendus expla- 
 nator aut interpres ejus alius. Nee erit alia 
 lex Romse, alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac ; 
 sed et omnes gentes, et omni tempore, una lex 
 et sempiterna et immortalis continebit ; unusque 
 erit communis quasi magister, et imperator 
 omnium Deus ille, legis hujus inventor, discep- 
 tator, lator; cui qui non parebit, ipse se fugiet, 
 ac naturam hominis aspernabitur, atque hoc ipso 
 luet maximas poenas, etiam si csetera supplicia 
 quae putantur efFugerit." 
 
 20. Such then is our first argument for the 
 moral character of God — even the moral cha- 
 racter of the law of conscience ; 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 
 enforcement of its dictates ; and so framed, that, 
 apart from local perversities of the understanding 
 or the habits, all its decisions are on the side of 
 righteousness. The inference is neither a distant 
 nor an obscure one, from the character of such a 
 law to the character of its law-giver. Neither is 
 it an inference, 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 
 
ON THE SUPREMACY OF CONSCIENCE. 97 
 
 to come forth with another and additional demon- 
 stration of its sovereignty — just as the punish- 
 ment of crime in society bears evidence to the 
 justice of the government which is established 
 there. In general, the inward complacency felt 
 by the virtuous, does not so impressively bespeak 
 the real 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 dispenser of its rewards to the obedient, 
 it comes forth like an offended 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 assem- 
 bled world, and the retributions 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 this very argument within 
 the limits of actual observation. Only, instead 
 of being manifested by the light of a preterna- 
 c. H 
 
98 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 tural 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 judg- 
 ment, 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 recol- 
 lect 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 cha- 
 racter of God. When we discover, that, into this 
 alleged happiness of the good there enter more 
 enjoyments than one, we thereby obtain two or 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 99 
 
 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 inde- 
 pendent elements, which meet together for the 
 production of some complex and beneficial 
 result.* 
 
 2. We have already spoken of one such ingre- 
 dient. 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-appro- 
 bation, 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 
 rectitude at all, without viewing it in reference 
 either to the law of conscience or to the law of 
 God, with no regard to jurisprudence in the 
 matter — there is, in the virtuous affection itself, 
 another and a distinct enjoyment. We ought to 
 cherish and to exercise benevolence ; and there 
 is a pleasure in the consciousness of doing what 
 we ought : but beside this moral sentiment, and 
 beside the peculiar pleasure appended to bene- 
 volence as moral, there is a sensation in the 
 merely physical affection of benevolence ; and 
 
 * See Chap. I. 6. 
 
100 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 that sensation, of itself, is in the highest degree 
 pleasurable. The primary or instant gratifica- 
 tion which there is in the direct and immediate 
 feeling of benevolence is one thing : the secon- 
 dary or reflex gratification which there is in the 
 consciousness of benevolence 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 conclusion, that God is the lover, and, 
 because so, the patron or the rewarder of virtue. 
 He hath so constituted our nature, 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. Kind- 
 ness, and honesty, and truth, are, of themselves, 
 and irrespective 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 worm- 
 wood. The Deity hath annexed a high mental 
 enjoyment, 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 implicated 
 or blended together they may be at the same 
 moment into one compound state of feeling ; 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 101 
 
 they are not the less distinct on that account, of 
 themselves. They form two pleasurable sensa- 
 tions, instead of one ; and their apposition, in 
 the case of every virtuous deed or virtuous de- 
 sire, exhibits 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 re- 
 peated only, but a vastly multiplied evidence for 
 design, throughout all its combinations. There 
 is a pleasure in the very sensation of virtue ; and 
 there is a pleasure attendant on the sense of its 
 rectitude. These two phenomena are independ- 
 ent of each other. Let there be a certain num- 
 ber of chances against the first in a random 
 economy of things, and also a certain number of 
 chances against the second. In the actual eco- 
 nomy 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 govern- 
 ment in the world, and a moral Governor over 
 them. 
 
 .3. In the calm satisfactions of virtue, this dis- 
 tinction may not be so palpable, as in the pun- 
 gent and more vividly felt disquietudes which 
 are attendant on the wrong affections of our 
 nature. The perpetual corrosion of that heart, 
 for example, which frets in unhappy peevish- 
 ness all the day long, is plainly distinct from the 
 
102 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 bitterness of that remorse which is felt, in the 
 recollection of its harsh and injurious outbreak- 
 ings on the innocent sufferers Avithin 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 — so to have framed our mental con- 
 stitution, 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 mechanism of our nature, that it is 
 thwarted and put out of sorts, by rage and envy, 
 and hatred ; and this, irrespective of the adverse 
 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 distillation of bitter- 
 ness. Just as the placid smile of benevolence 
 bespeaks the felt comfort of benevolence ; so, 
 in the frown and tempest of an angry counte- 
 nance, do we read the unhappiness of that man 
 who is vexed and agitated by his own malignant 
 affections — eating inwardly as they do on the 
 vitals of his enjoyment. It is, therefore, that he 
 is often styled, 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 
 ronscience which approves it. And the pain 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 103 
 
 of moral evil in itself, is a separate thing from 
 the pain inflicted by conscience in the act of 
 condemnuig it. They offer to our notice two 
 distinct ingredients, both of the present reward 
 attendant upon virtue, and of the present penalty 
 attendant upon vice ; and so, enhance the evi- 
 dence that is before our eyes, for the moral 
 character of that administration, under which 
 the world has been placed by its author. The 
 appetite of hunger is rightly alleged, in evi- 
 dence of the care, wherewith the Deity hath 
 provided for the well-being of our natural con- 
 stitution ; 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 evi- 
 dence of the care, wherewith the Deity hath 
 provided for the well-being of our moral con- 
 stitution ; 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 administl:ation, and so of a 
 righteous God. 
 
 4. Our present argument is grounded, neither 
 on the rectitude 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. 
 
104 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 But the sweetness of it — the diilce 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 ingre- 
 dient 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 
 wholesome 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 kind- 
 ness, as well as in its subsequent performances. 
 There is a certain rejoicing sense of clearness in 
 the consistency, the exactitude of justice and 
 truth. There is a triumphant elevation of spirit 
 in magnanimity and honour. In perfect har- 
 mony with this, there is a placid feeling of 
 serenity and blissful contentment in gentleness 
 and humility. There is a noble satisfciction in 
 
 I 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 105 
 
 those victories, which, at the bidding of principle, 
 or by the power of self-command, may have been 
 achieved over the propensities of animal nature. 
 There is an elate independence of soul, in the 
 consciousness of having nothing to hide, and 
 nothing to be ashamed of. In a word, by the 
 constitution of our nature, each virtue has its 
 appropriate charm ; and virtue, on the whole, is 
 a fund of varied, as well as of perpetual enjoy- 
 ment, 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 — proving 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 de- 
 monstrates the care and benevolence of God, so 
 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 therefore of a moral charac- 
 ter in God, so to have framed our mental 
 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 satisfac- 
 tions of virtue, is the essential and inherent bit- 
 terness of all that is morally evil. We repeat, 
 
10(j PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 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 suffer 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 w hich we at this moment insist ; 
 but the painfulness of the emotion itself; and the 
 same remark 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 grati- 
 fication ; but, in the case of these evil affections, 
 it is not unmixed enjoyment. The most ordi- 
 nary observer of his own feelings, however in- 
 capable 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 tumul- 
 tuating in the heart, and visibly pictured on the 
 countenance. The ferocious tyrant who has only 
 to issue forth his mandate, and strike dead at 
 pleasure the victim of his wrath, with any circum- 
 stance too of barbaric caprice and cruelty, which 
 his fancy in the very waywardness of passion 
 unrestrained and power unbounded might sug- 
 gest to him — he may be said to have experienced 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 107 
 
 through life a thousand gratifications, in the 
 solaced rage and revenge, which, though ever 
 breaking forth on some nevr subject, he can 
 appease again every day of his life by some new 
 execution. But we mistake it if we think other- 
 wise than that, in spite of these distinct and very 
 numerous nay daily gratifications if he so choose, 
 it is not a life of fierce internal agony notwith- 
 standing. It seems indispensable to the nature of 
 every desire, and to form part indeed of its very 
 idea, that there should be a distinctly felt plea- 
 sure, or at least, a removal at the time of a 
 distinctly felt pain, in the act of its fulfilment — 
 yet, whatever recreation or relief may have thus 
 been rendered, without doing away the misery 
 often in the whole amount of it the intense 
 misery, inflicted upon man by the evil propen- 
 sities of his nature. Who can doubt for example 
 the unhappiness 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 attainment 
 of his specific object ; and we cannot possibly 
 disjoin from the conception of success, the con- 
 ception of some sort of pleasure— yet in perfect 
 consistency, we afiirm, with a sad and heavy 
 
108 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 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 exquisite 
 sensations, and yet be a wretched passion still ; 
 the domineering 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 phy- 
 sically, and notwithstanding the pleasure or the 
 relief inseparable at the moment from every in- 
 dulgence of the passions, there are other sensa- 
 tions of bitterness, which of themselves, and 
 apart from remorse, would cause the suffering to 
 preponderate. 
 
 6. There is an important discrimination made 
 by Bishop Butler in his sermons ; and, by the 
 help of which, this phenomenon, of apparent con- 
 tradiction or mystery in our nature, may be 
 satisfactorily explained. He distinguishes be- 
 tween the final object of any of our desires, and 
 the pleasure attendant on or rather inseparable 
 from its gratification. The object is not the 
 pleasure, though the pleasure be an unfailing 
 and essential accompaniment on the attainment 
 of the object. This is well illustrated by the 
 appetite 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. 
 
 ! 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 109 
 
 The food is the object ; the pleasure is the accom- 
 paniment. 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 viltimate object, the object in which 
 the appetite rests and terminates, is the food 
 itself. The same is true of all our special affec- 
 tions. 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 Butler 
 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 special inclination 
 has its special and counterpart object. The 
 object of the inclination is one thing ; the plea- 
 sure of gratifying 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 discovery and clear 
 statement of it by Butler may well be regarded 
 as the highest service rendered by any philo- 
 
1 10 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 sopher 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 prin- 
 ciple 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 
 professes that man's sole object, in the practice 
 of all the various moralities, is his own individual 
 advantage. Now, in most cases of a special, and 
 more particularly of a virtuous affection, it can 
 be demonstrated, that the object is a something 
 out of himself and distinct from himself. Take 
 compassion for one instance out of the many. 
 The object of this affection is the relief of ano- 
 ther's misery, and, in the fulfilment of this, does 
 the affection meet with its full solace and gra- 
 tification ; 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 indulgence 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 intently set on his own gratification, 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. Ill 
 
 but because he of the two is the more intently 
 set on an outward accomplishment, the relief of 
 another's wretchedness. The truth is, that, just 
 because 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 himself. He is the most occupied with the 
 object of this affection ; and, on that very account, 
 the least occupied with the pleasure of its indul- 
 gence. And it is precisely the objective quality 
 of these regards, which stamps upon compassion 
 the character of a disinterested affection. He 
 surely is the most compassionate whose thoughts 
 and feelings 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 pleasure that he himself has in the indulgence 
 of it. Yet this prevents not the pleasure from 
 being actually felt ; and felt, too, in very pro- 
 portion 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 
 
112 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 love of it : yet it is equally unavoidable, that the 
 greater in that case will be our aim towards the 
 object of the affection, 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 that he who has had doubly greater 
 enjoyment than another in the exercise of com- 
 passion, is doubly the more disinterested of the 
 two ; that he has had the most pleasure in this 
 affection who has been the least careful to please 
 himself 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 great- 
 est distance from the aims of selfishness.* 
 
 7. And moreover, there is a just and philoso- 
 phical sense, in which many of our special affec- 
 tions, besides the virtuous, are alike disinterested 
 with these ; even though they have been com- 
 monly 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, 
 
 * The purely disinterested character of a right religious aflfec- 
 tion might be proved by these considerations. 
 
]VIISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 113 
 
 one and all of them, distinct from self-love, both 
 in their objects, and in the real psychological 
 character of the affections themselves. The 
 object of the avaricious affection is the acquire- 
 ment of wealth ; of the resentful, the chastise- 
 ment 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 em- 
 ployed, from the mind of him, who, at the time, 
 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 happiness for its object. So 
 far from this, the avaricious man often, con- 
 scious of the strength of his propensity, and at 
 the moment of being urged forward by it to new 
 speculations, acknowledges in his heart, that he 
 would be happier far, could he but moderate its 
 violence, and be satisfied with an 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, instead of seeking 
 for any benefit to himself, he is rushing on the 
 c. I 
 
114 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 destruction of his character, or fortune, or even 
 hfe. And many is the drunkard who under 
 the goadings of an appetite which he cannot 
 withstand, in place of self-love being the prin- 
 ci23le, and his own greatest happiness the object, 
 knows himself to be on the road to inevitable 
 ruin. There is an aifection which has happiness 
 for its object; but this is not the affection 
 which rules and has the ascendency in any of 
 these instances. These are all special affections, 
 grounded on the affinities which obtain between 
 certain objects and certain parts of human na- 
 ture ; and which cannot be indulged beyond a 
 given extent, without distemper and discomfort 
 to the whole nature ; so that, in spite of all the 
 particular gratifications which follow in their 
 train, the man over whom they tyrannize may 
 be unhappy upon the whole. The very distinc- 
 tion between the affection of self-love and the 
 special affections proves that there is a corres- 
 ponding 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 en- 
 joyments, the general state of man may be 
 that of utter and extreme wretchedness. It is 
 therefore a competent question, what those spe- 
 cial affections are, which most consist with the 
 general happiness of the mind ; and this, not- 
 withstanding that they all possess one circum- 
 
 1 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 115 
 
 stance in common — the unavoidable pleasure 
 appendant to the gratification of each of them.* 
 
 8, This explanation will help us to understand 
 wherein it is that the distinction in point of en- 
 joyment, between a good and an evil affection 
 
 * 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 seeks its own object, for the sake simply of ob- 
 taining it. Pleasure is the result of the attainment, but no sepa- 
 rate part of the aim of the agent. The desire that another person 
 maybe gratified, seeks that outward object alone, according to the 
 general course of human desire. Resentment is as disinterested 
 as gratitude or pity, but not more so. Hunger or thirst may be 
 as much as the purest benevolence, at variance 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 appetites. The weakness of the social 
 affections, and the strength of the private desires, properly consti- 
 tute 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. Understanding and reasoning are acts of self, for no man 
 can think by proxy ; but no man ever called them selfish, why ? 
 Evidently because they do not regard self. Precisely the same 
 reason applies to benevolence. Such an argument is a gross con- 
 fusion 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 appetites to self-love because they commonly promote 
 happiness, than it would be to refer them to self-hatred, in those 
 frequent cases where their gratification obstructs it." 
 
116 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 of our nature, properly lies. For there is a cer- 
 tain species of enjoyment common to them all. 
 It were a contradiction in terms to affirm other- 
 wise ; for it were tantamount to saying, that an 
 affection may be gratified, without the actual 
 experience of a gratification . There must be some 
 sensation or other of happiness, at the time when 
 a man obtains that which he is seeking for ; and 
 if it be not a positive sensation of pleasure, it will 
 at least be the sensation of a relief from pain, as 
 when one meets with the opportunity of wreak- 
 ing 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 un- 
 qualified wickedness was exclusive of all enjoy- 
 ment — 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 Pandemo- 
 nium, might there be lurid gleams of ecstacy, 
 and shouts of fiendish exultation — the merriment 
 of desperadoes in crime, who send forth the out- 
 cries of their spiteful and savage delight, when 
 some deep-laid villany has triumphed ; or when 
 in some dire perpetration 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 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 117 
 
 the veriest hell of assembled outcasts; for even 
 there, might there be many separate and specific 
 gratifications. And we must abstract the plea- 
 sure 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 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 tranquillize the 
 whole of human existence — whereas, had the 
 latter the entire and practical 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 may 
 
118 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 be long in existence and operation before their 
 ends are arrived at ; and then it is, we affirm, 
 that if compared, there will be found a wide 
 distinction and dissimilarity between them. 
 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 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 utter- 
 ance by words, of the labouring violence that is 
 within— seeing that words of bitterness, when 
 discharged on the object of our wrath, are some- 
 times the only, and even the most effective exe- 
 cutioners of all the vengeance that we meditate ; 
 besides that by their means, we may enlist in 
 our favour the grateful sympathy of other men — 
 thus obtaining a solace to ourselves, and aggra- 
 vating 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 gratification 
 at the last, by the infliction of a full and satisfac- 
 tory chastisement ; but a gratification, as it were 
 by instalments, with every likely purpose of 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 119 
 
 retaliation that we may form in our bosoms, and 
 every sentence of keen and reproachful 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 emotion, with the pleasure that is supposed 
 to lie in the feeling of the emotion. But the 
 truth is, that, apart from the gratification, the 
 emotion is an exceedingly painful one — insomuch 
 that the gratification mainly lies in the removal of 
 a pain, or in the being ridded of a felt uneasiness. 
 Compassion may in the same way be termed 
 a mixed feeling. But on close attention to these 
 two aftections 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 disappointment 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 difterence of 
 state between two minds, than that of one which 
 luxuriates in the tenderness of compassion, and 
 that of another which breathes and is infuriated 
 with the dark passions and the still darker pur- 
 
120 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 poses 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 a 
 another its hour of meditated revenge. We 
 speak of these two, not in the moment of their 
 respective triumphs, not of the sensations atten- 
 dant on the success of each — but of the direct 
 and instant sensations which he in the feelings 
 themselves. They form two as distinct 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 wishes, 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 affronted pride, or aggrieved 
 sense of the injury which has been done to it. 
 
 10. But perhaps the most favourable moment 
 for comparison between them, is when each is 
 frustrated of its peculiar aim ; and so each is 
 sent back upon itself, with that common suffer- 
 ing to which all the affections are liable — the 
 suffering of a disappointment. We shall be at 
 no loss to determine on which side the advantage 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 121 
 
 lies, if we have either felt or witnessed benevo- 
 lence in tears, because of the misery which it 
 cannot alleviate ; and rage, in the agonies of its 
 defeated impotence, because of the haughty or 
 successful defiance of an enemy, whom with 
 vain hostility it has tried to assail, but cannot 
 reach. We have the example of a good affec- 
 tion under disappointment, in the case of virtu- 
 ous grief or virtuous indignation ; and of a bad 
 affection under disappointment, in the case of 
 envy, when, in spite of every attempt to calum- 
 niate 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 mitigate, but 
 every thing to exasperate, and more fiercely to 
 agonize. The malignant feelings are no sooner 
 turned inwardly, by the arrest of a disappoint- 
 ment 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. Internally, there is a celes- 
 
122 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 tial peace and satisfaction in virtue, even though 
 in the midst of its outward discomfiture, it be 
 compelled to weep over the unredressed wrongs 
 and suiFerings of humanity. On the other hand, 
 the very glance of disappointed malevolence, be- 
 speaks of this evil affection, that, of itself, it is a 
 fierce and fretting distemper of the soul, an execu- 
 tioner of vengeance for all the guilty passions it 
 may have fanned into mischievous activity, and 
 for all the crimes it may have instigated. 
 
 1 1 . 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 gratifica- 
 tions — the one a state of sated compassion, the 
 other of sated resentment. There is one most 
 observable distinction between the states of feel- 
 ing, by which an act of compassion on the one 
 hand, and of resentment on the other, are suc- 
 ceeded. It is seldom that man feasts his eyes 
 on that spectacle of prostrate suffering 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- ' 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIOISS, 123 
 
 mentary. An act of compassion may extinguish 
 for a time the feeling of compassion, 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 pur- 
 pose, does extinguish and put an end to the 
 passion of revenge ; and is seldom, if ever, fol- 
 lowed 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 exas- 
 perates the more, and always augments, or even 
 often augments, a hostile disposition towards its 
 object. 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 
 
124 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 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 objects, and fastening upon new 
 ones ; the other is ever extinguishing its resent- 
 ment towards old objects by the pettier acts of 
 chastisement, or, if nothing short of a capital 
 punishment will appease it, by dying with their 
 death. The exterminating blow, the death which 
 " clears all scores" — this forms the natural and 
 necessary limit even to the fiercest revenge ; 
 whereas, the outgoings of benevolence are quite 
 indefinite. In revenge, the affection is succes- 
 sively extinguished ; and, if relumed, it is upon 
 new objects. In benevolence, the affection is 
 kept up for old objects, while ever open to excite- 
 ment from new ones ; and hence a living and a 
 multiplying power of enjoyment, which is pecu- 
 liarly its own. On the same principle that we 
 water a shrub just because 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 
 
 * So true it is, that he who hateth his brother with implacable 
 hatred is a murderer. 
 
 ! 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 125 
 
 object survises 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 fresh- 
 ness 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 so 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 enjoyment. The history 
 of the one walk presents us with a series of 
 accumulations ; the history of the other with a 
 series of extinctions. 
 
 12. But in dwelling on this beautiful pecu- 
 liarity, 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 malig- 
 nant desires of the human heart, if, while reason- 
 ing on the supposition of an enjoyment, however 
 transitory in their gratification, we give any room 
 for the imagination that even this is unmixed 
 enjoyment. We have already stated, that, of 
 
126 
 
 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 themselves, and anterior to their gratification, 
 there is a painfulness in these desires ; and that 
 when by their gratification we get quit of this 
 painfubiess, we might after all obtain 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 
 malignant passion, is but the exchange of one 
 misery for another ; and this apart still from the 
 remorse of an evil perpetration. There is one 
 familiar instance of it, which often occurs in 
 conversation — when, piqued by something offen- 
 sive in the remark or manner of our fellows, we 
 react with a severity which humbles and over- 
 whelms him. In this case, the pain of the re- 
 sentment is succeeded by the pain we feel in the 
 spectacle of that distress which ourselves have 
 created; and this, too, aggravated perhaps by 
 the reprobation of all the by-standers, affording 
 thereby a miniature example of the painful alter- 
 nations which are constantly taking place in the 
 history of moral evil ; when the misery of wrong 
 affections is but replaced, to the perpetrator him- 
 self, by the misery of the wrong actions 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 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 127 
 
 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 constant 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 physical world ; but in the moral 
 world it is a great and general phenomenon. The 
 example shows at least the possibility of a con- 
 stitution, under which a series of incessant gra- 
 tifications 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 evi- 
 dence 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 constitution, 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 kind- 
 ness towards an individual object, not only sur- 
 vives, 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 
 
128 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 end to the feeling of revenge, but even, that 
 certain acts of hostihty towards the individual 
 object of our hatred will make us relent from 
 this hatred, and at length extinguish it altoge- 
 ther. 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 outbreakings of evil are but par- 
 tial and temporary ; and that the moral 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 affec- 
 tions, 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 nature and providence, both virtue and vice 
 will be capable of immortality — we might gather 
 from what passes under our eyes, in this rudi- 
 mental and incipient stage of human existence, 
 that even with our present constitution virtue 
 alone is capable of a blissful immortality. For 
 malice and falsehood carry in them the seeds of 
 their ownwretchedness,if not of their own destruc- 
 tion. Only grant the soul to be imperishable ; 
 and if the character of the governor is to be 
 gathered from the final issues of the government 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 129 
 
 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 
 power 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 compre- 
 hensive principle of being or doing what it ought, 
 studies rightly to acquit itself of all the moral 
 obligations. Beside the perpetual feast of an 
 approving conscience, and the constant recur- 
 rence 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 mo- 
 rality, 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 be a 
 sensation of painful dissonance ; and the whole 
 man feels out of sorts, as one unhinged or dena- 
 turalized. This perhaps is the main reason that 
 
 c. K 
 
130 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS, AND 
 
 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 heakh of the body, than the general habit 
 of virtue is with a wholesome and well-condi- 
 tioned state of the soul. There is then no 
 derangement as it were in the system of our 
 nature — all the powers, whether superior or sub- 
 ordinate, being in their right places, and all 
 moving without discord and without dislocation. 
 It were anticipating our argument, did we refer 
 at present to the confidence and regard where- 
 with 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 established all its tendencies, 
 can be more clearly or convincingly read, than 
 in phenomena like these. 
 
 15. We have already said that the distinction 
 so well established by Butler, between the object 
 of our affection and its accompanying, nay, 
 inseparable pleasure, was the most effectual 
 
 I 
 
MISERY OF VICIOUS AFFECTIONS. 1.31 
 
 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 affection, 
 there must be a pleasure conjoined with the 
 prosecution 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 suitableness 
 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 
 satisfaction if he succeed in it. Nevertheless, it 
 is not the satisfaction which he is seeking ; it is 
 the object which yields the satisfaction — the 
 object too for its own sake, and not for the sake 
 of its accompanying or its resulting enjoyment. 
 Nay, the more strongly and therefore the more 
 exclusively set upon virtue for its own sake; the 
 less will he think of its enjoyment, 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 freest of all from the 
 taints of mercenary selfishness, it yields to its 
 votary the most perfect and supreme enjoyment. 
 Such is the constitution of our nature, that virtue 
 
132 PLEASURE OF VIRTUOUS AFFECTIONS, ETC. 
 
 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 perfect goodness and perfect happi- 
 ness are at one. Yet the union of these does 
 not constitute their imity. The union is a con- 
 tingent appointment of the Deity ; and so is at 
 once the evidence and the effect of the goodness 
 that is in His own nature. 
 
 1 6. This then is our second general argument 
 for the moral character of God, grounded on the 
 moral constitution of man ; and prior, as yet, to 
 any view of its adaptation to external nature. It 
 is distinct from the first argument, as grounded 
 on the phenomena of conscience, which assumes 
 the office of a 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 re- 
 morse and the pleasures of self- approbation. 
 These, however, are distinct and ought to be dis- 
 tinguished 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 cor- 
 rection, on the other hand, of a present and very 
 precious reward. 
 
133 
 
 Chapter III. 
 
 THIRD GENERAL ARGUMENT. 
 
 The Power and Operation of Habit. 
 
 1 . We have as yet been occupied with what may 
 be termed the instant sensations, wherewith mo- 
 raUty is beset in the mind of man — with the voice 
 of conscience which goes immediately before, or 
 with the sentence whether of approval or con- 
 demnation, 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 applicable — 
 the pleasure which there is in the very presence 
 and contact of the one, the distaste, the bitter- 
 ness which there is in the presence and contact 
 of the other. 
 
 2. These phenomena of juxtaposition, as they 
 may be termed ; 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 inserted there 
 such a constant power of command and encou- 
 ragement on the side of the former, and a like 
 constant operation of checks and discourage- 
 ments against the latter. But, perhaps, some- 
 
134 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 thing 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 enjoyments. 
 By studying these posterior results, we approxi- 
 mate our views towards the final issues of that 
 administration under which we are placed. That 
 defensive apparatus, wherewith the embryo seed 
 of plants is guarded and protected, might indi- 
 cate 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 mortality of the individual, for that 
 is already an inevitable law, but to the extinc- 
 tion and mortality of the species. 
 
 3. For tracing forward man's moral history, or 
 the changes which take place in his moral state, 
 it is necessary that we should advert to the in- 
 fluence of habit. Yet it is not properly the 
 philosophy of habit wherewith our argument is 
 concerned, but with the leading facts of its prac- 
 tical operation. A beneficial effect might still 
 remain an evidence of the divine goodness, by 
 whatever steps it should be efficiently or physi- 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 135 
 
 cally 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, devi- 
 ating from our own strict and pertinent line of 
 enquiry, did we stop to discuss the philosophic 
 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 ques- 
 tionable speculation. It is with palpable 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 modification introduced by Dr. Thomas 
 Brown into the theory of habit, was perhaps 
 uncalled for, even for the accomplishment of his 
 own purpose, which was to demonstrate that it 
 required no peculiar or original law of the 
 human constitution 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 thought.* We are all aware that if two 
 
 * The following is the passage taken from his forty-third lec- 
 ture, in which Dr. Brown seems to connect feeling with feeling- 
 by the same mental law which connects thougV twith thought 
 
136 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 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 impossible, 
 to break the succession between the thought 
 which suggests and the thought which is sug- 
 gested 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 followed up by another, then the thought 
 of the object introduces the feeling, or the one 
 feeling introduces the other feeling into the 
 mind, on the same principle that thought intro- 
 duces thought. Now we should rather be in- 
 clined to hold that thought introduces feeling, 
 
 " To explain the influence of habit in increasing the tendency to 
 certain actions I must remark — what I have already more than 
 once repeated — that the suggesting influence which is usually ex- 
 pressed in the phrase association of ideas, though that very im- 
 proper phrase would seem to limit it to our ideas or conceptions only, 
 and has unquestionably produced a mistaken belief of this partial 
 operation of a general 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 concep- 
 tions ; that our desires or other emotions, for example, may, like 
 them, form a part of our trains of suggestion," &c. See another 
 equally ambiguous passage in his sixty-fourth lecture. 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 137 
 
 not in consequence of the same law of sugges- 
 tion whereby thought introduces thought, but in 
 virtue of the direct pow er w^hich lies in the 
 object of the thought to excite that feeling. 
 When a voluptuous 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 voluptuous 
 feeling, we would not ascribe it to suggestion, 
 but still put it down to the power of the object, 
 whether presented or only represented, to awaken 
 certain emotions. And as little would we ascribe 
 the excitement of the feeling to suggestion, but 
 still to the direct and original power of the 
 object — 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 
 emotion — 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 w^e feel resentment in 
 consequence, without, surely, the law of sugges- 
 tion having had aught to do with the sequence. 
 
1.38 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 We see the aggressor 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, but only in the way of thought 
 suggesting 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 awakens the emotion. The first 
 sequence, or that which obtains between the first 
 and second term, is a pure instance of the sug- 
 gestion of thought by thought, or, to speak in 
 the old language, of the association of ideas. The 
 second sequence, or that which obtains between 
 the middle and last term, is still. Dr. Brown 
 would say, an instance of suggestion, but of 
 thought suggesting the feeling wherewith it was 
 formerly accompanied. Whereas, in our appre- 
 hension, it is due, not to the law of suggestion, 
 but to the law which connects an object, whether 
 present at the time or thought upon afterwards, 
 with its counterpart emotion. Still 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 the proper 
 law of suggestion, have introduced the thought 
 of an injury that had been done to us ; this second 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 139 
 
 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 inflic- 
 tion of the injury ; and this thought again recalls 
 to us the thought of the injury itself, and perhaps 
 the thought of other or similar injuries, which, as 
 at the first, excites anew the feeling of anger, 
 but, at this particular step, by means of a law 
 different from that of suggestion, even the law of 
 our emotions, in virtue of which, certain objects, 
 when present in any way to the cognizance of the 
 imderstanding, awaken certain sensibilities in the 
 heart. It is thus that thoughts and feelings 
 might reciprocally introduce each other, not by 
 means of but one law of suggestion extending 
 in common to them both, but by the inter- 
 mingling of two laws in this repeating or circu- 
 lating process,^ — even the law of suggestion, 
 acting only upon the thoughts ; and the law of 
 emotion, by which certain objects, when pre- 
 sented 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 suggested by other feelings, 
 separately from thoughts — more especially when, 
 
140 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 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 suggest 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 
 waken the resentment anew, and in greater 
 freshness than before. The idtimate effect might 
 be a fierce and fiery effervescence of irascible 
 feeling. Yet not by the operation of one law, 
 but of two distinct law^s in the human consti- 
 tution ; the first that, in virtue of w hich, 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 prac- 
 tical necessity for the purposes of our argument ; 
 and it is truly the same in many other instances, 
 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 effects 
 of Habit, in as far as these effects serve to in- 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 141 
 
 dicate 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 
 modified 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 recurring, would incline us to describe the 
 whole of the process over again ; and with the 
 greater power and certainty, the more frequently 
 that process has been repeated. We are per- 
 fectly sure that the more frequently any parti- 
 cular sequence 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 confidently 
 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 in- 
 dulgence — 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 ex- 
 citing causes which stimulate and awaken the 
 desires of gratification ; then, any process which 
 
142 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 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 
 acting on the precept of looking not unto the 
 wine when it is 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 con- 
 tinuity be broken in like manner. When we 
 revisit the next social company, we shall pro- 
 bably resign ourselves to the very order of sen- 
 sations that we did formerly ; and the more 
 surely, the oftener that that order has already 
 been described by us. And as the order of ob- 
 jects 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 repe- 
 tition ; and desires, when not evaded by the mind 
 shifting its attention away from the objects of 
 them, can only be appeased by their indulgence. 
 6. It is thus that he who enters on a career of 
 vice, enters on a career of headlong degeneracy. 
 If even for once we have described that process 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 143 
 
 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 pro- 
 bability, 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 strengthening with every repetition of the 
 process, till at length it advances 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 choose 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 prostrate subjects of a force that is 
 uncontrollable, only because 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 beniuiibed 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 almost 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 asso- 
 ciation may at length become inveterate, inso- 
 
144 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 much that when 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 on- 
 ward their counterpart desires, in that wonted 
 order, which had hitherto connected the begin- 
 ning of a temptation with its full and final 
 victory. At each repetition, would we find it 
 more difiicult 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 possesses 
 the whole man, and wields an irresistible or 
 rather an unresisted ascendency over him. 
 
 7. But this melancholy process, leading to a 
 vicious indulgence, may be counteracted by an 
 opposite process of resistance, though with far 
 greater facility at the first — yet a facility ever 
 augmenting, in proportion as the effectual resist- 
 ance of temptation is persevered in. That ba- 
 lancing moment, at which pleasure would allure, 
 and conscience is urging us to refrain, may be 
 regarded as the point of departure or diver- 
 gency, whence one 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 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 145 
 
 same circumstances, of being described over 
 again. Should the mind dwell on an object of 
 allurement, and the considerations 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 itself 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 circum- 
 stances ; and again break that line of continuity, 
 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, con- 
 science did interpose, and represent the evil of a 
 compliance, and so impress the man with a sense 
 of obligation, as led him to dismiss the fascinat- 
 ing object from the presence of his mind, or to 
 hurry away from it — the likelihood is, that the 
 recurrence of a similar temptation will suggest 
 the same train of thoughts and feelings and lead 
 to the same beneficial result ; and this is a like- 
 lihood ever increasing with every repetition of 
 the process. The train which would have ter- 
 minated in a vicious indulgence, is dispossessed 
 by the train which conducts to a resolution and 
 an act of virtuous self-denial. The thoughts 
 c. L 
 
146 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 which tend to awaken emotions and purposes on 
 the side of duty find readier entrance into the 
 mind ; and the thoughts which awaken and urge 
 forward the desire of what is evil more readily 
 give way. The positive force on the side of 
 virtue is augmented, by every repetition of the 
 train which leads to a virtuous determination. 
 The resistance to this force on the side of vice 
 is weakened, in proportion to the frequency 
 wherewith that train of suggestions which would 
 have led to a vicious indulgence, is broken and 
 discomfited. It is thus that when one is success- 
 fully resolute in his opposition to evil, the power 
 of making the achievement and the facility of 
 the achievement itself are both upon the in- 
 crease ; and virtue makes double gain to herself, 
 by every separate conquest which she may have 
 won. The humbler attainments of moral worth 
 are first mastered and secured ; and the aspiring- 
 disciple may pass onward in a career that is 
 quite indefinite to nobler deeds and nobler sa- 
 crifices. 
 
 8. And this law of habit when enlisted on the 
 side of righteousness, not only strengthens and 
 makes sure our resistance to vice, but facilitates 
 the most arduous performances of virtue. The 
 man whose thoughts, with the purposes and 
 doings to which they lead, are at the bidding of 
 conscience, will, by frequent repetition, at length 
 describe the same track almost spontaneously — 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 147 
 
 even as in physical education, things, laboriously 
 learned at the first, come to be done at last with- 
 out the feeling of an effort. And so, in moral 
 education, every new achievement of principle 
 smooths the way to future achievements of the 
 same kind ; and the precious fruit or purchase of 
 each moral victory is to set us on higher and 
 firmer vantage-ground for the conquests of prin- 
 ciple in all time coming. He who resolutely 
 bids away the suggestions of avarice, when they 
 come into conflict with the incumbent gene- 
 rosity ; or the suggestions of voluptuousness, 
 when they come into conflict with the incumbent 
 self-denial ; or the suggestions of anger, when 
 they come into conflict with the incumbent act 
 of magnanimity and forbearance — will at length 
 obtain, not a respite only, but a final deliverance 
 from their intrusion. Conscience, the longer it 
 has made way over 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 
 of moral discipline : Or, in other words, the 
 oftener that conscience makes good the supre- 
 macy 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 be- 
 cause, in virtue of the .law of suggestion, those 
 
148 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT- 
 
 trains of thought and feeling, which connect 
 her first biddings with their final execution, are 
 the less exposed at every new instance to he 
 disturbed, and the more likely to 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 argument. 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 adminis- 
 tration 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, Ave 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 circumstances 
 for obtaining a glimpse of their final destina- 
 tion ; 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 w^ho hath ordained it. And 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 149 
 
 surely, it is of prime importance to be noted in 
 this examination, 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 res- 
 pective 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 
 sovereign, 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 inferior, 
 would obtain the lawless ascendency, and sub- 
 ject their wretched 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 distinct moral territories, 
 where the habit of many centuries had given 
 fixture and establishment, first, to a society of 
 the upright, now in the firm possession of all 
 
150 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 goodness, as the well-earned result of that whole- 
 some 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 con- 
 tentment, 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 ex- 
 cesses with their dreary intervals of remorse 
 and lassitude, which kept the other region in 
 perpetual anarchy, and Avhich, constituted as 
 we are, must trouble or dry up all the well- 
 springs of enjoyment, 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 performer 
 still more virtuous or more vicious than before, 
 a moral remuneration on the one hand and a 
 moral penalty on the other — with an enhance- 
 ment of all the consequences, whether good or 
 evil, which flowed from each of them. We 
 could not have mistaken the purposes and mind 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 151 
 
 of the Deity — when we saw thus palpably, and 
 through the demonstrations of experience, the 
 ultimate effects of these respective processes ; 
 and, in this total diversity of character, with 
 a like total diversity of condition, were made 
 to perceive, that righteousness was its own 
 eternal reward, and that wickedness was fol- 
 lowed up, and that for ever, with the bitter fruit 
 of its own ways. 
 
 11. Death so far intercepts the view of this 
 result, that it is not here the object of sight or 
 of experience. Still, however, it remains the 
 object of our likely anticipation. The truth is, 
 that the process which we are now contem- 
 plating, 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 facul- 
 ties of sentient beings, and their counterpart 
 objects in external nature ; but between every 
 historical progression in nature, and a fulfilment 
 of corresponding interest or magnitude which it 
 ultimately lands in — that we cannot believe of 
 man's moral history, 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 
 
152 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 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 capacity of an 
 enjoyment, of which he had only been per- 
 mitted, 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 matu- 
 rity 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 — ^warranting 
 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 another 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 evidence 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 antici- 
 pations of a conscious futurity on the other 
 side of death, are the forebodings of guilty 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 153 
 
 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 afterplace of reparation and vengeance. 
 Beside those unsettled 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 directly and vividly still, 
 the sense of a yet unsettled controversy, be- 
 tween the sinner and the God whom he has 
 offended. The notion of immortality is far 
 more powerfully and habitually suggested by 
 the perpetual hauntings or misgivings of this 
 sort of undefined terror, by the dread of a 
 coming penalty — rather than by the conscious- 
 ness 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 keeps pace with the growth 
 of a man's wickedness, and, at times, becomes 
 quite inveterate towards the termination of his 
 mortal 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 here- 
 
154 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 tofore, in the impunity of a hardihood that 
 shields him alike from reproach and fear, con- 
 science will at length re-awaken to upbraid 
 him for his misdoings ; at once the assertor 
 of its own cause, and the executioner of its 
 own sentence. 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 different 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 business, and entertainments, and 
 converse, and day-light of that urgent and 
 obtruding world by which we are surrounded, 
 to carry off the attention of the mind from its 
 own guiltiness, and so, to suspend that agony, 
 which, when thrown back upon itself and dis- 
 severed from all its objects of gratification, will 
 be felt, without mitigation and without respite. 
 In the busy whirl of life, the mind, drawn 
 upon in all directions, can find, outwardly and 
 abroad, the relief of a constant diversion from 
 the misery of its own internal processes. But 
 
POA\^ER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 155 
 
 a slight change in its locality or its circum- 
 stances, would deliver it up to the full burden 
 and agony of these ; nor can we imagine a more 
 intense and intolerable wretchedness, than that 
 which would ensue, simply by rescinding the 
 connexion which obtains in this world between 
 a depraved mind and its external means of gra- 
 tification — when, forced inwardly 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, joined to this perpetual sense of 
 want, a pungent and pervading sense of worth- 
 lessness. It is the constant testimony of crimi- 
 nals, 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 ingredients. It strikingly demonstrates 
 the character of Him who so constructed our 
 moral nature, that from the workings of its me- 
 chanism alone, there should be evolved a suffer- 
 ing so tremendous on the children of iniquity, 
 insomuch that a sinner meets with sorest ven- 
 geance 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 possession of his earthly habits and earthly 
 
156 POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 
 
 passions, he is nevertheless doomed to everlast- 
 ing separation from their present counterpart 
 and earthly enjoyments. 
 
 13. There is a distinction sometimes made 
 between the natural and arbitrary rewards of 
 virtue, or between the natural and arbitrary 
 punishments of vice. The arbitrary is exempli- 
 fied in the enactments of human law ; there in 
 general being no natural or necessary connexion 
 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 vio- 
 lence, whether more or less outrageous, upon 
 the other. The natural again is exemplified in 
 the workings of the human constitution ; there 
 being a connexion, in necessity and nature, 
 between the temper 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 restless 
 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 informa- 
 tion of the arbitrary rewards or punishments 
 in a future 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 
 
POWER AND OPERATION OF HABIT. 157 
 
 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 gratifi- 
 cations, and only if not disturbed by grievous 
 physical annoyances, were enough of them- 
 selves to constitute an elysium of pure and 
 perennial happiness : and again, that the native 
 agonies of vice, unaided by any inflictions of 
 physical suflering, and only if unalleviated by a 
 perpetual round of physical enjoyments, were 
 enousfh of themselves to constitute a dire and 
 dreadful Pandemonium. They are not judicially 
 awarded, but result from the workings of that 
 constitution which God hath given to us ; and 
 they speak as decisively the purpose and cha- 
 racter of Him who is the author of that 
 constitvition — as would any code of jurispmdence 
 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. 
 
158 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 On the General Adaptation of External Nature 
 to the Moral Co7istitution 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 
 exercise. 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 other 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 were suited to it. The wisdom 
 of God admits of glorious vindication against 
 any such charge in the physical department 
 
MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 159 
 
 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 varied loveliness, 
 and sounds of as varied melody, and many 
 thousand tastes and odours of exquisite gra- 
 tification, and distinctions innumerable of touch 
 and feeling, to meet the whole compass and 
 diversity of the human senses — multiplying 
 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 occupation. The whole of life, in fact, 
 is crowded with opportunities for its employ- 
 ment — or, rather, instead of being represented 
 as the subject of so many distinct and ever- 
 recurring calls, conscience may well be repre- 
 sented as the constant guide and guardian of 
 human life ; and, for the right discharge 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 whether of a good or evil hue, tinges the 
 
160 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 whole current of his history. It is a thing of 
 constancy as well as a thing of frequency — for, 
 even when not carried forth into action, it is not 
 dormant ; but possesses the mind in the form of 
 a cherished purpose or cherished principle, or, 
 as the Romans expressed it, of a perpetual will 
 either to that which is good or evil. But over 
 and above this, the calls to action are innu- 
 merable. In the wants of others ; in their powers 
 of enjoyment ; in their claims on our equity, our 
 protection, or our kindness ; in the various open- 
 ings and walks of usefulness; in the services 
 which even the humblest might render to those 
 of their own family, or household, or country; 
 in the application, of that comprehensive pre- 
 cept, to do good unto all men as we have oppor- 
 tunity — we behold a prodigious number and 
 diversity of occasions for the exercise of moral 
 principle. It is possible that the lessons of a 
 school may not be arduous enough nor diver- 
 sified enough for the capacity of a learner. 
 But this cannot be affirmed of that school of 
 discipline, alike arduous and unremitting, to 
 which the great author of our being hath in- 
 troduced us. Along with the moral capacity by 
 which He hath endowed us. He hath provided 
 a richly furnished gymnasium for its exercises 
 and its trials — where we may earn, if not the 
 triumphs of virtue at least some delicious fore- 
 tastes of that full and final blessedness for which 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 101 
 
 the scholarship of human life, with its manifold 
 engagements and duties, is so obviously titled 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 gene- 
 rality 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 habit — 
 as forming three distinct arguments for the 
 moral goodness of Him, who hath so constructed 
 our nature, that by its workings alone, man 
 should be so clearly and powerfully warned to 
 a life of righteousness — should in the native and 
 immediate joys of rectitude, earn so precious 
 a reward — and, finally, should be led onward to 
 such a state of character, in respect of its con- 
 firmed good or confirmed evil, as to afford one 
 of the likeliest prognostications which nature 
 offers to our view of an immortality beyond the 
 grave, where we shall abundantly reap the con- 
 sequence 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 
 acted upon by any forces or influences from 
 without. It is in this latter aspect that we are 
 c. M 
 
162 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 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 sub- 
 jective begin to open upon us. It will still be 
 recollected, however,* that in our view of exter- 
 nal 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 legitimate subject, the actings and reactings 
 that take place between man and man in society. 
 3. And first, in regard to the power and sensi- 
 bility of conscience, 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 ex- 
 perience 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 suggestion. 
 
 * See Introductory Chapter, 1, 2, 3. 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 1(J3 
 
 Our wonted trains of thought might never have 
 conducted the mind to any thought or recollection 
 of the event in question — whereas, on the occur- 
 rence of even a very partial intimation, all the 
 associated circumstances come into vivid recog- 
 nition ; and we are transported back again to 
 the departed realities of former ;years, that had 
 lain extinct within 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 personally shared in ; and the 
 likelihood is, that, if admitted to the perusal of 
 this document, even after the lapse of half a 
 life time, our memory would depone to many 
 thousand events which had else escaped, into 
 utter and irrecoverable forgetfulness. It is cer- 
 tainly remarkable, that, on some brief utterance 
 by another, the stories of former days should 
 suddenly reappear, as if in illumined charac- 
 ters, on the tablet from which they had so totally 
 faded ; that the mention of a single circumstance, 
 if only the link of a train, should conjure to life 
 
164 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 again a whole host of sleeping recollections : 
 And so, in each of our fellow-men, might we 
 have a remembrancer, who can vivify our con- 
 sciousness anew, respecting scenes and trans- 
 actions of our former history which had long 
 gone by ; and which, after having vanished once 
 from a solitary mind left to its own processes, 
 woidd have vanished everlastingly. 
 
 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 trans- 
 lation of his own intelligence into the mind of 
 another. A shrewd discerner of the heart, when 
 laying open its heretofore unrevealed mysteries, 
 makes mention of things which at the moment 
 we feel to be novelties; but which, almost at 
 the same moment, are felt and recognised by us 
 as truths — and that, not because we receive them 
 upon his authority, but on the independent view 
 that ourselves have of their own evidence. His 
 utterance, in fact, has evoked from the cell of 
 their imprisonment, remembrances, which but 
 for him, might never have been awakened ; 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, than they shine before the mind's 
 eye, in the light of a satisfying demonstration. 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 165 
 
 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 forgetful n ess— whence, 
 however, they are quickly and vividly called 
 forth, as if with the power of a talisman, by the 
 voice of him, who no sooner announces his pro- 
 position, than he suggests the by-gone recollec- 
 tions of our own vv^hich 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 throughout with 
 evidence, notwithstanding ; and that, because 
 each of them speaks to the consciousness of his 
 readers, unlocking a treasury of latent recollec- 
 tions, which no sooner start again into being, 
 than they become witnesses for the sagacity 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 discerns. 
 The one utters new things ; but that light of 
 immediate manifestation in which the other 
 beholds them, is struck out of old materials 
 which himself 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 
 
166 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 and consciousness. This is the only way in 
 which the instant recognition of truths before 
 unheard of and unknown can possibly be ex- 
 plained. It is because their evidence lies en- 
 veloped 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 ad- 
 verted to for the purpose of illustration. For a 
 decayed conscience is susceptible of like resus- 
 citation with a decayed memory. In treating 
 of the effects of habit, we briefly noticed* the 
 gradual weakening of conscience, as the indul- 
 gences of vice were persisted in. Its remon- 
 strances, however ineffectual, may, at the first, 
 have had a part in that train of thought and 
 feeling, which commences with a temptation, 
 and is consummated in guilt ; but in proportion 
 to the frequency, wherewith the voice of con- 
 science is hushed, or overborne, or refused en- 
 tertainment 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 
 
 See Chap. iii. 6. of this Section, 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 167 
 
 without the sense or 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 in- 
 sensibility 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 pro- 
 secute his secret depravities, with no relentings 
 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 so 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 the 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 alto- 
 gether compose it — for often besides, is there a 
 resurrection of the moral sensibilities within the 
 bosom of the unhappy criminal, as if relumed 
 at the touch of sympathy, with the pronounced 
 judgments and feelings of other men. When 
 their unperverted and un warped consciences, 
 because free from the delusions which encompass 
 
168 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 his own, give forth a righteous sentence— they 
 enlist his conscience upon their side, which then 
 reasserts its power, and again speaks to him 
 in a voice of thunder. When that continuous 
 train between the first excitement of some guilty 
 passion, and its final gratification, from Avhicli 
 the suggestions of the moral faculty had been 
 so carefully excluded, is thus arrested and 
 broken — then does conscience, as if emancipated 
 from a spell, at times recover from the infatua- 
 tion which held it ; and utter reproaches of its 
 own, more terrible to the sinner^s heart, than all 
 the execrations of general society. And what- 
 ever shall forcibly terminate the- guilty indul- 
 gence, 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 con- 
 finement of a prison-house may do it. The 
 confinement 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 with 
 the might of an avenger, and make emphatic 
 representation 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 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 169 
 
 maintain the conscience in freshness and in- 
 tegrity, than to reanimate it from a state of decay, 
 or to recall its aberrations. Indeed its restora- 
 tive 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 hu- 
 man life, without observing the constant circula- 
 tion and reciprocal play of the moral judgments 
 among men — with whom there is not a more 
 favourite or familiar exercise, than that of dis- 
 cussing 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 pas- 
 sion, is placed under the observation and guar- 
 dianship 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 light is by this means kept up in society, 
 composed of men whose thoughts are ever em- 
 ployed in ' accusing or else excusing 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 applause intervenes at this point as a 
 distinct and auxiliary influence. But the pri- 
 mary influence is a moral one. Each man lives 
 under a consciousness of the vigilant and dis- 
 cerning witnesses who are on every side of him ; 
 
170 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 and his conscience, kept on the alert and kept 
 in accordance with theirs, acts both more power- 
 fully 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 con- 
 tact 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 quick- 
 ened anew, as if by sympathy, with the moral 
 judgments of other men. This phenomenon of 
 conscience seems to afford another glimpse or 
 indication of futurity. 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 
 disobedience. 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 possibility alone, but the 
 extreme likelihood of a far more vivid re-awa- 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 171 
 
 kening, 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 sleeping agony within us, 
 what may we not feel, when the adverse 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 
 insupportable, that twinkles upon us from the 
 thousand secondary and subordinate lustres by 
 which we are surrounded — what must it be, 
 when He, by whose hand they have all been 
 lighted up, turns towards us the strength of 
 His own countenance ; and, with His look of re- 
 probation 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 forin^d our second general argu- 
 ment in favour of God's righteous adminis- 
 tration ; and our mental constitution, even when 
 viewed singly, furnishes sufficient materials on 
 
 * Dr. Abercromby, in his interesting- work on the intellectual 
 powers, states some remarkable cases of resuscitated and enlarged 
 memory, which remind one of the explanation given by Mr. Cole- 
 ridge 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 condemnation. 
 
172 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 which to build it. But the argument is greatly 
 strengthened and enhanced by the adaptation 
 to that constitution of external nature, more 
 especially as exemplified in the reciprocal in- 
 fluences which take place between mind and 
 mind in society : for the effect of this adapta- 
 tion is to multiply 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 object 
 of this kindness — for merely in the conscious 
 possession of another's good will, there is a 
 great and distinct enjoyment. And then the 
 manifested kindness of the former awakens 
 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 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 173 
 
 and inevitably attach to our condition, we 
 should feel as if we had approximated very 
 nearly to a state of perfect enjoyment among 
 men — or, in other words, that the bliss of 
 paradise would be almost fully realized upon 
 earth, were but the moral graces and charities 
 of paradise firmly established there, and in 
 full operation. Let there be honest and uni- 
 versal good- will in every bosom, and this be 
 responded to from all who are the objects of 
 it by an honest gratitude back again ; let kind- 
 ness, in all its various effects and manifestations, 
 pass and repass from one heart and countenance 
 to another ; let there be a universal courteous- 
 ness 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 suc- 
 cour and sympathy of a willing neighbourhood 
 be ever in readiness to meet and to overpass 
 all the want and wretchedness to which hu- 
 manity is liable; let truth, and honour, and 
 inviolable friendship between man and man, 
 banish all treachery and 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, 
 
174 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 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 constituted and thus harmonized, 
 the palpable evidence of a nature so framed, 
 that the happiness of the world and the 
 righteousness of the world kept 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 elements — 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 
 receiver who feels as he ought, rejoices infinitely 
 more in the sense of the benefactor's kindness, 
 than in the physical gratification or fruit of 
 the benefactor's liberality. It is saying much 
 for the virtuousness of Him who hath so 
 moulded and so organized the spirit of man, 
 that, apart from sense and from all its satis- 
 factions, 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-echoing 
 to another, there should be yielded to human 
 hearts, so much of the truth and substance 
 of real enjoyment — so that did justice, and 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 175 
 
 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 universality 
 and reign of vice effected the same state of 
 blissful and secure enjoyment that virtue would 
 in ours — we should infer 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 perfect 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 
 so alleviating the ills of their destitution. This 
 is so very patent as not to require being ex- 
 patiated on. Yet we might notice here one 
 important adaptation, connected with the ex- 
 ercise of this morality — realized but in part, 
 so long as virtue has only a partial occupation 
 
176 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 in society ; but destined, we hope, to receive 
 its entire and beautiful accomplishment, when 
 virtue shall have become universal. It is well 
 known that certain collateral but very serious 
 mischiefs attend the exercise of a profuse and 
 capricious and indiscriminate charity ; that it 
 may, in fact, augment and aggravate the in- 
 digence which it tries to relieve, beside working 
 a moral deterioration among the humbler classes, 
 by ministering to the reckless improvidence 
 of the dissipated and the idle ; an operation 
 alike injurious to the physical comfort of the 
 one party, and to the moral comfort of the 
 other. These effects are inevitable, so lonor 
 as the indiscriminate benevolence of the rich 
 meets with an indefinite selfishness and rapacity 
 on the part of the poor. But this evil will be 
 mitigated and at length done away, with the 
 growth of principle among mankind ; and more 
 especially, when, instead of being 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 England, find 
 its own spontaneous, while, at the same time, its 
 best adjustment. Let an exuberant yet well 
 directed liberality on the one side come into 
 encounter, instead of a sordid and insatiable 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 177 
 
 appetency, with the recoil of delicacy and self- 
 respect upon the other, and the noble indepen- 
 dence of men who will work with their own 
 hands rather than be burdensome; and then 
 will the benefactions of the wealthy and the 
 wants of the indigent, not only meet but over- 
 pass. The willingness of the one party to give, 
 wdll exceed the willingness of the other to 
 receive; and an evil which threatens to rend 
 society asunder, and which law in her attempts 
 to remedy has only exasperated, will at length 
 give way before the omnipotence of moral 
 causes. This, as being one of many specimens, 
 tells most significantly that man was made for 
 virtue, or that this was the purpose of God in 
 making him — when we find, that through no 
 other medium than the morality of the people, 
 can the sorest distempers of society be healed. 
 The impotence of human wisdom, and of every 
 political expedient which this wisdom can devise 
 for the well-being of a state, when virtue lan- 
 guishes among the people, is one of the strongest 
 proofs which experience affords, that virtue was 
 the design of our creation. And we know not 
 how more emphatic demonstration can be given 
 of a virtuous Deity, than when we find society 
 to have been so constructed by His hands, that 
 virtue forms the great alternative on which the 
 secure or lasting prosperity of a commonwealth 
 is hinged — so that for any aggregate of human 
 
 C. N 
 
178 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 beings to be right physically and right econo- 
 mically, it is the indispensable, while at the 
 same time the all effectual condition, that they 
 should be right morally. 
 
 1 1 . Nothing can be more illustrative of the 
 character of God, or more decisive of the ques- 
 tion, whether His preference is for universal 
 virtue or for universal vice in the world, than to 
 consider the effect of each on the well-being of 
 human society — even that society which He did 
 Himself ordain, and whose mechanism is the 
 contrivance of His own intellect, and the work 
 of His own hands. It may not be easy to explain 
 the origin of that moral derangement into which 
 the species has actually fallen ; but it affords no 
 obscure or uncertain indication of what the 
 species was principally made for, when we j)ic- 
 ture to ourselves the difference between a com- 
 monwealth of vice and a commonwealth of virtue. 
 We have already said enough on the obvious 
 connection which obtains between the righteous- 
 ness of a nation and the happiness of its families ; 
 and it were superfluous to dilate on the equally 
 obvious connection which obtains between a 
 state of general depravity, and a state of general 
 wretchedness and disorder. And the counter- 
 part observation holds true, that, as the beatitudes 
 of the one condition, so the sufferings of the 
 other are chiefly made up of moral elements. 
 If, in the former, there be a more precious and 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 179 
 
 heartfelt 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 malignity, will greatly exceed any 
 physical hurt, 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 severely felt, than a ten-fold loss occa- 
 sioned by accident or misfortune — or, in other 
 words, we find the moral provocation to be 
 greatly more pungent and intolerable than the 
 physical calamity. So that beside the material 
 damage, too palpable to be insisted on at any 
 length, which vice and violence inflict 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 individual mind ; 
 but susceptible of being inflamed to a degree 
 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 themselves, though they should break 
 
180 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 not forth into overt- 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 miserable, 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 
 sufiiciently reflected on, it would evince how 
 intimately connected, 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 strength. The mere contests of 
 personal feeling will suflice. Let there be 
 mutual rage and mutual revilings ; let there be 
 the pangs and the outcries of fierce exaspera- 
 tion ; let there be the continual droppings of 
 peevishness and discontent; 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 them- 
 selves are of the most contemptible ; let there 
 be haughty defiance, and spiteful derision, and 
 the mortifications of affronted and irritated 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 181 
 
 pride — in the tumults of such a scene, though 
 tumults of the mind alone, there were enough 
 to constitute a hell of assembled maniacs or of 
 assembled malefactors. The very presence and 
 operation of these passions would form their own 
 sorest punishment. To have them perpetually 
 in ourselves 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 imagine a more decisive indication of His 
 favour being on the side of moral good, and His 
 displeasure against moral evil, than that, by the 
 working of each of these constitutions, virtue 
 and happiness on the one hand, vice and 
 wretchedness on the other, should be so inti- 
 mately 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 monarch by whom they were enacted. 
 And to learn this lesson, we do not need to wait 
 for the distant consequences of vice or virtue. 
 We at once feel the distinction put upon them 
 
182 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 by the hand of the Ahnighty, in the instant sen- 
 sations which He hath appended to each of them 
 — implicated as their effects 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 enjoyment. 
 
 13. The law and operation of habit, as exem- 
 plified in one individual mind, formed the theme 
 of our third general argument. The only adap- 
 tation which we shall notice to this part of our 
 mental constitution in the frame-work of society, 
 is that afforded by the changes which it under- 
 goes in the flux of its successive generations — 
 in virtue of which, the tender susceptibilities of 
 childhood are placed under the influence of that 
 ascendant seniority which precedes or goes 
 before it. At first sight it may be thought of 
 this peculiarity, that it tells equally in both 
 directions — that is, either in the transmission 
 and accumulation of vice, or in the transmission 
 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 where- 
 with, in families, the crime and profligacy of a 
 depraved parentage must operate on the habits 
 of their oftspring; and of the deadly poison 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 183 
 
 which, ill 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. But 
 after every deduction has been made for these, 
 who does not see that the systematic and sus- 
 tained 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 concentered on its own 
 personal enjoyments, and, with a few casual 
 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 become 
 universal among men. Accordingly, all the 
 ostensible countenance and exertion, in the 
 cause of learning, whether by governments or 
 associations, is on the side of virtue ; while no man 
 could dare to front the public eye, with a scheme 
 of discipleship in the lessons whether of fraud 
 
184 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 or profligacy. The clear tendency then is to 
 impress a right direction on the giant power of 
 education ; and when this is brought to bear, 
 more systematically and generally than hereto- 
 fore, on the pliant boyhood of the land — we 
 behold, in the operation of habit, a guarantee for 
 the progressive conquests, and at length the 
 ultimate and universal triumph of good over evil 
 in society. Our confidence in this result is 
 greatly enhanced, when we witness the influence 
 even of but one mind among the hundreds of any 
 given 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 manageable 
 ductility of its outset, presents a mighty opening 
 for the production of a new era in the moral 
 history of mankind; 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 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 185 
 
 and the likelihoods of such a consummation ; and 
 what gives an overbearing superiority to the 
 chances on the side of virtue is, that parents, 
 although the most sunken in depravity them- 
 selves, welcome the proposals, and receive with 
 gratitude, the services of Christian or moral 
 philanthropy in behalf of their families. How- 
 ever hopeless then of reformation among those 
 whose vicious habits have become inveterate, 
 it is well that there should be so wide and unob- 
 structed 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 indivi- 
 duals, yet for reclaiming after the lapse of a few 
 generations the degeneracy of the species ; and, 
 however abortive many of the schemes and 
 enterprizes in this highest walk of charity may 
 hitherto have proved, yet the manifest and 
 growing attention to the cause does open a bril- 
 liant 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 b]|^ght to bear on that most malle- 
 able of all subjects, the infancy of lumian ex- 
 istence, come to be better understood, and put 
 
186 ADAPTATION OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 into busy operation over the whole length and 
 breadth of the land. In the grievous defect of 
 our national institutions, and the wretched aban- 
 donment 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 system of wise and well principled 
 instruction, there are capabilities 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 
 recognise such influences at work, as when 
 multiplied and developed to the uttermost, are 
 abundantly capable of regenerating the world. 
 One of the likeliest of these influences is the 
 power of education — to the perfecting of Avhich 
 so many minds are earnestly directed at this 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 187 
 
 moment ; and for the general acceptance of 
 which in society, we have a guarantee, in the 
 strongest affections and fondest wishes of the 
 fathers and mothers of famihes. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 On the special and subordinate Adaptations of ex- 
 terfial 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 mate- 
 rial 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, benevolence, and truth, and condemna- 
 tory of their opposites ; that He should have 
 invested this conscience with such powers of 
 instant retribution, in the triumphs of that com- 
 placency wherewith he so promptly rewards the 
 good, and the horrors of that remorse wherewith 
 
188 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 He as promptly chastises the evil ; that beside 
 these, He should have so distinguished between 
 virtue and vice,* as that the emotions and exer- 
 cises of the former should all be pleasurable, 
 and of the latter painful to the taste of the inner 
 man ; that He should have so 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 
 
 * Butler, in Part I, Chapter 3d of his Analogy, makes the 
 following admirable discrimination between actions themselves 
 and that quality ascribed to them which we call virtuous or vicious. 
 — " An action by which any natural passion is gratified, or fortune 
 acquired, procures delight or advantag-e, abstracted from all con- 
 sideration of the morality of such action, consequently the pleasui-e 
 or advantage in this case is g-ained by the action itself, not by the 
 morality, the virtuousness, or viciousness of it, though it 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 say- 
 ing that such good or bad effect was owing to the virtue or vice of 
 such action or behaviour. In one case, an action 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. e. the virtuous- 
 ness or viciousness of it, produced the effect. 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 189 
 
 towards a state of things, when, after that the 
 moral education of the present life has been 
 consummated, the great Ruler of men will mani- 
 fest the eternal distinction which he puts be- 
 tween the good and the evil. 
 
 2. Now in these few simple sequences, how- 
 ever 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 defec- 
 tive in this evidence — though certainly neither 
 so prolific nor so 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, 
 consisting of so many laws, grafted it may be on 
 a simple and indivisible substance, yet yielding 
 in the fact of their beneficial 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 original, or some of them, as the 
 analysts of mind have laboured to manifest, only 
 derivative laws in the human constitution. If 
 the former, we have an evidence grounded on 
 the beneficial conjunction of a greater number 
 of independent laws. If the latter, we are 
 
190 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 reduced to fewer independent laAvs — ^but these 
 all the more prolific of useful applications, each 
 of which applications is grounded on a bene- 
 ficial 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, eacli characterized 
 by its own name, and pointing to its own 
 separate object, yet all of 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 in the formation of our race. 
 
 3. When we look to the beauty which over- 
 spreads the face of nature, and the exquisite 
 gratification which it ministers to the senses of 
 man — we cannot doubt, either the taste for 
 beauty which resides in the primeval mind that 
 emanated all this gracefulness ; or the benevo- 
 lence that endowed man with a kindred taste, 
 
 * And besides this, would it not bespeak a more comprehensive 
 wisdom on the part of a human artificer, that by means of one 
 device, or by the application of one principle, he effected not a few, 
 but many distinct and beneficial purposes ; and does it not in like 
 manner enhance the exhibition of divine skill in the workmanship 
 of nature, when a single law is found to subserve a vast and 
 manifold variety of important uses ? 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 191 
 
 and so fitted him for a kindred enjoyment. 
 This conclusion, however, like any moral con- 
 clusion we have yet come to, respecting the 
 perfections or the purposes of God, is founded on 
 generalities, — on the general amount of beauty 
 in the world, and the delight wherewith men 
 behold and admire it. Yet, beside this, we 
 may draw a corroborative evidence for the same, 
 from the machinery of certain special contri- 
 vances — as the construction of the calyx in 
 plants, for the defence of the tender blossom 
 previous to its expansion ; and the apparatus for 
 scattering seeds, whereby the earth is more fully 
 invested with its mantle of rich and varied gar- 
 niture. 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 reason- 
 ing on the element of beauty. We have first 
 those generalities 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 contemplated ; and more, 
 
192 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 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 onward to a certain beneficial 
 consummation. 
 
 4. But we must here premise an observation 
 extensively applicable in mental science. When 
 recognising the obvious subserviency of some 
 given feeling or principle in the mind to a bene- 
 ficial result — we are apt to imagine that it was 
 somehow or other, in the contemplation of this 
 result, that the principle was generated ; and 
 that therefore, instead of a distinct and original 
 part of the human constitution, it is but a 
 derivative 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 as- 
 cribed to the wisdom of man, which, if regarded 
 as instinctive and primary, would have been 
 directly ascribed to the wisdom of God. There 
 are many writers, for example, on the origin 
 and rights of property, who, instead of admit- 
 ting what may be termed an instinct of appro- 
 priation, would hold the appropriating tendency 
 to be the result of human intelligence, after ex- 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 193 
 
 perience had of the convenience 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 re- 
 ceived at certain intervals into the stomach. 
 Yet, notwithstanding all the strength which is 
 ascribed to the principle of self-preservation, 
 and all the veneration 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 wherewith 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 uncon- 
 nected with any thought on our part, of its 
 physical or posterior uses for the sustenance 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 product 
 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 
 c. o 
 
194 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 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 dis- 
 tinctly 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 pheno- 
 mena to one or two principles. There is no 
 warrant for this in the examples which Ana- 
 tomy and Physiology, those sciences that have 
 to do with the animal economy 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 the defects of human prudence, 
 hath furnished us with distinct corporeal appe- 
 tites, that might prompt us to operations, of 
 the greatest subservient benefit both to the in- 
 dividual and the species — might also, to sup- 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 195 
 
 plement the defects of human wisdom and 
 principle, have furnished us with distinct men- 
 tal affections or desires, both for our own par- 
 ticular 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 remembrancer and instigator 
 given to him as the appetite of hunger — we 
 ought not to marvel, should it be found that 
 nature, in endowing him mentally, hath pre- 
 sumed on his incapacity, either for wisely de- 
 vising or for regularly acting, with a view to 
 distant consequences, and amid the complicated 
 relations of human society. It may, on the one 
 hand, have inserted forces, when the mere con- 
 sideration of good effects would not have im- 
 pelled ; or, on the other hand, may have inserted 
 checks, when the mere consideration of evil 
 effects would not have arrested. Yet so it is, 
 that, because of the good that is thereby secured 
 and of the evil that is thereby shunned — we are 
 apt to imagine of some of the most useful prin- 
 ciples of our nature, that they are, somehow, 
 the product of human manufacture ; the re- 
 sults of human intelligence, or of rapid processes 
 of thought by man, sitting in judgment on the 
 consequences of his actions, and wisely provid- 
 
196 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 ing 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 reputation, 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 destructive 
 both of the individual and of the species. For 
 reasons already hinted at, we hold it immaterial 
 to the cause of natural 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 both of the 
 wisdom and goodness of God. 
 
 6. The common definition given of anger, is an 
 instance of the tendency on the part of philoso- 
 phers, if not to derive, at least to connect the 
 emotions of which we have been made suscep- 
 tible with certain anterior or higher principles 
 of our nature. Dr. Reid tells us that the proper 
 object of resentment is an injury ; and that as 
 *' no man can have the notion of injustice, 
 without having the notion of justice," then, " if 
 resentment be natural to man, the notion of 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 197 
 
 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 in- 
 tended, 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 de- 
 viation. 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 moral feeling. The property 
 of resenting a hurt inflicted upon ourselves, 
 
 * In glaring contradiction to this, is Dr. Reid's own affirma- 
 tion 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 emotion 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 land 
 us in the conclusion that brutes are capable of moral conception, 
 or that thev have a conscience. 
 
198 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 would, at this rate, argue, in all cases, a per- 
 ception of what the moral and equitable adjust- 
 ment would be between 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 sensi- 
 bility, can be in no way indispensable to an 
 emotion, exemplified in its utmost force and 
 intensity by sentient creatures, in whom there 
 cannot be detected even the first rudiments of 
 a moral nature. Two dogs, when fighting for 
 a bone, make as distinct and declared an ex- 
 hibition of their anger, as two human beings 
 when disputing about the boundary of their 
 contiguous fields. The emotion flashes as un- 
 equivocally 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 her wrongs, gives forth her deep and re- 
 iterated cry to the echoes of the wilderness. It 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 199 
 
 is an emotion, in fact, which seems coextensive, 
 not only with moral, but with physical sen- 
 sation. 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 re- 
 sentment which ring throughout the amplitudes 
 of savage and sohtary nature, as in the contests 
 of civilized man. 
 
 7. The truth, then, seems to be, that the 
 office of the moral faculty is, not to originate, 
 but rather to confine and qualify and regulate 
 this emotion. Anger, if we but study its history 
 and actual exhibitions, will be found the pri- 
 mary 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 ex- 
 pansive 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 violating our 
 rights. Infants are fully capable of the feeling, 
 long before they have a notion of equity, or 
 of what is rightfully their own and rightfully 
 another's. The anger of animals, too, is, in 
 like manner, destitute of that moral ingredient, 
 which the definitions we have quoted suppose 
 indispensable to the formation of it. And yet 
 
200 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 their emitted sounds have the very expression 
 of fierceness, that we meet with so often among 
 the fellows of our own species. The provoca- 
 tion, 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 
 indicative of kindred workings within, that 
 have their outward vent in a common and 
 kindred physiognomy, between him who is 
 styled the lord of the creation, and those be- 
 neath his feet, who are conceived to stand at 
 a distance that scarcely admits of comparison 
 in the phenomena of their nature. Even man, 
 in the full growth of his rational and moral 
 nature, 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 inferior 
 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 
 towards others, is the purposed injustice of 
 others towards us ; and, so far from purposing 
 the injustice, animals have not even the faculty 
 of conceiving it. The moral consideration, 
 then, does not enter as a constituent part into 
 all resentment. It is rather a superadded 
 quality which designates a species of it. It 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 201 
 
 is not the epithet which characterises 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 another blow that such a moral 
 characteristic is wholly inapplicable. Morality 
 may at times characterise both the mental 
 feeling, and the muscular performance ; but it 
 should be as little identified with the one as 
 with the other. And however much analysts 
 may have succeeded on other occasions, in 
 reducing to sameness what appeared to be 
 separate constituents 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 being 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 animal, without so much 
 as the germ, or the rudest elements of a moral 
 nature. 
 
 8. Anger then is an emotion that may rage 
 and tumultuate in a bosom into which one moral 
 conception has never entered. For its excite- 
 
202 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 ment nothing more seems necessary than to 
 thwart any desire however unreasonable, or to 
 disappoint any one object which the heart may 
 chance to be set upon. So far from a sense of 
 justice being needful to originate this emotion — 
 it is the man who, utterly devoid of justice, 
 would monopolize to himself all that lies within 
 the visible horizon, who is most exposed to its 
 visitation. He 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 all its interests as 
 already partitioned among the various members 
 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 individual, 
 till a trespass was made within the limits of that 
 territory which is properly and peculiarly his 
 own. In other words, it is the office of this 
 virtue, not to inspire anger, but to draw land- 
 marks and limitations around it ; and, so far 
 from a high moral principle originating this 
 propensity, it is but an animal propensity. 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 203 
 
 restrained and kept within check and confine- 
 ment at the bidding of principle. 
 
 9. The distinction between reflective and un- 
 reflective anger did not escape the notice of the 
 sagacious Butler, as may be seen in the follow- 
 ing passages of a sermon upon resentment. — 
 " Resentment is of two kinds — hasty and sudden, 
 or settled and deliberate. The former is called 
 anger and often passion, which, though a general 
 word, is frequently appropriated and confined to 
 the particular feeling, sudden anger, as distinct 
 from deliberate resentment malice and revenge." 
 " 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 anger, may 
 be occasioned by injury or contempt, in which 
 cases reason suggests to our thoughts the injury 
 and contempt which is the occasion of the 
 emotion : But I am speaking of the former, 
 only in so far as it is to be distinguished from 
 the latter. The only way in which our reason 
 and understanding can raise anger, is by repre- 
 senting to our mind an injustice or injury of some 
 kind or other. Now momentary anger is fre- 
 quently raised, not only without any rule, but with- 
 out any reason ; that is, without any appearance 
 
204 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 of injury as distinct from hurt or pain. It 
 cannot, I suppose, be thought that this passion 
 in infants and the lower species of animals, 
 and which is often seen in man towards them, 
 it cannot, I say, be imagined that these instances 
 of this emotion 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 opposition, 
 considered merely as such, and without regard 
 to the fault or demerit of him who is the author 
 of them ; 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 acci- 
 dentally serve to prevent or remedy such fault 
 and injury. 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 unculti- 
 vated parts of the world, and where regular 
 governments are not formed they frequently 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 205 
 
 happen, in which there is no time for consider- 
 ing, 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 instinc- 
 tive and what may be called rational anger, 
 when he specifies the anger that we often feel 
 towards the inferior animals. There is properly 
 no injury done, where there is no injury in- 
 tended. 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 resentment, 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 
 instruments 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 felt by the former just 
 as keen and persevering, as if it were between 
 two human combatants. This makes it quite 
 obvious that there may be anger without any 
 sense of designed injury on the part of him 
 who is the object of it. Even children, idiots, 
 lunatics, might all be the objects of such a 
 resentment. 
 
206 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 10. The final cause of this emotion in the in- 
 ferior animals is abundantly obvious. It stimu- 
 lates and ensures resistance to that violence, 
 which, if not resisted, would often terminate in 
 the destruction of its object. And it probably 
 much oftener 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 antago- 
 nists eye each other with a sort of natural 
 respect ; and, as if by a common though tacit 
 consent, wisely abstain on either side from 
 molestation, 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 cer- 
 tainly have been entered upon. And so by a 
 system, or machinery of reciprocal checks and 
 counteractives, and where the mental affections 
 too perform the part of essential forces, there is 
 not that incessant warfare of extermination which 
 might have depopulated the world. And here 
 we might observe, that, in studying that balance 
 of powers and of preserving influences, which 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 207 
 
 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 
 obviously 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 in- 
 tended for its safety, as is its muscular confor- 
 mation or capacity for speed. The affection of 
 a mother for her young points as intelligibly 
 to a designer's care for the preservation of the 
 species, as does that apparatus of nourishment 
 wherewith nature hath endowed her. The mo- 
 ther'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 indi- 
 cations of a God. 
 
 11. But to return to the special affection of 
 anger, with a reference more particularly to its 
 workings in our own species, 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 re- 
 sentment, when it burns and festers within our 
 own hearts, but also in being the objects of 
 another's resentment. They are not the effects 
 only of his anger that we are afraid of; we are 
 
208 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 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 formi- 
 dable, though no chastisement 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 often make as great a sacrifice to shun 
 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 correc- 
 tion 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 mus- 
 cular force among men ; and forms indeed a most 
 important mound of defence against the effer- 
 vescence 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 instru- 
 ment of defence against the aggressions of vio- 
 lence 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 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 209 
 
 are actually made. It has a preventive opera- 
 tion 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 compa- 
 nionships, to the consciousness of so many 
 sleeping fires, in readiness to blaze forth, at the 
 touch or on the moment of any provocation 
 being offered. We doubt not, that, in military 
 and fashionable, and indeed in all society, it acts 
 as a powerful restraint on every thing that is 
 offensive. The domineering insolence of those 
 who, with the instrument of anger too, would 
 hold society in bondage, is most effectually 
 arrested, when met by an anger which throws 
 back the fear upon themselves, and so quiets 
 and composes all their violence. It is thus that 
 a balance is maintained, without which human 
 society might go into utter derangement ; and 
 c. p 
 
210 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 without which too, even the animal creation 
 might lose its stability and disappear. And 
 there is a kind of moral power in the anger 
 itself, that is separate from the animal or the 
 physical strength which it puts into operation ; 
 and which invests with command, or at least 
 provides with defensive armour those who would 
 otherwise be the most helpless of our species — 
 so that decrepid age or feeble womanhood has 
 by the mere rebuke of an angry countenance 
 made the stoutest heart to tremble before them. 
 It is a moral force, by which the inequalities of 
 muscular force are repaired ; and, while itself a 
 firebrand and a destroyer, yet, by the very terror 
 of its ravages, which it diffuses among all, were 
 it to stalk abroad and at large over the world — 
 does it contribute to uphold the pacific virtues 
 among men. 
 
 12. When the anger of one individual in a 
 household is the terror of the rest, then that 
 individual may become the little despot of the 
 establishment ; and thus it is that often the 
 feeblest of them all in muscular strength may 
 wield a domestic tyranny by which the stoutest 
 is overpowered. But when the anger of this one 
 is fortunately met by the spirit and resolution of 
 another, then, kept at bay with its own weapon, 
 it is neutralized into a state of innocence. It is 
 not necessary for the production of this effect, that 
 the parties ever should have come to the extre- 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 211 
 
 mity of an open and declared violence. If there 
 be only a mutual consciousness of each other's 
 energy of passion and of purpose, then a mutual 
 awe and mutual forbearance may be the result of 
 it. And thus it is, that, by the operation of these 
 reciprocal checks in a family, the peace and 
 order of it may be securely upholden. We have 
 witnessed how much a wayward and outrageous 
 temper has been sweetened, by the very pre- 
 sence in the same mansion, of one vdio could 
 speak again, and would not succumb to any 
 unreasonable violence. The violence is abated. 
 And we cannot compute how much it is that the 
 blandness and the mutual complaisance which 
 obtain in society, are due to the secret dread in 
 whicli men stand of each other's irritation ; or, 
 in other words, little do we know to what extent, 
 the smile and the courteousness and the urbanity 
 of civiHzed life, that are in semblance so many 
 expressions of human benevolence, may, really 
 and substantially, be owing to the fears of human 
 selfishness. Were this speculation pursued, it 
 might lead to a very humiliating estimate indeed 
 of the virtue of individuals — though we cannot 
 but admire the wisdom of that economy, by 
 which, even without virtue, individuals may be 
 made, through the mutual action and reaction of 
 their emotions, to form the materials of a society 
 that can stand. Anger does in private Ufe, 
 what the terrors of the penal code do in the 
 
212 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 community at large. It acts with salutary in- 
 fluence, in a vast multiplicity of cases, which no 
 law could possibly provide for; and where the 
 chastisements of law, whether in their corrective 
 or preventive influence, cannot reach. The good 
 of a penal discipline in society extends far and 
 wide beyond the degree in which it is actually 
 inflicted ; and many are the pacific habits of a 
 neighbourhood, that might be ascribed, not to 
 the pacific virtues of the men who compose it, 
 but to the terror of those consequences which all 
 men know would ensue upon their violation. 
 And it is just so of anger, in the more frequent 
 and retired intercourse of private life. The 
 good which it does by the fear of its ebullitions 
 is greater far than all which is done by the 
 actual ebullitions themselves. But we cannot 
 fail to perceive that the amount of service which 
 is done in this way to the species at large, must 
 all be regarded as a deduction from the amount 
 of credit which is due to the individuals who 
 belong to it. We have already remarked on 
 the propensity of moralists to accredit the wisdom 
 of man with effects, which, as being provided 
 for not by any care or reflection of ours, but by 
 the operation of constitutional instincts — are 
 more properly and immediately to be ascribed 
 to the wisdom of God. And in like manner, 
 there is a propensity in moralists to accredit the 
 wisdom of man with effects, which, as being 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 213 
 
 provided for not by any consciousness or exercise 
 of principle on our part, but by the operation still 
 of constitutional instincts — are more properly 
 and immediately to be ascribed to the goodness 
 of God.* 
 
 13. There is another special affection which 
 we feel more particularly induced to notice, 
 from its palpable effect in restraining the ex- 
 cess 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, con- 
 sidered as a check or counteractive to the indul- 
 gence of passion between the sexes. The 
 former is as clear an instance of moral, as the 
 latter is of physical adaptation. And in their 
 
 * The following- extract from Brown tends well to illustrate one 
 of the final causes for the implantation of this principle in our 
 constitution. — " What human wants required, that all-foreseeing 
 Power, who is the g-uardian of our infirmities, has supplied to 
 human weakness. There is a principle in our mind, which is to 
 us like a constant protector, which may slumber, indeed, but which 
 slumbers only at seasons when its vigilance would be useless, 
 which awakes therefore, at the first appearance of unjust inten- 
 tion, 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 nature, if, when 
 aggression was threatened against the weak and unarmed, at a 
 distance from the aid of others, there were instantly and uni- 
 formly, by the intervention of some wonder-working power, 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 com- 
 
214 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 adjustment the one to the other, we observe 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 execu- 
 tion of some very nice and difficult task, he is 
 managing between contrary extremes, or is de- 
 vising in just proportion for contrary interests. 
 We might better comprehend the design of this 
 strikingly peculiar mechanism, by imagining of 
 the two opposite instincts, that either of them 
 was in excess, or either of them in defect. Did 
 the constitutional modesty prevail to a certain 
 conceivable extent — it might depopulate the 
 world. Did the animal propensity preponderate, 
 on the other hand — it might land the world in 
 an anarchy of unblushing and universal licen- 
 
 pared 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 danger might be averted, and to whom 
 consequently, the very sword, which he scarcely 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 thunder-bolt 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 moment, young again; the 
 weakest, vigorous." Lect. Ixiii. 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 215 
 
 tiousness — to the entire breaking up of our 
 present 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 almost 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 upholden ; and, in the second instance, 
 through the same appetency sufficiently re- 
 strained, those hallowed decencies of life are 
 kept unviolate, which are so indispensable to 
 all order 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 beauti- 
 ful result, when viewed in connection with that 
 moral force, by the insertion of which in our 
 nature it is accomplished, strongly bespeaks a 
 presiding intellect — which in framing the me- 
 chanism 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 crea- 
 
216 ADAPTATIONS OF EXTERNAL NATURE TO 
 
 tiire of a constitution which is anterior to his 
 own wisdom and his own will, and of circum- 
 stances which are also anterior to his wisdom 
 and his will. It would have needed a far more 
 comprehensive view than we are equal to, both 
 of what was best for men in a community and 
 for man as an individual, 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 ex- 
 ternal world. That constitutional shame, that 
 quick and trembling delicacy, a prompt and 
 ever-present guardian, appearing as it does in 
 very early childhood, is most assuredly not a 
 result from any anticipation by us, either of 
 future or distant consequences. 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 property 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 destructive fascination, which never is 
 indulged, without deterioration to the whole 
 structure of the moral character and constitu- 
 tion ; and which, when once permitted to lord 
 it over the habits, so often terminates in the 
 cruel disruption of families, and the irretriev- 
 able ruin and disgrace of the offender. It is 
 
THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. 217 
 
 not by any prospective calculation of ours, that 
 . this natural modesty, acting as a strong pre- 
 cautionary 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 
 beginning ; 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 himself, 
 has been placed so immediately under the 
 management of better and higher hands. 
 
 15. There are many other special affections 
 in our nature — the principal of which will fall 
 to be noticed in succeeding chapters ; and the 
 interests to which they are respectively sub- 
 servient form a natural ground of division, in 
 our treatment of them. Certain of these affec- 
 tions 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. 
 
218 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 On those special Affections ivJiich 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 isolation, could that 
 state ever have subsisted for a single day, is 
 the patriarchal arrangement. No sooner indeed 
 is the infant creature ushered into being, than 
 it is met by the cares and the caresses of those 
 who are around it, and who have either at- 
 tended or welcomed its entry on this scene of 
 existence — as if, in very proportion to the 
 extremity of its utter helplessness, was the 
 strength of that security which nature hath 
 provided, in the workings of the human con- 
 stitution, 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 bene- 
 volent adaptation, than that there should be 
 hearts to sympathize 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 
 
WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 219 
 
 fondness of mothers, 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 principle of association — still the argu- 
 ment 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 decisively 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 — yet the 
 frame-work of that very peculiar apparatus by 
 which the milk is secreted, and the suckling's 
 mouth provided with a duct of conveyance 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 con- 
 trivance 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 moment of their birth, instead of an inde- 
 pendent principle in her nature, was the de- 
 pendent product of remembrances and feelings 
 which had accumulated during the period of 
 gestation, and were at length fixed, amidst the 
 
220 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 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 circum- 
 stances 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 have risen into being ; and our argu- 
 ment 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 off- 
 spring. 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 ordaining mind, as would the establish- 
 ment of any peculiar law. Let it suffice once 
 for all to have said this — for if in the prosecu- 
 tion of our inquiry, we stopped at every turn to 
 entertain the question, whether each beneficial 
 tendency on which we reasoned, were an ori- 
 ginal or only a secondary principle in nature 
 — we should be constantly rushing uncalled 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 221 
 
 into the mists of obscurity ; and fastening upon 
 our cause an element 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 a derivative, 
 and less obviously of an instinctive character, 
 than is that strong maternal affinity which 
 meets so opportunely with the extreme help- 
 lessness of its objects, that but for the succour 
 and sympathy of those whose delight it is to 
 cherish and sustain them, would perish in the 
 infancy of their being. However questionable 
 the analysis might be, which would resolve 
 the universal 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 ob- 
 servation, not to be original but originated 
 feelings. Inquirers, according to their respec- 
 tive 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 multiplication 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 
 
222 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 both of matter and of mind, afforded so much 
 of entertainment, to the scholastics of a former 
 age. But with the adjustment of this philo- 
 sophy we properly have no concern. It matters 
 not to our argument whether the result in 
 question be due to the force of instincts or to 
 the force of circumstances, — any more than 
 whether, in the physical system, a certain 
 beneficial result may be ascribed to apt and 
 peculiar laws, or to apt and peculiar colloca- 
 tions. In virtue of one or other or both of 
 these causes, we behold the individuals of the 
 species grouped together — or, as it may be 
 otherwise expressed, the aggregate mass of the 
 species, broken asunder into distinct families, 
 and generally living by themselves, each family 
 under one common roof, but apart from all 
 the rest in distinct habitations ; while the mem- 
 bers of every little commonwealth are so linked 
 by certain affections, or by certain feelings of 
 reciprocal obligation, that each member feels 
 almost as intensely 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 his 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 arrangement are 
 too obvious to be enumerated. Even though the 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 223 
 
 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 wis- 
 dom are wanting. It is in the bosom 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 effective 
 succour afforded to them. Even when the 
 strength for labour, instead of being confined 
 to one, is shared among several of the house- 
 hold, there is often an incalculable benefit, in 
 the very concert of their forces and com- 
 munity of their gains — so long, for example, 
 as a brotherhood, yet advancing towards matu- 
 rity, continue to live under the same roof, and 
 to live under the direction of one authority, 
 or by the movement of one will. We 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 economy is dissolved, 
 and the separate members betake themselves 
 each to his own way in the world — the duties 
 and the friendships of domestic life are not 
 annihilated by this dispersion ; but, under the 
 powerful influence of a felt and acknowledged 
 relationship, the affinities of kindred spread 
 
224 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 and multiply beyond their original precincts, 
 to the vast increase of mutual sympathy and 
 aid and good offices in general society. It 
 will not, we suppose, be questioned — that a 
 vastly greater amount of good is done by the 
 instrumentality of others, and that the instru- 
 mentality itself is greatly more available, under 
 the family system, to which we are prompted 
 by the strong affections of nature, than if that 
 system were dissolved. But the remarkable 
 thing is, that these affections had to be pro- 
 vided, as so many impellent forces — guiding- 
 men onward to an arrangement the most pro- 
 lific 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 social economy, is analogous to 
 that, which we have already observed, for the 
 wants of the animal economy. Neither of these 
 interests was confided to any cold generality, 
 whether of principle or prudence. In the one, 
 the strong appetite of hunger supplements the 
 deficiency of the rational principle of self- 
 preservation. In the other, the strong family 
 affections supplement the deficiency of the 
 moral principle of general benevolence. With- 
 out the first, the requisite measures would not 
 have been taken for the regular sustenance 
 of the individual. Without the other, the re- 
 quisite measures would not have been taken 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIEIY. 225 
 
 for the diffused sustenance 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 endea- 
 voured to substitute a sort of universal citizen- 
 ship, 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 
 that which should, it is contended, be the object 
 of every enlightened philanthropist, the general 
 and greatest good of the whole. It is thus that 
 certain transcendental speculatists would cut 
 asunder all the special affinities of our nature, 
 in order that men, set at large from the ties and 
 the duties of the domestic relationshii), 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 affec- 
 tions, as so many narrow-minded virtues, which, 
 by their distracting influence, seduce men from 
 that all-comprehensive virtue, whose constant 
 study being the good of the world — a happy 
 and regenerated Avorld, it is the fond imagination 
 c. Q 
 
226 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 of some, would be the result of its universal 
 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 philoso- 
 phical 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 impotency in human 
 means or human expedients, for carrying this 
 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 
 universal affection in their place. But, in pro- 
 secuting the object of this last affection, what 
 specific and intelligible thing are they to do? 
 How shall they go about it? What conventional 
 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 these 
 cosmopoUtes admit of being practically realized 
 — whether by a combination, of which the 
 chance is that all men might not agree upon it ; 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 2*27 
 
 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 indulgence 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 endued us for a few particular men, 
 and the general love wherewith philosophers 
 would inspire us for men in the abstract — the 
 former philanthropy leading to a devoted and 
 sustained habit of well-directed exertion, for 
 supplying the wants and multiplying the enjoy- 
 ments of every separate household ; the latter 
 philanthropy, at once indefinite in its aim and 
 intangible in its objects, overlooking every man 
 just 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 happi- 
 ness of the world. But ambitious and aspiring 
 man would take the charge of this happiness 
 upon himself ; and his first step would be to rid 
 the heait of all its special affections — or, in other 
 
228 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 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 paralysed all the ordinary principles 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 op- 
 posed to the wisdom of nature, is utterly power- 
 less 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 every philan- 
 thropic or political experiment which proceeds 
 on the distrust of nature's strong and urgent 
 and general affections, 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 so teem throughout 
 the cities and parishes of our land ; the perni- 
 cious legislation, which mars instead of medi- 
 cates, whenever it intermeddles with the opera- 
 ti ons of a previous and better mechanism than 
 its own — have all of them misgiven only because, 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 229 
 
 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, whetlier totally or partially, the 
 actual frame-work of society, and reconstructing 
 it in a new way or on new principles — is altoge- 
 ther 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 entirely 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 undomesticated to a com- 
 mon education — could not have been carried 
 into effect, without overbearing the parental 
 affection, and other strong propensities of nature 
 besides ; and so, it was stifled in embryo, by 
 the instant revolt of nature against it. That 
 legislation, which, instead of overbearing, would 
 but seduce nature from her principles, may sub- 
 sist for generations — yet not without such dis- 
 temper 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 pernicious of all bribery, re- 
 laxed the ties and obligations of mutual relation- 
 ship — exonerating parents on the one hand from 
 
230 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 the care and maintenance of their own offspring ; 
 and tempting children on the other to cast off 
 the parents who gave them birth, and, instead 
 of an asykim gladdened by the associations 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 arrangements of nature not 
 been disturbed, the relative affections which 
 she herself has implanted would have been 
 found strong enough, 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 philanthropists and states- 
 men, of the hazard, nay of the positive and un- 
 doubted mischief, to which the best interests of 
 humanity are exposed — when they traverse the 
 processes of a better mechanism instituted by 
 the wisdom of God, through the operation of 
 another mechanism 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 ope- 
 ration, and which bear with most important effect 
 on the state and security of a commonwealth. 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 231 
 
 Each mail's house may be regarded as a prepa- 
 ratory school, where he acquires in boyhood, 
 those habits of subordination and dependence 
 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 that would 
 unsettle those principles which bind together the 
 larger commonwealth of a state ; and that too 
 with still greater force and frequency, than it 
 would unsettle those affections which bind toge- 
 ther the little commonwealth of a family. 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 brother- 
 hood, 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 them- 
 selves, 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 naturally and habitually ac- 
 tuated — as, individually, when the prince or 
 
232 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 the noble, however elevated, may have disgraced 
 himself by his tyranny or his vices ; or, gene- 
 rally, when the patrician orders of the state may 
 have entered into 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 in- 
 flamed hostility abroad in the land against the 
 principle itself — when wealth and 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, be- 
 cause the dupes of designing 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 demon- 
 stration of her wisdom, than by the mischief 
 which ensues on the abjuration of her own 
 principles; and never is the lesson thus held 
 forth more palpable and convincing, than when 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 233 
 
 respect for station and respect for office cease 
 to be operating principles in society. We are 
 abundantly sensible that both mighty posses- 
 sions and the honours of an industrious ancestry 
 may be disjoined from individual talent and 
 character — nay, that they may meet in the person 
 of one so utterly weak or worthless, as that our 
 reverence because of the adventitious circum- 
 stances in which he is placed, may be completely 
 overborne by our contempt either for the imbe- 
 cility 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 prin- 
 ciple to lose sight of its existence ; or to betray 
 such an imperfect discernment 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 righ- 
 teousness as to forfeit all its claims to respect — 
 on the other hand, to be convinced that these 
 claims are the objects of a natural and universal 
 acknowledgment, and have therefore a founda- 
 tion 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 
 
234 AFFECTIONS WHU:H CONDUCE TO 
 
 ordinary righteousness, meet together in the 
 person of the same individual. The effect of 
 such a composition upon human feelings may 
 well persuade us that, while a respect for righ- 
 teousness admitted by all enters as one ingre- 
 dient, 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 separation, 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 ingredient, when, instead of a virtuous 
 man, the object of contemplation is a virtuous 
 monarch — though it becomes more palpable 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 intellect which 
 belong to common and every day humanity. 
 Even such a monarch has only to appear among 
 his subjects ; 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 
 enthusiasm. Even the sturdiest demagogue, if 
 he come within the sphere of the royal presence, 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF .SOCIETY. 235 
 
 cannot resist the infection of that common senti- 
 ment 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 exclaim 
 that men are born to be slaves. But the truth 
 is, that there is nothing prostrate, nothing 
 pusillanimous in the emotion 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 with- 
 out any forfeiture of their native or becoming- 
 dignity. We do not affirm of this respect 
 either for the sovereignty of an empire, or 
 for the chieftainship of a province — that it 
 forms an original or constituent 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 established. 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 up- 
 root this principle from human hearts — he will 
 find that it cannot be accomplished, without 
 tearing asunder one of the strongest of those 
 
236 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 ligaments, which bind together the component 
 parts of human society into an harmonious and 
 well-adjusted mechanism. And it is then that 
 the wisdom which made nature, will demon- 
 strate its vast superiority over the wisdom 
 which would mend it — when the desperate ex- 
 periment of the latter has been tried and found 
 wanting. There are certain restraining forces 
 (and reverence for rank and station is one of 
 them) which never so convincingly 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 insurrectionary violence, till, as the effect 
 of this great national effervescence, the land 
 mourns over its ravaged fields and desolated 
 families ; when, after the sweeping anarchy 
 has blown over it, and the sore chastisement 
 has been undergone, the now schooled and 
 humbled 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 con- 
 servative influences, which, in the moment of 
 their wantonness, they had flung so recklessly 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 237 
 
 away — in virtue of which the whips may be- 
 come scorpions, and the mild and well-balanced 
 monarchy may become a grinding despotism, 
 
 8. Next to the wisdom which nature dis- 
 covers in her implantation or developement of 
 those affections, by which society is parcelled 
 down into separate families ; is the wisdom 
 which she discovers in those other affections, 
 by which the territory of a nation, and all upon 
 it that admits of such a distribution, is likewise 
 parcelled and broken off into separate proper- 
 ties. Both among the analysts of the human 
 mind, and among metaphysical jurists and 
 politicians, there is to be found much obscure 
 and unsatisfactory speculation respecting those 
 principles, whether elementary or complex, by 
 which property is originated and by which 
 property is upholden. We are not called to 
 enter upon any subtle analysis for the purpose 
 of ascertaining either what that is which gives 
 birth to the possessory feeling on the part of 
 an owner, or what that is which leads to such 
 a universal recognition and respect for his rights 
 in general society. It will be enough if we 
 can evince that neither of these is a factitious 
 product, devised by the wisdom or engendered 
 by the authority of patriots and legislators, de- 
 liberating on what was best for the good and 
 order of a community ; but that both of them 
 
238 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 are the results of a prior wisdom, employed, 
 not in framing a constitution for a state, but 
 in framing a constitution for human nature. It 
 will suffice to demonstrate this, if we can show, 
 that, in very early childhood, there are ger- 
 minated both a sense of property and a respect 
 for the property of others ; and that, long before 
 the children have been made the subjects of 
 any artificial training on the thing in question, 
 or are at all capable of any anticipation, or 
 even wish, respecting the public and collective 
 well-being of the country at large. Just as the 
 affection of a mother is altogether special, and 
 terminates upon the infant, without any calcu- 
 lation as to the superiority of the family system 
 over the speculative systems of the cosmopo- 
 lites ; and just as the appetite of hunger impels 
 to the use of food, without the least regard, for 
 the time being, to the support or preservation 
 of the animal economy — so, most assuredly, do 
 the desires or notions of property, and even 
 the principles by which it is limited, spring 
 up in the breasts of children, without the 
 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 en- 
 joyment of which I, 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 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 239 
 
 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 iise 
 and enjoyment of all things. We should say that 
 it regards the whole of external 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 inter- 
 meddle 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 rights— 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. Whatever 
 it grasps, it feels to be as much its own as it 
 does the fingers w hich 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 dis- 
 pleasure 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 
 
240 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 accurate 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 expecta- 
 tion, 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 con- 
 tradiction — the self-constituted proprietor of a 
 domain, wide as its desires, and on which none 
 may interfere against its will, without awakening 
 in its bosom, somewhat like the sense and 
 feeling of an injurious molestation.* 
 
 10. And it is instructive to observe the pro- 
 
 * 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 
 offence 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 we are vulnerable to anger from 
 all points of the compass. Let another meddle, to our annoyance, 
 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 his 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. 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 241 
 
 cess, 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 unre- 
 stricted 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 distin- 
 guishes 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 to signalize some things, to which, its 
 feelings of property, now withdrawn from wide 
 and boundless generality, are exclusively and 
 specifically directed. It will make conclusively 
 for our argument, if it shall appear, that this 
 sense of property, 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 
 wisdom, 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 ac- 
 quiescence and satisfaction of them all. We 
 
242 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 might gather a lesson even from the quarrel 
 which sometimes arises among them, about 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 
 injured, if, on returning, it shall find the chair 
 in the possession of another occupier. The brief 
 occupation which it has already had, gives it the 
 feeling of a right to the continued occupation of 
 it — insomuch, that, when kept out by an in- 
 truder, it has the sense of having been wrong- 
 ously dispossessed. 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 invested in its own imagina- 
 tion, 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 suf- 
 ficient in the apprehension of the claimant, but 
 sufficient in the general sense of the community, 
 for substantiating the right of many a proprietor. 
 12. But there is still another primitive ingre- 
 dient 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 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 243 
 
 in addition to the plea that it had been the re- 
 cent occupier of the chair in question, be able 
 further to advance in argument for its right — 
 that, with its own hands, it had just placed it 
 beside the fire, and thereby given additional 
 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 natural right 
 of property rests — even that every man is pro- 
 prietor of the fruit of his own labour ; and that 
 to whatever extent he may have impressed ad- 
 ditional 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 res- 
 pected by all his fellows— so that he is suffered 
 to remain, in the secure and unmolested posses- 
 sion of that which he rightfully claims. The 
 circumstances which originate the sense of pro- 
 
244 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 perty, serve to explain this one fact, the ex- 
 istence of a possessory feeling, in the heart of 
 every individual who is actuated thereby. But 
 the deference rendered to this feeling by any 
 other individuals, is another and a distinct fact ; 
 and we must refer to a distinct principle from 
 that of the mere sense of property, for the ex- 
 planation of it. This new or distinct principle 
 is a sense of equity — or that which prompts to 
 likeness or equality, between the treatment 
 which I should claim of other-s and my treat- 
 ment of them ; and in virtue of which, I should 
 hold it unrighteous and unfair, if I disregarded 
 or inflicted violence on the claim of another, 
 which, in the same circumstances with him, I 
 am conscious that I should have felt, and would 
 have advanced for myself. Had I been the occu- 
 pier of that chair, in like manner with the little 
 claimant who is now insisting on the possession 
 of it, I should have felt and claimed precisely as 
 he is doing. Still more, had I like him placed 
 it beside the fire, I should have felt what he is 
 now expressing — a still more distinct and de- 
 cided right to it. If conscious of an identity of 
 feeling between me and another in the same 
 circumstances — then let my moral nature be 
 so far evolved as to feel the force of this consi- 
 deration ; and, under the operation of a sense of 
 equity, I shall defer to the very claim, which I 
 should myself have urged, had I been similarly 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 245 
 
 placed. And it is marvellous, how soon the 
 hearts of children discover a sensibility to this 
 consideration, and how soon they are capable of 
 becoming obedient to the power of it. It is, in 
 fact, the principle on which a thousand contests 
 of the nursery are settled, and many thousand 
 more are prevented ; what else would be an 
 incessant scramble of rival and ravenous cupi- 
 dity, being mitigated and reduced to a very 
 great, though unknown and undefinable extent, 
 by the sense of justice coming into play. It is 
 altogether worthy of remark, however, that the 
 sense of property is anterior to the sense of 
 justice, and comes from an anterior and distinct 
 source in our nature. It is not justice which 
 originates the proprietary feeling in the heart of 
 any individual. It only arbitrates between the 
 proprietary claims and feelings of different indi- 
 viduals—after these had previously arisen by the 
 operation of other principles in the human con- 
 stitution. Those writers on jurisprudence are 
 sadly and inextricably puzzled, who imagine 
 that justice presided over the first ordinations of 
 property — utterly at a loss as they must be, to 
 find out the 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 
 
246 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 each of them can allege, as founded either on 
 the length of undisputed and luidisposed of pos- 
 session, 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 con- 
 stituted, before that she had ever bestowed any 
 attention, or given any award whatever regarding 
 it. The matter may be illustrated by the pecu- 
 liar relation 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 encroachment of a neighbour's 
 violence upon the other. But justice no more 
 originated the proprietary, than it did the sensi- 
 tive 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 infliction 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 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 247 
 
 an encroachment upon our own property, to 
 which Ave 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 another ; 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 Jus- 
 tice 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 misunderstanding 
 or controversy between man and man, property, 
 a material pre-existent or already made, forms 
 the subject of many of those questions which are 
 put into her hands. 
 
 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 conclusively and defini- 
 tively settled. The parents may interpose their 
 authority, and assign his own particular chair to 
 each member of the household. The instant 
 effect of such a decree, in fixing and distinguish- 
 ing the respective properties in all time coming, 
 has led, we believe, to a misconception regarding 
 the real origin of property — in consequence of a 
 
248 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 certain obscure analogy betAveen this act of 
 parents or legislators over the family of a house- 
 hold, and a supposed act of rulers or legislators 
 over the great family of a nation. Now, not only 
 have the parents this advantage over the magis- 
 trates — ^that the property which they thus dis- 
 tribute 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, v/ith all this 
 superiority on the part of the household legis- 
 lators, it would even be their wisdom, 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 — 
 to have respect, in fact, when making distribu- 
 tion of the chairs, both to their habits of previous 
 occupation, and to the additional value which 
 any of them may have impressed upon their 
 favourite seats, by such little arts of upholstery 
 or mechanics, as they are competent to practise. 
 A wise domestic legislator would not thwart, 
 but rather defer to the claims and expectations 
 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 un- 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 249 
 
 questioned occuiDation so universally gives ; and 
 greatly deferring to the principle, that, whatever 
 the fruit of each man's labour may be, it right- 
 fully, and therefore should legitimately belong to 
 him. A government could, and at the termination 
 of a revolutionary storm, often does, traverse these 
 principles ; but not without the excitement of a 
 thousand heart-burnings, and so the establish- 
 ment of a strong counteraction to its own autho- 
 rity in the heart of its dominions. It is the 
 dictate of sound policy — that the natural, on the 
 one hand, and the legal or political on the other, 
 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 never ex- 
 hibits a better understanding of her own place 
 and functions, than when, founding on materials 
 already provided, she feels that her wisest part 
 is but to act as an auxiliary, and to ratify 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 perpetuates or 
 defends from violation that existent order of 
 things which itself had established, or, rather, 
 which itself had ratified. Even though at its 
 tirst ordinations it had contravened those na- 
 
250 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 tural 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. Whatever fraud 
 or force may have been concerned at the his- 
 torical commencement of the present and actual 
 distribution of property — the then new pos- 
 sessors have at length become old ; and, under 
 the canopy and protection of law, the natural 
 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 inde- 
 finite 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 natural ju- 
 risprudence, whatever violence may have been 
 done to them at the overthrow of a former 
 regime, are again fostered into all their ori- 
 ginal efiicacy and strength during the con- 
 tinuance of a present one. Insomuch, that if, 
 at the end of half a century, those outcasts 
 of a great revolutionary hurricane, the descend- 
 ants of a confiscated noblesse, were to rally 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 251 
 
 and combine for the recovery of their ancient 
 domains — 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 pre- 
 scriptive 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. Apart from the physical, did we 
 but compute the 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 asso- 
 ciated with the recollection 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 recover 
 is not so strong as the disposition to retain. 
 The recollection that these were once my pa- 
 rental acres, though wrested from the hand of 
 remote ancestors 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 reflection that these are now my possessed 
 acres, which, though left but by immediate an- 
 cestors, I have been accustomed from infancy 
 to call my own, would enlist on the side of 
 
252 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 the defensive. In the course of generations, 
 those sedative influences, which tend to the 
 preservation of the existing order wax stronger 
 and stronger; and those disturbing influences, 
 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 accumidated 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 regard 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 eflectual 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 recognised possession, might claim 
 as being rightly and originally his, the fruit of 
 all the labour which he may choose to expend 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 253 
 
 upon it. But this was not left to the discovery 
 of man, or to any ordinations of his consequent 
 upon that discovery. He was 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 family affection — which, concentrating his 
 efforts on a certain few, has made them a 
 hundred times more prolific of benefit to man- 
 kind than if all had been left to provide the 
 best they may for the whole, without a precise 
 or detenuinate impulse to any. And in like 
 manner, man was not left to find out the direc- 
 tion in which his industry might be made most 
 productive of the materials of enjoyment ; but, 
 with the efforts of each concentrated by means 
 of a special possessory affection on a certain 
 portion of the territory, the universal produce 
 is incalculably greater than under a medley 
 system of indifference, with every field alike 
 
254 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 open to all, and, therefore, alike unreclaimed 
 from the wilderness — unless one man shall con- 
 sent to labour it in seed time, although another 
 should reap the fruit of his labour in harvest. 
 It is good that man was not trusted with the 
 whole disentanglement of this chaos — but that a 
 natural jurisprudence, founded on the constitu- 
 tion of the human mind, so far advances and 
 facilitates the task of that artificial jurispru- 
 dence, which frames the various codes or con- 
 stitutions 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 power- 
 fully backed this principle, by means of another 
 as strongly and universally felt as the former, 
 even that each man has a right to possess the 
 fruit of his own industry. The human legislator 
 has little more to do than to confirm, or rather 
 to promulgate and make known his determina- 
 tion to abide by principles already felt and 
 recognised by all men. Wanting these, he could 
 have fixed nothing, he could have perpetuated 
 nothing. The legal constitution of every state, 
 in its last and finished form, comes from the 
 hand of man. But the great and natural prin- 
 ciples, which secure for these constitutions the 
 acceptance of whole commtmities — implanted in 
 man from his birth, or at least evincing their 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 255 
 
 presence and power in very early childhood — 
 these are what bespeak the immediate hand of 
 God. 
 
 17. Bnt 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, however, 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 revolution has done its work 
 and ejected the old dynasty of proprietors, 
 the mischief to them may be as irrecoverable, 
 as if their estates had been wrested from them, 
 by an irruption from the waters of the ocean, 
 by earthquake, or the sweeping resistless visi- 
 tation of any other great physical calamity. 
 The moral world has its epochs and its transi- 
 tions as well as the natural, during which the 
 ordinary laws are not suspended but only for 
 the time overborne ; but this does not hinder the 
 recurrence and full reinstatement of these laws 
 during the long eras of intermediate repose. And 
 it is marvellous, with what certainty and speed, 
 the conservative influences, of which we have 
 
256 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 treated, gather around a new system of things, 
 with whatever violence, and even injustice, it 
 may have been nshered into the world — inso- 
 much 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 ; rivetting each of 
 them to his own several property, and altogether 
 establishing a present order of as great firmness 
 and strength as ever belonged to the order which 
 went before it, but which is now superseded 
 and forgotten. It is Avell that nature hath 
 annexed so potent a charm to actual possession ; 
 and a charm which strengthens with every 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 perpetual 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 well for the repose of its living generations, 
 that, in virtue of the 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. 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 257 
 
 18. But ere we have completed our views 
 upon this subject, we must shortly dwell on 
 a principle of very extensive application in 
 morals ; and which itself forms a striking 
 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 announced, briefly 
 and generally : — however strong the special 
 affections of our nature may be, yet, if along 
 with them there be but a principle of equity in 
 the mind, then, these affections, so far from con- 
 centrating our selfish regards upon their several 
 objects to the disregard and injury of others, will 
 but enhance 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 ap- 
 pears a very palpable iniquity. Let us now 
 conceive then, that the sentient frame- work of 
 each of the parties was made twice more sen- 
 sitive, or twice more alive to pain and pungency 
 of feeling than it actually is. In one view it 
 
 c. s 
 
258 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 may be said that each would become twice more 
 selfish than before. Each would feel a double 
 interest in warding off external 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 sensibility, 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 exquisiteness 
 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 frame would, in like 
 manner, afford a topic, on which his sense of 
 justice would feel more intensely than before. 
 It is even as w hen men of very acute sensibilities 
 company together — each has, on that very 
 account, a more delicate and refined considera- 
 tion 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 there coarseness 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 WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 259 
 
 the imagination of a similar fineness in a fellow- 
 man, restrain me so much more from the 
 putting forth of any violence upon his person. 
 If I had any compassion at all, or any horror at 
 the injustice of inflicting 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 deli- 
 cacy to all the sympathies which I before 
 felt for them. And especially, the more sensi- 
 tive 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 annoyance 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 aflection for his 
 own oflspring — the young whom he hath reared, 
 and with whom the daily habit of converse 
 
260 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 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 sepa- 
 rate 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 the strength of the parental 
 affection with each, will be the strength of the 
 fellow-feeling that each has with the affection of 
 the other — insomuch that he who bears in his 
 heart the greatest tenderness for his own off- 
 spring, would feel the greatest revolt against an 
 act of severity towards the offspring of his friend. 
 Now it is altogether so with the separate and ori- 
 ginal sense of property in each of two neigh- 
 bours, and a sense of justice grafted thereupon — 
 even as a mutual neighbourlike sympathy may be 
 grafted on the separate family affections. One 
 man a proprietor, linked by many ties with that 
 which he hath possessed and been in the 
 habitual use and management of for years, is 
 perfectly conscious of the very same kind of 
 affinity, between another man a proprietor and 
 that which belongs to him. It is not the justice 
 which so links him to his own property, any 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 26i 
 
 more than it is the sympathy with his neighbour 
 which has linked him to his own children. But 
 the justice hath given him a respectful feeling 
 for his neighbour's rights, even as the sympathy 
 would give him a tenderness for his neighbour's 
 offspring. And so far from there being aught in 
 the strength of the appropriating principle that 
 relaxes this deference to the rights of his neigh- 
 bour, the second principle may in fact grow with 
 the growth, and strengthen with the strength of 
 the first one. 
 
 2 1 . For the purpose of maintaining an equitable 
 regard, or an equitable conduct to others — it is 
 no more necessary that we should reduce or 
 extirpate the special affections of our nature, 
 than that, in order to make room for the love 
 of another, we should discharge from the bosom 
 all love of ourselves. So far from this, the 
 affection we have for ourselves, or for those 
 various objects which by the constitution of our 
 nature we are formed to seek after and to delight 
 in— is the measure of that duteous regard which 
 we owe to others, and of that duteous respect 
 which we owe to all their rights and all their 
 interests. The very highest behest of social 
 morality, while at the same time the most com- 
 prehensive of its rules, is that we should love 
 our neighbour as we do ourselves. Love to our 
 neighbour is the thing which this rule measures 
 off — and love to ourselves is the thing which 
 
262 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 it measures by. These two then, the social and 
 the selfish affections, instead of being as they 
 too often are inversely, might under a idr- 
 tuous regimen be directly proportional to each 
 other. At all events the way to advance or 
 magnify the one, is not surely to weaken or 
 abridge the other. The strength of certain 
 prior affections which by nature we do have, 
 is the standard of certain posterior affections 
 which morality tells that we ought to have. 
 Morality neither planted these prior affections, 
 nor does she enjoin us to extirpate them. They 
 were inserted by the hand of nature for the 
 most useful purposes; and morality, instead of 
 demolishing her work, applies the rule and com- 
 pass to it for the construction of her own. 
 
 22. It was not justice which presided over the 
 original distribution of property. It was not 
 she who assigned to each man his separate 
 field, any more than it was she who assigned 
 to each man his separate family. It was nature 
 that did both, by investing with such power 
 those anterior circumstances of habit and posses- 
 sion, which gave rise — first, to the special love 
 that each man bears to his own children, and 
 secondly, to the special love that each man 
 bears to his own acres. Had there been no 
 such processes beforehand, for thus isolating the 
 parental regards of each on that certain house- 
 hold group which nature placed under his roof 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 203 
 
 and the proprietary regards of each on that 
 certain local territory which history casts into 
 his possession : or, had each man been so consti- 
 tuted, that, instead of certain children whom 
 he felt to be his own, he was alike loose to 
 them or susceptible of a like random and in- 
 discriminate affection for any children; or, 
 instead of certain lands which he felt to be 
 his own, he was alike loose to them or sus- 
 ceptible of a like tenacious adherence to any 
 lands — had such been the rudimental chaos 
 which nature put into the hands of man for 
 the exercise of his matured faculties, neither 
 his morality nor his wisdom would have enabled 
 him to unravel it. But nature prepared for 
 man an easier task ; and when justice arose to her 
 work, she found a territory so far already par- 
 titioned, and each proprietor linked by a strong 
 and separate tie of peculiar force to that part 
 which he himself did occupy. She found this 
 to be the land which one man wont to possess 
 and cultivate, and that to be the land which 
 another man wont to possess and cultivate — 
 the destination, not originally, of justice, but of 
 accident, which her office nevertheless is not 
 to reverse, but to confirm. We hold it a beau- 
 tiful part of our constitution, that, the firmer 
 the tenacity wherewith the first man adheres 
 to his own, once that justice takes her place 
 among the other principles of his nature, the 
 
264 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 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 principle of justice, subsequent to pro- 
 perty, does not extirpate these special affections, 
 but only arbitrates between them. In pro- 
 portion 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 appropriation 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 impulse 
 of his own affections and unobservant of the 
 like affection of others, we should have been 
 kept in a state of constant and interminable 
 war. Under the guidance of nature and justice 
 together, the whole earth might have been par- 
 celled out, without conflict and without inter- 
 ference. 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 265 
 
 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 forbearance 
 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 fond- 
 ness 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 sensibilities of pain and suffering, 
 when any violence is inflicted, were also an- 
 terior. But as his moral perceptions expand, 
 and he considers others beside himself who are 
 similarly related to their bodies — these very 
 susceptibilities not only lead him to recoil from 
 the violence that is offered to himself; but they 
 lead him to refrain from the offering of violence 
 to other men. They may have an air of selfish- 
 ness at the first; yet so far from being obstacles 
 in the way of justice, 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 affec- 
 
266 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 tions, 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 relation 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 begins 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 w^hich gave to 
 either of them at the first that feeling of property, 
 which each has in his own separate domain ; 
 any more than it was justice which gave to 
 either of them that feeling of afiection which 
 each has for his own children. It is after, and 
 not before these feelings are formed, that justice 
 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 invasion of our 
 property, it teaches to defer to a similar dislike 
 and a similar resentment in other men. And, so 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 267 
 
 far from this original and instinctive regard for 
 this property which is my own serving at all 
 to impair, when once the moral sense comes 
 into play, it enhances my equitable regard for 
 the property of others. It is just with me the 
 proprietor, as it is with me the parent. My af- 
 fection 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 considera- 
 tion for all the attachments and the claims which 
 its proprietor has upon it. In proportion to the 
 strength of that instinct which binds me to my 
 own offspring, 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 
 towards the rights of all other proprietors. It 
 was not justice which gave either the one in- 
 stinct 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 painfully alive to the violence done upon 
 my own body, as to recoil from the infliction of 
 it upon myself. And it is in virtue of my moral 
 
268 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 nature, that, alive to the pain of other bodies than 
 my own, I refrain from the infliction of it upon 
 them. It is not justice which gives the sensa- 
 tions ; but justice pronounces on the equal re- 
 spect that is due to the sensations of all. Nei- 
 ther 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 feel- 
 ing ; neither is it justice which gives the posses- 
 sory feeling. Justice has nothing to do with the 
 process by which this body came to be my own ; 
 and although now, perhaps, there is not a pro- 
 perty, at least in the civilized world, which may 
 not have passed 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 gar- 
 den, 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, whe- 
 ther about his own person or his own property, 
 will, with an equal principle of justice in his 
 constitution, have the greatest sympathy, both 
 for the personal and the proprietary rights of 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 26^ 
 
 others. This view of it saves all the impracti- 
 cable mysticism that has gathered aromid the 
 speculations of those, who conceive of justice, 
 as presiding over the first distributions of pro- 
 perty ; 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 a time when there was none 
 who interfered or who ofi*ered to share it with 
 him ; and so he came to as firm a possessory 
 feeling in reference to his wider domain, as the 
 other has in reference to his smaller. Our me- 
 taphysical 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 — hav- 
 ing recourse to an original social compact, and 
 to other fictions alike visionary. But if there 
 be truth in our theory, it is just as easy to ex- 
 plain, why the humble proprietor, would no 
 more think of laying claim to certain acres of 
 his rich neighbour's estate because it was larger 
 than his own, than he would think of laying 
 claim to certain children of his neighbour's. 
 
270 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 family because it was larger — or even of laying 
 claim to certain parts of his neighbour's person 
 because it was larger. He is sufficiently ac- 
 quainted 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 affection 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 instance — 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 gradations. 
 
 25. It is from the treatment of an original as 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 271 
 
 if it were a derived affection, that the whole 
 obscurity on this topic has arisen. It is quite as 
 impossible to educe the possessory feeling from 
 an anterior sense of justice, or from a respect 
 for law — as it is to educe the parental feeling 
 from a previous and comprehensive regard for 
 the interests of humanity. 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 re- 
 gards 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 indivi- 
 dual, perhaps transmitted to him from generation 
 to generation, throughout the lengthened 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 margin, under a guardian- 
 ship of justice as unviolable, as that which assures 
 protection and ownership to the humble posses- 
 sor of one solitary acre. The right of property 
 
272 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 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 usurpa- 
 tion, there is a charm in the continued occupa- 
 tion, that prevails and has the mastery over our 
 most indignant remembrance of the villany of 
 other days. It says much for the strength of the 
 possessory feeling, that, even in less than half a 
 century, 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 admirably well 
 — that,* " Justice is not what constitutes pro- 
 perty •, it is a virtue which presupposes property 
 
 * Lecture Ixxxiii. 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 273 
 
 and respects it however constituted." And fur- 
 ther, that — " justice as a moral virtue is not the 
 creation of property, but the conformity 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 hun- 
 ger is the involuntary result of man's physical 
 constitution, and not of any care or consideration 
 by man on the uses of food. 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 instance, 
 each to possess and to use and to improve all 
 
 C. T 
 
274 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 that we are able to do without molestation, whe- 
 ther that freedom from molestation has been 
 secured to us by law or by the mere circum- 
 stances 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 childhood and long before we 
 are capable of being either philanthropists or 
 legislators) we feel a strong link of ownership 
 with that which we have thus possessed and 
 used, and on which we have bestowed our im- 
 provements ; 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 instruc- 
 tive name, of equity, suggests this equality be- 
 tween 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 neigh- 
 bour. 
 
 27. We have expatiated thus long on the 
 origin and rights of property — because of all 
 subjects, it is the one, regarding 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 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 275 
 
 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 aborigi- 
 nal ; and the office of justice is not to put it into 
 any man's head ; but to arbitrate among the 
 rival feelings of cupidity, or the arrogant and 
 overpassing claims that are apt to get into all 
 men's heads — not to initiate man into the notion 
 of property ; but, in fact, to limit and restrain 
 his notion 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 ear- 
 liest tendency is to call every thing their own, 
 what that is which they must refrain from and 
 concede to others. When justice rises to au- 
 thority 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 pro- 
 perty 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 
 
276 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 of property, is not to instruct the men, who but 
 for her lessons would appropriate none ; but it is 
 to restrain the men who, but for her checks and 
 prohibitions, would monopolize all. 
 
 28. Such then seems to have been the 
 purpose of nature in so framing our mental 
 constitution, that we not only appropriate from 
 the first ; but feel, each, such a power in those 
 circumstances, which serve to limit the appro- 
 priation 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 in- 
 terference, on their own respective portions, 
 however unequal, of the territory in which they 
 are placed. On the uses, the indispensable 
 uses of such an arrangement, we need not ex- 
 patiate.* The hundred-fold superiority, in the 
 amount of produce for the subsistence of human 
 
 * ^' 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 overran that land 
 which had been desolated of its people. And so by a series, 
 every step of which was marked with increasing wretchedness, 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 277 
 
 beings, which an appropriated country has over 
 an equal extent of a like fertile but unappro- 
 priated, and, therefore, unreclaimed wilderness, 
 is too obvious to be explained. It may be 
 stated however ; and when an economy so bene- 
 ficial, 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 connexion 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 allege, of the adaptation of external nature 
 to that mental constitution, wherewith the Author 
 of nature hath endowed us. 
 
 29. In connexion with this part of our sub- 
 
 the transition would at length be made to a thinly scattered tribe 
 of hunters, on what before had been a peopled territoiy of in- 
 dustrious and cultivated men. Thus, on the abolition of this 
 sing-le law, the fairest and most civilized region of the globe, 
 which at present sustains its millions of families, out of a fer- 
 tility that now waves over its cultivated, because its appropriated 
 acres, would, on the simple tie of appropriation being broken, 
 lapse in a very few years into a frightful solitude, or, if not 
 bereft of humanity altogether, would at last become as desolate 
 and dreary as a North American wilderness." — Political Economy 
 in connexion with the Moral State and Moral Prospects of 
 Society. 
 
278 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 ject, there is one especial adaptation, the state- 
 ment of which we more willingly bring forw ard, 
 that, beside being highly important in itself, 
 it forms an instance of adaptation in the pure 
 and limited sense of the term*-— even the in- 
 fluence of a circumstance strictly material on 
 the state of the moral world in all the civilized, 
 and indeed in all the appropriated coimtries 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 geo- 
 logical 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 dis- 
 integration 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 
 
 Sgg the first paragraphs of the introductory chapter. 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 279 
 
 of consumption and of supply are so adjusted 
 to each other, as to have ensured the per- 
 petuity of our soils.* But even though these 
 counteracting forces had been somewhat dif- 
 ferently balanced ; though the wasting ope- 
 ration 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 with- 
 stands, or in the impulse and the atmospherical 
 
 * "It is highly interesting to trace up, in this manner, the 
 action of causes with which we are familiar, to the production of 
 effects, which at first seem to require the introduction of unknown 
 and extraordinary powers ; and it is no less interesting to observe, 
 how skilfully nature has balanced the action of all 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 vegetable mould, spread out 
 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 according to circumstances ; it 
 has been computed in some instances, that the water of a river in a 
 
280 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 depositions and the grinding frosts and the 
 undermining torrents that separate and carry off 
 the materials — a shght change in one or all of 
 these causes, might have let down each of the 
 various soils on the face of the world to a low er 
 point in the scale of productiveness 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 con- 
 clusion 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 
 
 flood, contains earthy matter suspended in it, amounting* to more 
 than the two hundred and fiftieth part of its own bulk. The soil 
 therefore, is continually diminished, its parts being delivered from 
 higher to lower levels, and finally delivered into the sea. But it is 
 a fact, that the soil, notwithstanding, remains the same in quan- 
 tity, or at least nearly 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 a 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 complicated 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 iii. Art. 13. 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 281 
 
 produce extracted by the most strenuous efforts 
 of human toil, could no more than repay the 
 cultivation bestowed on them — 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 barren- 
 ness and desolation — when, though performing 
 as now its astronomical circuit in 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 have been up- 
 holden, the tenure by which each man held his 
 existence behoved to have been a life of unre- 
 mitting drudgery ; and we should have beheld 
 the whole species engaged 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 por- 
 tions of land in most countries of the earth — that 
 many and extensive are the soils which yield a 
 large surplus produce, over and above the main- 
 tenance of all, who are engaged, whether directly 
 or indirectly, in the work of their cultivation. 
 The strength of the possessory feelings on the 
 one hand, giving rise to possessory rights 
 recognised and acquiesced in by all men ; 
 these rights investing a single individual with 
 
282 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO 
 
 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 society 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 momentous pur- 
 poses, 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 idle- 
 ness, or for other employments than those of 
 husbandry, and such coarser manufactures as 
 serve to provide society with the second neces- 
 saries of existence. The species w^ould have 
 risen but a few degrees, whether physical or 
 
 * See Art. 7 of this Chapter. 
 
THE WELL-BEING OF SOCIETY. 283 
 
 moral, above the condition of mere savages. It 
 is just because of a fertility in the 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 
 precisely 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 either to strengthen or to 
 adorn the commonwealth. Without this surplus, 
 
 we should have had but an agrarian population 
 
 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 population. It marks an 
 interesting connection 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 manufac- 
 tories for the supply of comforts and refinements 
 to society, our wide and diversified 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! 
 
284 AFFECTIONS WHICH CONDUCE TO, ETC. 
 
 It has been remarked by geologists, as the 
 evidence of a presiding design in nature, that 
 the waste of the soil is so nicely balanced 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 fertility is sub- 
 servient, we cannot imagine a more wondrous 
 and beautiful adaptation between the state of 
 external nature and the mechanism of human 
 society."* 
 
 * Political Economy in connection with the Moral State and 
 Moral Prospects of Society. C. ii, Art. 10. In the appendix 
 to this work on the subject of rent, we have made further obser- 
 vations tending- to prove that " there is an optimism in the actual 
 constitution of the land, as in every thing else that has proceeded 
 from the hand of the Almighty." 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
 C. WHITTINGHAM, XOOKS COUBT, CHANCERY LANE.