sustained the rack

she knew that sla than betray the co illustrious persons of their private in sought posthumous

and unconscious. In proportion as the mind acquires an active power, the empire of these ten- | dencies becomes limited. Thus an infant, a savage, and a solitary beast, is selfish, because its mind is incapable of receiving an accurate intimation of the nature of pain as existing in beings resembling itself. The inhabitant of a highly civilised coming in history wit munity will more acutely sympathise with the defied infamy for sufferings and enjoyments of others, than the inhabitant of a society of a less degree of civilisation, He who shall have cultivated his intellectual powers by familiarity with the highest specimens of poetry and philosophy, will usually sympathise more than one engaged in the less refined functions of manual labour. Every one has experience of the fact, that to sympathise with the sufferings of another, is to chjoy a transitory oblivion of his own.

The mind thus acquires, by exercise, a habit, as it were, of perceiving and abhorring evil, however remote from the immediate sphere of sensations with which that individual mind is conversant. Imagination or mind employed in prophetically imaging forth its objects, is that faculty of human nature on which every gradation of its progress, nay, every, the minutest, change, depends. Pain or pleasure, if subtly analysed, will be found to consist entirely in prospect. The only distinction between the selfish man and the virtuous man is, that the imagination of the former is confined within a narrow limit, whilst that of the latter embraces a comprehensive circumference. In this sense, wisdom and virtue may be said to be inseparable, and criteria of each other. Selfishness is the offspring of ignorance and mistake; it is the portion of unreflecting infancy, and savage solitude, or of those whom toil or evil occupations have blunted or rendered torpid; disinterested benevolence is the product of a cultivated imagination, and has an intimate connexion with all the arts which add ornament, or dignity, or power, or stability to the social state of man. Virtue is thus entirely a refinement of civilised life; a creation of the human mind; or, rather, a combination which it has made, according to elementary rules contained within itself, of the feelings suggested by the relations established between man and man.

a great error in selfishness of fan. a person should personal gratificati frequently no more

others should cons

with, our own.

that draws us out infirmity of noble founded on the t possesses so extrao heart, only because the natural propens

selves are comparat the imagination of to be received, doc Let it not be obje valry, and sentiment of enormous miscl establish the propos elementary principl desiring and pursuin

THE benevolent p in the human mind. happiness of others faction in being the Everything that live pleasure and pain. propensities to regar ferently with whom have preference only

offer themselves mos Human beings are i they will avoid inflic should be attended w will seek to confer ple mischief that may re the expense of many. There is a sentiment

All the theories which have refined and exalted humanity, or those which have been devised as alleviations of its mistakes and evils, have been based upon the elementary emotions of disinterest-gulates benevolence in edness, which we feel to constitute the majesty of our nature. Patriotism, as it existed in the ancient republics, was never, as has been supposed, a calculation of personal advantages. When Mutius Scævola thrust his hand into the burning coals, and Regulus returned to Carthage, and Epicharis

of action. This is the well as benevolence, is It is through impelled to distribute a

nature.

*T

benevolence may suggest the communication of to
others, in equal portions among an equal number
of applicants. If ten men are shipwrecked on a
desert island, they distribute whatever subsistence
may remain to them, into equal portions among
themselves. If six of them conspire to deprive the
remaining four of their share, their conduct is
termed unjust.

The existence of pain has been shown to be a
circumstance which the human mind regards with
dissatisfaction, and of which it desires the cessa-
tion. It is equally according to its nature to desire
that the advantages to be enjoyed by a limited
number of persons should be enjoyed equally by
all. This proposition is supported by the evidence
of indisputable facts. Tell some ungarbled tale of
a number of persons being made the victims of the
enjoyments of one, and he who would appeal in
favour of any system which might produce such an
evil to the primary emotions of our nature, would
have nothing to reply. Let two persons, equally
strangers, make application for some benefit in the
possession of a third to bestow, and to which he
feels that they have an equal claim. They are
both sensitive beings; pleasure and pain affect
them alike.

CHAPTER II.

Ir is foreign to the general scope of this little Treatise to encumber a simple argument by controverting any of the trite objections of habit or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all political mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect of religious error, which it seems useful to refute.

First, it is inquired, "Wherefore should a man be benevolent and just?" The answer has been given in the preceding chapter.

If a man persists to inquire why he ought to promote the happiness of mankind, he demands a mathematical or metaphysical reason for a moral action. The absurdity of this scepticism is more apparent, but not less real than the exacting a moral reason for a mathematical or metaphysical fact. If any person should refuse to admit that all the radii of a circle are of equal length, or that human actions are necessarily determined by motives, until it could be proved that these radii and these actions uniformly tended to the production of the greatest general good, who would not wonder at the unreasonable and capricious association of his ideas!

The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine, at this advanced era of human intellect, be held excused from entering into a controversy with those reasoners, if such there are, who would claim an exemption from its decrees in favour of any one among those diversified systems of obscure opinion respecting morals, which, under the name of religions, have in various ages and countries prevailed among mankind. Besides that if, as these reasoners have pretended, eternal torture or happiness will ensue as the consequence of certain actions, we should be no nearer the possession of a standard to determine what actions were right and wrong, even if this pretended revelation, which is by no means the case, had furnished us with a complete catalogue of them. The character of actions as virtuous or vicious would by no means be determined alone by the personal advantage or disadvantage of each moral agent individually considered. Indeed, an action is often virtuous in proportion to the greatness of the personal calamity which the author willingly draws upon himself by daring to perform it. It is because an action produces an overbalance of pleasure or pain to the greatest number of sentient beings, and not merely because its consequences are beneficial or injurious to the author of that action, that it is good or evil. Nay, this latter consideration has a tendency to pollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch as it consists in the motive rather than in the consequences of an action. A person who should labour for the happiness of mankind lest he should be tormented eternally in Hell, would, with reference to that motive, possess as little claim to the epithet of virtuous, as he who should torture, imprison, and burn them alive, a more usual and natural consequence of such principles, for the sake of the enjoyments of Heaven.

My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may direct me to perform or to refrain from a particular action; indicating a certain arbitrary penalty in the event of disobedience within his power to inflict. My action, if modified by his menaces, can in no degree participate in virtue. He has afforded me no criterion as to what is right or wrong. A king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation affixing any penalty to any par ticular action, but that is not immoral because such penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident than that the epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the refraining from that action on account of the evil arbitrarily attached to it. If the action is in itself beneficial, virtue would rather consist in not refraining from it, but in firmly defying the personal consequences attached to its performance.

Some usurper of supernatural energy might

The

purazion

effects of their babs of ang

the tropos

cases, that the science evasika and malamodacus shock vist.

| made of human benga wis maatit z, and survey, IA TO ALL, The Mctins of the several cases mat vira they are drited Their SETJES BD ́ES are apparenty firm: the stabbey dỂ society wereas to be maccased softy by the md vm ty of the evaduct of its members, both with regard to themselves, and with regard to others. The labourer arises at a certain bour, and appies himwif to the task enjoined him. functionaries of government anal law are regularly employed in their offices and courts. The trader holds a train of conduct from which he never deviates. The ministers of religion employ an accustomed language, and maintain a decent and equable regard. The army is drawn forth, the motions of every soldier are such as they were expected to be; the general commands, and his words are echoed from troop to troop. The domestic actions of men are, for the most part, un-presentation of the distinguishable one from the other, at a superficial glance. The actions which are classed under the general appellation of marriage, education, friendship, &c., are perpetually going on, and to a superficial glance, are similar one to the other.

But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of this fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action has, when considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblance with any other. Each individual, who composes the vast multitude which we have been contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind, which, whilst the features of the great mass of his actions remain uniform, impresses the minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues. Thus, whilst his life, as a whole, is like the lives of other men, in detail, it is most unlike; and the more sub

This is the diff vidual man. Not t silered definite, or being as compared two classes of agenc human being. Non species of influence surface of his being to his conduct. Al mits to that legislat

perfect as it is from in the government, habits. Those who submit to the same p of their conduct, in than the clouds can e wind; and his opini has dispassionately s prejudice and vulga amination, to be the very usages from wh Internally all is con cieney, the essence, t its colour from what from any external sou while it derives the ac from the soil in which

or distorted, or inflated, yet retains those qualities
which essentially divide it from all others; so that
hemlock continues to be poison, and the violet does
not cease to emit its odour in whatever soil it may
grow.

We consider our own nature too superficially.

ION; OR, OF THE ILIAD;
Translated from Plato.

SOCRATES. Do you think that you or a diviner would make the best exposition, respecting all that these poets say of divination, both as they agree and as they differ?

ION. A diviner probably.

SOCRATES. Suppose you were a diviner, do you not think that you could explain the discrepancies of those poets on the subject of your profession, if you understand their argument?

SOCRATES.-How does it happen then that you are possessed of skill to illustrate Homer, and not Hesiod, or any other poet in an equal degree? Is the subject-matter of the poetry of Homer different from all other poets'? Does he not principally

would the same person be emprant to decide severally one an i

low- The same, evidently.
SRATRA-What would you call that person!
Ios- A physician.

SOCRATER-We may assert then, universally, that the same person who is competent to determine the truth, is competent also to determine the falsehood of whatever assertion is advanced on the same subject; and, it is manifest, that he who cannot judge respecting the falsehood, or unfitness of what is said upon a given subject, is equally incompetent to determine upon its truth or beauty? JON. Assuredly.

SOCRATES. The same person would then be competent or incompetent for both?

what I understar

Iox-Yes, by J with listening to yo

Ion; you rhapsodi the poems you red and private man, c serve how common prehension of any of ask relative to the s one entire art. entire ? Is

SOCRATES-It is

ION. Certainly.
SOCRATES.-Did yo

tent to judge of the

son of Aglaophon, an

JON, Yea. NOCRATION. Do you not any that Homer and the production of any oth other poets, and among them Hesiod and Archi-position of the works lochus, speak of the same things, but unequally; bited to him, was whe one better and the other worse i

inclined to go to s