Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid, sound, When rock'd the mountains, and when groan'd the ground, 250 She taught the weak to bend, the proud to pray, pride: 261 Then sacred seem'd the ethereal vault no more; below, And play'd the god an engine on his foe. 265 So drives self-love, through just and through unjust, To one man's power, ambition, lucre, lust: 270 How shall we keep, what, sleeping or awake, 275 285 Ev'n kings learn'd justice and benevolence: 280 That touching one must strike the other too; 291 296 295 Such is the world's great harmony. The accordance of the different interests of man in a general good, illustrated by a concert of musical instruments, was a favorite image among the ancients. Cicero expands the conception with studied elegance :- Ut in fidibus, ac tibiis, atque cantu ipso,' &c.— De Republ. It is striking to find Milton denying his democracy in words like these: And if not equal all, yet free, Equally free: for orders and degree Jar not with liberty, but well consist.-Par. L. v. 791. Warton justly observes that Thucydides, in three words, describes the beau ideal of government, αὐτόνομον, αὐτόδικον, αὐτοτελή. Where small and great, where weak and mighty, made 300 To serve, not suffer; strengthen, not invade; 303 For forms of government let fools contest. Warburton, always perplexed and diffuse in his vindication of Pope, here spreads his perplexity over whole pages. The expression of the text is undoubtedly latitudinarian: words cannot more distinctly declare, not only that the value of governments is to be estimated by their practical effect,-a postulate easily allowable; but that the value of religions depends on the conduct of their adherents. 306 His can't be wrong whose life is in the right. This principle is totally inadmissible: it would place the religion of a pious Mahometan in the same rank with that of a pious Christian; and, since individual instances of equality of virtue may be found under all systems of belief, would make the truth of all systems the same. : But the distinction between government and religion, so far as their effects are concerned, is obvious. Government, by its nature, exercises a direct coercive influence on the community if this influence does not palpably suppress evil and promote good, government has shown itself unfitted for its office but religion, by its nature, exercises no such direct coercive influence: it appeals solely to the will; and through the perversion of that will, it may fail of effect, and yet possess every quality of truth, beneficence, and virtue. The appeal of government is public, general, and to be tried by its immediate and palpable results: the appeal of religion is private, personal, and admits of no test but Scripture ; no evidence but the noiseless change of the heart; and no tribunal but Heaven. In faith and hope the world will disagree, All must be false, that thwart this one great end; And all of God, that bless mankind or mend. 310 Man, like the generous vine, supported lives; The strength he gains is from the embrace he gives. On their own axis as the planets run, Yet make at once their circle round the sun; 315 Thus God and Nature link'd the general frame, And bade self-love and social be the same. Yet, whether it lessen or increase the error of the poet, this conception is not original. Cowley, in censuring the proselytism of his friend Crashaw to the Romish church, says:— Pardon, my mother church, if I consent That angels led him when from thee he went; When join'd to so much piety as his. His faith, perhaps, in some nice tenets might It is even followed farther, by the minute scholarship of Digladient (digladientur) alii circa res religionis: Quod credis nihil est, sit modo vita proba. 318 And bade self-love and social be the same. Bolingbroke adopts those words: Thus it happens, that self-love and social are divided in the conduct of particular men, whilst in the making of laws and the regulation of government they continue the same.'-Minutes of Essays, Sect. 51. But, unless the distinction be strongly marked between self-love and selfishness, which is seldom done, nothing can be more fictitious than the theory. The system of Helvetius, that all virtue proceeds from selfishness, is a mere trifling with words, the paradox of a sensualist and an infidel. Every man knows that a multitude of benevolent actions are daily done, which have no reference in the mind of the doer to either his personal reward, or his avoidance of personal suffering. The evil of the Helvetian theory lay in the practical consequence, that nothing was a virtue which had not its root in selfishness. The theory has passed away, with the other follies of a time in which every absurdity was the habitual minister to every vice: the practical tendency to circumscribe all good within the limits of individual interest will live as long as human nature. |