cond limitation relates to cases in which the result of actions is complicated by a mixture of good and evil, and in which we may fix upon the good, when others fix on the evil, and may infer the intention in the agent of producing this good, which is a part of the mixed result, while others may conceive him to have had in view the partial evil. The same actions, therefore, may be approved and disapproved in different ages and countries, from the greater importance attached to the good or to the evil of such compound results, in relation to the general circumstances of society, or the influence, perhaps, of political errors, as to the consequences of advantage or injury to society of these particular actions; and, in the same age, and the same country, different individuals may regard the same action with very different moral feelings, from the higher attention paid to certain partial results of it, and the different presumptions thence formed as to the benevolent or injurious intentions of the agent. All this, it is evident, might take place without the slightest mutability of the principle of moral sentiments; because, though the action which is estimated may seem to be the same in the cases in which it is approved and condemned, it is truly a different action which is so approved and condemned;-a different action in the only sense in which an action has any meaning, as signifying the agent himself having certain views, and willing, in consequence, certain effects of supposed benefit or injury. A third limitation, often co-operating with the former, relates to the influence of habit and association in general, whether as extending to particular actions the emotions that have been gradually connected with the whole class of actions under which they have been arranged, or as modifying the sentiments of individuals by circumstances peculiar to the individuals themselves. It is pleasing to love those who are around us; it is pleasing, above all, to love our immediate friends, and those domestic relations to whom we owe our being, or to whose society, in the first friendships which we were capable of forming, before our heart had ventured from the little world of home into the great world without, we owed the happiness of many years, of which we have forgotten every thing but that they were delightful. It is not merely pleasing to love these first friends; we feel that it is a duty to love them ;-that is to say, we feel that, unless in circumstances of extraordinary profligacy on their part, if we were not to love them, we should look upon ourselves with moral disapprobation. The feeling of this very duty mingles in our estimates of the conduct of those whom we love; and it is in this way that association in such cases operates ;-not by rendering vice in itself less an object of disapprobation than before, but by blending with our disapprobation of the action that love of the agent, which is, as it were, an opposite duty. It is the good which is mixed with the bad that we love, not the bad which is mixed with the good; and the primary and paramount love of the good, and hatred of the bad remain, though we may seem, in certain cases, to love the one less or more, or to hate the other less or more, in consequence of the vivid images which association affords to heighten or reduce the force of the opposite sentiment, -when the actions of which we approve or disapprove have a resemblance to the actions of those who have loved or made us happy, whose love, therefore, and the consequent happiness produced by them, arise, perhaps, to our mind at the very moment at which the similar action is contemplated by us. These three limitations, then, we must make ;-limitations, the necessity of which it would have been natural for us to anticipate, though no objections had been urged to the original differences of actions as objects of moral sentiment. But, making these limitations, to some one or other of which the apparent anomalies may, I conceive, be referred,-do we not still leave unimpaired the great fundamental distinctions of morality itself,the moral approbation of the producer of unmixed good as good, the moral disapprobation of him who produces unmixed evil for the sake of evil? Where moral good and evil mix, the emotions may, indeed, be different; but they are different, not because the production of evil is loved as the mere production of evil, and the production of good hated as the mere production of good ;it is only because the evil is tolerated for the good which is loved, and the good, perhaps, in other cases, forgotten or unremarked, in the abhorrence of the evil which accompanies it. When some country is found, in which the intentional producer of pure unmixed misery is preferred, on that very account, to the intentional producer of as much good as an individual is capable of producing, some country, in which it is reckoned more meritorious to hate than to love a benefactor, merely for being a benefactor, and to love rather than to hate the betrayer of his friend, merely for being the betrayer of his friend,-then may the distinctions of morality be said to be as mutable, perhaps, as any other of the caprices of the most capricious fancy. But the denier of moral distinctions knows well, that it is impossible for him to prove the original indifference of actions in this way. He knows, that the intentional producer of evil, as pure evil, is always hated, the intentional producer of good, as pure good, always loved; and he flatters himself, that he has succeeded in proving, by an easier way, that we are naturally indifferent to what the prejudiced term moral good and evil, merely by proving, that we love the good so very much, as to forget, in the contemplation of it, some accompanying evil; and hate the evil so very much, as to forget in the contemplation of it, some accompanying good. One of our most popular moralists begins his inquiry into the truth of the natural distinctions of morality, by quoting from Valerius Maximus, an anecdote of most atrocious profligacy,which, he supposes, related to a savage, who had been cut off in his infancy from all intercourse with his species, and consequently, under no possible influence of example, authority, education, sympathy, or habit; and whose feelings, therefore, in hearing such a relation, if it were possible for us to ascertain what the feelings of such a mind would be, he would consider as decisive of the question." I quote the story as he has translated it. "The father of Caius Toranius had been proscribed by the Triumvirate. Caius Toranius, coming over to the interests of that party, discovered to the officers who were in pursuit of his father's life, the place where he had concealed himself, and gave them a description by which they might distinguish his person. The old man, more anxious for the safety and fortunes of his son, than about the little that might remain of his own life, began immediately to inquire of the officers who seized him, whether his son was well,-whether he had done his duty to the satisfaction of his generals. That son,' replied one of the officers, that son, so dear to thy affections, betrayed thee to us. By his information thou art apprehended and diest.' The officer, with this, struck a poniard to the old man's heart; and the unhappy parent fell, not so much affected by his fate, as by the means to which he owed it."-Auctore cædis quam ipsa cædi miserior.* It is necessary, for the very supposition which is made, that the savage should understand, not merely what is meant by the simple relations of son and father, and all the consequences of the treachery of the son, but that he should know also the additional interest which the paternal and filial relation, in the whole intercourse of good offices from infancy to manhood, receives from this continued intercourse. The author of our mere being is not all which a father, in such circumstances, is, he is far better known and loved by us as the author of our happiness in childhood and youth, and the venerable friend of our maturer years. If the savage, knowing this relation in its fullest extent, could yet feel no different emotions of moral regard and dislike, for the son and for the father, it would be easier to suppose, that a life of total privation of society had dulled his natural susceptibilities of emotion, than that he was originally void of these. But what reason is there to imagine, that, with this knowledge, he would not have the emotions which are felt by every human being to whom this story is related? It is easy to assert, that knowing every relation of a son and a father, as well as the con * Paley's Moral Philosophy. sequence of the action, the savage would not feel what every other human being feels, because it is easy to assume, by begging the question, any point of controversy. But where is the proof of the assertion? We cannot verify the supposition by exact experiment, indeed,-for such a savage, so thoroughly exempted from every social prejudice, is not to be found, and could not be made to understand the story even if he were found. But, though we cannot have the perfect experiment, we may yet have an approximation to it. Every infant that is born may be considered very nearly as such a savage; and as soon as the child is capable of knowing the very meaning of the words, without feeling half the force of the filial relation, he shudders at such a tale, with as lively abhorrence, perhaps as in other years, when his prejudices and habits, and every thing which is not originally in his constitution, may be said to be matured. We can imagine vessels sent on voyages of benevolence, to diffuse over the world the blessings of a pure religion,-we can imagine voyages of this kind to diffuse the improvements of our sciences and arts. But what should we think of a voyage, of which the sole object was to teach the world that all actions are not, in the moral sense of the term, absolutely indifferent, and that those who intentionally do good to the society to which they belong, or to any individual of that society, ought to be objects of greater regard than he whose life has been occupied in plans to injure the society in general, or at least, as many individuals of it as his power could reach? What shore is there at which such a vessel could arrive,-however barren the soil, and savage the inhabitants,-where these simple doctrines, which it came to diffuse, could be regarded as giving any instruction? The halfnaked animal, that has no hut in which to shelter himself,-no provision beyond the precarious chase of the day,-whose language of numeration does not extend beyond three or four, and who knows God only as something which produces thunder and the whirlwind, even this miserable creature, at least as ignorant as he is helpless, would turn away from his civilized instructors with contempt, as if he had not heard any thing of which he was not equally aware before. The vessel which carried out these simple primary essential truths of morals might return as it went. It could not make a single convert, because there would not have been one who had any doubts to be removed. If, indeed, instead of teaching these truths, the voyagers had endeavoured to teach the natives whom they visited the opposite doctrine, as to the absolute moral indifference of actions, there could then be little doubt that they might have taught something new, whatever doubt there might justly be as 'to the number of the converts. When Labienus, after urging to Cato a variety of motives, to VOL. III.-S induce him to consult the oracle of Ammon, in the neighbourhood of whose temple the little army had arrived, concludes with urging a motive, which he supposed to have peculiar influence on the mind of that great man, that he should at least make use of the opportunity of inquiring of a being who could not err, what it is which constitutes that moral perfection, which a good man should have in view for the guidance of his life, "Saltem vitutis amator Quære quid est virtus et posce exemplar honesti,”— How sublimely does the answer to this solicitation express the omnipotent divinity of virtue! "Ille Deo plenus, tacita quem mente gerebat, "Quid quæri, Labiene, jubes? An liber in armis Ut caneret paucis, mersitque hoc pulvere verum."* "Cast your eyes," says Rousseau, "over all the nations of the world, and all the histories of nations. Amid so many inhuman and absurd superstitions-amid that prodigious diversity of manners and characters, you will find every where the same principles and distinctions of moral good and evil. The Paganism of the ancient world produced, indeed, abominable gods, who on earth would have been shunned or punished as monsters, and who offered as a picture of supreme happiness, only crimes to commit, and passions to satiate. But Vice, armed with this sacred authority, descended in vain from the eternal abode: She found, in the heart of man, a moral instinct to repel her. The continence of Xenocrates was admired by those who celebrated the debaucheries of Jupiter-the chaste Lucretia adored the unchaste Venus-the most intrepid Roman sacrificed to Fear. He invoked the God who dethroned his father, and he died without a murmur by the hand of his own. The most contemptible divinities were served by the greatest men. The holy voice of Nature, stronger than that of the Gods, made itself heard, and respected, and obeyed on earth, and seemed to banish as it were to the confinement of Heaven, guilt and the guilty." There is, indeed, to borrow Cicero's noble description, one true and original law, conformable to reason and to nature, dif * Lucan. Pharsalia, Lib. ix. v. 562-567, and 569-577. |