the ear, or play, perhaps, with feeble comfort around the surface of the heart, are unable to reach that deeper-seated sense of guilt, which is within. In subjecting, for the evident good of all, whole multitudes to the sway of a few, or of one, Nature then, as we have seen, has thrown over them a shelter, which power may indeed violate, but which it cannot violate with impunity; since even when it is free from every other punishment, it is found, however reluctantly, to become the punisher of itself. This shelter, under which alone human weakness is safe, and which does not give protection only but happiness, is the shelter of virtue,-the shelter of moral love and hate, of moral pity and indignation, of moral joy and remorse. Life, indeed, and many of the enjoyments which render social life delightful, may at least on a great part of the surface of the earth, be at the mercy of a power that may seem to attack or forbear with no restraint but the caprice of its own will. Yet, before even these can be assailed, there is a voice which warns to desist, and a still more awful voice of condemnation, when the warning has been disregarded. For our best enjoyments, our remembrances of virtue, and our wishes of virtuewe are not dependent on the mercy, nor even on the restraints of power. Nature has provided for them with all her care, by placing them where no force can reach. In freedom or under tyranny they alike are safe from aggression ;-because, wherever the arm can find its way, there is still conscience beyond. The blow, which reaches the heart itself, cannot tear from the heart, what, in life has been happiness or consolation, and what, in death, is a happiness that needs not to be comforted. Our own felicity is then, truly, in no slight degree, as Goldsmith says, consigned to ourselves, amidst all the varieties of social institutions. "In every government, though terrors reign, With secret course, which no loud storms annoy, Luke's iron crown, and Damien's bed of steel, "So far," says Cicero," is virtue from depending on the enactment of kings, that it is as ancient as the system of nature itself, * Concluding verses of the Traveller. or as the great Being by whom nature was formed."-" Vis ad recte facta vocandi et a peccatis avocandi, non modo senior est, quam ætas populorum et civitatum, sed æqualis illius cœlum atque terras tuentis et regentis Dei-Nec si, regnante Tarquinio, nulla erat Romæ scripta lex de stupris, idcirco non contra illam legem sempiternam, Sextus Tarquinius vim Lucretia attulit. Erat enim ratio profecta a rerum natura, et ad recte faciendum impellens et a delicto avocans, que non tum denique incipit lex esse cum scripta est sed tum cum orta est; orta autem simul est cum mente divina."* The law, on which right and wrong depend, did not begin to be law when it was written: it is older than the ages of nations and cities, and contemporary with the very eternity of God. De legibus, lib. II. c. 4, of Gruter's Notation-or c. 8, 9, 10, of the common Notation-with some alterations and omissions. VOL. III.-T LECTURE LXXVI. ON THE SYSTEM OF MANDEVILLE; ON THE INFLUENCE OF REASON ON OUR MORAL SENTIMENTS; ON THE SYSTEMS OF CLARKE AND WOLLASTON. GENTLEMEN, In the inquiries, which have last engaged us, we have seen, what that susceptibility of moral emotion is, to which we owe our notions of virtue and vice, in all their relative variety of aspects, we have seen, in what sense it is to be understood as an original principle of our common nature, and what limitations it is necessary to give to its absolute universality. There is a sophistry, however, the errors of which it was necessary to state to you, that confounds, in these limitations, the primary distinctions themselves; and supposes that it has shown the whole system of morals to be founded on accidental prejudices, when, in opposition to the millions of millions of cases, that obviously confirm the truth of an original tendency to certain moral preferences, it has been able to exhibit a few facts which it professes to regard as anomalous. The fallacy of this objection, I endeavoured accordingly to prove to you, by showing, that the supposed anomalies arise, not from defect of original moral tendencies, but from the operation of other principles which are essential parts of our mental constitution, like our susceptibility of moral emotion ;-which are not, however, more essential parts of it than that moral susceptibility itself,-and which, even in modifying our sentiments of approbation and disapprobation produce this effect, not by altering the principle which approves and disapproves, but the object which we contemplate when these emotions arise. In the conclusion of my lecture, I examined the kindred sophistry of those political moralists, who, considering right and wrong as of human institution, in their denial of every primary distinction of morals, found a sort of artificial virtue on obedience to the civil power; forgetting that their very assertion of the duty of obedience, supposes a feeling of duty antecedent to the law itself; and that there are principles of equity, according to which even positive laws are judged, and, though approved in many cases, in many cases also condemned, by the moral voice within the breast, as inconsistent with that feeling of justice which is prior and paramount to the law itself. In some measure akin to the theory of these political moralists, since it ascribes morality, in like manner, to human contrivance, is the system of Mandeville,-who considers he general praise of virtue to be a mere artifice of political skill and what the world consents to praise as virtue in the individual, to a mere imposition on the part of the virtuous man. Human life, in short, according to him, is a constant intercourse of hypocrisy with hypocrisy; in which, by an involuntary self-denial, present enjoyment of some kind or other is sacrificed for the pleasure of that praise which society, as cunning as the individual self-denier, is ready indeed to give, but gives only in return for sacrifices that are made to its advantage. His system, to describe it a little more fully, as stated in the inquiry into the origin of moral virtue, prefixed to his remarks on his own Fable of the Bees, is simply this, that man, like all other animals, is naturally solicitous only of his personal gratification, without regard to the happiness or misery of others, that the great point, with the original lawgivers or tamers of these human animals, was to obtain from them the sacrifice of individual gratification, for the greater happiness of others,-that this sacrifice, however, could not be expected from creatures that cared only for themselves, unless a full equivalent were offered for the enjoyment sacrificed,that as this, at least in the greater number of cases, could not be found in objects of sensual gratification, or in the means of obtaining sensual gratification which are given in exchange in common purchases, it was necessary to have recourse to some other appetite of man,-that the natural appetite of man for praise readily presented itself, for this useful end, and that, by flattering him into the belief that he would be counted nobler for the sacrifices which he might make, he was led, accordingly, to purchase this praise by a fair barter of that, which, though he valued it much, and would not have parted with it but for some equivalent or greater gain, he still valued less than the praise which he was to acquire,-that the moral virtues, therefore, to use his strong exsression, are "the political offspring which flattery begot upon pride,”—and that, when we see virtue, we see only the indulgence of some frailty, or the expectation of some praise.* Such is the very licentious system, as to moral virtue, of this satirist of man; whose doctrine, false as it is, as a general view of human nature, has, in the world, so many instances which seem to correspond with it, that a superficial observer, who is little accustomed to make distinctions, extends readily to all mankind, what is true only of a part, and because some who wish to appear virtuous are hypocrites, conceives, that all virtue is hypocrisy,-in the same way, as such a superficial thinker would have * Fable of the Bees, Vol. I. p. 28-30, 8vo. Lond. 1728. admitted any other error, stated in language as strong, and with images and pictures as vivid. It would be idle to repeat, in particular application to this system, the general remarks which I made in my former lectures, on the early appearances of moral emotion, as marking an original distinction of actions, that excite in us moral approbation, from those which do not excite it, and which excite the opposite feeling of moral disapprobation. I shall not even appeal to the conscience of him, who has had the happiness of performing a generous action, without the slightest regard to the praise of man, which was perhaps not an object even of conception at all, and certainly not till the action itself was performed. But we may surely ask, in this case, as much as in any other physical hypothesis, by what authority so extensive a generalization is made from so small a number of particular cases? If, indeed, we previously take for granted that all virtue is hypocrisy, every case of virtue, which we perceive, seeming to us a case of hypocrisy, may be regarded only as an illustration of the doctrine, to the universal truth of which we have already given our assent. But if we consent to form our general conclusion before examination, and then to adapt our particular conclusions to the previous general belief, this sort of authority may be found, for the wildest hypothesis, in physics, as much as for that moral hypothesis, the licentiousness of which is founded on the same false logic. We have only to take the hypothesis, however wild, for granted ;and then the facts will be, or will be considered to be, illustrative of it. The question is not, whether on the supposition of universal hypocrisy, all seeming virtue be imposition, for, in that case there could be no doubt; but, whether all virtue be hypocrisy; and for this, it is surely necessary to have some stronger proof, than the mere fact that some men are hypocrites; or even the very probable inference, that there is a great deal of hypocrisy, (as there is a great deal of virtuous benevolence or selfcommand,) which we are not capable of discovering, and to which, accordingly, we may erroneously have given the praise of virtue. The love of praise may be an universal principle; but it is not more truly universal than the feeling of right and wrong, in some one or other of their forms, and of two feelings, equally universal, it is as absurd to deny the reality of one, as the reality of the other. All actions have not one object. Some are the result of a selfish love of praise; some of a generous love of virtue, that is to say, of love of those whose happiness virtue can promote. The secret motives of mankind, indeed, in this variety of possible objects, cannot be known; and the paradox of Dr. Mandeville, therefore, has this advantage, that it is impossible to say, "Here is virtue that has no regard to praise," since he has still the power of answering, that there may be a de |