abilities of a Mansfield. After long experience of the before God, I never knew a rogue who was not unhappy."* It is not necessary to pursue the catalogue. Man is by a being every one is purposely made dependent upon every ot consequently the happiness or well-being of the whole and u who constitutes an integral part of the whole, must be the same Yet as the happiness or well-being of the individual demands a capacity, as we have already seen it does, a system of private it or restraints, the happiness or well-being of society demand tensive system of public duties of the same kind. We se relinquish a part of our liberty, a part of our property, a pr personal propensities and appetites, or the well-being of t which we belong, and consequently our own social well-bei continue. We may indeed take ourselves away from society, an the solitude of forests; but our happiness is bound up in soc whatever is the cost, it is consistent with the same happiness tha Freethinkers are accustomed to sneer at the precepts of the h inculcate upon us the virtues of self-denial and mortification in life, in order to our making sure of a life of uninterrupted hap after. But if there be any degree of truth in the remarks Do they find themselves called upon to practise a similar restraint t even in the purchase of present enjoyment. And the analogy is between the natural and the moral government of the Deity in a that Bishop Butler has forcibly laid hold of the same argument” in vindication of the Gospel-precepts upon this point, but in t the paramount importance of our attending to them, if we wo to our future and everlasting interest. "Thought," says be sideration, the voluntary denying ourselves many things war es and a course of behaviour far from being always agreeab solutely necessary to our acting even a common decent and c dent part, so as to pass with any satisfaction through the present v be received upon any tolerably good terms in it. Since this is the cas presumption against self-denial and attention to secure our HIGHE REST is removed. The constitution of nature is as it is. Our ha and misery are trusted to our conduct, and made to depend upon it. what, and, in many circumstances, a great deal too, is put upon to do or to suffer, as we choose. And all the various miseries which people bring upon themselves by negligence and folly, and have avoided by proper care, are instances of this; which misere beforehand, just as contingent and undetermined as their conduct, to be determined by it."† It is from this common consent to put a restraint upon our pe feelings in the pursuit of relative pleasures, from this social impa our constitution with which we are so wisely and benevolently ende that every man belonging to the same state or community becomes a of every man, and cannot, even if he would, be an indifferent specta the wo or the weal of his neighbour. And hence arises the sacred of sympathy or fellow-feeling; And true self-love, and social, are the same. While as the line is drawn still closer, and we associate together ma *Letter, No. xliii. ↑ Analysis of Religion, Natural and Revealed, parti P and more intimately, we become, from the great and powerful e of habit, still more kindred parts of each other. And hence the of the higher public virtues of patriotism, generosity, gratitude, ip, conjugal fidelity, parental love, and filial reverence; the exerall which in our relative situations of life, whether we contemplate e time, or whether we do not, is by our own constitution, or, which same thing, by the will of the great Creator, rendered essential to lividual happiness. Pope, from a hint furnished by Dr. Donne, finely compares this and spread of the different circles of private and public virtues from ient point of self-love, or the desire of individual happiness in the to the series of circles within circles excited on the bosom of a still aceful lake by the throw of a pebble; while all nature smiles around, om this very agitation, the face of the heavens is reflected with an onal degree of lustre. "Self-love but serves the virtuous breast to wake, Earth smiles around, in boundless beauty dress'd; e stand in need, then, of no præcognita or innate ideas, of no fancistinct whatever ;-arguing as intelligent beings, and fairly exercising iscursive faculty of reason, we come to the clear conclusion that viris the path to human happiness. The case, indeed, is so manifest, while many of the instincts we actually possess are often tempting gainst such a conduct and such a conclusion, whenever reason is caled to, we never fail to return to the same established dictum. he Stoics, with a sort of romantic refinement, pretended to have fallen a love of virtue for her own sake; and to sustain and to abstain, to and forbear, to be patient and continent, comprised the summary of r moral system. But while they were thus cnraptured with the means, every other society of mankind, they had the full advantage of the . They may, indeed, have practised virtue for the love of virtue, but y also practised virtue, and reaped the benefit of their own happiness. The Epicureans, on the contrary, regarded all these sublime pretensions mere cant and affectation. They also enjoined and practised, and nothstanding the false reproach that has attached to their name, enjoined d practised with more rigidity than even the Stoics, the laws and reaints of moral virtue; yet boldly and unequivocally avowed that it was iefly as a mean towards an end: that it was not so much from a love virtue, as from a love of pleasure or happiness: and hence pleasure d happiness were in this school used as synonymous terms, as were also ce and folly, and wisdom and virtue; or, rather, wisdom was regarded the first of all virtues, as being that which teaches us that a life of real easure or happiness is to be obtained alone by the exercise of the geneI cluster of virtues. In one of his letters to Menæceus, that has yet rvived the ravage of time, Epicurus has a passage upon this subject peliarly striking, and that cannot be too strongly impressed on our memo"Wisdom," says he, "is the chief blessing of philosophy, since she es. gives birth to all other virtues which unite in teaching us, that no mar live happily who does not live wisely, conscientiously, and justly; noa the other hand, can he live wisely, conscientiously, and justly, without g happily for virtue is inseparable from a life of happiness, and a lifes happiness is equally inseparable from virtue. Be these, then, and maxing like these, the subjects of thy meditation, by night and by day, both wha alone and with the friend of thy bosom; and never, whether asleep awake, shalt thou be opprest with anxiety, but live as a god among makind." To the same effect Cassius, in an expostulatory letter to his friend Cicero, who had shown some inclination to join in the general calamgy against the Epicureans: "Those whom we call lovers of pleasure are real lovers of goodness and justice; they are men who practise and cultivate every virtue; for no true pleasure can exist without a good and virtuous life." So Lucretius, when describing the different tribes of the sons of vice or offenders against the public law, characterizes them by the common name of fools. "They are," says he, "perpetually smarting, even in secret, beneath a sense of their atrocious crimes, and that reward of the guilt, which they well know will sooner or later overtake them: The scourge, the wheel, the block, the dungeon deep, Which, though the villain 'scape, his conscious soul And still foreboding heavier pangs at death. It was from the elegant and ornate moralists of the East, that the philosophers of this school derived this figurative synonymy; from Arabia, Egypt, and India; in all which quarters we find it still more frequent and familiar. Solomon, whose early studies were derived from an Arabic source, is peculiarly addicted to this use of these terms. The very commencement of his book of Proverbs, or system of ethics, as the school would denominate it, affords us a striking instance :— "The fear of Jehovah is the beginning of knowledge: So Vishnusarman, in his Hitopadesa to the same precise effect; "Many who read the Scriptures are grossly ignorant; but he who acts well is a truly LEARNED man."‡ Whatever view, therefore, we take of this subject, in whatever way we exercise our reason upon it, we cannot fail to approve of virtue in preference to vice; for we cannot fail to regard virtue as the only sure road to happiness, and consequently as the path of wisdom, or the will of God. The case, indeed, is so clear, that it is seldom mankind in any part * Diog. Laert. x. 132. 135. Verbera, carnufices, robur, pix, lamina, tædæ : Atque eadem metuit magis, hæc ne in morte gravescant. 7 Sir W. Jones, vi. p. 37. vorld are now-a-days at the trouble of debating the subject. There ontroversy-the result is taken for granted. And hence wherever on exists, or, in other words, wherever civilized life extends, we efly taught it, not as a science, but as a rule of action; we imbibe habit; and our first and finest feelings co-operate with our best in its favour. We form an abstract picture of it in our minds, and te it, under the correct and pleasing image of the fair, the needful, vereign good. We have already seen that, in proportion as society ›rant, men are wicked; in proportion as it becomes wise, they grow Is. They acquire clearer ideas of right and wrong, which are ob7 nothing more than virtue and vice, under an additional set of , or in a state of activity. And were the rules and laws of right, , or wisdom to be constantly adhered to, or, in other words, the f the Deity to be fully complied with, there can be no question that ind, even in the present state, would enjoy all the happiness their e will allow of; and that a kind of paradise would once more visit irth. d why, then, is not the will of the Deity fully complied with? Why, the consequence is so undoubted, and so beneficial, are not the of virtue constantly and universally adhered to? is is a most important question, as well in itself as in its results. e will of the Deity, or the entire rules of virtue, are not always adto, first, because, as collected from reason or the light of nature , they are not, through the whole range of this complicated subject, instances equally clear and conspicuous; and, secondly, because in usand instances in which there is no want of clearness or perspicuity, is a want of sanction-of a compulsory and adequate force. The of virtue are general, and must necessarily be general; but the 3 to which they apply are particular, The case is present and often lsive, but the operation of the rule is remote, and it may not operate 1; and hence the pleasure of immediate gratification is perpetually nging this harmonious system, and plunging mankind into vice with r eyes open. ut civil laws, moreover, or the authority of the social compact in ur of virtue, are not only often inadequate in their force, but they st necessarily, in a thousand instances, be inadequate in their extent. s impossible for man of himself to provide against every case of vice criminality that may offend the public; for the keenest casuist can m no idea of many of such cases till they are before him; and if he ld, the whole world would not contain the statute-books that should written upon the subject. There are also duties which a man owes to himself as well as to his ghbour; or, in other words, human happiness, as we have already seen, pends almost as largely upon his exercise of private as of public virtues. at the eye of civil law cannot follow him into the performance of these ties, for it cannot follow him into his privacy; it cannot take cognizance his personal faults or offences, nor often apply its sanction if it could SO. And hence, in most countries, this important part of morality is rposely left out of the civil code, as a hopeless and intractable subject. et even in the breach of public duties, specifically stated and provided r, it cannot always follow up the offender, and apply the punishment; r he may secrete himself among his own colleagues, and elude, or he ay abandon his country, and defy the arm of justice. There seems, then, to be a something still wanting. If the Deity have so benevolently willed the happiness of man, and made virtue the rule of that happiness, ought he not upon the same principle of benevolence, to have declared his will more openly than by the mere, and, at times, doubtful, inferences of reason? in characters, indeed so plain, that he who runs may read? and ought he not also to have employed sanctions so universa as to cover every case, and so weighty as to command every attention! As a being of infinite benevolence, undoubtedly he ought. And what, in this character, he ought to have done, he has actually accomplished. He has declared his will by an express revelation, and has thus confirmed the voice of reason by a voice from heaven: he has made this revelation a written law, and has enforced it by the strongest sanctions to which the mind of man can be open :-not only by his best chance of happiness here, but by all his hopes and expectations of happiness hereafter. And he has hence completed the code of human obligations, by adding to the duties which we owe to our neighbour and to ourselves, a clear rescript of those we owe to our Maker. Nor is such revelation of recent date. for a state of retributive justice beyond the grave constituted, as we have already seen, the belief of mankind in the earliest ages of time; and amidst all the revolutions the world has witnessed, amidst the most savage bar barism, and the foulest idolatries, there never perhaps has been a country in which all traces of it have been entirely lost, or have even entirely ceased to operate. At different periods, and in different manners, the Deity has renewed this divine communication according as his infinite wisdom has seen the world stand in need of it. New doctrines and discoveries, and doctrines and discoveries, too, of the highest importance, but which it is not my province to touch upon in the present place, have in every instance accompanied such renewal, justificatory of the supernatural interposition. But the sanction has, in every instance, been the same: while, and speak it with reverence, the proofs of divine benevolence have with every promulgation been growing fuller and fuller :-revealed religion thus cooperating with natural, co-operating with the great frame of the visible world, co-operating with every pulse and feeling of our own hearts in es tablishing the delightful truth, that GOD IS LOVE; and in calling upon us to love him, not from any cold and lifeless picture of the abstract beauty of holiness, beautiful as it unquestionably is in itself, but from the touching and all-subduing motive, BECAUSE HE FIRST LOVED US. LECTURE VIII. On the GENERAL FACULTIES OF THE MIND, AND ITS FREEDOM IN WILLING. In the commencement of the successive series of lectures which I have had the honour of delivering before this respectable school of science, ! stated, as it may be recollected by many of the audience before me, that the subject I proposed to discuss would be of considerable extent and variety;-that it would embrace, though with a rapid survey, the whole circle of physics in the most enlarged sense in which this term has been employed by Aristotle or Lord Bacon; and, consequently, would touch slightly, yet, as I hoped, with a correct outline, upon all the more inte |