Footnotes

1.

The opinions of Hume on moral questions are grossly misrepresented by many writers, who persist in describing them as substantially identical with those of Bentham. How far Hume was from denying the existence of a moral sense, the following passages will show:—“The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praiseworthy or blameable ... depends on some internal sense or feeling which nature has made universal in the whole species.”—Enquiry Concerning Morals, § 1. “The hypothesis we embrace ... defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to the spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation.”—Ibid. Append. I. “The crime or immorality is no particular fact or relation which can be the object of the understanding, but arises entirely from the sentiment of disapprobation, which, by the structure of human nature, we unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or treachery.”—Ibid. “Reason instructs us in the several tendencies of actions, and humanity makes a distinction in favour of those which are useful and beneficial.”—Ibid. “As virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account without fee or reward, merely for the immediate satisfaction it conveys, it is requisite that there should be some sentiment which it touches, some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other.”—Ibid. The two writers to whom Hume was most indebted were Hutcheson and Butler. In some interesting letters to the former (Burton's Life of Hume, vol. i.), he discusses the points on which he differed from them.

2.

“The chief thing therefore which lawgivers and other wise men that have laboured for the establishment of society have endeavoured, has been to make the people they were to govern believe that it was more beneficial for everybody to conquer than to indulge his appetites, and much better to mind the public than what seemed his private interest ... observing that none were either so savage as not to be charmed with praise, or so despicable as patiently to bear contempt, they justly concluded that flattery must be the most powerful argument that could be used to human creatures. Making use of this bewitching engine, they extolled the excellency of our nature above other animals ... by the help of which we were capable of performing the most noble achievements. Having, by this artful flattery, insinuated themselves into the hearts of men, they began to instruct them in the notions of honour and shame, &c.”—Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue.

3.

“I conceive that when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing or not do it, he does nothing else but consider whether it be better for himself to do it or not to do it.”—Hobbes On Liberty and Necessity. “Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions.”—Ibid. Leviathan, part i. ch. xvi. “Obligation is the necessity of doing or omitting any action in order to be happy.”—Gay's dissertation prefixed to King's Origin of Evil, p. 36. “The only reason or motive by which individuals can possibly be induced to the practice of virtue, must be the feeling immediate or the prospect of future private happiness.”—Brown On the Characteristics, p. 159. “En tout temps, en tout lieu, tant en matière de morale qu'en matière d'esprit, c'est l'intérêt personnel qui dicte le jugement des particuliers, et l'intérêt général qui dicte celui des nations.... Tout homme ne prend dans ses jugements conseil que de son intérêt.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, discours ii. “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.... The principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. i. “By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.”—Ibid. “Je regarde l'amour éclairé de nous-mêmes comme le principe de tout sacrifice moral.”—D'Alembert quoted by D. Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. p. 220.

4.

“Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good; pain is in itself an evil, and, indeed, without exception, the only evil, or else the words good and evil have no meaning.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. x.

5.

“Good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us. Moral good and evil then is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will and power of the law maker, which good and evil, pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law by the decree of the law maker, is that we call reward or punishment.”—Locke's Essay, book ii. ch. xxviii. “Take away pleasures and pains, not only happiness, but justice, and duty, and obligation, and virtue, all of which have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them, are so many empty sounds.”—Bentham's Springs of Action, ch. i. § 15.

6.

“Il lui est aussi impossible d'aimer le bien pour le bien, que d'aimer le mal pour le mal.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, disc. ii. ch. v.

7.

“Even the goodness which we apprehend in God Almighty, is his goodness to us.”—Hobbes On Human Nature, ch. vii. § 3. So Waterland, “To love God is in effect the same thing as to love happiness, eternal happiness; and the love of happiness is still the love of ourselves.”—Third Sermon on Self-love.

8.

“Reverence is the conception we have concerning another, that he hath the power to do unto us both good and hurt, but not the will to do us hurt.”—Hobbes On Human Nature, ch. viii. § 7.

9.

“The pleasures of piety are the pleasures that accompany the belief of a man's being in the acquisition, or in possession of the goodwill or favour of the Supreme Being; and as a fruit of it, of his being in the way of enjoying pleasures to be received by God's special appointment either in this life or in a life to come.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. v. “The pains of piety are the pains that accompany the belief of a man's being obnoxious to the displeasure of the Supreme Being, and in consequence to certain pains to be inflicted by His especial appointment, either in this life or in a life to come. These may be also called the pains of religion.”—Ibid.

10.

“There can be no greater argument to a man of his own power, than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs; and this is that conception wherein consisteth charity.”—Hobbes On Hum. Nat. ch. ix. § 17. “No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object to every man is his own good.”—Hobbes' Leviathan, part i. ch. xv. “Dream not that men will move their little finger to serve you, unless their advantage in so doing be obvious to them. Men never did so, and never will while human nature is made of its present materials.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. ii. p. 133.

11.

“Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because there then appeareth more probability that the same may happen to us; for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to every man.”—Hobbes On Hum. Nat. ch. ix. § 10. “La pitié est souvent un sentiment de nos propres maux dans les maux d'autrui. C'est une habile prévoyance des malheurs où nous pouvons tomber. Nous donnons des secours aux autres pour les engager à nous en donner en de semblables occasions, et ces services que nous leur rendons sont, à proprement parler, des biens que nous nous faisons à nous-mêmes par avance.”—La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 264. Butler has remarked that if Hobbes' account were true, the most fearful would be the most compassionate nature; but this is perhaps not quite just, for Hobbes' notion of pity implies the union of two not absolutely identical, though nearly allied, influences, timidity and imagination. The theory of Adam Smith, though closely connected with, differs totally in consequences from that of Hobbes on this point. He says, “When I condole with you for the loss of your son, in order to enter into your grief, I do not consider what I, a person of such a character and profession, should suffer if I had a son, and if that son should die—I consider what I should suffer if I was really you. I not only change circumstances with you, but I change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account.... A man may sympathise with a woman in child-bed, though it is impossible he should conceive himself suffering her pains in his own proper person and character.”—Moral Sentiments, part vii. ch. i. §3.

12.

“Ce que les hommes ont nommé amitié n'est qu'une société, qu'un ménagement réciproque d'intérêts et qu'un échange de bons offices. Ce n'est enfin qu'un commerce où l'amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose à gagner.”—La Rochefoucauld, Max. 83. See this idea developed at large in Helvétius.

13.

“La science de la morale n'est autre chose que la science même de la législation.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, ii. 17.

14.

This doctrine is expounded at length in all the moral works of Hobbes and his school. The following passage is a fair specimen of their meaning:—“Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind. Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men are different ... from whence arise disputes, controversies, and at last war. And therefore, so long as man is in this condition of mere nature (which is a condition of war), his private appetite is the measure of good and evil. And consequently all men agree in this, that peace is good, and therefore also that the ways or means of peace, (which, as I have showed before) are justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the rest of the laws of nature are good ... and their contrary vices evil.”—Hobbes' Leviathan, part i. ch. xvi. See, too, a striking passage in Bentham's Deontology, vol. ii. p. 132.

15.

As an ingenious writer in the Saturday Review (Aug. 10, 1867) expresses it: “Chastity is merely a social law created to encourage the alliances that most promote the permanent welfare of the race, and to maintain woman in a social position which it is thought advisable she should hold.” See, too, on this view, Hume's Inquiry concerning Morals, § 4, and also note x.: “To what other purpose do all the ideas of chastity and modesty serve? Nisi utile est quod facimus, frustra est gloria.”

16.

“All pleasure is necessarily self-regarding, for it is impossible to have any feelings out of our own mind. But there are modes of delight that bring also satisfaction to others, from the round that they take in their course. Such are the pleasures of benevolence. Others imply no participation by any second party, as, for example, eating, drinking, bodily warmth, property, and power; while a third class are fed by the pains and privations of fellow-beings, as the delights of sport and tyranny. The condemnatory phrase, selfishness, applies with especial emphasis to the last-mentioned class, and, in a qualified degree, to the second group; while such terms as unselfishness, disinterestedness, self-devotion, are applied to the vicarious position wherein we seek our own satisfaction in that of others.”—Bain On the Emotions and Will, p. 113.

17.

“Vice may be defined to be a miscalculation of chances, a mistake in estimating the value of pleasures and pains. It is false moral arithmetic.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. i. p. 131.

18.

“La récompense, la punition, la gloire et l'infamie soumises à ses volontés sont quatre espèces de divinités avec lesquelles le législateur peut toujours opérer le bien public et créer des hommes illustres en tous les genres. Toute l'étude des moralistes consiste à déterminer l'usage qu'on doit faire de ces récompenses et de ces punitions et les secours qu'on peut tirer pour lier l'intérêt personnel à l'intérêt général.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, ii. 22. “La justice de nos jugements et de nos actions n'est jamais que la rencontre heureuse de notre intérêt avec l'intérêt public.”—Ibid. ii. 7. “To prove that the immoral action is a miscalculation of self-interest, to show how erroneous an estimate the vicious man makes of pains and pleasures, is the purpose of the intelligent moralist. Unless he can do this he does nothing; for, as has been stated above, for a man not to pursue what he deems likely to produce to him the greatest sum of enjoyment, is, in the very nature of things, impossible.”—Bentham's Deontology.

19.

“If the effect of virtue were to prevent or destroy more pleasure than it produced, or to produce more pain than it prevented, its more appropriate name would be wickedness and folly; wickedness as it affected others, folly as respected him who practised it.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. i. p. 142. “Weigh pains, weigh pleasures, and as the balance stands will stand the question of right and wrong.”—Ibid. vol. i. p. 137. “Moralis philosophiæ caput est, Faustine fili, ut scias quibus ad beatam vitam perveniri rationibus possit.”—Apuleius, Ad Doct. Platonis, ii. “Atque ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et æqui.”—Horace, Sat. I. iii. 98.

20.

“We can be obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by; for nothing else can be ‘violent motive’ to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the laws or the magistrate unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of God.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, book ii. ch. ii.

21.

See Gassendi Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma. These four canons are a skilful condensation of the argument of Torquatus in Cicero, De Fin. i. 2. See, too, a very striking letter by Epicurus himself, given in his life by Diogenes Laërtius.

22.

“Sanus igitur non est, qui nulla spe majore proposita, iis bonis quibus cæteri utuntur in vita, labores et cruciatus et miserias anteponat.... Non aliter his bonis præsentibus abstinendum est quam si sint aliqua majora, propter quæ tanti sit et voluptates omittere et mala omnia sustinere.”—Lactantius, Div. Inst. vi. 9. Macaulay, in some youthful essays against the Utilitarian theory (which he characteristically described as “Not much more laughable than phrenology, and immeasurably more humane than cock-fighting”), maintains the theological form of selfishness in very strong terms. “What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, and that is not only true but identical, that men always act from self-interest.”—Review of Mill's Essay on Government. “Of this we may be sure, that the words ‘greatest happiness’ will never in any man's mouth mean more than the greatest happiness of others, which is consistent with what he thinks his own.... This direction (Do as you would be done by) would be utterly unmeaning, as it actually is in Mr. Bentham's philosophy, unless it were accompanied by a sanction. In the Christian scheme accordingly it is accompanied by a sanction of immense force. To a man whose greatest happiness in this world is inconsistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is held out the prospect of an infinite happiness hereafter, from which he excludes himself by wronging his fellow-creatures here.”—Answer to the Westminster Review's Defence of Mill.

23.

“All virtue and piety are thus resolvable into a principle of self-love. It is what Scripture itself resolves them into by founding them upon faith in God's promises, and hope in things unseen. In this way it may be rightly said that there is no such thing as disinterested virtue. It is with reference to ourselves and for our own sakes that we love even God Himself.”—Waterland, Third Sermon on Self-love. “To risk the happiness of the whole duration of our being in any case whatever, were it possible, would be foolish.”—Robert Hall's Sermon on Modern Infidelity. “In the moral system the means are virtuous practice; the end, happiness.”— Warburton's Divine Legation, book ii. Appendix.

24.

“There is always understood to be a difference between an act of prudence and an act of duty. Thus, if I distrusted a man who owed me a sum of money, I should reckon it an act of prudence to get another person bound with him; but I should hardly call it an act of duty.... Now in what, you will ask, does the difference consist, inasmuch as, according to our account of the matter, both in the one case and the other, in acts of duty as well as acts of prudence, we consider solely what we ourselves shall gain or lose by the act? The difference, and the only difference, is this: that in the one case we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world to come.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, ii. 3.

25.

“Hence we may see the weakness and mistake of those falsely religious ... who are scandalised at our being determined to the pursuit of virtue through any degree of regard to its happy consequences in this life.... For it is evident that the religious motive is precisely of the same kind, only stronger, as the happiness expected is greater and more lasting.”—Brown's Essays on the Characteristics, p. 220.

26.

“If a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as a reason, because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if an Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of the old heathen philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, because it was dishonest, below the dignity of man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.”—Locke's Essay, i. 3.

27.

Thus Paley remarks that—“The Christian religion hath not ascertained the precise quantity of virtue necessary to salvation,” and he then proceeds to urge the probability of graduated scales of rewards and punishments. (Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vii.)

28.

This view was developed by Locke (Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. ch. xxi.) Pascal, in a well-known passage, applied the same argument to Christianity, urging that the rewards and punishments it promises are so great, that it is the part of a wise man to embrace the creed, even though he believes it improbable, if there be but a possibility in its favour.

29.

Cudworth, in his Immutable Morals, has collected the names of a number of the schoolmen who held this view. See, too, an interesting note in Miss Cobbe's very learned Essay on Intuitive Morals, pp. 18, 19.

30.

E.g. Soame Jenyns, Dr. Johnson, Crusius, Pascal, Paley, and Austin. Warburton is generally quoted in the list, but not I think quite fairly. See his theory, which is rather complicated (Divine Legation, i. 4). Waterland appears to have held this view, and also Condillac. See a very remarkable chapter on morals, in his Traité des Animaux, part ii. ch. vii. Closely connected with this doctrine is the notion that the morality of God is generically different from the morality of men, which having been held with more or less distinctness by many theologians (Archbishop King being perhaps the most prominent), has found in our own day an able defender in Dr. Mansel. Much information on the history of this doctrine will be found in Dr. Mansel's Second Letter to Professor Goldwin Smith (Oxford, 1862).

31.

Leibnitz noticed the frequency with which Supralapsarian Calvinists adopt this doctrine. (Théodicée, part ii. § 176.) Archbishop Whately, who from his connection with the Irish Clergy had admirable opportunities of studying the tendencies of Calvinism, makes a similar remark as the result of his own experience. (Whately's Life, vol. ii. p. 339.)

32.

“God designs the happiness of all His sentient creatures.... Knowing the tendencies of our actions, and knowing His benevolent purpose, we know His tacit commands.”—Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. p. 31. “The commands which He has revealed we must gather from the terms wherein they are promulgated. The commands which He has not revealed we must construe by the principle of utility.”—Ibid. p. 96. So Paley's Moral Philosophy, book ii. ch. iv. v.

33.

Paley's Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vii. The question of the disinterestedness of the love we should bear to God was agitated in the Catholic Church, Bossuet taking the selfish, and Fénelon the unselfish side. The opinions of Fénelon and Molinos on the subject were authoritatively condemned. In England, the less dogmatic character of the national faith, and also the fact that the great anti-Christian writer, Hobbes, was the advocate of extreme selfishness in morals, had, I think, a favourable influence upon the ethics of the church. Hobbes gave the first great impulse to moral philosophy in England, and his opponents were naturally impelled to an unselfish theory. Bishop Cumberland led the way, resolving virtue (like Hutcheson) into benevolence. The majority of divines, however, till the present century, have, I think, been on the selfish side.

34.

Moral Philosophy, ii. 3.

35.

Essay on the Human Understanding, ii. 28.

36.

Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. iii. Mr. Mill observes that, “Bentham's idea of the world is that of a collection of persons pursuing each his separate interest or pleasure, and the prevention of whom from jostling one another more than is unavoidable, may be attempted by hopes and fears derived from three sources—the law, religion, and public opinion. To these three powers, considered as binding human conduct, he gave the name of sanctions; the political sanction operating by the rewards and penalties of the law; the religious sanction by those expected from the ruler of the universe; and the popular, which he characteristically calls also the moral sanction, operating through the pains and pleasures arising from the favour or disfavour of our fellow-creatures.”—Dissertations, vol. i. pp. 362-363.

37.

Hume on this, as on most other points, was emphatically opposed to the school of Hobbes, and even declared that no one could honestly and in good faith deny the reality of an unselfish element in man. Following in the steps of Butler, he explained it in the following passage:—“Hunger and thirst have eating and drinking for their end, and from the gratification of these primary appetites arises a pleasure which may become the object of another species of desire or inclination that is secondary and interested. In the same manner there are mental passions by which we are impelled immediately to seek particular objects, such as fame or power or vengeance, without any regard to interest, and when these objects are attained a pleasing enjoyment ensues.... Now where is the difficulty of conceiving that this may likewise be the case with benevolence and friendship, and that from the original frame of our temper we may feel a desire of another's happiness or good, which by means of that affection becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyment?”—Hume's Enquiry concerning Morals, Appendix II. Compare Butler, “If there be any appetite or any inward principle besides self-love, why may there not be an affection towards the good of our fellow-creatures, and delight from that affection's being gratified and uneasiness from things going contrary to it?”—Sermon on Compassion.

38.

“By sympathetic sensibility is to be understood the propensity that a man has to derive pleasure from the happiness, and pain from the unhappiness, of other sensitive beings.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. vi. “The sense of sympathy is universal. Perhaps there never existed a human being who had reached full age without the experience of pleasure at another's pleasure, of uneasiness at another's pain.... Community of interests, similarity of opinion, are sources from whence it springs.”—Deontology, vol. i. pp. 169-170.

39.

“The idea of the pain of another is naturally painful. The idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable.... In this, the unselfish part of our nature, lies a foundation, even independently of inculcation from without, for the generation of moral feelings”—Mill's Dissertations, vol. i. p. 137. See, too, Bain's Emotions and the Will, pp. 289, 313; and especially Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence. The first volume of this brilliant work contains, I think without exception, the best modern statement of the utilitarian theory in its most plausible form—a statement equally remarkable for its ability, its candour, and its uniform courtesy to opponents.

40.

See a collection of passages from Aristotle, bearing on the subject, in Mackintosh's Dissertation.

41.

Cic. De Finibus, i. 5. This view is adopted in Tucker's Light of Nature (ed. 1842), vol. i. p. 167. See, too, Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 174.

42.

Essay, book ii. ch. xxxiii.

43.

Hutcheson On the Passions, § 1. The “secondary desires” of Hutcheson are closely related to the “reflex affections” of Shaftesbury. “Not only the outward beings which offer themselves to the sense are the objects of the affection; but the very actions themselves, and the affections of pity, kindness, gratitude, and their contraries, being brought into the mind by reflection, become objects. So that by means of this reflected sense, there arises another kind of affection towards those very affections themselves.”—Shaftesbury's Enquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part ii. § 3.

44.

See the preface to Hartley On Man. Gay's essay is prefixed to Law's translation of Archbishop King On the Origin of Evil.

45.

“The case is this. We first perceive or imagine some real good; i.e. fitness to promote our happiness in those things which we love or approve of.... Hence those things and pleasures are so tied together and associated in our minds, that one cannot present itself, but the other will also occur. And the association remains even after that which at first gave them the connection is quite forgotten, or perhaps does not exist, but the contrary.”—Gay's Essay, p. lii. “All affections whatsoever are finally resolvable into reason, pointing out private happiness, and are conversant only about things apprehended to be means tending to this end; and whenever this end is not perceived, they are to be accounted for from the association of ideas, and may properly enough be called habits.”—Ibid. p. xxxi.

46.

Principally by Mr. James Mill, whose chapter on association, in his Analysis of the Human Mind, may probably rank with Paley's beautiful chapter on happiness, at the head of all modern writings on the utilitarian side,—either of them, I think, being far more valuable than anything Bentham ever wrote on morals. This last writer—whose contempt for his predecessors was only equalled by his ignorance of their works, and who has added surprisingly little to moral science (considering the reputation he attained), except a barbarous nomenclature and an interminable series of classifications evincing no real subtlety of thought—makes, as far as I am aware, no use of the doctrine of association. Paley states it with his usual admirable clearness. “Having experienced in some instances a particular conduct to be beneficial to ourselves, or observed that it would be so, a sentiment of approbation rises up in our minds, which sentiment afterwards accompanies the idea or mention of the same conduct, although the private advantage which first existed no longer exist.”—Paley, Moral Philos. i. 5. Paley, however, made less use of this doctrine than might have been expected from so enthusiastic an admirer of Tucker. In our own day it has been much used by Mr. J. S. Mill.

47.

This illustration, which was first employed by Hutcheson, is very happily developed by Gay (p. lii.). It was then used by Hartley, and finally Tucker reproduced the whole theory with the usual illustration without any acknowledgment of the works of his predecessors, employing however, the term “translation” instead of “association” of ideas. See his curious chapter on the subject, Light of Nature, book i. ch. xviii.

48.

“It is the nature of translation to throw desire from the end upon the means, which thenceforward become an end capable of exciting an appetite without prospect of the consequences whereto they lead. Our habits and most of the desires that occupy human life are of this translated kind.”—Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. ii. (ed. 1842), p. 281.

49.

Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. The desire for posthumous fame is usually cited by intuitive moralists as a proof of a naturally disinterested element in man.

50.

Mill's Analysis.

51.

Hartley On Man, vol. i. pp. 474-475.

52.

“Benevolence ... has also a high degree of honour and esteem annexed to it, procures us many advantages and returns of kindness, both from the person obliged and others, and is most closely connected with the hopes of reward in a future state, and of self-approbation or the moral sense; and the same things hold with respect to generosity in a much higher degree. It is easy therefore to see how such associations may be formed as to engage us to forego great pleasure, or endure great pain for the sake of others, how these associations may be attended with so great a degree of pleasure as to overrule the positive pain endured or the negative one from the foregoing of a pleasure, and yet how there may be no direct explicit expectation of reward either from God or man, by natural consequence or express appointment, not even of the concomitant pleasure that engages the agent to undertake the benevolent and generous action; and this I take to be a proof from the doctrine of association that there is and must be such a thing as pure disinterested benevolence; also a just account of the origin and nature of it.”—Hartley On Man, vol. i. pp. 473-474. See too Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. p. 252.

53.

Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. pp. 244-247.

54.

“With self-interest,” said Hartley, “man must begin; he may end in self-annihilation;” or as Coleridge happily puts it, “Legality precedes morality in every individual, even as the Jewish dispensation preceded the Christian in the world at large.”—Notes Theological and Political, p. 340. It might be retorted with much truth, that we begin by practising morality as a duty—we end by practising it as a pleasure, without any reference to duty. Coleridge, who expressed for the Benthamite theories a very cordial detestation, sometimes glided into them himself. “The happiness of man,” he says, “is the end of virtue, and truth is the knowledge of the means.” (The Friend, ed. 1850, vol. ii. p. 192.) “What can be the object of human virtue but the happiness of sentient, still more of moral beings?” (Notes Theol. and Polit. p. 351.) Leibnitz says, “Quand on aura appris à faire des actions louables par ambition, on les fera après par inclination.” (Sur l' Art de connaître les Hommes.)

55.

E.g. Mackintosh and James Mill. Coleridge in his younger days was an enthusiastic admirer of Hartley; but chiefly, I believe, on account of his theory of vibrations. He named his son after him, and described him in one of his poems as:— “He of mortal kind Wisest, the first who marked the ideal tribes Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.” Religious Musings.

56.

This position is elaborated in a passage too long for quotation by Mr. Austin. (Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. p. 44.)

57.

Hobbes defines conscience as “the opinion of evidence” (On Human Nature, ch. vi. §8). Locke as “our own opinion or judgment of the moral rectitude or pravity of our own actions” (Essay, book i. ch. iii. § 8). In Bentham there is very little on the subject; but in one place he informs us that “conscience is a thing of fictitious existence, supposed to occupy a seat in the mind” (Deontology, vol. i. p. 137); and in another he ranks “love of duty” (which he describes as an “impossible motive, in so far as duty is synonymous to obligation”) as a variety of the “love of power” (Springs of Action, ii.) Mr. Bain says, “conscience is an imitation within ourselves of the government without us.” (Emotions and Will, p. 313.)

58.

“However much they [utilitarians] may believe (as they do) that actions and dispositions are only virtuous because they promote another end than virtue, yet this being granted ... they not only place virtue at the very head of the things which are good as means to the ultimate end, but they also recognise as a psychological fact the possibility of its being to the individual a good in itself.... Virtue, according to the utilitarian doctrine, is not naturally and originally part of the end, but it is capable of becoming so.... What was once desired as an instrument for the attainment of happiness has come to be desired ... as part of happiness.... Human nature is so constituted as to desire nothing which is not either a part of happiness or a means of happiness.”—J. S. Mill's Utilitarianism, pp. 54, 55, 56, 58.

59.

“A man is tempted to commit adultery with the wife of his friend. The composition of the motive is obvious. He does not obey the motive. Why? He obeys other motives which are stronger. Though pleasures are associated with the immoral act, pains are associated with it also—the pains of the injured husband, the pains of the wife, the moral indignation of mankind, the future reproaches of his own mind. Some men obey the first rather than the second motive. The reason is obvious. In these the association of the act with the pleasure is from habit unduly strong, the association of the act with pains is from want of habit unduly weak. This is the case of a bad education.... Among the different classes of motives, there are men who are more easily and strongly operated on by some, others by others. We have also seen that this is entirely owing to habits of association. This facility of being acted upon by motives of a particular description, is that which we call disposition.”—Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. pp. 212, 213, &c. Adam Smith says, I think with much wisdom, that “the great secret of education is to direct vanity to proper objects.”—Moral Sentiments, part vi. § 3.

60.

“Goodness in ourselves is the prospect of satisfaction annexed to the welfare of others, so that we please them for the pleasure we receive ourselves in so doing, or to avoid the uneasiness we should feel in omitting it. But God is completely happy in Himself, nor can His happiness receive increase or diminution from anything befalling His creatures; wherefore His goodness is pure, disinterested bounty, without any return of joy or satisfaction to Himself. Therefore it is no wonder we have imperfect notions of a quality whereof we have no experience in our own nature.”—Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. i. p. 355. “It is the privilege of God alone to act upon pure, disinterested bounty, without the least addition thereby to His own enjoyment.”—Ibid. vol. ii. p. 279. On the other hand, Hutcheson asks, “If there be such disposition in the Deity, where is the impossibility of some small degree of this public love in His creatures, and why must they be supposed incapable of acting but from self-love?”—Enquiry concerning Moral Good, § 2.

61.

“We gradually, through the influence of association, come to desire the means without thinking of the end; the action itself becomes an object of desire, and is performed without reference to any motive beyond itself. Thus far, it may still be objected that the action having, through association, become pleasurable, we are as much as before moved to act by the anticipation of pleasure, namely, the pleasure of the action itself. But granting this, the matter does not end here. As we proceed in the formation of habits, and become accustomed to will a particular act ... because it is pleasurable, we at last continue to will it without any reference to its being pleasurable.... In this manner it is that habits of hurtful excess continue to be practised, although they have ceased to be pleasurable, and in this manner also it is that the habit of willing to persevere in the course which he has chosen, does not desert the moral hero, even when the reward ... is anything but an equivalent for the suffering he undergoes, or the wishes he may have to renounce.”—Mill's Logic (4th edition), vol. ii. pp. 416, 417.

62.

“In regard to interest in the most extended, which is the original and only strictly proper sense of the word disinterested, no human act has ever been or ever can be disinterested.... In the only sense in which disinterestedness can with truth be predicated of human actions, it is employed ... to denote, not the absence of all interest ... but only the absence of all interest of the self-regarding class. Not but that it is very frequently predicated of human action in cases in which divers interests, to no one of which the appellation of self-regarding can with propriety be denied, have been exercising their influence, and in particular fear of God, or hope from God, and fear of ill-repute, or hope of good repute. If what is above be correct, the most disinterested of men is not less under the dominion of interest than the most interested. The only cause of his being styled disinterested, is its not having been observed that the sort of motive (suppose it sympathy for an individual or class) has as truly a corresponding interest belonging to it as any other species of motive has. Of this contradiction between the truth of the case and the language employed in speaking of it, the cause is that in the one case men have not been in the habit of making—as in point of consistency they ought to have made—of the word interest that use which in the other case they have been in the habit of making of it.”—Bentham's Springs of Action, ii. § 2.

63.

Among others Bishop Butler, who draws some very subtle distinctions on the subject in his first sermon “on the love of our neighbour.” Dugald Stewart remarks that “although we apply the epithet selfish to avarice and to low and private sensuality, we never apply it to the desire of knowledge or to the pursuits of virtue, which are certainly sources of more exquisite pleasure than riches or sensuality can bestow.”—Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. p. 19.

64.

Sir W. Hamilton.

65.

Cic. De Fin. lib. ii.

66.

“As there is not any sort of pleasure that is not itself a good, nor any sort of pain the exemption from which is not a good, and as nothing but the expectation of the eventual enjoyment of pleasure in some shape, or of exemption from pain in some shape, can operate in the character of a motive, a necessary consequence is that if by motive be meant sort of motive, there is not any such thing as a bad motive.”—Bentham's Springs of Action, ii. § 4. The first clauses of the following passage I have already quoted: “Pleasure is itself a good, nay, setting aside immunity from pain, the only good. Pain is in itself an evil, and indeed, without exception, the only evil, or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure. It follows therefore immediately and incontestably that there is no such thing as any sort of motive that is in itself a bad one.”—Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. ix. “The search after motive is one of the prominent causes of men's bewilderment in the investigation of questions of morals.... But this is a pursuit in which every moment employed is a moment wasted. All motives are abstractedly good. No man has ever had, can, or could have a motive different from the pursuit of pleasure or of shunning pain.”—Deontology, vol. i. p. 126. Mr. Mill's doctrine appears somewhat different from this, but the difference is I think only apparent. He says: “The motive has nothing to do with the morality of the action, though much with the worth of the agent,” and he afterwards explains this last statement by saying that the “motive makes a great difference in our moral estimation of the agent, especially if it indicates a good or a bad habitual disposition, a bent of character from which useful or from which hurtful actions are likely to arise.”—Utilitarianism, 2nd ed. pp. 26-27.

67.

This truth has been admirably illustrated by Mr. Herbert Spencer (Social Statics, pp. 1-8).

68.

“On évalue la grandeur de la vertu en comparant les biens obtenus aux maux au prix desquels on les achète: l'excédant en bien mesure la valeur de la vertu, comme l'excédant en mal mesure le degré de haine que doit inspirer le vice.”—Ch. Comte, Traité de Législation, liv. ii. ch. xii.

69.

M. Dumont, the translator of Bentham, has elaborated in a rather famous passage the utilitarian notions about vengeance. “Toute espèce de satisfaction entraînant une peine pour le délinquant produit naturellement un plaisir de vengeance pour la partie lésée. Ce plaisir est un gain. Il rappelle la parabole de Samson. C'est le doux qui sort du terrible. C'est le miel recueilli dans la gueule du lion. Produit sans frais, résultat net d'une opération nécessaire à d'autres titres, c'est une jouissance à cultiver comme toute autre; car le plaisir de la vengeance considérée abstraitement n'est comme tout autre plaisir qu'un bien en lui-même.”—Principes du Code pénal, 2me partie, ch. xvi. According to a very acute living writer of this school, “The criminal law stands to the passion of revenge in much the same relation as marriage to the sexual appetite” (J. F. Stephen, On the Criminal Law of England, p. 99). Mr. Mill observes that, “In the golden rule of Jesus of Nazareth, we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility” (Utilitarianism, p. 24). It is but fair to give a specimen of the opposite order of extravagance. “So well convinced was Father Claver of the eternal happiness of almost all whom he assisted,” says this saintly missionary's biographer, “that speaking once of some persons who had delivered a criminal into the hands of justice, he said, God forgive them; but they have secured the salvation of this man at the probable risk of their own.”—Newman's Anglican Difficulties, p. 205.

70.

De Ordine, ii. 4. The experiment has more than once been tried at Venice, Pisa, &c., and always with the results St. Augustine predicted.

71.

The reader will here observe the very transparent sophistry of an assertion which is repeated ad nauseam by utilitarians. They tell us that a regard to the remote consequences of our actions would lead us to the conclusion that we should never perform an act which would not be conducive to human happiness if it were universally performed, or, as Mr. Austin expresses it, that “the question is if acts of this class were generally done or generally forborne or omitted, what would be the probable effect on the general happiness or good?” (Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. p. 32.) The question is nothing of the kind. If I am convinced that utility alone constitutes virtue, and if I am meditating any particular act, the sole question of morality must be whether that act is on the whole useful, produces a net result of happiness. To determine this question I must consider both the immediate and the remote consequences of the act; but the latter are not ascertained by asking what would be the result if every one did as I do, but by asking how far, as a matter of fact, my act is likely to produce imitators, or affect the conduct and future acts of others. It may no doubt be convenient and useful to form classifications based on the general tendency of different courses to promote or diminish happiness, but such classifications cannot alter the morality of particular acts. It is quite clear that no act which produces on the whole more pleasure than pain can on utilitarian principles be vicious. It is, I think, equally clear that no one could act consistently on such a principle without being led to consequences which in the common judgment of mankind are grossly and scandalously immoral.

72.

There are some very good remarks on the possibility of living a life of imagination wholly distinct from the life of action in Mr. Bain's Emotions and Will, p. 246.

73.

Bentham especially recurs to this subject frequently. See Sir J. Bowring's edition of his works (Edinburgh, 1843), vol. i. pp. 142, 143, 562; vol. x. pp. 549-550.

74.

“Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness they do not with one voice answer ‘immoral,’ let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.”—Mill's Dissert. vol. ii. p. 485. “We deprive them [animals] of life, and this is justifiable—their pains do not equal our enjoyments. There is a balance of good.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. i. p. 14. Mr. Mill accordingly defines the principle of utility, without any special reference to man. “The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility or the great happiness principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.”—Utilitarianism, pp. 9-10.

75.

The exception of course being domestic animals, which may be injured by ill treatment, but even this exception is a very partial one. No selfish reason could prevent any amount of cruelty to animals that were about to be killed, and even in the case of previous ill-usage the calculations of selfishness will depend greatly upon the price of the animal. I have been told that on some parts of the continent diligence horses are systematically under-fed, and worked to a speedy death, their cheapness rendering such a course the most economical.

76.

Bentham, as we have seen, is of opinion that the gastronomic pleasure would produce the requisite excess of enjoyment. Hartley, who has some amiable and beautiful remarks on the duty of kindness to animals, without absolutely condemning, speaks with much aversion of the custom of eating “our brothers and sisters,” the animals. (On Man, vol. ii. pp. 222-223.) Paley, observing that it is quite possible for men to live without flesh-diet, concludes that the only sufficient justification for eating meat is an express divine revelation in the Book of Genesis. (Moral Philos. book ii. ch. 11.) Some reasoners evade the main issue by contending that they kill animals because they would otherwise overrun the earth; but this, as Windham said, “is an indifferent reason for killing fish.”

77.

In commenting upon the French licentiousness of the eighteenth century, Hume says, in a passage which has excited a great deal of animadversion:—“Our neighbours, it seems, have resolved to sacrifice some of the domestic to the social pleasures; and to prefer ease, freedom, and an open commerce, to strict fidelity and constancy. These ends are both good, and are somewhat difficult to reconcile; nor must we be surprised if the customs of nations incline too much sometimes to the one side, and sometimes to the other.”—Dialogue.

78.

There are few things more pitiable than the blunders into which writers have fallen when trying to base the plain virtue of chastity on utilitarian calculations. Thus since the writings of Malthus it has been generally recognised that one of the very first conditions of all material prosperity is to check early marriages, to restrain the tendency of population to multiply more rapidly than the means of subsistence. Knowing this, what can be more deplorable than to find moralists making such arguments as these the very foundation of morals?—“The first and great mischief, and by consequence the guilt, of promiscuous concubinage consists in its tendency to diminish marriages.” (Paley's Moral Philosophy, book iii. part iii. ch. ii.) “That is always the most happy condition of a nation, and that nation is most accurately obeying the laws of our constitution, in which the number of the human race is most rapidly increasing. Now it is certain that under the law of chastity, that is, when individuals are exclusively united to each other, the increase of population will be more rapid than under any other circumstances.” (Wayland's Elements of Moral Science, p. 298, 11th ed., Boston, 1839.) I am sorry to bring such subjects before the reader, but it is impossible to write a history of morals without doing so.

79.

See Luther's Table Talk.

80.

Tillemont, Mém. pour servir à l'Hist. ecclésiastique, tome x. p. 57.

81.

Τό τε ἀληθεύειν καὶ τὸ εὐεργετεῖν. (Ælian, Var. Hist. xii. 59.) Longinus in like manner divides virtue into εὐεργεσία καὶ ἀλήθεια. (De Sublim. § 1.) The opposite view in England is continually expressed in the saying, “You should never pull down an opinion until you have something to put in its place,” which can only mean, if you are convinced that some religious or other hypothesis is false, you are morally bound to repress or conceal your conviction until you have discovered positive affirmations or explanations as unqualified and consolatory as those you have destroyed.

82.

See this powerfully stated by Shaftesbury. (Inquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part iii.) The same objection applies to Dr. Mansel's modification of the theological doctrine—viz. that the origin of morals is not the will but the nature of God.

83.

“The one great and binding ground of the belief of God and a hereafter is the law of conscience.”—Coleridge, Notes Theological and Political, p. 367. That our moral faculty is our one reason for maintaining the supreme benevolence of the Deity was a favourite position of Kant.

84.

“Nescio quomodo inhæret in mentibus quasi sæculorum quoddam augurium futurorum; idque in maximis ingeniis altissimisque animis et exsistit maxime et apparet facillime.”—Cic. Tusc. Disp. i. 14.

85.

“It is a calumny to say that men are roused to heroic actions by ease, hope of pleasure, recompense—sugar-plums of any kind in this world or the next. In the meanest mortal there lies something nobler. The poor swearing soldier hired to be shot has his ‘honour of a soldier,’ different from drill, regulations, and the shilling a day. It is not to taste sweet things, but to do noble and true things, and vindicate himself under God's heaven as a God-made man, that the poorest son of Adam dimly longs. Show him the way of doing that, the dullest day-drudge kindles into a hero. They wrong man greatly who say he is to be seduced by ease. Difficulty, abnegation, martyrdom, death, are the allurements that act on the heart of man. Kindle the inner genial life of him, you have a flame that burns up all lower considerations.”—Carlyle's Hero-worship, p. 237 (ed. 1858).

86.

“Clamat Epicurus, is quem vos nimis voluptatibus esse deditum dicitis, non posse jucunde vivi nisi sapienter, honeste, justeque vivatur, nec sapienter, honeste, juste nisi jucunde.”—Cicero, De Fin. i. 18.

87.

“The virtues to be complete must have fixed their residence in the heart and become appetites impelling to actions without further thought than the gratification of them; so that after their expedience ceases they still continue to operate by the desire they raise.... I knew a mercer who having gotten a competency of fortune, thought to retire and enjoy himself in quiet; but finding he could not be easy without business was forced to return to the shop and assist his former partners gratis, in the nature of a journeyman. Why then should it be thought strange that a man long inured to the practice of moral duties should persevere in them out of liking, when they can yield him no further advantage?”—Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. i. p. 269. Mr. J. S. Mill in his Utilitarianism dwells much on the heroism which he thinks this view of morals may produce.

88.

See Lactantius, Inst. Div. vi. 9. Montesquieu, in his Décadence de l'Empire romain, has shown in detail the manner in which the crimes of Roman politicians contributed to the greatness of their nation. Modern history furnishes only too many illustrations of the same truth.

89.

“That quick sensibility which is the groundwork of all advances towards perfection increases the pungency of pains and vexations.”—Tucker's Light of Nature, ii. 16, § 4.

90.

This position is forcibly illustrated by Mr. Maurice in his fourth lecture On Conscience (1868). It is manifest that a tradesman resisting a dishonest or illegal trade custom, an Irish peasant in a disturbed district revolting against the agrarian conspiracy of his class, or a soldier in many countries conscientiously refusing in obedience to the law to fight a duel, would incur the full force of social penalties, because he failed to do that which was illegal or criminal.

91.

See Brown On the Characteristics, pp. 206-209.

92.

“A toothache produces more violent convulsions of pain than a phthisis or a dropsy. A gloomy disposition ... may be found in very worthy characters, though it is sufficient alone to embitter life.... A selfish villain may possess a spring and alacrity of temper, which is indeed a good quality, but which is rewarded much beyond its merit, and when attended with good fortune will compensate for the uneasiness and remorse arising from all the other vices.”—Hume's Essays: The Sceptic.

93.

At the same time, the following passage contains, I think, a great deal of wisdom and of a kind peculiarly needed in England at the present day:—“The nature of the subject furnishes the strongest presumption that no better system will ever, for the future, be invented, in order to account for the origin of the benevolent from the selfish affections, and reduce all the various emotions of the human mind to a perfect simplicity. The case is not the same in this species of philosophy as in physics. Many an hypothesis in nature, contrary to first appearances, has been found, on more accurate scrutiny, solid and satisfactory.... But the presumption always lies on the other side in all enquiries concerning the origin of our passions, and of the internal operations of the human mind. The simplest and most obvious cause which can there be assigned for any phenomenon, is probably the true one.... The affections are not susceptible of any impression from the refinements of reason or imagination; and it is always found that a vigorous exertion of the latter faculties, necessarily, from the narrow capacity of the human mind, destroys all activity in the former.”—Hume's Enquiry Concerning Morals, Append. II.

94.

“The pleasing consciousness and self-approbation that rise up in the mind of a virtuous man, exclusively of any direct, explicit, consideration of advantage likely to accrue to himself from his possession of those good qualities” (Hartley On Man, vol. i. p. 493), form a theme upon which moralists of both schools are fond of dilating, in a strain that reminds one irresistibly of the self-complacency of a famous nursery hero, while reflecting upon his own merits over a Christmas-pie. Thus Adam Smith says, “The man who, not from frivolous fancy, but from proper motives, has performed a generous action, when he looks forward to those whom he has served, feels himself to be the natural object of their love and gratitude, and by sympathy with them, of the esteem and approbation of all mankind. And when he looks backward to the motive from which he acted, and surveys it in the light in which the indifferent spectator will survey it, he still continues to enter into it, and applauds himself by sympathy with the approbation of this supposed impartial judge. In both these points of view, his conduct appears to him every way agreeable.... Misery and wretchedness can never enter the breast in which dwells complete self-satisfaction.”—Theory of Moral Sentiments, part ii. ch. ii. § 2; part iii. ch. iii. I suspect that many moralists confuse the self-gratulation which they suppose a virtuous man to feel, with the delight a religious man experiences from the sense of the protection and favour of the Deity. But these two feelings are clearly distinct, and it will, I believe, be found that the latter is most strongly experienced by the very men who most sincerely disclaim all sense of merit. “Were the perfect man to exist,” said that good and great writer, Archer Butler, “he himself would be the last to know it; for the highest stage of advancement is the lowest descent in humility.” At all events, the reader will observe, that on utilitarian principles nothing could be more pernicious or criminal than that modest, humble, and diffident spirit, which diminishes the pleasure of self-gratulation, one of the highest utilitarian motives to virtue.

95.

Hartley has tried in one place to evade this conclusion by an appeal to the doctrine of final causes. He says that the fact that conscience is not an original principle of our nature, but is formed mechanically in the manner I have described, does not invalidate the fact that it is intended for our guide, “for all the things which have evident final causes, are plainly brought about by mechanical means;” and he appeals to the milk in the breast, which is intended for the sustenance of the young, but which is nevertheless mechanically produced. (On Man, vol. ii. pp. 338-339.) But it is plain that this mode of reasoning would justify us in attributing an authoritative character to any habit—e.g. to that of avarice—which these writers assure us is in the manner of its formation an exact parallel to conscience. The later followers of Hartley certainly cannot be accused of any excessive predilection for the doctrine of final causes, yet we sometimes find them asking what great difference it can make whether (when conscience is admitted by both parties to be real) it is regarded as an original principle of our nature, or as a product of association? Simply this. If by the constitution of our nature we are subject to a law of duty which is different from and higher than our interest, a man who violates this law through interested motives, is deserving of reprobation. If on the other hand there is no natural law of duty, and if the pursuit of our interest is the one original principle of our being, no one can be censured who pursues it, and the first criterion of a wise man will be his determination to eradicate every habit (conscientious or otherwise) which impedes him in doing so.

96.

On Human Nature, chap. ix. § 10.

97.

Enquiry concerning Good and Evil.

98.

This theory is noticed by Hutcheson, and a writer in the Spectator (No. 436) suggests that it may explain the attraction of prize-fights. The case of the pleasure derived from fictitious sorrow is a distinct question, and has been admirably treated in Lord Kames' Essays on Morality. Bishop Butler notices (Second Sermon on Compassion), that it is possible for the very intensity of a feeling of compassion to divert men from charity by making them “industriously turn away from the miserable;” and it is well known that Goethe, on account of this very susceptibility, made it one of the rules of his life to avoid everything that could suggest painful ideas. Hobbes makes the following very characteristic comments on some famous lines of Lucretius: “From what passion proceedeth it that men take pleasure to behold from the shore the danger of those that are at sea in a tempest or in fight, or from a safe castle to behold two armies charge one another in the field? It is certainly in the whole sum joy, else men would never flock to such a spectacle. Nevertheless, there is both joy and grief, for as there is novelty and remembrance of our own security present, which is delight, so there is also pity, which is grief. But the delight is so far predominant that men usually are content in such a case to be spectators of the misery of their friends.” (On Human Nature, ch. ix. § 19.) Good Christians, according to some theologians, are expected to enjoy this pleasure in great perfection in heaven. “We may believe in the next world also the goodness as well as the happiness of the blest will be confirmed and advanced by reflections naturally arising from the view of the misery which some shall undergo, which seems to be a good reason for the creation of those beings who shall be finally miserable, and for the continuation of them in their miserable existence ... though in one respect the view of the misery which the damned undergo might seem to detract from the happiness of the blessed through pity and commiseration, yet under another, a nearer and much more affecting consideration, viz. that all this is the misery they themselves were often exposed to and in danger of incurring, why may not the sense of their own escape so far overcome the sense of another's ruin as quite to extinguish the pain that usually attends the idea of it, and even render it productive of some real happiness? To this purpose, Lucretius' Suave mari,” etc. (Law's notes to his Translation of King's Origin of Evil, pp. 477, 479.)

99.

See e.g. Reid's Essays on the Active Powers, essay iii. ch. v.

100.

The error I have traced in this paragraph will be found running through a great part of what Mr. Buckle has written upon morals—I think the weakest portion of his great work. See, for example, an elaborate confusion on the subject, History of Civilisation, vol. ii. p. 429. Mr. Buckle maintains that all the philosophers of what is commonly called “the Scotch school” (a school founded by the Irishman Hutcheson, and to which Hume does not belong), were incapable of inductive reasoning, because they maintained the existence of a moral sense or faculty, or of first principles, incapable of resolution; and he enters into a learned enquiry into the causes which made it impossible for Scotch writers to pursue or appreciate the inductive method. It is curious to contrast this view with the language of one, who, whatever may be the value of his original speculations, is, I conceive, among the very ablest philosophical critics of the present century. “Les philosophes écossais adoptèrent les procédés que Bacon avait recommandé d'appliquer à l'étude du monde physique, et les transportèrent dans l'étude du monde moral. Ils firent voir que l'induction baconienne, c'est-à-dire, l'induction précédée d'une observation scrupuleuse des phénomènes, est en philosophie comme en physique la seule méthode légitime. C'est un de leurs titres les plus honorables d'avoir insisté sur cette démonstration, et d'avoir en même temps joint l'exemple au précepte.... Il est vrai que le zèle des philosophes écossais en faveur de la méthode d'observation leur a presque fait dépasser le but. Ils ont incliné à renfermer la psychologie dans la description minutieuse et continuelle de phénomènes de l'âme sans réfléchir assez que cette description doit faire place à l'induction et au raisonnement déductif, et qu'une philosophie qui se bornerait à l'observation serait aussi stérile que celle qui s'amuserait à construire des hypothèses sans avoir préalablement observé.”—Cousin, Hist. de la Philos. Morale au xviiime Siècle, Tome 4, p. 14-16. Dugald Stewart had said much the same thing, but he was a Scotchman, and therefore, according to Mr. Buckle (Hist. of Civ. ii. pp. 485-86), incapable of understanding what induction was. I may add that one of the principal objections M. Cousin makes against Locke is, that he investigated the origin of our ideas before analysing minutely their nature, and the propriety of this method is one of the points on which Mr. Mill (Examination of Sir W. Hamilton) is at issue with M. Cousin.

101.

M. Ch. Comte, in his very learned Traité de Législation, liv. iii. ch. iv., has made an extremely curious collection of instances in which different nations have made their own distinctive peculiarities of colour and form the ideal of beauty.

102.

“How particularly fine the hard theta is in our English terminations, as in that grand word death, for which the Germans gutturise a sound that puts you in mind of nothing but a loathsome toad.”—Coleridge's Table Talk, p. 181.

103.

Mackintosh, Dissert. p. 238.

104.

Lord Kames' Essays on Morality (1st edition), pp. 55-56.

105.

See Butler's Three Sermons on Human Nature, and the preface.

106.

Speaking of the animated statue which he regarded as a representative of man, Condillac says, “Le goût peut ordinairement contribuer plus que l'odorat à son bonheur et à son malheur.... Il y contribue même encore plus que les sons harmonieux, parce que le besoin de nourriture lui rend les saveurs plus nécessaires, et par conséquent les lui fait goûter avec plus de vivacité. La faim pourra la rendre malheureuse, mais dès qu'elle aura remarqué les sensations propres à l'apaiser, elle y déterminera davantage son attention, les désirera avec plus de violence et en jouira avec plus de délire.”—Traité des Sensations, 1re partie ch. x.

107.

This is one of the favourite thoughts of Pascal, who, however, in his usual fashion dwells upon it in a somewhat morbid and exaggerated strain. “C'est une bien grande misère que de pouvoir prendre plaisir à des choses si basses et si méprisables ... l'homme est encore plus à plaindre de ce qu'il peut se divertir à ces choses si frivoles et si basses, que de ce qu'il s'afflige de ses misères effectives.... D'ou vient que cet homme, qui a perdu depuis peu son fils unique, et qui, accablé de procès et de querelles, était ce matin si troublé, n'y pense plus maintenant? Ne vous en étonnez pas; il est tout occupé à voir par où passera un cerf que ses chiens poursuivent.... C'est une joie de malade et de frénétique.”—Pensées (Misère de l'homme).

108.

“Quæ singula improvidam mortalitatem involvunt, solum ut inter ista certum sit, nihil esse certi, nec miserius quidquam homine, aut superbius. Cæteris quippe animantium sola victus cura est, in quo sponte naturæ benignitas sufficit: uno quidem vel præferenda cunctis bonis, quod de gloria, de pecunia, ambitione, superque de morte, non cogitant.”—Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 5.

109.

Paley, in his very ingenious, and in some respects admirable, chapter on happiness tries to prove the inferiority of animal pleasures, by showing the short time their enjoyment actually lasts, the extent to which they are dulled by repetition, and the cases in which they incapacitate men for other pleasures. But this calculation omits the influence of some animal enjoyments upon health and temperament. The fact, however, that health, which is a condition of body, is the chief source of happiness, Paley fully admits. “Health,” he says, “is the one thing needful ... when we are in perfect health and spirits, we feel in ourselves a happiness independent of any particular outward gratification.... This is an enjoyment which the Deity has annexed to life, and probably constitutes in a great measure the happiness of infants and brutes ... of oysters, periwinkles, and the like; for which I have sometimes been at a loss to find out amusement.” On the test of happiness he very fairly says, “All that can be said is that there remains a presumption in favour of those conditions of life in which men generally appear most cheerful and contented; for though the apparent happiness of mankind be not always a true measure of their real happiness, it is the best measure we have.”—Moral Philosophy, i. 6.

110.

A writer who devoted a great part of his life to studying the deaths of men in different countries, classes, and churches, and to collecting from other physicians information on the subject, says: “À mesure qu'on s'éloigne des grands foyers de civilisation, qu'on se rapproche des plaines et des montagnes, le caractère de la mort prend de plus en plus l'aspect calme du ciel par un beau crépuscule du soir.... En général la mort s'accomplit d'une manière d'autant plus simple et naturelle qu'on est plus libre des innombrables liens de la civilisation.”—Lauvergne, De l'agonie de la Mort, tome i. pp. 131-132.

111.

“I will omit much usual declamation upon the dignity and capacity of our nature, the superiority of the soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our constitution, upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensuality of others; because I hold that pleasures differ in nothing but in continuance and intensity.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vi. Bentham in like manner said, “Quantity of pleasure being equal, pushpin is as good as poetry,” and he maintained that the value of a pleasure depends on—its (1) intensity, (2) duration, (3) certainty, (4) propinquity, (5) purity, (6) fecundity, (7) extent (Springs of Action). The recognition of the “purity” of a pleasure might seem to imply the distinction for which I have contended in the text, but this is not so. The purity of a pleasure or pain, according to Bentham, is “the chance it has of not being followed by sensations of the opposite kind: that is pain if it be a pleasure, pleasure if it be a pain.”—Morals and Legislation, i. § 8. Mr. Buckle (Hist. of Civilisation, vol. ii. pp. 399-400) writes in a somewhat similar strain, but less unequivocally, for he admits that mental pleasures are “more ennobling” than physical ones. The older utilitarians, as far as I have observed, did not even advert to the question. This being the case, it must have been a matter of surprise as well as of gratification to most intuitive moralists to find Mr. Mill fully recognising the existence of different kinds of pleasure, and admitting that the superiority of the higher kinds does not spring from their being greater in amount.—Utilitarianism, pp. 11-12. If it be meant by this that we have the power of recognising some pleasures as superior to others in kind, irrespective of all consideration of their intensity, their cost, and their consequences, I submit that the admission is completely incompatible with the utilitarian theory, and that Mr. Mill has only succeeded in introducing Stoical elements into his system by loosening its very foundation. The impossibility of establishing an aristocracy of enjoyments in which, apart from all considerations of consequences, some which give less pleasure and are less widely diffused are regarded as intrinsically superior to others which give more pleasure and are more general, without admitting into our estimate a moral element, which on utilitarian principles is wholly illegitimate, has been powerfully shown since the first edition of this book by Professor Grote, in his Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy, chap. iii.

112.

Büchner, Force et Matière, pp. 163-164. There is a very curious collection of the speculations of the ancient philosophers on this subject in Plutarch's treatise, De Placitis Philos.

113.

Aulus Gellius, Noctes, x. 23. The law is given by Dion. Halicarn. Valerius Maximus says, “Vini usus olim Romanis feminis ignotus fuit, ne scilicet in aliquod dedecus prolaberentur: quia proximus a Libero patre intemperantiæ gradus ad inconcessam Venerem esse consuevit” (Val. Max. ii. 1, § 5). This is also noticed by Pliny (Hist. Nat. xiv. 14), who ascribes the law to Romulus, and who mentions two cases in which women were said to have been put to death for this offence, and a third in which the offender was deprived of her dowry. Cato said that the ancient Romans were accustomed to kiss their wives for the purpose of discovering whether they had been drinking wine. The Bona Dea, it is said, was originally a woman named Fatua, who was famous for her modesty and fidelity to her husband, but who, unfortunately, having once found a cask of wine in the house, got drunk, and was in consequence scourged to death by her husband. He afterwards repented of his act, and paid divine honours to her memory, and as a memorial of her death, a cask of wine was always placed upon the altar during the rites. (Lactantius, Div. Inst. i. 22.) The Milesians, also, and the inhabitants of Marseilles are said to have had laws forbidding women to drink wine (Ælian, Hist. Var. ii. 38). Tertullian describes the prohibition of wine among the Roman women as in his time obsolete, and a taste for it was one of the great trials of St. Monica (Aug. Conf. x. 8).

114.

“La loi fondamentale de la morale agit sur toutes les nations bien connues. Il y a mille différences dans les interprétations de cette loi en mille circonstances; mais le fond subsiste toujours le même, et ce fond est l'idée du juste et de l'injuste.”—Voltaire, Le Philosophe ignorant.

115.

The feeling in its favour being often intensified by filial affection. “What is the most beautiful thing on the earth?” said Osiris to Horus. “To avenge a parent's wrongs,” was the reply.—Plutarch De Iside et Osiride.

116.

Hence the Justinian code and also St. Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xix. 15) derived servus from “servare,” to preserve, because the victor preserved his prisoners alive.

117.

“Les habitants du Congo tuent les malades qu'ils imaginent ne pouvoir en revenir; c'est, disentils, pour leur épargner les douleurs de l'agonie. Dans l'île Formose, lorsqu'un homme est dangereusement malade, on lui passe un nœud coulant au col et on l'étrangle, pour l'arracher à la douleur.”—Helvétius, De l'Esprit, ii. 13. A similar explanation may be often found for customs which are quoted to prove that the nations where they existed had no sense of chastity. “C'est pareillement sous la sauvegarde des lois que les Siamoises, la gorge et les cuisses à moitié découvertes, portées dans les rues sur les palanquins, s'y présentent dans des attitudes très-lascives. Cette loi fut établie par une de leurs reines nommée Tirada, qui, pour dégoûter les hommes d'un amour plus déshonnête, crut devoir employer toute la puissance de la beauté.”—De l'Esprit, ii. 14.

118.

“The contest between the morality which appeals to an external standard, and that which grounds itself on internal conviction, is the contest of progressive morality against stationary, of reason and argument against the deification of mere opinion and habit.” (Mill's Dissertations, vol. ii. p. 472); a passage with a true Bentham ring. See, too, vol. i. p. 158. There is, however, a schism on this point in the utilitarian camp. The views which Mr. Buckle has expressed in his most eloquent chapter on the comparative influence of intellectual and moral agencies in civilisation diverge widely from those of Mr. Mill.

119.

“Est enim sensualitas quædam vis animæ inferior.... Ratio vero vis animæ est superior.”—Peter Lombard, Sent. ii. 24.

120.

Helvétius, De l'Esprit, discours iv. See too, Dr. Draper's extremely remarkable History of Intellectual Development in Europe (New York, 1864), pp. 48, 53.

121.

Plutarch, De Cohibenda Ira.

122.

Lactantius, Div. Inst. i. 22. The mysteries of the Bona Dea became, however, after a time, the occasion of great disorders. See Juvenal, Sat. vi. M. Magnin has examined the nature of these rites (Origines du Théâtre, pp. 257-259).

123.

The history of the vestals, which forms one of the most curious pages in the moral history of Rome, has been fully treated by the Abbé Nadal, in an extremely interesting and well-written memoir, read before the Académie des Belles-lettres, and republished in 1725. It was believed that the prayer of a vestal could arrest a fugitive slave in his flight, provided he had not got past the city walls. Pliny mentions this belief as general in his time. The records of the order contained many miracles wrought at different times to save the vestals or to vindicate their questioned purity, and also one miracle which is very remarkable as furnishing a precise parallel to that of the Jew who was struck dead for touching the ark to prevent its falling.

124.

As for example the Sibyls and Cassandra. The same prophetic power was attributed in India to virgins.—Clem. Alexandrin. Strom. iii. 7.

125.

This custom continued to the worst period of the empire, though it was shamefully and characteristically evaded. After the fall of Sejanus the senate had no compunction in putting his innocent daughter to death, but their religious feelings were shocked at the idea of a virgin falling beneath the axe. So by way of improving matters “filia constuprata est prius a carnifice, quasi impium esset virginem in carcere perire.”—Dion Cassius, lviii. 11. See too, Tacitus, Annal. v. 9. If a vestal met a prisoner going to execution the prisoner was spared, provided the vestal declared that the encounter was accidental. On the reverence the ancients paid to virgins, see Justus Lipsius, De Vesta et Vestalibus.

126.

See his picture of the first night of marriage:— “Tacitè subit ille supremus Virginitatis amor, primæque modestia culpæ Confundit vultus. Tunc ora rigantur honestis Imbribus.” Thebaidos, lib. ii. 232-34.

127.

Bees (which Virgil said had in them something of the divine nature) were supposed by the ancients to be the special emblems or models of chastity. It was a common belief that the bee mother begot her young without losing her virginity. Thus in a fragment ascribed to Petronius we read, “Sic sine concubitu textis apis excita ceris Fervet, et audaci milite castra replet.” Petron. De Varia Animalium Generatione. So too Virgil:— “Quod neque concubitu indulgent nec corpora segnes In Venerem solvunt aut fœtus nixibus edunt.”—Georg. iv. 198-99. Plutarch says that an unchaste person cannot approach bees, for they immediately attack him and cover him with stings. Fire was also regarded as a type of virginity. Thus Ovid, speaking of the vestals, says:— “Nataque de fiamma corpora nulla vides: Jure igitur virgo est, quæ semina nulla remittit Nec capit, et comites virginitatis amat.” “The Egyptians believed that there are no males among vultures, and they accordingly made that bird an emblem of nature.”—Ammianus Marcellinus, xvii. 4.

128.

“La divinité étant considérée comme renfermant en elle toutes les qualités, toutes les forces intellectuelles et morales de l'homme, chacune de ces forces ou de ces qualités, conçue séparément, s'offrait comme un Être divin.... De-là aussi les contradictions les plus choquantes dans les notions que les anciens avaient des attributs divins.”—Maury, Hist. des Religions de la Grèce antique, tome i. pp. 578-579.

129.

“The Church holds that it were better for sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions who are upon it to die of starvation in extremest agony, so far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say should be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should tell one wilful untruth, though it harmed no one, or steal one poor farthing without excuse.”—Newman's Anglican Difficulties, p. 190.

130.

There is a remarkable dissertation on this subject, called “The Limitations of Morality,” in a very ingenious and suggestive little work of the Benthamite school, called Essays by a Barrister (reprinted from the Saturday Review).

131.

The following passage, though rather vague and rhetorical, is not unimpressive: “Oui, dit Jacobi, je mentirais comme Desdemona mourante, je tromperais comme Oreste quand il veut mourir à la place de Pylade, j'assassinerais comme Timoléon, je serais parjure comme Épaminondas et Jean de Witt, je me déterminerais au suicide comme Caton, je serais sacrilége comme David; car j'ai la certitude en moi-même qu'en pardonnant à ces fautes suivant la lettre l'homme exerce le droit souverain que la majesté de son être lui confère; il appose le sceau de sa divine nature sur la grâce qu'il accorde.”—Barchou de Penhoen, Hist. de la Philos. allemande, tome i. p. 295.

132.

This equivocation seems to me to lie at the root of the famous dispute whether man is by nature a social being, or whether, as Hobbes averred, the state of nature is a state of war. Few persons who have observed the recent light thrown on the subject will question that the primitive condition of man was that of savage life, and fewer still will question that savage life is a state of war. On the other hand, it is, I think, equally certain that man necessarily becomes a social being in exact proportion to the development of the capacities of his nature.

133.

One of the best living authorities on this question writes: “The asserted existence of savages so low as to have no moral standard is too groundless to be discussed. Every human tribe has its general views as to what conduct is right and what wrong, and each generation hands the standard on to the next. Even in the details of their moral standards, wide as their differences are, there is yet wider agreement throughout the human race.”—Tylor on Primitive Society, Contemporary Review, April 1873, p. 702.

134.

The distinction between innate faculties evolved by experience and innate ideas independent of experience, and the analogy between the expansion of the former and that of the bud into the flower has been very happily treated by Reid. (On the Active Powers, essay iii. chap. viii. p. 4.) Professor Sedgwick, criticising Locke's notion of the soul being originally like a sheet of white paper, beautifully says: “Naked man comes from his mother's womb, endowed with limbs and senses indeed well fitted to the material world, yet powerless from want of use; and as for knowledge, his soul is one unvaried blank; yet has this blank been already touched by a celestial hand, and when plunged in the colours which surround it, it takes not its tinge from accident but design, and comes forth covered with a glorious pattern.” (On the Studies of the University, p. 54.) Leibnitz says: “L'esprit n'est point une table rase. Il est tout plein de caractères que la sensation ne peut que découvrir et mettre en lumière au lieu de les y imprimer. Je me suis servi de la comparaison d'une pierre de marbre qui a des veines plutôt que d'une pierre de marbre tout unie.... S'il y avait dans la pierre des veines qui marquassent la figure d'Hercule préférablement à d'autres figures, ... Hercule y serait comme inné en quelque façon, quoiqu'il fallût du travail pour découvrir ces veines.”—Critique de l'Essai sur l'Entendement.

135.

The argument against the intuitive moralists derived from savage life was employed at some length by Locke. Paley then adopted it, taking a history of base ingratitude related by Valerius Maximus, and asking whether a savage would view it with disapprobation. (Moral Phil. book i. ch. 5.) Dugald Stewart (Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. pp. 230-231) and other writers have very fully answered this, but the same objection has been revived in another form by Mr. Austin, who supposes (Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. pp. 82-83) a savage who first meets a hunter carrying a dead deer, kills the hunter and steals the deer, and is afterwards himself assailed by another hunter whom he kills. Mr. Austin asks whether the savage would perceive a moral difference between these two acts of homicide? Certainly not. In this early stage of development, the savage recognises a duty of justice and humanity to the members of his tribe, but to no one beyond this circle. He is in a “state of war” with the foreign hunter. He has a right to kill the hunter and the hunter an equal right to kill him.

136.

Everyone who is acquainted with metaphysics knows that there has been an almost endless controversy about Locke's meaning on this point. The fact seems to be that Locke, like most great originators of thought, and indeed more than most, often failed to perceive the ultimate consequences of his principles, and partly through some confusion of thought, and partly through unhappiness of expression, has left passages involving the conclusions of both schools. As a matter of history the sensual school of Condillac grew professedly out of his philosophy. In defence of the legitimacy of the process by which these writers evolved their conclusions from the premisses of Locke, the reader may consult the very able lectures of M. Cousin on Locke. The other side has been treated, among others, by Dugald Stewart in his Dissertation, by Professor Webb in his Intellectualism of Locke, and by Mr. Rogers in an essay reprinted from the Edinburgh Review.

137.

I make this qualification, because I believe that the denial of a moral nature in man capable of perceiving the distinction between duty and interest and the rightful supremacy of the former, is both philosophically and actually subversive of natural theology.

138.

See the forcible passage in the life of Epicurus by Diogenes Laërtius. So Mackintosh: “It is remarkable that, while, of the three professors who sat in the Porch from Zeno to Posidonius, every one either softened or exaggerated the doctrines of his predecessor, and while the beautiful and reverend philosophy of Plato had in his own Academy degenerated into a scepticism which did not spare morality itself, the system of Epicurus remained without change; his disciples continued for ages to show personal honour to his memory in a manner which may seem unaccountable among those who were taught to measure propriety by a calculation of palpable and outward usefulness.”—Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy, p. 85, ed. 1836. See, too, Tennemann (Manuel de la Philosophie, ed. Cousin, tome i. p. 211).

139.

Thus e.g. the magnificent chapters of Helvétius on the moral effects of despotism, form one of the best modern contributions to political ethics. We have a curious illustration of the emphasis with which this school dwells on the moral importance of institutions in a memoir of M. De Tracy, On the best Plan of National Education, which appeared first towards the close of the French Revolution, and was reprinted during the Restoration. The author, who was one of the most distinguished of the disciples of Condillac, argued that the most efficient of all ways of educating a people is, the establishment of a good system of police, for the constant association of the ideas of crime and punishment in the minds of the masses is the one effectual method of creating moral habits, which will continue to act when the fear of punishment is removed.

140.

An important intellectual revolution is at present taking place in England. The ascendency in literary and philosophical questions which belonged to the writers of books is manifestly passing in a very great degree to weekly and even daily papers, which have long been supreme in politics, and have begun within the last ten years systematically to treat ethical and philosophical questions. From their immense circulation, their incontestable ability and the power they possess of continually reiterating their distinctive doctrines, from the impatience, too, of long and elaborate writings, which newspapers generate in the public, it has come to pass that these periodicals exercise probably a greater influence than any other productions of the day, in forming the ways of thinking of ordinary educated Englishmen. The many consequences, good and evil, of this change it will be the duty of future literary historians to trace, but there is one which is, I think, much felt in the sphere of ethics. An important effect of these journals has been to evoke a large amount of literary talent in the lawyer class. Men whose professional duties would render it impossible for them to write long books, are quite capable of treating philosophical subjects in the form of short essays, and have in fact become conspicuous in these periodicals. There has seldom, I think, before, been a time when lawyers occupied such an important literary position as at present, or when legal ways of thinking had so great an influence over English philosophy; and this fact has been eminently favourable to the progress of utilitarianism.

141.

There are some good remarks on this point in the very striking chapter on the present condition of Christianity in Wilberforce's Practical View.

142.

See Reid's Essays on the Active Powers, iii. i.

143.

I say usually proportioned, because it is, I believe, possible for men to realise intensely suffering, and to derive pleasure from that very fact. This is especially the case with vindictive cruelty, but it is not, I think, altogether confined to that sphere. This question we shall have occasion to examine when discussing the gladiatorial shows. Most cruelty, however, springs from callousness, which is simply dulness of imagination.

144.

The principal exception being where slavery, coexisting with advanced civilisation, retards or prevents the growth of industrial habits.

145.

See Mr. Laing's Travels in Sweden. A similar cause is said to have had a similar effect in Bavaria.

146.

This has been, I think, especially the case with the Austrians.

147.

See some remarkable instances of this in Cabanis, Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme.

148.

Diog. Laërt. Pythag.

149.

Plutarch, De Profectibus in Virt.

150.

Diog. Laërt. Stilpo.

151.

Clem. Alexand. Strom. vii.

152.

Cicero, De Nat. Deorum, i. 1.

153.

Lactant. Inst. Div. i. 5.

154.

“Pythagoras ita definivit quid esset Deus: Animus qui per universas mundi partes, omnemque naturam commeans atque diffusus, ex quo omnia quæ nascuntur animalia vitam capiunt.”—Ibid. Lactantius in this chapter has collected several other philosophic definitions of the Divinity. See too Plutarch, De Placit. Philos. Tertullian explains the stoical theory by an ingenious illustration: “Stoici enim volunt Deum sic per materiem decucurrisse quomodo mel per favos.”—Tert. De Anima.

155.

As Cicero says: “Epicurus re tollit, oratione relinquit, deos.”—De Nat. Deor. i. 44.

156.

Sometimes, however, they restricted its operation to the great events of life. As an interlocutor in Cicero says: “Magna dii curant, parva negligunt.”—Cic. De Natur. Deor. ii. 66. Justin Martyr notices (Trypho, i.) that some philosophers maintained that God cared for the universal or species, but not for the individual. Seneca maintains that the Divinity has determined all things by an inexorable law of destiny, which He has decreed, but which He Himself obeys. (De Provident. v.)

157.

See on this theory Cicero, De Natur. Deor. i. 42; Lactantius, Inst. Div. i. 11.

158.

Diog. Laërt. Vit. Zeno. St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, iv. 11. Maximus of Tyre, Dissert. x. (in some editions xxix.) § 8. Seneca, De Beneficiis, iv. 7-8. Cic. De Natur. Deor. i. 15. Cicero has devoted the first two books of this work to the stoical theology. A full review of the allegorical and mythical interpretations of paganism is given by Eusebius, Evang. Præpar. lib. iii.

159.

St. Aug. De Civ. vii. 5.

160.

Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 1.

161.

“Nec vero Deus ipse qui intelligitur a nobis, alio modo intelligi potest nisi mens soluta quædam et libera, segregata ab omni concretione mortali, omnia sentiens et movens, ipsaque prædita motu sempiterno.”—Tusc. Quæst. i. 27.

162.

Senec. Quæst. Nat. ii. 45.

163.

“Estne Dei sedes, nisi terra et pontus et aër. Et cœlum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra? Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris.” Pharsal. ix. 578-80.

164.

“Quæve anus tam excors inveniri potest, quæ illa, quæ quondam credebantur apud inferos portenta, extimescat?”—Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii. 2. “Esse aliques Manes et subterranea regna ... Nec pueri credunt nisi qui nondum ære lavantur.” Juv. Sat. ii. 149, 152. See on this subject a good review by the Abbé Freppel, Les Pères Apostoliques, leçon viii.

165.

Cicero, De Leg. i. 14; Macrobius, In. Som. Scip. i. 10.

166.

See his works De Divinatione and De Nat. Deorum, which form a curious contrast to the religious conservatism of the De Legibus, which was written chiefly from a political point of view.

167.

Eusebius, Præp. Evang. lib. iv.

168.

The oracles first gave their answers in verse, but their bad poetry was ridiculed, and they gradually sank to prose, and at last ceased. Plutarch defended the inspiration of the bad poetry on the ground that the inspiring spirit availed itself of the natural faculties of the priestess for the expression of its infallible truths—a theory which is still much in vogue among Biblical critics, and is, I believe, called dynamical inspiration. See Fontenelle, Hist. des Oracles (1st ed.), pp. 292-293.

169.

See the famous description of Cato refusing to consult the oracle of Jupiter Ammon in Lucan, Phars. ix.; and also Arrian, ii. 7. Seneca beautifully says, “Vis deos propitiare? bonus esto. Satis illos coluit quisquis imitatus est.”—Ep. xcv.

170.

Cicero, De Divin. ii. 24.

171.

Aulus Gellius, Noct. Att. xv. 22.

172.

See a long string of witticisms collected by Legendre, Traité de l'Opinion, ou Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de l'Esprit humain (Venise, 1735), tome i. pp. 386-387.

173.

See Cicero, De Natura Deorum; Seneca, De Brev. Vit. c. xvi.; Plin. Hist. Nat. ii. 5; Plutarch, De Superstitione.

174.

“Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum, Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum, Maluit esse Deum.” Sat. I. viii. 1-3.

175.

There is a very curious discussion on this subject, reported to have taken place between Apollonius of Tyana and an Egyptian priest. The former defended the Greek fashion of worshipping the Divinity under the form of the human image, sculptured by Phidias and Praxiteles, this being the noblest form we can conceive, and therefore the least inadequate to the Divine perfections. The latter defended the Egyptian custom of worshipping animals, because, as he said, it is blasphemous to attempt to conceive an image of the Deity, and the Egyptians therefore concentrate the imagination of the worshipper on objects that are plainly merely allegorical or symbolical, and do not pretend to offer any such image (Philos. Apoll. of Tyana, vi. 19). Pliny shortly says, “Effigiem Dei formamque quærere imbecillitatis humanæ reor” (Hist. Nat. ii. 5). See too Max. Tyrius, Diss. xxxviii. There was a legend that Numa forbade all idols, and that for 200 years they were unknown in Rome (Plutarch, Life of Numa). Dion Chrysostom said that the Gods need no statues or sacrifices, but that by these means we attest our devotion to them (Orat. xxxi.). On the vanity of rich idols, see Plutarch, De Superstitione; Seneca, Ep. xxxi.

176.

1 Lact. Inst. Div. vi. 25.

177.

Dion. Halic. ii.; Polyb. vi. 56.

178.

St. Aug. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31.

179.

Epictetus, Enchir. xxxix.

180.

Cicero, speaking of the worship of deified men, says, “indicat omnium quidem animos immortales esse, sed fortium bonorumque divinos.”—De Leg. ii. 11. The Roman worship of the dead, which was the centre of the domestic religion, has been recently investigated with much ability by M. Coulanges (La Cité antique).