tends to his friends, all those dependent upon him, or who loved him ; and even to society at large. Hence the murder of a king, a chieftain, a philosopher, a poet, even the head of a family, is looked upon as a more aggravated offence, than the murder of an undistinguished, isolated individual. Hence in monarchical countries the excessive guilt ascribed to regicide.

22. It is from a more distinct apprehension of the secondary evils resulting from homicide; it is from the greater mutual interconnexion of men, and the increase of humanity which civilization produces, and especially from the greater rarity of the act, that murder, in a civilized state, is looked upon as so much greater a crime than in barbarous communities. Just in proportion as homicide becomes more rare, it implies a greater destitution of moral sentiment; till at last, from being regarded as comparatively a trivial misdeed, it comes to be reckoned among the greatest of crimes. Thus the homicides perpetrated during the reign of republicanism in France, though far less numerous and atrocious than those which on various occasions had signalized the monarchy; though accompanied by far fewer acts of gratuitous cruelty; and though prompted by an impulse into which the sentiment of benevolence entered in a much greater degree; yet taking place as they did, after Europe had, for near a century, been unaccustomed to such acts, they were thought to indicate a new and strange development of human depravity; and they cast a stigma upon the cause of reform, whether political or philosophical, which, even to the present day, serves to impede its progress.

23. We have already pointed out some of the paradoxes on the subject of homicide, to which the mystical theory of morals has given rise. But there are other conclusions of that theory on this same subject which are worse than paradoxical; conclusions which have impelled men, under a mistaken sense of moral obligation, to perpetrate the most enormous cruelties, and to inflict upon their fellow-men the greatest possible injuries, not only death, but injuries far worse than death.

The personal God of the more orthodox mystics, as we have already seen, is supposed susceptible to feelings not of benevolence only, but also of malevolence, commonly disguised under the epithet of justice; and it has thence been concluded that the torment, and even the total destruction of those whom God hates, must be agreeable to God; and of course a moral duty. Each different school of mystics, setting themselves up to be God's chosen interpreters and vicegerants upon earth, have naturally concluded, that all who refuse to acknowledge and receive them in that character, must of course be God's enemies, and that God must delight in their destruction; and whenever they have possessed the - power, they have conceived it to be their duty to God to suppress and destroy these his enemies. Hence we find the history of every school of mys-. tics, whether Jews, Egyptians, Persian followers of Zoroaster, Christians in all their varieties, Pagans, Mahometans, Bhramins or Boodhists, little more than one continued series of outrages and injuries, carried to the extremity of the most cruel death against all

those, whether denominated heretics, misbelievers, infidels, or atheists, who have refused to acknowledge the reality of their divine mission and appointment, and humbly to submit, in consequence, to their despotic authority. If within the last century, religious persecution throughout Christendom has assumed a less destructive character, that has been chiefly owing to the circumstance that with the declining influence of the mystical philosophy and the increase of religious skepticism, civil governments have refused to act any longer as the agents of priestly persecution. All that can be done without the help of the civil magistrate, still is done. The unhappy rebel against mystic despotism, is placed under a social interdict, not wholly dissimilar to that interdict of fire and water among the Romans, which, evading the name and the form of capital punishment, was more terrible and not less effectual.

That school of Christian mystics, which we have above described as having combined the mystical and disinterested theories of morals, and gradually etherealized God into a personification of Humanity, are led by that view to repudiate religious persecution; and hence, among that school of mystics there are some sincere friends of the entire toleration of opinions; and it is partly owing to the increased diffusion of their ideas, that religious persecutions have gradually acquired a more mitigated character. 24. Wounds, blows, and assaults upon the person, especially where the injury is permanent, or endangers life; and for the same reason, the administration of poisons, that is, of certain drugs tending to de

range the vital functions, and to inflict pains of disease, such drugs, for instance, as alcohol and opium, are acts, the direct and inevitable tendency of which is, to inflict pain. They are, therefore, usually classed as wrong acts, though there are certain circumstances similar to those already pointed out in the case of homicide, which may render them, in certain cases, permissible, obligatory, and even meritorious.

25. The same may be said of Restraint or Imprisonment, the infliction of which combines pains of muscular and mental activity, pains of inferiority, and the deprivation of many pleasures, which might otherwise have been pursued and enjoyed.

26. Compulsion stands upon the same ground. It is the impelling a man by the pain of fear to submit to some other pain, such, for instance, as the pains of labor, falling under the head of pains of activity. Compulsion is always attended by a pain of inferiority, which makes it doubly disagreeable. It is, however, esteemed sometimes wrong, sometimes permissible, sometimes obligatory, and sometimes meritorious, according to the objects for which, and the circumstances under which, it is exercised. The state of Slavery includes all the evils of restraint and compulsion; and it is upon that ground that most recent moralists have maintained that to hold men in slavery is morally wrong. The prevalence of slavery, however, still causes it to be regarded by many as morally permissible.

27. Threats are the preliminary to compulsion,,

and are one chief means of compulsion. Of course, they are to be regarded in the same light.

28. We come next to a class of personal injuries called Insults. These injuries, considering merely the bodily pain which they inflict, are often of the most trifling character; indeed, some of them inflict no bodily pain at all. They consist in such acts as merely touching a man with a stick, or shaking it over him, ejecting a drop of spittle into his face, or the applying to him a particular epithet, such as liar, or coward. These acts owe their injurious character entirely to the fact that they are conventionally used and understood as marks of contempt. The pain they inflict is a pain of inferiority; and to submit quietly to them is understood to imply a voluntary acquiescence in our own degradation. Now, inasmuch as the pain of inferiority is an essential auxiliary even to ordinary virtue, to show ourselves insensible to that pain, is regarded as indicating a depraved character.

Legislators, who generally look merely at the outside of things, have failed to comprehend the true character and serious nature of insults. They have regarded them as trifles unworthy the notice of the laws; and though, when seen in the light of provocations, their importance has been admitted, yet no enactments have been made to suppress and punish them. Hence it has happened that duelling, which offers a remedy, though often a very imperfect and a very expensive one against this sort of injuries, has survived all the homilies that have been uttered, and even all the laws that have been enacted, against it.