to take from us not only the power, but also the disposition, to confer benefits upon others. It is for this reason that they have been denounced by the moralists of every age; though great differences of opinion have existed, and still exist, as to the particular acts which deserve to be stigmatized with the reproach of intemperance. Much depends, in this case, as in the case of imprudences, upon the particular position of the actor.

30. Thus it would be a gluttonous and immoral act, for a poor man, whose children depended upon his daily wages for bread, to indulge himself, though it were once a year, in viands of which a rich man may partake every day, without reproach; and the reason is, that the poor man is not able thus to indulge himself, except by depriving his children of their needed bread; while the indulgence of the rich man inflicts no evil, at least no obvious ascertainable evil, upon anybody.

31. As regards intoxication, whether produced by alcohol, by opium, or in any other way, if the pleasures and the pains, to which that indulgence gives rise, terminated with the individual, there would be no more moral guilt in it, than there is in the indulgence of a taste for music or poetry. But, not only does intoxication, while it lasts, disorder the understanding, destroy the sense of right and wrong, and render man a wild and dangerous animal, incapable of self-control, and, therefore, liable to inflict indefinite injuries upon others; but, if it become habitual, it is liable to occasion a general incapacity, to make its victim a burden to his friends, and a scourge to

society. Even the habitual use of intoxicating drinks, as it tends directly to the formation of habits of drunkenness, has come, and not without reason, to be regarded by many as an immoral act.

32. As to excessive sexual indulgence, what is in general so considered can hardly take place without the direct infliction of positive injury upon others. This injury, it is true, is oftener mental than physical; an injury to the feelings oftener than an external, visible injury; but it is not on that account any the less real. He who violates the marriage bed, inflicts an injury upon the husband, which has been reckoned, in all times and countries, among the most unpardonable. He who seduces a girl, besides the injury that he does her by diminishing her chances of marriage, and, in many countries, ruining her character, and so at once destroying her self-respect, and depriving her, it may be, of all honest means of support, inflicts, at the same time, an injury upon her parents and friends, who share her disgrace and her sufferings; and upon whom, perhaps, he imposes the burden of supporting her illegitimate offspring.

The consent of the parties liable to suffer evidently does away with this wrong; and it has accordingly been held and is held, in many countries, that the consent of the husband or the father renders innocent the act of intercourse with the wife or daughter. Such was the opinion of the Romans, who were accustomed to lend their wives to their friends. Elsewhere this opinion has not prevailed; the chastity of woman having been judged of such serious importance to domestic happiness, that any infraction

of it is regarded as an evil, inflicted upon the community at large, even though the parties more immediately concerned may have purged the injury to themselves, by giving their consent. Perhaps, however, there is no point of morals upon which greater diversities of opinion have existed, than upon the merits of chastity, and the extent to which it is a moral duty. We shall find occasion, in the Second Part, to point out more particularly the origin of these diversities.

33. With regard to economy, that is a virtue which consists in restraining our expenses within the limits of our income. It is perfectly evident that we cannot transgress those limits without inflicting injuries upon others. Our own means being exhausted, as without economy they soon will be, extravagance can only be indulged by running in debt, by a system of sponging, swindling falsehood, and fraud, not less injurious to those who are the objects of it than downright robbery. And perhaps we may be driven even to that; for it is in want, produced by extravagance, that almost all offences against property originate. It is in these facts that we may discover the origin of that moral disapprobation, with which want of economy, described under the various terms of waste, profusion, extravagance, dissipation, is so generally regarded, and of the obloquy attendant upon the character of a spendthrift.

34. We come now to that very remarkable class of actions which have been denominated duties to God.

As human knowledge is limited by the extent of

human experience, it universally happens, when the cause, or origin, or law of any operation is unknown, that an attempt is made to explain it by something that is known. Thus we find in ourselves, and in other animals, a certain power of spontaneous or voluntary action, from which originate many of the changes that take place about us. But there are many other changes, such as the vicissitudes of the seasons, the growth, perfection, and decay of vegetables, and a multitude of others, which are the sources to us of many pains and many pleasures, which evidently do not arise from the spontaneity either of men or of animals. With respect to these latter changes, the origin of which is not apparent, mankind have almost universally been led, by a process of analogical reasoning, to ascribe them to the spontaneity of certain agents, supposed to resemble man in many particulars, but invisible, intangible, immortal, and possessing powers or capacities altogether superhuman. These agents are, of necessity, supposed to be invisible and intangible, since they are neither seen nor felt. The idea of their immortality originates in the permanency of those operations, which are supposed to be their acts; and the notion of their superhuman power in the superhuman character of those supposed acts.

Thus it has happened that the unknown causes of all the operations of nature have been personified, and all the complex results of the laws of inanimate existence explained as the voluntary actions of certain supernatural, spiritual beings. It is this popular and current explanation of the phenomena

of nature, which, in this treatise, we denominate the Mystical Hypothesis.

The analogies in which this hypothesis originates have been pushed still further, and all the feelings and attributes of man have been ascribed to these supposed invisible beings; and as there are good and bad men, so there have been supposed to be good and bad spirits. It has even been supposed that these spiritual beings possess the form of men or animals, and that they have the power of occasionally rendering themselves visible to human sight; an idea which easily originated in certain optical illusions. The sense of touch is not so readily deceived; and spirits, though often seen, have been seldom, if ever, felt. This assimilation of the spiritual to the sensible has been carried further yet. The gods, like men, have been supposed to have a birth and history; certain gods have been supposed to become men, or at least to appear, and act on earth in a human shape; and by an easy transition, certain men have been supposed to become gods; and mythologies have thus been multiplied to an almost infinite extent.

35. It is in this supposed nature of the gods, constructed after the analogy of human nature, that all acts of religious worship have originated. The gods have been supposed capable of being influenced precisely in the same way in which men are influenced. All those methods by which the favor and good will of men may be secured, have been imagined to be equally available with the gods.

Prayer, supplication, and even reproaches are a powerful means of working upon the feelings of men,