are bewildered amid a multitude of contradictory decisions, all claiming an equal authority; till at length we are driven to doubt, whether what is called conscience, or the moral sentiment, is, after all, any thing more than education, habit, prejudice, inclination, or caprice.

6. Another theory of morals, which, under different forms, has had, and still has, a very extensive currency, places the difference between Right and Wrong, in the tendency of right actions to promote, and of wrong actions to diminish, the happiness of the actor. This is called the Selfish theory.

This theory is not without a certain degree of plausibility; since every man's consciousness will inform him, that the performance of actions which the agent esteems right, is always attended by a degree of satisfaction; while the performance of actions which the agent esteems wrong, is always attended by a degree of pain.

7. But when we look closer into the matter, and examine that which is called happiness, we find it not a simple, but a very complex thing, made up of many various, and often hostile, ingredients. There are numerous kinds of pleasures besides the pleasure of acting rightly; and numerous kinds of pains besides the pain of doing wrong. What is called happiness consists in the enjoyment of pleasures of all kinds; and those who have held that happiness and virtue are correlative, have been inevitably driven into one, or the other, of two opposite paradoxes. They have found themselves obliged to maintain, either that the pleasure of virtue is the

only pleasure, or that all pleasures are equally vir

tuous.

8. The Stoics chose the first horn of this dilemma. Filled with that admiration of the beauty and dignity of virtue which they had learned in the school of Plato, and led away by a certain affected contempt for the ordinary objects of human pursuit, borrowed from the Cynics, they went the length of maintaining, in defiance of the common sense of mankind, that bodily pain, hunger, poverty, degradation, disgrace, and a thousand other things, which men universally regard as among the greatest of evils, are in fact no evils at all, and cannot diminish the happiness of a truly virtuous man; while wealth, authority, and the so called gratifications of the senses and the appetites have no power whatever of conferring pleasure, or of making vicious men happy.

9. The Epicureans, avoiding this paradox, fell into the opposite extreme; and in equal defiance of the common sense of mankind, came to the conclusion, that the pleasures of virtue and the pains of vice are in no respect different from other pleasures and other pains. That the man who pleases himself with eating a good dinner is quite as virtuous, provided his pleasure be as great, as the man who pleases himself with doing a good action; that virtue, in fact, consists in making one's self as comfortable as possible.

These paradoxes are so monstrous, that few have been induced to defend them in their original form. But both the Stoic and the Epicurean doctrines,

slightly modified and disguised, have had, and still have, a host of supporters.

10. The semi-Stoics admit that bodily pain, poverty, sickness, hunger, nakedness, and degradation are certainly evils, and evils which men may reasonably do much to avoid, provided they can avoid them without any sacrifice of virtue. But they maintain, that, compared with the evil of conscious departure from rectitude, all other evils are trifling, and do not deserve to be taken into account. like manner it is held, of the gratification of the senses and the appetites, wealth, power, superiority, and other like objects of human wishes, though, considered by themselves, they may be desirable, yet that, compared with virtue, they are quite unproductive in pleasure.

In

This is a doctrine often preached, seldom sincerely believed, and still seldomer practised. Indeed it is to be observed, that the most zealous advocates of this doctrine are generally persons who are in quiet habitual possession of those very advantages which they affect to depreciate; advantages which, however meanly they may rate them, they show not the slightest inclination to resign. There are few Stoics among the humble, the sick, or the poor; and the experience of every day may convince us, that those pains which this doctrine esteems so inconsiderable, often rise to such a pitch as to make men wholly regardless of moral distinctions.

As has been already stated, virtuous conduct is doubtless one source of enjoyment, and vicious conduct one source of suffering. Yet it is evident that

no definite proportion exists between happiness and virtue, vice and misery. A very limited observation is enough to show, that persons of great virtue often lead very miserable lives; and that very vicious men often enjoy a great amount of pleasure.

11. The semi-Epicureans, on the other hand, admit that there are many actions which may give pleasure to the actor, which are not, simply on that account, entitled to be considered virtuous; and many actions also, which may give pain to the actor, but which do not therefore deserve to be called wrong. According to their account, the true distinction is this; those actions which, on the whole, produce a balance of pleasure to the actor, are virtuous actions; and those actions which, on the whole, produce a balance of pain to the actor, are vicious actions.*

A fatal objection to this statement is to be found in the fact, that the very same course of conduct often produces to one man a great balance of pleasure, which produces to another man a great balance of pain. One man heads an insurrection and so rises to wealth, eminence, and glory, and is handed down to posterity as a virtuous patriot, the father of his country. Another man does the same thing, and pines in a prison, or perishes ignobly on the scaffold, denounced as a traitor, and the object of universal execration. Is success the test of merit and of vir

* This appears to have been the opinion of Epicurus himself; first revived in modern times by Gassendi. But many of his followers, and Hobbes among the rest, went much greater lengths, and constitute the pure Epicurean school described in the ninth section.

tue? In point of fact, in passing a moral judgment upon a man's conduct, it frequently happens that the ill consequences to himself, the pains, the unhappiness, the heavy balance of evil, which that conduct has brought upon him, and which he knew at the time it would bring upon him, render his conduct so much the more meritorious in our eyes.

12. There is indeed so little in the course of human life and experience to give support to the doctrine either of the semi-Stoics or the semi-Epicureans, the doctrine, namely, that virtue and happiness are correlative, that the followers of both these schools, despite the authority of their original founders, were compelled to adopt the idea of a future life; in which future life, they allege, all that the virtuous suffer here will be more than made up to them, while the wicked will exchange their temporary happiness for prolonged, if not eternal, misery.

But, inasmuch as men who have no distinct idea of any such future retribution, or who deny it altogether, do yet distinguish between actions as morally good and morally bad, it is sufficiently evident that this distinction cannot depend upon any effect of actions here to produce pleasure or pain in a life to come. Indeed the most zealous advocates for a future retribution principally insist upon it, as necessary to make up for the sufferings of the good and the enjoyments of the wicked in this present life ;– an argument which would be destitute of force, and even of meaning, unless the goodness and the wickedness of actions be something distinct from their consequences to the actor.