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to extol, it may be, the same persons, produces what have been pointed out as some of the strangest inconsistencies of human nature. We call them inconsistencies, but they depend upon fixed and certain laws; and they can no more to excite surprise in a mind versed in the science of man, than do the phenomena of eclipses, or the aberrations of the planets, in the mind of the astronomer. The laws upon which the phenomena of human action depend, had they been only as patiently and accurately investigated, would appear quite as certain, and quite as regular, as those which govern the motion of the planets.

PART SECOND.

SOLUTION OF MORAL PROBLEMS AND CON-
CILIATION OF ETHICAL CODES.

CHAPTER I.

OF PERSONAL SECURITY AND THE RIGHTS AND DUTIES RELATIVE TO IT.

1. HAVING, in the preceding part of this treatise, by an analytical examination of the phenomena of human thought and action,* investigated the origin and nature of Moral Distinctions, and the laws according to which actions are classed as praiseworthy, indifferent, and wrong, meritorious, obligatory, permissible, and criminal; and having, also, pointed out the origin and foundation of the several prevailing theories of morals, and of the systems of practical morality founded upon those theories; we now propose to show the application of these results, as means of explaining both the coincidences and discrepances, so remarkable in the various systems of practical morality prevalent in different ages and

countries.

* This examination is not complete, but limited to the objects of the present treatise. In the Theory of Knowledge it will be pursued to a greater extent.

Let us begin with those moral precepts, those Rights and Duties, which have an immediate reference to life and personal security.

2. In all systems of morals, deliberate and unprovoked homicide has been esteemed a high crime ; and that for the obvious reason, that Death has ever been regarded as one of the greatest of evils, if not the very greatest, which a man can suffer, or inflict. 3. If we inquire why death is regarded as so great an evil, we shall find that several circumstances concur to give it that character. In the first place, except where it is instantaneous, it is the result of, or at least is or appears to be attended by, intense pains consequent upon the disorganization or disturbed action of the vital system. Thus the idea of excessive suffering becomes intimately, and almost inseparably, associated with the idea of death.

In the second place, the idea of death is attended by a pain of inferiority of the acutest kind. Death levels all distinctions. It takes away all that makes us superior to mere clods of earth; it reduces the most beautiful and the most illustrious to heaps of disgusting corruption, and puts the wisest, the wittiest, and the strongest, below the level of the meanest worm that crawls. A live dog is better than a dead lion. It is this pain of inferiority which makes men clutch so eagerly at the idea of a new life after death, however slight and unsatisfactory may be the evidence by which that idea is supported.*

"that must be our cure

To be no more? sad cure; for who would lose,
Though full of pain, this intellectual being,

In the third place, the idea of death is attended by a pain of inferiority of another kind, a pain of ignorance or doubt, joined to which are pains of fear. Is death the end or not? If not, what is to follow after death? This doubt and the fears which attend it greatly enhance that compound pain, called dread or Horror, with which Death is so commonly regarded.

*

Finally, in all ages and countries, in which the idea of a future existence has prevailed, that is to say, in almost all, if not all, ages and countries of which we have any knowledge, the conceived possibility, and, in many cases, the conceived probability and even certainty, that such future existence will be an existence of torment, has greatly added to the dread of death.

Mystical views have contributed not a little to enhance these horrors. Mysticism has taught, at least some modifications of it have taught, that death will introduce us, at once, into the sensible presence of an awful, if not an offended Deity; and hence, in all countries in which mystical ideas have prevailed, the conceived necessity of preparations for

These thoughts that wander through eternity,
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost

In the wide womb of uncreated night

Devoid of sense and motion?"

Paradise Lost, Book II. v. 146.

"Ay, there's the rub;

For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,

When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect,
That makes calamity of so long life."

Hamlet, Act IIl. Sc. 1.

death; which conceived necessity has caused sudden, and what is called violent death, to be regarded as something peculiarly dreadful;* though it is evidently the least painful, and, therefore, as far as that goes, the most desirable way of dying.

4. Mystical systems of morals have condemned homicide equally with forensic systems; but upon widely different grounds. According to mystical morality, murder is wrong, not because death is an evil to him who suffers it, but because it displeases God to have his creatures killed, his property injured, and his arrangements interfered with; or, as it is commonly expressed, to have men hurried into his presence before he has sent for them.

5. This objection, it is plain, applies to all sorts of killing, killing in battle, killing in execution of a judicial sentence, killing in self-defence, — just as decidedly as to the most unprovoked murder; and hence those mystical moralists who have been consistent, have denounced war, capital punishments, and, since resistance must always tend towards homicide, even resistance to injuries, - as displeasing to God, and, therefore, sins. For it should be observed that what, in forensic systems of morals, are denominated Faults and Crimes, in mystical systems of morals, are called Sins. Whatever thought, word,

*Cut off even in the blossoms of my sin,
Unhouseled, disappointed, unaneled ;
No reckoning made, but sent to my account
With all my imperfections on my head.
O horrible! O horrible! most horrible!"

Hamlet, Act I. Sc. 5.

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