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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. AT 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,

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.

come.

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 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.

13. Indeed, when we come to look more closely into the matter, so far from finding that the peculiar characteristic of actions morally right, is their tendency to promote the pleasure or happiness of the actor, either immediate or permanent; and of actions morally wrong to produce either present or future pain to the actor; it is a much more distinguishing quality that those actions which we call morally good are such as tend to promote the pleasure, either immediate or prospective, of some sensitive being other than the actor; while those actions which we call morally bad are such as tend to produce pain, immediate or prospective, to some sensitive being other than the actor.

14. Before proceeding to follow up this observation, certain preliminary distinctions must be pointed out; otherwise we shall become involved, like so many other speculators upon morals, in an endless labyrinth of verbal ambiguities.

15. In the first place, it is to be observed, that ACTIONS are the only original subject-matter of moral judgment. By the word action, we must here understand, not any event happening by any agency, in which broad meaning the word is sometimes used, but an event happening by the agency of some being having a power of voluntary or spontaneous action. We must even limit the word still further, so as to include only the actions of beings capable of perceiving beforehand, at least to a certain. extent, the consequences of their actions; in other words, to the actions of men, or of beings having, or supposed to have, an intellectual constitution similar to that of man.

Human actions then are the original subject-matter of moral judgment; and other things fall under its cognizance merely as they tend, or are supposed to tend, to produce human actions of a particular kind; or if the actions of any beings, other than men, ever become the subject-matter upon which moral judgment is exercised, it is only because those beings are supposed to possess a nature, so far as the distinction between good and bad actions is concerned, similar to that of man.

16. Now an action such as we have here described it, to wit, the action of a spontaneous intelligent being, is made up of two things quite distinct from each other; namely, the external event resulting, and the motive by which the agent was impelled to produce that event.

17. In speaking of actions we use the words right and wrong principally with an eye to the external event, and with little or no reference to the motive of the actor. We use the words virtuous and vicious principally with reference to the motive of the actor, and with little or no regard to the external event. This distinction is clearly traceable in the most ordinary use of language; * it is of great importance; and in this treatise it will be strictly adhered to. The phrases, morally good and morally bad, are used indiscriminately, with respect both to the motive and the event; sometimes with principal reference to the one; sometimes with principal reference to the

* The epithets right and wrong are confined entirely to actions; the epithets virtuous and vicious are applicable to actors as well as to actions.

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