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,

exciting their sympathies in our behalf; and the same means have been supposed equally efficacious with the gods.

Gifts are a great means of securing human favor; and gifts to pious uses, whether in the shape of sacrifices, the erection of temples, or other appropriations of property thought to be agreeable to the gods, have everywhere attained the character of religious acts.

Processions, ceremonies, feasts, festivals, and the erection of monuments and statues are usual means of doing honor to men; the same sorts of honor have been supposed to be agreeable also to the gods. We may prove our devotion to men, and so gain their favor, by submitting to order to give them pleasure. various bodily torments, and pleasures have obtained the character of religious acts, under the idea that these things are pleasing to the gods.

pains and privations in Thus fasts, scourgings, abstinence from many

To believe a man, against the testimony of our own senses and reason, is a high compliment. Hence the merit ascribed by theologians to implicit faith.

36. As all the operations of nature have been imagined to originate in the volition of some deity, it naturally has happened that the same analogical method of reasoning has caused these natural events to be construed into marks of divine approbation, or of divine displeasure. Thus, seasonable showers, plentiful harvests, success in war, and public prosperity in general have been esteemed marks of divine favor; while droughts, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes, pestilences, defeats, and misfortunes in

general, have been ascribed to the displeasure of some deity. The gods, moreover, by analogy to the conduct of human princes, have been imagined not to be very discriminating in their wrath; but to visit. a whole community with calamities, because their displeasure has been excited by the acts of one, or a few.*

It is hence easy to discern how the worship of the gods, that is to say, the performance of certain acts thought likely to secure their favor and to avert their indignation, acquired the character of moral duties. They acquired that character not by reason of any individual benefits they were supposed to produce to him who performed them; but because they were thought an essential means of preserving the community in general against the injurious anger of the gods. Hence, just as public prosperity and calamity have ceased to be ascribed to special divine interferences, the performance of religious acts has ceased to be ranked among moral duties.

37. There is, however, another point of view, from which this subject may be considered, and which is of the greatest importance, since it has afforded a foundation for a theory of morals of very

* Thus, the pestilence that raged in the Grecian camp, commemorated at the beginning of the Iliad, originated in the refusal of Agamemnon to give up the daughter of a priest of Apollo, whose wrongs that god revenged upon the whole Greek army. Or, to cite a more recent instance, the celebrated Salem witchcraft in 1692- the last of the witchcrafts, at least on a large scale was supposed by some of the most learned theologians of that day, to be sent as a punishment for the sin committed by some foppish young men and women, wearing lace and love-locks.

in.