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extensive currency, and will help us to an explanation of several of the most remarkable anomalies and discrepancies in systems of practical morality.

The tendency towards simplification, the anology of human societies, particularly in the East, where the supreme power over great districts was generally lodged in a single chief; and the gradual advance of men from gross ignorance and credulity, to a certain degree of knowledge and of skepticism, led to the gradual abandonment and repudiation of the numerous deities of the old mythologies, and to the concentration of all the divine power and attributes in a single being, the sole God, the supreme Deity, who might indeed have numerous inferior, invisible agents, but who was, in fact, the prime mover and original cause of all things.

This deity, however, was still supposed to be a person; and though men ceased to represent him. under a bodily shape, and with human members ; though many of the adherents of this new form of spiritualism were violent iconoclasts; it is not the less true that they still made God after their own image; for he was still supposed to possess a nature modelled after the nature of man; leaving out certain parts, which appeared less worthy of admiration, and exaggerating others to an infinite degree. In particular, he was still supposed to be like man, accessible to pain and pleasure; and certain acts of men were still supposed able to give him pleasure and to give him pain.

It will be shown in another part of this treatise, that such a being, with those who have a present,

continuous, and practical belief in his existence, is calculated to engross the whole of the moral affections, to such an extent, that his pains and pleasures become the only pains and pleasures—not their own - which seem worthy of the slightest attention, or at all entitled to influence conduct.

38. This idea of the nature of God led to a theory of morals which may be distinguished as the Mystical Theory; and the various systems of practical morals, founded upon that theory, may be called Mystical Systems, or systems of mystical morality; systems which, variously modified, are spread over all the world; and which have exercised, and still continue to exercise, an extensive influence.

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In the systems of Mystical morals, as in the various systems of Forensic morals, for we may employ that term by way of distinction, the difference between praiseworthy, indifferent, and wrong actions, still depends upon the principle above laid down, to wit, their tendency to produce pain, or pleasure, or neither, to some sensitive being other than the actor. But while, in all Forensic systems of morals, those other beings are men, or occasionally animals, in Mystical systems of morals, it is the pain or pleasure of the deity, by which the moral character of actions is tested. Such an act is praiseworthy because it pleases God; in other words, because it gives God pleasure; such an act is wrong, because it is displeasing to God; in other words, because it gives God pain; such an act is indifferent, because it does. not affect God in any way.

39. The Mystical theory, however, when it is

made the foundation of practical morals, is usually amalgamated with the Selfish theory; that is, with the theory, that virtue consists in securing our own greatest happiness. This amalgamation easily takes place; for since, according to the mystics, every thing depends upon the volition of God; and as God is supposed to act, at least to a certain extent, as men act, and, like them, to be influenced by feelings of gratitude; hence, those who please God will certainly be rewarded by him in the end; and those who displease him will be punished. But as this present life does by no means exhibit any such rewards and punishments, mysticism has been led to adopt the hypothesis of a future retribution; a doctrine, as we have seen, which the semi-Stoics, and the semi-Epicureans have also found themselves obliged to adopt, as the only means of giving any plausibility to their idea of the coincidence of virtue and happiness.

40. The fact, that actions, to be approved, must have a tendency to promote happiness, and that no action acquires the character of being wrong except by reason of some pain that it inflicts, or tends to inflict, has been so far perceived, as to have been made the foundation of a theory of morals, according to which virtuous actions are neither more nor less than useful actions; meaning, by useful actions, actions which tend to produce pleasure, or to prevent pain.

41. But this theory involves two fatal defects. In the first place, it does not accurately distinguish between actions useful to others, and actions useful

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to ourselves; a distinction upon which the whole of morality depends. In the second place, it forgets that an action, to be a subject of moral judgment, implies not only an external event, but a design to produce that event, and certain feelings or motives. impelling to the formation and execution of that design. It is very true, that whether an action shall be esteemed praiseworthy or not, — considered generally, and without reference to the motives of the actor, depends upon its utility, or supposed utility, to persons other than the actor, and the degree of that utility; but whether or not any particular action shall be pronounced virtuous, the use of which appellation includes a reference to the actor, -depends upon the actor's motives and intentions. It is not enough, that an action be, in fact, useful to others; in order to make it virtuous, that utility to others must have been perceived and intended; nay, more, it must have been a leading object in the performance of the action.*

* The Theory of Utility was first suggested in Hume's Treatise upon Morals, in which he shows that all actions and qualities called virtuous, are useful, or agreeable,— words which have subsequently been used as synonymous, - either to others or to ourselves. Towards the conclusion of the same treatise, he also suggests the ideas, more fully developed by Helvetius, and known as the doctrine of Interest well understood.

It is Bentham, however, who has expanded the theory of utility, and given it celebrity. He sets out with the assumption, that it is utility to ourselves, (substantially the doctrine of interest well understood, the doctrine of Hobbes, and of the Epicureans,) which is the test of right and wrong actions; that is, he assumes the fundamental principle of the selfish theory. But in his system of practical morals, what he actually makes the test of right and wrong is, not particular or individual utility, utility to self, but general utility,

42. But here we are met by a very serious objection. All the partisans of the Selfish theory of morals, whether Stoics, Epicureans, semi-Stoics, semi-Epicureans, Mystics, or Utilitarians, unite to assure us, that the only conceivable motive to act, which a man can have, is the promotion of his own happiness. Whence it is argued, that mere utility to others never can be the primary motive to the performance of any action. This doctrine, as to the origin of human action, lies at the bottom of the Selfish theory, in all its forms; and, indeed, first-produced that theory, the rise and progress of which we proceed to trace.

A very cursory observation of mankind, and a very slight degree of attention to the motives of our own conduct, are sufficient to lead to the discovery, that human action consists in the pursuit of pleasures and the avoidance of pains. This pursuit of pleas

which differs only by an infinitesimal quantity, from utility to others; private or personal utility forming but an imperceptible element of general utility. He assumes that the greatest happiness of the greatest number will always be coincident with individual happiness ; which is, in point of fact, the same assumption made by the semiStoics, and the semi-Epicureans, when they tell us that virtue and happiness are identical; an assumption which all human experience contradicts.

Notwithstanding these defects in his theory, no man has contributed more than Bentham to advance the science of morals, of which, as will subsequently appear, the science of Utility is a most important branch. His Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation contains a complete and beautiful development of that science. See, also, for a more easy and agreeable explanation of the doctrines of Bentham, Traités de Législation, compiled from Bentham's publications and manuscripts, by Dumont, the two first volumes of which have been translated into English, by the author of this treatise, and published under the title of Theory of Legislation.

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