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.

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.

other; sometimes with equal reference to both. The epithets good and bad, and the corresponding substantives good and evil, when used alone, without the qualifying term, morally, have their signification greatly enlarged. The word good is employed to describe any thing that gives us pleasure; the words bad and evil, any thing that gives us pain, whether a moral pleasure or a moral pain, or a pain or pleasure of any other kind. As the qualifying epithet morally is frequently dropped, even when the signification of these words is restricted to moral. good and moral evil, an ambiguity thence arises, which has led to infinite confusion and mistakes, an ambiguity which we must carefully avoid.

18. The word action, it must also be recollected, includes not only positive acts, that is, things actually done; but also negative acts, that is, things omitted to be done.

19. After these explanations, we may assert, that ALL POSITIVE ACTIONS CALLED WRONG, are actions that produce, or are supposed to produce, or to tend to produce, immediately or ultimately, some pain to some sensitive being other than the actor; and that ALL NEGATIVE ACTIONS CALLED WRONG, are actions that deprive, or tend to deprive, or are thought to do so, some sensitive being other than the actor, of some pleasure that he would otherwise have enjoyed; or which leave him exposed to some pain, from which, had the action been performed, he would have escaped.

20. Let it here be remarked, once for all, that the word pleasure, in its ordinary use, and for the