man, and that, to a certain extent, virtuous conduct is, and always must be, a source of pleasure, and often of the most exquisite and most lasting pleasure, to those who act virtuously, has been sufficiently demonstrated in the first and second parts of this Treatise. But that virtuous conduct will always secure happiness, and happiness in proportion to the degree of virtue, is not true. Of the four elements of human happiness and misery above pointed out, our own actions form but one. The most virtuous conduct in the world cannot secure us against the miseries that originate in the three other elements. No degree of virtue can cure the toothache, or guard against it; no degree of virtue can cure that heartache which springs from the ingratitude or treachery of others. Indeed, the more virtuous a man is, the more sensitive he becomes to that sort of suffering.*

Whosoever performs a virtuous act, always feels a pleasure from it; if not a positive pleasure, at least the negative pleasure of relief from a pain of benevolence. But the very performance of that virtuous act, may expose him who performs it, to infinite pains of other kinds. To perform an act of high virtue, is often an act of the highest imprudence; and though the consciousness of virtue be a great

* It is not the value of what they lose by the perfidy and ingratitude of those they live with, which the generous and humane are most apt to regret. Whatever they have lost, they can generally be very happy without it. What most disturbs them is, the idea of perfidy and ingratitude exercised towards themselves; and the discordant and disagreeable passions which this excites, constitute, in their own opinion, the chief part of the injury which they suffer.". Smith's Moral Sentiments, Part I. Sect. II.

consolation, that very sentiment of self-comparison which makes it so, frequently exposes the virtuous. man, especially if his conduct be remarkably and singularly virtuous, to suffer the acutest pains from the indignities heaped upon him by an ignorant, bigoted, ferocious multitude, who do not understand, and who cannot appreciate him.

It may happen and it has happened, and it will happen again, that the virtuous man having sacrificed wealth, reputation, friends, health, all the comforts and pleasures of life, the pleasures of virtue alone excepted, to a strong desire to confer benefits. upon his fellow-men, finds, at last, in a lonely and melancholy death, perhaps by his own hand, a refuge from calamities no longer endurable; while he in whom selfishness so often disguised under the name of prudence, has triumphed over every more generous emotion, creeps up by crooked paths, aided by a base prostitution of talent, to wealth, power, influence, and fame; lives to a good old age, admired and applauded as success always is; dies comforted by priests, with the hope of a blessed immortality, — for such men, as they grow old, are apt to grow devout, and passes away lamented and bepraised, as a great and good man. Is not this the story of ninety-nine in a hundred of those who are recorded. in the world's history as having risen to eminence, authority, and renown? Was virtue the ladder by

which they rose, and rise?

What is called poetical

justice, must be sought for in poetry, not in life.

No doubt the pleasure of virtue has a permanency Many other

which belongs to few other pleasures.

pleasures pass away with the moment; but the recollection of having performed a virtuous act, especially if it were an act of extraordinary virtue, -and often though it were only an act of duty, whenever it recurs, produces, or may produce, an emotion. of present pleasure, a feeling of present superiority, which is always agreeable. The recollection of criminal actions, or of failures in duty, often produces, on the other hand, a present pain of inferiority, even though years of success and prosperity have intervened. This is true; but it is also true, that in point of fact, the pleasures of virtue are often completely outweighed by a complication of pains of other kinds; and that the pains of vice and even of crimes, are often much more than counterbalanced by a combination of pleasures of other kinds, pleasures, perhaps, which those very vices and crimes have been the means of procuring.

That it is impossible for a man over whom moral sentiment exerts a powerful influence to be happy in what he considers a wrong course of conduct is doubtless true. But what of that? It by no means follows, that in acting virtuously, he must of course be happy. So far from it, such a high degree of moral sensibility often exposes him to a Scylla of moral suffering on the one hand, and a Charybdis of all other kinds of suffering on the other; and too often there is no passage between; into one or the other he must fall, or alternately into both.

7. Hence the distinction so universally made, between the Right and the Expedient. The Right is that which will afford us the greatest amount of

moral pleasure; the Expedient is that which will afford us the greatest sum total of pleasures of all kinds, moral pleasure included. Now there are very few men in whom the sentiment of benevolence is so strong, that the Expedient does not constantly appear to them to be in opposition to the Right; and for whom, in fact, the Expedient is not in opposition to the Right.

8. Never, indeed, was there a doctrine more false, more unjust, or more dangerous to morality, than the doctrine that success is the test of merit; and what is but a modification of the same idea, the doctrine that happiness is the necessary concomitant of virtue, and misery the inevitable attendant upon vice. These are notions better fitted for the sycophant and the parasite, than for the philosopher or the moralist. One man plants and waters, but it happens too often that another reaps. Even so far as mere reputation goes, and laying all other pleasures out of account, neither talent nor virtue can secure even that; while it is often snatched up and enjoyed, by knaves and by fools. Some men are born great, others have greatness thrust upon them; while those who achieve it, achieve it often by the most discreditable means. An enlightened posterity, in a few instances, is able to do that justice which bigoted, and undiscerning contemporaries deny; but even that late and unavailing reparation occurs but seldom, and forms the exception, not the rule. Posterity in general, does but recho the judgment of contemporaries.

9. That virtue in an ordinary, that is to say, in an

average degree, is favorable to the happiness of individuals, is very certain; at the same time it is not less certain that virtue in an extraordinary degree is unfavorable to the happiness of individuals. A man virtuous in an extraordinary degree, finds little sympathy and no companionship; he stands a great chance to pass with his neighbours for a fanatic or a fool; his perpetual scruples always stand in the way of his advancement, and even of his employment; not to mention those pains to which the contemplation of vice and misery expose him, or that desire to remedy this vice and misery, which he finds no means to gratify, and which constantly torment him. 10. Hence it ought to be the aim of the enlightened moralist not so much to produce individual instances of extraordinary virtue, individual instances of self-sacrifice for the benefit of mankind, as to raise the general standard of morals, and thereby to produce a general increase of virtue, and at the same time of happiness; and that too without any sacrifice of individuals, and those the most meritorious.

It becomes, then, a most interesting inquiry, how is this great object to be accomplished? How is a general increase of virtue to be produced? In other words, how shall we cause the Right and the Expedient to coalesce?