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CHAPTER SECOND.

OF THE MORAL FACULTY.

General Observations on the Moral Faculty, tending chiefly to show that it is an original principle of our nature, and not resolvable into any other principle or principles more general.

As some authors have supposed that vice consists in an excessive regard to our own happiness, so others have gone into the opposite extreme, by representing virtue as merely a matter of prudence, and a sense of duty but another name for a rational self-love. This view of the subject was far from being unnatural; for we find that these two principles lead in general to the same course of action; and we have every reason to believe, that, if our knowledge of the universe was more extensive, they would be found to do so in all instances whatever. Accordingly, by many of the best of the ancient moralists, our sense of duty was considered as resolvable into self-love, and the whole of ethics was reduced to this question, What is the supreme good? or, in other words, What is most conducive, on the whole, to our happiness? *

That we have, however, a sense of duty, which is not resolvable into a regard to our happiness, appears from various considerations.

(1.) There are, in all languages, words equivalent to duty and to interest, which men have constantly distin

The same opinion has been adopted by various philosophers of the first eminence in England, and it has long been the prevailing system on the continent. From the following passage in one of D'Alembert's Letters to the King of Prussia, it appears to have been considered both by the writer and by his royal correspondent as a fundamental principle in morals. "Je n'ai pas en effet perdu un moment pour lire cet excellent mémoire; et je puis, Sire, assurer à V. M. que je suis absolument de son avis sur les principes qui doivent servir de base à la morale. Si V. M. veut prendre la peine de jeter les yeux sur mes Elémens de Philosophie, elle verra que j'y indique comme la source de la morale et du bonheur, la liaison intime de notre véritable interêt avec l'accomplissement de nos devoirs,' et que je regarde l'amour éclairé de nous-mêmes comme le principe de tout sacrifice morale."-Euvres Post. du Roi de Prusse, Tom. XIV. p. 99.

guished in their signification. They coincide in general in their applications, but they convey very different ideas. When I wish to persuade a man to a particular action, I address some of my arguments to a sense of duty, and others to the regard he has to his own interest. I endeavour to show him that it is not only his duty, but his interest to act in the way that I recommend to him.

This distinction was expressed among the Roman moralists by the words honestum and utile. Of the former Cicero says, "quod vere dicimus, etiamsi a nullo laudetur, naturâ esse laudabile.” *

The to xalov among the Greeks corresponds, when applied to the conduct, to the honestum of the Romans.† Dr. Reid remarks that the word xa0ñxov (officium) extended both to the honestum and the utile, and comprehended every action performed either from a sense of duty, or from an enlightened regard to our true interest. In English we use the word reasonable with the same latitude, and indeed almost exactly in the same sense in which Cicero defines officium: "Id quod cur factum sit ratio probabilis reddi potest." In treating of such offices Cicero, and Panatius before him, first points out those that are recommended to us by our love of the honestum, and next those that are recommended by our regard to the utile.

This distinction between a sense of duty and a regard to interest is acknowledged even by men whose moral principles are not the purest, nor the most consistent. What unlimited confidence do we repose in the conduct of one whom we know to be a man of honor, even in those cases in which he acts out of the view of the world, and where the strongest temptations of worldly interest concur to lead him astray! We know that his heart would revolt at the idea of any thing base or unworthy. Dr. Reid observes that what we call honor, considered as a principle of conduct, "is only another name for a regard to duty, to rectitude, to propriety of conduct." This, I think, is going rather too far; for, +

De Offic. Lib. i. 4.

† Reid's Essays on the Active Powers. Essay 3d, Chap. 5. Essays on the Active Powers, p. 230. 4to. Edit.

although the two principles coincide in general in the direction they give to our conduct, they do not coincide always; the principle of honor being liable, from its nature and origin, to be most unhappily perverted in its applications by a bad education and the influence of fash

At the same time, Dr. Reid's remark is perfectly in point, for the principle of honor is plainly grafted on a sense of duty, and necessarily presupposes its ex

istence.

Dr. Paley, one of the most zealous advocates for the selfish system of morals, admits the fact on which the foregoing argument proceeds, but endeavours to evade the conclusion by means of a theory so extraordinary, that I shall state it in his own words. "There is always understood to be a difference between an act of prudence and an act of duty. Thus, if I distrusted a man who owed me a sum of money, I should reckon it an act of prudence to get another person bound with him ; but I should hardly call it an act of duty. On the other hand it would be thought a very unusual and loose kind of language to say, that, as I had made such a promise, it was prudent to perform it; or, that, as my friend, when he went abroad, placed a box of jewels in my hands, it was prudent in me to preserve it for him till he returned.

"Now, in what, you will ask, does the difference consist, inasmuch as, according to our account of the matter, both in the one case and the other, in acts of duty as well as acts of prudence, we consider solely what we ourselves shall gain or lose by the act?

"The difference, and the only difference, is this, that, in the one case we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what we shall lose or gain in the world to come."

On this curious passage I have no comment to offer. A sufficient answer to it may, I trust, be derived from the following reasonings. In the meantime, it will be allowed to be at least one presumption of an essential distinction between the notions of duty and of interest, that there are different words to express these notions in all languages, and that the most illiterate of mankind. are in no danger of confounding them together.

(2.) But, secondly, the emotions arising from the contemplation of what is right and wrong in conduct are different both in degree and kind from those which are produced by a calm regard to our own happiness. Of this, I think, nobody can doubt, who considers with attention the operation of our moral principles in cases where their effects are not counteracted or modified by a combination with some other principles of our nature. In judging, for example, of our own conduct, our moral powers are warped by the influence of self-partiality and self-deceit; and accordingly, we daily see men commit, without any remorse, actions, which, if performed by another person, they would have regarded with the liveliest sentiments of indignation and abhorrence. Even in this last case the experiment is not always perfectly fair; for where the actor has been previously known to us our judgment is generally affected, in a greater or less degree, by our prepossessions or by our prejudices. In contemplating the characters exhibited in histories and in novels, the emotions we feel are the immediate and the genuine result of our moral constitution; and although they may be stronger in some men than in others, yet they are in all distinctly perceivable, even in those whose want of temper and of candor render them scarcely conscious of the distinction of right and wrong in the conduct of their neighbours and acquaintance. And hence probably (we may observe by the way) the chief origin of the pleasure we experience in this sort of reading. The representations of the stage, however, afford the most favorable of all opportunities for studying the moral constitution of man. As the mind is here perfectly indifferent to the parties whose character and conduct are the subject of the fable, the judgments it forms can hardly fail to be impartial, and the feelings arising from these judgments are much more conspicuous in their external effects than if the play were perused in the closet; for every species of enthusiasm operates more forcibly when men are collected in a crowd. On such an occasion the slightest hint suggested by the poet raises to transport the passions of the audience, and forces involuntary tears from men of the greatest reserve and

the most correct sense of propriety. The crowd does not create the feeling nor even alter its nature, it only enables us to remark its operation on a greater scale. In these cases we have surely no time for reflection; and indeed the emotions of which we are conscious are such as no speculations about our own interest could possibly excite. It is in situations of this kind that we most completely forget ourselves as individuals, and feel the most sensibly the existence of those moral ties by which Heaven has been pleased to bind mankind together.

(3.) Although Philosophers have shown that a sense of duty and an enlightened regard to our own happiness conspire in most instances to give the same direction to our conduct, so as to put it beyond a doubt, that even in this world, a virtuous life is true wisdom, yet this is a truth by no means obvious to the common sense of mankind, but deduced from an extensive view of human affairs, and an accurate investigation of the remote consequences of our different actions. It is from experience and reflection, therefore, we learn the connexion between virtue and happiness; and consequently, the great lessons of morality which are obvious to the capacity of all mankind could never have been suggested to them merely by a regard to their own interest. Indeed, this discovery which experience makes to us of the connexion between virtue and happiness, both in the case of individuals and of political societies, furnishes one of the most pleasing subjects of speculation to the philosopher, as it places in a striking point of view the unity of design which takes place in our constitution, and opens encouraging and delightful prospects with respect to the moral government of the Deity.

It is a just and beautiful observation of Dr. Reid, that "although wise men have concluded that virtue is the only road to happiness, this conclusion is founded chiefly upon the natural respect men have for virtue, and the good and happiness that is intrinsic to it, and arises from the love of it. If we suppose a man altogether destitute of this principle, who considered virtue as only the means' to another end, there is no reason to think that he would ever take it to be the road to hap