Their common parent: and by him were both
Sent forth among the creatures, hand in hand,
Inseparably joined; nor e'er did Truth

Find an apt ear to listen to her lore,

Which knew not Virtue's voice: nor, save where Truth's
Majestic words are heard and understood,
Doth Virtue deign to inhabit. Go, inquire
Of nature-not among Tartarian rocks,
Whither the hungry vulture with its prey
Returns ;-not where the lion's sullen roar
At noon resounds along the lonely banks
Of ancient Tigris ;-but her gentler scenes,
The dovecot, and the shepherd's fold at morn,
Consultor by the meadow's fragrant hedge
In spring-time, when the woodlands first are green,
Attend the linnet singing to his mate,

Couch'd o'er their tender young. To this fond care
Thou dost not Virtue's honourable name
Attribute ;-wherefore, save that not one gleam
Of truth did e'er discover to themselves
Their little hearts, or teach them, by the effects
Of that parental love, the love itself

To judge, and measure its officious deeds?
But man, whose eyelids truth has fill'd with day,
Discerns, how skilfully to bounteous ends
His own affections move,-with free accord
Adopts their guidance; yields himself secure
To Nature's proudest impulse; and converts
Instinct to duty and to sacred love.*

Important, however, as reason is, in pointing out all the possible physical consequences of actions, and all the different degrees of probability of these, it must not be forgotten, that this is all which it truly does,-that our moral sentiment itself depends on another principle of our mind-and that, if we had not previously been capable of loving the good of others as good, and of hating the production of evil as evil, to show us that the happiness of every created being depended on our choice, would have excited in us as little eagerness to do what was to be so extensively beneficial, as if we had conceived, that only a single individual was to profit by it, or no individual whatever.

These remarks will show you the inadequacy of the moral systems, which make virtue in our contemplation of it, a sort of product of reasoning, like any other abstract relation, which we are capable of discovering intellectually ;-that of Clarke, for example, which supposes it to consist in the regulation of our conduct, according to certain fitnesses which we perceive in things, or a peculiar congruity of certain relations to each other; and that of Wollaston, which supposes virtue to consist in acting according to the truth of things, in treating objects according to their real character, and not according to a character or properties which they truly have not-a system which is virtually the

* Pleasures of Imagination. B. II.

same as that of Clarke, expressing only more awkwardly what is not very simply developed, indeed, even in Dr. Clarke's speculations. These systems, independent of their general defect, in making incongruity,-which, as mere incongruity bears no proportion to vice, but is often greatest in the most frivolous improprieties, the measure of vice, assume, it must be remembered, the previous existence of feelings, for which all the congruities of which they speak, and the mere power of discovering such congruities, are insufficient to account. There must be a principle of moral regard, independent of reason, or reason may, in vain, see a thousand fitnesses, and a thousand truths; and would be warmed with the same lively emotions of indignation, against an inaccurate time-piece, or an error in arithmetical calculation, as against the wretch who robbed, by every fraud which could elude the law, those who had already little of which they could be deprived, that he might riot a little more luxuriously, while the helpless, whom he had plundered, were starving around him.

Fitness, as understood by every one, is obviously a word expressive only of relation. It indicates skill, indeed, in the artist, whatever the end may be, but, considered abstractly from the nature of the end, it is indicative of skill only. It is to the good or evil of the end that we look, and that we must always look, in estimating the good or evil of the fitness itself; and if it be the nature of the end which gives value to the fitness, it is not the fitness, but the end to which the fitness is subservient, that must be the true object of moral regard. The fitness of virtue for producing serene delight is not, as mere fitness, greater than that of vice for producing disquietude and wretchedness; and we act, therefore, as much according to the mere fitness of things, in being vicious as being virtuous. If the world had been adapted for the production of misery, with fitnesses opposite, indeed, in kind, but exactly equal in number and nicety of adjustment to those which are at present so beautifully employed in the production of happiness, we should still have formed our views and our actions according to these fitnesses; but our moral view of the universe and of its Author would have been absolutely reversed. We should have seen the fitnesses of things precisely as before, but we should have seen them with hatred instead of love.

Since every human action, then, in producing any effect whatever, must be in conformity with the fitnesses of things, the limitation of virtue to actions which are in conformity with these fitnesses, has no meaning, unless we have previously distinguished the ends which are morally good, from the ends which are morally evil, and limited the conformity of which we speak, to the one of these classes. In this case, however, the theory of fitnesses, it is evident, far from accounting for the origin of me

ral distinctions, proceeds on the admission of them; it presupposes a distinctive love of certain virtuous ends, by their relation to which all the fitnesses of actions are measured; and the system of Dr. Clarke, therefore, if stripped of its pompous phraseology, and translated into common language, is nothing more than the very simple truism or tautology, that to act virtuously is to act in conformity with virtue.

From this doctrine of conformity to the fitness of things, the theory of Wollaston, in which virtue is represented to consist in the conformity of our actions to the true nature of things, scarcely differs, as I have said, in any respect, unless as being a little more circuitous and complicated. The truth, of which Wollaston speaks, is only virtue under another name; and if we had no previous notions of moral good and evil,-no love of the happiness of others more than of their misery, it would be absolutely impossible to determine whether virtue or vice were truth or falsehood, even in the sense in which he uses these terms. If, indeed, we previously take for granted, that it is the nature,— the true nature of the parent, to be loved by the child, of the child to love the parent, we cannot then, it will be allowed, have any hesitation in admitting, that the child, in performing offices of tenderness to the parent, treats the parent according to his true nature; and that, if he were to treat him unkindly, he would treat him not according to his true nature, but as if he were a foe, to whose true nature such usage would be accordant. In taking for granted this very nature, however, the agreement or disagreement with which, we have chosen to denominate truth or falsehood,-is it not evident that we have taken for granted all those duties which are strangely said to depend on the perception of an agreement, that cannot even be conceived by us, till the duties themselves as constituting the real nature or truth of our various relations, in the actions which are said to agree with it, have been previously supposed? If there were no previous belief of the different moral relations of foes and friends, but all were regarded by us as indifferent, how could any species of conduct which was true with respect to the one, be false with respect to the other? It is false, indeed, to nature, but it is false to nature only, because it is false to that virtue which, before we thought of truth or falsehood, distinguished, with the clear perception of different moral duties, our benefactor from our insidious enemy.

The work of Mr. Wollaston, which with all its pedantry of ostentatious erudition, and the manifest absurdity of its leading principle, has many profound reflections and acute remarks, which render it valuable on its own account, appears to me, however, I must confess, more valuable for the light which it indirectly throws on the nature of the prejudices that pervert our judg

ment, than for the truths which it contains in itself. If I were desirous of convincing any one of the influence of a system in producing, in the mind of its author, a ready acquiescence in errors the most absurd, and in explanations far more necessary to be explained than the very difficulties which they professed to remove or illustrate, I know no work which I could put into his hands, better suited for this purpose, than "The Religion of Nature Delineated." Who, but the author of such a system, could believe for a moment, that parricide is a crime, only for the same reason which would make it a crime for any one, (and if the great principle of the system be just, a crime exactly of the same amount,) to walk across a room on his hands and feet, because he would then be guilty of the practical untruth of using his hands, not as if they were hands, but as if they were feet,-as, in parricide, he would be guilty of the practical untruth of treating a parent, as if he were not a parent, but a robber or a murderer? Even without considering guilt so atrocious, is common cruelty, in any of its forms, made hateful to us as it should be, or even hateful in the slightest degree of moral disgust by being represented only as the half ludicrous falsehood of affirming practically, that a man is not a man capable of feeling, but an insensible post; and is it only for a similar falsehood, in this tacit proposition, which we are supposed by our negligence to affirm, that we should reproach ourselves, if we had left any one to perish, whom a slight effort on our part would have saved from destruction? "Should I find a man grievously hurt by some accident," says Wollaston, "fallen down, alone, and without present help, like to perish, or see his house on fire, nobody being near, to help or call out;-in this extremity, if I do not give him my assistance immediately, I do not do it at all;-and by this refusing to do it according to my ability, I deny his case to be what it is; human nature to be what it is; and even those desires and expectations which I am conscious to myself I should have under the like misfortune, to be what they are."* These strange denials we certainly do not make; all which we tacitly declare is, on the contrary, a truth, and a truth of the most unquestionable kind. We affirm ourselves to be what we are, indifferent to the miseries of others; and if to affirm a truth by our actions be all which constitutes virtue, we act as virtuously in this tacit declaration of our insensibility, as if we had flown instantly to the aid of the sufferer, with the most compassionate declaration of our feeling; or rather, if, with the same indifference at heart, we had stooped our body, or stretched out our hand to relieve him, our very attempt to give the slightest relief, according to the theory of moral falsehood, would have been only a crime additional.

Relig. of Nat. Delin. p. 18. 4to, Lond. 1738.

Reason then, as distinguishing the conformity or unconformity of actions with the fitnesses of things, or the moral truth or falsehood of actions, is not the principle from which we derive our moral sentiments. These very sentiments, on the contrary, are necessary, before we can feel that moral fitness or moral truth, according to which we are said to estimate actions, as right or wrong. All actions, virtuous and vicious, have a tendency or fitness of one sort or other; and every action, which the benevolent and malevolent perform with a view to a certain end, may alike have a fitness for producing that end. There is not an action then, which may not be in conformity with the fitnesses of things; and if the feelings of exclusive approbation and disapprobation that constitute our moral emotions be not presupposed, in spite of the thousand fitnesses which reason may have shown us, all actions must be morally indifferent. They are not thus indifferent, because the ends to which reason shows certain actions to be most suitable, are ends which we have previously felt to be worthy of our moral choice; and we are virtuous in conforming our actions to these ends, not because our actions have a physical relation to the end, as the wheels and pullies of a machine have to the motion which is to result from them; but because the desire of producing this very end has a relation, which has been previously felt, to our moral emotion. The moral truth, in like manner, which reason is said to show us, consists in the agreement of our actions with a certain frame of mind which nature has previously distinguished to us as virtuous; without which previous distinction, the actions of the most ferocious tyrant, and of the most generous and intrepid patriot, would be equally true, as alike indicative of the real nature of the oppressor of a nation, and of the assertor and guardian of its rights.

The fitness and the truth then, in every case, presuppose virtue as an object of moral sentiment, and do not constitute or evolve it.

The moral use of reason, in influencing our approbation and disapprobation, is, as I before remarked, to point out to us the remote good, which we do not perceive, or the elements of mixed good and evil, which also, but for the analytic power of reason, we should be incapable of distinguishing with accuracy, in the immediate compound result. If the mere discovery of greater utility, however, is sufficient to affect our approbation, utility must, it is evident, have a certain relation to virtue. Utility, it is said, is the measure of virtue. Let us consider what meaning is to be attached to this phrase.