Part VI 
Of the Character of Virtue 
Consisting of Three Sections 
Introduction 
    When we consider the character of any individual, we 
naturally view it under two different aspects; first, as it may 
affect his own happiness; and secondly, as it may affect that of 
other people. 
Section I 
Of the Character of the Individual, so far as it affects his own 
Happiness; or of Prudence 
    The preservation and healthful state of the body seem to be 
the objects which Nature first recommends to the care of every 
individual. The appetites of hunger and thirst, the agreeable or 
disagreeable sensations of pleasure and pain, of heat and cold, 
etc. may be considered as lessons delivered by the voice of 
Nature herself, directing him what he ought to chuse, and what he 
ought to avoid, for this purpose. The first lessons which he is 
taught by those to whom his childhood is entrusted, tend, the 
greater part of them, to the same purpose. Their principal object 
is to teach him how to keep out of harm's way. 
    As he grows up, he soon learns that some care and foresight 
are necessary for providing the means of gratifying those natural 
appetites, of procuring pleasure and avoiding pain, of procuring 
the agreeable and avoiding the disagreeable temperature of heat 
and cold. In the proper direction of this care and foresight 
consists the art of preserving and increasing what is called his 
external fortune. 
    Though it is in order to supply the necessities and 
conveniencies of the body, that the advantages of external 
fortune are originally recommended to us, yet we cannot live long 
in the world without perceiving that the respect of our equals, 
our credit and rank in the society we live in, depend very much 
upon the degree in which we possess, or are supposed to possess, 
those advantages. The desire of becoming the proper objects of 
this respect, of deserving and obtaining this credit and rank 
among our equals, is, perhaps, the strongest of all our desires, 
and our anxiety to obtain the advantages of fortune is 
accordingly much more excited and irritated by this desire, than 
by that of supplying all the necessities and conveniencies of the 
body, which are always very easily supplied. 
    Our rank and credit among our equals, too, depend very much 
upon, what, perhaps, a virtuous man would wish them to depend 
entirely, our character and conduct, or upon the confidence, 
esteem, and good-will, which these naturally excite in the people 
we live with. 
    The care of the health, of the fortune, of the rank and 
reputation of the individual, the objects upon which his comfort 
and happiness in this life are supposed principally to depend, is 
considered as the proper business of that virtue which is 
commonly called Prudence. 
    We suffer more, it has already been observed, when we fall 
from a better to a worse situation, than we ever enjoy when we 
rise from a worse to a better. Security, therefore, is the first 
and the principal object of prudence. It is averse to expose our 
health, our fortune, our rank, or reputation, to any sort of 
hazard. It is rather cautious than enterprising, and more anxious 
to preserve the advantages which we already possess, than forward 
to prompt us to the acquisition of still greater advantages. The 
methods of improving our fortune, which it principally recommends 
to us, are those which expose to no loss or hazard; real 
knowledge and skill in our trade or profession, assiduity and 
industry in the exercise of it, frugality, and even some degree 
of parsimony, in all our expences. 
    The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to 
understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to 
persuade other people that he understands it; and though his 
talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always 
perfectly genuine. He neither endeavours to impose upon you by 
the cunning devices of an artful impostor, nor by the arrogant 
airs of an assuming pedant, nor by the confident assertions of a 
superficial and imprudent pretender. He is not ostentatious even 
of the abilities which he really possesses. His conversation is 
simple and modest, and he is averse to all the quackish arts by 
which other people so frequently thrust themselves into public 
notice and reputation. For reputation in his profession he is 
naturally disposed to rely a good deal upon the solidity of his 
knowledge and abilities; and he does not always think of 
cultivating the favour of those little clubs and cabals, who, in 
the superior arts and sciences, so often erect themselves into 
the supreme judges of merit; and who make it their business to 
celebrate the talents and virtues of one another, and to decry 
whatever can come into competition with them. If he ever connects 
himself with any society of this kind, it is merely in 
self-defence, not with a view to impose upon the public, but to 
hinder the public from being imposed upon, to his disadvantage, 
by the clamours, the whispers, or the intrigues, either of that 
particular society, or of some other of the same kind. 
    The prudent man is always sincere, and feels horror at the 
very thought of exposing himself to the disgrace which attends 
upon the detection of falsehood. But though always sincere, he is 
not always frank and open; and though he never tells any thing 
but the truth, he does not always think himself bound, when not 
properly called upon, to tell the whole truth. As he is cautious 
in his actions, so he is reserved in his speech; and never rashly 
or unnecessarily obtrudes his opinion concerning either things or 
persons. 
    The prudent man, though not always distinguished by the most 
exquisite sensibility, is always very capable of friendship. But 
his friendship is not that ardent and passionate, but too often 
transitory affection, which appears so delicious to the 
generosity of youth and inexperience. It is a sedate, but steady 
and faithful attachment to a few well-tried and well-chosen 
companions; in the choice of whom he is not guided by the giddy 
admiration of shining accomplishments, but by the sober esteem of 
modesty, discretion, and good conduct. But though capable of 
friendship, he is not always much disposed to general sociality. 
He rarely frequents, and more rarely figures in those convivial 
societies which are distinguished for the jollity and gaiety of 
their conversation. Their way of life might too often interfere 
with the regularity of his temperance, might interrupt the 
steadiness of his industry, or break in upon the strictness of 
his frugality. 
    But though his conversation may not always be very sprightly 
or diverting, it is always perfectly inoffensive. He hates the 
thought of being guilty of any petulance or rudeness. He never 
assumes impertinently over any body, and, upon all common 
occasions, is willing to place himself rather below than above 
his equals. Both in his conduct and conversation, he is an exact 
observer of decency, and respects with an almost religious 
scrupulosity, all the established decorums and ceremonials of 
society. And, in this respect, he sets a much better example than 
has frequently been done by men of much more splendid talents and 
virtues; who, in all ages, from that of Socrates and Aristippus, 
down to that of Dr Swift and Voltaire, and from that of Philip 
and Alexander the Great, down to that of the great Czar Peter of 
Moscovy, have too often distinguished themselves by the most 
improper and even insolent contempt of all the ordinary decorums 
of life and conversation, and who have thereby set the most 
pernicious example to those who wish to resemble them, and who 
too often content themselves with imitating their follies, 
without even attempting to attain their perfections. 
    In the steadiness of his industry and frugality, in his 
steadily sacrificing the ease and enjoyment of the present moment 
for the probable expectation of the still greater ease and 
enjoyment of a more distant but more lasting period of time, the 
prudent man is always both supported and rewarded by the entire 
approbation of the impartial spectator, and of the representative 
of the impartial spectator, the man within the breast. The 
impartial spectator does not feel himself worn out by the present 
labour of those whose conduct he surveys; nor does he feel 
himself solicited by the importunate calls of their present 
appetites. To him their present, and what is likely to be their 
future situation, are very nearly the same: he sees them nearly 
at the same distance, and is affected by them very nearly in the 
same manner. He knows, however, that to the persons principally 
concerned, they are very far from being the same, and that they 
naturally affect them in a very different manner. He cannot 
therefore but approve, and even applaud, that proper exertion of 
self-command, which enables them to act as if their present and 
their future situation affected them nearly in the same manner in 
which they affect him. 
    The man who lives within his income, is naturally contented 
with his situation, which, by continual, though small 
accumulations, is growing better and better every day. He is 
enabled gradually to relax, both in the rigour of his parsimony 
and in the severity of his application; and he feels with double 
satisfaction this gradual increase of ease and enjoyment, from 
having felt before the hardship which attended the want of them. 
He has no anxiety to change so comfortable a situation, and does 
not go in quest of new enterprises and adventures, which might 
endanger, but could not well increase, the secure tranquillity 
which he actually enjoys. If he enters into any new projects or 
enterprises, they are likely to be well concerted and well 
prepared. He can never be hurried or drove into them by any 
necessity, but has always time and leisure to deliberate soberly 
and coolly concerning what are likely to be their consequences. 
    The prudent man is not willing to subject himself to any 
responsibility which his duty does not impose upon him. He is not 
a bustler in business where he has no concern; is not a meddler 
in other people's affairs; is not a professed counsellor or 
adviser, who obtrudes his advice where nobody is asking it. He 
confines himself, as much as his duty will permit, to his own 
affairs, and has no taste for that foolish importance which many 
people wish to derive from appearing to have some influence in 
the management of those of other people. He is averse to enter 
into any party disputes, hates faction, and is not always very 
forward to listen to the voice even of noble and great ambition. 
When distinctly called upon, he will not decline the service of 
his country, but he will not cabal in order to force himself into 
it; and would be much better pleased that the public business 
were well managed by some other person, than that he himself 
should have the trouble, and incur the responsibility, of 
managing it. In the bottom of his heart he would prefer the 
undisturbed enjoyment of secure tranquillity, not only to all the 
vain splendour of successful ambition, but to the real and solid 
glory of performing the greatest and most magnanimous actions. 
    Prudence, in short, when directed merely to the care of the 
health, of the fortune, and of the rank and reputation of the 
individual, though it is regarded as a most respectable and even, 
in some degree, as an amiable and agreeable quality, yet it never 
is considered as one, either of the most endearing, or of the 
most ennobling of the virtues. It commands a certain cold esteem, 
but seems not entitled to any very ardent love or admiration. 
    Wise and judicious conduct, when directed to greater and 
nobler purposes than the care of the health, the fortune, the 
rank and reputation of the individual, is frequently and very 
properly called prudence. We talk of the prudence of the great 
general, of the great statesman, of the great legislator. 
Prudence is, in all these cases, combined with many greater and 
more splendid virtues, with valour, with extensive and strong 
benevolence, with a sacred regard to the rules of justice, and 
all these supported by a proper degree of self-command. This 
superior prudence, when carried to the highest degree of 
perfection, necessarily supposes the art, the talent, and the 
habit or disposition of acting with the most perfect propriety in 
every possible circumstance and situation. It necessarily 
supposes the utmost perfection of all the intellectual and of all 
the moral virtues. It is the best head joined to the best heart. 
It is the most perfect wisdom combined with the most perfect 
virtue. It constitutes very nearly the character of the 
Academical or Peripatetic sage, as the inferior prudence does 
that of the Epicurean. 
    Mere imprudence, or the mere want of the capacity to take 
care of one's-self, is, with the generous and humane, the object 
of compassion; with those of less delicate sentiments, of 
neglect, or, at worst, of contempt, but never of hatred or 
indignation. When combined with other vices, however, it 
aggravates in the highest degree the infamy and disgrace which 
would otherwise attend them. The artful knave, whose dexterity 
and address exempt him, though not from strong suspicions, yet 
from punishment or distinct detection, is too often received in 
the world with an indulgence which he by no means deserves. The 
awkward and foolish one, who, for want of this dexterity and 
address, is convicted and brought to punishment, is the object of 
universal hatred, contempt, and derision. In countries where 
great crimes frequently pass unpunished, the most atrocious 
actions become almost familiar, and cease to impress the people 
with that horror which is universally felt in countries where an 
exact administration of justice takes place. The injustice is the 
same in both countries; but the imprudence is often very 
different. In the latter, great crimes are evidently great 
follies. In the former, they are not always considered as such. 
In Italy, during the greater part of the sixteenth century, 
assassinations, murders, and even murders under trust, seem to 
have been almost familiar among the superior ranks of people. 
Caesar Borgia invited four of the little princes in his 
neighbourhood, who all possessed little sovereignties, and 
commanded little armies of their own, to a friendly conference at 
Senigaglia, where, as soon as they arrived, he put them all to 
death. This infamous action, though certainly not approved of 
even in that age of crimes, seems to have contributed very little 
to the discredit, and not in the least to the ruin of the 
perpetrator. That ruin happened a few years after from causes 
altogether disconnected with this crime. Machiavel, not indeed a 
man of the nicest morality even for his own times, was resident, 
as minister from the republic of Florence, at the court of Caesar 
Borgia when this crime was committed. He gives a very particular 
account of it, and in that pure, elegant, and simple language 
which distinguishes all his writings. He talks of it very coolly; 
is pleased with the address with which Caesar Borgia conducted 
it; has much contempt for the dupery and weakness of the 
sufferers; but no compassion for their miserable and untimely 
death, and no sort of indignation at the cruelty and falsehood of 
their murderer. The violence and injustice of great conquerors 
are often regarded with foolish wonder and admiration; those of 
petty thieves, robbers, and murderers, with contempt, hatred, and 
even horror upon all occasions. The former, though they are a 
hundred times more mischievous and destructive, yet when 
successful, they often pass for deeds of the most heroic 
magnanimity. The latter are always viewed with hatred and 
aversion, as the follies, as well as the crimes, of the lowest 
and most worthless of mankind. The injustice of the former is 
certainly, at least, as great as that of the latter; but the 
folly and imprudence are not near so great. A wicked and 
worthless man of parts often goes through the world with much 
more credit than he deserves. A wicked and worthless fool appears 
always, of all mortals, the most hateful, as well as the most 
contemptible. As prudence combined with other virtues, 
constitutes the noblest; so imprudence combined with other vices, 
constitutes the vilest of all characters. 
  
Section II 
Of the Character of the Individual, so far as it can affect the 
Happiness of other People 
    The character of every individual, so far as it can affect 
the happiness of other people, must do so by its disposition 
either to hurt or to benefit them. 
    Proper resentment for injustice attempted, or actually 
committed, is the only motive which, in the eyes of the impartial 
spectator, can justify our hurting or disturbing in any respect 
the happiness of our neighbour. To do so from any other motive is 
itself a violation of the laws of justice, which force ought to 
be employed either to restrain or to punish. The wisdom of every 
state or commonwealth endeavours, as well as it can, to employ 
the force of the society to restrain those who are subject to its 
authority, from hurting or disturbing the happiness of one 
another. The rules which it establishes for this purpose, 
constitute the civil and criminal law of each particular state or 
country. The principles upon which those rules either are, or 
ought to be founded, are the subject of a particular science, of 
all sciences by far the most important, but hitherto, perhaps, 
the least cultivated, that of natural jurisprudence,. concerning 
which it belongs not to our present subject to enter into any 
detail. A sacred and religious regard not to hurt or disturb in 
any respect the happiness of our neighbour, even in those cases 
where no law can properly protect him, constitutes the character 
of the perfectly innocent and just man; a character which, when 
carried to a certain delicacy of attention, is always highly 
respectable and even venerable for its own sake, and can scarce 
ever fail to be accompanied with many other virtues, with great 
feeling for other people, with great humanity and great 
benevolence. It is a character sufficiently understood, and 
requires no further explanation. In the present section I shall 
only endeavour to explain the foundation of that order which 
nature seems to have traced out for the distribution of our good 
offices, or for the direction and employment of our very limited 
powers of beneficence: first, towards individuals; and secondly, 
towards societies. 
    The same unerring wisdom, it will be found, which regulates 
every other part of her conduct, directs, in this respect too, 
the order of her recommendations; which are always stronger or 
weaker in proportion as our beneficence is more or less 
necessary, or can be more or less useful. 
Chap. I 
Of the Order in which Individuals are recommended by Nature to 
our care and attention 
    Every man, as the Stoics used to say, is first and 
principally recommended to his own care; and every man is 
certainly, in every respect, fitter and abler to take care of 
himself than of any other person. Every man feels his own 
pleasures and his own pains more sensibly than those of other 
people. The former are the original sensations; the latter the 
reflected or sympathetic images of those sensations. The former 
may be said to be the substance; the latter the shadow. 
    After himself, the members of his own family, those who 
usually live in the same house with him, his parents, his 
children, his brothers and sisters, are naturally the objects of 
his warmest affections. They are naturally and usually the 
persons upon whose happiness or misery his conduct must have the 
greatest influence. He is more habituated to sympathize with 
them. He knows better how every thing is likely to affect them, 
and his sympathy with them is more precise and determinate, than 
it can be with the greater part of other people. It approaches 
nearer, in short, to what he feels for himself. 
    This sympathy too, and the affections which are founded on 
it, are by nature more strongly directed towards his children 
than towards his parents, and his tenderness for the former seems 
generally a more active principle, than his reverence and 
gratitude towards the latter. In the natural state of things, it 
has already been observed, the existence of the child, for some 
time after it comes into the world, depends altogether upon the 
care of the parent; that of the parent does not naturally depend 
upon the care of the child. In the eye of nature, it would seem, 
a child is a more important object than an old man; and excites a 
much more lively, as well as a much more universal sympathy. It 
ought to do so. Every thing may be expected, or at least hoped, 
from the child. In ordinary cases, very little can be either 
expected or hoped from the old man. The weakness of childhood 
interests the affections of the most brutal and hard-hearted. It 
is only to the virtuous and humane, that the infirmities of old 
age are not the objects of contempt and aversion. In ordinary 
cases, an old man dies without being much regretted by any body. 
Scarce a child can die without rending asunder the heart of 
somebody. 
    The earliest friendships, the friendships which are naturally 
contracted when the heart is most susceptible of that feeling, 
are those among brothers and sisters. Their good agreement, while 
they remain in the same family, is necessary for its tranquillity 
and happiness. They are capable of giving more pleasure or pain 
to one another than to the greater part of other people. Their 
situation renders their mutual sympathy of the utmost importance 
to their common happiness; and, by the wisdom of nature, the same 
situation, by obliging them to accommodate to one another, 
renders that sympathy more habitual, and thereby more lively, 
more distinct, and more determinate. 
    The children of brothers and sisters are naturally connected 
by the friendship which, after separating into different 
families, continues to take place between their parents. Their 
good agreement improves the enjoyment of that friendship; their 
discord would disturb it. As they seldom live in the same family, 
however, though of more importance to one another, than to the 
greater part of other people, they are of much less than brothers 
and sisters. As their mutual sympathy is less necessary, so it is 
less habitual, and therefore proportionably weaker. 
    The children of cousins, being still less connected, are of 
still less importance to one another; and the affection gradually 
diminishes as the relation grows more and more remote. 
    What is called affection, is in reality nothing but habitual 
sympathy. Our concern in the happiness or misery of those who are 
the objects of what we call our affections; our desire to promote 
the one, and to prevent the other; are either the actual feeling 
of that habitual sympathy, or the necessary consequences of that 
feeling. Relations being usually placed in situations which 
naturally create this habitual sympathy, it is expected that a 
suitable degree of affection should take place among them. We 
generally find that it actually does take place; we therefore 
naturally expect that it should; and we are, upon that account, 
more shocked when, upon any occasion, we find that it does not. 
The general rule is established, that persons related to one 
another in a certain degree, ought always to be affected towards 
one another in a certain manner, and that there is always the 
highest impropriety, and sometimes even a sort of impiety, in 
their being affected in a different manner. A parent without 
parental tenderness, a child devoid of all filial reverence, 
appear monsters, the objects, not of hatred only, but of horror. 
    Though in a particular instance, the circumstances which 
usually produce those natural affections, as they are called, 
may, by some accident, not have taken place, yet respect for the 
general rule will frequently, in some measure, supply their 
place, and produce something which, though not altogether the 
same, may bear, however, a very considerable resemblance to those 
affections. A father is apt to be less attached to a child, who, 
by some accident, has been separated from him in its infancy, and 
who does not return to him till it is grown up to manhood. The 
father is apt to feel less paternal tenderness for the child; the 
child, less filial reverence for the father. Brothers and 
sisters, when they have been educated in distant countries, are 
apt to feel a similar diminution of affection. With the dutiful 
and the virtuous, however, respect for the general rule will 
frequently produce something which, though by no means the same, 
yet may very much resemble those natural affections. Even during 
the separation, the father and the child, the brothers or the 
sisters, are by no means indifferent to one another. They all 
consider one another as persons to and from whom certain 
affections are due, and they live in the hopes of being some time 
or another in a situation to enjoy that friendship which ought 
naturally to have taken place among persons so nearly connected. 
Till they meet, the absent son, the absent brother, are 
frequently the favourite son, the favourite brother. They have 
never offended, or, if they have, it is so long ago, that the 
offence is forgotten, as some childish trick not worth the 
remembering. Every account they have heard of one another, if 
conveyed by people of any tolerable good nature, has been, in the 
highest degree, flattering and favourable. The absent son, the 
absent brother, is not like other ordinary sons and brothers; but 
an all-perfect son, an all-perfect brother; and the most romantic 
hopes are entertained of the happiness to be enjoyed in the 
friendship and conversation of such persons. When they meet, it 
is often with so strong a disposition to conceive that habitual 
sympathy which constitutes the family affection, that they are 
very apt to fancy they have actually conceived it, and to behave 
to one another as if they had. Time and experience, however, I am 
afraid, too frequently undeceive them. Upon a more familiar 
acquaintance, they frequently discover in one another habits, 
humours, and inclinations, different from what they expected, to 
which, from want of habitual sympathy, from want of the real 
principle and foundation of what is properly called 
family-affection, they cannot now easily accommodate themselves. 
They have never lived in the situation which almost necessarily 
forces that easy accommodation, and though they may now be 
sincerely desirous to assume it, they have really become 
incapable of doing so. Their familiar conversation and 
intercourse soon become less pleasing to them, and, upon that 
account, less frequent. They may continue to live with one 
another in the mutual exchange of all essential good offices, and 
with every other external appearance of decent regard. But that 
cordial satisfaction, that delicious sympathy, that confidential 
openness and ease, which naturally take place in the conversation 
of those who have lived long and familiarly with one another, it 
seldom happens that they can completely enjoy. 
    It is only, however, with the dutiful and the virtuous, that 
the general rule has even this slender authority. With the 
dissipated, the profligate, and the vain, it is entirely 
disregarded. They are so far from respecting it, that they seldom 
talk of it but with the most indecent derision. and an early and 
long separation of this kind never fails to estrange them most 
completely from one another. With such persons, respect for the 
general rule can at best produce only a cold and affected 
civility (a very slender semblance of real regard); and even 
this, the slightest offence, the smallest opposition of interest, 
commonly puts an end to altogether. 
    The education of boys at distant great schools, of young men 
at distant colleges, of young ladies in distant nunneries and 
boarding-schools, seems, in the higher ranks of life, to have 
hurt most essentially the domestic morals, and consequently the 
domestic happiness, both of France and England. Do you wish to 
educate your children to be dutiful to their parents, to be kind 
and affectionate to their brothers and sisters? put them under 
the necessity of being dutiful children, of being kind and 
affectionate brothers and sisters: educate them in your own 
house. From their parent's house they may, with propriety and 
advantage, go out every day to attend public schools: but let 
their dwelling be always at home. Respect for you must always 
impose a very useful restraint upon their conduct; and respect 
for them may frequently impose no useless restraint upon your 
own. Surely no acquirement, which can possibly be derived from 
what is called a public education, can make any sort of 
compensation for what is almost certainly and necessarily lost by 
it. Domestic education is the institution of nature; public 
education, the contrivance of man. It is surely unnecessary to 
say, which is likely to be the wisest. 
    In some tragedies and romances, we meet with many beautiful 
and interesting scenes, founded upon, what is called, the force 
of blood, or upon the wonderful affection which near relations 
are supposed to conceive for one another, even before they know 
that they have any such connection. This force of blood, however, 
I am afraid, exists no-where but in tragedies and romances. Even 
in tragedies and romances, it is never supposed to take place 
between any relations, but those who are naturally bred up in the 
same house; between parents and children, between brothers and 
sisters. To imagine any such mysterious affection between 
cousins, or even between aunts or uncles, and nephews or nieces, 
would be too ridiculous. 
    In pastoral countries, and in all countries where the 
authority of law is not alone sufficient to give perfect security 
to every member of the state, all the different branches of the 
same family commonly chuse to live in the neighbourhood of one 
another. Their association is frequently necessary for their 
common defence. They are all, from the highest to the lowest, of 
more or less importance to one another. Their concord strengthens 
their necessary association; their discord always weakens, and 
might destroy it. They have more intercourse with one another, 
than with the members of any other tribe. The remotest members of 
the same tribe claim some connection with one another; and, where 
all other circumstances are equal, expect to be treated with more 
distinguished attention than is due to those who have no such 
pretensions. It is not many years ago that, in the Highlands of 
Scotland, the Chieftain used to consider the poorest man of his 
clan, as his cousin and relation. The same extensive regard to 
kindred is said to take place among the Tartars, the Arabs, the 
Turkomans, and, I believe, among all other nations who are nearly 
in the same state of society in which the Scots Highlanders were 
about the beginning of the present century. 
    In commercial countries, where the authority of law is always 
perfectly sufficient to protect the meanest man in the state, the 
descendants of the same family, having no such motive for keeping 
together, naturally separate and disperse, as interest or 
inclination may direct. They soon cease to be of importance to 
one another; and, in a few generations, not only lose all care 
about one another, but all remembrance of their common origin, 
and of the connection which took place among their ancestors. 
Regard for remote relations becomes, in every country, less and 
less, according as this state of civilization has been longer and 
more completely established. It has been longer and more 
completely established in England than in Scotland; and remote 
relations are, accordingly, more considered in the latter country 
than in the former, though, in this respect, the difference 
between the two countries is growing less and less every day. 
Great lords, indeed, are, in every country, proud of remembering 
and acknowledging their connection with one another, however 
remote. The remembrance of such illustrious relations flatters 
not a little the family pride of them all; and it is neither from 
affection, nor from any thing which resembles affection, but from 
the most frivolous and childish of all vanities, that this 
remembrance is so carefully kept up. Should some more humble, 
though, perhaps, much nearer kinsman, presume to put such great 
men in mind of his relation to their family, they seldom fail to 
tell him that they are bad genealogists, and miserably 
ill-informed concerning their own family history. It is not in 
that order, I am afraid, that we are to expect any extraordinary 
extension of, what is called, natural affection. 
    I consider what is called natural affection as more the 
effect of the moral than of the supposed physical connection 
between the parent and the child. A jealous husband, indeed, 
notwithstanding the moral connection, notwithstanding the child's 
having been educated in his own house, often regards, with hatred 
and aversion, that unhappy child which he supposes to be the 
offspring of his wife's infidelity. It is the lasting monument of 
a most disagreeable adventure; of his own dishonour, and of the 
disgrace of his family. 
    Among well-disposed people, the necessity or conveniency of 
mutual accommodation, very frequently produces a friendship not 
unlike that which takes place among those who are born to live in 
the same family. Colleagues in office, partners in trade, call 
one another brothers; and frequently feel towards one another as 
if they really were so. Their good agreement is an advantage to 
all; and, if they are tolerably reasonable people, they are 
naturally disposed to agree. We expect that they should do so; 
and their disagreement is a sort of a small scandal. The Romans 
expressed this sort of attachment by the word necessitudo, which, 
from the etymology, seems to denote that it was imposed by the 
necessity of the situation. 
    Even the trifling circumstance of living in the same 
neighbourhood, has some effect of the same kind. We respect the 
face of a man whom we see every day, provided he has never 
offended us. Neighbours can be very convenient, and they can be 
very troublesome, to one another. If they are good sort of 
people, they are naturally disposed to agree. We expect their 
good agreement; and to be a bad neighbour is a very bad 
character. There are certain small good offices, accordingly, 
which are universally allowed to be due to a neighbour in 
preference to any other person who has no such connection. 
    This natural disposition to accommodate and to assimilate, as 
much as we can, our own sentiments, principles, and feelings, to 
those which we see fixed and rooted in the persons whom we are 
obliged to live and converse a great deal with, is the cause of 
the contagious effects of both good and bad company. The man who 
associates chiefly with the wise and the virtuous, though he may 
not himself become either wise or virtuous, cannot help 
conceiving a certain respect at least for wisdom and virtue; and 
the man who associates chiefly with the profligate and the 
dissolute, though he may not himself become profligate and 
dissolute, must soon lose, at least, all his original abhorrence 
of profligacy and dissolution of manners. The similarity of 
family characters, which we so frequently see transmitted through 
several successive generations, may, perhaps, be partly owing to 
this disposition, to assimilate ourselves to those whom we are 
obliged to live and converse a great deal with. The family 
character, however, like the family countenance, seems to be 
owing, not altogether to the moral, but partly too to the 
physical connection. The family countenance is certainly 
altogether owing to the latter. 
    But of all attachments to an individual, that which is 
founded altogether upon the esteem and approbation of his good 
conduct and behaviour, confirmed by much experience and long 
acquaintance, is, by far, the most respectable. Such friendships, 
arising not from a constrained sympathy, not from a sympathy 
which has been assumed and rendered habitual for the sake of 
conveniency and accommodation; but from a natural sympathy, from 
an involuntary feeling that the persons to whom we attach 
ourselves are the natural and proper objects of esteem and 
approbation; can exist only among men of virtue. Men of virtue 
only can feel that entire confidence in the conduct and behaviour 
of one another, which can, at all times, assure them that they 
can never either offend or be offended by one another. Vice is 
always capricious: virtue only is regular and orderly. The 
attachment which is founded upon the love of virtue, as it is 
certainly, of all attachments, the most virtuous; so it is 
likewise the happiest, as well as the most permanent and secure. 
Such friendships need not be confined to a single person, but may 
safely embrace all the wise and virtuous, with whom we have been 
long and intimately acquainted, and upon whose wisdom and virtue 
we can, upon that account, entirely depend. They who would 
confine friendship to two persons, seem to confound the wise 
security of friendship with the jealousy and folly of love. The 
hasty, fond, and foolish intimacies of young people, founded, 
commonly, upon some slight similarity of character, altogether 
unconnected with good conduct, upon a taste, perhaps, for the 
same studies, the same amusements, the same diversions, or upon 
their agreement in some singular principle or opinion, not 
commonly adopted; those intimacies which a freak begins, and 
which a freak puts an end to, how agreeable soever they may 
appear while they last, can by no means deserve the sacred and 
venerable name of friendship. 
    Of all the persons, however, whom nature points out for our 
peculiar beneficence, there are none to whom it seems more 
properly directed than to those whose beneficence we have 
ourselves already experienced. Nature, which formed men for that 
mutual kindness, so necessary for their happiness, renders every 
man the peculiar object of kindness, to the persons to whom he 
himself has been kind. Though their gratitude should not always 
correspond to his beneficence, yet the sense of his merit, the 
sympathetic gratitude of the impartial spectator, will always 
correspond to it. The general indignation of other people, 
against the baseness of their ingratitude, will even, sometimes, 
increase the general sense of his merit. No benevolent man ever 
lost altogether the fruits of his benevolence. If he does not 
always gather them from the persons from whom he ought to have 
gathered them, he seldom fails to gather them, and with a tenfold 
increase, from other people. Kindness is the parent of kindness; 
and if to be beloved by our brethren be the great object of our 
ambition, the surest way of obtaining it is, by our conduct to 
show that we really love them. 
    After the persons who are recommended to our beneficence, 
either by their connection with ourselves, by their personal 
qualities, or by their past services, come those who are pointed 
out, not indeed to, what is called, our friendship, but to our 
benevolent attention and good offices; those who are 
distinguished by their extraordinary situation; the greatly 
fortunate and the greatly unfortunate, the rich and the powerful, 
the poor and the wretched. The distinction of ranks, the peace 
and order of society, are, in a great measure, founded upon the 
respect which we naturally conceive for the former. The relief 
and consolation of human misery depend altogether upon our 
compassion for the latter. The peace and order of society, is of 
more importance than even the relief of the miserable. Our 
respect for the great, accordingly, is most apt to offend by its 
excess; our fellow_feeling for the miserable, by its defect. 
Moralists exhort us to charity and compassion. They warn us 
against the fascination of greatness. This fascination, indeed, 
is so powerful, that the rich and the great are too often 
preferred to the wise and the virtuous. Nature has wisely judged 
that the distinction of ranks, the peace and order of society, 
would rest more securely upon the plain and palpable difference 
of birth and fortune, than upon the invisible and often uncertain 
difference of wisdom and virtue. The undistinguishing eyes of the 
great mob of mankind can well enough perceive the former: it is 
with difficulty that the nice discernment of the wise and the 
virtuous can sometimes distinguish the latter. In the order of 
all those recommendations, the benevolent wisdom of nature is 
equally evident. 
    It may, perhaps, be unnecessary to observe, that the 
combination of two, or more, of those exciting causes of 
kindness, increases the kindness. The favour and partiality 
which, when there is no envy in the case, we naturally bear to 
greatness, are much increased when it is joined with wisdom and 
virtue. If, notwithstanding that wisdom and virtue, the great man 
should fall into those misfortunes, those dangers and distresses, 
to which the most exalted stations are often the most exposed, we 
are much more deeply interested in his fortune than we should be 
in that of a person equally virtuous, but in a more humble 
situation. The most interesting subjects of tragedies and 
romances are the misfortunes of virtuous and magnanimous kings 
and princes. If, by the wisdom and manhood of their exertions, 
they should extricate themselves from those misfortunes, and 
recover completely their former superiority and security, we 
cannot help viewing them with the most enthusiastic and even 
extravagant admiration. The grief which we felt for their 
distress, the joy which we feel for their prosperity, seem to 
combine together in enhancing that partial admiration which we 
naturally conceive both for the station and the character. 
    When those different beneficent affections happen to draw 
different ways, to determine by any precise rules in what cases 
we ought to comply with the one, and in what with the other, is, 
perhaps, altogether impossible. In what cases friendship ought to 
yield to gratitude, or gratitude to friend, ship. in what cases 
the strongest of all natural affections ought to yield to a 
regard for the safety of those superiors upon whose safety often 
depends that of the whole society; and in what cases natural 
affection may, without impropriety, prevail over that regard; 
must be left altogether to the decision of the man within the 
breast, the supposed impartial spectator, the great judge and 
arbiter of our conduct. If we place ourselves completely in his 
situation, if we really view ourselves with his eyes, and as he 
views us, and listen with diligent and reverential attention to 
what he suggests to us, his voice will never deceive us. We shall 
stand in need of no casuistic rules to direct our conduct. These 
it is often impossible to accommodate to all the different shades 
and gradations of circumstance, character, and situation, to 
differences and distinctions which, though not imperceptible, 
are, by their nicety and delicacy, often altogether undefinable. 
In that beautiful tragedy of Voltaire, the Orphan of China, while 
we admire the magnanimity of Zamti, who is willing to sacrifice 
the life of his own child, in order to preserve that of the only 
feeble remnant of his ancient sovereigns and masters; we not only 
pardon, but love the maternal tenderness of Idame, who, at the 
risque of discovering the important secret of her husband, 
reclaims her infant from the cruel hands of the Tartars, into 
which it had been delivered. 
Chap. II 
Of the order in which Societies are by nature recommended to our 
Beneficence 
    The same principles that direct the order in which 
individuals are recommended to our beneficence, direct that 
likewise in which societies are recommended to it. Those to which 
it is, or may be of most importance, are first and principally 
recommended to it. 
    The state or sovereignty in which we have been born and 
educated, and under the protection of which we continue to live, 
is, in ordinary cases, the greatest society upon whose happiness 
or misery, our good or bad conduct can have much influence. It is 
accordingly, by nature, most strongly recommended to us. Not only 
we ourselves, but all the objects of our kindest affections, our 
children, our parents, our relations, our friends, our 
benefactors, all those whom we naturally love and revere the 
most, are commonly comprehended within it; and their prosperity 
and safety depend in some measure upon its prosperity and safety. 
It is by nature, therefore, endeared to us, not only by all our 
selfish, but by all our private benevolent affections. Upon 
account of our own connexion with it, its prosperity and glory 
seem to reflect some sort of honour upon ourselves. When we 
compare it with other societies of the same kind, we are proud of 
its superiority, and mortified in some degree, if it appears in 
any respect below them. All the illustrious characters which it 
has produced in former times (for against those of our own times 
envy may sometimes prejudice us a little), its warriors, its 
statesmen, its poets, its philosophers, and men of letters of all 
kinds; we are disposed to view with the most partial admiration, 
and to rank them (sometimes most unjustly) above those of all 
other nations. The patriot who lays down his life for the safety, 
or even for the vain-glory of this society, appears to act with 
the most exact propriety. He appears to view himself in the light 
in which the impartial spectator naturally and necessarily views 
him, as but one of the multitude, in the eye of that equitable 
judge, of no more consequence than any other in it, but bound at 
all times to sacrifice and devote himself to the safety, to the 
service, and even to the glory of the greater number. But though 
this sacrifice appears to be perfectly just and proper, we know 
how difficult it is to make it, and how few people are capable of 
making it. His conduct, therefore, excites not only our entire 
approbation, but our highest wonder and admiration, and seems to 
merit all the applause which can be due to the most heroic 
virtue. The traitor, on the contrary, who, in some peculiar 
situation, fancies he can promote his own little interest by 
betraying to the public enemy that of his native country. who, 
regardless of the judgment of the man within the breast, prefers 
himself, in this respect so shamefully and so basely, to all 
those with whom he has any connexion; appears to be of all 
villains the most detestable. 
    The love of our own nation often disposes us to view, with 
the most malignant jealousy and envy, the prosperity and 
aggrandisement of any other neighbouring nation. Independent and 
neighbouring nations, having no common superior to decide their 
disputes, all live in continual dread and suspicion of one 
another. Each sovereign, expecting little justice from his 
neighbours, is disposed to treat them with as little as he 
expects from them. The regard for the laws of nations, or for 
those rules which independent states profess or pretend to think 
themselves bound to observe in their dealings with one another, 
is often very little more than mere pretence and profession. From 
the smallest interest, upon the slightest provocation, we see 
those rules every day, either evaded or directly violated without 
shame or remorse. Each nation foresees, or imagines it foresees, 
its own subjugation in the increasing power and aggrandisement of 
any of its neighbours; and the mean principle of national 
prejudice is often founded upon the noble one of the love of our 
own country. The sentence with which the elder Cato is said to 
have concluded every speech which he made in the senate, whatever 
might be the subject, 'It is my opinion likewise that Carthage 
ought to be destroyed,' was the natural expression of the savage 
patriotism of a strong but coarse mind, enraged almost to madness 
against a foreign nation from which his own had suffered so much. 
The more humane sentence with which Scipio Nasica is said to have 
concluded all his speeches, 'It is my opinion likewise that 
Carthage ought not to be destroyed,' was the liberal expression 
of a more enlarged and enlightened mind, who felt no aversion to 
the prosperity even of an old enemy, when reduced to a state 
which could no longer be formidable to Rome. France and England 
may each of them have some reason to dread the increase of the 
naval and military power of the other; but for either of them to 
envy the internal happiness and prosperity of the other, the 
cultivation of its lands, the advancement of its manufactures, 
the increase of its commerce, the security and number of its 
ports and harbours, its proficiency in all the liberal arts and 
sciences, is surely beneath the dignity of two such great 
nations. These are all real improvements of the world we live in. 
Mankind are benefited, human nature is ennobled by them. In such 
improvements each nation ought, not only to endeavour itself to 
excel, but from the love of mankind, to promote, instead of 
obstructing the excellence of its neighbours. These are all 
proper objects of national emulation, not of national prejudice 
or envy. 
    The love of our own country seems not to be derived from the 
love of mankind. The former sentiment is altogether independent 
of the latter, and seems sometimes even to dispose us to act 
inconsistently with it. France may contain, perhaps, near three 
times the number of inhabitants which Great Britain contains. In 
the great society of mankind, therefore, the prosperity of France 
should appear to be an object of much greater importance than 
that of Great Britain. The British subject, however, who, upon 
that account, should prefer upon all occasions the prosperity of 
the former to that of the latter country, would not be thought a 
good citizen of Great Britain. We do not love our country merely 
as a part of the great society of mankind: we love it for its own 
sake, and independently of any such consideration. That wisdom 
which contrived the system of human affections, as well as that 
of every other part of nature, seems to have judged that the 
interest of the great society of mankind would be best promoted 
by directing the principal attention of each individual to that 
particular portion of it, which was most within the sphere both 
of his abilities and of his understanding. 
    National prejudices and hatreds seldom extend beyond 
neighbouring nations. We very weakly and foolishly, perhaps, call 
the French our natural enemies; and they perhaps, as weakly and 
foolishly, consider us in the same manner. Neither they nor we 
bear any sort of envy to the prosperity of China or Japan. It 
very rarely happens, however, that our good-will towards such 
distant countries can be exerted with much effect. 
    The most extensive public benevolence which can commonly be 
exerted with any considerable effect, is that of the statesmen, 
who project and form alliances among neighbouring or not very 
distant nations, for the preservation either of, what is called, 
the balance of power, or of the general peace and tranquillity of 
the states within the circle of their negotiations. The 
statesmen, however, who plan and execute such treaties, have 
seldom any thing in view, but the interest of their respective 
countries. Sometimes, indeed, their views are more extensive. The 
Count d'Avaux, the plenipotentiary of France, at the treaty of 
Munster, would have been willing to sacrifice his life (according 
to the Cardinal de Retz, a man not over-credulous in the virtue 
of other people) in order to have restored, by that treaty, the 
general tranquillity of Europe. King William seems to have had a 
real zeal for the liberty and independency of the greater part of 
the sovereign states of Europe; which, perhaps, might be a good 
deal stimulated by his particular aversion to France, the state 
from which, during his time, that liberty and independency were 
principally in danger. Some share of the same spirit seems to 
have descended to the first ministry of Queen Anne. 
    Every independent state is divided into many different orders 
and societies, each of which has its own particular powers, 
privileges, and immunities. Every individual is naturally more 
attached to his own particular order or society, than to any 
other. His own interest, his own vanity the interest and vanity 
of many of his friends and companions, are commonly a good deal 
connected with it. He is ambitious to extend its privileges and 
immunities. He is zealous to defend them against the 
encroachments of every other order or society. 
    Upon the manner in which any state is divided into the 
different orders and societies which compose it, and upon the 
particular distribution which has been made of their respective 
powers, privileges, and immunities, depends, what is called, the 
constitution of that particular state. 
    Upon the ability of each particular order or society to 
maintain its own powers, privileges, and immunities, against the 
encroachments of every other, depends the stability of that 
particular constitution. That particular constitution is 
necessarily more or less altered, whenever any of its subordinate 
parts is either raised above or depressed below whatever had been 
its former rank and condition. 
    All those different orders and societies are dependent upon 
the state to which they owe their security and protection. That 
they are all subordinate to that state, and established only in 
subserviency to its prosperity and preservation, is a truth 
acknowledged by the most partial member of every one of them. It 
may often, however, be hard to convince him that the prosperity 
and preservation of the state require any diminution of the 
powers, privileges, and immunities of his own particular order or 
society. This partiality, though it may sometimes be unjust, may 
not, upon that account, be useless. It checks the spirit of 
innovation. It tends to preserve whatever is the established 
balance among the different orders and societies into which the 
state is divided; and while it sometimes appears to obstruct some 
alterations of government which may be fashionable and popular at 
the time, it contributes in reality to the stability and 
permanency of the whole system. 
    The love of our country seems, in ordinary cases, to involve 
in it two different principles; first, a certain respect and 
reverence for that constitution or form of government which is 
actually established; and secondly, an earnest desire to render 
the condition of our fellow-citizens as safe, respectable, and 
happy as we can. He is not a citizen who is not disposed to 
respect the laws and to obey the civil magistrate; and he is 
certainly not a good citizen who does not wish to promote, by 
every means in his power, the welfare of the whole society of his 
fellow-citizens. 
    In peaceable and quiet times, those two principles generally 
coincide and lead to the same conduct. The support of the 
established government seems evidently the best expedient for 
maintaining the safe, respectable, and happy situation of our 
fellow-citizens; when we see that this government actually 
maintains them in that situation. But in times of public 
discontent, faction, and disorder, those two different principles 
may draw different ways, and even a wise man may be disposed to 
think some alteration necessary in that constitution or form of 
government, which, in its actual condition, appears plainly 
unable to maintain the public tranquillity. In such cases, 
however, it often requires, perhaps, the highest effort of 
political wisdom to determine when a real patriot ought to 
support and endeavour to re-establish the authority of the old 
system, and when he ought to give way to the more daring, but 
often dangerous spirit of innovation. 
    Foreign war and civil faction are the two situations which 
afford the most splendid opportunities for the display of public 
spirit. The hero who serves his country successfully in foreign 
war gratifies the wishes of the whole nation, and is, upon that 
account, the object of universal gratitude and admiration. In 
times of civil discord, the leaders of the contending parties, 
though they may be admired by one half of their fellow-citizens, 
are commonly execrated by the other. Their characters and the 
merit of their respective services appear commonly more doubtful. 
The glory which is acquired by foreign war is, upon this account, 
almost always more pure and more splendid than that which can be 
acquired in civil faction. 
    The leader of the successful party, however, if he has 
authority enough to prevail upon his own friends to act with 
proper temper and moderation (which he frequently has not), may 
sometimes render to his country a service much more essential and 
important than the greatest victories and the most extensive 
conquests. He may re-establish and improve the constitution, and 
from the very doubtful and ambiguous character of the leader of a 
party, he may assume the greatest and noblest of all characters, 
that of the reformer and legislator of a great state; and, by the 
wisdom of his institutions, secure the internal tranquillity and 
happiness of his fellow-citizens for many succeeding generations. 
    Amidst the turbulence and disorder of faction, a certain 
spirit of system is apt to mix itself with that public spirit 
which is founded upon the love of humanity, upon a real 
fellow-feeling with the inconveniencies and distresses to which 
some of our fellow-citizens may be exposed. This spirit of system 
commonly takes the direction of that more gentle public spirit; 
always animates it, and often inflames it even to the madness of 
fanaticism. The leaders of the discontented party seldom fail to 
hold out some plausible plan of reformation which, they pretend, 
will not only remove the inconveniencies and relieve the 
distresses immediately complained of, but will prevent, in all 
time coming, any return of the like inconveniencies and 
distresses. They often propose, upon this account, to new-model 
the constitution, and to alter, in some of its most essential 
parts, that system of government under which the subjects of a 
great empire have enjoyed, perhaps, peace, security, and even 
glory, during the course of several centuries together. The great 
body of the party are commonly intoxicated with the imaginary 
beauty of this ideal system, of which they have no experience, 
but which has been represented to them in all the most dazzling 
colours in which the eloquence of their leaders could paint it. 
Those leaders themselves, though they originally may have meant 
nothing but their own aggrandisement, become many of them in time 
the dupes of their own sophistry, and are as eager for this great 
reformation as the weakest and foolishest of their followers. 
Even though the leaders should have preserved their own heads, as 
indeed they commonly do, free from this fanaticism, yet they dare 
not always disappoint the expectation of their followers; but are 
often obliged, though contrary to their principle and their 
conscience, to act as if they were under the common delusion. The 
violence of the party, refusing all palliatives, all 
temperaments, all reasonable accommodations, by requiring too 
much frequently obtains nothing; and those inconveniencies and 
distresses which, with a little moderation, might in a great 
measure have been removed and relieved, are left altogether 
without the hope of a remedy. 
    The man whose public spirit is prompted altogether by 
humanity and benevolence, will respect the established powers and 
privileges eVen of individuals, and still more those of the great 
orders and societies, into which the state is divided. Though he 
should consider some of them as in some measure abusive, he will 
content himself with moderating, what he often cannot annihilate 
without great violence. When he cannot conquer the rooted 
prejudices of the people by reason and persuasion, he will not 
attempt to subdue them by force; but will religiously observe 
what, by Cicero, is justly called the divine maxim of Plato, 
never to use violence to his country no more than to his parents. 
He will accommodate, as well as he can, his public arrangements 
to the confirmed habits and prejudices of the people; and will 
remedy as well as he can, the inconveniencies which may flow from 
the want of those regulations which the people are averse to 
submit to. When he cannot establish the right, he will not 
disdain to ameliorate the wrong; but like Solon, when he cannot 
establish the best system of laws, he will endeavour to establish 
the best that the people can bear. 
    The man of system, on the contrary, is apt to be very wise in 
his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed 
beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer 
the smallest deviation from any part of it. He goes on to 
establish it completely and in all its parts, without any regard 
either to the great interests, or to the strong prejudices which 
may oppose it. He seems to imagine that he can arrange the 
different members of a great society with as much ease as the 
hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does 
not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other 
principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon 
them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every 
single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether 
different from that which the legislature might chuse to impress 
upon it. If those two principles coincide and act in the same 
direction, the game of human society will go on easily and 
harmoniously, and is very likely to be happy and successful. If 
they are opposite or different, the game will go on miserably, 
and the society must be at all times in the highest degree of 
disorder. 
    Some general, and even systematical, idea of the perfection 
of policy and law, may no doubt be necessary for directing the 
views of the statesman. But to insist upon establishing, and upon 
establishing all at once, and in spite of all opposition, every 
thing which that idea may seem to require, must often be the 
highest degree of arrogance. It is to erect his own judgment into 
the supreme standard of right and wrong. It is to fancy himself 
the only wise and worthy man in the commonwealth, and that his 
fellow-citizens should accommodate themselves to him and not he 
to them. It is upon this account, that of all political 
speculators, sovereign princes are by far the most dangerous. 
This arrogance is perfectly familiar to them. They entertain no 
doubt of the immense superiority of their own judgment. When such 
imperial and royal reformers, therefore, condescend to 
contemplate the constitution of the country which is committed to 
their government, they seldom see any thing so wrong in it as the 
obstructions which it may sometimes oppose to the execution of 
their own will. They hold in contempt the divine maxim of Plato, 
and consider the state as made for themselves, not themselves for 
the state. The great object of their reformation, therefore, is 
to remove those obstructions; to reduce the authority of the 
nobility; to take away the privileges of cities and provinces, 
and to render both the greatest individuals and the greatest 
orders of the state, as incapable of opposing their commands, as 
the weakest and most insignificant. 
Chap. III 
Of universal Benevolence 
    Though our effectual good offices can very seldom be extended 
to any wider society than that of our own country; our good-will 
is circumscribed by no boundary, but may embrace the immensity of 
the universe. We cannot form the idea of any innocent and 
sensible being, whose happiness we should not desire, or to whose 
misery, when distinctly brought home to the imagination, we 
should not have some degree of aversion. The idea of a 
mischievous, though sensible, being, indeed, naturally provokes 
our hatred: but the ill-will which, in this case, we bear to it, 
is really the effect of our universal benevolence. It is the 
effect of the sympathy which we feel with the misery and 
resentment of those other innocent and sensible beings, whose 
happiness is disturbed by its malice. 
    This universal benevolence, how noble and generous soever, 
can be the source of no solid happiness to any man who is not 
thoroughly convinced that all the inhabitants of the universe, 
the meanest as well as the greatest, are under the immediate care 
and protection of that great, benevolent, and all-wise Being, who 
directs all the movements of nature; and who is determined, by 
his own unalterable perfections, to maintain in it, at all times, 
the greatest possible quantity of happiness. To this universal 
benevolence, on the contrary, the very suspicion of a fatherless 
world, must be the most melancholy of all reflections; from the 
thought that all the unknown regions of infinite and 
incomprehensible space may be filled with nothing but endless 
misery and wretchedness. All the splendour of the highest 
prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful 
an idea must necessarily over-shadow the imagination; nor, in a 
wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most afflicting 
adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily springs from the 
habitual and thorough conviction of the truth of the contrary 
system. 
    The wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his 
own private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest 
of his own particular order or society. He is at all times 
willing, too, that the interest of this order or society should 
be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state or 
sovereignty, of which it is only a subordinate part. He should, 
therefore, be equally willing that all those inferior interests 
should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the universe, to 
the interest of that great society of all sensible and 
intelligent beings, of which God himself is the immediate 
administrator and director. If he is deeply impressed with the 
habitual and thorough conviction that this benevolent and 
all-wise Being can admit into the system of his government, no 
partial evil which is not necessary for the universal good, he 
must consider all the misfortunes which may befal himself, his 
friends, his society, or his country, as necessary for the 
prosperity of the universe, and therefore as what he ought, not 
only to submit to with resignation, but as what he himself, if he 
had known all the connexions and dependencies of things, ought 
sincerely and devoutly to have wished for. 
    Nor does this magnanimous resignation to the will of the 
great Director of the universe, seem in any respect beyond the 
reach of human nature. Good soldiers, who both love and trust 
their general, frequently march with more gaiety and alacrity to 
the forlorn station, from which they never expect to return, than 
they would to one where there was neither difficulty nor danger. 
In marching to the latter, they could feel no other sentiment 
than that of the dulness of ordinary duty: in marching to the 
former, they feel that they are making the noblest exertion which 
it is possible for man to make. They know that their general 
would not have ordered them upon this station, had it not been 
necessary for the safety of the army, for the success of the war. 
They cheerfully sacrifice their own little systems to the 
prosperity of a greater system. They take an affectionate leave 
of their comrades, to whom they wish all happiness and success; 
and march out, not only with submissive obedience, but often with 
shouts of the most joyful exultation, to that fatal, but splendid 
and honourable station to which they are appointed. No conductor 
of an army can deserve more unlimited trust, more ardent and 
zealous affection, than the great Conductor of the universe. In 
the greatest public as well as private disasters, a wise man 
ought to consider that he himself, his friends and countrymen, 
have only been ordered upon the forlorn station of the universe; 
that had it not been necessary for the good of the whole, they 
would not have been so ordered; and that it is their duty, not 
only with humble resignation to submit to this allotment, but to 
endeavour to embrace it with alacrity and joy. A wise man should 
surely be capable of doing what a good soldier holds himself at 
all times in readiness to do. 
    The idea of that divine Being, whose benevolence and wisdom 
have, from all eternity, contrived and conducted the immense 
machine of the universe, so as at all times to produce the 
greatest possible quantity of happiness, is certainly of all the 
objects of human contemplation by far the most sublime. Every 
other thought necessarily appears mean in the comparison. The man 
whom we believe to be principally occupied in this sublime 
contemplation, seldom fails to be the object of our highest 
veneration; and though his life should be altogether 
contemplative, we often regard him with a sort of religious 
respect much superior to that with which we look upon the most 
active and useful servant of the commonwealth. The Meditations of 
Marcus Antoninus, which turn principally upon this subject, have 
contributed more, perhaps, to the general admiration of his 
character, than all the different transactions of his just, 
merciful, and beneficent reign. 
    The administration of the great system of the universe, 
however, the care of the universal happiness of all rational and 
sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is 
allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to 
the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his 
comprehension; the care of his own happiness, of that of his 
family, his friends, his country: that he is occupied in 
contemplating the more sublime, can never be an excuse for his 
neglecting the more humble department; and he must not expose 
himself to the charge which Avidius Cassius is said to have 
brought, perhaps unjustly, against Marcus Antoninus; that while 
he employed himself in philosophical speculations, and 
contemplated the prosperity of the universe, he neglected that of 
the Roman empire. The most sublime speculation of the 
contemplative philosopher can scarce compensate the neglect of 
the smallest active duty. 
Section III 
Of Self-command 
    The man who acts according to the rules of perfect prudence, 
of strict justice, and of proper benevolence, may be said to be 
perfectly virtuous. But the most perfect knowledge of those rules 
will not alone enable him to act in this manner: his own passions 
are very apt to mislead him; sometimes to drive him and sometimes 
to seduce him to violate all the rules which he himself, in all 
his sober and cool hours, approves of. The most perfect 
knowledge, if it is not supported by the most perfect 
self-command, will not always enable him to do his duty. 
    Some of the best of the ancient moralists seem to have 
considered those passions as divided into two different classes: 
first, into those which it requires a considerable exertion of 
self-command to restrain even for a single moment; and secondly, 
into those which it is easy to restrain for a single moment, or 
even for a short period of time; but which, by their continual 
and almost incessant solicitations, are, in the course of a life, 
very apt to mislead into great deviations. 
    Fear and anger, together with some other passions which are 
mixed or connected with them, constitute the first class. The 
love of ease, of pleasure, of applause, and of many other selfish 
gratifications, constitute the second. Extravagant fear and 
furious anger, it is often difficult to restrain even for a 
single moment. The love of ease, of pleasure, of applause, and 
other selfish gratifications, it is always easy to restrain for a 
single moment, or even for a short period of time; but, by their 
continual solicitations, they often mislead us into many 
weaknesses which we have afterwards much reason to be ashamed of. 
The former set of passions may often be said to drive, the 
latter, to seduce us from our duty. The command of the former 
was, by the ancient moralists above alluded to, denominated 
fortitude, manhood, and strength of mind; that of the latter, 
temperance, decency, modesty, and moderation. 
    The command of each of those two sets of passions, 
independent of the beauty which it derives from its utility; from 
its enabling us upon all occasions to act according to the 
dictates of prudence, of justice, and of proper benevolence; has 
a beauty of its own, and seems to deserve for its own sake a 
certain degree of esteem and admiration. In the one case, the 
strength and greatness of the exertion excites some degree of 
that esteem and admiration. In the other, the uniformity, the 
equality and unremitting steadiness of that exertion. 
    The man who, in danger, in torture, upon the approach of 
death, preserves his tranquillity unaltered, and suffers no word, 
no gesture to escape him which does not perfectly accord with the 
feelings of the most indifferent spectator, necessarily commands 
a very high degree of admiration. If he suffers in the cause of 
liberty and justice, for the sake of humanity and the love of his 
country, the most tender compassion for his sufferings, the 
strongest indignation against the injustice of his persecutors, 
the warmest sympathetic gratitude for his beneficent intentions, 
the highest sense of his merit, all join and mix themselves with 
the admiration of his magnanimity, and often inflame that 
sentiment into the most enthusiastic and rapturous veneration. 
The heroes of ancient and modern history, who are remembered with 
the most peculiar favour and affection, are, many of them, those 
who, in the cause of truth, liberty, and justice, have perished 
upon the scaffold, and who behaved there with that ease and 
dignity which became them. Had the enemies of Socrates suffered 
him to die quietly in his bed, the glory even of that great 
philosopher might possibly never have acquired that dazzling 
splendour in which it has been beheld in all succeeding ages. In 
the english history, when we look over the illustrious heads 
which have been engraven by Vertue and Howbraken, there is scarce 
any body, I imagine, who does not feel that the axe, the emblem 
of having been beheaded, which is engraved under some of the most 
illustrious of them. under those of the Sir Thomas Mores, of the 
Rhaleighs, the Russels, the Sydneys, etc. sheds a real dignity 
and interestingness over the characters to which it is affixed, 
much superior to what they can derive from all the futile 
ornaments of heraldry, with which they are sometimes accompanied. 
    Nor does this magnanimity give lustre only to the characters 
of innocent and virtuous men. It draws some degree of favourable 
regard even upon those of the greatest criminals; and when a 
robber or highwayman is brought to the scaffold, and behaves 
there with decency and firmness, though we perfectly approve of 
his punishment, we often cannot help regretting that a man who 
possessed such great and noble powers should have been capable of 
such mean enormities. 
    War is the great school both for acquiring and exercising 
this species of magnanimity. Death, as we say, is the king of 
terrors; and the man who has conquered the fear of death, is not 
likely to lose his presence of mind at the approach of any other 
natural evil. In war, men become Familiar with death, and are 
thereby necessarily cured of that superstitious horror with which 
it is viewed by the weak and unexperienced. They consider it 
merely as the loss of life, and as no further the object of 
aversion than as life may happen to be that of desire. They learn 
from experience, too, that many seemingly great dangers are not 
so great as they appear; and that, with courage, activity, and 
presence of mind, there is often a good probability of 
extricating themselves with honour from situations where at first 
they could see no hope. The dread of death is thus greatly 
diminished; and the confidence or hope of escaping it, augmented. 
They learn to expose themselves to danger with less reluctance. 
They are less anxious to get out of it, and less apt to lose 
their presence of mind while they are in it. It is this habitual 
contempt of danger and death which ennobles the profession of a 
soldier, and bestows upon it, in the natural apprehensions of 
mankind, a rank and dignity superior to that of any other 
profession. The skilful and successful exercise of this 
profession, in the service of their country, seems to have 
constituted the most distinguishing feature in the character of 
the favourite heroes of all ages. 
    Great warlike exploit, though undertaken contrary to every 
principle of justice, and carried on without any regard to 
humanity, sometimes interests us, and commands even some degree 
of a certain sort of esteem for the very worthless characters 
which conduct it. We are interested even in the exploits of the 
Buccaneers; and read with some sort of esteem and admiration, the 
history of the most worthless men, who, in pursuit of the most 
criminal purposes, endured greater hardships, surmounted greater 
difficulties, and encountered greater dangers, than, perhaps, any 
which the ordinary course of history gives an account of. 
    The command of anger appears upon many occasions not less 
generous and noble than that of fear. The proper expression of 
just indignation composes many of the most splendid and admired 
passages both of ancient and modern eloquence. The Philippics of 
Demosthenes, the Catalinarians of Cicero, derive their whole 
beauty from the noble propriety with which this passion is 
expressed. But this just indignation is nothing but anger 
restrained and properly attempered to what the impartial 
spectator can enter into. The blustering and noisy passion which 
goes beyond this, is always odious and offensive, and interests 
us, not for the angry man, but for the man with whom he is angry. 
The nobleness of pardoning appears, upon many occasions, superior 
even to the most perfect propriety of resenting. When either 
proper acknowledgments have been made by the offending party; or, 
even without any such acknowledgments, when the public interest 
requires that the most mortal enemies should unite for the 
discharge of some important duty, the man who can cast away all 
animosity, and act with confidence and cordiality towards the 
person who had most grievously offended him, seems justly to 
merit our highest admiration. 
    The command of anger, however, does not always appear in such 
splendid colours. Fear is contrary to anger, and is often the 
motive which restrains it; and in such cases the meanness of the 
motive takes away all the nobleness of the restraint. Anger 
prompts to attack, and the indulgence of it seems sometimes to 
shew a sort of courage and superiority to fear. The indulgence of 
anger is sometimes an object of vanity. That of fear never is. 
Vain and weak men, among their inferiors, or those who dare not 
resist them, often affect to be ostentatiously passionate, and 
fancy that they show, what is called, spirit in being so. A bully 
tells many stories of his own insolence, which are not true, and 
imagines that he thereby renders himself, if not more amiable and 
respectable, at least more formidable to his audience. Modern 
manners, which, by favouring the practice of duelling, may be 
said, in some cases, to encourage private revenge, contribute, 
perhaps, a good deal to render, in modern times, the restraint of 
anger by fear still more contemptible than it might otherwise 
appear to be. There is always something dignified in the command 
of fear, whatever may be the motive upon which it is founded. It 
is not so with the command of anger. Unless it is founded 
altogether in the sense of decency, of dignity, and propriety, it 
never is perfectly agreeable. 
    To act according to the dictates of prudence, of justice, and 
proper beneficence, seems to have no great merit where there is 
no temptation to do otherwise. But to act with cool deliberation 
in the midst of the greatest dangers and difficulties; to observe 
religiously the sacred rules of justice in spite both of the 
greatest interests which might tempt, and the greatest injuries 
which might provoke us to violate them; never to suffer the 
benevolence of our temper to be damped or discouraged by the 
malignity and ingratitude of the individuals towards whom it may 
have been exercised; is the character of the most exalted wisdom 
and virtue. Self-command is not only itself a great virtue, but 
from it all the other virtues seem to derive their principal 
lustre. 
    The command of fear, the command of anger, are always great 
and noble powers. When they are directed by justice and 
benevolence, they are not only great virtues, but increase the 
splendour of those other virtues. They may, however, sometimes be 
directed by very different motives; and in this case, though 
still great and respectable, they may be excessively dangerous. 
The most intrepid valour may be employed in the cause of the 
greatest injustice. Amidst great provocations, apparent 
tranquillity and good humour may sometimes conceal the most 
determined and cruel resolution to revenge. The strength of mind 
requisite for such dissimulation, though always and necessarily 
contaminated by the baseness of falsehood, has, however, been 
often much admired by many people of no contemptible judgment. 
The dissimulation of Catharine of Medicis is often celebrated by 
the profound historian Davila; that of Lord Digby, afterwards 
Earl of Bristol, by the grave and conscientious Lord Clarendon; 
that of the first Ashley Earl of Shaftesbury, by the judicious Mr 
Locke. Even Cicero seems to consider this deceitful character, 
not indeed as of the highest dignity, but as not unsuitable to a 
certain flexibility of manners, which, he thinks, may, 
notwithstanding, be, upon the whole, both agreeable and 
respectable. He exemplifies it by the characters of Homer's 
Ulysses, of the Athenian Themistocles, of the Spartan Lysander, 
and of the Roman Marcus Crassus. This character of dark and deep 
dissimulation occurs most commonly in times of great public 
disorder; amidst the violence of faction and civil war. When law 
has become in a great measure impotent, when the most perfect 
innocence cannot alone insure safety, regard to self-defence 
obliges the greater part of men to have recourse to dexterity, to 
address, and to apparent accommodation to whatever happens to be, 
at the moment, the prevailing party. This false character, too, 
is frequently accompanied with the coolest and most determined 
courage. The proper exercise of it supposes that courage, as 
death is commonly the certain consequence of detection. It may be 
employed indifferently, either to exasperate or to allay those 
furious animosities of adverse factions which impose the 
necessity of assuming it; and though it may sometimes be useful, 
it is at least equally liable to be excessively pernicious. 
    The command of the less violent and turbulent passions seems 
much less liable to be abused to any pernicious purpose. 
Temperance, decency, modesty, and moderation, are always amiable, 
and can seldom be directed to any bad end. It is from the 
unremitting steadiness of those gentler exertions of 
self-command, that the amiable virtue of chastity, that the 
respectable virtues of industry and frugality, derive all that 
sober lustre which attends them. The conduct of all those who are 
contented to walk in the humble paths of private and peaceable 
life, derives from the same principle the greater part of the 
beauty and grace which belong to it; a beauty and grace, which, 
though much less dazzling, is not always less pleasing than those 
which accompany the more splendid actions of the hero, the 
statesman, or the legislator. 
    After what has already been said, in several different parts 
of this discourse, concerning the nature of self-command, I judge 
it unnecessary to enter into any further detail concerning those 
virtues. I shall only observe at present, that the point of 
propriety, the degree of any passion which the impartial 
spectator approves of, is differently situated in different 
passions. In some passions the excess is less disagreeable than 
the defect; and in such passions the point of propriety seems to 
stand high, or nearer to the excess than to the defect. In other 
passions, the defect is less disagreeable than the excess; and in 
such passions the point of propriety seems to stand low, or 
nearer to the defect than to the excess. The former are the 
passions which the spectator is most, the latter, those which he 
is least disposed to sympathize with. The former, too, are the 
passions of which the immediate feeling or sensation is agreeable 
to the person principally concerned; the latter, those of which 
it is disagreeable. It may be laid down as a general rule, that 
the passions which the spectator is most disposed to sympathize 
with, and in which, upon that account, the point of propriety may 
be said to stand high, are those of which the immediate feeling 
or sensation is more or less agreeable to the person principally 
concerned: and that, on the contrary, the passions which the 
spectator is least disposed to sympathize with, and in which, 
upon that account, the point of propriety may be said to stand 
low, are those of which the immediate feeling or sensation is 
more or less disagreeable, or even painful, to the person 
principally concerned. This general rule, so far as I have been 
able to observe, admits not of a single exception. A few examples 
will at once, both sufficiently explain it and demonstrate the 
truth of it. 
    The disposition to the affections which tend to unite men in 
society, to humanity, kindness, natural affection, friendship, 
esteem, may sometimes be excessive. Even the excess of this 
disposition, however, renders a man interesting to every body. 
Though we blame it, we still regard it with compassion, and even 
with kindness, and never with dislike. We are more sorry for it 
than angry at it. To the person himself, the indulgence even of 
such excessive affections is, upon many occasions, not only 
agreeable, but delicious. Upon some occasions, indeed, especially 
when directed, as is too often the case, towards unworthy 
objects, it exposes him to much real and heartfelt distress. Even 
upon such occasions, however, a well-disposed mind regards him 
with the most exquisite pity, and feels the highest indignation 
against those who affect to despise him for his weakness and 
imprudence. The defect of this disposition, on the contrary, what 
is called hardness of heart, while it renders a man insensible to 
the feelings and distresses of other people, renders other people 
equally insensible to his; and, by excluding him from the 
friendship of all the world, excludes him from the best and most 
comfortable of all social enjoyments. 
    The disposition to the affections which drive men from one 
another, and which tend, as it were, to break the bands of human 
society; the disposition to anger, hatred, envy, malice, revenge; 
is, on the contrary, much more apt to offend by its excess than 
by its defect. The excess renders a man wretched and miserable in 
his own mind, and the object of hatred, and sometimes even of 
horror, to other people. The defect is very seldom complained of. 
It may, however, be defective. The want of proper indignation is 
a most essential defect in the manly character, and, upon many 
occasions, renders a man incapable of protecting either himself 
or his friends from insult and injustice. Even that principle, in 
the excess and improper direction of which consists the odious 
and detestable passion of envy, may be defective. Envy is that 
passion which views with malignant dislike the superiority of 
those who are really entitled to all the superiority they 
possess. The man, however, who, in matters of consequence, tamely 
suffers other people, who are entitled to no such superiority, to 
rise above him or get before him, is justly condemned as 
mean-spirited. This weakness is commonly founded in indolence, 
sometimes in good nature, in an aversion to opposition, to bustle 
and solicitation, and sometimes, too, in a sort of ill-judged 
magnanimity, which fancies that it can always continue to despise 
the advantage which it then despises, and, therefore, so easily 
gives up. Such weakness, however, is commonly followed by much 
regret and repentance; and what had some appearance of 
magnanimity in the beginning frequently gives place to a most 
malignant envy in the end, and to a hatred of that superiority, 
which those who have once attained it, may often become really 
entitled to, by the very circumstance of having attained it. In 
order to live comfortably in the world, it is, upon all 
occasions, as necessary to defend our dignity and rank, as it is 
to defend our life or our fortune. 
    Our sensibility to personal danger and distress, like that to 
personal provocation, is much more apt to offend by its excess 
than by its defect. No character is more contemptible than that 
of a coward; no character is more admired than that of the man 
who faces death with intrepidity, and maintains his tranquillity 
and presence of mind amidst the most dreadful dangers. We esteem 
the man who supports pain and even torture with manhood and 
firmness; and we can have little regard for him who sinks under 
them, and abandons himself to useless outcries and womanish 
lamentations. A fretful temper, which feels, with too much 
sensibility, every little cross accident, renders a man miserable 
in himself and offensive to other people. A calm one, which does 
not allow its tranquillity to be disturbed, either by the small 
injuries, or by the little disasters incident to the usual course 
of human affairs; but which, amidst the natural and moral evils 
infesting the world, lays its account and is contented to suffer 
a little from both, is a blessing to the man himself, and gives 
ease and security to all his companions. 
    Our sensibility, however, both to our own injuries and to our 
own misfortunes, though generally too strong, may likewise be too 
weak. The man who feels little for his own misfortunes must 
always feel less for those of other people, and be less disposed 
to relieve them. The man who has little resentment for the 
injuries which are done to himself, must always have less for 
those which are done to other people, and be less disposed either 
to protect or to avenge them. A stupid insensibility to the 
events of human life necessarily extinguishes all that keen and 
earnest attention to the propriety of our own conduct, which 
constitutes the real essence of virtue. We can feel little 
anxiety about the propriety of our own actions, when we are 
indifferent about the events which may result from them. The man 
who feels the full distress of the calamity which has befallen 
him, who feels the whole baseness of the injustice which has been 
done to him, but who feels still more strongly what the dignity 
of his own character requires; who does not abandon himself to 
the guidance of the undisciplined passions which his situation 
might naturally inspire; but who governs his whole behaviour and 
conduct according to those restrained and corrected emotions 
which the great inmate, the great demi-god within the breast 
prescribes and approves of; is alone the real man of virtue, the 
only real and proper object of love, respect, and admiration. 
Insensibility and that noble firmness, that exalted self-command, 
which is founded in the sense of dignity and propriety, are so 
far from being altogether the same, that in proportion as the 
former takes place, the merit of the latter is, in many cases, 
entirely taken away. 
    But though the total want of sensibility to personal injury, 
to personal danger and distress, would, in such situations, take 
away the whole merit of self-command, that sensibility, however, 
may very easily be too exquisite, and it frequently is so. When 
the sense of propriety, when the authority of the judge within 
the breast, can control this extreme sensibility, that authority 
must no doubt appear very noble and very great. But the exertion 
of it may be too fatiguing; it may have too much to do. The 
individual, by a great effort, may behave perfectly well. But the 
contest between the two principles, the warfare within the 
breast, may be too violent to be at all consistent with internal 
tranquillity and happiness. The wise man whom Nature has endowed 
with this too exquisite sensibility, and whose too lively 
feelings have not been sufficiently blunted and hardened by early 
education and proper exercise, will avoid, as much as duty and 
propriety will permit, the situations for which he is not 
perfectly fitted. The man whose feeble and delicate constitution 
renders him too sensible to pain, to hardship, and to every sort 
of bodily distress, should not wantonly embrace the profession of 
a soldier. The man of too much sensibility to injury, should not 
rashly engage in the contests of faction. Though the sense of 
propriety should be strong enough to command all those 
sensibilities, the composure of the mind must always be disturbed 
in the struggle. In this disorder the judgment cannot always 
maintain its ordinary acuteness and precision; and though he may 
always mean to act properly, he may often act rashly and 
imprudently, and in a manner which he himself will, in the 
succeeding part of his life, be for ever ashamed of. A certain 
intrepidity, a certain firmness of nerves and hardiness of 
constitution, whether natural or acquired, are undoubtedly the 
best preparatives for all the great exertions of self-command. 
    Though war and faction are certainly the best schools for 
forming every man to this hardiness and firmness of temper, 
though they are the best remedies for curing him of the opposite 
weaknesses, yet, if the day of trial should happen to come before 
he has completely learned his lesson, before the remedy has had 
time to produce its proper effect, the consequences might not be 
agreeable. 
    Our sensibility to the pleasures, to the amusements and 
enjoyments of human life, may offend, in the same manner, either 
by its excess or by its defect. Of the two, however, the excess 
seems less disagreeable than the defect. Both to the spectator 
and to the person principally concerned, a strong propensity to 
joy is certainly more pleasing than a dull insensibility to the 
objects of amusement and diversion. We are charmed with the 
gaiety of youth, and even with the playfulness of childhood: but 
we soon grow weary of the flat and tasteless gravity which too 
frequently accompanies old age. When this propensity, indeed, is 
not restrained by the sense of propriety, when it is unsuitable 
to the time or to the place, to the age or to the situation of 
the person, when, to indulge it, he neglects either his interest 
or his duty; it is justly blamed as excessive, and as hurtful 
both to the individual and to the society. In the greater part of 
such cases, however, what is chiefly to be found fault with is, 
not so much the strength of the propensity to joy, as the 
weakness of the sense of propriety and duty. A young man who has 
no relish for the diversions and amusements that are natural and 
suitable to his age, who talks of nothing but his book or his 
business, is disliked as formal and pedantic; and we give him no 
credit for his abstinence even from improper indulgences, to 
which he seems to have so little inclination. 
    The principle of self-estimation may be too high, and it may 
likewise be too low. It is so very agreeable to think highly, and 
so very disagreeable to think meanly of ourselves, that, to the 
person himself, it cannot well be doubted, but that some degree 
of excess must be much less disagreeable than any degree of 
defect. But to the impartial spectator, it may perhaps be 
thought, things must appear quite differently, and that to him, 
the defect must always be less disagreeable than the excess. And 
in our companions, no doubt, we much more frequently complain of 
the latter than of the former. When they assume upon us, or set 
themselves before us, their self-estimation mortifies our own. 
Our own pride and vanity prompt us to accuse them of pride and 
vanity, and we cease to be the impartial spectators of their 
conduct. When the same companions, however, suffer any other man 
to assume over them a superiority which does not belong to him, 
we not only blame them, but often despise them as mean-spirited. 
When, on the contrary, among other people, they push themselves a 
little more forward, and scramble to an elevation 
disproportioned, as we think, to their merit, though we may not 
perfectly approve of their conduct, we are often, upon the whole, 
diverted with it; and, where there is no envy in the case, we are 
almost always much less displeased with them, than we should have 
been, had they suffered themselves to sink below their proper 
station. 
    In estimating our own merit, in judging of our own character 
and conduct, there are two different standards to which we 
naturally compare them. The one is the idea of exact propriety 
and perfection, so far as we are each of us capable of 
comprehending that idea. The other is that degree of 
approximation to this idea which is commonly attained in the 
world, and which the greater part of our friends and companions, 
of our rivals and competitors, may have actually arrived at. We 
very seldom (I am disposed to think, we never) attempt to judge 
of ourselves without giving more or less attention to both these 
different standards. But the attention of different men, and even 
of the same man at different times, is often very unequally 
divided between them; and is sometimes principally directed 
towards the one, and sometimes towards the other. 
    So far as our attention is directed towards the first 
standard, the wisest and best of us all, can, in his own 
character and conduct, see nothing but weakness and imperfection; 
can discover no ground for arrogance and presumption, but a great 
deal for humility, regret and repentance. So far as our attention 
is directed towards the second, we may be affected either in the 
one way or in the other, and feel ourselves, either really above, 
or really below, the standard to which we compare ourselves. 
    The wise and virtuous man directs his principal attention to 
the first standard; the idea of exact propriety and perfection. 
There exists in the mind of every man, an idea of this kind, 
gradually formed from his observations upon the character and 
conduct both of himself and of other people. It is the slow, 
gradual, and progressive work of the great demigod within the 
breast, the great judge and arbiter of conduct. This idea is in 
every man more or less accurately drawn, its colouring is more or 
less just, its outlines are more or less exactly designed, 
according to the delicacy and acuteness of that sensibility, with 
which those observations were made, and according to the care and 
attention employed in making them. In the wise and virtuous man 
they have been made with the most acute and delicate sensibility, 
and the utmost care and attention have been employed in making 
them. Every day some feature is improved; every day some blemish 
is corrected. He has studied this idea more than other people, he 
comprehends it more distinctly, he has formed a much more correct 
image of it, and is much more deeply enamoured of its exquisite 
and divine beauty. He endeavours as well as he can, to assimilate 
his own character to this archetype of perfection. But he 
imitates the work of a divine artist, which can never be 
equalled. He feels the imperfect success of all his best 
endeavours, and sees, with grief and affliction, in how many 
different features the mortal copy falls short of the immortal 
original. He remembers, with concern and humilation, how often, 
from want of attention, from want of judgment, from want of 
temper, he has, both in words and actions, both in conduct and 
conversation, violated the exact rules of perfect propriety; and 
has so far departed from that model, according to which he wished 
to fashion his own character and conduct. When he directs his 
attention towards the second standard, indeed, that degree of 
excellence which his friends and acquaintances have commonly 
arrived at, he may be sensible of his own superiority. But, as 
his principal attention is always directed towards the first 
standard, he is necessarily much more humbled by the one 
comparison, than he ever can be elevated by the other. He is 
never so elated as to look down with insolence even upon those 
who are really below him. He feels so well his own imperfection, 
he knows so well the difficulty with which he attained his own 
distant approximation to rectitude, that he cannot regard with 
contempt the still greater imperfection of other people. Far from 
insulting over their inferiority, he views it with the most 
indulgent commiseration, and, by his advice as well as example, 
is at all times willing to promote their further advancement. If, 
in any particular qualification, they happen to be superior to 
him (for who is so perfect as not to have many superiors in many 
different qualifications?), far from envying their superiority, 
he, who knows how difficult it is to excel, esteems and honours 
their excellence, and never fails to bestow upon it the full 
measure of applause which it deserves. His whole mind, in short, 
is deeply impressed, his whole behaviour and deportment are 
distinctly stamped with the character of real modesty; with that 
of a very moderate estimation of his own merit, and, at the same 
time, of a full sense of the merit of other people. 
    In all the liberal and ingenious arts, in painting, in 
poetry, in music, in eloquence, in philosophy, the great artist 
feels always the real imperfection of his own best works, and is 
more sensible than any man how much they fall short of that ideal 
perfection of which he has formed some conception, which he 
imitates as well as he can, but which he despairs of ever 
equalling. It is the inferior artist only, who is ever perfectly 
satisfied with his own performances. He has little conception of 
this ideal perfection, about which he has little employed his 
thoughts; and it is chiefly to the works of other artists, of, 
perhaps, a still lower order, that he deigns to compare his own 
works. Boileau, the great French poet (in some of his works, 
perhaps not inferior to the greatest poet of the same kind, 
either ancient or modern), used to say, that no great man was 
ever completely satisfied with his own works. His acquaintance 
Santeuil (a writer of Latin verses, and who, on account of that 
schoolboy accomplishment, had the weakness to fancy himself a 
poet), assured him, that he himself was always completely 
satisfied with his own. Boileau replied, with, perhaps, an arch 
ambiguity, that he certainly was the only great man that ever was 
so. Boileau, in judging of his own works, compared them with the 
standard of ideal perfection, which, in his own particular branch 
of the poetic art, he had, I presume, meditated as deeply, and 
conceived as distinctly, as it is possible for man to conceive 
it. Santeuil, in judging of his own works, compared them, I 
suppose, chiefly to those of the other Latin poets of his own 
time, to the greater part of whom he was certainly very far from 
being inferior. But to support and finish off, if I may say so, 
the conduct and conversation of a whole life to some resemblance 
of this ideal perfection, is surely much more difficult than to 
work up to an equal resemblance any of the productions of any of 
the ingenious arts. The artist sits down to his work undisturbed, 
at leisure, in the full possession and recollection of all his 
skill, experience, and knowledge. The wise man must support the 
propriety of his own conduct in health and in sickness, in 
success and in disappointment, in the hour of fatigue and drowsy 
indolence, as well as in that of the most awakened attention. The 
most sudden and unexpected assaults of difficulty and distress 
must never surprise him. The injustice of other people must never 
provoke him to injustice. The violence of faction must never 
confound him. All the hardships and hazards of war must never 
either dishearten or appal him. 
    Of the persons who, in estimating their own merit, in judging 
of their own character and conduct, direct by far the greater 
part of their attention to the second standard, to that ordinary 
degree of excellence which is commonly attained by other people, 
there are some who really and justly feel themselves very much 
above it, and who, by every intelligent and impartial spectator, 
are acknowledged to be so. The attention of such persons, 
however, being always principally directed, not to the standard 
of ideal, but to that of ordinary perfection, they have little 
sense of their own weaknesses and imperfections; they have little 
modesty; are often assuming, arrogant, and presumptuous; great 
admirers of themselves, and great contemners of other people. 
Though their characters are in general much less correct, and 
their merit much inferior to that of the man of real and modest 
virtue; yet their excessive presumption, founded upon their own 
excessive self-admiration, dazzles the multitude, and often 
imposes even upon those who are much superior to the multitude. 
The frequent, and often wonderful, success of the most ignorant 
quacks and imposters, both civil and religious, sufficiently 
demonstrate how easily the multitude are imposed upon by the most 
extravagant and groundless pretensions. But when those 
pretensions are supported by a very high degree of real and solid 
merit, when they are displayed with all the splendour which 
ostentation can bestow upon them, when they are supported by high 
rank and great power, when they have often been successfully 
exerted, and are, upon that account, attended by the loud 
acclamations of the multitude; even the man of sober judgment 
often abandons himself to the general admiration. The very noise 
of those foolish acclamations often contributes to confound his 
understanding, and while he sees those great men only at a 
certain distance, he is often disposed to worship them with a 
sincere admiration, superior even to that with which they appear 
to worship themselves. When there is no envy in the case, we all 
take pleasure in admiring, and are, upon that account, naturally 
disposed, in our own fancies, to render complete and perfect in 
every respect the characters which, in many respects, are so very 
worthy of admiration. The excessive self-admiration of those 
great men is well understood, perhaps, and even seen through, 
with some degree of derision, by those wise men who are much in 
their familiarity, and who secretly smile at those lofty 
pretensions, which, by people at a distance, are often regarded 
with reverence, and almost with adoration. Such, however, have 
been, in all ages, the greater part of those men who have 
procured to themselves the most noisy fame, the most extensive 
reputation; a fame and reputation, too, which have often 
descended to the remotest posterity. 
    Great success in the world, great authority over the 
sentiments and opinions of mankind, have very seldom been 
acquired without some degree of this excessive self-admiration. 
The most splendid characters, the men who have performed the most 
illustrious actions, who have brought about the greatest 
revolutions, both in the situations and opinions of mankind; the 
most successful warriors, the greatest statesmen and legislators, 
the eloquent founders and leaders of the most numerous and most 
successful sects and parties; have many of them been, not more 
distinguished for their very great merit, than for a degree of 
presumption and self-admiration altogether disproportioned even 
to that very great merit. This presumption was, perhaps, 
necessary, not only to prompt them to undertakings which a more 
sober mind would never have thought of, but to command the 
submission and obedience of their followers to support them in 
such undertakings. When crowned with success, accordingly, this 
presumption has often betrayed them into a vanity that approached 
almost to insanity and folly. Alexander the Great appears, not 
only to have wished that other people should think him a God, but 
to have been at least very well disposed to fancy himself such. 
Upon his death-bed, the most ungodlike of all situations, he 
requested of his friends that, to the respectable list of 
Deities, into which himself had long before been inserted, his 
old mother Olympia might likewise have the honour of being added. 
Amidst the respectful admiration of his followers and disciples, 
amidst the universal applause of the public, after the oracle, 
which probably had followed the voice of that applause, had 
pronounced him the wisest of men, the great wisdom of Socrates, 
though it did not suffer him to fancy himself a God, yet was not 
great enough to hinder him from fancying that he had secret and 
frequent intimations from some invisible and divine Being. The 
sound head of Caesar was not so perfectly sound as to hinder him 
from being much pleased with his divine genealogy from the 
goddess Venus; and, before the temple of this pretended 
great-grandmother, to receive, without rising from his seat, the 
Roman Senate, when that illustrious body came to present him with 
some decrees conferring upon him the most extravagant honours. 
This insolence, joined to some other acts of an almost childish 
vanity, little to be expected from an understanding at once so 
very acute and comprehensive, seems, by exasperating the public 
jealousy, to have emboldened his assassins, and to have hastened 
the execution of their conspiracy. The religion and manners of 
modern times give our great men little encouragement to fancy 
themselves either Gods or even Prophets. Success, however, joined 
to great popular favour, has often so far turned the heads of the 
greatest of them, as to make them ascribe to themselves both an 
importance and an ability much beyond what they really possessed; 
and, by this presumption, to precipitate themselves into many 
rash and sometimes ruinous adventures. It is a characteristic 
almost peculiar to the great Duke of Marlborough, that ten years 
of such uninterrupted and such splendid success as scarce any 
other general could boast of, never betrayed him into a single 
rash action, scarce into a single rash word or expression. The 
same temperate coolness and self-command cannot, I think, be 
ascribed to any other great warrior of later times; not to Prince 
Eugene, not to the late King of Prussia, not to the great Prince 
of Conde, not even to Gustavus Adolphus. Turrenne seems to have 
approached the nearest to it; but several different transactions 
of his life sufficiently demonstrate that it was in him by no 
means so perfect as in the great Duke of Marlborough. 
    In the humble project of private life, as well as in the 
ambitious and proud pursuit of high stations, great abilities and 
successful enterprise, in the beginning, have frequently 
encouraged to undertakings which necessarily led to bankruptcy 
and ruin in the end. 
    The esteem and admiration which every impartial spectator 
conceives for the real merit of those spirited, magnanimous, and 
high-minded persons, as it is a just and well-founded sentiment, 
so it is a steady and permanent one, and altogether independent 
of their good or bad fortune. It is otherwise with that 
admiration which he is apt to conceive for their excessive 
self-estimation and presumption. While they are successful, 
indeed, he is often perfectly conquered and overborne by them. 
Success covers from his eyes, not only the great imprudence, but 
frequently the great injustice of their enterprises; and, far 
from blaming this defective part of their character, he often 
views it with the most enthusiastic admiration. When they are 
unfortunate, however, things change their colours and their 
names. What was before heroic magnanimity, resumes its proper 
appellation of extravagant rashness and folly; and the blackness 
of that avidity and injustice, which was before hid under the 
splendour of prosperity, comes full into view, and blots the 
whole lustre of their enterprise. Had Caesar, instead of gaining, 
lost the battle of Pharsalia, his character would, at this hour, 
have ranked a little above that of Catiline, and the weakest man 
would have viewed his enterprise against the laws of his country 
in blacker colours, than, perhaps, even Cato, with all the 
animosity of a party-man, ever viewed it at the time. His real 
merit, the justness of his taste, the simplicity and elegance of 
his writings, the propriety of his eloquence, his skill in war, 
his resources in distress, his cool and sedate judgment in 
danger, his faithful attachment to his friends, his unexampled 
generosity to his enemies, would all have been acknowledged; as 
the real merit of Catiline, who had many great qualities, is 
acknowledged at this day. But the insolence and injustice of his 
all-grasping ambition would have darkened and extinguished the 
glory of all that real merit. Fortune has in this, as well as in 
some other respects already mentioned, great influence over the 
moral sentiments of mankind, and, according as she is either 
favourable or adverse, can render the same character the object, 
either of general love and admiration, or of universal hatred and 
contempt. This great disorder in our moral sentiments is by no 
means, however, without its utility; and we may on this, as well 
as on many other occasions, admire the wisdom of God even in the 
weakness and folly of man. Our admiration of success is founded 
upon the same principle with our respect for wealth and 
greatness, and is equally necessary for establishing the 
distinction of ranks and the order of society. By this admiration 
of success we are taught to submit more easily to those 
superiors, whom the course of human affairs may assign to us; to 
regard with reverence, and sometimes even with a sort of 
respectful affection, that fortunate violence which we are no 
longer capable of resisting; not only the violence of such 
splendid characters as those of a Caesar or an Alexander, but 
often that of the most brutal and savage barbarians, of an 
Attila, a Gengis, or a Tamerlane. To all such mighty conquerors 
the great mob of mankind are naturally disposed to look up with a 
wondering, though, no doubt, with a very weak and foolish 
admiration. By this admiration, however, they are taught to 
acquiesce with less reluctance under that government which an 
irresistible force imposes upon them, and from which no 
reluctance could deliver them. 
    Though in prosperity, however, the man of excessive 
self-estimation may sometimes appear to have some advantage over 
the man of correct and modest virtue; though the applause of the 
multitude, and of those who see them both only at a distance, is 
often much louder in favour of the one than it ever is in favour 
of the other; yet, all things fairly computed, the real balance 
of advantage is, perhaps in all cases, greatly in favour of the 
latter and against the former. The man who neither ascribes to 
himself, nor wishes that other people should ascribe to him, any 
other merit besides that which really belongs to him, fears no 
humiliation, dreads no detection; but rests contented and secure 
upon the genuine truth and solidity of his own character. His 
admirers may neither be very numerous nor very loud in their 
applauses; but the wisest man who sees him the nearest and who 
knows him the best, admires him the most. To a real wise man the 
judicious and well-weighed approbation of a single wise man, 
gives more heartfelt satisfaction than all the noisy applauses of 
ten thousand ignorant though enthusiastic admirers. He may say 
with Parmenides, who, upon reading a philosophical discourse 
before a public assembly at Athens, and observing, that, except 
Plato, the whole company had left him, continued, 
notwithstanding, to read on, and said that Plato alone was 
audience sufficient for him. 
    It is otherwise with the man of excessive self-estimation. 
The wise men who see him the nearest, admire him the least. 
Amidst the intoxication of prosperity, their sober and just 
esteem falls so far short of the extravagance of his own 
self-admiration, that he regards it as mere malignity and envy. 
He suspects his best friends. Their company becomes offensive to 
him. He drives them from his presence, and often rewards their 
services, not only with ingratitude, but with cruelty and 
injustice. He abandons his confidence to flatterers and traitors, 
who pretend to idolize his vanity and presumption; and that 
character which in the beginning, though in some respects 
defective, was, upon the whole, both amiable and respectable, 
becomes contemptible and odious in the end. Amidst the 
intoxication of prosperity, Alexander killed Clytus, for having 
preferred the exploits of his father Philip to his own; put 
Calisthenes to death in torture, for having refused to adore him 
in the Persian manner; and murdered the great friend of his 
father, the venerable Parmenio, after having, upon the most 
groundless suspicions, sent first to the torture and afterwards 
to the scaffold the only remaining son of that old man, the rest 
having all before died in his own service. This was that Parmenio 
of whom Philip used to say, that the Athenians were very 
fortunate who could find ten generals every year, while he 
himself, in the whole course of his life, could never find one 
but Parmenio. It was upon the vigilance and attention of this 
Parmenio that he reposed at all times with confidence and 
security, and, in his hours of mirth and jollity, used to say, 
Let us drink, my friends, we may do it with safety, for Parmenio 
never drinks. It was this same Parmenio, with whose presence and 
counsel, it had been said, Alexander had gained all his 
victories; and without whose presence and counsel, he had never 
gained a single victory. The humble, admiring, and flattering 
friends, whom Alexander left in power and authority behind him, 
divided his empire among themselves, and after having thus robbed 
his family and kindred of their inheritance, put, one after 
another, every single surviving individual of them, whether male 
or female, to death. 
    We frequently, not only pardon, but thoroughly enter into and 
sympathize with the excessive self-estimation of those splendid 
characters in which we observe a great and distinguished 
superiority above the common level of mankind. We call them 
spirited, magnanimous, and high-minded; words which all involve 
in their meaning a considerable degree of praise and admiration. 
But we cannot enter into anD sympathize with the excessive 
self-estimation of those characters in which we can discern no 
such distinguished superiority. We are disgusted and revolted by 
it; and it is with some difficulty that we can either pardon or 
suffer it: We call it pride or vanity; two words, of which the 
latter always, and the former for the most part, involve in their 
meaning a considerable degree of blame. 
    Those two vices, however, though resembling, in some 
respects, as being both modifications of excessive 
self-estimation, are yet, in many respects, very different from 
one another. 
    The proud man is sincere, and, in the bottom of his heart, is 
convinced of his own superiority; though it may sometimes be 
difficult to guess upon what that conviction is founded. He 
wishes you to view him in no other light than that in which, when 
he places himself in your situation, he really views himself. He 
demands no more of you than, what he thinks, justice. If you 
appear not to respect him as he respects himself, he is more 
offended than mortified, and feels the same indignant resentment 
as if he had suffered a real injury. He does not even then, 
however, deign to explain the grounds of his own pretensions. He 
disdains to court your esteem. He affects even to despise it, and 
endeavours to maintain his assumed station, not so much by making 
you sensible of his superiority, as of your own meanness. He 
seems to wish, not so much to excite your esteem for himself as 
to mortify that for yourself. 
    The vain man is not sincere, and, in the bottom of his heart, 
is very seldom convinced of that superiority which he wishes you 
to ascribe to him. He wishes you to view him in much more 
splendid colours than those in which, when he places himself in 
your situation, and supposes you to know all that he knows, he 
can really view himself. When you appear to view him, therefore, 
in different colours, perhaps in his proper colours, he is much 
more mortified than offended. The grounds of his claim to that 
character which he wishes you to ascribe to him, he takes every 
opportunity of displaying, both by the most ostentatious and 
unnecessary exhibition of the good qualities and accomplishments 
which he possesses in some tolerable degree, and sometimes even 
by false pretensions to those which he either possesses in no 
degree, or in so very slender a degree that he may well enough be 
said to possess them in no degree. Far from despising your 
esteem, he courts it with the most anxious assiduity. Far from 
wishing to mortify your self-estimation, he is happy to cherish 
it, in hopes that in return you will cherish his own. He flatters 
in order to be flattered. He studies to please, and endeavours to 
bribe you into a good opinion of him by politeness and 
complaisance, and sometimes even by real and essential good 
offices, though often displayed, perhaps, with unnecessary 
ostentation. 
    The vain man sees the respect which is paid to rank and 
fortune, and wishes to usurp this respect, as well as that for 
talents and virtues. His dress, his equipage, his way of living, 
accordingly, all announce both a higher rank and a greater 
fortune than really belong to him; and in order to support this 
foolish imposition for a few years in the beginning of his life, 
he often reduces himself to poverty and distress long before the 
end of it. As long as he can continue his expence, however, his 
vanity is delighted with viewing himself, not in the light in 
which you would view him if you knew all that he knows; but in 
that in which, he imagines, he has, by his own address, induced 
you actually to view him. Of all the illusions of vanity this is, 
perhaps, the most common. Obscure strangers who visit foreign 
countries, or who, from a remote province, come to visit, for a 
short time, the capital of their own country, most frequently 
attempt to practise it. The folly of the attempt, though always 
very great and most unworthy of a man of sense, may not be 
altogether so great upon such as upon most other occasions. If 
their stay is short, they may escape any disgraceful detection; 
and, after indulging their vanity for a few months or a few 
years, they may return to their own homes, and repair, by future 
parsimony, the waste of their past profusion. 
    The proud man can very seldom be accused of this folly. His 
sense of his own dignity renders him careful to preserve his 
independency, and, when his fortune happens not to be large, 
though he wishes to be decent, he studies to be frugal and 
attentive in all his expences. The ostentatious expence of the 
vain man is highly offensive to him. It outshines, perhaps, his 
own. It provokes his indignation as an insolent assumption of a 
rank which is by no means due; and he never talks of it without 
loading it with the harshest and severest reproaches. 
    The proud man does not always feel himself at his ease in the 
company of his equals, and still less in that of his superiors. 
He cannot lay down his lofty pretensions, and the countenance and 
conversation of such company overawe him so much that he dare not 
display them. He has recourse to humbler company, for which he 
has little respect, which he would not willingly chuse; and which 
is by no means agreeable to him; that of his inferiors, his 
flatterers, and dependants. He seldom visits his superiors, or, 
if he does, it is rather to show that he is entitled to live in 
such company, than for any real satisfaction that he enjoys in 
it. It is as Lord Clarendon says of the Earl of Arundel, that he 
sometimes went to court, because he could there only find a 
greater man than himself; but that he went very seldom, because 
he found there a greater man than himself. 
    It is quite otherwise with the vain man. He courts the 
company of his superiors as much as the proud man shuns it. Their 
splendour, he seems to think, reflects a splendour upon those who 
are much about them. He haunts the courts of kings and the levees 
of ministers, and gives himself the air of being a candidate for 
fortune and preferment, when in reality he possesses the much 
more precious happiness, if he knew how to enjoy it, of not being 
one. He is fond of being admitted to the tables of the great, and 
still more fond of magnifying to other people the familiarity 
with which he is honoured there. He associates himself, as much 
as he can, with fashionable people, with those who are supposed 
to direct the public opinion, with the witty, with the learned, 
with the popular; and he shuns the company of his best friends 
whenever the very uncertain current of public favour happens to 
run in any respect against them. With the people to whom he 
wishes to recommend himself, he is not always very delicate about 
the means which he employs for that purpose; unnecessary 
ostentation, groundless pretensions, constant assentation, 
frequently flattery, though for the most part a pleasant and a 
sprightly flattery, and very seldom the gross and fulsome 
flattery of a parasite. The proud man, on the contrary, never 
flatters, and is frequently scarce civil to any body. 
    Notwithstanding all its groundless pretensions, however, 
vanity is almost always a sprightly and a gay, and very often a 
good-natured passion. Pride is always a grave, a sullen, and a 
severe one. Even the falsehoods of the vain man are all innocent 
falsehoods, meant to raise himself, not to lower other people. To 
do the proud man justice, he very seldom stoops to the baseness 
of falsehood. When he does, however, his falsehoods are by no 
means so innocent. They are all mischievous, and meant to lower 
other people. He is full of indignation at the unjust 
superiority, as he thinks it, which is given to them. He views 
them with malignity and envy, and, in talking of them, often 
endeavours, as much as he can, to extenuate and lessen whatever 
are the grounds upon which their superiority is supposed to be 
founded. Whatever tales are circulated to their disadvantage, 
though he seldom forges them himself, yet he often takes pleasure 
in believing them, is by no means unwilling to repeat them, and 
even sometimes with some degree of exaggeration. The worst 
falsehoods of vanity are all what we call white lies: those of 
pride, whenever it condescends to falsehood, are all of the 
opposite complexion. 
    Our dislike to pride and vanity generally disposes us to rank 
the persons whom we accuse of those vices rather below than above 
the common level. In this judgment, however, I think, we are most 
frequently in the wrong, and that both the proud and the vain man 
are often (perhaps for the most part) a good deal above it; 
though not near so much as either the one really thinks himself, 
or as the other wishes you to think him. If we compare them with 
their own pretensions, they may appear the just objects of 
contempt. But when we compare them with what the greater part of 
their rivals and competitors really are, they may appear quite 
otherwise, and very much above the common level. Where there is 
this real superiority, pride is frequently attended with many 
respectable virtues; with truth, with integrity, with a high 
sense of honour, with cordial and steady friendship, with the 
most inflexible firmness and resolution. Vanity, with many 
amiable ones; with humanity, with politeness, with a desire to 
oblige in all little matters, and sometimes with a real 
generosity in great ones; a generosity, however, which it often 
wishes to display in the most splendid colours that it can. By 
their rivals and enemies, the French, in the last century, were 
accused of vanity; the Spaniards, of pride; and foreign nations 
were disposed to consider the one as the more amiable; the other, 
as the more respectable people. 
    The words vain and vanity are never taken in a good sense. We 
sometimes say of a man, when we are talking of him in good 
humour, that he is the better for his vanity, or that his vanity 
is more diverting than offensive; but we still consider it as a 
foible and a ridicule in his character. 
    The words proud and pride, on the contrary, are sometimes 
taken in a good sense. We frequently say of a man, that he is too 
proud, or that he has too much noble pride, ever to suffer 
himself to do a mean thing. Pride is, in this case, confounded 
with magnanimity. Aristotle, a Philosopher who certainly knew the 
world, in drawing the character of the magnanimous man, paints 
him with many features which, in the two last centuries, were 
commonly ascribed to the Spanish character: that he was 
deliberate in all his resolutions; slow, and even tardy, in all 
his actions; that his voice was grave, his speech deliberate, his 
step and motion slow; that he appeared indolent and even 
slothful, not at all disposed to bustle about little matters, but 
to act with the most determined and vigorous resolution upon all 
great and illustrious occasions; that he was not a lover of 
danger, or forward to expose himself to little dangers, but to 
great dangers; and that, when he exposed himself to danger, he 
was altogether regardless of his life. 
    The proud man is commonly too well contented with himself to 
think that his character requires any amendment. The man who 
feels himself all-perfect, naturally enough despises all further 
improvement. His self-sufficiency and absurd conceit of his own 
superiority, commonly attend him from his youth to his most 
advanced age; and he dies, as Hamlet says, with all his sins upon 
his head, unanointed, unanealed. 
    It is frequently otherwise with the vain man. The desire of 
the esteem and admiration of other people, when for qualities and 
talents which are the natural and proper objects of esteem and 
admiration, is the real love of true glory; a passion which, if 
not the very best passion of human nature, is certainly one of 
the best. Vanity is very frequently no more than an attempt 
prematurely to usurp that glory before it is due. Though your 
son, under five-and-twenty years of age, should be but a coxcomb; 
do not, upon that account, despair of his becoming, before he is 
forty, a very wise and worthy man, and a real proficient in all 
those talents and virtues to which, at present, he may only be an 
ostentatious and empty pretender. The great secret of education 
is to direct vanity to proper objects. Never suffer him to value 
himself upon trivial accomplishments. But do not always 
discourage his pretensions to those that are of real importance. 
He would not pretend to them if he did not earnestly desire to 
possess them. encourage this desire; afford him every means to 
facilitate the acquisition; and do not take too much offence, 
although he should sometimes assume the air of having attained it 
a little before the time. 
    Such, I say, are the distinguishing characteristics of pride 
and vanity, when each of them acts according to its proper 
character. But the proud man is often vain; and the vain man is 
often proud. Nothing can be more natural than that the man, who 
thinks much more highly of himself than he deserves, should wish 
that other people should think still more highly of him: or that 
the man, who wishes that other people should think more highly of 
him than he thinks of himself, should, at the same time, think 
much more highly of himself than he deserves. Those two vices 
being frequently in the same character, the characteristics of 
both are necessarily confounded; and we sometimes find the 
superficial and impertinent ostentation of vanity joined to the 
most malignant and derisive insolence of pride. We are sometimes, 
upon that account, at a loss how to rank a particular character, 
or whether to place it among the proud or among the vain. 
    Men of merit considerably above the common level, sometimes 
underrate as well as over-rate themselves. Such characters, 
though not very dignified, are often, in private society, far 
from being disagreeable. His companions all feel themselves much 
at their ease in the society of a man so perfectly modest and 
unassuming. If those companions, however, have not both more 
discernment and more generosity than ordinary, though they may 
have some kindness for him, they have seldom much respect; and 
the warmth of their kindness is very seldom sufficient to 
compensate the coldness of their respect. Men of no more than 
ordinary discernment never rate any person higher than he appears 
to rate himself. He seems doubtful himself, they say, whether he 
is perfectly fit for such a situation or such an office; and 
immediately give the preference to some impudent blockhead who 
entertains no doubt about his own qualifications. Though they 
should have discernment, yet, if they want generosity, they never 
fail to take advantage of his simplicity, and to assume over him 
an impertinent superiority which they are by no means entitled 
to. His good-nature may enable him to bear this for some time; 
but he grows weary at last, and frequently when it is too late, 
and when that rank, which he ought to have assumed, is lost 
irrecoverably, and usurped, in consequence of his own 
backwardness, by some of his more forward, though much less 
meritorious companions. A man of this character must have been 
very fortunate in the early choice of his companions, if, in 
going through the world, he meets always with fair justice, even 
from those whom, from his own past kindness, he might have some 
reason to consider as his best friends; and a youth, too 
unassuming and too unambitious, is frequently followed by an 
insignificant, complaining, and discontented old age. 
    Those unfortunate persons whom nature has formed a good deal 
below the common level, seem sometimes to rate themselves still 
more below it than they really are. This humility appears 
sometimes to sink them into idiotism. Whoever has taken the 
trouble to examine idiots with attention, will find that, in many 
of them, the faculties of the understanding are by no means 
weaker than in several other people, who, though acknowledged to 
be dull and stupid, are not, by any body, accounted idiots. Many 
idiots, with no more than ordinary education, have been taught to 
read, write, and account tolerably well. Many persons, never 
accounted idiots, notwithstanding the most careful education, and 
notwithstanding that, in their advanced age, they have had spirit 
enough to attempt to learn what their early education had not 
taught them, have never been able to acquire, in any tolerable 
degree, any one of those three accomplishments. By an instinct of 
pride, however, they set themselves upon a level with their 
equals in age and situation; and, with courage and firmness, 
maintain their proper station among their companions. By an 
opposite instinct, the idiot feels himself below every company 
into which you can introduce him. Ill-usage, to which he is 
extremely liable, is capable of throwing him into the most 
violent fits of rage and fury. But no good usage, no kindness or 
indulgence, can ever raise him to converse with you as your 
equal. If you can bring him to converse with you at all, however, 
you will frequently find his answers sufficiently pertinent, and 
even sensible. But they are always stamped with a distinct 
consciousness of his own great inferiority. He seems to shrink 
and, as it were, to retire from your look and conversation; and 
to feel, when he places himself in your situation, that, 
notwithstanding your apparent condescension, you cannot help 
considering him as immensely below you. Some idiots, perhaps the 
greater part, seem to be so, chiefly or altogether, from a 
certain numbness or torpidity in the faculties of the 
understanding. But there are others, in whom those faculties do 
not appear more torpid or benumbed than in many other people who 
are not accounted idiots. But that instinct of pride, necessary 
to support them upon an equality with their brethren, seems 
totally wanting in the former and not in the latter. 
    That degree of self-estimation, therefore, which contributes 
most to the happiness and contentment of the person himself, 
seems likewise most agreeable to the impartial spectator. The man 
who esteems himself as he ought, and no more than he ought, 
seldom fails to obtain from other people all the esteem that he 
himself thinks due. He desires no more than is due to him, and he 
rests upon it with complete satisfaction. 
    The proud and the vain man, on the contrary, are constantly 
dissatisfied. The one is tormented with indignation at the unjust 
superiority, as he thinks it, of other people. The other is in 
continual dread of the shame which, he foresees, would attend 
upon the detection of his groundless pretensions. Even the 
extravagant pretensions of the man of real magnanimity, though, 
when supported by splendid abilities and virtues, and, above all, 
by good fortune, they impose upon the multitude, whose applauses 
he little regards, do not impose upon those wise men whose 
approbation he can only value, and whose esteem he is most 
anxious to acquire. He feels that they see through, and suspects 
that they despise his excessive presumption; and he often suffers 
the cruel misfortune of becoming, first the jealous and secret, 
and at last the open, furious, and vindictive enemy of those very 
persons, whose friendship it would have given him the greatest 
happiness to enjoy with unsuspicious security. 
    Though our dislike to the proud and the vain often disposes 
us to rank them rather below than above their proper station, 
yet, unless we are provoked by some particular and personal 
impertinence, we very seldom venture to use them ill. In common 
cases, we endeavour, for our own ease, rather to acquiesce, and, 
as well as we can, to accommodate ourselves to their folly. But, 
to the man who under-rates himself, unless we have both more 
discernment and more generosity than belong to the greater part 
of men, we seldom fail to do, at least, all the injustice which 
he does to himself, and frequently a great deal more. He is not 
only more unhappy in his own feelings than either the proud or 
the vain, but he is much more liable to every sort of ill-usage 
from other people. In almost all cases, it is better to be a 
little too proud, than, in any respect, too humble; and, in the 
sentiment of self-estimation, some degree of excess seems, both 
to the person and to the impartial spectator, to be less 
disagreeable than any degree of defect. 
    In this, therefore, as well as in every other emotion, 
passion, and habit, the degree that is most agreeable to the 
impartial spectator is likewise most agreeable to the person 
himself; and according as either the excess or the defect is 
least offensive to the former, so, either the one or the other is 
in proportion least disagreeable to the latter. 
Conclusion of the Sixth Part 
    Concern for our own happiness recommends to us the virtue of 
prudence: concern for that of other people, the virtues of 
justice and beneficence; of which, the one restrains us from 
hurting, the other prompts us to promote that happiness. 
Independent of any regard either to what are, or to what ought to 
be, or to what upon a certain condition would be, the sentiments 
of other people, the first of those three virtues is originally 
recommended to us by our selfish, the other two by our benevolent 
affections. Regard to the sentiments of other people, however, 
comes afterwards both to enforce and to direct the practice of 
all those virtues; and no man during, either the whole of his 
life, or that of any considerable part of it, ever trod steadily 
and uniformly in the paths of prudence, of justice, or of proper 
beneficence, whose conduct was not principally directed by a 
regard to the sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator, of 
the great inmate of the breast, the great judge and arbiter of 
conduct. If in the course of the day we have swerved in any 
respect from the rules which he prescribes to us; if we have 
either exceeded or relaxed in our frugality; if we have either 
exceeded or relaxed in our industry; if, through passion or 
inadvertency, we have hurt in any respect the interest or 
happiness of our neighbour; if we have neglected a plain and 
proper opportunity of promoting that interest and happiness; it 
is this inmate who, in the evening, calls us to an account for 
all those omissions and violations, and his reproaches often make 
us blush inwardly both for our folly and inattention to our own 
happiness, and for our still greater indifference and 
inattention, perhaps, to that of other people. 
    But though the virtues of prudence, justice, and beneficence, 
may, upon different occasions, be recommended to us almost 
equally by two different principles; those of self-command are, 
upon most occasions, principally and almost entirely recommended 
to us by one; by the sense of propriety, by regard to the 
sentiments of the supposed impartial spectator. Without the 
restraint which this principle imposes, every passion would, upon 
most occasions, rush headlong, if I may say so, to its own 
gratification. Anger would follow the suggestions of its own 
fury; fear those of its own violent agitations. Regard to no time 
or place would induce vanity to refrain from the loudest and most 
impertinent ostentation; or voluptuousness from the most open, 
indecent, and scandalous indulgence. Respect for what are, or for 
what ought to be, or for what upon a certain condition would be, 
the sentiments of other people, is the sole principle which, upon 
most occasions, overawes all those mutinous and turbulent 
passions into that tone and temper which the impartial spectator 
can enter into and sympathize with. 
    Upon some occasions, indeed, those passions are restrained, 
not so much by a sense of their impropriety, as by prudential 
considerations of the bad consequences which might follow from 
their indulgence. In such cases, the passions, though restrained, 
are not always subdued, but often remain lurking in the breast 
with all their original fury. The man whose anger is restrained 
by fear, does not always lay aside his anger, but only reserves 
its gratification for a more safe opportunity. But the man who, 
in relating to some other person the injury which has been done 
to him, feels at once the fury of his passion cooled and becalmed 
by sympathy with the more moderate sentiments of his companion, 
who at once adopts those more moderate sentiments, and comes to 
view that injury, not in the black and atrocious colours in which 
he had originally beheld it, but in the much milder and fairer 
light in which his companion naturally views it; not only 
restrains, but in some measure subdues, his anger. The passion 
becomes really less than it was before, and less capable of 
exciting him to the violent and bloody revenge which at first, 
perhaps, he might have thought of inflicting. 
    Those passions which are restrained by the sense of 
propriety, are all in some degree moderated and subdued by it. 
But those which are restrained only by prudential considerations 
of any kind, are, on the contrary, frequently inflamed by the 
restraint, and sometimes (long after the provocation given, and 
when nobody is thinking about it) burst out absurdly and 
unexpectedly, and with tenfold fury and violence. 
    Anger, however, as well as every other passion, may, upon 
many occasions, be very properly restrained by prudential 
considerations. Some exertion of manhood and self-command is even 
necessary for this sort of restraint; and the impartial spectator 
may sometimes view it with that sort of cold esteem due to that 
species of conduct which he considers as a mere matter of vulgar 
prudence; but never with that affectionate admiration with which 
he surveys the same passions, when, by the sense of propriety, 
they are moderated and subdued to what he himself can readily 
enter into. In the former species of restraint, he may frequently 
discern some degree of propriety, and, if you will, even of 
virtue; but it is a propriety and virtue of a much inferior order 
to those which he always feels with transport and admiration in 
the latter. 
    The virtues of prudence, justice, and beneficence, have no 
tendency to produce any but the most agreeable effects. Regard to 
those effects, as it originally recommends them to the actor, so 
does it afterwards to the impartial spectator. In our approbation 
of the character of the prudent man, we feel, with peculiar 
complacency, the security which he must enjoy while he walks 
under the safeguard of that sedate and deliberate virtue. In our 
approbation of the character of the just man, we feel, with equal 
complacency, the security which all those connected with him, 
whether in neighbourhood, society, or business, must derive from 
his scrupulous anxiety never either to hurt or offend. In our 
approbation of the character of the beneficent man, we enter into 
the gratitude of all those who are within the sphere of his good 
offices, and conceive with them the highest sense of his merit. 
In our approbation of all those virtues, our sense of their 
agreeable effects, of their utility, either to the person who 
exercises them, or to some other persons, joins with our sense of 
their propriety, and constitutes always a considerable, 
frequently the greater part of that approbation. 
    But in our approbation of the virtues of self-command, 
complacency with their effects sometimes constitutes no part, and 
frequently but a small part, of that approbation. Those effects 
may sometimes be agreeable, and sometimes disagreeable; and 
though our approbation is no doubt stronger in the former case, 
it is by no means altogether destroyed in the latter. The most 
heroic valour may be employed indifferently in the cause either 
of justice or of injustice; and though it is no doubt much more 
loved and admired in the former case, it still appears a great 
and respectable quality even in the latter. In that, and in all 
the other virtues of self-command, the splendid and dazzling 
quality seems always to be the greatness and steadiness of the 
exertion, and the strong sense of propriety which is necessary in 
order to make and to maintain that exertion. The effects are too 
often but too little regarded. 

PART VII 
Of Systems of Moral Philosophy 
Consisting of Four Section 
Section I 
Of the Questions which ought to be examined in a Theory of Moral 
Sentiments 
    If we examine the most celebrated and remarkable of the 
different theories which have been given concerning the nature 
and origin of our moral sentiments, we shall find that almost all 
of them coincide with some part or other of that which I have 
been endeavouring to give an account of; and that if every thing 
which has already been said be fully considered, we shall be at 
no loss to explain what was the view or aspect of nature which 
led each particular author to form his particular system. From 
some one or other of those principles which I have been 
endeavouring to unfold, every system of morality that ever had 
any reputation in the world has, perhaps, ultimately been 
derived. As they are all of them, in this respect, founded upon 
natural principles, they are all of them in some measure in the 
right. But as many of them are derived from a partial and 
imperfect view of nature, there are many of them too in some 
respects in the wrong. 
    In treating of the principles of morals there are two 
questions to be considered. First, wherein does virtue consist? 
Or what is the tone of temper, and tenour of conduct, which 
constitutes the excellent and praise-worthy character, the 
character which is the natural object of esteem, honour, and 
approbation? And, secondly, by what power or faculty in the mind 
is it, that this character, whatever it be, is recommended. to 
us? Or in other words, how and by what means does it come to 
pass, that the mind prefers one tenour of conduct to another, 
denominates the one right and the other wrong; considers the one 
as the object of approbation, honour, and reward, and the other 
of blame, censure, and punishment? 
    We examine the first question when we consider whether virtue 
consists in benevolence, as Dr Hutcheson imagines; or in acting 
suitably to the different relations we stand in, as Dr Clarke 
supposes; or in the wise and prudent pursuit of our own real and 
solid happiness, as has been the opinion of others. 
    We examine the second question, when we consider, whether the 
virtuous character, whatever it consists in, be recommended to us 
by self-love, which makes us perceive that this character, both 
in ourselves and others, tends most to promote our own private 
interest; or by reason, which points out to us the difference 
between one character and another, in the same manner as it does 
that between truth and falsehood; or by a peculiar power of 
perception, called a moral sense, which this virtuous character 
gratifies and pleases, as the contrary disgusts and displeases 
it; or last of all, by some other principle in human nature, such 
as a modification of sympathy, or the like. 
    I shall begin with considering the systems which have been 
formed concerning the first of these questions, and shall proceed 
afterwards to examine those concerning the second. 
Section II 
Of the different Accounts which have been given of the Nature of 
Virtue 
    The different accounts which have been given of the nature of 
virtue, or of the temper of mind which constitutes the excellent 
and praise-worthy character, may be reduced to three different 
classes. According to some, the virtuous temper of mind does not 
consist in any one species of affections, but in the proper 
government and direction of all our affections, which may be 
either virtuous or vicious according to the objects which they 
pursue, and the degree of vehemence with which they pursue them. 
According to these authors, therefore, virtue consists in 
propriety. 
    According to others, virtue consists in the judicious pursuit 
of our own private interest and happiness, or in the proper 
government and direction of those selfish affections which aim 
solely at this end. In the opinion of these authors, therefore, 
virtue consists in prudence. 
    Another set of authors make virtue consist in those 
affections only which aim at the happiness of others, not in 
those which aim at our own. According to them, therefore, 
disinterested benevolence is the only motive which can stamp upon 
any action the character of virtue. 
    The character of virtue, it is evident, must either be 
ascribed indifferently to all our affections, when under proper 
government and direction; or it must be confined to some one 
class or division of them. The great division of our affections 
is into the selfish and the benevolent. If the character of 
virtue, therefore, cannot be ascribed indifferently to all our 
affections, when under proper government and direction, it must 
be confined either to those which aim directly at our own private 
happiness, or to those which aim directly at that of others. If 
virtue, therefore, does not consist in propriety, it must consist 
either in prudence or in benevolence. Besides these three, it is 
scarce possible to imagine that any other account can be given of 
the nature of virtue. I shall endeavour to show hereafter how all 
the other accounts, which are seemingly different from any of 
these, coincide at bottom with some one or other of them. 
Chap. I 
Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Propriety 
    According to Plato, to Aristotle, and to Zeno, virtue 
consists in the propriety of conduct, or in the suitableness of 
the affection from which we act to the object which excites it. 
    I. In the system of Plato(1*) the soul is considered as 
something like a little state or republic, composed of three 
different faculties or orders. 
    The first is the judging faculty, the faculty which 
determines not only what are the proper means for attaining any 
end, but also what ends are fit to be pursued, and what degree of 
relative value we ought to put upon each. This faculty Plato 
called, as it is very properly called, reason, and considered it 
as what had a right to be the governing principle of the whole. 
Under this appellation, it is evident, he comprehended not only 
that faculty by which we judge of truth and falsehood, but that 
by which we judge of the propriety or impropriety of desires and 
affections. 
    The different passions and appetites, the natural subjects of 
this ruling principle, but which are so apt to rebel against 
their master, he reduced to two different classes or orders. The 
first consisted of those passions, which are founded in pride and 
resentment, or in what the schoolmen called the irascible part of 
the soul; ambition, animosity, the love of honour, and the dread 
of shame, the desire of victory, superiority, and revenge; all 
those passions, in short, which are supposed either to rise from, 
or to denote what, by a metaphor in our language, we commonly 
call spirit or natural fire. The second consisted of those 
passions which are founded in the love of pleasure, or in what 
the schoolmen called the concupiscible part of the soul. It 
comprehended all the appetites of the body, the love of ease and 
security, and of all sensual gratifications. 
    It rarely happens that we break in upon that plan of conduct, 
which the governing principle prescribes, and which in all our 
cool hours we had laid down to ourselves as what was most proper 
for us to pursue, but when prompted by one or other of those two 
different sets of passions; either by ungovernable ambition and 
resentment, or by the importunate solicitations of present ease 
and pleasure. But though these two orders of passions are so apt 
to mislead us, they are still considered as necessary parts of 
human nature: the first having been given to defend us against 
injuries, to assert our rank and dignity in the world, to make us 
aim at what is noble and honourable, and to make us distinguish 
those who act in the same manner; the second, to provide for the 
support and necessities of the body. 
    In the strength, acuteness, and perfection of the governing 
principle was placed the essential virtue of prudence, which, 
according to Plato, consisted in a just and clear discernment, 
founded upon general and scientific ideas, of the ends which were 
proper to be pursued, and of the means which were proper for 
attaining them. 
    When the first set of passions, those of the irascible part 
of the soul, had that degree of strength and firmness, which 
enabled them, under the direction of reason, to despise all 
dangers in the pursuit of what was honourable and noble; it 
constituted the virtue of fortitude and magnanimity. This order 
of passions, according to this system, was of a more generous and 
noble nature than the other. They were considered upon many 
occasions as the auxiliaries of reason, to check and restrain the 
inferior and brutal appetites. We are often angry at ourselves, 
it was observed, we often become the objects of our own 
resentment and indignation, when the love of pleasure prompts to 
do what we disapprove of; and the irascible part of our nature is 
in this manner called in to assist the rational against the 
concupiscible. 
    When all those three different parts of our nature were in 
perfect concord with one another, when neither the irascible nor 
concupiscible passions ever aimed at any gratification which 
reason did not approve of, and when reason never commanded any 
thing, but what these of their own accord were willing to 
perform: this happy composure, this perfect and complete harmony 
of soul, constituted that virtue which in their language is 
expressed by a word which we commonly translate temperance, but 
which might more properly be translated good temper, or sobriety 
and moderation of mind. 
    Justice, the last and greatest of the four cardinal virtues, 
took place, according to this system, when each of those three 
faculties of the mind confined itself to its proper office, 
without attempting to encroach upon that of any other; when 
reason directed and passion obeyed, and when each passion 
performed its proper duty, and exerted itself towards its proper 
object easily and without reluctance, and with that degree of 
force and energy, which was suitable to the value of what it 
pursued. In this consisted that complete virtue, that perfect 
propriety of conduct, which Plato, after some of the ancient 
Pythagoreans, denominated Justice. 
    The word, it is to be observed, which expresses justice in 
the Greek language, has several different meanings; and as the 
correspondent word in all other languages, so far as I know, has 
the same, there must be some natural affinity among those various 
significations. In one sense we are said to do justice to our 
neighbour when we abstain from doing him any positive harm, and 
do not directly hurt him, either in his person, or in his estate, 
or in his reputation. This is that justice which I have treated 
of above, the observance of which may be extorted by force, and 
the violation of which exposes to punishment. In another sense we 
are said not to do justice to our neighbour unless we conceive 
for him all that love, respect, and esteem, which his character, 
his situation, and his connexion with ourselves, render suitable 
and proper for us to feel, and unless we act accordingly. It is 
in this sense that we are said to do injustice to a man of merit 
who is connected with us, though we abstain from hurting him in 
every respect, if we do not exert ourselves to serve him and to 
place him in that situation in which the impartial spectator 
would be pleased to see him. The first sense of the word 
coincides with what Aristotle and the Schoolmen call commutative 
justice, and with what Grotius calls the justitia expletrix, 
which consists in abstaining from what is another's, and in doing 
voluntarily whatever we can with propriety be forced to do. The 
second sense of the word coincides with what some have called 
distributive justice,(2*) and with the justitia attributrix of 
Grotius, which consists in proper beneficence, in the becoming 
use of what is our own, and in the applying it to those purposes 
either of charity or generosity, to which it is most suitable, in 
our situation, that it should be applied. In this sense justice 
comprehends all the social virtues: There is yet another sense in 
which the word justice is sometimes taken, still more extensive 
than either of the former, though very much a-kin to the last; 
and which runs too, so far as I know, through all languages. It 
is in this last sense that we are said to be unjust, when we do 
not seem to value any particular object with that degree of 
esteem, or to pursue it with that degree of ardour which to the 
impartial spectator it may appear to deserve or to be naturally 
fitted for exciting. Thus we are said to do injustice to a poem 
or a picture, when we do not admire them enough, and we are said 
to do them more than justice when we admire them too much. In the 
same manner we are said to do injustice to ourselves when we 
appear not to give sufficient attention to any particular object 
of self-interest. In this last sense, what is called justice 
means the same thing with exact and perfect propriety of conduct 
and behaviour, and comprehends in it, not only the offices of 
both commutative and distributive justice, but of every other 
virtue, of prudence, of fortitude, of temperance. It is in this 
last sense that Plato evidently understands what he calls 
justice, and which, therefore, according to him, comprehends in 
it the perfection of every sort of virtue. 
    Such is the account given by Plato of the nature of virtue, 
or of that temper of mind which is the proper object of praise 
and approbation. It consists, according to him, in that state of 
mind in which every faculty confines itself within its proper 
sphere without encroaching upon that of any other, and performs 
its proper office with that precise degree of strength and vigour 
which belongs to it. His account, it is evident, coincides in 
every respect with what we have said above concerning the 
propriety of conduct. 
    II. Virtue, according to Aristotle,(3*) consists in the habit 
of mediocrity according to right reason. Every particular virtue, 
according to him, lies in a kind of middle between two opposite 
vices, of which the one offends from being too much, the other 
from being too little affected by a particular species of 
objects. Thus the virtue of fortitude or courage lies in the 
middle between the opposite vices of cowardice and of 
presumptuous rashness, of which the one offends from being too 
much, and the other from being too little affected by the objects 
of fear. Thus too the virtue of frugality lies in a middle 
between avarice and profusion, of which the one consists in an 
excess, the other in a defect of the proper attention to the 
objects of self-interest. Magnanimity, in the same manner, lies 
in a middle between the excess of arrogance and the defect of 
pusillanimity, of which the one consists in too extravagant, the 
other in too weak a sentiment of our own worth and dignity. It is 
unnecessary to observe that this account of virtue corresponds 
too pretty exactly with what has been said above concerning the 
propriety and impropriety of conduct. 
    According to Aristotle,(4*) indeed, virtue did not so much 
consist in those moderate and right affections, as in the habit 
of this moderation. In order to understand this, it is to be 
observed, that virtue may be considered either as the quality of 
an action, or as the quality of a person. Considered as the 
quality of an action, it consists, even according to Aristotle, 
in the reasonable moderation of the affection from which the 
action proceeds, whether this disposition be habitual to the 
person or not. Considered as the quality of a person, it consists 
in the habit of this reasonable moderation, in its having become 
the customary and usual disposition of the mind. Thus the action 
which proceeds from an occasional fit of generosity is 
undoubtedly a generous action, but the man who performs it, is 
not necessarily a generous person, because it may be the single 
action of the kind which he ever performed. The motive and 
disposition of heart, from which this action was performed, may 
have been quite just and proper: but as this happy mood seems to 
have been the effect rather of accidental humour than of any 
thing steady or permanent in the character, it can reflect no 
great honour on the performer. When we denominate a character 
generous or charitable, or virtuous in any respect, we mean to 
signify that the disposition expressed by each of those 
appellations is the usual and customary disposition of the 
person. But single actions of any kind, how proper and suitable 
soever, are of little consequence to show that this is the case. 
If a single action was sufficient to stamp the character of any 
virtue upon the person who performed it, the most worthless of 
mankind. might lay claim to all the virtues; since there is no 
man who has not, upon some occasions, acted with prudence, 
justice, temperance, and fortitude. But though single actions, 
how laudable soever, reflect very little praise upon the person 
who performs them, a single vicious action performed by one whose 
conduct is usually very regular, greatly diminishes and sometimes 
destroys altogether our opinion of his virtue. A single action of 
this kind sufficiently shows that his habits are not perfect, and 
that he is less to be depended upon, than, from the usual train 
of his behaviour, we might have been apt to imagine. 
    Aristotle too,(5*) when he made virtue to consist in 
practical habits, had it probably in his view to oppose the 
doctrine of Plato, who seems to have been of opinion that just 
sentiments and reasonable judgments concerning what was fit to be 
done or to be avoided, were alone sufficient to constitute the 
most perfect virtue. Virtue, according to Plato, might be 
considered as a species of science, and no man, he thought, could 
see clearly and demonstratively what was right and what was 
wrong, and not act accordingly. Passion might make us act 
contrary to doubtful and uncertain opinions, not to plain and 
evident judgments. Aristotle, on the contrary, was of opinion, 
that no conviction of the understanding was capable of getting 
the better of inveterate habits, and that good morals arose not 
from knowledge but from action. 
    III. According to Zeno,(6*) the founder of the Stoical 
doctrine, every animal was by nature recommended to its own care, 
and was endowed with the principle of self-love, that it might 
endeavour to preserve, not only its existence, but all the 
different parts of its nature, in the best and most perfect state 
of which they were capable. 
    The self-love of man embraced, if I may say so, his body and 
all its different members, his mind and all its different 
faculties and powers, and desired the preservation and 
maintenance of them all in their best and most perfect condition. 
Whatever tended to support this state of existence was, 
therefore, by nature pointed out to him as fit to be chosen; and 
whatever tended to destroy it, as fit to be rejected. Thus 
health, strength, agility and ease of body as well as the eternal 
conveniencies which could promote these; wealth, power, honours, 
the respect and esteem of those we live with; were naturally 
pointed out to us as things eligible, and of which the possession 
was preferable to the want. On the other hand, sickness, 
infirmity, unwieldiness, pain of body, as well as all the eternal 
inconveniencies which tend to occasion or bring on any of them; 
poverty, the want of authority, the contempt or hatred of those 
we live with; were, in the same manner, pointed out to us as 
things to be shunned and avoided. In each of those two opposite 
classes of objects, there were some which appeared to be more the 
objects either of choice or rejection, than others in the same 
class. Thus, in the first class, health appeared evidently 
preferable to strength, and strength to agility; reputation to 
power, and power to riches. And thus too, in the second class, 
sickness was more to be avoided than unwieldiness of body, 
ignominy than poverty, and poverty than the loss of power. Virtue 
and the propriety of conduct consisted in choosing and rejecting 
all different objects and circumstances according as they were by 
nature rendered more or less the objects of choice or rejection; 
in selecting always from among the several objects of choice 
presented to us, that which was most to be chosen, when we could 
not obtain them all; and in selecting too, out of the several 
objects of rejection offered to us, that which was least to be 
avoided, when it was not in our power to avoid them all. By 
choosing and rejecting with this just and accurate discernment, 
by thus bestowing upon every object the precise degree of 
attention it deserved, according to the place which it held in 
this natural scale of things, we maintained, according to the 
Stoics, that perfect rectitude of conduct which constituted the 
essence of virtue. This was what they called to live 
consistently, to live according to nature, and to obey those laws 
and directions which nature, or the Author of nature, had 
prescribed for our conduct. 
    So far the Stoical idea of propriety and virtue is not very 
different from that of Aristotle and the ancient Peripatetics. 
    Among those primary objects which nature had recommended to 
us as eligible, was the prosperity of our family, of our 
relations, of our friends, of our country, of mankind, and of the 
universe in general. Nature, too, had taught us, that as the 
prosperity of two was preferable to that of one, that of many, or 
of all, must be infinitely more so. That we ourselves were but 
one, and that consequently wherever our prosperity was 
inconsistent with that, either of the whole, or of any 
considerable part of the whole, it ought, even in our own choice, 
to yield to what was so vastly preferable. As all the events in 
this world were conducted by the providence of a wise, powerful, 
and good God, we might be assured that whatever happened tended 
to the prosperity and perfection of the whole. If we ourselves, 
therefore, were in poverty, in sickness, or in any other 
calamity, we ought, first of all, to use our utmost endeavours, 
so far as justice and our duty to others would allow, to rescue 
ourselves from this disagreeable circumstance. But if, after all 
we could do, we found this impossible, we ought to rest satisfied 
that the order and perfection of the universe required that we 
should in the mean time continue in this situation. And as the 
prosperity of the whole should, even to us, appear preferable to 
so insignificant a part as ourselves, our situation, whatever it 
was, ought from that moment to become the object of our liking, 
if we would maintain that complete propriety and rectitude of 
sentiment and conduct in which consisted the perfection of our 
nature. If, indeed, any opportunity of extricating ourselves 
should offer, it became our duty to embrace it. The order of the 
universe, it was evident, no longer required our continuance in 
this situation, and the great Director of the world plainly 
called upon us to leave it, by so clearly pointing out the road 
which we were to follow. It was the same case with the adversity 
of our relations, our friends, our country. If, without violating 
any more sacred obligation, it was in our power to prevent or put 
an end to their calamity, it undoubtedly was our duty to do so. 
The propriety of action, the rule which Jupiter had given us for 
the direction of our conduct, evidently required this of us. But 
if it was altogether out of our power to do either, we ought then 
to consider this event as the most fortunate which could possibly 
have happened; because we might be assured that it tended most to 
the prosperity and order of the whole, which was what we 
ourselves, if we were wise and equitable, ought most of all to 
desire. It was our own final interest considered as a part of 
that whole, of which the prosperity ought to be, not only the 
principal, but the sole object of our desire. 
    'In what sense,' says Epictetus, 'are some things said to be 
according to our nature, and others contrary to it? It is in that 
sense in which we consider ourselves as separated and detached 
from all other things. For thus it may be said to be according to 
the nature of the foot to be always clean. But if you consider it 
as a foot, and not as something detached from the rest of the 
body, it must behove it sometimes to trample in the dirt, and 
sometimes to tread upon thorns, and sometimes, too, to be cut off 
for the sake of the whole body; and if it refuses this, it is no 
longer a foot. Thus, too, ought we to conceive with regard to 
ourselves. What are you? A man. If you consider yourself as 
something separated and detached, it is agreeable to your nature 
to live to old age, to be rich, to be in health. But if you 
consider yourself as a man, and as a part of a whole, upon 
account of that whole, it will behove you sometimes to be in 
sickness, sometimes to be exposed to the inconveniency of a sea 
voyage, sometimes to be in want; and at last, perhaps, to die 
before your time. Why then do you complain? Do not you know that 
by doing so, as the foot ceases to be a foot, so you cease to be 
a man?'(7*) 
    A wise man never complains of the destiny of Providence, nor 
thinks the universe in confusion when he is out of order. He does 
not look upon himself as a whole, separated and detached from 
every other part of nature, to be taken care of by itself and for 
itself. He regards himself in the light in which he imagines the 
great genius of human nature, and of the world, regards him. He 
enters, if I may say so, into the sentiments of that divine 
Being, and considers himself as an atom, a particle, of an 
immense and infinite system, which must and ought to be disposed 
of, according to the conveniency of the whole. Assured of the 
wisdom which directs all the events of human life, whatever lot 
befalls him, he accepts it with joy, satisfied that, if he had 
known all the connections and dependencies of the different parts 
of the universe, it is the very lot which he himself would have 
wished for. If it is life, he is contented to live; and if it is 
death, as nature must have no further occasion for his presence 
here, he willingly goes where he is appointed. I accept, said a 
cynical philosopher, whose doctrines were in this respect the 
same as those of the Stoics, I accept, with equal joy and 
satisfaction, whatever fortune can befall me. Riches or poverty, 
pleasure or pain, health or sickness, all is alike: nor would I 
desire that the Gods should in any respect change my destination. 
If I was to ask of them any thing beyond what their bounty has 
already bestowed, it should be that they would inform me 
before-hand what it was their pleasure should be done with me, 
that I might of my own accord place myself in this situation, and 
demonstrate the cheerfulness with which I embraced their 
allotment. If I am going to sail, says Epictetus, I chuse the 
best ship and the best pilot, and I wait for the fairest weather 
that my circumstances and duty will allow. Prudence and 
propriety, the principles which the Gods have given me for the 
direction of my conduct, require this of me; but they require no 
more: and if, notwithstanding, a storm arises, which neither the 
strength of the vessel nor the skill of the pilot are likely to 
withstand, I give myself no trouble about the consequence. All 
that I had to do is done already. The directors of my conduct 
never command me to be miserable, to be anxious, desponding, or 
afraid. Whether we are to be drowned, or to come to a harbour, is 
the business of Jupiter, not mine. I leave it entirely to his 
determination, nor ever break my rest with considering which way 
he is likely to decide it, but receive whatever comes with equal 
indifference and security. 
    From this perfect confidence in that benevolent wisdom which 
governs the universe, and from this entire resignation to 
whatever order that wisdom might think proper to establish, it 
necessarily followed, that, to the Stoical wise man, all the 
events of human life must be in a great measure indifferent. His 
happiness consisted altogether, first, in the contemplation of 
the happiness and perfection of the great system of the universe, 
of the good government of the great republic of Gods and men, of 
all rational and sensible beings; and, secondly, in discharging 
his duty, in acting properly in the affairs of this great 
republic whatever little part that wisdom had assigned to him. 
The propriety or impropriety of his endeavours might be of great 
consequence to him. Their success or disappointment could be of 
none at all; could excite no passionate joy or sorrow, no 
passionate desire or aversion. If he preferred some events to 
others, if some situations were the objects of his choice and 
others of his rejection, it was not because he regarded the one 
as in themselves in any respect better than the other, or thought 
that his own happiness would be more complete in what is called 
the fortunate than in what is regarded as the distressful 
situation; but because the propriety of action, the rule which 
the Gods had given him for the direction of his conduct, required 
him to chuse and reject in this manner. All his affections were 
absorbed and swallowed up in two great affections; in that for 
the discharge of his own duty, and in that for the greatest 
possible happiness of all rational and sensible beings. For the 
gratification of this latter affection, he rested with the most 
perfect security upon the wisdom and power of the great 
Superintendant of the universe. His sole anxiety was about the 
gratification of the former; not about the event, but about the 
propriety of his own endeavours. Whatever the event might be, he 
trusted to a superior power and wisdom for turning it to promote 
that great end which he himself was most desirous of promoting. 
    This propriety of chusing and rejecting, though originally 
pointed out to us, and as it were recommended and introduced to 
our acquaintance by the things, and for the sake of the things, 
chosen and rejected; yet when we had once become thoroughly 
acquainted with it, the order, the grace, the beauty which we 
discerned in this conduct, the happiness which we felt resulted 
from it, necessarily appeared to us of much greater value than 
the actual obtaining of all the different objects of choice, or 
the actual avoiding of all those of rejection. From the 
observation of this propriety arose the happiness and the glory; 
from the neglect of it, the misery and the disgrace of human 
nature. 
    But to a wise man, to one whose passions were brought under 
perfect subjection to the ruling principles of his nature, the 
exact observation of this propriety was equally easy upon all 
occasions. Was he in prosperity, he returned thanks to Jupiter 
for having joined him with circumstances which were easily 
mastered, and in which there was little temptation to do wrong. 
Was he in adversity, he equally returned thanks to the director 
of this spectacle of human life, for having opposed to him a 
vigorous athlete, over whom, though the contest was likely to be 
more violent, the victory was more glorious, and equally certain. 
Can there be any shame in that distress which is brought upon us 
without any fault of our own, and in which we behave with perfect 
propriety? There can, therefore, be no evil, but, on the 
contrary, the greatest good and advantage. A brave man exults in 
those dangers in which, from no rashness of his own, his fortune 
has involved him. They afford an opportunity of exercising that 
heroic intrepidity, whose exertion gives the exalted delight 
which flows from the consciousness of superior propriety and 
deserved admiration. One who is master of all his exercises has 
no aversion to measure his strength and activity with the 
strongest. And, in the same manner, one who is master of all his 
passions, does not dread any circumstance in which the 
Superintendant of the universe may think proper to place him. The 
bounty of that divine Being has provided him with virtues which 
render him superior to every situation. If it is pleasure, he has 
temperance to refrain from it; if it is pain, he has constancy to 
bear it; if it is danger or death, he has magnanimity and 
fortitude to despise it. The events of human life can never find 
him unprepared, or at a loss how to maintain that propriety of 
sentiment and conduct which, in his own apprehension, constitutes 
at once his glory and his happiness. 
    Human life the Stoics appear to have considered as a game of 
great skill; in which, however, there was a mixture of chance, or 
of what is vulgarly understood to be chance. In such games the 
stake is commonly a trifle, and the whole pleasure of the game 
arises from playing well, from playing fairly, and playing 
skilfully. If notwithstanding all his skill, however, the good 
player should, by the influence of chance, happen to lose, the 
loss ought to be a matter, rather of merriment, than of serious 
sorrow. He has made no false stroke; he has done nothing which he 
ought to be ashamed of; he has enjoyed completely the whole 
pleasure of the game. If, on the contrary, the bad player, 
notwithstanding all his blunders, should, in the same manner, 
happen to win, his success can give him but little satisfaction. 
He is mortified by the remembrance of all the faults which he 
committed. Even during the play he can enjoy no part of the 
pleasure which it is capable of affording. From ignorance of the 
rules of the game, fear and doubt and hesitation are the 
disagreeable sentiments that precede almost every stroke which he 
plays; and when he has played it, the mortification of finding it 
a gross blunder, commonly completes the unpleasing circle of his 
sensations. Human life, with all the advantages which can 
possibly attend it, ought, according to the Stoics, to be 
regarded but as a mere two-penny stake; a matter by far too 
insignificant to merit any anxious concern. Our only anxious 
concern ought to be, not about the stake, but about the proper 
method of playing. If we placed our happiness in winning the 
stake, we placed it in what depended upon causes beyond our 
power, and out of our direction. We necessarily exposed ourselves 
to perpetual fear and uneasiness, and frequently to grievous and 
mortifying disappointments. If we placed it in playing well, in 
playing fairly, in playing wisely and skilfully; in the propriety 
of our own conduct in short; we placed it in what, by proper 
discipline, education, and attention, might be altogether in our 
own power, and under our own direction. Our happiness was 
perfectly secure, and beyond the reach of fortune. The event of 
our actions, if it was out of our power, was equally out of our 
concern, and we could never feel either fear or anxiety about it; 
nor ever suffer any grievous, or even any serious disappointment. 
    Human life itself, as well as every different advantage or 
disadvantage which can attend it, might, they said, according to 
Different circumstances, be the proper object either of our 
choice or of our rejection. If, in our actual situation, there 
were more circumstances agreeable to nature than contrary to it; 
more circumstances which were the objects of choice than of 
rejection; life, in this case, was, upon the whole, the proper 
object of choice, and the propriety of conduct required that we 
should remain in it. If, on the other hand, there were, in our 
actual situation, without any probable hope of amendment, more 
circumstances contrary to nature than agreeable to it; more 
circumstances which were the objects of rejection than of choice; 
life itself, in this case, became, to a wise man, the object of 
rejection, and he was not only at liberty to remove out of it, 
but the propriety of conduct, the rule which the Gods had given 
him for the direction of his conduct, required him to do so. I am 
ordered, says Epictetus, not to dwell at Nicopolis. I do not 
dwell there. I am ordered not to dwell at Athens. I do not dwell 
at Athens. I am ordered not to dwell in Rome. I do not dwell in 
Rome. I am ordered to dwell in the little and rocky island of 
Gyarae. I go and dwell there. But the house smokes in Gyarae. If 
the smoke is moderate, I will bear it, and stay there. If it is 
excessive, I will go to a house from whence no tyrant can remove 
me. I keep in mind always that the door is open, that I can walk 
out when I please, and retire to that hospitable house which is 
at all times open to all the world; for beyond my undermost 
garment, beyond my body, no man living has any power over me. If 
your situation is upon the whole disagreeable; if your house 
smokes too much for you, said the Stoics, walk forth by all 
means. But walk forth without, repining, without murmuring or 
complaining. Walk forth calm, contented, rejoicing, returning 
thanks to the Gods, who, from their infinite bounty, have opened 
the safe and quiet harbour of death, at all times ready to 
receive us from the stormy ocean of human life; who have prepared 
this sacred, this inviolable, this great asylum, always open, 
always accessible; altogether beyond the reach of human rage and 
injustice; and large enough to contain both all those who wish, 
and all those who do not wish to retire to it: an asylum which 
takes away from every man every pretence of complaining, or even 
of fancying that there can be any evil in human life, except such 
as he may suffer from his own folly and weakness. 
    The Stoics, in the few fragments of their philosophy which 
have come down to us, sometimes talk of leaving life with a 
gaiety, and even with a levity, which, were we to consider those 
passages by themselves, might induce us to believe that they 
imagined we could with propriety leave it whenever we had a mind, 
wantonly and capriciously, upon the slightest disgust or 
uneasiness. 'When you sup with such a person,' says Epictetus, 
'you complain of the long stories which he tells you about his 
Mysian wars. "Now my friend, says he, having told you how I took 
possession of an eminence at such a place, I will tell you how I 
was besieged in such another place." But if you have a mind not 
to be troubled with his long stories, do not accept of his 
supper. If you accept of his supper, you have not the least 
pretence to complain of his long stories. It is the same case 
with what you call the evils of human life. Never complain of 
that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself.' 
Notwithstanding this gaiety and even levity of expression, 
however, the alternative of leaving life, or of remaining in it, 
was, according to the Stoics, a matter of the most serious and 
important deliberation. We ought never to leave it till we were 
distinctly called upon to do so by that superintending power 
which had originally placed us in it. But we were to consider 
ourselves as called upon to do so, not merely at the appointed 
and unavoidable term of human life. Whenever the providence of 
that superintending Power had rendered our condition in life upon 
the whole the proper object rather of rejection than of choice; 
the great rule which he had given us for the direction of our 
conduct, then required us to leave it. We might then be said to 
hear the awful and benevolent voice of that divine Being 
distinctly calling upon us to do so. 
    It was upon this account that, according to the Stoics, it 
might be the duty of a wise man to remove out of life though he 
was perfectly happy; while, on the contrary, it might be the duty 
of a weak man to remain in it, though he was necessarily 
miserable. If, in the situation of the wise man, there were more 
circumstances which were the natural objects of rejection than of 
choice, the whole situation became the object of rejection, and 
the rule which the Gods had given him for the direction of his 
conduct, required that he should remove out of it as speedily as 
particular circumstances might render convenient. He was, 
however, perfectly happy even during the time that he might think 
proper to remain in it. He had placed his happiness, not in 
obtaining the objects of his choice, or in avoiding those of his 
rejection; but in always choosing and rejecting with exact 
propriety; not in the success, but in the fitness of his 
endeavours and exertions. If, in the situation of the weak man, 
on the contrary, there were more circumstances which were the 
natural objects of choice than of rejection; his whole situation 
became the proper object of choice, and it was his duty to remain 
in it. He was unhappy, however, from not knowing how to use those 
circumstances. Let his cards be ever so good, he did not know how 
to play them, and could enjoy no sort of real satisfaction, 
either in the progress, or in the event of the game, in whatever 
manner it might happen to turn out.(8*) 
    The propriety, upon some occasions, of voluntary death, 
though it was, perhaps, more insisted upon by the Stoics, than by 
any other sect of ancient philosophers, was, however, a doctrine 
common to them all, even to the peaceable and indolent 
Epicureans. During the age in which flourished the founders of 
all the principal sects of ancient philosophy; during the 
Peloponnesian war and for many years after its conclusion, all 
the different republics of Greece were, at home, almost always 
distracted by the most furious factions; and abroad, involved in 
the most sanguinary wars, in which each sought, not merely 
superiority or dominion, but either completely to extirpate all 
its enemies, or, what was not less cruel, to reduce them into the 
vilest of all states, that of domestic slavery, and to sell them, 
man, woman, and child, like so many herds of cattle, to the 
highest bidder in the market. The smallness of the greater part 
of those states, too, rendered it, to each of them, no very 
improbable event, that it might itself fall into that very 
calamity which it had so frequently, either, perhaps, actually 
inflicted, or at least attempted to inflict upon some of its 
neighbours. In this disorderly state of things, the most perfect 
innocence, joined to both the highest rank and the greatest 
public services, could give no security to any man that, even at 
home and among his own relations and fellow-citizens, he was not, 
at some time or another, from the prevalence of some hostile and 
furious faction, to be condemned to the most cruel and 
ignominious punishment. If he was taken prisoner in war, or if 
the city of which he was a member was conquered, he was exposed, 
if possible, to still greater injuries and insults. But every man 
naturally, or rather necessarily, familiarizes his imagination 
with the distresses to which he foresees that his situation may 
frequently expose him. It is impossible that a sailor should not 
frequently think of storms and shipwrecks, and foundering at sea, 
and of how he himself is likely both to feel and to act upon such 
occasions. It was impossible, in the same manner, that a Grecian 
patriot or hero should not familiarize his imagination with all 
the different calamities to which he was sensible his situation 
must frequently, or rather constantly expose him. As an American 
savage prepares his death-song, and considers how he should act 
when he has fallen into the hands of his enemies, and is by them 
put to death in the most lingering tortures, and amidst the 
insults and derision of all the spectators; so a Grecian patriot 
or hero could not avoid frequently employing his thoughts in 
considering what he ought both to suffer and to do in banishment, 
in captivity, when reduced to slavery, when put to the torture, 
when brought to the scaffold. But the philosophers of all the 
different sects very justly represented virtue; that is, wise, 
just, firm, and temperate conduct; not only as the most probable, 
but as the certain and infallible road to happiness even in this 
life. This conduct, however, could not always exempt, and might 
even sometimes expose the person who followed it to all the 
calamities which were incident to that unsettled situation of 
public affairs. They endeavoured, therefore, to show that 
happiness was either altogether, or at least in a great measure, 
independent of fortune; the Stoics, that it was so altogether; 
the Academic and Peripatetic philosophers, that it was so in a 
great measure. Wise, prudent, and good conduct was, in the first 
place, the conduct most likely to ensure success in every species 
of undertaking; and secondly, though it should fail of success, 
yet the mind was not left without consolation. The virtuous man 
might still enjoy the complete approbation of his own breast; and 
might still feel that, how untoward soever things might be 
without, all was calm and peace and concord within. He might 
generally comfort himself, too, with the assurance that he 
possessed the love and esteem of every intelligent and impartial 
spectator, who could not fail both to admire his conduct, and to 
regret his misfortune. 
    Those philosophers endeavoured, at the same time, to show, 
that the greatest misfortunes to which human life was liable, 
might be supported more easily than was commonly imagined. They 
endeavoured to point out the comforts which a man might still 
enjoy when reduced to poverty, when driven into banishment, when 
exposed to the injustice of popular clamour, when labouring under 
blindness, under deafness, in the extremity of old age, upon the 
approach of death. They pointed out, too, the considerations 
which might contribute to support his constancy under the agonies 
of pain and even of torture, in sickness, in sorrow for the loss 
of children, for the death of friends and relations, etc. The few 
fragments which have come down to us of what the ancient 
philosophers had written upon these subjects, form, perhaps, one 
of the most instructive, as well as one of the most interesting 
remains of antiquity. The spirit and manhood of their doctrines 
make a wonderful contrast with the desponding, plaintive, and 
whining tone of some modern systems. 
    But while those ancient philosophers endeavoured in this 
manner to suggest every consideration which could, as Milton 
says, arm the obdured breast with stubborn patience, as with 
triple steel; they, at the same time, laboured above all to 
convince their followers that there neither was nor could be any 
evil in death; and that, if their situation became at any time 
too hard for their constancy to support, the remedy was at hand, 
the door was open, and they might, without fear, walk out when 
they pleased. If there was no world beyond the present, death, 
they said, could be no evil; and if there was another world, the 
Gods must likewise be in that other, and a just man could fear no 
evil while under their protection. Those philosophers, in short, 
prepared a death-song, if I may say so, which the Grecian 
patriots and heroes might make use of upon the proper occasions; 
and, of all the different sects, the Stoics, I think it must be 
acknowledged, had prepared by far the most animated and spirited 
song. 
    Suicide, however, never seems to have been very common among 
the Greeks. Excepting Cleomenes, I cannot at present recollect 
any very illustrious either patriot or hero of Greece, who died 
by his own hand. The death of Aristomenes is as much beyond the 
period of true history as that of Ajax. The common story of the 
death of Themistocles, though within that period, bears upon its 
face all the marks of a most romantic fable. Of all the Greek 
heroes whose lives have been written by Plutarch, Cleomenes 
appears to have been the only one who perished in this manner. 
Theramines, Socrates, and Phocion, who certainly did not want 
courage, suffered themselves to be sent to prison, and submitted 
patiently to that death to which the injustice of their 
fellow-citizens had condemned them. The brave Eumenes allowed 
himself to be delivered up, by his own mutinous soldiers, to his 
enemy Antigonus, and was starved to death, without attempting any 
violence. The gallant Philopoemen suffered himself to be taken 
prisoner by the Messenians, was thrown into a dungeon, and was 
supposed to have been privately poisoned. Several of the 
philosophers, indeed, are said to have died in this manner; but 
their lives have been so very foolishly written, that very little 
credit is due to the greater part of the tales which are told of 
them. Three different accounts have been given of the death of 
Zeno the Stoic. One is, that after enjoying, for ninety-eight 
years, the most perfect state of health, he happened, in going 
out of his school, to fall; and though he suffered no other 
damage than that of breaking or dislocating one of his fingers, 
he struck the ground with his hand, and, in the words of the 
Niobe of Euripides, said, I come, why doest thou call me? and 
immediately went home and hanged himself. At that great age, one 
should think, he might have had a little more patience. Another 
account is, that, at the same age, and in consequence of a like 
accident, he starved himself to death. The third account is, 
that, at seventy-two years of age, he died in the natural way; by 
far the most probable account of the three, and supported too by 
the authority of a co-temporary, who must have had every 
opportunity of being well informed; of Persaeus, originally the 
slave, and afterwards the friend and disciple of Zeno. The first 
account is given by Apollonius of Tyre, who flourished about the 
time of Augustus Caesar, between two and three hundred years 
after the death of Zeno. I know not who is the author of the 
second account. Apollonius, who was himself a Stoic, had probably 
thought it would do honour to the founder of a sect which talked 
so much about voluntary death, to die in this manner by his own 
hand. Men of letters, though, after their death, they are 
frequently more talked of than the greatest princes or statesmen 
of their times, are generally, during their life, so obscure and 
insignificant that their adventures are seldom recorded by 
co-temporary historians. Those of after-ages, in order to satisfy 
the public curiosity, and having no authentic documents either to 
support or to contradict their narratives, seem frequently to 
have fashioned them according to their own fancy; and almost 
always with a great mixture of the marvellous. In this particular 
case the marvellous, though supported by no authority, seems to 
have prevailed over the probable, though supported by the best. 
Diogenes Laertius plainly gives the preference to the story of 
Apollonius. Lucian and Lactantius appear both to have given 
credit to that of the great age and of the violent death. 
    This fashion of voluntary death appears to have been much 
more prevalent among the proud Romans, than it ever was among the 
lively, ingenious, and accommodating Greeks. Even among the 
Romans, the fashion seems not to have been established in the 
early and, what are called, the virtuous ages of the republic. 
The common story of the death of Regulus, though probably a 
fable, could never have been invented, had it been supposed that 
any dishonour could fall upon that hero, from patiently 
submitting to the tortures which the Carthaginians are said to 
have inflicted upon him. In the later ages of the republic some 
dishonour I apprehend, would have attended this submission. In 
the different civil wars which preceded the fall of the 
commonwealth, many of the eminent men of all the contending 
parties chose rather to perish by their own hands, than to fall 
into those of their enemies. The death of Cato, celebrated by 
Cicero, and censured by Caesar, and become the subject of a very 
serious controversy between, perhaps, the two most illustrious 
advocates that the world had ever beheld, stamped a character of 
splendour upon this method of dying which it seems to have 
retained for several ages after. The eloquence of Cicero was 
superior to that of Caesar. The admiring prevailed greatly over 
the censuring party, and the lovers of liberty, for many ages 
afterwards, looked up to Cato as to the most venerable martyr of 
the republican party. The head of a party, the Cardinal de Retz 
observes, may do what he pleases; as long as he retains the 
confidence of his own friends, he can never do wrong; a maxim of 
which his Eminence had himself, upon several occasions, an 
opportunity of experiencing the truth. Cato, it seems, joined to 
his other virtues that of an excellent bottle companion. His 
enemies accused him of drunkenness, but, says Seneca, whoever 
objected this vice to Cato, will find it much easier to prove 
that drunkenness is a virtue, than that Cato could be addicted to 
any vice. 
    Under the Emperors this method of dying seems to have been, 
for a long time, perfectly fashionable. In the epistles of Pliny 
we find an account of several persons who chose to die in this 
manner, rather from vanity and ostentation, it would seem, than 
from what would appear, even to a sober and judicious Stoic, any 
proper or necessary reason. Even the ladies, who are seldom 
behind in following the fashion, seem frequently to have chosen, 
most unnecessarily, to die in this manner; and, like the ladies 
in Bengal, to accompany, upon some occasions, their husbands to 
the tomb. The prevalence of this fashion certainly occasioned 
many deaths which would not otherwise have happened. All the 
havock, however, which this, perhaps the highest exertion of 
human vanity and impertinence, could occasion, would, probably, 
at no time, be very great. 
    The principle of suicide, the principle which would teach us, 
upon some occasions, to consider that violent action as an object 
of applause and approbation, seems to be altogether a refinement 
of philosophy. Nature, in her sound and healthful state, seems 
never to prompt us to suicide. There is, indeed, a species of 
melancholy (a disease to which human nature, among its other 
calamities, is unhappily subject) which seems to be accompanied 
with, what one may call, an irresistible appetite for 
self-destruction. In circumstances often of the highest external 
prosperity, and sometimes too, in spite even of the most serious 
and deeply impressed sentiments of religion, this disease has 
frequently been known to drive its wretched victims to this fatal 
extremity. The unfortunate persons who perish in this miserable 
manner, are the proper objects, not of censure, but of 
commiseration. To attempt to punish them, when they are beyond 
the reach of all human punishment, is not more absurd than it is 
unjust. That punishment can fall only on their surviving friends 
and relations, who are always perfectly innocent, and to whom the 
loss of their friend, in this disgraceful manner, must always be 
alone a very heavy calamity. Nature, in her sound and healthful 
state, prompts us to avoid distress upon all occasions; upon many 
occasions to defend ourselves against it, though at the hazard, 
or even with the certainty of perishing in that defence. But, 
when we have neither been able to defend ourselves from it, nor 
have perished in that defence, no natural principle, no regard to 
the approbation of the supposed impartial spectator, to the 
judgment of the man within the breast, seems to call upon us to 
escape from it by destroying ourselves. It is only the 
consciousness of our own weakness, of our own incapacity to 
support the calamity with proper manhood and firmness, which can 
drive us to this resolution. I do not remember to have either 
read or heard of any American savage, who, upon being taken 
prisoner by some hostile tribe, put himself to death, in order to 
avoid being afterwards put to death in torture, and amidst the 
insults and mockery of his enemies. He places his glory in 
supporting those torments with manhood, and in retorting those 
insults with tenfold contempt and derision. 
    This contempt of life and death, however, and, at the same 
time, the most entire submission to the order of Providence; the 
most complete contentment with every event which the current of 
human affairs could possibly cast up, may be considered as the 
two fundamental doctrines upon which rested the whole fabric of 
Stoical morality. The independent and spirited, but often harsh 
Epictetus, may be considered as the great apostle of the first of 
those doctrines: the mild, the humane, the benevolent Antoninus, 
of the second. 
    The emancipated slave of Epaphriditus, who, in his youth, had 
been subjected to the insolence of a brutal master, who, in his 
riper years, was, by the jealousy and caprice of Domitian, 
banished from Rome and Athens, and obliged to dwell at Nicopolis, 
and who, by the same tyrant, might expect every moment to be sent 
to Gyarae, or, perhaps, to be put to death; could preserve his 
tranquillity only by fostering in his mind the most sovereign 
contempt of human life. He never exults so much, accordingly his 
eloquence is never so animated as when he represents the futility 
and nothingness of all its pleasures and all its pains. 
    The good-natured Emperor, the absolute sovereign of the whole 
civilized part of the world, who certainly had no peculiar reason 
to complain of his own allotment, delights in expressing his 
contentment with the ordinary course of things, and in pointing 
out beauties even in those parts of it where vulgar observers are 
not apt to see any. There is a propriety and even an engaging 
grace, he observes, in old age as well as in youth; and the 
weakness and decrepitude of the one state are as suitable to 
nature as the bloom and vigour of the other. Death, too, is just 
as proper a termination of old age, as youth is of childhood, or 
manhood of youth. As we frequently say, he remarks upon another 
occasion, that the physician has ordered to such a man to ride on 
horseback, or to use the cold bath, or to walk barefooted; so 
ought we to say, that Nature, the great conductor and physician 
of the universe, has ordered to such a man a disease, or the 
amputation of a limb, or the loss of a child. By the 
prescriptions of ordinary physicians the patient swallows many a 
bitter potion; undergoes many a painful operation. From the very 
uncertain hope, however, that health may be the consequence, he 
gladly submits to all. The harshest prescriptions of the great 
Physician of nature, the patient may, in the same manner, hope 
will contribute to his own health, to his own final prosperity 
and happiness: and he may be perfectly assured that they not only 
contribute, but are indispensably necessary to the health, to the 
prosperity and happiness of the universe, to the furtherance and 
advancement of the great plan of Jupiter. Had they not been so, 
the universe would never have produced them; its all-wise 
Architect and Conductor would never have suffered them to happen. 
As all, even the smallest of the co-existent parts of the 
universe, are exactly fitted to one another, and all contribute 
to compose one immense and connected system; so all, even 
apparently the most insignificant of the successive events which 
follow one another, make parts, and necessary parts, of that 
great chain of causes and effects which had no beginning, and 
which will have no end; and which, as they all necessarily result 
from the original arrangement and contrivance of the whole; so 
they are all essentially necessary, not only to its prosperity, 
but to its continuance and preservation. Whoever does not 
cordially embrace whatever befals him, whoever is sorry that it 
has befallen him, whoever wishes that it had not befallen him, 
wishes, so far as in him lies, to stop the motion of the 
universe, to break that great chain of succession, by the 
progress of which that system can alone be continued and 
preserved, and, for some little conveniency of his own, to 
disorder and discompose the whole machine of the world. 'O 
world,' says he, in another place, 'all things are suitable to me 
which are suitable to thee. Nothing is too early or too late to 
me which is seasonable for thee. All is fruit to me which thy 
seasons bring forth. From thee are all things; in thee are all 
things; for thee are all things. One man says, O beloved city of 
Cecrops. Wilt not thou say, O beloved city of God?' 
    From these very sublime doctrines the Stoics, or at least 
some of the Stoics, attempted to deduce all their paradoxes. 
    The Stoical wise man endeavoured to enter into the views of 
the great Superintendant of the universe, and to see things in 
the same light in which that divine Being beheld them. But, to 
the great Superintendant of the universe, all the different 
events which the course of his providence may bring forth, what 
to us appear the smallest and the greatest, the bursting of a 
bubble, as Mr Pope says, and that of a world, for example, were 
perfectly equal, were equally parts of that great chain which he 
had predestined from all eternity, were equally the effects of 
the same unerring wisdom, of the same universal and boundless 
benevolence. To the Stoical wise man, in the same manner, all 
those different events were perfectly equal. In the course of 
those events, indeed, a little department, in which he had 
himself some little management and direction, had been assigned 
to him. In this department he endeavoured to act as properly as 
he could, and to conduct himself according to those orders which, 
he understood, had been prescribed to him. But he took no anxious 
or passionate concern either in the success, or in the 
disappointment of his own most faithful endeavours. The highest 
prosperity and the total destruction of that little department, 
of that little system which had been in some measure committed to 
his charge, were perfectly indifferent to him. If those events 
had depended upon him, he would have chosen the one, and he would 
have rejected the other. But as they did not depend upon him, he 
trusted to a superior wisdom, and was perfectly satisfied that 
the event which happened, whatever it might be, was the very 
event which he himself, had he known all the connections and 
dependencies of things, would most earnestly and devoutly have 
wished for. Whatever he did under the influence and direction of 
those principles was equally perfect; and when he stretched out 
his finger, to give the example which they commonly made use of, 
he performed an action in every respect as meritorious, as worthy 
of praise and admiration, as when he laid down his life for the 
service of his country. As, to the great Superintendant of the 
universe, the greatest and the smallest exertions of his power, 
the formation and dissolution of a world, the formation and 
dissolution of a bubble, were equally easy, were equally 
admirable, and equally the effects of the same divine wisdom and 
benevolence; so, to the Stoical wise man, what we would call the 
great action required no more exertion than the little one, was 
equally easy, proceeded from exactly the same principles, was in 
no respect more meritorious, nor worthy of any higher degree of 
praise and admiration. 
    As all those who had arrived at this state of perfection, 
were equally happy. so all those who fell in the smallest degree 
short of it, how nearly soever they might approach to it, were 
equally miserable. As the man, they said, who was but an inch 
below the surface of the water, could no more breathe than he who 
was an hundred yards below it; so the man who had not completely 
subdued all his private, partial, and selfish passions, who had 
any other earnest desire but that for the universal happiness, 
who had not completely emerged from that abyss of misery and 
disorder into which his anxiety for the gratification of those 
private, partial, and selfish passions had involved him, could no 
more breathe the free air of liberty and independency, could no 
more enjoy the security and happiness of the wise man, than he 
who was most remote from that situation. As all the actions of 
the wise man were perfect, and equally perfect; so all those of 
the man who had not arrived at this supreme wisdom were faulty, 
and, as some Stoics pretended, equally faulty. As one truth, they 
said, could not be more true, nor one falsehood more false than 
another; so an honourable action could not be more honourable, 
nor a shameful one more shameful than another. As in shooting at 
a mark, the man who missed it by an inch had equally missed it 
with him who had done so by a hundred yards; so the man who, in 
what to us appears the most insignificant action, had acted 
improperly and without a sufficient reason, was equally faulty 
with him who had done so in, what to us appears, the most 
important; the man who has killed a cock, for example, improperly 
and without a sufficient reason, with him who had murdered his 
father. 
    If the first of those two paradoxes should appear 
sufficiently violent, the second is evidently too absurd to 
deserve any serious consideration. It is, indeed, so very absurd 
that one can scarce help suspecting that it must have been in 
some measure misunderstood or misrepresented. At any rate, I 
cannot allow myself to believe that such men as Zeno or 
Cleanthes, men, it is said, of the most simple as well as of the 
most sublime eloquence, could be the authors, either of these, or 
of the greater part of the other Stoical paradoxes, which are in 
general mere impertinent quibbles, and do so little honour to 
their system that I shall give no further account of them. I am 
disposed to impute them rather to Chrysippus, the disciple and 
follower, indeed, of Zeno and Cleanthes, but who, from all that 
has been delivered down to us concerning him, seems to have been 
a mere dialectical pedant, without taste or elegance of any kind. 
He may have been the first who reduced their doctrines into a 
scholastic or technical system of artificial definitions, 
divisions, and subdivisions; one of the most effectual 
expedients, perhaps, for extinguishing whatever degree of good 
sense there may be in any moral or metaphysical doctrine. Such a 
man may very easily be supposed to have understood too literally 
some animated expressions of his masters in describing the 
happiness of the man of perfect virtue, and the unhappiness of 
whoever fell short of that character. 
    The Stoics in general seem to have admitted that there might 
be a degree of proficiency in those who had not advanced to 
perfect virtue and happiness. They distributed those proficients 
into different classes, according to the degree of their 
advancement; and they called the imperfect virtues which they 
supposed them capable of exercising, not rectitudes, but 
proprieties, fitnesses, decent and becoming actions, for which a 
plausible or probable reason could be assigned, what Cicero 
expresses by the Latin word officia, and Seneca, I think more 
exactly, by that of convenientia. The doctrine of those 
imperfect, but attainable virtues, seems to have constituted what 
we may call the practical morality of the Stoics. It is the 
subject of Cicero's Offices; and is said to have been that of 
another book written by Marcus Brutus, but which is now lost. 
    The plan and system which Nature has sketched out for our 
conduct, seems to be altogether different from that of the 
Stoical philosophy. 
    By Nature the events which immediately affect that little 
department in which we ourselves have some little management and 
direction, which immediately affect ourselves, our friends, our 
country, are the events which interest us the most, and which 
chiefly excite our desires and aversions, our hopes and fears, 
our joys and sorrows. Should those passions be, what they are 
very apt to be, too vehement, Nature has provided a proper remedy 
and correction. The real or even the imaginary presence of the 
impartial spectator, the authority of the man within the breast, 
is always at hand to overawe them into the proper tone and temper 
of moderation. 
    If, notwithstanding our most faithful exertions, all the 
events which can affect this little department, should turn out 
the most unfortunate and disastrous, Nature has by no means left 
us without consolation. That consolation may be drawn, not only 
from the complete approbation of the man within the breast, but, 
if possible, from a still nobler and more generous principle, 
from a firm reliance upon, and a reverential submission to, that 
benevolent wisdom which directs all the events of human life, and 
which, we may be assured, would never have suffered those 
misfortunes to happen, had they not been indispensably necessary 
for the good of the whole. 
    Nature has not prescribed to us this sublime contemplation as 
the great business and occupation of our lives. She only points 
it out to us as the consolation of our misfortunes. The Stoical 
philosophy prescribes it as the great business and occupation of 
our lives. That philosophy teaches us to interest ourselves 
earnestly and anxiously in no events, external to the good order 
of our own minds, to the propriety of our own choosing and 
rejecting, except in those which concern a department where we 
neither have nor ought to have any sort of management or 
direction, the department of the great Superintendant of the 
universe. By the perfect apathy which it prescribes to us, by 
endeavouring, not merely to moderate, but to eradicate all our 
private, partial, and selfish affections, by suffering us to feel 
for whatever can befall ourselves, our friends, our country, not 
even the sympathetic and reduced passions of the impartial 
spectator, it endeavours to render us altogether indifferent and 
unconcerned in the success or miscarriage of every thing which 
Nature has prescribed to us as the proper business and occupation 
of our lives. 
    The reasonings of philosophy, it may be said, though they may 
confound and perplex the understanding, can never break down the 
necessary connection which Nature has established between causes 
and their effects. The causes which naturally excite our desires 
and aversions, our hopes and fears, our joys and sorrows, would 
no doubt, notwithstanding all the reasonings of Stoicism, produce 
upon each individual, according to the degree of his actual 
sensibility, their proper and necessary effects. The judgments of 
the man within the breast, however, might be a good deal affected 
by those reasonings, and that great inmate might be taught by 
them to attempt to overawe all our private, partial, and selfish 
affections into a more or less perfect tranquillity. To direct 
the judgments of this inmate is the great purpose of all systems 
of morality. That the Stoical philosophy had very great influence 
upon the character and conduct of its followers, cannot be 
doubted; and that though it might sometimes incite them to 
unnecessary violence, its general tendency was to animate them to 
actions of the most heroic magnanimity and most extensive 
benevolence. 
    IV. Besides these ancient, there are some modern systems, 
according to which virtue consists in propriety; or in the 
suitableness of the affection from which we act, to the cause or 
object which excites it. The system of Dr Clark, which places 
virtue in acting according to the relations of things, in 
regulating our conduct according to the fitness or incongruity 
which there may be in the application of certain actions to 
certain things, or to certain relations: that of Mr Woollaston, 
which places it in acting according to the truth of things, 
according to their proper nature and essence, or in treating them 
as what they really are, and not as what they are not: that of my 
Lord Shaftesbury, which places it in maintaining a proper balance 
of the affections, and in allowing no passion to go beyond its 
proper sphere; are all of them more or less inaccurate 
descriptions of the same fundamental idea. 
    None of those systems either give, or even pretend to give, 
any precise or distinct measure by which this fitness or 
propriety of affection can be ascertained or judged of. That 
precise and distinct measure can be found nowhere but in the 
sympathetic feelings of the impartial and well-informed 
spectator. 
    The description of virtue, besides, which is either given, or 
at least meant and intended to be given in each of those systems, 
for some of the modern authors are not very fortunate in their 
manner of expressing themselves, is no doubt quite just, so far 
as it goes. There is no virtue without propriety, and wherever 
there is propriety some degree of approbation is due. But still 
this description is imperfect. For though propriety is an 
essential ingredient in every virtuous action, it is not always 
the sole ingredient. Beneficent actions have in them another 
quality by which they appear not only to deserve approbation but 
recompense. None of those systems account either easily or 
sufficiently for that superior degree of esteem which seems due 
to such actions, or for that diversity of sentiment which they 
naturally excite. Neither is the description of vice more 
complete. For, in the same manner, though impropriety is a 
necessary ingredient in every vicious action, it is not always 
the sole ingredient; and there is often the highest degree of 
absurdity and impropriety in very harmless and insignificant 
actions. Deliberate actions, of a pernicious tendency to those we 
live with, have, besides their impropriety, a peculiar quality of 
their own by which they appear to deserve, not only 
disapprobation, but punishment; and to be the objects, not of 
dislike merely, but of resentment and revenge: and none of those 
systems easily and sufficiently account for that superior degree 
of detestation which we feel for such actions. 
Chap. II 
Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Prudence 
    The most ancient of those systems which make virtue consist 
in prudence, and of which any considerable remains have come down 
to us, is that of Epicurus, who is said, however, to have 
borrowed all the leading principles of his philosophy from some 
of those who had gone before him, particularly from Aristippus; 
though it is very probable, notwithstanding this allegation of 
his enemies, that at least his manner of applying those 
principles was altogether his own. 
    According to Epicurus,(9*) bodily pleasure and pain were the 
sole ultimate objects of natural desire and aversion. That they 
were always the natural objects of those passions, he thought 
required no proof. Pleasure might, indeed, appear sometimes to be 
avoided; not, however, because it was pleasure, but because, by 
the enjoyment of it, we should either forfeit some greater 
pleasure, or expose ourselves to some pain that was more to be 
avoided than this pleasure was to be desired. Pain, in the same 
manner, might appear sometimes to be eligible; not, however, 
because it was pain, but because by enduring it we might either 
avoid a still greater pain, or acquire some pleasure of much more 
importance. That bodily pain and pleasure, therefore, were always 
the natural objects of desire and aversion, was, he thought, 
abundantly evident. Nor was it less so, he imagined, that they 
were the sole ultimate objects of those passions. Whatever else 
was either desired or avoided, was so, according to him, upon 
account of its tendency to produce one or other of those 
sensations. The tendency to procure pleasure rendered power and 
riches desirable, as the contrary tendency to produce pain made 
poverty and insignificancy the objects of aversion. Honour and 
reputation were valued, because the esteem and love of those we 
live with were of the greatest consequence both to procure 
pleasure and to defend us from pain. Ignominy and bad fame, on 
the contrary, were to be avoided, because the hatred, contempt 
and resentment of those we lived with, destroyed all security, 
and necessarily exposed us to the greatest bodily evils. 
    All the pleasures and pains of the mind were, according to 
Epicurus, ultimately derived from those of the body. The mind was 
happy when it thought of the past pleasures of the body, and 
hoped for others to come: and it was miserable when it thought of 
the pains which the body had formerly endured, and dreaded the 
same or greater thereafter. 
    But the pleasures and pains of the mind, though ultimately 
derived from those of the body, were vastly greater than their 
originals. The body felt only the sensation of the present 
instant, whereas the mind felt also the past and the future, the 
one by remembrance, the other by anticipation, and consequently 
both suffered and enjoyed much more. When we are under the 
greatest bodily pain, he observed, we shall always find, if we 
attend to it, that it is not the suffering of the present instant 
which chiefly torments us, but either the agonizing remembrance 
of the past, or the yet more horrible dread of the future. The 
pain of each instant, considered by itself, and cut off from all 
that goes before and all that comes after it, is a trifle, not 
worth the regarding. Yet this is all which the boDy can ever be 
said to suffer. In the same manner, when we enjoy the greatest 
pleasure, we shall always find that the bodily sensation, the 
sensation of the present instant, makes but a small part of our 
happiness, that our enjoyment chiefly arises either from the 
cheerful recollection of the past, or the still more joyous 
anticipation of the future, and that the mind always contributes 
by much the largest share of the entertainment. 
    Since our happiness and misery, therefore, depended chiefly 
on the mind, if this part of our nature was well disposed, if our 
thoughts and opinions were as they should be, it was of little 
importance in what manner our body was affected. Though under 
great bodily pain, we might still enjoy a considerable share of 
happiness, if our reason and judgment maintained their 
superiority. We might entertain ourselves with the remembrance of 
past, and with the hopes of future pleasure; we might soften the 
rigour of our pains, by recollecting what it was which, even in 
this situation, we were under any necessity of suffering. That 
this was merely the bodily sensation, the pain of the present 
instant, which by itself could never be very great. That whatever 
agony we suffered from the dread of its continuance, was the 
effect of an opinion of the mind, which might be corrected by 
juster sentiments; by considering that, if our pains were 
violent, they would probably be of short duration; and that if 
they were of long continuance, they would probably be moderate, 
and admit of many intervals of ease; and that, at any rate, death 
was always at hand and within call to deliver us, which as, 
according to him, it put an end to all sensation, either of pain 
or pleasure, could not be regarded as an evil. When we are, said 
he, death is not; and when death is, we are not; death therefore 
can be nothing to us. 
    If the actual sensation of positive pain was in itself so 
little to be feared, that of pleasure was still less to be 
desired. Naturally the sensation of pleasure was much less 
pungent than that of pain. If, therefore, this last could take so 
very little from the happiness of a well-disposed mind, the other 
could add scarce any thing to it. When the body was free from 
pain and the mind from fear and anxiety, the superadded sensation 
of bodily pleasure could be of very little importance; and though 
it might diversify could not properly be said to increase the 
happiness of the situation. 
    In ease of body, therefore, and in security or tranquillity 
of mind, consisted, according to Epicurus, the most perfect state 
of human nature, the most complete happiness which man was 
capable of enjoying. To obtain this great end of natural desire 
was the sole object of all the virtues, which, according to him, 
were not desirable upon their own account, but upon account of 
their tendency to bring about this situation. 
    Prudence, for example, though, according to this philosophy, 
the source and principle of all the virtues, was not desirable 
upon its own account. That careful and laborious and circumspect 
state of mind, ever watchful and ever attentive to the most 
distant consequences of every action. could not be a thing 
pleasant or agreeable for its own sake, but upon account of its 
tendency to procure the greatest goods and to keep off the 
greatest evils. 
    To abstain from pleasure too, to curb and restrain our 
natural passions for enjoyment, which was the office of 
temperance, could never be desirable for its own sake. The whole 
value of this virtue arose from its utility, from its enabling us 
to postpone the present enjoyment for the sake of a greater to 
come, or to avoid a greater pain that might ensue from it. 
Temperance, in short, was nothing but prudence with regard to 
pleasure. 
    To support labour, to endure pain, to be exposed to danger or 
to death, the situations which fortitude would often lead us 
into, were surely still less the objects of natural desire. They 
were chosen only to avoid greater evils. We submitted to labour, 
in order to avoid the greater shame and pain of poverty, and we 
exposed ourselves to danger and to death in defence of our 
liberty and property, the means and instruments of pleasure and 
happiness; or in defence of our country, in the safety of which 
our own was necessarily comprehended. Fortitude enabled us to do 
all this cheerfully, as the best which, in our present situation, 
could possibly be done, and was in reality no more than prudence, 
good judgment, and presence of mind in properly appreciating 
pain, labour, and danger, always choosing the less in order to 
avoid the greater. 
    It is the same case with justice. To abstain from what is 
another's was not desirable on its own account, and it could not 
surely be better for you, that I should possess what is my own, 
than that you should possess it. You ought, however, to abstain 
from whatever belongs to me, because by doing otherwise you will 
provoke the resentment and indication of mankind. The security 
and tranquillity of your mind will be entirely destroyed. You 
will be filled with fear and consternation at the thought of that 
punishment which you will imagine that men are at all times ready 
to inflict upon you, and from which no power, no art, no 
concealment, will ever, in your own fancy, be sufficient to 
protect you. That other species of justice which. consists in 
doing proper good offices to different persons, according to the 
various relations of neighbours, kinsmen, friends, benefactors, 
superiors, or equals, which they may stand in to us, is 
recommended by the same reasons. To act properly in all these 
different relations procures us the esteem and love of those we 
live with; as to do otherwise excites their contempt and hatred. 
By the one we naturally secure, by the other we necessarily 
endanger our own ease and tranquillity, the great and ultimate 
objects of all our desires. The whole virtue of justice, 
therefore, the most important of all the virtues, is no more than 
discreet and prudent conduct with regard to our neighbours. 
    Such is the doctrine of Epicurus concerning the nature of 
virtue. It may seem extraordinary that this philosopher, who is 
described as a person of the most amiable manners, should never 
have observed, that, whatever may be the tendency of those 
virtues, or of the contrary vices, with regard to our bodily ease 
and security, the sentiments which they naturally excite in 
others are the objects of a much more passionate desire or 
aversion than all their other consequences; that to be amiable, 
to be respectable, to be the proper object of esteem, is by every 
well-disposed mind more valued than all the ease and security 
which love, respect, and esteem can procure us; that, on the 
contrary, to be odious, to be contemptible, to be the proper 
object of indignation, is more dreadful than all that we can 
suffer in our body from hatred, contempt, or indignation; and 
that consequently our desire of the one character, and our 
aversion to the other, cannot arise from any regard to the 
effects which either of them is likely to produce upon the body. 
    This system is, no doubt, altogether inconsistent with that 
which I have been endeavouring to establish. It is not difficult, 
however, to discover from what phasis, if I may say so, from what 
particular view or aspect of nature, this account of things 
derives its probability. By the wise contrivance of the Author of 
nature, virtue is upon all ordinary occasions, even with regard 
to this life, real wisdom, and the surest and readiest means of 
obtaining both safety and advantage. Our success or 
disappointment in our undertakings must very much depend upon the 
good or bad opinion which is commonly entertained of us, and upon 
the general disposition of those we live with, either to assist 
or to oppose us. But the best, the surest, the easiest, and the 
readiest way of obtaining the advantageous and of avoiding the 
unfavourable judgments of others, is undoubtedly to render 
ourselves the proper objects of the former and not of the latter. 
'Do you desire,' said Socrates, 'the reputation of a good 
musician? The only sure way of obtaining it, is to become a good 
musician. Would you desire in the same manner to be thought 
capable of serving your country either as a general or as a 
statesman? The best way in this case too is really to acquire the 
art and experience of war and government, and to become really 
fit to be a general or a statesman. And in the same manner if you 
would be reckoned sober, temperate, just, and equitable, the best 
way of acquiring this reputation is to become sober, temperate, 
just, and equitable. If you can really render yourself amiable, 
respectable, and the proper object of esteem, there is no fear of 
your not soon acquiring the love, the respect, and esteem of 
those you live with.' Since the practice of virtue, therefore, is 
in general so advantageous, and that of vice so contrary to our 
interest, the consideration of those opposite tendencies 
undoubtedly stamps an additional beauty and propriety upon the 
one, and a new deformity and impropriety upon the other. 
Temperance, magnanimity, justice, and beneficence, come thus to 
be approved of, not only under their proper characters, but under 
the additional character of the highest wisDom and most real 
prudence. And in the same manner, the contrary vices of 
intemperance, pusillanimity, injustice, and either malevolence or 
sordid selfishness, come to be disapproved of, not only under 
their proper characters, but under the additional character of 
the most short-sighted folly and weakness. Epicurus appears in 
every virtue to have attended to this species of propriety only. 
It is that which is most apt to occur to those who are 
endeavouring to persuade others to regularity of conduct. When 
men by their practice, and perhaps too by their maxims, 
manifestly show that the natural beauty of virtue is not like to 
have much effect upon them, how is it possible to move them but 
by representing the folly of their conduct, and how much they 
themselves are in the end likely to suffer by it? 
    By running up all the different virtues too to this one 
species of propriety, Epicurus indulged a propensity, which is 
natural to all men, but which philosophers in particular are apt 
to cultivate with a peculiar fondness, as the great means of 
displaying their ingenuity, the propensity to account for all 
appearances from as few principles as possible. And he, no doubt, 
indulged this propensity still further, when he referred all the 
primary objects of natural desire and aversion to the pleasures 
and pains of the body. The great patron of the atomical 
philosophy, who took so much pleasure in deducing all the powers 
and qualities of bodies from the most obvious and familiar, the 
figure, motion, and arrangement of the small parts of matter, 
felt no doubt a similar satisfaction, when he accounted, in the 
same manner, for all the sentiments and passions of the mind from 
those which are most obvious and familiar. 
    The system of Epicurus agreed with those of Plato, Aristotle, 
and Zeno, in making virtue consist in acting in the most suitable 
manner to obtain the (10*)primary objects of natural desire. It 
differed from all of them in two other respects; first, in the 
account which it gave of those primary objects of natural desire; 
and secondly, in the account which it gave of the excellence of 
virtue, or of the reason why that quality ought to be esteemed. 
    The primary objects of natural desire consisted, according to 
Epicurus, in bodily pleasure and pain, and in nothing else: 
whereas, according to the other three philosophers, there were 
many other objects, such as knowledge, such as the happiness of 
our relations, of our friends, of our country, which were 
ultimately desirable for their own sakes. 
    Virtue too, according to Epicurus, did not deserve to be 
pursued for its own sake, nor was itself one of the ultimate 
objects of natural appetite, but was eligible only upon account 
of its tendency to prevent pain and to procure ease and pleasure. 
In the opinion of the other three, on the contrary, it was 
desirable, not merely as the means of procuring the other primary 
objects of natural desire, but as something which was in itself 
more valuable than them all. Man, they thought, being born for 
action, his happiness must consist, not merely in the 
agreeableness of his passive sensations, but also in the 
propriety of his active exertions. 
Chap. III 
Of those Systems which make Virtue consist in Benevolence 
    The system which makes virtue consist in benevolence, though 
I think not so ancient as all of those which I have already given 
an account of, is, however, of very great antiquity. It seems to 
have been the doctrine of the greater part of those philosophers 
who, about and after the age of Augustus, called themselves 
Eclectics, who pretended to follow chiefly the opinions of Plato 
and Pythagoras, and who upon that account are commonly known by 
the name of the later Platonists. 
    In the divine nature, according to these authors, benevolence 
or love was the sole principle of action, and directed the 
exertion of all the other attributes. The wisdom of the Deity was 
employed in finding out the means for bringing about those ends 
which his goodness suggested, as his infinite power was exerted 
to execute them. Benevolence, however, was still the supreme and 
governing attribute, to which the others were subservient, and 
from which the whole excellency, or the whole morality, if I may 
be allowed such an expression, of the divine operations, was 
ultimately derived. The whole perfection and virtue of the human 
mind consisted in some resemblance or participation of the divine 
perfections, and, consequently, in being filled with the same 
principle of benevolence and love which influenced all the 
actions of the Deity. The actions of men which flowed from this 
motive were alone truly praise-worthy, or could claim any merit 
in the sight of the Deity. It was by actions of charity and love 
only that we could imitate, as became us, the conduct of God, 
that we could express our humble and devout admiration of his 
infinite perfections, that by fostering in our own minds the same 
divine principle, we could bring our own affections to a greater 
resemblance with his holy attributes, and thereby become more 
proper objects of his love and esteem; till at last we arrived at 
that immediate converse and communication with the Deity to which 
it was the great object of this philosophy to raise us. 
    This system, as it was much esteemed by many ancient fathers 
of the Christian church, so after the Reformation it was adopted 
by several divines of the most eminent piety and learning and of 
the most amiable manners; particularly, by Dr Ralph Cudworth, by 
Dr Henry More, and by Mr John Smith of Cambridge. But of all the 
patrons of this system, ancient or modern, the late Dr Hutcheson 
was undoubtedly, beyond all comparison, the most acute, the most 
distinct, the most philosophical, and what is of the greatest 
consequence of all, the soberest and most judicious. 
    That virtue consists in benevolence is a notion supported by 
many appearances in human nature. It has been observed already, 
that proper benevolence is the most graceful and agreeable of all 
the affections, that it is recommended to us by a double 
sympathy, that as its tendency is necessarily beneficent, it is 
the proper object of gratitude and reward, and that upon all 
these accounts it appears to our natural sentiments to possess a 
merit superior to any other. It has been observed too, that even 
the weaknesses of benevolence are not very disagreeable to us, 
whereas those of every other passion are always extremely 
disgusting. Who does not abhor excessive malice, excessive 
selfishness, or excessive resentment? But the most excessive 
indulgence even of partial friendship is not so offensive. It is 
the benevolent passions only which can exert themselves without 
any regard or attention to propriety, and yet retain something 
about them which is engaging. There is something pleasing even in 
mere instinctive good-will which goes on to do good offices 
without once reflecting whether by this conduct it is the proper 
object either of blame or approbation. It is not so with the 
other passions. The moment they are deserted, the moment they are 
unaccompanied by the sense of propriety, they cease to be 
agreeable. 
    As benevolence bestows upon those actions which proceed from 
it, a beauty superior to all others, so the want of it, and much 
more the contrary inclination, communicates a peculiar deformity 
to whatever evidences such a disposition. Pernicious actions are 
often punishable for no other reason than because they shew a 
want of sufficient attention to the happiness of our neighbour. 
    Besides all this, Dr Hutcheson(11*) observed that whenever in 
any action, supposed to proceed from benevolent affections, some 
other motive had been discovered, our sense of the merit of this 
action was just so far diminished as this motive was believed to 
have influenced it. If an action, supposed to proceed from 
gratitude, should be discovered to have arisen from an 
expectation of some new favour, or if what was apprehended to 
proceed from public spirit, should be found out to have taken its 
origin from the hope of a pecuniary reward, such a discovery 
would entirely destroy all notion of merit or praise-worthiness 
in either of these actions. Since, therefore, the mixture of any 
selfish motive, like that of a baser alloy, diminished or took 
away altogether the merit which would otherwise have belonged to 
any action, it was evident, he imagined, that virtue must consist 
in pure and disinterested benevolence alone. 
    When those actions, on the contrary, which are commonly 
supposed to proceed from a selfish motive, are discovered to have 
arisen from a benevolent one, it greatly enhances our sense of 
their merit. If we believed of any person that he endeavoured to 
advance his fortune from no other view but that of doing friendly 
offices, and of making proper returns to his benefactors, we 
should only love and esteem him the more. And this observation 
seemed still more to confirm the conclusion, that it was 
benevolence only which could stamp upon any action the character 
of virtue. 
    Last of all, what, he imagined, was an evident proof of the 
justness of this account of virtue, in all the disputes of 
casuists concerning the rectitude of conduct, the public good, he 
observed, was the standard to which they constantly referred; 
thereby universally acknowledging that whatever tended to promote 
the happiness of mankind was right and laudable and virtuous, and 
the contrary, wrong, blamable, and vicious. In the late debates 
about passive obeDience and the right of resistance, the sole 
point in controversy among men of sense was, whether universal 
submission would probably be attended with greater evils than 
temporary insurrections when privileges were invaded. Whether 
what, upon the whole, tended most to the happiness of mankind, 
was not also morally good, was never once, he said, made a 
question. 
    Since benevolence, therefore, was the only motive which could 
bestow upon any action the character of virtue, the greater the 
benevolence which was evidenced by any action, the greater the 
praise which must belong to it. 
    Those actions which aimed at the happiness of a great 
community, as they demonstrated a more enlarged benevolence than 
those which aimed only at that of a smaller system, so were they, 
likewise, proportionally the more virtuous. The most virtuous of 
all affections, therefore, was that which embraced as its object 
the happiness of all intelligent beings. The least virtuous, on 
the contrary, of those to which the character of virtue could in 
any respect belong, was that which aimed no further than at the 
happiness of an individual, such as a son, a brother, a friend. 
    In directing all our actions to promote the greatest possible 
good, in submitting all inferior affections to the desire of the 
general happiness of mankind, in regarding one's self but as one 
of the many, whose prosperity was to be pursued no further than 
it was consistent with, or conducive to that of the whole, 
consisted the perfection of virtue. 
    Self-love was a principle which could never be virtuous in 
any degree or in any direction. It was vicious whenever it 
obstructed the general good. When it had no other effect than to 
make the individual take care of his own happiness, it was merely 
innocent, and though it deserved no praise, neither ought it to 
incur any blame. Those benevolent actions which were performed, 
notwithstanding some strong motive from self-interest, were the 
more virtuous upon that account. They demonstrated the strength 
and vigour of the benevolent principle. 
    Dr Hutcheson(12*) was so far from allowing self-love to be in 
any case a motive of virtuous actions, that even a regard to the 
pleasure of self-approbation, to the comfortable applause of our 
own consciences, according to him, diminished the merit of a 
benevolent action. This was a selfish motive, he thought, which, 
so far as it contributed to any action, demonstrated the weakness 
of that pure and disinterested benevolence which could alone 
stamp upon the conduct of man the character of virtue. In the 
common judgments of mankind, however, this regard to the 
approbation of our own minds is so far from being considered as 
what can in any respect diminish the virtue of any action, that 
it is rather looked upon as the sole motive which deserves the 
appellation of virtuous. 
    Such is the account given of the nature of virtue in this 
amiable system, a system which has a peculiar tendency to nourish 
and support in the human heart the noblest and the most agreeable 
of all affections, and not only to check the injustice of 
self-love, but in some measure to discourage that principle 
altogether, by representing it as what could never reflect any 
honour upon those who were influenced by it. 
    As some of the other systems which I have already given an 
account of, do not sufficiently explain from whence arises the 
peculiar excellency of the supreme virtue of beneficence, so this 
system seems to have the contrary defect, of not sufficiently 
explaining from whence arises our approbation of the inferior 
virtues of prudence, vigilance, circumspection, temperance, 
constancy, firmness. The view and aim of our affections, the 
beneficent and hurtful effects which they tend to produce, are 
the only qualities at all attended to in this system. Their 
propriety and impropriety, their suitableness and unsuitableness, 
to the cause which excites them, are disregarded altogether. 
    Regard to our own private happiness and interest, too, appear 
upon many occasions very laudable principles of action. The 
habits of oeconomy, industry, discretion, attention, and 
application of thought, are generally supposed to be cultivated 
from self-interested motives, and at the same time are 
apprehended to be very praise-worthy qualities, which deserve the 
esteem and approbation of every body. The mixture of a selfish 
motive, it is true, seems often to sully the beauty of those 
actions which ought to arise from a benevolent affection. The 
cause of this, however, is not that self-love can never be the 
motive of a virtuous action, but that the benevolent principle 
appears in this particular case to want its due degree of 
strength, and to be altogether unsuitable to its object. The 
character, therefore, seems evidently imperfect, and upon the 
whole to deserve blame rather than praise. The mixture of a 
benevolent motive in an action to which self-love alone ought to 
be sufficient to prompt us, is not so apt indeed to diminish our 
sense of its propriety, or of the virtue of the person who 
performs it. We are not ready to suspect any person of being 
defective in selfishness. This is by no means the weak side of 
human nature, or the failing of which we are apt to be 
suspicious. If we could really believe, however, of any man, 
that, was it not from a regard to his family and friends, he 
would not take that proper care of his health, his life, or his 
fortune, to which self-preservation alone ought to be sufficient 
to prompt him, it would undoubtedly be a failing, though one of 
those amiable failings, which render a person rather the object 
of pity than of contempt or hatred. It would still, however, 
somewhat diminish the dignity and respectableness of his 
character. Carelessness and want of oeconomy are universally 
disapproved of, not, however, as proceeding from a want of 
benevolence, but from a want of the proper attention to the 
objects of self-interest. 
    Though the standard by which casuists frequently determine 
what is right or wrong in human conduct, be its tendency to the 
welfare or disorder of society, it does not follow that a regard 
to the welfare of society should be the sole virtuous motive of 
action, but only that, in any competition, it ought to cast the 
balance against all other motives. 
    Benevolence may, perhaps, be the sole principle of action in 
the Deity, and there are several, not improbable, arguments which 
tend to persuade us that it is so. It is not easy to conceive 
what other motive an independent and all-perfect Being, who 
stands in need of nothing external, and whose happiness is 
complete in himself, can act from. But whatever may be the case 
with the Deity, so imperfect a creature as man, the support of 
whose existence requires so many things external to him, must 
often act from many other motives. The condition of human nature 
were peculiarly hard, if those affections, which, by the very 
nature of our being, ought frequently to influence our conduct, 
could upon no occasion appear virtuous, or deserve esteem and 
commendation from any body. 
    Those three systems, that which places virtue in propriety, 
that which places it in prudence, and that which makes it consist 
in benevolence, are the principal accounts which have been given 
of the nature of virtue. To one or other of them, all the other 
descriptions of virtue, how different soever they may appear, are 
easily reducible. 
    That system which places virtue in obedience to the will of 
the Deity, may be counted either among those which make it 
consist in prudence, or among those which make it consist in 
propriety. When it is asked, why we ought to obey the will of the 
Deity, this question, which would be impious and absurd in the 
highest degree, if asked from any doubt that we ought to obey 
him, can admit but of two different answers. It must either be 
said that we ought to obey the will of the Deity because he is a 
Being of infinite power, who will reward us eternally if we do 
so, and punish us eternally if we do otherwise: or it must be 
said, that independent of any regard to our own happiness, or to 
rewards and punishments of any kind, there is a congruity and 
fitness that a creature should obey its creator, that a limited 
and imperfect being should submit to one of infinite and 
incomprehensible perfections. Besides one or other of these two, 
it is impossible to conceive that any other answer can be given 
to this question. If the first answer be the proper one, virtue 
consists in prudence, or in the proper pursuit of our own final 
interest and happiness; since it is upon this account that we are 
obliged to obey the will of the Deity. If the second answer be 
the proper one, virtue must consist in propriety, since the 
ground of our obligation to obedience is the suitableness or 
congruity of the sentiments of humility and submission to the 
superiority of the object which excites them. 
    That system which places virtue in utility, coincides too 
with that which makes it consist in propriety. According to this 
system, all those qualities of the mind which are agreeable or 
advantageous, either to the person himself or to others, are 
approved of as virtuous, and the contrary disapproved of as 
vicious. But the agreeableness or utility of any affection 
depends upon the degree which it is allowed to subsist in. Every 
affection is useful when it is confined to a certain degree of 
moderation; and every affection is disadvantageous when it 
exceeds the proper bounds. According to this system therefore, 
virtue consists not in any one affection, but in the proper 
degree of all the affections. The only difference between it and 
that which I have been endeavouring to establish, is, that it 
makes utility, and not sympathy, or the correspondent affection 
of the spectator, the natural and original measure of this proper 
degree. 
Chap. IV 
Of licentious Systems 
    All those systems, which I have hitherto given an account of, 
suppose that there is a real and essential distinction between 
vice and virtue, whatever these qualities may consist in. There 
is a real and essential difference between the propriety and 
impropriety of any affection, between benevolence and any other 
principle of action, between real prudence and shortsighted folly 
or precipitate rashness. In the main too all of them contribute 
to encourage the praise-worthy, and to discourage the blamable 
disposition. 
    It may be true, perhaps, of some of them, that they tend, in 
some measure, to break the balance of the affections, and to give 
the mind a particular bias to some principles of action, beyond 
the proportion that is due to them. The ancient systems, which 
place virtue in propriety, seem chiefly to recommend the great, 
the awful, and the respectable virtues, the virtues of 
self-government and self-command; fortitude, magnanimity, 
independency upon fortune, the contempt of all outward accidents, 
of pain, poverty, exile, and death. It is in these great 
exertions that the noblest propriety of conduct is displayed. The 
soft, the amiable, the gentle virtues, all the virtues of 
indulgent humanity are, in comparison, but little insisted upon, 
and seem, on the contrary, by the Stoics in particular, to have 
been often regarded as mere weaknesses which it behoved a wise 
man not to harbour in his breast. 
    The benevolent system, on the other hand, while it fosters 
and encourages all those milder virtues in the highest degree, 
seems entirely to neglect the more awful and respectable 
qualities of the mind. It even denies them the appellation of 
virtues. It calls them moral abilities, and treats them as 
qualities which do not deserve the same sort of esteem and 
approbation, that is due to what is properly denominated virtue. 
All those principles of action which aim only at our own 
interest, it treats, if that be possible, still worse. So far 
from having any merit of their own, they diminish, it pretends, 
the merit of benevolence, when they co-operate with it: and 
prudence, it is asserted, when employed only in promoting private 
interest, can never even be imagined a virtue. 
    That system, again, which makes virtue consist in prudence 
only, while it gives the highest encouragement to the habits of 
caution, vigilance, sobriety, and judicious moderation, seems to 
degrade equally both the amiable and respectable virtues, and to 
strip the former of all their beauty, and the latter of all their 
grandeur. 
    But notwithstanding these defects, the general tendency of 
each of those three systems is to encourage the best and most 
laudable habits of the human mind: and it were well for society, 
if, either mankind in general, or even those few who pretend to 
live according to any philosophical rule, were to regulate their 
conduct by the precepts of any one of them. We may learn from 
each of them something that is both valuable and peculiar. If it 
was possible, by precept and exhortation, to inspire the mind 
with fortitude and magnanimity, the ancient systems of propriety 
would seem sufficient to do this. Or if it was possible, by the 
same means, to soften it into humanity, and to awaken the 
affections of kindness and general love towards those we live 
with, some of the pictures with which the benevolent system 
presents us, might seem capable of producing this effect. We may 
learn from the system of Epicurus, though undoubtedly the most 
imperfect of all the three, how much the practice of both the 
amiable and respectable virtues is conducive to our own interest, 
to our own ease and safety and quiet even in this life. As 
Epicurus placed happiness in the attainment of ease and security, 
he exerted himself in a particular manner to show that virtue 
was, not merely the best and the surest, but the only means of 
acquiring those invaluable possessions. The good effects of 
virtue, upon our inward tranquillity and peace of mind, are what 
other philosophers have chiefly celebrated. Epicurus, without 
neglecting this topic, has chiefly insisted upon the influence of 
that amiable quality on our outward prosperity and safety. It was 
upon this account that his writings were so much studied in the 
ancient world by men of all different philosophical parties. It 
is from him that Cicero, the great enemy of the Epicurean system, 
borrows his most agreeable proofs that virtue alone is sufficient 
to secure happiness. Seneca, though a Stoic, the sect most 
opposite to that of Epicurus, yet quotes this philosopher more 
frequently than any other. 
    There is, however, another system which seems to take away 
altogether the distinction between vice and virtue, and of which 
the tendency is, upon that account, wholly pernicious: I mean the 
system of Dr Mandeville. Though the notions of this author are in 
almost every respect erroneous, there are, however, some 
appearances in human nature, which, when viewed in a certain 
manner, seem at first sight to favour them. These, described and 
exaggerated by the lively and humorous, though coarse and rustic 
eloquence of Dr Mandeville, have thrown upon his doctrines an air 
of truth and probability which is very apt to impose upon the 
unskilful. 
    Dr Mandeville considers whatever is done from a sense of 
propriety, from a regard to what is commendable and 
praise-worthy, as being done from a love of praise and 
commendation, or as he calls it from vanity. Man, he observes, is 
naturally much more interested in his own happiness than in that 
of others, and it is impossible that in his heart he can ever 
really prefer their prosperity to his own. Whenever he appears to 
do so, we may be assured that he imposes upon us, and that he is 
then acting from the same selfish motives as at all other times. 
Among his other selfish passions, vanity is one of the strongest, 
and he is always easily flattered and greatly delighted with the 
applauses of those about him. When he appears to sacrifice his 
own interest to that of his companions, he knows that his conduct 
will be highly agreeable to their self-love, and that they will 
not fail to express their satisfaction by bestowing upon him the 
most extravagant praises. The pleasure which he expects from 
this, over-balances, in his opinion, the interest which he 
abandons in order to procure it. His conduct, therefore, upon 
this occasion, is in reality just as selfish, and arises from 
just as mean a motive, as upon any other. He is flattered, 
however, and he flatters himself, with the belief that it is 
entirely disinterested; since, unless this was supposed, it would 
not seem to merit any commendation either in his own eyes or in 
those of others. All public spirit, therefore, all preference of 
public to private interest, is, according to him, a mere cheat 
and imposition upon mankind; and that human virtue which is so 
much boasted of, and which is the occasion of so much emulation 
among men, is the mere offspring of flattery begot upon pride. 
    Whether the most generous and public-spirited actions may 
not, in some sense, be regarded as proceeding from self-love, I 
shall not at present examine. The decision of this question is 
not, I apprehend, of any importance towards establishing the 
reality of virtue, since self-love may frequently be a virtuous 
motive of action. I shall only endeavour to show that the desire 
of doing what is honourable and noble, of rendering ourselves the 
proper objects of esteem and approbation, cannot with any 
propriety be called vanity. Even the love of well-grounded fame 
and reputation, the desire of acquiring esteem by what is really 
estimable, does not deserve that name. The first is the love of 
virtue, the noblest and the best passion in human nature. The 
second is the love of true glory, a passion inferior no doubt to 
the former, but which in dignity appears to come immediately 
after it. He is guilty of vanity who desires praise for qualities 
which are either not praise-worthy in any degree, or not in that 
degree in which he expects to be praised for them who sets his 
character upon the frivolous ornaments of dress and equipage, or 
upon the equally frivolous accomplishments of ordinary behaviour. 
He is guilty of vanity who desires praise for what indeed very 
well deserves it, but what he perfectly knows does not belong to 
him. The empty coxcomb who gives himself airs of importance which 
he has no title to, the silly liar who assumes the merit of 
adventures which never happened, the foolish plagiary who gives 
himself out for the author of what he has no pretensions to, are 
properly accused of this passion. He too is said to be guilty of 
vanity who is not contented with the silent sentiments of esteem 
and approbation, who seems to be fonder of their noisy 
expressions and acclamations than of the sentiments themselves, 
who is never satisfied but when his own praises are ringing in 
his ears, and who solicits with the most anxious importunity all 
external marks of respect, is fond of titles, of compliments, of 
being visited, of being attended, of being taken notice of in 
public places with the appearance of deference and attention. 
This frivolous passion is altogether different from either of the 
two former, and is the passion of the lowest and the least of 
mankind, as they are of the noblest and the greatest. 
    But though these three passions, the desire of rendering 
ourselves the proper objects of honour and esteem; or of becoming 
what is honourable and estimable; the desire of acquiring honour 
and esteem by really deserving those sentiments; and the 
frivolous desire of praise at any rate, are widely different; 
though the two former are always approved of, while the latter 
never fails to be despised; there is, however, a certain remote 
affinity among them, which, exaggerated by the humorous and 
diverting eloquence of this lively author, has enabled him to 
impose upon his readers. There is an affinity between vanity and 
the love of true glory, as both these passions aim at acquiring 
esteem and approbation. But they are different in this, that the 
one is a just, reasonable, and equitable passion, while the other 
is unjust, absurd, and ridiculous. The man who desires esteem for 
what is really estimable, desires nothing but what he is justly 
entitled to, and what cannot be refused him without some sort of 
injury. He, on the contrary, who desires it upon any other terms, 
demands what he has no just claim to. The first is easily 
satisfied, is not apt to be jealous or suspicious that we do not 
esteem him enough, and is seldom solicitous about receiving many 
external marks of our regard. The other, on the contrary, is 
never to be satisfied, is full of jealousy and suspicion that we 
do not esteem him so much as he desires, because he has some 
secret consciousness that he desires more than he deserves. The 
least neglect of ceremony, he considers as a mortal affront, and 
as an expression of the most determined contempt. He is restless 
and impatient, and perpetually afraid that we have lost all 
respect for him, and is upon this account always anxious to 
obtain new expressions of esteem, and cannot be kept in temper 
but by continual attention and adulation. 
    There is an affinity too between the desire of becoming what 
is honourable and estimable, and the desire of honour and esteem, 
between the love of virtue and the love of true glory. They 
resemble one another not only in this respect, that both aim at 
really being what is honourable and noble, but even in that 
respect in which the love of true glory resembles what is 
properly called vanity, some reference to the sentiments of 
others. The man of the greatest magnanimity, who desires virtue 
for its own sake, and is most indifferent about what actually are 
the opinions of mankind with regard to him, is still, however, 
delighted with the thoughts of what they should be, with the 
consciousness that though he may neither be honoured nor 
applauded, he is still the proper object of honour and applause, 
and that if mankind were cool and candid and consistent with 
themselves, and properly informed of the motives and 
circumstances of his conduct, they would not fail to honour and 
applaud him. Though he despises the opinions which are actually 
entertained of him, he has the highest value for those which 
ought to be entertained of him. That he might think himself 
worthy of those honourable sentiments, and, whatever was the idea 
which other men might conceive of his character, that when he 
should put himself in their situation, and consider, not what 
was, but what ought to be their opinion, he should always have 
the highest idea of it himself, was the great and exalted motive 
of his conduct. As even in the love of virtue, therefore, there 
is still some reference, though not to what is, yet to what in 
reason and propriety ought to be, the opinion of others, there is 
even in this respect some affinity between it, and the love of 
true glory. There is, however, at the same time, a very great 
difference between them. The man who acts solely from a regard to 
what is right and fit to be done, from a regard to what is the 
proper object of esteem and approbation, though these sentiments 
should never be bestowed upon him, acts from the most sublime and 
godlike motive which human nature is even capable of conceiving. 
The man, on the other hand, who while he desires to merit 
approbation is at the same time anxious to obtain it, though he 
too is laudable in the main, yet his motives have a greater 
mixture of human infirmity. He is in danger of being mortified by 
the ignorance and injustice of mankind, and his happiness is 
exposed to the envy of his rivals and the folly of the public. 
The happiness of the other, on the contrary, is altogether secure 
and independent of fortune, and of the caprice of those he lives 
with. The contempt and hatred which may be thrown upon him by the 
ignorance of mankind, he considers as not belonging to him, and 
is not at all mortified by it. Mankind despise and hate him from 
a false notion of his character and conduct. If they knew him 
better, they would esteem and love him. It is not him whom, 
properly speaking, they hate and despise, but another person whom 
they mistake him to be. Our friend, whom we should meet at a 
masquerade in the garb of our enemy, would be more diverted than 
mortified, if under that disguise we should vent our indignation 
against him. Such are the sentiments of a man of real 
magnanimity, when exposed to unjust censure. It seldom happens, 
however, that human nature arrives at this degree of firmness. 
Though none but the weakest and most worthless of mankind are 
much delighted with false glory, yet, by a strange inconsistency, 
false ignominy is often capable of mortifying those who appear 
the most resolute and determined. 
    Dr Mandeville is not satisfied with representing the 
frivolous motive of vanity, as the source of all those actions 
which are commonly accounted virtuous. He endeavours to point out 
the imperfection of human virtue in many other respects. In every 
case, he pretends, it falls short of that complete self-denial 
which it pretends to, and, instead of a conquest, is commonly no 
more than a concealed indulgence of our passions. Wherever our 
reserve with regard to pleasure falls short of the most ascetic 
abstinence, he treats it as gross luxury and sensuality. Every 
thing, according to him, is luxury which exceeds what is 
absolutely necessary for the support of human nature, so that 
there is vice even in the use of a clean shirt, or of a 
convenient habitation. The indulgence of the inclination to sex, 
in the most lawful union, he considers as the same sensuality 
with the most hurtful gratification of that passion, and derides 
that temperance and that chastity which can be practised at so 
cheap a rate. The ingenious sophistry of his reasoning, is here, 
as upon many other occasions, covered by the ambiguity of 
language. There are some of our passions which have no other 
names except those which mark the disagreeable and offensive 
degree. The spectator is more apt to take notice of them in this 
degree than in any other. When they shock his own sentiments, 
when they give him some sort of antipathy and uneasiness, he is 
necessarily obliged to attend to them, and is from thence 
naturally led to give them a name. When they fall in with the 
natural state of his own mind, he is very apt to overlook them 
altogether, and either gives them no name at all, or, if he give 
them any, it is one which marks rather the subjection and 
restraint of the passion, than the degree which it still is 
allowed to subsist in, after it is so subjected and restrained. 
Thus the common names(13*) of the love of pleasure, and of the 
love of sex, denote a vicious and offensive degree of those 
passions. The words temperance and chastity, on the other hand, 
seem to mark rather the restraint and subjection which they are 
kept under, than the degree which they are still allowed to 
subsist in. When he can show, therefore, that they still subsist 
in some degree, he imagines, he has entirely demolished the 
reality of the virtues of temperance and chastity, and shown them 
to be mere impositions upon the inattention and simplicity of 
mankind. Those virtues, however, do not require an entire 
insensibility to the objects of the passions which they mean to 
govern. They only aim at restraining the violence of those 
passions so far as not to hurt the individual, and neither 
disturb nor offend the society. 
    It is the great fallacy of Dr. Mandeville's book(14*) to 
represent every passion as wholly vicious, which is so in any 
degree and in any direction. It is thus that he treats every 
thing as vanity which has any reference, either to what are, or 
to what ought to be the sentiments of others: and it is by means 
of this sophistry, that he establishes his favourite conclusion, 
that private vices are public benefits. If the love of 
magnificence, a taste for the elegant arts and improvements of 
human life, for whatever is agreeable in dress, furniture, or 
equipage, for architecture, statuary, painting, and music, is to 
be regarded as luxury, sensuality, and ostentation, even in those 
whose situation allows, without any inconveniency, the indulgence 
of those passions, it is certain that luxury, sensuality, and 
ostentation are public benefits: since without the qualities upon 
which he thinks proper to bestow such opprobrious names, the arts 
of refinement could never find encouragement, and must languish 
for want of employment. Some popular ascetic doctrines which had 
been current before his time, and which placed virtue in the 
entire extirpation and annihilation of all our passions, were the 
real foundation of this licentious system. It was easy for Dr 
Mandeville to prove, first, that this entire conquest never 
actually took place among men; and secondly, that, if it was to 
take place universally, it would be pernicious to society, by 
putting an end to all industry and commerce, and in a manner to 
the whole business of human life. By the first of these 
propositions he seemed to prove that there was no real virtue, 
and that what pretended to be such, was a mere cheat and 
imposition upon mankind; and by the second, that private vices 
were public benefits, since without them no society could prosper 
or flourish. 
    Such is the system of Dr Mandeville, which once made so much 
noise in the world, and which, though, perhaps, it never gave 
occasion to more vice than what would have been without it, at 
least taught that vice, which arose from other causes, to appear 
with more effrontery, and to avow the corruption of its motives 
with a profligate audaciousness which had never been heard of 
before. 
    But how destructive soever this system may appear, it could 
never have imposed upon so great a number of persons, nor have 
occasioned so general an alarm among those who are the friends of 
better principles, had it not in some respects bordered upon the 
truth. A system of natural philosophy may appear very plausible, 
and be for a long time very generally received in the world, and 
yet have no foundation in nature, nor any sort of resemblance to 
the truth. The vortices of Des Cartes were regarded by a very 
ingenious nation, for near a century together, as a most 
satisfactory account of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies. 
Yet it has been demonstrated, to the conviction of all mankind, 
that these pretended causes of those wonderful effects, not only 
do not actually exist, but are utterly impossible, and if they 
did exist, could produce no such effects as are ascribed to them. 
But it is otherwise with systems of moral philosophy, and an 
author who pretends to account for the origin of our moral 
sentiments, cannot deceive us so grossly, nor depart so very far 
from all resemblance to the truth. When a traveller gives an 
account of some distant country, he may impose upon our credulity 
the most groundless and absurd fictions as the most certain 
matters of fact. But when a person pretends to inform us of what 
passes in our neighbourhood, and of the affairs of the very 
parish which we live in, though here too, if we are so careless 
as not to examine things with our own eves, he may deceive us in 
many respects, yet the greatest falsehoods which he imposes upon 
us must bear some resemblance to the truth, and must even have a 
considerable mixture of truth in them. An author who treats of 
natural philosophy, and pretends to assign the causes of the 
great phaenomena of the universe, pretends to give an account of 
the affairs of a very distant country, concerning which he may 
tell us what he pleases, and as long as his narration keeps 
within the bounds of seeming possibility, he need not despair of 
gaining our belief. But when he proposes to explain the origin of 
our desires and affections, of our sentiments of approbation and 
disapprobation, he pretends to give an account, not only of the 
affairs of the very parish that we live in, but of our own 
domestic concerns. Though here too, like indolent masters who put 
their trust in a steward who deceives them, we are very liable to 
be imposed upon, yet we are incapable of passing any account 
which does not preserve some little regard to the truth. Some of 
the articles, at least, must be just, and even those which are 
most overcharged must have had some foundation, otherwise the 
fraud would be detected even by that careless inspection which we 
are disposed to give. The author who should assign, as the cause 
of any natural sentiment, some principle which neither had any 
connexion with it, nor resembled any other principle which had 
some such connexion, would appear absurd and ridiculous to the 
most injudicious and unexperienced reader. 
Section III 
Of the different Systems which have been formed concerning the 
Principle of Approbation 
Introduction 
    After the inquiry concerning the nature of virtue, the next 
question of importance in Moral Philosophy, is concerning the 
principle of approbation, concerning the power or faculty of the 
mind which renders certain characters agreeable or disagreeable 
to us, makes us prefer one tenour of conduct to another, 
denominate the one right and the other wrong, and consider the 
one as the object of approbation, honour, and reward; the other 
as that of blame, censure, and punishment. 
    Three different accounts have been given of this principle of 
approbation. According to some, we approve and disapprove both of 
our own actions and of those of others, from self-love only, or 
from some view of their tendency to our own happiness or 
disadvantage: according to others, reason, the same faculty by 
which we distinguish between truth and falsehood, enables us to 
distinguish between what is fit and unfit both in actions and 
affections: accorDing to others this distinction is altogether 
the effect of immediate sentiment and feeling, and arises from 
the satisfaction or disgust with which the view of certain 
actions or affections inspires us. Self-love, reason, and 
sentiment, therefore, are the three different sources which have 
been assigned for the principle of approbation. 
    Before I proceed to give an account of those different 
systems, I must observe, that the determination of this second 
question, though of the greatest importance in speculation, is of 
none in practice. The question concerning the nature of virtue 
necessarily has some influence upon our notions of right and 
wrong in many particular cases. That concerning the principle of 
approbation can possibly have no such effect. To examine from 
what contrivance or mechanism within, those different notions or 
sentiments arise, is a mere matter of philosophical curiosity. 
Chap. I 
Of those Systems which deduce the Principle of Approbation from 
Self-love 
    Those who account for the principle of approbation from 
self-love, do not all account for it in the same manner, and 
there is a good deal of confusion and inaccuracy in all their 
different systems. According to Mr Hobbes, and many of his 
followers,(15*) man is driven to take refuge in society, not by 
any natural love which he bears to his own kind, but because 
without the assistance of others he is incapable of subsisting 
with ease or safety. Society, upon this account, becomes 
necessary to him, and whatever tends to its support and welfare, 
he considers as having a remote tendency to his own interest; 
and, on the contrary, whatever is likely to disturb or destroy 
it, he regards as in some measure hurtful or pernicious to 
himself. Virtue is the great support, and vice the great 
disturber of human society. The former, therefore, is agreeable, 
and the latter offensive to every man; as from the one he 
foresees the prosperity, and from the other the ruin and disorder 
of what is so necessary for the comfort and security of his 
existence. 
    That the tendency of virtue to promote, and of vice to 
disturb the order of society, when we consider it coolly and 
philosophically, reflects a very great beauty upon the one, and a 
very great deformity upon the other, cannot, as I have observed 
upon a former occasion, be called in question. Human society, 
when we contemplate it in a certain abstract and philosophical 
light, appears like a great, an immense machine, whose regular 
and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects. As 
in any other beautiful and noble machine that was the production 
of human art, whatever tended to render its movements more smooth 
and easy, would derive a beauty from this effect, and, on the 
contrary, whatever tended to obstruct them would displease upon 
that account: so virtue, which is, as it were, the fine polish to 
the wheels of society, necessarily pleases; while vice, like the 
vile rust, which makes them jar and grate upon one another, is as 
necessarily offensive. This account, therefore, of the origin of 
approbation and disapprobation, so far as it derives them from a 
regard to the order of society, runs into that principle which 
gives beauty to utility, and which I have explained upon a former 
occasion; and it is from thence that this system derives all that 
appearance of probability which it possesses. When those authors 
describe the innumerable advantages of a cultivated and social, 
above a savage and solitary life; when they expatiate upon the 
necessity of virtue and good order for the maintenance of the 
one, and demonstrate how infallibly the prevalence of vice and 
disobedience to the laws tend to bring back the other, the reader 
is charmed with the novelty and grandeur of those views which 
they open to him: he sees plainly a new beauty in virtue, and a 
new deformity in vice, which he had never taken notice of before, 
and is commonly so delighted with the discovery, that he seldom 
takes time to reflect, that this political view, having never 
occurred to him in his life before, cannot possibly be the ground 
of that approbation and disapprobation with which he has always 
been accustomed to consider those different qualities. 
    When those authors, on the other hand, deduce from self-love 
the interest which we take in the welfare of society, and the 
esteem which upon that account we bestow upon virtue, they do not 
mean, that when we in this age applaud the virtue of Cato, and 
detest the villany of Catiline, our sentiments are influenced by 
the notion of any benefit we receive from the one, or of any 
detriment we suffer from the other. It was not because the 
prosperity or subversion of society, in those remote ages and 
nations, was apprehended to have any influence upon our happiness 
or misery in the present times; that according to those 
philosophers, we esteemed the virtuous, and blamed the disorderly 
characters. They never imagined that our sentiments were 
influenced by any benefit or damage which we supposed actually to 
redound to us, from either; but by that which might have 
redounded to us, had we lived in those distant ages and 
countries; or by that which might still redound to us, if in our 
own times we should meet with characters of the same kind. The 
idea, in short, which those authors were groping about, but which 
they were never able to unfold distinctly, was that indirect 
sympathy which we feel with the gratitude or resentment of those 
who received the benefit or suffered the damage resulting from 
such opposite characters: and it was this which they were 
indistinctly pointing at, when they said, that it was not the 
thought of what we had gained or suffered which prompted our 
applause or indignation, but the conception or imagination of 
what we might gain or suffer if we were to act in society with 
such associates. 
    Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a 
selfish principle. When I sympathize with your sorrow or your 
indignation, it may be pretended, indeed, that my emotion is 
founded in self-love, because it arises from bringing your case 
home to myself, from putting myself in your situation, and thence 
conceiving what I should feel in the like circumstances. But 
though sympathy is very properly said to arise from an imaginary 
change of situations with the person principally concerned, yet 
this imaginary change is not supposed to happen to me in my own 
person and character, but in that of the person with whom I 
sympathize. When I condole with you for the loss of your only 
son, in order to enter into your grief I do not consider what I, 
a person of such a character and profession, should suffer, if I 
had a son, and if that son was unfortunately to die: but I 
consider what I should suffer if I was really you, and I not only 
change circumstances with you, but I change persons and 
characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, 
and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in the 
least selfish. How can that be regarded as a selfish passion, 
which does not arise even from the imagination of any thing that 
has befallen, or that relates to myself, in my own proper person 
and character, but which is entirely occupied about what relates 
to you? A man may sympathize with a woman in child-bed; though it 
is impossible that he should conceive himself as suffering her 
pains in his own proper person and character. That whole account 
of human nature, however, which deduces all sentiments and 
affections from self-love, which has made so much noise in the 
world, but which, so far as I know, has never yet been fully and 
distinctly explained, seems to me to have arisen from some 
confused misapprehension of the system of sympathy. 
Chap. II 
Of those Systems which make Reason the Principle of Approbation 
    It is well known to have been the doctrine of Mr Hobbes, that 
a state of nature is a state of war; and that antecedent to the 
institution of civil government there could be no safe or 
peaceable society among men. To preserve society, therefore, 
according to him, was to support civil government, and to destroy 
civil government was the same thing as to put an end to society. 
But the existence of civil government depends upon the obedience 
that is paid to the supreme magistrate. The moment he loses his 
authority, all government is at an end. As self-preservation, 
therefore, teaches men to applaud whatever tends to promote the 
welfare of society, and to blame whatever is likely to hurt it; 
so the same principle, if they would think and speak 
consistently, ought to teach them to applaud upon all occasions 
obedience to the civil magistrate, and to blame all disobedience 
and rebellion. The very ideas of laudable and blamable, ought to 
be the same with those of obedience and disobedience. The laws of 
the civil magistrate, therefore, ought to be regarded as the sole 
ultimate standards of what was just and unjust, of what was right 
and wrong. 
    It was the avowed intention of Mr Hobbes, by propagating 
these notions, to subject the consciences of men immediately to 
the civil, and not to the ecclesiastical powers, whose turbulence 
and ambition, he had been taught, by the example of his own 
times, to regard as the principal source of the disorders of 
society. His doctrine, upon this account, was peculiarly 
offensive to theologians, who accorDingly did not fail to vent 
their indignation against him with great asperity and bitterness. 
It was likewise offensive to all sound moralists, as it supposed 
that there was no natural distinction between right and wrong, 
that these were mutable and changeable, and depended upon the 
mere arbitrary will of the civil magistrate. This account of 
things, therefore, was attacked from all quarters, and by all 
sorts of weapons, by sober reason as well as by furious 
declamation. 
    In order to confute so odious a doctrine, it was necessary to 
prove, that antecedent to all law or positive institution, the 
mind was naturally endowed with a faculty, by which it 
distinguished in certain actions and affections, the qualities of 
right, laudable, and virtuous, and in others those of wrong, 
blamable, and vicious. 
    Law, it was justly observed by Dr Cudworth,(16*) could not be 
the original source of those distinctions; since upon the 
supposition of such a law, it must either be right to obey it, 
and wrong to disobey it, or indifferent whether we obeyed it, or 
disobeyed it. That law which it was indifferent whether we obeyed 
or disobeyed, could not, it was evident, be the source of those 
distinctions; neither could that which it was right to obey and 
wrong to disobey, since even this still supposed the antecedent 
notions or ideas of right and wrong, and that obedience to the 
law was conformable to the idea of right, and disobedience to 
that of wrong. 
    Since the mind, therefore, had a notion of those distinctions 
antecedent to all law, it seemed necessarily to follow, that it 
derived this notion from reason, which pointed out the difference 
between right and wrong, in the same manner in which it did that 
between truth and falsehood: and this conclusion, which, though 
true in some respects, is rather hasty in others, was more easily 
received at a time when the abstract science of human nature was 
but in its infancy, and before the distinct offices and powers of 
the different faculties of the human mind had been carefully 
examined and distinguished from one another. When this 
controversy with Mr Hobbes was carried on with the greatest 
warmth and keenness, no other faculty had been thought of from 
which any such ideas could possibly be supposed to arise. It 
became at this time, therefore, the popular doctrine, that the 
essence of virtue and vice did not consist in the conformity or 
disagreement of human actions with the law of a superior, but in 
their conformity or disagreement with reason, which was thus 
considered as the original source and principle of approbation 
and disapprobation. 
    That virtue consists in conformity to reason, is true in some 
respects, and this faculty may very justly be considered as, in 
some sense, the source and principle of approbation and 
disapprobation, and of all solid judgments concerning right and 
wrong. It is by reason that we discover those general rules of 
justice by which we ought to regulate our actions: and it is by 
the same faculty that we form those more vague and indeterminate 
ideas of what is prudent, of what is decent, of what is generous 
or noble, which we carry constantly about with us, and according 
to which we endeavour, as well as we can, to model the tenor of 
our conduct. The general maxims of morality are formed, like all 
other general maxims, from experience and induction. We observe 
in a great variety of particular cases what pleases or displeases 
our moral faculties, what these approve or disapprove of, and, by 
induction from this experience, we establish those general rules. 
But induction is always regarded as one of the operations of 
reason. From reason, therefore, we are very properly said to 
derive all those general maxims and ideas. It is by these, 
however, that we regulate the greater part of our moral 
judgments, which would be extremely uncertain and precarious if 
they depended altogether upon what is liable to so many 
variations as immediate sentiment and feeling, which the 
different states of health and humour are capable of altering so 
essentially. As our most solid judgments, therefore, with regard 
to right and wrong, are regulated by maxims and ideas derived 
from an induction of reason, virtue may very properly be said to 
consist in a conformity to reason, and so far this faculty may be 
considered as the source and principle of approbation and 
disapprobation. 
    But though reason is undoubtedly the source of the general 
rules of morality, and of all the moral judgments which we form 
by means of them; it is altogether absurd and unintelligible to 
suppose that the first perceptions of right and wrong can be 
derived from reason, even in those particular cases upon the 
experience of which the general rules are formed. These first 
perceptions, as well as all other experiments upon which any 
general rules are founded, cannot be the object of reason, but of 
immediate sense and feeling. It is by finding in a vast variety 
of instances that one tenor of conduct constantly pleases in a 
certain manner, and that another as constantly displeases the 
mind, that we form the general rules of morality. But reason 
cannot render any particular object either agreeable or 
disagreeable to the mind for its own sake. Reason may show that 
this object is the means of obtaining some other which is 
naturally either pleasing or displeasing, and in this manner may 
render it either agreeable or disagreeable for the sake of 
something else. But nothing can be agreeable or disagreeable for 
its own sake, which is not rendered such by immediate sense and 
feeling. If virtue, therefore, in every particular instance, 
necessarily pleases for its own sake, and if vice as certainly 
displeases the mind, it cannot be reason, but immediate sense and 
feeling, which, in this manner, reconciles us to the one, and 
alienates us from the other. 
    Pleasure and pain are the great objects of desire and 
aversion: but these are distinguished not by reason, but by 
immediate sense and feeling. If virtue, therefore, be desirable 
for its own sake, and if vice be, in the same manner, the object 
of aversion, it cannot be reason which originally distinguishes 
those different qualities, but immediate sense and feeling. 
    As reason, however, in a certain sense, may justly be 
considered as the principle of approbation and disapprobation, 
these sentiments were, through inattention, long regarded as 
originally flowing from the operations of this faculty. Dr 
Hutcheson had the merit of being the first who distinguished with 
any degree of precision in what respect all moral distinctions 
may be said to arise from reason, and in what respect they are 
founded upon immediate sense and feeling. In his illustrations 
upon the moral sense he has explained this so fully, and, in my 
opinion, so unanswerably, that, if any controversy is still kept 
up about this subject, I can impute it to nothing, but either to 
inattention to what that gentleman has written, or to a 
superstitious attachment to certain forms of expression, a 
weakness not very uncommon among the learned, especially in 
subjects so deeply interesting as the present, in which a man of 
virtue is often loath to abandon, even the propriety of a single 
phrase which he has been accustomed to. 
Chap. III 
Of those Systems which make Sentiment the Principle of 
Approbation 
    Those systems which make sentiment the principle of 
approbation may be divided into two different classes. 
    I. According to some the principle of approbation is founded 
upon a sentiment of a peculiar nature, upon a particular power of 
perception exerted by the mind at the view of certain actions or 
affections; some of which affecting this faculty in an agreeable 
and others in a disagreeable manner, the former are stamped with 
the characters of right, laudable, and virtuous; the latter with 
those of wrong, blamable, and vicious. This sentiment being of a 
peculiar nature distinct from every other, and the effect of a 
particular power of perception, they give it a particular name, 
and call it a moral sense. 
    II. According to others, in order to account for the 
principle of approbation, there is no occasion for supposing any 
new power of perception which had never been heard of before: 
Nature, they imagine, acts here, as in all other cases, with the 
strictest oeconomy, and produces a multitude of effects from one 
and the same cause; and sympathy, a power which has always been 
taken notice of, and with which the mind is manifestly endowed, 
is, they think, sufficient to account for all the effects 
ascribed to this peculiar faculty. 
    I. Dr Hutcheson(17*) had been at great pains to prove that 
the principle of approbation was not founded on self-love. He had 
demonstrated too that it could not arise from any operation of 
reason. Nothing remained, he thought, but to suppose it a faculty 
of a peculiar kind, with which Nature had endowed the human mind, 
in order to produce this one particular and important effect. 
When self-love and reason were both excluded, it did not occur to 
him that there was any other known faculty of the mind which 
could in any respect answer this purpose. 
    This new power of perception he called a moral sense, and 
supposed it to be somewhat analogous to the external senses. As 
the bodies around us, by affecting these in a certain manner, 
appear to possess the different qualities of sound, taste, odour, 
colour; so the various affections of the human mind, by touching 
this particular faculty in a certain manner, appear to possess 
the different qualities of amiable and odious, of virtuous and 
vicious, of right and wrong. 
    The various senses or powers of perception,(18*) from which 
the human mind derives all its simple ideas, were, according to 
this system, of two different kinds, of which the one were called 
the direct or antecedent, the other, the reflex or consequent 
senses. The direct senses were those faculties from which the 
mind derived the perception of such species of things as did not 
presuppose the antecedent perception of any other. Thus sounds 
and colours were objects of the direct senses. To hear a sound or 
to see a colour does not presuppose the antecedent perception of 
any other quality or object. The reflex or consequent senses, on 
the other hand, were those faculties from which the mind derived 
the perception of such species of things as presupposed the 
antecedent perception of some other. Thus harmony and beauty were 
objects of the reflex senses. In order to perceive the harmony of 
a sound, or the beauty of a colour, we must first perceive the 
sound or the colour. The moral sense was considered as a faculty 
of this kind. That faculty, which Mr Locke calls reflection, and 
from which he derived the simple ideas of the different passions 
and emotions of the human mind, was, according to Dr Hutcheson, a 
direct internal sense. That faculty again by which we perceived 
the beauty or deformity, the virtue or vice of those different 
passions and emotions, was a reflex, internal sense. 
    Dr Hutcheson endeavoured still further to support this 
doctrine, by shewing that it was agreeable to the analogy of 
nature, and that the mind was endowed with a variety of other 
reflex senses exactly similar to the moral sense; such as a sense 
of beauty and deformity in external objects; a public sense, by 
which we sympathize with the happiness or misery of our 
fellow-creatures; a sense of shame and honour, and a sense of 
ridicule. 
    But notwithstanding all the pains which this ingenious 
philosopher has taken to prove that the principle of approbation 
is founded in a peculiar power of perception, somewhat analogous 
to the external senses, there are some consequences, which he 
acknowledges to follow from this doctrine, that will, perhaps, be 
regarded by many as a sufficient confutation of it. The qualities 
he allows,(19*) which belong to the objects of any sense, cannot, 
without the greatest absurdity, be ascribed to the sense itself. 
Who ever thought of calling the sense of seeing black or white, 
the sense of hearing loud or low, or the sense of tasting sweet 
or bitter? And, according to him, it is equally absurd to call 
our moral faculties virtuous or vicious, morally good or evil. 
These qualities belong to the objects of those faculties, not to 
the faculties themselves. If any man, therefore, was so absurdly 
constituted as to approve of cruelty and injustice as the highest 
virtues, and to disapprove of equity and humanity as the most 
pitiful vices, such a constitution of mind might indeed be 
regarded as inconvenient both to the individual and to the 
society, and likewise as strange, surprising, and unnatural in 
itself; but it could not, without the greatest absurdity, be 
denominated vicious or morally evil. 
    Yet surely if we saw any man shouting with admiration and 
applause at a barbarous and unmerited execution, which some 
insolent tyrant had ordered, we should not think we were guilty 
of any great absurdity in denominating this behaviour vicious and 
morally evil in the highest degree, though it expressed nothing 
but depraved moral faculties, or an absurd approbation of this 
horrid action, as of what was noble, magnanimous, and great. Our 
heart, I imagine, at the sight of such a spectator, would forget 
for a while its sympathy with the sufferer, and feel nothing but 
horror and detestation, at the thought of so execrable a wretch. 
We should abominate him even more than the tyrant who might be 
goaded on by the strong passions of jealousy, fear, and 
resentment, and upon that account be more excusable. But the 
sentiments of the spectator would appear altogether without cause 
or motive, and therefore most perfectly and completely 
detestable. There is no perversion of sentiment or affection 
which our heart would be more averse to enter into, or which it 
would reject with greater hatred and indignation than one of this 
kind; and so far from regarding such a constitution of mind as 
being merely something strange or inconvenient, and not in any 
respect vicious or morally evil, we should rather consider it as 
the very last and most dreadful stage of moral depravity. 
    Correct moral sentiments, on the contrary, naturally appear 
in some degree laudable and morally good. The man, whose censure 
and applause are upon all occasions suited with the greatest 
accuracy to the value or unworthiness of the object, seems to 
deserve a degree even of moral approbation. We admire the 
delicate precision of his moral sentiments: they lead our own 
judgments, and, upon account of their uncommon and surprising 
justness, they even excite our wonder and applause. We cannot 
indeed be always sure that the conduct of such a person would be 
in any respect correspondent to the precision and accuracy of his 
judgments concerning the conduct of others. Virtue requires habit 
and resolution of mind, as well as delicacy of sentiment; and 
unfortunately the former qualities are sometimes wanting, where 
the latter is in the greatest perfection. This disposition of 
mind, however, though it may sometimes be attended with 
imperfections, is incompatible with any thing that is grossly 
criminal, and is the happiest foundation upon which the 
superstructure of perfect virtue can be built. There are many men 
who mean very well, and seriously purpose to do what they think 
their duty, who notwithstanding are disagreeable on account of 
the coarseness of their moral sentiments. 
    It may be said, perhaps, that though the principle of 
approbation is not founded upon any power of perception that is 
in any respect analogous to the external senses, it may still be 
founded upon a peculiar sentiment which answers this one 
particular purpose and no other. Approbation and disapprobation, 
it may be pretended, are certain feelings or emotions which arise 
in the mind upon the view of different characters and actions; 
and as resentment might be called a sense of injuries, or 
gratitude a sense of benefits, so these may very properly receive 
the name of a sense of right and wrong, or of a moral sense. 
    But this account of things, though it may not be liable to 
the same objections with the foregoing, is exposed to others 
which are equally unanswerable. 
    First of all, whatever variations any particular emotion may 
undergo, it still preserves the general features which 
distinguish it to be an emotion of such a kind, and these general 
features are always more striking and remarkable than any 
variation which it may undergo in particular cases. Thus anger is 
an emotion of a particular kind: and accordingly its general 
features are always more distinguishable than all the variations 
it undergoes in particular cases. Anger against a man is, no 
doubt, somewhat different from anger against a woman, and that 
again from anger against a child. In each of those three cases, 
the general passion of anger receives a different modification 
from the particular character of its object, as may easily be 
observed by the attentive. But still the general features of the 
passion predominate in all these cases. To distinguish these, 
requires no nice observation: a very delicate attention, on the 
contrary, is necessary to discover their variations: every body 
takes notice of the former; scarce any body observes the latter. 
If approbation and disapprobation, therefore, were, like 
gratitude and resentment, emotions of a particular kind, distinct 
from every other, we should expect that in all the variations 
which either of them might undergo, it would still retain the 
general features which mark it to be an emotion of such a 
particular kind, clear, plain, and easily distinguishable. But in 
fact it happens quite otherwise. If we attend to what we really 
feel when upon different occasions we either approve or 
disapprove, we shall find that our emotion in one case is often 
totally different from that in another, and that no common 
features can possibly be discovered between them. Thus the 
approbation with which we view a tender, delicate, and humane 
sentiment, is quite different from that with which we are struck 
by one that appears great, daring, and magnanimous. Our 
approbation of both may, upon different occasions, be perfect and 
entire; but we are softened by the one, and we are elevated by 
the other, and there is no sort of resemblance between the 
emotions which they excite in us. But according to that system 
which I have been endeavouring to establish, this must 
necessarily be the case. As the emotions of the person whom we 
approve of, are, in those two cases, quite opposite to one 
another, and as our approbation arises from sympathy with those 
opposite emotions, what we feel upon the one occasion, can have 
no sort of resemblance to what we feel upon the other. But this 
could not happen if approbation consisted in a peculiar emotion 
which had nothing in common with the sentiments we approved of, 
but which arose at the view of those sentiments, like any other 
passion at the view of its proper object. The same thing holds 
true with regard to disapprobation. Our horror for cruelty has no 
sort of resemblance to our contempt for mean-spiritedness. It is 
quite a different species of discord which we feel at the view of 
those two different vices, between our own minds and those of the 
person whose sentiments and behaviour we consider. 
    Secondly, I have already observed, that not only the 
different passions or affections of the human mind which are 
approved or disapproved of, appear morally good or evil, but that 
proper and improper approbation appear, to our natural 
sentiments, to be stamped with the same characters. I would ask, 
therefore, how it is, that, according to this system, we approve 
or disapprove of proper or improper approbation? To this question 
there is, I imagine, but one reasonable answer, which can 
possibly be given. It must be said, that when the approbation 
with which our neighbour regards the conduct of a third person 
coincides with our own, we approve of his approbation, and 
consider it as, in some measure, morally good; and that, on the 
contrary, when it does not coincide with our own sentiments, we 
disapprove of it, and consider it as, in some measure, morally 
evil. It must be allowed, therefore, that, at least in this one 
case, the coincidence or opposition of sentiments, between the 
observer and the person observed, constitutes moral approbation 
or disapprobation. And if it does so in this one case, I would 
ask, why not in every other? Or to what purpose imagine a new 
power of perception in order to account for those sentiments? 
    Against every account of the principle of approbation, which 
makes it depend upon a peculiar sentiment, distinct from every 
other, I would object; that it is strange that this sentiment, 
which Providence undoubtedly intended to be the governing 
principle of human nature, should hitherto have been so little 
taken notice of, as not to have got a name in any language. The 
word moral sense is of very late formation, and cannot yet be 
considered as making part of the English tongue. The word 
approbation has but within these few years been appropriated to 
denote peculiarly any thing of this kind. In propriety of 
language we approve of whatever is entirely to our satisfaction, 
of the form of a building, of the contrivance of a machine, of 
the flavour of a dish of meat. The word conscience does not 
immediately denote any moral faculty by which we approve or 
disapprove. Conscience supposes, indeed, the existence of some 
such faculty, and properly signifies our consciousness of having 
acted agreeably or contrary to its directions. When love, hatred, 
joy, sorrow, gratitude, resentment, with so many other passions 
which are all supposed to be the subjects of this principle, have 
made themselves considerable enough to get titles to know them 
by, is it not surprising that the sovereign of them all should 
hitherto have been so little heeded, that, a few philosophers 
excepted, nobody has yet thought it worth while to bestow a name 
upon it? 
    When we approve of any character or action, the sentiments 
which we feel, are, according to the foregoing system, derived 
from four sources, which are in some respects different from one 
another. First, we sympathize with the motives of the agent; 
secondly, we enter into the gratitude of those who receive the 
benefit of his actions; thirdly, we observe that his conduct has 
been agreeable to the general rules by which those two sympathies 
generally act; and, last of all, when we consider such actions as 
making a part of a system of behaviour which tends to promote the 
happiness either of the individual or of the society, they appear 
to derive a beauty from this utility, not unlike that which we 
ascribe to any well-contrived machine. After deducting, in any 
one particular case, all that must be acknowledged to proceed 
from some one or other of these four principles, I should be glad 
to know what remains, and I shall freely allow this overplus to 
be ascribed to a moral sense, or to any other peculiar faculty, 
provided any body will ascertain precisely what this overplus is. 
It might be expected, perhaps, that if there was any such 
peculiar principle, such as this moral sense is supposed to be, 
we should feel it, in some particular cases, separated and 
detached from every other, as we often feel joy, sorrow, hope, 
and fear, pure and unmixed with any other emotion. This however, 
I imagine, cannot even be pretended. I have never heard any 
instance alleged in which this principle could be said to exert 
itself alone and unmixed with sympathy or antipathy, with 
gratitude or resentment, with the perception of the agreement or 
disagreement of any action to an established rule, or last of all 
with that general taste for beauty and or der which is excited by 
inanimated as well as by animated objects. 
    II. There is another system which attempts to account for the 
origin of our moral sentiments from sympathy, distinct from that 
which I have been endeavouring to establish. It is that which 
places virtue in utility, and accounts for the pleasure with 
which the spectator surveys the utility of any quality from 
sympathy with the happiness of those who are affected by it. This 
sympathy is different both from that by which we enter into the 
motives of the agent, and from that by which we go along with the 
gratitude of the persons who are benefited by his actions. It is 
the same principle with that by which we approve of a 
well-contrived machine. But no machine can be the object of 
either of those two last mentioned sympathies. I have already, in 
the fourth part of this discourse, given some account of this 
system. 
Section IV 
Of the Manner in which different Authors have treated of the 
practical Rules of Morality 
  
    It was observed in the third part of this discourse, that the 
rules of justice are the only rules of morality which are precise 
and accurate; that those of all the other virtues are loose, 
vague, and indeterminate; that the first may be compared to the 
rules of grammar; the others to those which critics lay down for 
the attainment of what is sublime and elegant in composition, and 
which present us rather with a general idea of the perfection we 
ought to aim at, than afford us any certain and infallible 
directions for acquiring it. 
    As the different rules of morality admit such different 
degrees of accuracy, those authors who have endeavoured to 
collect and digest them into systems have done it in two 
Different manners; and one set has followed through the whole 
that loose method to which they were naturally directed by the 
consideration of one species of virtues; while another has as 
universally endeavoured to introduce into their precepts that 
sort of accuracy of which only some of them are susceptible. The 
first have wrote like critics, the second like grammarians. 
    I. The first, among whom we may count all the ancient 
moralists, have contented themselves with describing in a general 
manner the different vices and virtues, and with pointing out the 
deformity and misery of the one disposition as well as the 
propriety and happiness of the other, but have not affected to 
lay down many precise rules that are to hold good unexceptionably 
in all particular cases. They have only endeavoured to ascertain, 
as far as language is capable of ascertaining, first, wherein 
consists the sentiment of the heart, upon which each particular 
virtue is founded, what sort of internal feeling or emotion it is 
which constitutes the essence of friendship, of humanity, of 
generosity, of justice, of magnanimity, and of all the other 
virtues, as well as of the vices which are opposed to them: and, 
secondly, what is the general way of acting, the ordinary tone 
and tenor of conduct to which each of those sentiments would 
direct us, or how it is that a friendly, a generous, a brave, a 
just, and a humane man, would, upon ordinary occasions, chuse to 
act. 
    To characterize the sentiment of the heart, upon which each 
particular virtue is founded, though it requires both a delicate 
and an accurate pencil, is a task, however, which may be executed 
with some degree of exactness. It is impossible, indeed, to 
express all the variations which each sentiment either does or 
ought to undergo, according to every possible variation of 
circumstances. They are endless, and language wants names to mark 
them by. The sentiment of friendship, for example, which we feel 
for an old man is different from that which we feel for a young: 
that which we entertain for an austere man different from that 
which we feel for one of softer and gentler manners: and that 
again from what we feel for one of gay vivacity and spirit. The 
friendship which we conceive for a man is different from that 
with which a woman affects us, even where there is no mixture of 
any grosser passion. What author could enumerate and ascertain 
these and all the other infinite varieties which this sentiment 
is capable of undergoing? But still the general sentiment of 
friendship and familiar attachment which is common to them all, 
may be ascertained with a sufficient degree of accuracy. The 
picture which is drawn of it, though it will always be in many 
respects incomplete, may, however, have such a resemblance as to 
make us know the original when we meet with it, and even 
distinguish it from other sentiments to which it has a 
considerable resemblance, such as good-will, respect, esteem, 
admiration. 
    To describe, in a general manner, what is the ordinary way of 
acting to which each virtue would prompt us, is still more easy. 
It is, indeed, scarce possible to describe the internal sentiment 
or emotion upon which it is founded, without doing something of 
this kind. It is impossible by language to express, if I may say 
so, the invisible features of all the different modifications of 
passion as they show themselves within. There is no other way of 
marking and distinguishing them from one another, but by 
describing the effects which they produce without, the 
alterations which they occasion in the countenance, in the air 
and eternal behaviour, the resolutions they suggest, the actions 
they prompt to. It is thus that Cicero, in the first book of his 
Offices, endeavours to direct us to the practice of the four 
cardinal virtues, and that Aristotle in the practical parts of 
his Ethics, points out to us the different habits by which he 
would have us regulate our behaviour, such as liberality, 
magnificence, magnanimity, and even jocularity and good-humour, 
qualities which that indulgent philosopher has thought worthy of 
a place in the catalogue of the virtues, though the lightness of 
that approbation which we naturally bestow upon them, should not 
seem to entitle them to so venerable a name. 
    Such works present us with agreeable and lively pictures of 
manners. By the vivacity of their descriptions they inflame our 
natural love of virtue, and increase our abhorrence of vice: by 
the justness as well as delicacy of their observations they may 
often help both to correct and to ascertain our natural 
sentiments with regard to the propriety of conduct, and 
suggesting many nice and delicate attentions, form us to a more 
exact justness of behaviour, than what, without such instruction, 
we should have been apt to think of. In treating of the rules of 
morality, in this manner, consists the science which is properly 
called Ethics, a science which, though like criticism it does not 
admit of the most accurate precision, is, however, both highly 
useful and agreeable. It is of all others the most susceptible of 
the embellishments of eloquence, and by means of them of 
bestowing, if that be possible, a new importance upon the 
smallest rules of duty. Its precepts, when thus dressed and 
adorned, are capable of producing upon the flexibility of youth, 
the noblest and most lasting impressions, and as they fall in 
with the natural magnanimity of that generous age, they are able 
to inspire, for a time at least, the most heroic resolutions, and 
thus tend both to establish and confirm the best and most useful 
habits of which the mind of man is susceptible. Whatever precept 
and exhortation can do to animate us to the practice of virtue, 
is done by this science delivered in this manner. 
 II. The second set of moralists, among whom we may count all the 
casuists of the middle and latter ages of the christian church, 
as well as all those who in this and in the preceding century 
have treated of what is called natural jurisprudence, do not 
content themselves with characterizing in this general manner 
that tenor of conduct which they would recommend to us, but 
endeavour to lay down exact and precise rules for the direction 
of every circumstance of our behaviour. As justice is the only 
virtue with regard to which such exact rules can properly be 
given; it is this virtue, that has chiefly fallen under the 
consideration of those two different sets of writers. They treat 
of it, however, in a very different manner. 
    Those who write upon the principles of jurisprudence, 
consider only what the person to whom the obligation is due, 
ought to think himself entitled to exact by force; what every 
impartial spectator would approve of him for exacting, or what a 
judge or arbiter, to whom he had submitted his case, and who had 
undertaken to do him justice, ought to oblige the other person to 
suffer or to perform. The casuists, on the other hand, do not so 
much examine what it is, that might properly be exacted by force, 
as what it is, that the person who owes the obligation ought to 
think himself bound to perform from the most sacred and 
scrupulous regard to the general rules of justice, and from the 
most conscientious dread, either of wronging his neighbour, or of 
violating the integrity of his own character. It is the end of 
jurisprudence to prescribe rules for the decisions of judges and 
arbiters. It is the end of casuistry to prescribe rules for the 
conduct of a good man. By observing all the rules of 
jurisprudence, supposing them ever so perfect, we should deserve 
nothing but to be free from external punishment. By observing 
those of casuistry, supposing them such as they ought to be, we 
should be entitled to considerable praise by the exact and 
scrupulous delicacy of our behaviour. 
    It may frequently happen that a good man ought to think 
himself bound, from a sacred and conscientious regard to the 
general rules of justice, to perform many things which it would 
be the highest injustice to extort from him, or for any judge or 
arbiter to impose upon him by force. To give a trite example; a 
highwayman, by the fear of death, obliges a traveller to promise 
him a certain sum of money. Whether such a promise, extorted in 
this manner by unjust force, ought to be regarded as obligatory, 
is a question that has been very much debated. 
    If we consider it merely as a question of jurisprudence, the 
decision can admit of no doubt. It would be absurd to suppose 
that the highwayman can be entitled to use force to constrain the 
other to perform. To extort the promise was a crime which 
deserved the highest punishment, and to extort the performance 
would only be adding a new crime to the former. He can complain 
of no injury who has been only deceived by the person by whom he 
might justly have been killed. To suppose that a judge ought to 
enforce the obligation of such promises, or that the magistrate 
ought to allow them to sustain action at law, would be the most 
ridiculous of all absurdities. If we consider this question, 
therefore, as a question of jurisprudence, we can be at no loss 
about the decision. 
    But if we consider it as a question of casuistry, it will not 
be so easily determined. Whether a good man, from a conscientious 
regard to that most sacred rule of justice, which commands the 
observance of all serious promises, would not think himself bound 
to perform, is at least much more doubtful. That no regard is due 
to the disappointment of the wretch who brings him into this 
situation, that no injury is done to the robber, and consequently 
that nothing can be extorted by force, will admit of no sort of 
dispute. But whether some regard is not, in this case, due to his 
own dignity and honour, to the inviolable sacredness of that part 
of his character which makes him reverence the law of truth and 
abhor every thing that approaches to treachery and falsehood, 
may, perhaps, more reasonably be made a question. The casuists 
accordingly are greatly divided about it. One party, with whom we 
may count Cicero among the ancients, among the moderns, 
Puffendorf, Barbeyrac his commentator, and above all the late Dr 
Hutcheson, one who in most cases was by no means a loose casuist, 
determine, without any hesitation, that no sort of regard is due 
to any such promise, and that to think otherwise is mere weakness 
and superstition. Another party, among whom we may reckon 
(20*)some of the ancient fathers of the church, as well as some 
very eminent modern casuists, have been of another opinion, and 
have judged all such promises obligatory. 
    If we consider the matter according to the common sentiments 
of mankind, we shall find that some regard would be thought due 
even to a promise of this kind; but that it is impossible to 
determine how much, by any general rule that will apply to all 
cases without exception. The man who was quite frank and easy in 
making promises of this kind, and who violated them with as 
little ceremony, we should not chuse for our friend and 
companion. A gentleman who should promise a highwayman five 
pounds and not perform, would incur some blame. If the sum 
promised, however, was very great, it might be more doubtful, 
what was proper to be done. If it was such, for example, that the 
payment of it would entirely ruin the family of the promiser, if 
it was so great as to be sufficient for promoting the most useful 
purposes, it would appear in some measure criminal, at least 
extremely improper, to throw it, for the sake of a punctilio, 
into such worthless hands. The man who should beggar himself, or 
who should throw away an hundred thousand pounds, though he could 
afford that vast sum, for the sake of observing such a parole 
with a thief, would appear to the common sense of mankind, absurd 
and extravagant in the highest degree. Such profusion would seem 
inconsistent with his duty, with what he owed both to himself and 
others, and what, therefore, regard to a promise extorted in this 
manner, could by no means authorise. To fix, however, by any 
precise rule, what degree of regard ought to be paid to it, or 
what might be the greatest sum which could be due from it, is 
evidently impossible. This would vary according to the characters 
of the persons, according to their circumstances, according to 
the solemnity of the promise, and even according to the incidents 
of the rencounter. and if the promiser had been treated with a 
great deal of that sort of gallantry, which is sometimes to be 
met with in persons of the most abandoned characters, more would 
seem due than upon other occasions. It may be said in general, 
that exact propriety requires the observance of all such 
promises, wherever it is not inconsistent with some other duties 
that are more sacred; such as regard to the public interest, to 
those whom gratitude, whom natural affection, or whom the laws of 
proper beneficence should prompt us to provide for. But, as was 
formerly taken notice of, we have no precise rules to determine 
what external actions are due from a regard to such motives, nor, 
consequently, when it is that those virtues are inconsistent with 
the observance of such promises. 
    It is to be observed, however, that whenever such promises 
are violated, though for the most necessary reasons, it is always 
with some degree of dishonour to the person who made them. After 
they are made, we may be convinced of the impropriety of 
observing them. But still there is some fault in having made 
them. It is at least a departure from the highest and noblest 
maxims of magnanimity and honour. A brave man ought to die, 
rather than make a promise which he can neither keep without 
folly, nor violate without ignominy. For some degree of ignominy 
always attends a situation of this kind. Treachery and falsehood 
are vices so dangerous, so dreadful, and, at the same time, such 
as may so easily, and, upon many occasions, so safely be 
indulged, that we are more jealous of them than of almost any 
other. Our imagination therefore attaches the idea of shame to 
all violations of faith, in every circumstance and in every 
situation. They resemble, in this respect, the violations of 
chastity in the fair sex, a virtue of which, for the like 
reasons, we are excessively jealous; and our sentiments are not 
more delicate with regard to the one, than with regard to the 
other. Breach of chastity dishonours irretrievably. No 
circumstances, no solicitation can excuse it; no sorrow, no 
repentance atone for it. We are so nice in this respect that even 
a rape dishonours, and the innocence of the mind cannot, in our 
imagination, wash out the pollution of the body. It is the same 
case with the violation of faith, when it has been solemnly 
pledged, even to the most worthless of mankind. Fidelity is so 
necessary a virtue, that we apprehend it in general to be due 
even to those to whom nothing else is due, and whom we think it 
lawful to kill and destroy. It is to no purpose that the person 
who has been guilty of the breach of it, urges that he promised 
in order to save his life, and that he broke his promise because 
it was inconsistent with some other respectable duty to keep it. 
These circumstances may alleviate, but cannot entirely wipe out 
his dishonour. He appears to have been guilty of an action with 
which, in the imaginations of men, some degree of shame is 
inseparably connected. He has broke a promise which he had 
solemnly averred he would maintain; and his character, if not 
irretrievably stained and polluted, has at least a ridicule 
affixed to it, which it will be very difficult entirely to 
efface; and no man, I imagine, who had gone through an adventure 
of this kind would be fond of telling the story. 
    This instance may serve to show wherein consists the 
difference between casuistry and jurisprudence, even when both of 
them consider the obligations of the general rules of justice. 
    But though this difference be real and essential, though 
those two sciences propose quite different ends, the sameness of 
the subject has made such a similarity between them, that the 
greater part of authors whose professed design was to treat of 
jurisprudence, have determined the different questions they 
examine, sometimes according to the principles of that science, 
and sometimes according to those of casuistry, without 
distinguishing, and, perhaps, without being themselves aware when 
they did the one, and when the other. 
    The doctrine of the casuists, however, is by no means 
confined to the consideration of what a conscientious regard to 
the general rules of justice would demand of us. It embraces many 
other parts of Christian and moral duty. What seems principally 
to have given occasion to the cultivation of this species of 
science was the custom of auricular confession, introduced by the 
Roman Catholic superstition, in times of barbarism and ignorance. 
By that institution, the most secret actions, and even the 
thoughts of every person, which could be suspected of receding in 
the smallest degree from the rules of Christian purity, were to 
be revealed to the confessor. The confessor informed his 
penitents whether, and in what respect they had violated their 
duty, and what penance it behoved them to undergo, before he 
could absolve them in the name of the offended Deity. 
    The consciousness, or even the suspicion of having done 
wrong, is a load upon every mind, and is accompanied with anxiety 
and terror in all those who are not hardened by long habits of 
iniquity. Men, in this, as in all other distresses, are naturally 
eager to disburthen themselves of the oppression which they feel 
upon their thoughts, by unbosoming the agony of their mind to 
some person whose secrecy and discretion they can confide in. The 
shame, which they suffer from this acknowledgment, is fully 
compensated by that deviation of their uneasiness which the 
sympathy of their confident seldom fails to occasion. It relieves 
them to find that they are not altogether unworthy of regard, and 
that however their past conduct may be censured, their present 
disposition is at least approved of, and is perhaps sufficient to 
compensate the other, at least to maintain them in some degree of 
esteem with their friend. A numerous and artful clergy had, in 
those times of superstition, insinuated themselves into the 
confidence of almost every private family. They possessed all the 
little learning which the times could afford, and their manners, 
though in many respects rude and disorderly, were polished and 
regular compared with those of the age they lived in. They were 
regarded, therefore, not only as the great directors of all 
religious, but of all moral duties. Their familiarity gave 
reputation to whoever was so happy as to possess it, and every 
mark of their disapprobation stamped the deepest ignominy upon 
all who had the misfortune to fall under it. Being considered as 
the great judges of right and wrong, they were naturally 
consulted about all scruples that occurred, and it was reputable 
for any person to have it known that he made those holy men the 
confidents of all such secrets, and took no important or delicate 
step in his conduct without their advice and approbation. It was 
not difficult for the clergy, therefore, to get it established as 
a general rule, that they should be entrusted with what it had 
already become fashionable to entrust them, and with what they 
generally would have been entrusted, though no such rule had been 
established. To qualify themselves for confessors became thus a 
necessary part of the study of churchmen and divines, and they 
were thence led to collect what are called cases of conscience, 
nice and delicate situations in which it is hard to determine 
whereabouts the propriety of conduct may lie. Such works, they 
imagined, might be of use both to the directors of consciences 
and to those who were to be directed; and hence the origin of 
books of casuistry. 
    The moral duties which fell under the consideration of the 
casuists were chiefly those which can, in some measure at least, 
be circumscribed within general rules, and of which the violation 
is naturally attended with some degree of remorse and some dread 
of suffering punishment. The design of that institution which 
gave occasion to their works, was to appease those terrors of 
conscience which attend upon the infringement of such duties. But 
it is not every virtue of which the defect is accompanied with 
any very severe compunctions of this kind, and no man applies to 
his confessor for absolution, because he did not perform the most 
generous, the most friendly, or the most magnanimous action 
which, in his circumstances, it was possible to perform. In 
failures of this kind, the rule that is violated is commonly not 
very determinate, and is generally of such a nature too, that 
though the observance of it might entitle to honour and reward, 
the violation seems to expose to no positive blame, censure, or 
punishment. The exercise of such virtues the casuists seem to 
have regarded as a sort of works of supererogation, which could 
not be very strictly exacted, and which it was therefore 
unnecessary for them to treat of. 
    The breaches of moral duty, therefore, which came before the 
tribunal of the confessor, and upon that account fell under the 
cognizance of the casuists, were chiefly of three different 
kinds. 
    First and principally, breaches of the rules of justice. The 
rules here are all express and positive, and the violation of 
them is naturally attended with the consciousness of deserving, 
and the dread of suffering punishment both from God and man. 
    Secondly, breaches of the rules of chastity. These in all 
grosser instances are real breaches of the rules of justice, and 
no person can be guilty of them without doing the most 
unpardonable injury to some other. In smaller instances, when 
they amount only to a violation of those exact decorums which 
ought to be observed in the conversation of the two sexes, they 
cannot indeed justly be considered as violations of the rules of 
justice. They are generally, however, violations of a pretty 
plain rule, and, at least in one of the sexes, tend to bring 
ignominy upon the person who has been guilty of them, and 
consequently to be attended in the scrupulous with some degree of 
shame and contrition of mind. 
    Thirdly, breaches of the rules of veracity. The violation of 
truth, it is to be observed, is not always a breach of justice, 
though it is so upon many occasions, and consequently cannot 
always expose to any external punishment. The vice of common 
lying, though a most miserable meanness, may frequently do hurt 
to nobody, and in this case no claim of vengeance or satisfaction 
can be due either to the persons imposed upon, or to others. But 
though the violation of truth is not always a breach of justice, 
it is always a breach of a very plain rule, and what naturally 
tends to cover with shame the person who has been guilty of it. 
    There seems to be in young children an instinctive 
disposition to believe whatever they are told. Nature seems to 
have judged it necessary for their preservation that they should, 
for some time at least, put implicit confidence in those to whom 
the care of their childhood, and of the earliest and most 
necessary parts of their education, is intrusted. Their 
credulity, accordingly, is excessive, and it requires long and 
much experience of the falsehood of mankind to reduce them to a 
reasonable degree of diffidence and distrust. In grown-up people 
the degrees of credulity are, no doubt, very different. The 
wisest and most experienced are generally the least credulous. 
But the man scarce lives who is not more credulous than he ought 
to be, and who does not, upon many occasions, give credit to 
tales, which not only turn out to be perfectly false, but which a 
very moderate degree of reflection and attention might have 
taught him could not well be true. The natural disposition is 
always to believe. It is acquired wisdom and experience only that 
teach incredulity, and they very seldom teach it enough. The 
wisest and most cautious of us all frequently gives credit to 
stories which he himself is afterwards both ashamed and 
astonished that he could possibly think of believing. 
    The man whom we believe is necessarily, in the things 
concerning which we believe him, our leader and director, and we 
look up to him with a certain degree of esteem and respect. But 
as from admiring other people we come to wish to be admired 
ourselves; so from being led and directed by other people we 
learn to wish to become ourselves leaders and directors. And as 
we cannot always be satisfied merely with being admired, unless 
we can at the same time persuade ourselves that we are in some 
degree really worthy of admiration; so we cannot always be 
satisfied merely with being believed, unless we are at the same 
time conscious that we are really worthy of belief. As the desire 
of praise and that of praise-worthiness, though very much a-kin, 
are yet distinct and separate desires; so the desire of being 
believed and that of being worthy of belief, though very much 
a-kin too, are equally distinct and separate desires. 
    The desire of being believed, the desire of persuading, of 
leading and directing other people, seems to be one of the 
strongest of all our natural desires. It is, perhaps, the 
instinct upon which is founded the faculty of speech, the 
characteristical faculty of human nature. No other animal 
possesses this faculty, and we cannot discover in any other 
animal any desire to lead and direct the judgment and conduct of 
its fellows. Great ambition, the desire of real superiority, of 
leading and directing, seems to be altogether peculiar to man, 
and speech is the great instrument of ambition, of real 
superiority, of leading and directing the judgments and conduct 
of other people. 
    It is always mortifying not to be believed, and it is doubly 
so when we suspect that it is because we are supposed to be 
unworthy of belief and capable of seriously and wilfully 
deceiving. To tell a man that he lies, is of all affronts the 
most mortal. But whoever seriously and wilfully deceives is 
necessarily conscious to himself that he merits this affront, 
that he does not deserve to be believed, and that he forfeits all 
title to that sort of credit from which alone he can derive any 
sort of ease, comfort, or satisfaction in the society of his 
equals. The man who had the misfortune to imagine that nobody 
believed a single word he said, would feel himself the outcast of 
human society, would dread the very thought of going into it, or 
of presenting himself before it, and could scarce fail, I think, 
to die of despair. It is probable, however, that no man ever had 
just reason to entertain this humiliating opinion of himself. The 
most notorious liar, I am disposed to believe, tells the fair 
truth at least twenty times for once that he seriously and 
deliberately lies; and, as in the most cautious the disposition 
to believe is apt to prevail over that to doubt and distrust; so 
in those who are the most regardless of truth, the natural 
disposition to tell it prevails upon most occasions over that to 
deceive, or in any respect to alter or disguise it. 
    We are mortified when we happen to deceive other people, 
though unintentionally, and from having been ourselves deceived. 
Though this involuntary falsehood may frequently be no mark of 
any want of veracity, of any want of the most perfect love of 
truth, it is always in some degree a mark of want of judgment, of 
want of memory, of improper credulity, of some degree of 
precipitancy and rashness. It always diminishes our authority to 
persuade, and always brings some degree of suspicion upon our 
fitness to lead and direct. The man who sometimes misleads from 
mistake, however, is widely different from him who is capable of 
wilfully deceiving. The former may safely be trusted upon many 
occasions; the latter very seldom upon any. 
    Frankness and openness conciliate confidence. We trust the 
man who seems willing to trust us. We see clearly, we think, the 
road by which he means to conduct us, and we abandon ourselves 
with pleasure to his guidance and direction. Reserve and 
concealment, on the contrary, call forth diffidence. We are 
afraid to follow the man who is going we do not know where. The 
great pleasure of conversation and society, besides, arises from 
a certain correspondence of sentiments and opinions, from a 
certain harmony of minds, which like so many musical instruments 
coincide and keep time with one another. But this most delightful 
harmony cannot be obtained unless there is a free communication 
of sentiments and opinions. We all desire, upon this account, to 
feel how each other is affected, to penetrate into each other's 
bosoms, and to observe the sentiments and affections which really 
subsist there. The man who indulges us in this natural passion, 
who invites us into his heart, who, as it were, sets open the 
gates of his breast to us, seems to exercise a species of 
hospitality more delightful than any other. No man, who is in 
ordinary good temper, can fail of pleasing, if he has the courage 
to utter his real sentiments as he feels them, and because he 
feels them. It is this unreserved sincerity which renders even 
the prattle of a child agreeable. How weak and imperfect soever 
the views of the open-hearted, we take pleasure to enter into 
them, and endeavour, as much as we can, to bring down our own 
understanding to the level of their capacities, and to regard 
every subject in the particular light in which they appear to 
have considered it. This passion to discover the real sentiments 
of others is naturally so strong, that it often degenerates into 
a troublesome and impertinent curiosity to pry into those secrets 
of our neighbours which they have very justifiable reasons for 
concealing; and, upon many occasions, it requires prudence and a 
strong sense of propriety to govern this, as well as all the 
other passions of human nature, and to reduce it to that pitch 
which any impartial spectator can approve of. To disappoint this 
curiosity, however, when it is kept within proper bounds, and 
aims at nothing which there can be any just reason for 
concealing, is equally disagreeable in its turn. The man who 
eludes our most innocent questions, who gives no satisfaction to 
our most inoffensive inquiries, who plainly wraps himself up in 
impenetrable obscurity, seems, as it were, to build a wall about 
his breast. We run forward to get within it, with all the 
eagerness of harmless curiosity; and feel ourselves all at once 
pushed back with the rudest and most offensive violence. 
    The man of reserve and concealment, though seldom a very 
amiable character, is not disrespected or despised. He seems to 
feel coldly towards us, and we feel as coldly towards him. He is 
not much praised or beloved, but he is as little hated or blamed. 
He very seldom, however, has occasion to repent of his caution, 
and is generally disposed rather to value himself upon the 
prudence of his reserve. Though his conduct, therefore, may have 
been very faulty, and sometimes even hurtful, he can very seldom 
be disposed to lay his case before the casuists, or to fancy that 
he has any occasion for their acquittal or approbation. 
    It is not always so with the man, who, from false 
information, from inadvertency, from precipitancy and rashness, 
has involuntarily deceived. Though it should be in a matter of 
little consequence, in telling a piece of common news, for 
example, if he is a real lover of truth, he is ashamed of his own 
carelessness, and never fails to embrace the first opportunity of 
making the fullest acknowledgments. If it is in a matter of some 
consequence, his contrition is still greater; and if any unlucky 
or fatal consequence has followed from his misinformation, he can 
scarce ever forgive himself. Though not guilty, he feels himself 
to be in the highest degree, what the ancients called, piacular, 
and is anxious and eager to make every sort of atonement in his 
power. Such a person might frequently be disposed to lay his case 
before the casuists, who have in general been very favourable to 
him, and though they have sometimes justly condemned him for 
rashness, they have universally acquitted him of the ignominy of 
falsehood. 
    But the man who had the most frequent occasion to consult 
them, was the man of equivocation and mental reservation, the man 
who seriously and deliberately meant to deceive, but who, at the 
same time, wished to flatter himself that he had really told the 
truth. With him they have dealt variously. When they approved 
very much of the motives of his deceit, they have sometimes 
acquitted him, though, to do them justice, they have in general 
and much more frequently condemned him. 
    The chief subjects of the works of the casuists, therefore, 
were the conscientious regard that is due to the rules of 
justice; how far we ought to respect the life and property of our 
neighbour; the duty of restitution; the laws of chastity and 
modesty, and wherein consisted what, in their language, are 
called the sins of concupiscence; the rules of veracity, and the 
obligation of oaths, promises, and contracts of all kinds. 
    It may be said in general of the works of the casuists that 
they attempted, to no purpose, to direct by precise rules what it 
belongs to feeling and sentiment only to judge of. How is it 
possible to ascertain by rules the exact point at which, in every 
case, a delicate sense of justice begins to run into a frivolous 
and weak scrupulosity of conscience? When it is that secrecy and 
reserve begin to grow into dissimulation? How far an agreeable 
irony may be carried, and at what precise point it begins to 
degenerate into a detest. able lie? What is the highest pitch of 
freedom and ease of behaviour which can be regarded as graceful 
and becoming, and when it is that it first begins to run into a 
negligent and thoughtless licentiousness? With regard to all such 
matters, what would hold good in any one case would scarce do so 
exactly in any other, and what constitutes the propriety and 
happiness of behaviour varies in every case with the smallest 
variety of situation. Books of casuistry, therefore, are 
generally as useless as they are commonly tiresome. They could be 
of little use to one who should consult them upon occasion, even 
supposing their decisions to be just; because, notwithstanding 
the multitude of cases collected in them, yet upon account of the 
still greater variety of possible circumstances, it is a chance, 
if among all those cases there be found one exactly parallel to 
that under consideration. One, who is really anxious to do his 
duty, must be very weak, if he can imagine that he has much 
occasion for them; and with regard to one who is negligent of it, 
the style of those writings is not such as is likely to awaken 
him to more attention. None of them tend to animate us to what is 
generous and noble. None of them tend to soften us to what is 
gentle and humane. Many of them, on the contrary, tend rather to 
teach us to chicane with our own consciences, and by their vain 
subtilties serve to authorise innumerable evasive refinements 
with regard to the most essential articles of our duty. That 
frivolous accuracy which they attempted to introduce into 
subjects which do not admit of it, almost necessarily betrayed 
them into those dangerous errors, and at the same time rendered 
their works dry and disagreeable, abounding in abtruse and 
metaphysical distinctions, but incapable of exciting in the heart 
any of those emotions which it is the principal use of books of 
morality to excite. 
    The two useful parts of moral philosophy, therefore, are 
Ethics and Jurisprudence: casuistry ought to be rejected 
altogether; and the ancient moralists appear to have judged much 
better, who, in treating of the same subjects, did not affect any 
such nice exactness, but contented themselves with describing, in 
a general manner, what is the sentiment upon which justice, 
modesty, and veracity are founded, and what is the ordinary way 
of acting to which those virtues would commonly prompt us. 
    Something, indeed, not unlike the doctrine of the casuists, 
seems to have been attempted by several philosophers. There is 
something of this kind in the third book of Cicero's Offices, 
where he endeavours like a casuist to give rules for our conduct 
in many nice cases, in which it is difficult to determine 
whereabouts the point of propriety may lie. It appears too, from 
many passages in the same book, that several other philosophers 
had attempted something of the same kind before him. Neither he 
nor they, however, appear to have aimed at giving a complete 
system of this sort, but only meant to show how situations may 
occur, in which it is doubtful, whether the highest propriety of 
conduct consists in observing or in receding from what, in 
ordinary cases, are the rules of duty. 
    Every system of positive law may be regarded as a more or 
less imperfect attempt towards a system of natural jurisprudence, 
or towards an enumeration of the particular rules of justice. As 
the violation of justice is what men will never submit to from 
one another, the public magistrate is under a necessity of 
employing the power of the commonwealth to enforce the practice 
of this virtue. Without this precaution, civil society would 
become a scene of bloodshed and disorder, every man revenging 
himself at his own hand whenever he fancied he was injured. To 
prevent the confusion which would attend upon every man's doing 
justice to himself, the magistrate, in all governments that have 
acquired any considerable authority, undertakes to do justice to 
all, and promises to hear and to redress every complaint of 
injury. In all well-governed states too, not only judges are 
appointed for determining the controversies of individuals, but 
rules are prescribed for regulating the decisions of those 
judges; and these rules are, in general, intended to coincide 
with those of natural justice. It does not, indeed, always happen 
that they do so in every instance. Sometimes what is called the 
constitution of the state, that is, the interest of the 
government; sometimes the interest of particular orders of men 
who tyrannize the government, warp the positive laws of the 
country from what natural justice would prescribe. In some 
countries, the rudeness and barbarism of the people hinder the 
natural sentiments of justice from arriving at that accuracy and 
precision which, in more civilized nations, they naturally attain 
to. Their laws are, like their manners, gross and rude and 
undistinguishing. In other countries the unfortunate constitution 
of their courts of judicature hinders any regular system of 
jurisprudence from ever establishing itself among them, though 
the improved manners of the people may be such as would admit of 
the most accurate. In no country do the decisions of positive law 
coincide exactly, in every case, with the rules which the natural 
sense of justice would dictate. Systems of positive law, 
therefore, though they deserve the greatest authority, as the 
records of the sentiments of mankind in different ages and 
nations, yet can never be regarded as accurate systems of the 
rules of natural justice. 
    It might have been expected that the reasonings of lawyers, 
upon the different imperfections and improvements of the laws of 
different countries, should have given occasion to an inquiry 
into what were the natural rules of justice independent of all 
positive institution. It might have been expected that these 
reasonings should have led them to aim at establishing a system 
of what might properly be called natural jurisprudence, or a 
theory of the general principles which ought to run through and 
be the foundation of the laws of all nations. But though the 
reasonings of lawyers did produce something of this kind, and 
though no man has treated systematically of the laws of any 
particular country, without intermixing in his work many 
observations of this sort; it was very late in the world before 
any such general system was thought of, or before the philosophy 
of law was treated of by itself, and without regard to the 
particular institutions of any one nation. In none of the ancient 
moralists, do we find any attempt towards a particular 
enumeration of the rules of justice. Cicero in his Offices, and 
Aristotle in his Ethics, treat of justice in the same general 
manner in which they treat of all the other virtues. In the laws 
of Cicero and Plato, where we might naturally have expected some 
attempts towards an enumeration of those rules of natural equity, 
which ought to be enforced by the positive laws of every country, 
there is, however, nothing of this kind. Their laws are laws of 
police, not of justice. Grotius seems to have been the first who 
attempted to give the world any thing like a system of those 
principles which ought to ruin through, and be the foundation of 
the laws of all nations: and his treatise of the laws of war and 
peace, with all its imperfections, is perhaps at this day the 
most complete work that has yet been given upon this subject. I 
shall in another discourse endeavour to give an account of the 
general principles of law and government, and of the different 
revolutions they have undergone in the different ages and periods 
of society, not only in what concerns justice, but in what 
concerns police, revenue, and arms, and whatever else is the 
object of law. I shall not, therefore, at present enter into any 
further detail concerning the history of jurisprudence. 
NOTES: 
1. See Plato de Rep. lib. iv. 
2. The distributive justice of Aristotle is somewhat different. 
It consists in the proper distribution of rewards from the public 
stock of a community. See Aristotle Ethic. Nic. l.5.c.2. 
3. See Artistotle Ethic. Nic. l.a.c.5. et seq. et l.3.c.3 et seq. 
4. See Aristotle Ethic. Nic. lib. ii. ch 1, 2, 3, and 4. 
5. See Aristotle Mag. Mor. lib. i. ch. 1. 
6. See Cicero de finibus. lib. iii.; also Dogenes Laertius in 
Zenone, lib. vii. segment 84. 
7. Arrian. lib. ii.c.5. 
8. See Cicero de finibus, lib. 3. c.28. Olivet's edition. 
9. See Cicero de finibus. lib. i. Diogenes Laert. i, x. 
10. Prima naturae. 
11. See Inquiry concerning Virtue, sect. 1 and 2. 
12. Inquiry concerning virtue, sect. 2. art. 4. also 
Illustrations on the moral sense, sect. 5. last paragraph. 
13. Luxury and lust. 
14. Fable of the Bees. 
15. Puffendorff, Mandeville. 
16. Immutable Morality, l. 1. 
17. Inquiry concerning Virtue. 
18. Treatise of the Passions. 
19. Illustrations upon the Moral Sense, sect. 1, p. 237, et seq.; third edition. 
20. St Augustine, La Placette.