negligence, or through affectation, or through design, even when we apply it well. It was applied rather impertinently than hurtfully, to maintain stoical apathy; for it was not given to destroy, but to direct and govern the passions; to make them as beneficial as they are necessary in the human system; to make a Piso of a Catiline,*) and a Brutus, I mean the first, of a Cæsar. But it was applied very hurtfully; indeed, and it is so still by those who employ all the reason they have to corrupt the morals of men, to bribe, to seduce, argue, to deceive, or to force them out of their properties, or their liberties, and to make an whole community become the vassals of a faction of men, or of one man. This in politics. In religion it was applied very hurtfully, and it is so still by atheists and divines, whilst the former endeavour by sophism and declamation to censure the works of God, and the order of his providence, to destroy the belief of his existence, and to banish all sense of religion; and whilst the latter, who join very heartily in the same censure, would be thought to justify the divine attributes against the common accusation, and to promote the interests of religion by this justification.

A most unnecessary justification surely! if they did not make it necessary; since God leads. us by the natural state, in which we stand at first, into the road of happiness, and leaves us to the conduct of a sufficient guide, that is, of our reason, afterwards. It would be false to say, as Seneca says, somewhere in one of the rants of the portic, that we owe our virtue to ourselves, not to God. It would be equally false to say, that we owe our happiness to ourselves, not to God. But this may be said with truth, that God, when he gave us reason, left us to our free- will to make a proper, or improper, use of it: so that we are obliged to our creator for a certain rule and sufficient means of arriving at happiness, and have none to blame but ourselves, when we fail of it. It is not reason, but perverse will, that makes us fall

* Der edle Römer, der hier in Gegensatz mit dem leidenschaftlichen Catilina gestellt wird, soll höchst wahrscheinlich L. Piso Frugi, der erste dieses Beinamens, seyn, von dem, Cicero pro Fonteio c. 13. sagt: tanta virtute atque inte gritate fuit, ut etiam illis optimis temporibus, cum hominem invenire nequam neminem possés, solus tamen Frugi

nominaretur.

short of attainable happiness. The rule is so certain, and the means so sufficient, that they who deviate from them are self-condemned at the time they 'do so; for he, who breaks the laws of nature, or of his country, will concur to preserve them inviolate from others. As a member of society, he acknowledges the general rule. As an individual, he endeavours to be a particular exception to it. He is determined in both cases by self-love. That active principle, inflaming and inflamed by his passions, presses on to the apparent good which is the object of them: and if reason, a less active principle, which, instead of impelling, requires to be impelled, and to whom it belongs to be consulted in the choice, as well as in the pursuit, of an object, is called in, it is called in too late, and is made the drudge of the will, predetermined by passion. Thus it happens, that self-love and social are divided, and set in opposition to one another in the conduct of particular men, whilst, in the making laws, and in the regulation of government, they continue to be the same. long as they do so, the happiness of mankind is abundantly provided for and secured, in their several societies; and, notwithstanding the physical evils to which the members of these societies may stand sometimes exposed, every reasonable man, every man who is not a disciple of such a whining philosopher as Wollaston *), nor such a presumptuous divine as Clarke **), will confess that such a state is as happy not only as human eye ever saw, or human ear ever heard, but as the heart of man can conceive to belong to humanity: and much more happy than creatures, but one degree above those whom they despise, could expect to be.

As

It is true, indeed, that governments shift and change not only their administrations, but their forms. Good princes and magistrates carry on the work of God, and by making men better make them happier. When these are corrupt, the infection spreads. They corrupt the people, the people them, social love is extinguished, and passion divides those whom

*) Wilhelm Wollaston, geb. 1659, gest. 1724, ein Englischer Geistlicher, vorzüglich bekannt durch sein Werk über die natürliche Religion. ** Samuel Clarke, geb. 1675, gest. 1729, gleichfalls ein Englischer Geistlicher. Er ist als Verfasser mehrerer theologischer und philosophischer Schriften bekannt; auch zeichnete er sich als Philolog durch, die Herausgabe des Homer aus.

reason united. When the abuse is confined within certain bounds, the condition of many men may be happy, and that of all, may be still tolerable: and when the abuse exceeds such degrees, and when confusion or oppression becomes intolerable, we are to consider that they who suffer deserve to suffer. Good government cannot grow excessively bad, nor liberty be turned into slavery, unless the body of a people co-operate to their own ruin. The laws, by which societies are governed regard particulars, and individuals are rewarded, or punished, by men. But the laws by which the moral as well as the physical world is governed, regard generals: and communities are rewarded or punished by God, according to the nature of things in the ordinary course of his. providence, and even without any extraordinary interposition. Look round the world antient and modern, you will observe the general state of mankind to increase in happiness, or decline to misery, as virtue or vice prevails in their several societies. Thus the author of nature has been pleased to constitute the human system, and he must be mad who thinks that any of the atheistical, theological, or philosophical makers, and menders of worlds, could have constituted it better. The saying of Alphonsus, king of Castile, who found so many faults in the construction of the material world that he pronounced himself able to have given the supreme architect a better plan, has been heard with horror by every theist. Shall we hear without horror the men spoken of here, when they find fault with the moral, as well as physical plan, when they found accusations against the goodness, justice, and wisdom of God, merely on their pride, when they assume, on no other foundation, that man is or ought to have been the final cause of the creation, and rail as heartily at providence as Plutarch represents Epicurus to have done; in short, when they go so far as to impute to God the introduction or permission of those very evils which neither God is answerable for, if I may use such an expression, nor nature, nor reason, but our own perverse wills, and the wrong elections we make?

I cannot hear any part of this without horror; and theref I had walked with Wollaston in some retired field, my meditations would have been very different from his, more just, and more reverential toward the Supreme Being. I should have been very sure that neither lifeless matter nor the vegetative tribe have any reflex thoughts, nor any thoughts at

K

all. I should have been convinced that the faculty of thinking is given to sensitive animals, as we call them, in a lower degree than to man. But I should not have been convinced that they have the power of excercising it in respect of present objects only. The contrary would appear to me, on some occasions, as manifest in them, or in some of them, as it appears on others, and on more, in the man who is born dumb. I should feel the superiority of my species, but I should acknowledge the community of our kind. I should rouze in my mind a grateful sense of these advantages above all others, that I am a creature capable of knowing, of adoring, and worshiping my creator, capable of discovering his will in the law of my nature, and capable of promoting my happiness by obeying it. I should acknowledge thankfully, that I am able, by the superiority of my intellectual faculties, much better than my fellow creatures, to avoid some evils and to soften others, which are common to us and to them. I should confess, that as I proved myself more rational than they by employing my reason to this purpose, so I should prove myself less rational by repining at my state here, and by complaining that there are any unavoidable evils. I should confess that neither perfect virtue, nor perfect happiness are to be found among the sons of men: and that we ought to judge of the continuance of one, as we may judge of our perseverance in the other, according to a maxim in the ethics of Confucius; not by this, that we never fall from either, since in that sense there would be no one good nor no one happy man in the world; but by this, that when we do fall, we rise again, and pursue the journey of life, in the same road. Let us pursue it contentedly, and learn that, as the softest pillow on which we can lay our heads has been said by Montagne to be ignorance, we may say more properly that it is resignation. He alone is happy, and he is truly so, who can say: Welcome life whatever it brings! Welcome death whatever it is! Aut transfert, aut finit."*) If the former, we change our state, but we are still the creatures of the same God. He made us to be happy here. He may make us happier in another system of being. At least, this we are sure of, we shall be dealed with according to the perfections of his nature, not according to the imperfections

*) Entweder verscizt er uns anders wehin oder macht ein Ende.

of our own.

Resignation in this instance cannot be hard to one who thinks worthily of God, nor in the other, except to one who thinks too highly of man. That you, or I, or even Wollaston himself should return to the earth from whence we came, to the dirt under our feet, or be mingled with the ashes of those herbs and plants, from which we drew nutrition whilst we lived, does not seem any indignity, offered to our nature, since it is common to all the animal kind: and he, who complains of it as such, does not seem to have been set, by his reasoning faculties, so far above them in life, as to deserve not to be levelled with them at death. We were like them before our birth, that is nothing. So we shall be on this hypothesis like them too after our death that is nothing. What hardship is done us? None, unless it be an hardship, that we are not immortal, because we wish to be so, and flatter ourselves with that expectation. As well might that emperor of China have complained of his disappointment, when he imagined, he had bought immortality of a certain impostor, who pretended to give it, and then died. If this hypothesis were true, which I am far from assuming, I should have no reason to complain, tho' having tasted existence, I might abhor non-entity. Since then the first cannot be demonstrated by reason, nor the second be reconciled to my inward sentiment, let me take refuge in resignation at the last, as in every other act of my life. Let others be solicitous about their future state, and frighten, or flatter themselves as prejudice, imagination, bad health, or good health, nay a lowering day, or a clear sunshine shall inspire them to do. Let the tranquillity of my mind rest on this immoveable rock, that my future, as well as my present, state are ordered by an Almighty and Allwise Creator; and that they are equally foolish, and presumptuous, who make imaginary excursions into futurity, and who complain of the present.

These reflections, on the general and usual state of mankind, may be carried much further, and more may be added. But these are sufficient.