LECTURE LXXVII.

ON HUME'S SYSTEM, THAT UTILITY IS THE CONSTITUENT OR MEASURE OF VIRTUE.

In my last Lecture, Gentlemen, I examined, at as great a length, as a doctrine so false in its principles requires, the system of Dr. Mandeville with respect to virtue,-a system in which the actions that commonly go under that honourable name, are represented as, in every instance, where any seeming sacrifice is made to the happiness of another, the result of a calculating vanity, that, in its love of praise, consents to barter, for a suitable equivalent of commendation, the means of enjoyment which it would not give without a due equivalent, but which it values less than the applause that is to be offered in purchase of them. The pretender to generosity, who is a speculator in this species of traffic, is of course a hypocrite by the very quality of the moral ware in which he jobs; and the applauders of the ostensible generosity, who are as little capable of unpaid admiration, as he of gratuitous bounty, are hypocrites of equal skill, in the supposed universal cheat of social life. All are impostors, or all are dupes ;-or rather, all are at once impostors and dupes, dupes easily deceived by impostors whom it is easy to deceive. On a system, of which, I may safely take for granted, that every one of you has in the delightful remembrances of his own breast innumerable confutations, I should not have thought it necessary to dwell, if there had been less peril in the adoption of it to happiness and virtue. As a philosophic system it is scarcely worthy of discussion. It is an evident example of an error that is very common in hypothetical systems,-the error of supposing, notwithstanding the most striking seeming contrarieties, that what is true of a few cases out of many is, therefore, necessarily true of all. Some men are hypocrites, therefore all men are hypocrites :-it is not absolutely impossible, that he whom the world honours as virtuous for a life, which, from youth to old age, has had the uniform semblance of regard for the happiness of others, may have no virtue whatever at heart, therefore, it may be affirmed, with certainty, that he has no virtue whatever; such are the two propositions, which, though not expressed in these precise terms, con

stitute truly the whole logic of Mandeville. They are the very essence of his system; and unless we admit them as logically just, we must reject his system as logically false. But it is in his rhetoric that he trusts far more than in his defective logic; -and, if he have given us a few lively picturings of hypocrisy, he flatters himself that we shall not pause to inquire, whether pictures, so lively, are representations of a few only, or of all mankind.

What should we think of a moral theorist, who, after painting some coarse debauch in the midnight profligacy of the lowest alehouse, or the wider drunkenness and riot of a fair or an election, should seriously exhibit to us those pictures as evidence of an universal conclusion, that all men are drunkards? We might admire the verbal painting, indeed, as we admire the pictures of Hogarth; but we should admire as little the soundness of the 'philosophy, as we should have admired the accuracy of one of Hogarth's pictures, if he had exhibited to us the interior of a Brothel, as a representation of domestic life, a faithful sketch of one of those virtuous and smiling groups, that around a virtuous and delighted father at his own parlour fire, seem to inclose him, as it were, within a circle of happiness! It is certainly not more absurd, to argue, that, because some men are drunkards all men are drunkards, than to contend that all men are, in every action of their life, indifferent to the happiness of every other being, because some may be hypocrites in affecting to regard any happiness but their own; and he who, in adopting this theory, can seriously believe that there is not a single parent, or wife, or child, who has any other view than the selfish one of acquiring praise, in any one office of seeming kindness to those whom they would wish us to regard as dear to them,—may certainly believe with equal reason, and admire as ingenious and just, the wildest absurdity which the wildest propounder of absurdities can offer to his assent and admiration.

This system, by a little extension to all the sources of selfish enjoyment, and by a little purification of the selfishness, as the enjoyment is rendered less prominently selfish by being more remote and more connected by many direct or indirect ties with the happiness of others, assumes the form of the more general theory of selfish morals, in which the most refined virtue is represented only as disguised self love; though the veil, which is thin in itself so as often to afford no disguise to the passion which glows through it, is sometimes thickened in so many folds, that it is scarcely possible to guess what features of ugliness or beauty are beneath. Before considering, however, this finer system of moral selfishness, which is founded on views of remote personal advantage, and therefore, in a great measure on the skill that detects those elements of distant good, I conceived that we

might derive some aid to our inquiry, by considering first the relations which reason, the great analyzer and detector of those elements of distant good, bears to morality; and consequently, as in their fittest place, those systems which would reduce all our moral feelings to intellectual discoveries made by that power, which is supposed, in these systems, to determine the very nature of vice and virtue, in the same way as it extracts roots, measures angles, and determines specific gravities or affinities, or quantities of motion.

We consider, then, two celebrated systems of this sort, that found morality on reason; one which supposes virtue to consist in the accommodation of our actions to the fitnesses of things,— and another which supposes it to consist in actions that are conformable to truth. In both cases I showed you, that the systems, far from accounting for our moral feelings, or showing them to be the result of a process of ratiocination, proceed on the susceptibility of these feelings, as an essential part of our mental constitution, independent of every thing that can be resolved into reasoning. If we were not formed, to love previously, the happiness of others, and to have a moral approbation of the wish of producing happiness, in vain would reason tell us, after tracing a thousand consequences, that an action will be more generally beneficial than, but for this analytic investigation, we should have supposed. If we were not formed to love certain ends of moral good rather than certain other ends of moral evil, the mere fitnesses, or means of producing these ends, must be as indifferent to us, as that indifferent good or evil which they tend to produce. If we have formed no previous moral conception of certain duties, as forming that truth of character, to which vice is said to be false, there will be as little falsehood-and, therefore, if vice be only a want of conformity to truth, as little vice-in the most cruel and unrelenting malignity, as in the most generous benevolence. In every case, in which we suppose reason to be thus morally exercised, we must, as I said, presuppose certain feelings of love and approbation, that constitute all which is truly moral in our sentiments of actions; or the discovery of mere consequences of general good, mere fitnesses, mere truths, will be as powerless to affect us with moral regard, as a new combination of wheels and pullies, or a new solution of a geometric problem.

But, though the discovery of certain fitnesses or incongruities, such as those of which Clarke speaks,-or of a certain conformity to truth, such as that of which Wollaston speaks,-or of the beneficial and injurious consequences of certain actions, considered as a mere series of consequences, discoverable by the understanding, like any other series of physical effects,-may not be capable of giving birth to moral feeling, without some VOL. III.-X

peculiar and previous susceptibility in the mind of being so affected,-may they not at least indirectly give birth to it, by presenting to this original susceptibility of moral emotion, its peculiar objects? Whatever may be the principle that developes it, does not the approving sentiment arise, on the contemplation of actions that are in their tendency beneficial to individuals, and thus to society in general, and only on the contemplation of actions that are thus beneficial? Is not utility, therefore, since it appears to be essential, in some greater or less degree, to the whole class of actions that are termed virtuous,-the constituent or the measure of virtue itself?

The doctrine of the utility of actions, as that which constitutes them virtuous, has been delivered, with all the force of which the doctrine seems capable, by the genius of Mr. Hume, who has formed it into an elaborate system of morals. It has ever since entered largely into the vague speculations on the principles of virtue, in which minds, that are rather fond of theorizing than capable of it, are apt to indulge ;-and we seldom hear, in familiar discussion, any allusion to the principle or principles of moral sentiment, without some loose reference to this relation, which that moral sentiment is supposed to bear to the utility of the actions approved. That it does bear a certain relation to it is unquestionable,-though a relation which is not always very distinctly conceived, by those who are in the frequent habit of speaking of it. It will be the more important, then, to endeavour to separate what is true in the common language on the subject, from the error which frequently accompanies it.

Benevolence, as the very name implies, is always a wish of good to others; and every benevolent action, therefore, must be intended to be of advantage to somebody. But if, by the measure of virtue,-when utility is said to be the constituent or measure of the actions that are denominated virtuous,-be meant that to which the virtue is an exact proportion,-increasing always as the mere physical advantage increases, and decreasing always as the mere physical advantage decreases,—and if it be said, that such actions only are felt to be meritorious, in which the agent is supposed to have willed directly that which appeared to him, at the moment of his willing it most useful, and to have willed it with moral approbation for this reason only, because it appeared to him most useful,-utility, in this general sense, is so far from being the measure of virtue, that there is, comparatively, but a very small number of virtuous actions to which the measure can be applied, and very few, indeed, in which the proportion will be found to hold with exactness.

That virtuous actions do all tend, in some greater or less degree, to the advantage of the world, is, indeed, a fact, with respect to which there can be no doubt. The important question,

however, is, whether the specific amount of utility be that which we have in view, and which alone we have in view, in the approbation which we give to certain actions;-since this approbation is the direct feeling of virtue itself, without which, as intervening, it will be allowed, that even the most useful action could not be counted by us virtuous;-whether we love the generosity of our benefactor, with an emotion exactly the same in kind, however different it may be in degree, as that with which we love the bank-bill, or the estate which he may have given us ;-in short, to use Dr. Smith's strong language, whether, "we have no other reason for praising a man, than that for which we commend a chest of drawers."

It may be necessary, in this discussion, to remind you once more, that virtue is nothing in itself, any more than our other general terms, which we have invented to express a number of particulars comprehended in them; that what is true of virtue, then, must be true of all the particular actions to which we give that name; and that all which we have to consider, in the present argument, is, not the vague general term, but some particular action, that is to say, some particular agent, in certain circumstances, willing a certain effect; since the feeling which rises in the mind, on the contemplation of this particular action, is that which leads us to class it with other actions that may have excited a similar vivid sentiment, and to employ for the whole the common term virtue. The question then is, whether it be necessary to the rise of this vivid sentiment-the moral emotion of approbation or disapprobation-that we should have in immediate contemplation, as the sole object of the emotion, the utility or inutility of the action; and whether the emotion itself be always exactly proportioned by us to the quantity of usefulness which we may have found, by a sort of intellectual calculation or measurement, in the action itself, or in the principle of the action. It is the vivid feeling of moral approbation alone, which leads us to distinguish actions as virtuous or vicious; and the supposed measure or standard of virtue, therefore, must relate to its vivid feeling in all its degrees, or it cannot have any relation to the virtue, that, in all its degrees, is marked by that vivid feeling only.

If the utility of actions be their moral standard, then, it must be present to the contemplation of the agent himself, when he morally prefers one mode of conduct to another; and to the contemplation of others, when they morally approve or disapprove of his action.

In every moral action that can be estimated by us, these two sets of feelings may be taken into account; the feelings of the agent when he meditated and willed the action; and the feelings of the spectator, or of him who calmly contemplates the action