LECTURE LXXXIII.

DIVISION OF THE PRACTICAL VIRTUES INTO THREE CLASSESDUTIES THAT RELATE PRIMARILY TO OTHERS-DUTIES THAT RELATE DIRECTLY TO OURSELVES-AND DUTIES TO GOD.

GENTLEMEN, after the discussions in which we have been of late engaged, of the theory of morals, we are now to enter on the consideration of those practical duties of which we have been investigating the source. Man is not formed to know only,-he is formed still more to avail himself of his knowledge, by acting in conformity with it. In the society in which he is placed, he is surrounded with a multitude, to almost every one of whom some effort of his may be beneficial,-who, if they do not require the aid of his strenuous and long-continued exertions, which are necessary only on rare occasions, require, at least, in the social intercourse of life, those little services of easy courtesy, which are not to be estimated as slight, from the seeming insignificance of each separate act; since they contribute largely to the amount of general happiness by the universality of their diffusion, and the frequency of the repetition. While his actions may thus have almost unremitting usefulness, Nature has, with a corresponding provision, made it delightful to man to be active; and, not content with making it delightful to him to be merely active, -since this propensity to action, which of itself might lead him sometimes to benefit others, might of itself also lead him to injure as well as to benefit,-she has, as we have seen, directed him how to act, by that voice of conscience which she has placed within his breast; and given still greater efficacy to that voice by the pain which she has attached to disobedience, and the pleasure that is felt in obeying it, and remembering it as obeyed. Of this moral pleasure it is, indeed, the high character, that it is the only pleasure which no situation can preclude; since it is beyond the reach of all those external aggressions and chances, which can lessen only the power of diffusing happiness, not the wish of diffusing it, and which, even in robbing the virtuous of every thing beside, must still leave with them the good which they have done, and the good which they would wish to do. Human life, then, when it is such, as not impartial spectators VOL. III.-Ii

only, but the individual himself, can survey with pleasure, is the exercise, and almost the unremitting exercise, of duties. To have discharged these best, is to have lived best. It is truly to have lived the most nobly, though there may have been no vanities of wealth in the simple home, which was great only because it contained a great inhabitant, and no vanities of heraldry on the simple tomb, under the rude stone of which, or under the turf which is unmarked by any memorial, or by any ornament but the herbage and the flowers which nature every where sheds, -the ashes of a great man repose. What mere symbols of honour, indeed, which man can confer, could add to the praise of him who possesses internally, all which those symbols, even when they are not falsely representative of a merit that does not exist, can only picture to the gazer's eye,-to the praise of him who has done every thing which it was right for him to do,who has abstained, in his very desires, from every thing which it would have required a sacrifice of virtue to possess,-and who, in suffering the common ills of our nature, has suffered them as common ills, not repining at affliction, nor proud of enduring it without a murmur, but feeling only that it is a part of a great system which is good, and that it is that which it is easy to bear.

Human life, then, when it is worthy of the name of life, is, as I have said, the exercise of duties.

In treating of our practical virtues, I shall consider, first, those which directly relate to our fellow-creatures, and afterwards, those which immediately relate to ourselves. Besides these two classes of duties, indeed, there are others of a still higher kind,the duties which we owe to the great Being who formed us,duties which, though they do not absolutely produce all the others, at least add to them a force of obligation, which more than doubles their own moral urgency; and with the wilful violation or neglect of which, there can be as little moral excellence of character in the observance of other duties, as there would be in the virtue of any one, who, after boasting of a thousand good deeds, should conclude by confessing, that he had never felt the slightest affection for the parent to whom he owed existence, and wisdom, and worldly honour, or for some generous benefactor who had been to him like a parent. These duties of gratitude and reverence which we owe to God, will admit, however, of more appropriate illustration, after the inquiries on which we are to enter in another part of the course, with respect to the traces of the divine perfections, that are revealed to us in the frame and order of the universe.

At present, then, the practical virtues which we have to consider, are those that relate immediately, only to our fellow-creatures and ourselves.

Of these two great classes of duties, let us consider, in the first place, the duties that primarily relate to others.

Of the living multitude in the midst of which we are placed on this earth which is our common home, by far the greater number have no other relation to us, than simply as they are human beings,-who may, indeed, sometimes come within the sphere of our usefulness, and who, even when they are far beyond this sphere of active aid, are still within the range of our benevolent affection, to which there are no limits even in distance the most remote,-but to whom this benevolence of mere wishes is the only duty which, in such circumstances, is consigned to us. There are others, with whom we feel ourselves connected by peculiar ties, and to whom, therefore, we owe peculiar duties, varying in kind and importance, with the nature of the circumstances that connect us with them. The general duties which we owe to all mankind, may be treated first,-before we enter on the consideration of the peculiar duties which we owe to certain individuals only, of this wide community.

The general offices which we owe to every individual of mankind, may be reduced to two great generic duties,-one negative, the other positive,-one leading us to abstain from all intentional injury of others, the other leading us to be actively beneficial to them. With the former of these, at least with the greater number of the specific duties which it generically comprehends, jus tice is very nearly synonymous; with the other set of specific duties, benevolence;-which, though it may, in truth, be made to comprehend the negative duties also, since, to wish to benefit, is at the same time to wish not to injure, is usually confined to the desire of positive increase of good, without including mere abstinence from injury.

I proceed, then, to the consideration of the former set of duties, which are negative only,-as limited to abstinence from every thing which might be injurious to others.

These duties, of course, are, specifically, as various as the different sorts of injury which it is in our power to occasion, directly or indirectly. Such injuries,-if man were wretched enough and fearless enough both of individual resentment and of the law, to do whatever it is in his power to do,-would, in their possible complication and variety, be almost beyond our power of numbering them, and giving them names. The most important, however, if arranged according to the objects which it is the direct immediate intention of the injurer, at the moment of an injury, to assail, may be considered as reducible to the following general heads:-They are injuries which affect the sufferer directly in his person,-in his property,-in the affections of others,-in his character,-in his knowledge or belief,in his virtue,-in his tranquillity. They are injuries, I repeat,

which are intended to affect the sufferer directly in his person,→→ in his property,--in the affections of others,-in his character, &c.

Let us now, then, proceed to the consideration of these subdivisions of our merely negative duty, in the order in which I have now stated them. Of injuries to the person of another, the most atrocious, I need not say, is that which deprives him of life; and as it is the only evil which is absolutely irreparable by us, and is yet one to which many of our most impetuous passions might lead us,--jealousy, envy, revenge, or even sudden wrath itself,--without taking into account those instances of violence in which murder is only the dreadful mean of accomplishing a sordid end,--the Creator and Preserver of man has provided against the frequency of a crime to which there might seem so many fearful inducements and facilities,--by rendering the contemplation of it something, from which even the most abandoned shrink with a loathing which is, perhaps, the only human feeling which still remains in their heart; and the commission of it a source of a wilder agony of horror than can be borne, even by the gloomy heart which was capable of conceiving the crime. "Homo homini res sacra." When we read or hear of the assassin, who is driven, by the anguish of his own conscience, to reveal to those whom most he dreaded, the secret which he was most anxious to hide,--addressing himself to the guardians, not of the mere laws, which he has offended, (for of the laws of man he does not think, except that he may submit himself to that death which they only can award,) but to the guardians of the life and happiness of those whose interests have been assigned to them,-the guardians of the individual whom their protection, at that moment, which is ever before his memory, was too powerless to save; when we think of the number of years that in many instances of this kind have elapsed, since the mortal blow was given, and of the inefficacy of time, which effaces all other sorrows, to lessen that remorse, which no one suspected to be the cause of the wasting of the cheek, and the gloomy melancholy of the eye,-can we fail to regard a spectacle like this as an awful testimony to the goodness of that Almighty Protector of the world, who proportions the internal restraints of conscience to the iniquity that needs to be restrained, and to the amount of evil which would flow from it, if unrestrained, and who, seeming to leave the life of every individual at the mercy of every arm, has secured for it a defence, in the very bosom of him, whose watchful glance had already marked its victim, and whose hand was already almost raised to give the blow. The reign of superstition,-its wide and general reign, is now over, at least in our land. We do not need to have recourse to volumes of philosophy, to convince us, that the ghost which haunts the murderer is but an image of his own

fancy. This, now, the very children will tell us, while they laugh, not so gaily, perhaps, as at other tales, but still with laughter which, though mixed with a little horror is sincere, at the spectres which their predecessors in the same nursery, a single generation back, would, on hearing the same story, have seen before their eyes for more than half the night. There is no fear then, now, that we should be tempted to suppose any peculiar supernatural visitation, in the shape that seems for ever rising to the eye of the murderer. It is to the influence of his strong conception alone, that all will agree in ascribing it; and if it be, as it most certainly is, the result only of conception that is awfully vivid, how strongly does it mark the horror, so far surpassing the horror of every other offence, which must have given to the imagination, this agonizing sensibility. The robber may plunder, the traitor may destroy, without any moral superstition of this sort; but let one human being give his last gasp beneath the dagger of another human being; and, though superstition had before been banished from the earth, there is at least one individual, to whom this single crime would be sufficient to call it back.

The species of injury which I have placed next in order, is that which relates to the property of others.

Were we to consider, for the first time, the unequal distribution of property in society, without reflecting on the amount of general happiness to which that unequal distribution is subservient, we should scarcely know, in our astonishment at the seeming rapacity of the few, and the acquiescence of the many, whether the boldness of such an usurpation,—at least of that which, on such a first unreflecting view would seem usurpation,—or the strange submission by all the plundered, to an usurpation which they might have prevented, were the more wonderful. It would not be easy to represent this first aspect of society, in a more lively manner than has been done by Paley.

"If you should see a flock of pigeons in a field of corn: and if, (instead of each picking where and what it liked, taking just as much as it wanted, and no more,) you should see ninety-nine of them gathering all they got into a heap; reserving nothing for themselves, but the chaff and the refuse; keeping this heap for one, and that the weakest, perhaps worst pigeon of the flock; sitting round, and looking on all the winter, whilst this one was devouring, throwing about and wasting it; and if a pigeon, more hardy or hungry than the rest, touched a grain of the hoard, all the others instantly flying upon it, and tearing it to pieces; if you should see this, you would see nothing more than what is every day practised and established among men. Among men, you see the ninety-and-nine toiling and scraping together a heap of superfluities for one, (and this one, too, oftentimes the feeblest