that which stated the absolute physical indifference as to the happiness of rapture and agony, would be very slow of maintaining a paradox additional, if the assertion of it were necessary to the maintenance of their system. It is an error, I may remark by the way, which is not in principle at least, confined to Stoicism, but is radically involved in all those Theological systems of Ethics, which make the very essence of virtue to consist in mere obedience to the will of God. If all virtues be equal, except as they are ordered or not ordered by heaven, which makes them objects of moral choice, simply by pointing them out to us as fit or unfit to be performed, then is there only one virtue, and only one vice;-the virtue of doing as Heaven commands, the vice of not doing as Heaven commands. Whatever the action may be, there may be this moral difference, but on the Stoical or Theological view of virtue and vice, there can be this difference only. To suppose that certain actions, merely by being more widely beneficial, are more obligatory than others,—that certain other actions, merely by being more widely injurious, are of greater delinquency than others, would be to suppose, in opposition to the fundamental tenet of the whole system, that what we term a benefit is a good in itself,--what we term an injury an evil in itself, independently of that will which intimates to us what is fit or unfit to be done. The most beneficial action,—an action that confers the greatest amount of happiness on our nearest relative, or on our most generous benefactor, is good only because it is divinely commanded; and this character of virtue it must share in common with every action, however comparatively unimportant in itself, that is so commanded ;-the most injurious action, of which the injury, too, may have been directed against those whom we were especially called to love, is evil only because it is divinely indicated to us as unworthy of our choice; and this character of vice it must share in common with all the actions that are marked to be evil by this prohibition, and by this prohibition only. We are astonished, indeed, that offences, which we regard as trifling, should be classed by the Stoics with crimes that appear to us of the most aggravated iniquity; but we are astonished only because we assume another estimate of virtue and vice, and have not adopted their general doctrine,-that virtue is mere obedience to the will of the Gods, and vice disobedience to it. The paradox is repugnant, indeed, to every feeling of our heart, but still it must be allowed to be in perfect harmony with the system, as it must be allowed also to be necessarily involved in every system, that reduces virtue and vice to mere obedience or disobedience to the will of Heaven.

The whole errors of the Stoical system, or at least its more important errors, may be traced then, I conceive, to that radical mistake, as to the nature of happiness, which we have been considering, a mistake that, if truly allowed to influence the heart, could not fail to lessen the happiness of the individual, and in some measure too, his virtue, in all the relations which personal happiness and virtue bear to private affection. If, indeed, it had been possible for human nature to feel what the Stoics maintained,-an absolute indifference as to every thing external, unless from some relation which it bore, or was imagined to bear, to the will of the Divinity, how much of all that tenderness which renders the domestic and friendly relations so delightful would have been destroyed, by the mere cessation of the little pleasures, and little exercises of kindness and compassion, which foster the benevolent regard. It is in relation to these private affections only, however, that I conceive the Stoical system to have been practically inju rious to virtue, however false it may have been in mere theory, either as a physical system of the nature of man, or as a system of ethics adapted to the circumstances of his physical constitution. In every thing which terminated in the individnal himself, the virtue which it recommended, was what man perhaps may never be able to attain, but what it would be well for man if he could even approach,-and the nearer his approach to it, the more excellent must he become. Pain is, indeed, an ill, and we must err physically whenever we pronounce that to endure this ill is not an affliction to our sensitive nature;--but it would be well for us, in our moral resolutions, at least in those which regard only sufferings which ourselves may have to overcome,-if we could be truly, what a perfect Stoic would require of us to be.

The error of the philosophy of the Porch, then, in relation to the physical ills of life, was at least an error of minds of the noblest character of moral enthusiasm. "If," says Montesquieu, "I could for a moment cease to think that I am a Christian, I could not fail to rank the destruction of the sect of Zeno, in the list of the misfortunes of human kind. It was extravagant only in feelings which have in themselves a moral grandeur, in the contempt of pleasures and afflictions. It alone knew how to make great Citizens; it alone made great men; it alone made Emperors worthy of being called great. While the Stoics regarded as nothing, riches, grandeur, pleasures, and vexations, they occupied themselves only with labouring for the happiness of others in the discharge of the various social duties. It seemed as if they regarded that holy spirit, the portion of the divinity which they believed to

be in man, as a sort of bountiful providence that was watching over the human race. Born for society, they considered it as their office thus to labour for it,-and they laboured, at little cost to the society which they benefited, because their reward was all within themselves: their philosophy sufficed for their happiness; or rather, the happiness of others was the only accession which could increase their own."

Hi mores, hæc duri immota Catonis

Secta fuit, servare modum, finemque tenere,
Naturamque sequi, patriæque impendere vitam;
Nec Sibi, sed toti genitum se credere mundo.
Huic epulæ vicisse famem,-magnique penates
Submovisse hyemem tecto-pretiosaque vestis
Hirtam membra super Romani more Quiritis,
Induxisse togam-Venerisque huic maximus usus
Progenies. Urbi pater est, Urbique maritus;
Justitiæ cultor, rigidi servator honesti;

In commune bonus; nullosque Catonis in actus
Subrebsit, partemque tulit sibi nata voluptas.†

In the peculiar circumstances of the ages in which the Stoical doctrines chiefly flourished,-the servile and wretched ages, in which, with that intellectual light, in a few individuals, which leads when there is virtue, to grandeur of soul, and almost leads to virtue itself,-there was every where around a cold and gloomy despotism, that left man only to gaze on misery, or to feel misery, if he did not strive to rise wholly above it, it is not wonderful that a philosophy, which gave aid to this necessary elevation above the scene of human suffering and human ignominy, should have been the favourite philosophy of every better spirit; of all those names, which at the distance of so many centuries, we still venerate as the names of some more than mortal deliverers of mankind.

"Among the different schools," says Apollonius, in the sublime eulogy of the Emperor M. Aurelius, "among the different schools he soon discovered one which taught man to rise above himself. It discovered to him, as it were a new world, a world in which pleasure and pain were annihilated, where the senses had lost all their power over the soul, where poverty, riches, life, death, were nothing, and virtue existed alone. Romans! it was this philosophy which gave you Cato and Brutus. It was it which supported them in the midst of the ruins of liberty. It extended itself afterwards and multiplied under your tyrants. It seemed as if it had become a want to your oppressed ancestors, whose uncertain life was

De l'Esprit des Loix. Liv. XXIV. Chap. X.

Lucan. Civ. Bel. Lib. II. v. 380–392.

incessantly under the axe of the despot. In those times of disgrace, alone it preserved the dignity of human nature. It taught to live; it taught to die; and while tyranny was degrading the soul, it lifted it up again with more force and grandeur. This heroic philosophy was made for heroic souls. Aurelius marked as one of the most fortunate days of his life that day of his boyhood in which he first heard of Cato. He preserved with gratitude, the names of those who had made him, in like manner, acquainted with Brutus and Thrasea. He thanked the Gods that he had had an opportunity of reading the maxims of Epictetus."

That great emperor, who thus looked with veneration to others, was himself one of the noble boasts of Stoicism, and it must always be the glory of the philosophy of the Porch, that, whatever its truths and errors might be, they were truths and errors which animated the virtues, and comforted the sufferings of some of the noblest of mankind.

With all the admiration, however, which it is impossible for us not to feel, of the sublimer parts of this system, it is still, as I said, founded on a false view of our nature.

Man is to be considered not in one light only, but in many lights,-in all of which he may be a subject of agreeable feelings, and consequently of happiness, as a series of agreeable feelings. He is a sensitive being,-an intellectual being,—a moral being,--a religious being,--and there are species of happiness that correspond with these varieties.

Though it would be unnecessary, then, to enter on any very minute details of all the varieties of agreeable feelings of which happiness, as a whole, may be composed, a few slight remarks may still be added, on these chief specific relations of our happiness, sensitive, intellectual, moral, and religious.

That the pleasure, which may be felt by us as sensitive beings, is not to be rejected by us as unworthy of man, I need not prove to you, after the definition of happiness, which I have given you. Happiness, however, though only a series of agreeable feelings, is to be estimated, not only by the intensity and duration of those agreeable feelings which compose it, but by the relations of these, as likely to produce or not to produce, to prevent or not to prevent, other series of agreeable feelings, and to cherish or repress that moral excellence which, as an object of desire, is superior even to pleasure itself. It is according to these relations chiefly, that the pleasures of the senses are to be estimated. In themselves, as mere pleasures, they are good, and if they left the same ardour of generous enterprise, or of patient self-command,-if they did not occupy time, which should have been employed in higher

offices, and if, in their influence on the future capacity of mere enjoyment, they did not tend to lessen or prevent happiness which would otherwise have been enjoyed, or to occasion pain which otherwise would not have arisen, and which is equivalent, or more than equivalent, to the temporary happiness afforded, it would, in these circumstances, I will admit, be impossible for man to be too much a sensualist; since pleasure, which in itself is good, is evil, only when its consequences are evil.

He who has lavished on us so many means of delight, as to make it impossible for us in the ordinary circumstances of life, not to be sensitively happy in some greater or less degree, has not made nature so full of beauty that we should not admire it. He has not poured fragrance and music around us, and strewed with flowers the very turf on which we tread, that our heart may not rejoice as we move along-that we may walk through this world of loveliness with the same dull eye and indifferent soul, with which we should have traversed unvaried scenes, without a colour, or an odour, or a song.

The pleasures of the senses, then, are not merely allowable, under the restrictions which I stated, but to abstain from them with no other view than because they are pleasures, would be a sort of contempt of the goodness of God,--or a blasphemy against his gracious bounty, if we were to assert that such abstinence from pleasure, merely as pleasure, can be gratifying to infinite benevolence.

It is very different, however, when the solicitations of pleasure are resisted on account of those circumstances which I have mentioned as the only reasonable restrictions on enjoyment, circumstances which give to temperance its rank as one of the virtues, and as one which is far from being the humblest of the glorious band.

Even though excessive indulgence in sensual pleasures, had no other evil than the pains and lessening of enjoyments to which they give occasion, this reduction of the general amount of happiness would afford an irresistible reason for curbing the sensual appetite. The headach, the langour, the long and miserable diseases of intemperance, are themselves sufficient punishments of the luxurious indulgencies which produced them. But, without taking these into account, how great is the loss of simpler pleasure,-of pleasure more frequently, and more universally acquirable, but which the habit of seeking only violent enjoyments for an inflamed and vitiated appetite, has rendered too feeble to be felt. They do not lose little, who lose only what the intemperate lose. To enjoy, perhaps, a single luxury, which even though they were truly