Footnotes
[1.] The opinions of Hume on moral questions are grossly misrepresented by many writers, who persist in describing them as substantially identical with those of Bentham. How far Hume was from denying the existence of a moral sense, the following passages will show:—“The final sentence, it is probable, which pronounces characters and actions amiable or odious, praiseworthy or blameable ... depends on some internal sense or feeling which nature has made universal in the whole species.”—Enquiry Concerning Morals, § 1. “The hypothesis we embrace ... defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to the spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation.”—Ibid. Append. I. “The crime or immorality is no particular fact or relation which can be the object of the understanding, but arises entirely from the sentiment of disapprobation, which, by the structure of human nature, we unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or treachery.”—Ibid. “Reason instructs us in the several tendencies of actions, and humanity makes a distinction in favour of those which are useful and beneficial.”—Ibid. “As virtue is an end, and is desirable on its own account without fee or reward, merely for the immediate satisfaction it conveys, it is requisite that there should be some sentiment which it touches, some internal taste or feeling, or whatever you please to call it, which distinguishes moral good and evil, and which embraces the one and rejects the other.”—Ibid. The two writers to whom Hume was most indebted were Hutcheson and Butler. In some interesting letters to the former (Burton's Life of Hume, vol. i.), he discusses the points on which he differed from them. [2.] “The chief thing therefore which lawgivers and other wise men that have laboured for the establishment of society have endeavoured, has been to make the people they were to govern believe that it was more beneficial for everybody to conquer than to indulge his appetites, and much better to mind the public than what seemed his private interest ... observing that none were either so savage as not to be charmed with praise, or so despicable as patiently to bear contempt, they justly concluded that flattery must be the most powerful argument that could be used to human creatures. Making use of this bewitching engine, they extolled the excellency of our nature above other animals ... by the help of which we were capable of performing the most noble achievements. Having, by this artful flattery, insinuated themselves into the hearts of men, they began to instruct them in the notions of honour and shame, &c.”—Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue. [3.] “I conceive that when a man deliberates whether he shall do a thing or not do it, he does nothing else but consider whether it be better for himself to do it or not to do it.”—Hobbes On Liberty and Necessity. “Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions.”—Ibid. Leviathan, part i. ch. xvi. “Obligation is the necessity of doing or omitting any action in order to be happy.”—Gay's dissertation prefixed to King's Origin of Evil, p. 36. “The only reason or motive by which individuals can possibly be induced to the practice of virtue, must be the feeling immediate or the prospect of future private happiness.”—Brown On the Characteristics, p. 159. “En tout temps, en tout lieu, tant en matière de morale qu'en matière d'esprit, c'est l'intérêt personnel qui dicte le jugement des particuliers, et l'intérêt général qui dicte celui des nations.... Tout homme ne prend dans ses jugements conseil que de son intérêt.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, discours ii. “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.... The principle of utility recognises this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and of law. Systems which attempt to question it, deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. i. “By the principle of utility is meant that principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish the happiness of the party whose interest is in question.”—Ibid. “Je regarde l'amour éclairé de nous-mêmes comme le principe de tout sacrifice moral.”—D'Alembert quoted by D. Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, vol. i. p. 220. [4.] “Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good; pain is in itself an evil, and, indeed, without exception, the only evil, or else the words good and evil have no meaning.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. x. [5.] “Good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain, or that which occasions or procures pleasure or pain to us. Moral good and evil then is only the conformity or disagreement of our voluntary actions to some law whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will and power of the law maker, which good and evil, pleasure or pain, attending our observance or breach of the law by the decree of the law maker, is that we call reward or punishment.”—Locke's Essay, book ii. ch. xxviii. “Take away pleasures and pains, not only happiness, but justice, and duty, and obligation, and virtue, all of which have been so elaborately held up to view as independent of them, are so many empty sounds.”—Bentham's Springs of Action, ch. i. § 15. [6.] “Il lui est aussi impossible d'aimer le bien pour le bien, que d'aimer le mal pour le mal.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, disc. ii. ch. v. [7.] “Even the goodness which we apprehend in God Almighty, is his goodness to us.”—Hobbes On Human Nature, ch. vii. § 3. So Waterland, “To love God is in effect the same thing as to love happiness, eternal happiness; and the love of happiness is still the love of ourselves.”—Third Sermon on Self-love. [8.] “Reverence is the conception we have concerning another, that he hath the power to do unto us both good and hurt, but not the will to do us hurt.”—Hobbes On Human Nature, ch. viii. § 7. [9.] “The pleasures of piety are the pleasures that accompany the belief of a man's being in the acquisition, or in possession of the goodwill or favour of the Supreme Being; and as a fruit of it, of his being in the way of enjoying pleasures to be received by God's special appointment either in this life or in a life to come.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. v. “The pains of piety are the pains that accompany the belief of a man's being obnoxious to the displeasure of the Supreme Being, and in consequence to certain pains to be inflicted by His especial appointment, either in this life or in a life to come. These may be also called the pains of religion.”—Ibid. [10.] “There can be no greater argument to a man of his own power, than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs; and this is that conception wherein consisteth charity.”—Hobbes On Hum. Nat. ch. ix. § 17. “No man giveth but with intention of good to himself, because gift is voluntary; and of all voluntary acts, the object to every man is his own good.”—Hobbes' Leviathan, part i. ch. xv. “Dream not that men will move their little finger to serve you, unless their advantage in so doing be obvious to them. Men never did so, and never will while human nature is made of its present materials.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. ii. p. 133. [11.] “Pity is imagination or fiction of future calamity to ourselves, proceeding from the sense of another man's calamity. But when it lighteth on such as we think have not deserved the same, the compassion is greater, because there then appeareth more probability that the same may happen to us; for the evil that happeneth to an innocent man may happen to every man.”—Hobbes On Hum. Nat. ch. ix. § 10. “La pitié est souvent un sentiment de nos propres maux dans les maux d'autrui. C'est une habile prévoyance des malheurs où nous pouvons tomber. Nous donnons des secours aux autres pour les engager à nous en donner en de semblables occasions, et ces services que nous leur rendons sont, à proprement parler, des biens que nous nous faisons à nous-mêmes par avance.”—La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, 264. Butler has remarked that if Hobbes' account were true, the most fearful would be the most compassionate nature; but this is perhaps not quite just, for Hobbes' notion of pity implies the union of two not absolutely identical, though nearly allied, influences, timidity and imagination. The theory of Adam Smith, though closely connected with, differs totally in consequences from that of Hobbes on this point. He says, “When I condole with you for the loss of your 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 should die—I consider what I should suffer if I was really you. I not only change circumstances with you, but I change persons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account.... A man may sympathise with a woman in child-bed, though it is impossible he should conceive himself suffering her pains in his own proper person and character.”—Moral Sentiments, part vii. ch. i. §3. [12.] “Ce que les hommes ont nommé amitié n'est qu'une société, qu'un ménagement réciproque d'intérêts et qu'un échange de bons offices. Ce n'est enfin qu'un commerce où l'amour-propre se propose toujours quelque chose à gagner.”—La Rochefoucauld, Max. 83. See this idea developed at large in Helvétius. [13.] “La science de la morale n'est autre chose que la science même de la législation.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, ii. 17. [14.] This doctrine is expounded at length in all the moral works of Hobbes and his school. The following passage is a fair specimen of their meaning:—“Moral philosophy is nothing else but the science of what is good and evil in the conversation and society of mankind. Good and evil are names that signify our appetites and aversions, which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines of men are different ... from whence arise disputes, controversies, and at last war. And therefore, so long as man is in this condition of mere nature (which is a condition of war), his private appetite is the measure of good and evil. And consequently all men agree in this, that peace is good, and therefore also that the ways or means of peace, (which, as I have showed before) are justice, gratitude, modesty, equity, mercy, and the rest of the laws of nature are good ... and their contrary vices evil.”—Hobbes' Leviathan, part i. ch. xvi. See, too, a striking passage in Bentham's Deontology, vol. ii. p. 132. [15.] As an ingenious writer in the Saturday Review (Aug. 10, 1867) expresses it: “Chastity is merely a social law created to encourage the alliances that most promote the permanent welfare of the race, and to maintain woman in a social position which it is thought advisable she should hold.” See, too, on this view, Hume's Inquiry concerning Morals, § 4, and also note x.: “To what other purpose do all the ideas of chastity and modesty serve? Nisi utile est quod facimus, frustra est gloria.” [16.] “All pleasure is necessarily self-regarding, for it is impossible to have any feelings out of our own mind. But there are modes of delight that bring also satisfaction to others, from the round that they take in their course. Such are the pleasures of benevolence. Others imply no participation by any second party, as, for example, eating, drinking, bodily warmth, property, and power; while a third class are fed by the pains and privations of fellow-beings, as the delights of sport and tyranny. The condemnatory phrase, selfishness, applies with especial emphasis to the last-mentioned class, and, in a qualified degree, to the second group; while such terms as unselfishness, disinterestedness, self-devotion, are applied to the vicarious position wherein we seek our own satisfaction in that of others.”—Bain On the Emotions and Will, p. 113. [17.] “Vice may be defined to be a miscalculation of chances, a mistake in estimating the value of pleasures and pains. It is false moral arithmetic.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. i. p. 131. [18.] “La récompense, la punition, la gloire et l'infamie soumises à ses volontés sont quatre espèces de divinités avec lesquelles le législateur peut toujours opérer le bien public et créer des hommes illustres en tous les genres. Toute l'étude des moralistes consiste à déterminer l'usage qu'on doit faire de ces récompenses et de ces punitions et les secours qu'on peut tirer pour lier l'intérêt personnel à l'intérêt général.”—Helvétius De l'Esprit, ii. 22. “La justice de nos jugements et de nos actions n'est jamais que la rencontre heureuse de notre intérêt avec l'intérêt public.”—Ibid. ii. 7. “To prove that the immoral action is a miscalculation of self-interest, to show how erroneous an estimate the vicious man makes of pains and pleasures, is the purpose of the intelligent moralist. Unless he can do this he does nothing; for, as has been stated above, for a man not to pursue what he deems likely to produce to him the greatest sum of enjoyment, is, in the very nature of things, impossible.”—Bentham's Deontology. [19.] “If the effect of virtue were to prevent or destroy more pleasure than it produced, or to produce more pain than it prevented, its more appropriate name would be wickedness and folly; wickedness as it affected others, folly as respected him who practised it.”—Bentham's Deontology, vol. i. p. 142. “Weigh pains, weigh pleasures, and as the balance stands will stand the question of right and wrong.”—Ibid. vol. i. p. 137. “Moralis philosophiæ caput est, Faustine fili, ut scias quibus ad beatam vitam perveniri rationibus possit.”—Apuleius, Ad Doct. Platonis, ii. “Atque ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et æqui.”—Horace, Sat. I. iii. 98. [20.] “We can be obliged to nothing but what we ourselves are to gain or lose something by; for nothing else can be ‘violent motive’ to us. As we should not be obliged to obey the laws or the magistrate unless rewards or punishments, pleasure or pain, somehow or other, depended upon our obedience; so neither should we, without the same reason, be obliged to do what is right, to practise virtue, or to obey the commands of God.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, book ii. ch. ii. [21.] See Gassendi Philosophiæ Epicuri Syntagma. These four canons are a skilful condensation of the argument of Torquatus in Cicero, De Fin. i. 2. See, too, a very striking letter by Epicurus himself, given in his life by Diogenes Laërtius. [22.] “Sanus igitur non est, qui nulla spe majore proposita, iis bonis quibus cæteri utuntur in vita, labores et cruciatus et miserias anteponat.... Non aliter his bonis præsentibus abstinendum est quam si sint aliqua majora, propter quæ tanti sit et voluptates omittere et mala omnia sustinere.”—Lactantius, Div. Inst. vi. 9. Macaulay, in some youthful essays against the Utilitarian theory (which he characteristically described as “Not much more laughable than phrenology, and immeasurably more humane than cock-fighting”), maintains the theological form of selfishness in very strong terms. “What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of only one, and that is not only true but identical, that men always act from self-interest.”—Review of Mill's Essay on Government. “Of this we may be sure, that the words ‘greatest happiness’ will never in any man's mouth mean more than the greatest happiness of others, which is consistent with what he thinks his own.... This direction (Do as you would be done by) would be utterly unmeaning, as it actually is in Mr. Bentham's philosophy, unless it were accompanied by a sanction. In the Christian scheme accordingly it is accompanied by a sanction of immense force. To a man whose greatest happiness in this world is inconsistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest number, is held out the prospect of an infinite happiness hereafter, from which he excludes himself by wronging his fellow-creatures here.”—Answer to the Westminster Review's Defence of Mill. [23.] “All virtue and piety are thus resolvable into a principle of self-love. It is what Scripture itself resolves them into by founding them upon faith in God's promises, and hope in things unseen. In this way it may be rightly said that there is no such thing as disinterested virtue. It is with reference to ourselves and for our own sakes that we love even God Himself.”—Waterland, Third Sermon on Self-love. “To risk the happiness of the whole duration of our being in any case whatever, were it possible, would be foolish.”—Robert Hall's Sermon on Modern Infidelity. “In the moral system the means are virtuous practice; the end, happiness.”— Warburton's Divine Legation, book ii. Appendix. [24.] “There is always understood to be a difference between an act of prudence and an act of duty. Thus, if I distrusted a man who owed me a sum of money, I should reckon it an act of prudence to get another person bound with him; but I should hardly call it an act of duty.... Now in what, you will ask, does the difference consist, inasmuch as, according to our account of the matter, both in the one case and the other, in acts of duty as well as acts of prudence, we consider solely what we ourselves shall gain or lose by the act? The difference, and the only difference, is this: that in the one case we consider what we shall gain or lose in the present world; in the other case, we consider also what we shall gain or lose in the world to come.”—Paley's Moral Philosophy, ii. 3. [25.] “Hence we may see the weakness and mistake of those falsely religious ... who are scandalised at our being determined to the pursuit of virtue through any degree of regard to its happy consequences in this life.... For it is evident that the religious motive is precisely of the same kind, only stronger, as the happiness expected is greater and more lasting.”—Brown's Essays on the Characteristics, p. 220. [26.] “If a Christian, who has the view of happiness and misery in another life, be asked why a man must keep his word, he will give this as a reason, because God, who has the power of eternal life and death, requires it of us. But if an Hobbist be asked why, he will answer, because the public requires it, and the Leviathan will punish you if you do not. And if one of the old heathen philosophers had been asked, he would have answered, because it was dishonest, below the dignity of man, and opposite to virtue, the highest perfection of human nature, to do otherwise.”—Locke's Essay, i. 3. [27.] Thus Paley remarks that—“The Christian religion hath not ascertained the precise quantity of virtue necessary to salvation,” and he then proceeds to urge the probability of graduated scales of rewards and punishments. (Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vii.) [28.] This view was developed by Locke (Essay on the Human Understanding, book ii. ch. xxi.) Pascal, in a well-known passage, applied the same argument to Christianity, urging that the rewards and punishments it promises are so great, that it is the part of a wise man to embrace the creed, even though he believes it improbable, if there be but a possibility in its favour. [29.] Cudworth, in his Immutable Morals, has collected the names of a number of the schoolmen who held this view. See, too, an interesting note in Miss Cobbe's very learned Essay on Intuitive Morals, pp. 18, 19. [30.] E.g. Soame Jenyns, Dr. Johnson, Crusius, Pascal, Paley, and Austin. Warburton is generally quoted in the list, but not I think quite fairly. See his theory, which is rather complicated (Divine Legation, i. 4). Waterland appears to have held this view, and also Condillac. See a very remarkable chapter on morals, in his Traité des Animaux, part ii. ch. vii. Closely connected with this doctrine is the notion that the morality of God is generically different from the morality of men, which having been held with more or less distinctness by many theologians (Archbishop King being perhaps the most prominent), has found in our own day an able defender in Dr. Mansel. Much information on the history of this doctrine will be found in Dr. Mansel's Second Letter to Professor Goldwin Smith (Oxford, 1862). [31.] Leibnitz noticed the frequency with which Supralapsarian Calvinists adopt this doctrine. (Théodicée, part ii. § 176.) Archbishop Whately, who from his connection with the Irish Clergy had admirable opportunities of studying the tendencies of Calvinism, makes a similar remark as the result of his own experience. (Whately's Life, vol. ii. p. 339.) [32.] “God designs the happiness of all His sentient creatures.... Knowing the tendencies of our actions, and knowing His benevolent purpose, we know His tacit commands.”—Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence, vol. i. p. 31. “The commands which He has revealed we must gather from the terms wherein they are promulgated. The commands which He has not revealed we must construe by the principle of utility.”—Ibid. p. 96. So Paley's Moral Philosophy, book ii. ch. iv. v. [33.] Paley's Moral Philosophy, book i. ch. vii. The question of the disinterestedness of the love we should bear to God was agitated in the Catholic Church, Bossuet taking the selfish, and Fénelon the unselfish side. The opinions of Fénelon and Molinos on the subject were authoritatively condemned. In England, the less dogmatic character of the national faith, and also the fact that the great anti-Christian writer, Hobbes, was the advocate of extreme selfishness in morals, had, I think, a favourable influence upon the ethics of the church. Hobbes gave the first great impulse to moral philosophy in England, and his opponents were naturally impelled to an unselfish theory. Bishop Cumberland led the way, resolving virtue (like Hutcheson) into benevolence. The majority of divines, however, till the present century, have, I think, been on the selfish side. [34.] Moral Philosophy, ii. 3. [35.] Essay on the Human Understanding, ii. 28. [36.] Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. iii. Mr. Mill observes that, “Bentham's idea of the world is that of a collection of persons pursuing each his separate interest or pleasure, and the prevention of whom from jostling one another more than is unavoidable, may be attempted by hopes and fears derived from three sources—the law, religion, and public opinion. To these three powers, considered as binding human conduct, he gave the name of sanctions; the political sanction operating by the rewards and penalties of the law; the religious sanction by those expected from the ruler of the universe; and the popular, which he characteristically calls also the moral sanction, operating through the pains and pleasures arising from the favour or disfavour of our fellow-creatures.”—Dissertations, vol. i. pp. 362-363. [37.] Hume on this, as on most other points, was emphatically opposed to the school of Hobbes, and even declared that no one could honestly and in good faith deny the reality of an unselfish element in man. Following in the steps of Butler, he explained it in the following passage:—“Hunger and thirst have eating and drinking for their end, and from the gratification of these primary appetites arises a pleasure which may become the object of another species of desire or inclination that is secondary and interested. In the same manner there are mental passions by which we are impelled immediately to seek particular objects, such as fame or power or vengeance, without any regard to interest, and when these objects are attained a pleasing enjoyment ensues.... Now where is the difficulty of conceiving that this may likewise be the case with benevolence and friendship, and that from the original frame of our temper we may feel a desire of another's happiness or good, which by means of that affection becomes our own good, and is afterwards pursued, from the combined motives of benevolence and self-enjoyment?”—Hume's Enquiry concerning Morals, Appendix II. Compare Butler, “If there be any appetite or any inward principle besides self-love, why may there not be an affection towards the good of our fellow-creatures, and delight from that affection's being gratified and uneasiness from things going contrary to it?”—Sermon on Compassion. [38.] “By sympathetic sensibility is to be understood the propensity that a man has to derive pleasure from the happiness, and pain from the unhappiness, of other sensitive beings.”—Bentham's Principles of Morals and Legislation, ch. vi. “The sense of sympathy is universal. Perhaps there never existed a human being who had reached full age without the experience of pleasure at another's pleasure, of uneasiness at another's pain.... Community of interests, similarity of opinion, are sources from whence it springs.”—Deontology, vol. i. pp. 169-170. [39.] “The idea of the pain of another is naturally painful. The idea of the pleasure of another is naturally pleasurable.... In this, the unselfish part of our nature, lies a foundation, even independently of inculcation from without, for the generation of moral feelings”—Mill's Dissertations, vol. i. p. 137. See, too, Bain's Emotions and the Will, pp. 289, 313; and especially Austin's Lectures on Jurisprudence. The first volume of this brilliant work contains, I think without exception, the best modern statement of the utilitarian theory in its most plausible form—a statement equally remarkable for its ability, its candour, and its uniform courtesy to opponents. [40.] See a collection of passages from Aristotle, bearing on the subject, in Mackintosh's Dissertation. [41.] Cic. De Finibus, i. 5. This view is adopted in Tucker's Light of Nature (ed. 1842), vol. i. p. 167. See, too, Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. ii. p. 174. [42.] Essay, book ii. ch. xxxiii. [43.] Hutcheson On the Passions, § 1. The “secondary desires” of Hutcheson are closely related to the “reflex affections” of Shaftesbury. “Not only the outward beings which offer themselves to the sense are the objects of the affection; but the very actions themselves, and the affections of pity, kindness, gratitude, and their contraries, being brought into the mind by reflection, become objects. So that by means of this reflected sense, there arises another kind of affection towards those very affections themselves.”—Shaftesbury's Enquiry concerning Virtue, book i. part ii. § 3. [44.] See the preface to Hartley On Man. Gay's essay is prefixed to Law's translation of Archbishop King On the Origin of Evil. [45.] “The case is this. We first perceive or imagine some real good; i.e. fitness to promote our happiness in those things which we love or approve of.... Hence those things and pleasures are so tied together and associated in our minds, that one cannot present itself, but the other will also occur. And the association remains even after that which at first gave them the connection is quite forgotten, or perhaps does not exist, but the contrary.”—Gay's Essay, p. lii. “All affections whatsoever are finally resolvable into reason, pointing out private happiness, and are conversant only about things apprehended to be means tending to this end; and whenever this end is not perceived, they are to be accounted for from the association of ideas, and may properly enough be called habits.”—Ibid. p. xxxi. [46.] Principally by Mr. James Mill, whose chapter on association, in his Analysis of the Human Mind, may probably rank with Paley's beautiful chapter on happiness, at the head of all modern writings on the utilitarian side,—either of them, I think, being far more valuable than anything Bentham ever wrote on morals. This last writer—whose contempt for his predecessors was only equalled by his ignorance of their works, and who has added surprisingly little to moral science (considering the reputation he attained), except a barbarous nomenclature and an interminable series of classifications evincing no real subtlety of thought—makes, as far as I am aware, no use of the doctrine of association. Paley states it with his usual admirable clearness. “Having experienced in some instances a particular conduct to be beneficial to ourselves, or observed that it would be so, a sentiment of approbation rises up in our minds, which sentiment afterwards accompanies the idea or mention of the same conduct, although the private advantage which first existed no longer exist.”—Paley, Moral Philos. i. 5. Paley, however, made less use of this doctrine than might have been expected from so enthusiastic an admirer of Tucker. In our own day it has been much used by Mr. J. S. Mill. [47.] This illustration, which was first employed by Hutcheson, is very happily developed by Gay (p. lii.). It was then used by Hartley, and finally Tucker reproduced the whole theory with the usual illustration without any acknowledgment of the works of his predecessors, employing however, the term “translation” instead of “association” of ideas. See his curious chapter on the subject, Light of Nature, book i. ch. xviii. [48.] “It is the nature of translation to throw desire from the end upon the means, which thenceforward become an end capable of exciting an appetite without prospect of the consequences whereto they lead. Our habits and most of the desires that occupy human life are of this translated kind.”—Tucker's Light of Nature, vol. ii. (ed. 1842), p. 281. [49.] Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind. The desire for posthumous fame is usually cited by intuitive moralists as a proof of a naturally disinterested element in man. [50.] Mill's Analysis. [51.] Hartley On Man, vol. i. pp. 474-475. [52.] “Benevolence ... has also a high degree of honour and esteem annexed to it, procures us many advantages and returns of kindness, both from the person obliged and others, and is most closely connected with the hopes of reward in a future state, and of self-approbation or the moral sense; and the same things hold with respect to generosity in a much higher degree. It is easy therefore to see how such associations may be formed as to engage us to forego great pleasure, or endure great pain for the sake of others, how these associations may be attended with so great a degree of pleasure as to overrule the positive pain endured or the negative one from the foregoing of a pleasure, and yet how there may be no direct explicit expectation of reward either from God or man, by natural consequence or express appointment, not even of the concomitant pleasure that engages the agent to undertake the benevolent and generous action; and this I take to be a proof from the doctrine of association that there is and must be such a thing as pure disinterested benevolence; also a just account of the origin and nature of it.”—Hartley On Man, vol. i. pp. 473-474. See too Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. p. 252. [53.] Mill's Analysis, vol. ii. pp. 244-247. [54.] “With self-interest,” said Hartley, “man must begin; he may end in self-annihilation;” or as Coleridge happily puts it, “Legality precedes morality in every individual, even as the Jewish dispensation preceded the Christian in the world at large.”—Notes Theological and Political, p. 340. It might be retorted with much truth, that we begin by practising morality as a duty—we end by practising it as a pleasure, without any reference to duty. Coleridge, who expressed for the Benthamite theories a very cordial detestation, sometimes glided into them himself. “The happiness of man,” he says, “is the end of virtue, and truth is the knowledge of the means.” (The Friend, ed. 1850, vol. ii. p. 192.) “What can be the object of human virtue but the happiness of sentient, still more of moral beings?” (Notes Theol. and Polit. p. 351.) Leibnitz says, “Quand on aura appris à faire des actions louables par ambition, on les fera après par inclination.” (Sur l' Art de connaître les Hommes.) [55.]
E.g. Mackintosh and James Mill. Coleridge in his younger days was an enthusiastic admirer of Hartley; but chiefly, I believe, on account of his theory of vibrations. He named his son after him, and described him in one of his poems as:—
“He of mortal kind
Wisest, the first who marked the ideal tribes
Up the fine fibres through the sentient brain.”
Religious Musings.
See his picture of the first night of marriage:—
“Tacitè subit ille supremus
Virginitatis amor, primæque modestia culpæ
Confundit vultus. Tunc ora rigantur honestis
Imbribus.”
Thebaidos, lib. ii. 232-34.
Bees (which Virgil said had in them something of the divine nature) were supposed by the ancients to be the special emblems or models of chastity. It was a common belief that the bee mother begot her young without losing her virginity. Thus in a fragment ascribed to Petronius we read,
“Sic sine concubitu textis apis excita ceris
Fervet, et audaci milite castra replet.”
Petron. De Varia Animalium Generatione.
So too Virgil:—
“Quod neque concubitu indulgent nec corpora segnes
In Venerem solvunt aut fœtus nixibus edunt.”—Georg. iv. 198-99.
Plutarch says that an unchaste person cannot approach bees, for they immediately attack him and cover him with stings. Fire was also regarded as a type of virginity. Thus Ovid, speaking of the vestals, says:—
“Nataque de fiamma corpora nulla vides:
Jure igitur virgo est, quæ semina nulla remittit
Nec capit, et comites virginitatis amat.”
“The Egyptians believed that there are no males among vultures, and they accordingly made that bird an emblem of nature.”—Ammianus Marcellinus, xvii. 4.
“Estne Dei sedes, nisi terra et pontus et aër.
Et cœlum et virtus? Superos quid quærimus ultra?
Jupiter est quodcumque vides, quodcumque moveris.”
Pharsal. ix. 578-80.
“Quæve anus tam excors inveniri potest, quæ illa, quæ quondam credebantur apud inferos portenta, extimescat?”—Cic. De Nat. Deor. ii. 2.
“Esse aliques Manes et subterranea regna ...
Nec pueri credunt nisi qui nondum ære lavantur.”
Juv. Sat. ii. 149, 152.
See on this subject a good review by the Abbé Freppel, Les Pères Apostoliques, leçon viii.
“Olim truncus eram ficulnus, inutile lignum,
Cum faber, incertus scamnum faceretne Priapum,
Maluit esse Deum.”
Sat. I. viii. 1-3.
“Ego deûm genus esse semper dixi et dicam cœlitum; Sed eos non curare opinor quid agat hominum genus.”
Cicero adds: “magno plausu loquitur assentiente populo.”—De Divin. ii. 50.
See that most impressive passage (Hist. Nat. vii. 56). That the sleep of annihilation is the happiest end of man is a favourite thought of Lucretius. Thus:
“Nil igitur mors est, ad nos neque pertinet hilum,
Quandoquidem natura animi mortalis habetur.”—iii. 842.
This mode of thought has been recently expressed in Mr. Swinburne's very beautiful poem on The Garden of Proserpine.
“Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem;
Non ponebat enim rumores ante salutem.”—Ennius.
See Seneca (Ep. lxxxix.). Seneca himself, however, has devoted a work to natural history, but the general tendency of the school was certainly to concentrate all attention upon morals, and all, or nearly all the great naturalists were Epicureans. Cicero puts into the mouth of the Epicurean the sentence, “Omnium autem rerum natura cognita levamur superstitione, liberamur mortis metu, non conturbamur ignoratione rerum” (De Fin. i.); and Virgil expressed an eminently Epicurean sentiment in his famous lines:—
“Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas,
Quique metus omnes et inexorabile fatum
Subjecit pedibus, strepitumque
Acherontis avari.”
Georg. 490-492.
“Orandum est ut sit mens sana in corpore sano:
Fortem posce animum, mortis terrore carentem....
Monstro, quod ipse tibi possis dare.”
Juvenal, Sat. x. 356.
Marcus Aurelius recommends prayer, but only that we may be freed from evil desires. (ix. 11.)
Philost. Apoll. of Tyan. v. 4. Hence their passion for suicide, which Silius Italicus commemorates in lines which I think very beautiful:—
“Prodiga gens animæ et properare facillima mortem;
Namque ubi transcendit florentes viribus annos
Impatiens ævi, spernit novisse senectam
Et fati modus in dextra est.”—i. 225-228.
Valerius Maximus (ii. vi. § 12) speaks of Celts who celebrated the birth of men with lamentation, and their deaths with joy.
“Proxima deinde tenent mœsti loca qui sibi lethum
Insontes peperere manu, lucemque perosi
Projecere animas. Quam vellent æthere in alto
Nunc et pauperiem et duros perferre labores.”
—Æneid, vi. 434-437.
Thus Ovid:—
“Rebus in adversis facile est contemnere vitam,
Fortiter ille facit qui miser esse potest.”
See, too, Martial, xi. 56.
See Suetonius, Otho. c. x.-xi., and the very fine description in Tacitus, Hist. lib. ii. c. 47-49. Martial compares the death of Otho to that of Cato:
“Sit Cato, dum vivit, sane vel Cæsare major;
Dum moritur, numquid major Othone fuit?”
—Ep. vi. 32.
See the very beautiful lines of Statius:—
“Urbe fuit media nulli concessa potentum
Ara Deum, mitis posuit Clementia sedem:
Et miseri fecere sacram, sine supplice numquam
Illa novo; nulla damnavit vota repulsa.
Auditi quicunque rogant, noctesque diesque
Ire datum, et solis numen placare querelis.
Parca superstitio; non thurea flamma, nec altus
Accipitur sanguis, lachrymis altaria sudant ...
Nulla autem effigies, nulli commissa metallo
Forma Deæ, mentes habitare et pectora gaudet.
Semper habet trepidos, semper locus horret egenis
Cœtibus, ignotæ tantum felicibus aræ.”—Thebaid, xii. 481-496.
This altar was very old, and was said to have been founded by the descendants of Hercules. Diodorus of Sicily, however, makes a Syracusan say that it was brought from Syracuse (lib. xiii. 22). Marcus Aurelius erected a temple to “Beneficentia” on the Capitol. (Xiphilin, lib. lxxi. 34.)
“Tunc genus humanum positis sibi consulat armis,
Inque vicem gens omnis amet.”
—Pharsalia, vi.
“Hæc duri immota Catonis
Secta fuit, servare modum, finemque tenere,
Naturamque sequi, patriæque impendere vitam,
Nec sibi sed toti genitum se credere mundo.”
Lucan, Phars. ii. 380-383.
On the gladiators at banquets, see J. Lipsius, Saturnalia, lib. i. c. vi., Magnin; Origines du Théâtre, pp. 380-385. This was originally an Etruscan custom, and it was also very common at Capua. As Silius Italicus says:—
“Exhilarare viris convivia cæde Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira.”
Verus, the colleague of Marcus Aurelius, was especially addicted to this kind of entertainment. (Capitolinus, Verus.) See, too, Athenæus iv. 40, 41.
Suet. Aug. xliv. This was noticed before by Cicero. The Christian poet Prudentius dwelt on this aspect of the games in some forcible lines:—
“Virgo modesta jubet converso pollice rumpi
Ne lateat pars ulla animæ vitalibus imis
Altius impresso dum palpitat ense secutor.”
“Et verso pollice vulgi
Quemlibet occidunt populariter.”—Juvenal, Sat. iii. 36-37.
Lucretius, lib. vi. The poet says there are certain seeds of fire in the earth, around the water, which the sun attracts to itself, but which the cold of the night represses, and forces back upon the water.
The fountain of Jupiter Ammon, and many others that were deemed miraculous, are noticed by Pliny, Hist. Nat. ii. 106.
“Fly not yet; the fount that played
In times of old through Ammon's shade,
Though icy cold by day it ran,
Yet still, like souls of mirth, began
To burn when night was near.”—Moore's Melodies.
Juvenal describes the popular estimate of the Jews:—
“Tradidit arcano quodcunque volumine Moses;
Non monstrare vias, eadem nisi sacra colenti,
Quæsitum ad fontem solos deducere verpos.”
Sat. xix. 102-105.
It is not true that the Mosaic law contains these precepts.