6. Idleness is the parent of every vice. It is mentioned in the Old Testament as another of the predisposing causes of the vices of the cities of the plain. Labour, of all kinds, favours and facilitates the practice of virtue. The country life is happy, chiefly because its laborious employments are favourable to virtue, and unfriendly to vice. It is a common practice, I have been told, for the planters, in the southern states, to consign a house slave, who has become vicious from idleness, to the drudgery of the field, in order to reform him. The bridewells and workhouses of all civilized countries prove, that labour is not only a very severe, but the most benevolent of all punishments, inasmuch as it is one of the most suitable means of reformation. Mr. Howard tells us, in his History of Prisons, that in Holland it is a common saying, “Make men work, and you will make them honest.” And over the rasp and spinhouse at Grœningen, this sentiment is expressed (he tells us) by a happy motto:
“Vitiorum semina—otium—labore exhauriendum.”
The effects of steady labour in early life, in creating virtuous habits, is still more remarkable. The late Anthony Benezet, of this city, whose benevolence was the centinel of the virtue, as well as of the happiness of his country, made it a constant rule, in binding out poor children, to avoid putting them into wealthy families, but always preferred masters for them who worked themselves, and who obliged these children to work in their presence. If the habits of virtue, contracted by means of this apprenticeship to labour, are purely mechanical, their effects are, nevertheless, the same upon the happiness of society, as if they flowed from principle. The mind, moreover, when preserved by these means from weeds, becomes a more mellow soil afterwards, for moral and rational improvement.
7. The effects of EXCESSIVE SLEEP are intimately connected with the effects of idleness upon the moral faculty: hence we find that moderate, and even scanty portions of sleep, in every part of the world, have been found to be friendly, not only to health and long life, but in many instances to morality. The practice of the monks, who often sleep upon a floor, and who generally rise with the sun, for the sake of mortifying their sensual appetites, is certainly founded in wisdom, and has often produced the most salutary moral effects.
8. The effects of bodily pain upon the moral, are not less remarkable than upon the intellectual powers of the mind. The late Dr. Gregory, of the university of Edinburgh, used to tell his pupils, that he always found his perceptions quicker in a fit of the gout, than at any other time. The pangs which attend the dissolution of the body, are often accompanied with conceptions and expressions upon the most ordinary subjects, that discover an uncommon elevation of the intellectual powers. The effects of bodily pain are exactly the same in rousing and directing the moral faculty. Bodily pain, we find, was one of the remedies employed in the Old Testament, for extirpating vice, and promoting virtue: and Mr. Howard tells us, that he saw it employed successfully as a means of reformation, in one of the prisons which he visited. If pain has a physical tendency to cure vice, I submit it to the consideration of parents and legislators, whether moderate degrees of corporal punishments, inflicted for a great length of time, would not be more medicinal in their effects, than the violent degrees of them, which are of short duration.
9. Too much cannot be said in favour of CLEANLINESS, as a physical means of promoting virtue. The writings of Moses have been called by military men, the best “orderly book” in the world. In every part of them we find cleanliness inculcated with as much zeal, as if it was part of the moral, instead of the Levitical law. Now, it is well known, that the principal design of every precept and rite of the ceremonial parts of the Jewish religion, was to prevent vice, and to promote virtue. All writers upon the leprosy, take notice of its connection with a certain vice. To this disease gross animal food, particularly swine's flesh, and a dirty skin, have been thought to be predisposing causes: hence the reason, probably, why pork was forbidden, and why ablutions of the body and limbs were so frequently inculcated by the Jewish law. Sir John Pringle's remarks, in his Oration upon Captain Cook's voyage, delivered before the Royal Society, in London, are very pertinent to this part of our subject. “Cleanliness (says he) is conducive to health, but it is not so obvious, that it also tends to good order and other virtues. Such (meaning the ship's crew) as were made more cleanly, became more sober, more orderly, and more attentive to duty.” The benefit to be derived by parents and schoolmasters from attending to these facts, is too obvious to be mentioned.
10. I hope I shall be excused in placing SOLITUDE among the physical causes which influence the moral faculty, when I add, that I confine its effects to persons who are irreclaimable by rational or moral remedies. Mr. Howard informs us, that the chaplain of the prison at Leige, in Germany, assured him, “that the most refractory and turbulent spirits became tractable and submissive, by being closely confined for four or five days.” In bodies that are predisposed to vice, the stimulus of cheerful, but much more of profane society and conversation, upon the animal spirits, becomes an exciting cause, and, like the stroke of the flint upon the steel, renders the sparks of vice both active and visible. By removing men out of the reach of this exciting cause, they are often reformed, especially if they are confined long enough to produce a sufficient chasm in their habits of vice. Where the benefit of reflection and instruction from books can be added to solitude and confinement, their good effects are still more certain. To this philosophers and poets in every age have assented, by describing the life of a hermit as a life of passive virtue.
11. Connected with solitude, as a mechanical means of promoting virtue, SILENCE deserves to be mentioned in this place. The late Dr. Fothergill, in his plan of education for that benevolent institution at Ackworth, which was the last care of his useful life, says every thing that can be said in favour of this necessary discipline, in the following words: “To habituate children from their early infancy, to silence and attention, is of the greatest advantage to them, not only as a preparative to their advancement in religious life, but as the groundwork of a well cultivated understanding. To have the active minds of children put under a kind of restraint; to be accustomed to turn their attention from external objects, and habituated to a degree of abstracted quiet, is a matter of great consequence, and lasting benefit to them. Although it cannot be supposed, that young and active minds are always engaged in silence as they ought to be, yet to be accustomed thus to quietness, is no small point gained towards fixing a habit of patience, and recollection, which seldom forsakes those who have been properly instructed in this entrance of the school of wisdom, during the residue of their days.”