that he should reflect that one of the most sacred rules of conduct, was what prohibited the taking away the life of an innocent person, that this was a plain violation of that rule, and consequently a very blameable action. His detestation of this crime, it is evident, would arise instantaneously, and antecedent to his having formed to himself any such general rule. The general rule, on the contrary, which he might afterwards form, would be founded upon the detestation which he felt, necessarily arising in his own breast, at the thought of this, and every other particular action of the same kind."*

Of the universality of these moral emotions, which attend our mere perception of certain actions, or our reasonings on the beneficial or injurious tendency of actions, what more convincing proof can be imagined, than the very permanence of these feelings, in the breasts of those, whose course of life they are every moment reproaching, who, even when they are false to virtue, are not false to their love of virtue, and whose secret heart, if it could be laid open to those whom they are endeavouring to seduce, and who can listen only to the voice of the lips, would proclaim to them the charms of that innocence which the lips are affecting to deride, and the slavery of that licentiousness which the lips are proclaiming to be the glorious privilege of the free.

"What law of any state," says an eloquent Roman moralist, has ever ordered the child to love his parents, the parents to love their child, each individual to love himself? It would be not more idle, to order us to love virtue, which by its own nature, has so many charms, that it is impossible for the wicked to withhold from it their approbation. Who is there, that, living amid crimes, and in the practice of every injury which he can inflict on society, does not still wish to obtain some praise of goodness, and cover his very atrocities, if they can by any means be covered, with some veil, however slight, of honourable semblance? No one has so completely shaken off the very character of man, as to wish to be wicked, for the mere sake of wickedness. The very robber who lives by rapine, and who does not hesitate to strike his dagger into the breast of the passenger, who has any plunder to repay the stroke, would still rather find what he takes by violence, only because he cannot hope to find it. The most abandoned of human beings, if he could enjoy the wages of guilt without the guilt itself, would not perfer to be guilty. It is no small obligation," he continues," which we owe to nature, that Virtue reveals her glorious light, not to a few only, but to all man

* Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part III, c. iv.

kind. Even those who do not follow her, still see the splendid track along which she moves."" Placet suapte natura: adeoque graitosa virtus est, ut insitum sit etiam malis, probale meliora. Quis est, qui non beneficus videri velit,—qui non, inter scelera et injurias, opinionem bonitatis affectet-qui non ipsis quæ impotentissime fecit, speciam aliquam induat recti? Quod non facerent, nisi illos honesti, et per se expetendi, amor cogeret, moribus suis opinionem contrariam quærere, et nequitiam abdere, cujus fructus concupiscitur, ipsa vero odio pudoreque est. Maximum hoc habemus naturæ meritum, quod virtus in omnium animos lumen suum permittit: etiam qui non sequuntur, illam vident.”*

And it is well, surely, even the most sceptical will admit, that nature, if we are deceived by this delightful vision, does permit us to be deceived by it. Though virtue were only a dream, and all which we admire, as fallacious as the imaginary colours which shine upon our slumber in the darkness of the night, who could wish the slumber to be broken, if, instead of the groves of Paradise and the pure and happy forms that people them, we were to awake in a world, in which the moral sunshine was extinguished, and every thing on which we vainly turned our eye were to be only one equal gloom? Though the libertine should have hardihood enough to shake, or, at least, to try to shake, from his own mind, every feeling of moral admiration or abhorrence, he still could not wish, that others, among whom he is to live, should be as free as himself. For his own profit, he would wish all others to be virtuous, himself the single exception; and what would profit each, individually, must profit all. If he were rich, he could not wish the multitude that surrounded him to approve of the rapine which would strip him of all the sources of his few miserable enjoyments, and to approve, too, perhaps, of murder, as the shortest mode of separating him from his possessions; if he were in want, he could not wish those, whose charity he was forced to solicit, to see, in charity, nothing but a foolish mode of voluntarily abridging their own means of selfish luxury: if he were condemned, for some offence, to the prison or the gibbet, he would not wish mercy to be regarded as a word without meaning. What noble and irresistible evidence is this of the excellence of virtue, even in its worldy and temporary advantages, that, if all men were what all individually would wish them to be, there would not be a single crime to pollute the earth!

When we reflect, how many temptations there are to the

• Seneca de Beneficiis, lib. iv. c. 17.

multitudes, who live together in social society,-temptations, that, wherever they look around them, would lead them, if they had not been rendered capable of moral affections, as much as of their sentient enjoyments and passions, to seek the attainment of the objects within their view, and almost within their reach, and to seek it as readily by force, or by falsehood, as by that patient industry, which could not fail to seem to them more tedious, and, therefore, less worthy of their prudent choice; when we think of all the temptations of all these objects, and the facilities of attaining them by violence or deceit, and yet observe the security with which man, in society, spreads out his enjoyments as it were, to the view of others, and delights in the number of the gazers and enviers, that are attracted by them, it is truly as beautiful, as it is astonishing, to think of the simple means, on which so much security depends. The laws, which men have found it expedient, for their common interest, to make, and to enforce, are, indeed, the obvious pieces of machinery, by which this great result is brought about. But how much of its motion depends on springs, that are scarcely regarded by those, who look only to the exterior wheels, as they perform their rotation in beautiful regularity! The grosser measures of fraud or force may be prevented by enactments, that attach to those measures of fraud or force, a punishment, the risk of which would render the attempt too perilous, to obtain for it the approbation even of selfish prudence. But what innumerable actions are there, over which the laws, that cannot extend to the secret thoughts of man, or to half the possibilities of human action, must have as little control, as it is in our power physically to exercise, over the unseen and unsuspected elements of future storms, which, long before the whirlwind has begun, are preparing that desolation, which it is afterwards to produce. The force of open violence, the laws may check,-but they cannot check the still more powerful force of seduction,--the frauds of mere persuasion, which are never to be known to be frauds, but by the conscience of the deceiver, and which may be said to steal the very assent of the unsuspecting mind, as they afterwards steal the wealth, or the worldly honours, or voluptuous enjoyments, for which that assent was necessary. It is in these circumstances, that He, who formed and protects us, has provided a check for that injustice, which is beyond the restraining power of man, and has produced, what the whole united strength of nations could not produce,-by a few simple feelings, a check and control as mighty as it is silent and invisible, which he has placed within the mind of the very criminal himself, where it would most be needed, or rather

in the mind of him, who, but for these feelings, would have been a criminal, and who, with them, is virtuous and happy. The voice within, which approves or disapproves,-long before action, and before even the very wish, that would lead to action, can be said to be fully formed,—has in it a restraining force, more powerful than a thousand gibbets, and it is accompanied with the certainty, that, in every breast around, there is a similar voice, that would join its dreadful award to that which would be for ever felt within. The feelings of moral approbation and disapprobation are thus at once the security of virtue and its avengers,-its security in the happiness that is felt, and the happiness that is promised to every future year and hour of virtuous remembrance,-its avengers in that long period of earthly punishment, when its guilty injurer is to read in every eye that gazes on him, the reproach which is to be for ever sounding on his heart.

I have already said, however, that it is merely as a part of our mental constitution that I at present speak of our distinctive feelings of the moral differences of actions ;-as states or affections, or phenomena of the mind, and nothing more. The further illustration of them, in their most important light, as principles of conduct, I reserve for our future discussions of the nature and obligation of virtue.

The moral emotions, to which I next proceed, are those of love and hate,-words, which, as general terms, comprehend a great variety of affections, that have different names, according to their own intensity, and the notion which they involve of the qualities on which the love is founded, as when we speak of love or affection simply, or of regard, esteem, respect, veneration, and which have different names, also, according to the objects to which they are directed, as love, friendship, patriotism, devotion,-to which, or, at least, to far the greater part of which there are corresponding terms of the varieties of the opposite emotion of hatred, which I need not waste your time with attempting to enumerate. Indeed if we were to compare the two vocabularies of love and hate, I fear that we should find rather a mortifying proof of our disposition to discover imperfections more rapidly than the better qualities, since we are still richer in terms of contempt and dislikes, than in terms of admiration and reverence.

The analysis of love, as a complex feeling, presents to us always, at least, two elements,-a vivid delight in the contemplation of the object, and a desire of good to that object. To love, then, it is essential that there should be some quality, in the object, which is capable of giving pleasure, since love, VOL. II.-3 B

which is the consequence of this, is itself a pleasurable emotion. There is a feeling of beauty, external, moral, or intellectual, which affords the primary delight of loving, and continues to mingle with the kind desire which it has produced. In this sense, indeed, but in this sense only, the most disinterested love is selfish, though it is a sense in which selfishness may be, said to be as little sordid as the most generous sacrifices which virtue can make. It loves, not because delight is to be felt in loving, but because it has been impressed with qualities which nature has rendered it impossible to view without delight. It must, therefore, have felt that delight which arises from the contemplation of objects worthy of being loved; yet the delight thus felt has not been valued for itself, but as indicative, like some sweet voice of nature, of those qualities to which affection may be safely given. Though we cannot, then, when there is no interfering passion, think of the virtues of others without pleasure, and must, therefore, in loving virtue, love what is by its own nature pleasing, the love of the virtue which cannot exist without the pleasure, is surely an affection very different from the love of the mere pleasure existing, if it had been possible for it to exist, without the virtue,—a pleasure, that accompanies the virtue, only as the soft or brilliant colouring of nature flows from the great orb above, a gentle radiance, that is delightful to our eyes, indeed, and to our heart, but which leads our eye upward to the splendid source from which it flows, and our heart, still higher, to that Being by whom the sun was made.

The distinction of the love of that which is pleasing, but which is loved only for those intrinsic qualities which the pleasure accompanies, and of the love of mere pleasure, without any regard to the qualities which excite it, is surely a very obvious one; and it is not more obvious, as thus defined, than in the heart of the virtuous,-in the generous friendships which he feels, and the generous sacrifices to which he readily submits. If, as is sometimes strangely contended, the love that animates such a heart be selfishness, it must be allowed, at least, that it is a selfishness, which, for the sake of others, can often prefer penury to wealth,-which can hang, for many sleepless nights, unwearied and unconscious of any personal fear, over the bed of contagion,-which can enter the dungeon, a voluntary prisoner, without the power even of giving any other comfort than that of the mere presence of an object beloved, or fling itself before the dagger which would pierce another breast, and rejoice in receiving the stroke. It is the selfishness which thinks not of itself-the selfishness