Enquiry Concerning Political Justice
by William Godwin
1793



ENQUIRY CONCERNING POLITICAL JUSTICE

AND ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN MORALS AND HAPPINESS




BOOK I: OF THE POWERS OF MAN CONSIDERED IN HIS SOCIAL CAPACITY




CHAPTER I




INTRODUCTION




The object proposed in the following work is an investigation concerning
that form of public or political society, that system of intercourse and
reciprocal action, extending beyond the bounds of a single family, which
shall be found most to conduce to the general benefit. How may the peculiar
and independent operation of each individual in the social state most effectually
be preserved? How may the security each man ought to possess, as to his life,
and the employment of his faculties according to the dictates of his own
understanding, be most certainly defended from invasion? How may the individuals
of the human species be made to contribute most substantially to the general
improvement and happiness? The enquiry here undertaken has for its object
to facilitate the solution of these interesting questions.




In entering upon this investigation nothing can be more useful than to
examine into the extent of the influence that is to be ascribed to political
institutions; in other words, into the powers of man, as they have modified,
or may hereafter modify his social state of existence. Upon this subject
there has been considerable difference of opinion.




The most usually received hypothesis is that which considers the effects
of government or social institutions, whether acting by express regulations
or otherwise, as rather of a negative than positive nature. No doubt the
purposes for which government was established are in their strictest sense
negative; to maintain us in the possession of certain advantages against
the occasional hostility either of domestic or foreign invaders. But does
the influence of government stop at the point for the sake of which mankind
were first prevailed on to adopt it?




Those who believe that it does or can stop at this point necessarily regard
it as a matter of subordinate disquisition, or at most only co-ordinate with
several others. They survey man in his individual character, in his domestic
connections, and in the pursuits and attachments which his feelings may incline
him to adopt. These of course fill the principal part of the picture. These
are supposed, by the speculators of whom we now speak, to be in ordinary
cases independent of all political systems and establishments. It is only
in peculiar emergencies and matters that depart from the accustomed routine
of affairs that they conceive a private individual to have any occasion to
remember, or to be in the least affected by the government of his country.
If he commit or is supposed to commit any offence against the general welfare,
if he find himself called upon to repress the offence of another, or if any
danger from foreign hostility threaten the community in which he resides,
in these cases and these only is he obliged to recollect that he has a country.
These considerations impose upon him the further duty of consulting, even
when no immediate danger is nigh, how political liberty may best be maintained,
and maladministration prevented.




Many of the best patriots and most popular writers on the subject of government
appear to have proceeded upon the principles here delineated. They have treated
morality and personal happiness as one science, and politics as a different
one. But, while they have considered the virtues and pleasures of mankind
as essentially independent of civil policy, they have justly remarked, that
the security with which the one can be exercised and the other enjoyed will
be decided by the wisdom of our public institutions and the equity with which
they are administered; and have earnestly pressed it upon the attention of
mankind not to forget, in the rectitude or happiness of the present moment,
those precautions and that "generous plan of power"(1*) which may
tend to render it impregnable to the stratagems of corruption or the insolence
of tyranny.(2*)




But, while we confess ourselves indebted to the labours of these writers,
and perhaps still more to the intrepid language and behaviour of these patriots,
we are incited to enquire whether the topic which engaged their attention
be not of higher and more extensive importance than they suspected. Perhaps
government is not merely in some cases the defender, and in other the treacherous
foe of the domestic virtues. Perhaps it insinuates itself into our personal
dispositions, and insensibly communicates its own spirit to our private transactions.
Were not the inhabitants of ancient Greece and Rome indebted in some degree
to their political liberties for their excellence in art, and the illustrious
theatre they occupy in the moral history of mankind? Are not the governments
of modern Europe accountable for the slowness and inconstancy of its literary
efforts, and the unworthy selfishness that characterizes its inhabitants?
Is it not owing to the governments of the East that that part of the world
can scarcely be said to have made any progress in intellect or science?




When scepticism or a spirit of investigation has led us to start these
questions, we shall be apt not to stop at them. A wide field of speculation
opens itself before us. If government thus insinuate itself in its effects
into our most secret retirements, who shall define the extent of its operation?
If it be the author of thus much, who shall specify the points from which
its influence is excluded? May it not happen that the grand moral evils that
exist in the world, the calamities by which we are so grievously oppressed,
are to be traced to political institution as their source, and that their
removal is only to be expected from its correction? May it not be found that
the attempt to alter the morals of mankind singly and in detail is an injudicious
and futile undertaking; and that the change of their political institutions
must keep pace with their advancement in knowledge, if we expect to secure
to them a real and permanent improvement? To prove the affirmative of these
questions shall be the business of this first book.




The method to be pursued for that purpose shall be, first, to take a concise
survey of the evils existing in political society;(3*) secondly, to show
that these evils are to be ascribed to public institutions;(4*) and thirdly,
that they are not the inseparable condition of our existence, but admit of
removal and remedy.(5*)




NOTES:




1. Addison: Cato, Act iv.




2. These remarks will for the most part apply to the English writers
upon politics, from Sydney and Locke to the author of the Rights of Man.
The more comprehensive view has been strikingly delineated by Rousseau and
Helvetius.




3. Chapters II, III.




4. Chapter IV.




5. Chapters V, VI, VII, VIII.




CHAPTER II




HISTORY OF POLITICAL SOCIETY




The extent of the influence of political systems will be forcibly illustrated
by a concise recollection of the records of political society.




It is an old observation that the history of mankind is little else than
a record of crimes. Society comes recommended to us by its tendency to supply
our wants and promote our well being. If we consider the human species, as
they were found previously to the existence of political society, it is difficult
not to be impressed with emotions of melancholy. But, though the chief purpose
of society is to defend us from want and inconvenience, it effects this purpose
in a very imperfect degree. We are still liable to casualties, disease, infirmity
and death. Famine destroys its thousands, and pestilence its ten thousands.
Anguish visits us under every variety of form, and day after day is spent
in languor and dissatisfaction. Exquisite pleasure is a guest of very rare
approach, and not less short continuance.




But, though the evils that arise to us from the structure of the material
universe are neither trivial nor few, yet the history of political society
sufficiently shows that man is of all other beings the most formidable enemy
to man. Among the various schemes that he has formed to destroy and plague
his kind, war is the most terrible. Satiated with petty mischief and retail
of insulated crimes, he rises in this instance to a project that lays nations
waste, and thins the population of the world. Man directs the murderous engine
against the life of his brother; he invents with indefatigable care refinements
in destruction; he proceeds in the midst of gaiety and pomp to the execution
of his horrid purpose; whole ranks of sensitive beings, endowed with the
most admirable faculties, are mowed down in an instant; they perish by inches
in the midst of agony and neglect, lacerated with every variety of method
that can give torture to the frame.




This is indeed a tremendous scene! Are we permitted to console ourselves
under the spectacle of its evils by the rareness with which it occurs, and
the forcible reasons that compel men to have recourse to this last appeal
of human society? Let us consider it under each of these heads.




War has hitherto been found the inseparable ally of political institution.
The earliest records of time are the annals of conquerors and heroes, a Bacchus,
a Sesostris, a Semiramis and a Cyrus. These princes led millions of men under
their standard, and ravaged innumerable provinces. A small number only of
their forces ever returned to their native homes, the rest having perished
by diseases, hardship and misery. The evils they inflicted, and the mortality
introduced in the countries against which their expeditions were directed,
were certainly not less severe than those which their countrymen suffered.




No sooner does history become more precise than we are presented with
the four great monarchies, that is, with four successful projects, by means
of bloodshed, violence and murder, of enslaving mankind. The expeditions
of Cambyses against Egypt, of Darius against the Scythians, and of Xerxes
against the Greeks, seem almost to set credibility at defiance by the fatal
consequences with which they were attended. The conquests of Alexander cost
innumerable lives, and the immortality of Caesar is computed to have been
purchased by the death of one million two hundred thousand men.




Indeed the Romans, by the long duration of their wars, and their inflexible
adherence to their purpose, are to be ranked among the foremost destroyers
of the human species. Their wars in Italy continued for more than four hundred
years, and their contest for supremacy with the Carthaginians two hundred.
The Mithridatic war began with a massacre of one hundred and fifty thousand
Romans, and in three single actions five hundred thousand men were lost by
the Eastern monarch. Sylla, his ferocious conqueror, next turned his arms
against his country, and the struggle between him and Marius was attended
with proscriptions, butcheries and murders that knew no restraint from humanity
or shame. The Romans, at length, suffered the evils they had been so prompt
to inflict upon others; and the world was vexed for three hundred years by
the irruptions of Goths, Vandals, Ostrogoths, Huns and innumerable hordes
of barbarians.




I forbear to detail the victorious progress of Mahomet and the pious expeditions
of Charlemagne. I will not enumerate the crusades against the infidels, the
exploits of Tamerlane, Gengiskan and Aurungzebe, or the extensive murders
of the Spaniards in the new world. Let us examine Europe, the most civilized
and favoured quarter of the world, or even those countries of Europe which
are thought the most enlightened.




France was wasted by successive battles during a whole century, for the
question of the Salic law, and the claim of the Plantagenets. Scarcely was
this contest terminated, before the religious wars broke out, some idea of
which we may form from the siege of Rochelle, where, of fifteen thousand
persons shut up, eleven thousand perished of hunger and misery; and from
the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, in which the numbers assassinated were
forty thousand. This quarrel was appeased by Henry the fourth, and succeeded
by the thirty years war in Germany for superiority with the house of Austria,
and afterwards by the military transactions of Louis the fourteenth.




In England the war of Cressy and Agincourt only gave place to the civil
war of York and Lancaster, and again after an interval to the war of Charles
the first and his parliament. No sooner was the constitution settled by
the revolution than we were engaged in a wide field of continental hostilities
by king William, the duke of Marlborough, Maria Theresa and the king of
Prussia.




And what are in most cases the pretences upon which war is undertaken?
What rational man could possibly have given himself the least disturbance
for the sake of choosing whether Henry the sixth or Edward the fourth should
have the style of king of England? What English man could reasonably have
drawn his sword for the purpose of rendering his country an inferior dependency
of France, as it must necessarily have been if the ambition of the Plantagenets
had succeeded? What can be more deplorable than to see us first engage eight
years in war rather than suffer the haughty Maria Theresa to live with a
diminished sovereignty or in a private station; and then eight years more
to support the free-booter who had taken advantage of her helpless condition?




The usual causes of war are excellently described by Swift. "Sometimes
the quarrel between two princes is to decide which of them shall dispossess
a third of his dominions, where neither of them pretends to any right. Sometimes
one prince quarrels with another, for fear the other should quarrel with
him. Sometimes a war is entered upon because the enemy is too strong; and
sometimes because he is too weak. Sometimes our neighbours want the things
which we have, or have the things which we want; and we both fight, till
they take ours, or give us theirs. It is a very justifiable cause of war
to invade a country after the people have been wasted by famine, destroyed
by pestilence, or embroiled by factions among themselves. It is justifiable
to enter into a war against our nearest ally, when one of his towns lies
convenient for us, or a territory of land that would render our dominions
round and compact. If a prince sends forces into a nation where the people
are poor and ignorant, he may lawfully put the half of them to death, and
make slaves of the rest, in order to civilize and reduce them from their
barbarous way of living. It is a very kingly, honourable and frequent practice,
when one prince desires the assistance of another to secure him against an
invasion, that the assistant, when he has driven out the invader, should
seize on the dominions himself, and kill, imprison or banish the prince he
came to relieve."(1*)




If we turn from the foreign transactions of states with each other to
the principles of their domestic policy, we shall not find much greater reason
to be satisfied. A numerous class of mankind are held down in a state of
abject penury, and are continually prompted by disappointment and distress
to commit violence upon their more fortunate neighbours. The only mode which
is employed to repress this violence, and to maintain the order and peace
of society, is punishment. Whips, axes and gibbets, dungeons, chains and
racks are the most approved and established methods of persuading men to
obedience, and impressing upon their minds the lessons of reason. There are
few subjects upon which human ingenuity has been more fully displayed than
in inventing instruments of torture. The lash of the whip a thousand times
repeated and flagrant on the back of the defenceless victim, the bastinado
on the soles of the feet, the dislocation of limbs, the fracture of bones,
the faggot and the stake, the cross, impaling, and the mode of drifting pirates
on the Volga, make but a small part of the catalogue. When Damiens, the maniac,
was arraigned for his abortive attempt on the life of Louis XV of France,
a council of anatomists was summoned to deliberate how a human being might
be destroyed with the longest protracted and most diversified agony. Hundreds
of victims are annually sacrificed at the shrine of positive law and political
institution.




Add to this the species of government which prevails over nine tenths
of the globe, which is despotism: a government, as Locke justly observes,
altogether "vile and miserable," and "more to be deprecated
than anarchy itself."(2*)




Certainly every man who takes a dispassionate survey of this picture will
feel himself inclined to pause respecting the necessity of the havoc which
is thus made of his species, and to question whether the established methods
for protecting mankind against the caprices of each other are the best that
can be devised. He will be at a loss which of the two to pronounce most worthy
of regret, the misery that is inflicted, or the depravity by which it is
produced. If this be the unalterable allotment of our nature, the eminence
of our rational faculties must be considered as rather an abortion than a
substantial benefit; and we shall not fail to lament that, while in some
respects we are elevated above the brutes, we are in so many important ones
destined for ever to remain their inferiors.




NOTES:




1. Gulliver's Travels, Part IV, Chapter V.




2. Locke on Government, Book I, Chapter i, section 1; and Book II, Chapter
vii., section 91.




Most of the above arguments may be found much more at large in Burke's
Vindication of Natural Society; a treatise in which the evils of the existing
political institutions are displayed with incomparable force of reasoning
and lustre of eloquence, while the intention of the author was to show that
these evils were to be considered as trivial.




CHAPTER III




SPIRIT OF POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS.




Additional perspicuity will be communicated to our view of the evils of
political society if we reflect with further and closer attention upon what
may be called its interior and domestic history.




Two of the greatest abuses relative to the interior policy of nations,
which at this time prevail in the world, consist in the irregular transfer
of property, either first by violence, or secondly by fraud. If among the
inhabitants of any country there existed no desire in one individual to possess
himself of the substance of another, or no desire so vehement and restless
as to prompt him to acquire it by means inconsistent with order and justice,
undoubtedly in that country guilt could scarcely be known but by report.
If every man could with perfect facility obtain the necessaries of life,
and, obtaining them, feel no uneasy craving after its superfluities, temptation
would lose its power. Private interest would visibly accord with public good;
and civil society become what poetry has feigned of the golden age. Let us
enquire into the principles to which these abuses are indebted for their
existence.




First then it is to be observed that, in the most refined states of Europe,
the inequality of property has risen to an alarming height. Vast numbers
of their inhabitants are deprived of almost every accommodation that can
render life tolerable or secure. Their utmost industry scarcely suffices
for their support. The women and children lean with an insupportable weight
upon the efforts of the man, so that a large family has in the lower orders
of life become a proverbial expression for an uncommon degree of poverty
and wretchedness. If sickness, or some of those casualties which are perpetually
incident to an active and laborious life, be added to these burdens, the
distress is yet greater.




It seems to be agreed that in England there is less wretchedness and distress
than in most of the kingdoms of the continent. In England the poors' rates
amount to the sum of two millions sterling per annum. It has been calculated
that one person in seven of the inhabitants of this country derives at some
period of his life assistance from this fund. If to this we add the persons
who, from pride, a spirit of independence, or the want of a legal settlement,
though in equal distress receive no such assistance, the proportion will
be considerably increased.




I lay no stress upon the accuracy of this calculation; the general fact
is sufficient to give us an idea of the greatness of the abuse. The consequences
that result are placed beyond the reach of contradiction. A perpetual struggle
with the evils of poverty, if frequently ineffectual, must necessarily render
many of the sufferers desperate. A painful feeling of their oppressed situation
will itself deprive them of the power of surmounting it. The superiority
of the rich, being thus unmercifully exercised, must inevitably expose them
to reprisals; and the poor man will be induced to regard the state of society
as a state of war, an unjust combination, not for protecting every man in
his rights and securing to him the means of existence, but for engrossing
all its advantages to a few favoured individuals, and reserving for the portion
of the rest want, dependence and misery.




A second source of those destructive passions by which the peace of society
is interrupted is to be found in the luxury, the pageantry and magnificence
with which enormous wealth is usually accompanied. Human beings are capable
of encountering with cheerfulness considerable hardships when those hardships
are impartially shared with the rest of the society, and they are not insulted
with the spectacle of indolence and ease in others, no way deserving of
greater advantages than themselves. But it is a bitter aggravation of their
own calamity, to have the privileges of others forced on their observation,
and, while they are perpetually and vainly endeavouring to secure for themselves
and their families the poorest conveniences, to find others revelling in
the fruits of their labours. This aggravation is assiduously administered
to them under most of the political establishments at present in existence.
There is a numerous class of individuals who, though rich, have neither brilliant
talents nor sublime virtues; and, however highly they may prize their education,
their affability, their superior polish and the elegance of their manners,
have a secret consciousness that they possess nothing by which they can so
securely assert their pre-eminence and keep their inferiors at a distance
as the splendour of their equipage, the magnificence of their retinue and
the sumptuousness of their entertainments. The poor man is struck with this
exhibition; he feels his own miseries; he knows how unwearied are his efforts
to obtain a slender pittance of this prodigal waste; and he mistakes opulence
for felicity. He cannot persuade himself that an embroidered garment may
frequently cover an aching heart.




A third disadvantage that is apt to connect poverty with discontent consists
in the insolence and usurpation of the rich. If the poor man would in other
respects compose himself in philosophic indifference, and, conscious that
he possesses every thing that is truly honourable to man as fully as his
rich neighbour, would look upon the rest as beneath his envy, his neighbour
will not permit him to do so. He seems as if he could never be satisfied
with his possessions unless he can make the spectacle of them grating to
others; and that honest self-esteem, by which his inferior might otherwise
attain to tranquillity, is rendered the instrument of galling him with oppression
and injustice. In many countries justice is avowedly made a subject of solicitation,
and the man of the highest rank and most splendid connections almost infallibly
carries his cause against the unprotected and friendless. In countries where
this shameless practice is not established, justice is frequently a matter
of expensive purchase, and the man with the longest purse is proverbially
victorious. A consciousness of these facts must be expected to render the
rich little cautious of offence in his dealings with the poor, and to inspire
him with a temper overbearing, dictatorial and tyrannical. Nor does this
indirect oppression satisfy his despotism. The rich are in all such countries
directly or indirectly the legislators of the state; and of consequence are
perpetually reducing oppression into a system, and depriving the poor of
that little commonage of nature which might otherwise still have remained
to them.




The opinions of individuals, and of consequence their desires, for desire
is nothing but opinion maturing for action, will always be in a great degree
regulated by the opinions of the community. But the manners prevailing in
many countries are accurately calculated to impress a conviction that integrity,
virtue, understanding and industry are nothing, and that opulence is everything.
Does a man whose exterior denotes indigence expect to be well received in
society, and especially by those who would be understood to dictate to the
rest? Does he find or imagine himself in want of their assistance and favour?
He is presently taught that no merit can atone for a mean appearance. The
lesson that is read to him is, "Go home; enrich yourself by whatever
means; obtain those superfluities which are alone regarded as estimable;
and you may then be secure of an amicable reception." Accordingly poverty
in such countries is viewed as the greatest of demerits. It is escaped from
with an eagerness that has no leisure for the scruples of honesty. It is
concealed as the most indelible disgrace. While one man chooses the path
of undistinguishing accumulation, another plunges into expenses which are
to impose him upon the world as more opulent than he is. He hastens to the
reality of that penury the appearance of which he dreads; and, together
with his property, sacrifices the integrity, veracity and character which
might have consoled him in his adversity.




Such are the causes that, in different degrees under the different governments
of the world, prompt mankind openly or secretly to encroach upon the property
of each other. Let us consider how far they admit either of remedy or aggravation
from political institution. Whatever tends to decrease the injuries attendant
upon poverty decreases at the same time the inordinate desire and the enormous
accumulation of wealth. Wealth is not pursued for its own sake, and seldom
for the sensual gratifications it can purchase, but for the same reasons
that ordinarily prompt men to the acquisition of learning, eloquence and
skill, for the love of distinction and the fear of contempt. How few would
prize the possession of riches if they were condemned to enjoy their equipage,
their palaces and their entertainments in solitude, with no eye to wonder
at their magnificence, and no sordid observer ready to convert that wonder
into an adulation of the owner? If admiration were not generally deemed the
exclusive property of the rich, and contempt the constant lacquey of poverty,
the love of gain would cease to be an universal passion. Let us consider
in what respects political institution is rendered subservient to this passion.




First then, legislation is in almost every country grossly the favourer
of the rich against the poor. Such is the character of the game-laws, by
which the industrious rustic is forbidden to destroy the animal that preys
upon the hopes of his future subsistence, or to supply himself with the food
that unsought thrusts itself in his path. Such was the spirit of the late
revenue-laws of France, which in several of their provisions fell exclusively
upon the humble and industrious, and exempted from their operation those
who were best able to support it. Thus in England the land-tax at this moment
produces half a million less than it did a century ago, while the taxes on
consumption have experienced an addition of thirteen millions per annum
during the same period. This is an attempt, whether effectual or no, to throw
the burthen from the rich upon the poor, and as such is an example of the
spirit of legislation. Upon the same principle robbery and other offences,
which the wealthier part of the community have no temptation to commit, are
treated as capital crimes, and attended with the most rigorous, often the
most inhuman punishments. The rich are encouraged to associate for the execution
of the most partial and oppressive positive laws; monopolies and patents
are lavishly dispensed to such as are able to purchase them; while the most
vigilant policy is employed to prevent combinations of the poor to fix the
price of labour, and they are deprived of the benefit of that prudence and
judgement which would select the scene of their industry.




Secondly, the administration of law is not less iniquitous than the spirit
in which it is framed. Under the late government of France the office of
judge was a matter of purchase, partly by an open price advanced to the crown,
and partly by a secret douceur paid to the minister. He who knew best how
to manage his market in the retail trade of justice could afford to purchase
the good will of its functions at the highest price. To the client justice
was avowedly made an object of personal solicitation; and a powerful friend,
a handsome woman, or a proper present were articles of much greater value
than a good cause. In England the criminal law is administered with greater
impartiality so far as regards the trial itself; but the number of capital
offences, and of consequence the frequency of pardons, open a wide door to
favour and abuse. In causes relating to property the practice of law is arrived
at such a pitch as to render its nominal impartiality utterly nugatory. The
length of our chancery suits, the multiplied appeals from court to court,
the enormous fees of counsel, attorneys, secretaries, clerks, the drawing
of briefs, bills, replications and rejoinders, and what has sometimes been
called the "glorious uncertainty" of the law, render it frequently
more advisable to resign a property than to contest it, and particularly
exclude the impoverished claimant from the faintest hope of redress.




Thirdly, the inequality of conditions usually maintained by political
institution is calculated greatly to enhance the imagined excellence of wealth.
In the ancient monarchies of the East, and in Turkey at the present day,
an eminent station could scarcely fail to excite implicit deference. The
timid inhabitant trembled before his superior; and would have thought it
little less than blasphemy to touch the veil drawn by the proud satrap over
his inglorious origin. The same principles were extensively prevalent under
the feudal system. The vassal, who was regarded as a sort of live stock upon
the estate, and knew no appeal from the arbitrary fiat of his lord, would
scarcely venture to suspect that he was of the same species. This however
constituted an unnatural and violent situation. There is a propensity in
man to look further than the outside; and to come with a writ of enquiry
into the title of the upstart and the successful. By the operation of these
causes the insolence of wealth has been in some degree moderated. Meantime
it cannot be pretended that even among ourselves the inequality is not strained
so as to give birth to very unfortunate consequences. If, in the enormous
degree in which it prevails in some parts of the world, it wholly debilitate
and emasculate the human race, we shall feel some reason to believe that,
even in the milder state in which we are accustomed to behold it, it is still
pregnant with the most mischievous effects.




CHAPTER IV(1*)




THE CHARACTERS OF MEN ORIGINATE IN THEIR EXTERNAL CIRCUMSTANCES.




Thus far we have argued from historical facts, and from them have collected
a very strong presumptive evidence that political institutions have a more
powerful and extensive influence than it has been generally the practice
to ascribe to them.




But we can never arrive at precise conceptions relative to this part of
the subject without entering into an analysis of the human mind,(2*) and
endeavouring to ascertain the nature of the causes by which its operations
are directed. Under this branch of the subject I shall attempt to prove two
things: first, that the actions and dispositions of mankind are the offspring
of circumstances and events, and not of any original determination that they
bring into the world; and, secondly, that the great stream of our voluntary
actions essentially depends, not upon the direct and immediate impulses of
sense, but upon the decisions of the understanding. If these propositions
can be sufficiently established, it will follow that the happiness men are
able to attain is proportioned to the justness of the opinions they take
as guides in the pursuit; and it will only remain, for the purpose of applying
these premises to the point under consideration, that we should demonstrate
the opinions of men to be, for the most part, under the absolute control
of political institution.




First, the actions and dispositions of men are not the off-spring of any
original bias that they bring into the world in favour of one sentiment or
character rather than another, but flow entirely from the operation of circumstances
and events acting upon a faculty of receiving sensible impressions.




There are three modes in which the human mind has been conceived to be
modified, independently of the circumstances which occur to us, and the sensations
excited: first, innate principles; secondly, instincts; thirdly, the original
differences of our structure, together with the impressions we receive in
the womb. Let us examine each of these in their order.




First, innate principles of judgement. Those by whom this doctrine has
been maintained have supposed that there were certain branches of knowledge,
and those perhaps of all others the most important, concerning which we felt
an irresistible persuasion, at the same time that we were wholly unable to
trace them through any channels of external evidence and methodical deduction.
They conceived therefore that they were originally written in our hearts;
or perhaps, more properly speaking, that there was a general propensity in
the human mind suggesting them to our reflections, and fastening them upon
our conviction. Accordingly, they established the universal consent of mankind
as one of the most infallible criterions of fundamental truth. It appeared
upon their system that we were furnished with a sort of sixth sense, the
existence of which was not proved to us, like that of our other senses, by
direct and proper evidence, but from the consideration of certain phenomena
in the history of the human mind, which cannot be otherwise accounted for
than by the assumption of this hypothesis.




There is an essential deficiency in every speculation of this sort. It
turns entirely upon an appeal to our ignorance. Its language is as follows:
"You cannot account for certain events from the known laws of the subjects
to which they belong; therefore they are not deducible from those laws;
therefore you must admit a new principle into the system for the express
purpose of accounting for them." But there cannot be a sounder maxim
of reasoning than that which points out to us the error of admitting into
our hypotheses unnecessary principles, or referring the phenomena that occur
to remote and extraordinary sources, when they may with equal facility be
referred to sources which obviously exist, and the results of which we daily
observe. This maxim alone is sufficient to persuade us to reject the doctrine
of innate principles. If we consider the infinitely various causes by which
the human mind is perceptibly modified, and the different principles, argument,
imitation, inclination, early prejudice and imaginary interest, by which
opinion is generated, we shall readily perceive that nothing can be more
difficult than to assign any opinion, existing among the human species, and
at the same time incapable of being generated by any of these causes and
principles.




A careful enquirer will be strongly inclined to suspect the soundness
of opinions which rest for their support on so ambiguous a foundation as
that of innate impression. We cannot reasonably question the existence of
facts; that is, we cannot deny the existence of our sensations, or the series
in which they occur. We cannot deny the axioms of mathematics; for they exhibit
nothing more than a consistent use of words, and affirm of some idea that
it is itself and not something else. We can entertain little doubt of the
validity of mathematical demonstrations, which appear to be irresistible
conclusions deduced from identical propositions. We ascribe a certain value,
sometimes greater and sometimes less, to considerations drawn from analogy.
But what degree of weight shall we attribute to affirmations which pretend
to rest upon none of these grounds? The most preposterous propositions, incapable
of any rational defence, have in different ages and countries appealed to
this inexplicable authority, and passed for infallible and innate. The enquirer
that has no other object than truth, that refuses to be misled, and is determined
to proceed only upon just and sufficient evidence will find little reason
to be satisfied with dogmas which rest upon no other foundation than a pretended
necessity impelling the human mind to yield its assent.




But there is a still more irresistible argument proving to us the absurdity
of the supposition of innate principles. Every principle is a proposition:
either it affirms, or it denies. Every proposition consists in the connection
of at least two distinct ideas, which are affirmed to agree or disagree with
each other. It is impossible that the proposition can be innate, unless the
ideas to which it relates be also innate. A connection where there is nothing
to be connected, a proposition where there is neither subject nor conclusion,
is the most incoherent of all suppositions. But nothing can be more incontrovertible
than that we do not bring pre-established ideas into the world with us.




Let the innate principle be that "virtue is a rule to which we are
obliged to conform." Here are three principal and leading ideas, not
to mention subordinate ones, which it is necessary to form, before we can
so much as understand the proposition. What is virtue? Previously to our
forming an idea corresponding to this general term, it seems necessary that
we should have observed the several features by which virtue is distinguished,
and the several subordinate articles of right conduct, that taken together
constitute that mass of practical judgements to which we give the denomination
of virtue. These are so far from being innate that the most impartial and
laborious enquirers are not yet agreed respecting them. The next idea included
in the above proposition is that of a rule or standard, a generical measure
with which individuals are to be compared, and their conformity or disagreement
with which is to determine their value. Lastly, there is the idea of obligation,
its nature and source, the obliger and the sanction, the penalty and the
reward.




Who is there in the present state of scientifical improvement that will
believe that this vast chain of perceptions and notions is something that
we bring into the world with us, a mystical magazine, shut up in the human
embryo, whose treasures are to be gradually unfolded as circumstances shall
require? Who does not perceive that they are regularly generated in the mind
by a series of impressions, and digested and arranged by association and
reflection?




But, if we are not endowed with innate principles of judgement, it has
nevertheless been supposed by some persons that we might have instincts to
action, leading us to the performance of certain useful and necessary functions,
independently of any previous reasoning as to the advantage of these functions.
These instincts, like the innate principles of judgement we have already
examined, are conceived to be original, a separate endowment annexed to our
being, and not anything that irresistibly flows from the mere faculty of
perception and thought, as acted upon by the circumstances, either of our
animal frame, or of the external objects, by which we are affected. They
are liable therefore to the same objection as that already urged against
innate principles. The system by which they are attempted to be established
is a mere appeal to our ignorance, assuming that we are fully acquainted
with all the possible operations of known powers, and imposing upon us an
unknown power as indispensable to the accounting for certain phenomena. If
we were wholly unable to solve these phenomena, it would yet behove us to
be extremely cautious in affirming that known principles and causes are inadequate
to their solution. If we are able upon strict and mature investigation to
trace the greater part of them to their source, this necessarily adds force
to the caution here recommended.




An unknown cause is exceptionable, in the first place, inasmuch as to
multiply causes is contrary to the experienced operation of scientifical
improvement. It is exceptionable, secondly, because its tendency is to break
that train of antecedents and consequents of which the history of the universe
is composed. It introduces an action apparently extraneous, instead of imputing
the nature of what follows to the properties of that which preceded. It bars
the progress of enquiry by introducing that which is occult, mysterious and
incapable of further investigation. It allows nothing to the future advancement
of human knowledge; but represents the limits of what is already known, as
the limits of human understanding.




Let us review a few of the most common examples adduced in favour of human
instincts, and examine how far they authorize the conclusion that is attempted
to be drawn from them: and first, some of those actions which appear to rise
in the most instantaneous and irresistible manner.




A certain irritation of the palm of the hand will produce that contraction
of the fingers which accompanies the action of grasping. This contraction
will at first take place unaccompanied with design, the object will be grasped
without any intention to retain it, and let go again without thought or observation.
After a certain number of repetitions, the nature of the action will be perceived;
it will be performed with a consciousness of its tendency; and even the hand
stretched out upon the approach of any object that is desired. Present to
the child, thus far instructed, a lighted candle. The sight of it will produce
a pleasurable state of the organs of perception. He will probably stretch
out his hand to the flame, and will have no apprehension of the pain of burning
till he has felt the sensation.




At the age of maturity, the eyelids instantaneously close when any substance
from which danger is apprehended is advanced towards them; and this action
is so constant as to be with great difficulty prevented by a grown person,
though he should explicitly desire it. In infants there is no such propensity;
and an object may be approached to their organs, however near and however
suddenly, without producing this effect. Frowns will be totally indifferent
to a child, who has never found them associated with the effects of anger.
Fear itself is a species of foresight, and in no case exists till introduced
by experience.




It has been said that the desire of self-preservation is innate. I demand
what is meant by this desire? Must we not understand by it a preference of
existence to nonexistence? Do we prefer anything but because it is apprehended
to be good ? It follows that we cannot prefer existence, previously to our
experience of the motives for preference it possesses. Indeed the ideas of
life and death are exceedingly complicated, and very tardy in their formation.
A child desires pleasure and loathes pain long before he can have any imagination
respecting the ceasing to exist.




Again, it has been said that self-love is innate. But there cannot be
an error more easy of detection. By the love of self we understand the approbation
of pleasure, and dislike of pain: but this is only the faculty of perception
under another name. Who ever denied that man was a percipient being? Who
ever dreamed that there was a particular instinct necessary to render him
percipient?




Pity has sometimes been supposed an instance of innate principle; particularly
as it seems to arise with greater facility in young persons, and persons
of little refinement, than in others. But it was reasonable to expect that
threats and anger, circumstances that have been associated with our own sufferings,
should excite painful feelings in us in the case of others, independently
of any laboured analysis. The cries of distress, the appearance of agony
or corporal infliction, irresistibly revive the memory of the pains accompanied
by those symptoms in ourselves. Longer experience and observation enable
us to separate the calamities of others and our own safety, the existence
of pain in one subject and of pleasure or benefit in others, or in the same
at a future period, more accurately than we could be expected to do previously
to that experience.




If then it appear that the human mind is unattended either with innate
principles or instincts, there are only two remaining circumstances that
can be imagined to anticipate the effects of institution, and fix the human
character independently of every species of education: these are, the qualities
that may be produced in the human mind previously to the era of our birth,
and the differences that may result from the different structure of the greater
or subtler elements of the animal frame.




To objections derived from these sources the answer will be in both cases
similar.




First, ideas are to the mind nearly what atoms are to the body. The whole
mass is in a perpetual flux; nothing is stable and permanent; after the lapse
of a given period not a single particle probably remains the same. Who knows
not that in the course of a human life the character of the individual frequently
undergoes two or three revolutions of its fundamental stamina? The turbulent
man will frequently become contemplative, the generous be changed into selfish,
and the frank and good-humoured into peevish and morose. How often does it
happen that, if we meet our best loved friend after an absence of twenty
years, we look in vain in the man before us for the qualities that formerly
excited our sympathy, and, instead of the exquisite delight we promised ourselves,
reap nothing but disappointment? If it is thus in habits apparently the most
rooted, who will be disposed to lay any extraordinary stress upon the impressions
which an infant may have received in the womb of his mother?




He that considers human life with an attentive eye will not fail to remark
that there is scarcely such a thing in character and principles as an irremediable
error. Persons of narrow and limited views may upon many occasions incline
to sit down in despair; but those who are inspired with a genuine energy
will derive new incentives from miscarriage. Has any unfortunate and undesirable
impression been made upon the youthful mind? Nothing will be more easy than
for a judicious superintendent, provided its nature is understood, and it
is undertaken sufficiently early, to remedy and obliterate it. Has a child
passed a certain period of existence in ill-judged indulgence and habits
of command and caprice? The skilful parent, when the child returns to its
paternal roof, knows that this evil is not invincible, and sets himself with
an undoubting spirit to the removal of the depravity. It often happens that
the very impression which, if not counteracted, shall decide upon the pursuits
and fortune of an entire life might perhaps under other circumstances be
reduced to complete inefficiency in half an hour.




It is in corporeal structure as in intellectual impressions. The first
impressions of our infancy are so much upon the surface that their effects
scarcely survive the period of the impression itself. The mature man seldom
retains the faintest recollection of the incidents of the two first years
of his life. Is it to be supposed that that which has left no trace upon
the memory can be in an eminent degree powerful in its associated effects?
Just so in the structure of the animal frame. What is born into the world
is an unfinished sketch, without character or decisive feature impressed
upon it. In the sequel there is a correspondence between the physiognomy
and the intellectual and moral qualities of the mind. But is it not reasonable
to suppose that this is produced by the continual tendency of the mind to
modify its material engine in a particular way? There is for the most part
no essential difference between the child of the lord and of the porter.
Provided he do not come into the world infected with any ruinous distemper,
the child of the lord, if changed in the cradle, would scarcely find any
greater difficulty than the other in learning the trade of his softer father,
and becoming a carrier of burthens. The muscles of those limbs which are
most frequently called into play are always observed to acquire peculiar
flexibility or strength. It is not improbable, if it should be found that
the capacity of the skull of a wise man is greater than that of a fool, that
this enlargement should be produced by the incessantly repeated action of
the intellectual faculties, especially if we recollect of how flexible materials
the skulls of infants are composed, and at how early an age persons of eminent
intellectual merit acquire some portion of their future characteristics.




In the meantime it would be ridiculous to question the real differences
that exist between children at the period of their birth. Hercules and his
brother, the robust infant whom scarcely any neglect can destroy, and the
infant that is with difficulty reared, are undoubtedly from the moment of
parturition very different beings. If each of them could receive an education
precisely equal and eminently wise, the child labouring under original disadvantage
would be benefited, but the child to whom circumstances had been most favourable
in the outset would always retain his priority. These considerations however
do not appear materially to affect the doctrine of the present chapter; and
that for the following reasons.




First, education never can be equal. The inequality of external circumstances
in two beings whose situations most nearly resemble is so great as to baffle
all power of calculation. In the present state of mankind this is eminently
the case. There is no fact more palpable than that children of all sizes
and forms indifferently become wise. It is not the man of great stature or
vigorous make that outstrips his fellow in understanding. It is not the man
who possesses all the external senses in the highest perfection. It is not
the man whose health is most vigorous and invariable. Those moral causes
that awaken the mind, that inspire sensibility, imagination and perseverance,
are distributed without distinction to the tall or the dwarfish, the graceful
or the deformed, the lynx-eyed or the blind. But, if the more obvious distinctions
of animal structure appear to have little share in deciding upon their associated
varieties of intellect, it is surely in the highest degree unjustifiable
to attribute these varieties to such subtle and imperceptible differences
as, being out of our power to assign, are yet gratuitously assumed to account
for the most stupendous effects. This mysterious solution is the refuge
of indolence or the instrument of imposture, but incompatible with a sober
and persevering spirit of investigation.




Secondly, it is sufficient to recollect the nature of moral causes to
be satisfied that their efficiency is nearly unlimited. The essential differences
that are to be found between individual and individual originate in the opinions
they form, and the circumstances by which they are controlled. It is impossible
to believe that the same moral train would not make nearly the same man.
Let us suppose a being to have heard all the arguments and been subject to
all the excitements that were ever addressed to any celebrated character.
The same arguments, with all their strength and all their weakness, unaccompanied
with the smallest addition or variation, and retailed in exactly the same
proportions from month to month and year to year, must surely have produced
the same opinions. The same excitements, without reservation, whether direct
or accidental, must have fixed the same propensities. Whatever science or
pursuit was selected by this celebrated character must be loved by the person
respecting whom we are supposing this identity of impressions. In fine, it
is impression that makes the man, and, compared with the empire of impression,
the mere differences of animal structure are inexpressibly unimportant and
powerless.




These truths will be brought to our minds with much additional evidence
if we compare in this respect the case of brutes with that of men. Among
the inferior animals, breed is a circumstance of considerable importance,
and a judicious mixture and preservation in this point is found to be attended
with the most unequivocal results. But nothing of that kind appears to take
place in our own species. A generous blood, a gallant and fearless spirit
is by no means propagated from father to son. When a particular appellation
is granted, as is usually practised in the existing governments of Europe,
to designate the descendants of a magnanimous ancestry, we do not find, even
with all the arts of modern education, to assist, that such descendants are
the legitimate representatives of departed heroism. Whence comes this difference?
Probably from the more irresistible operation of moral causes. It is not
impossible that among savages those differences would be conspicuous which
with us are annihilated. It is not unlikely that if men, like brutes, were
withheld from the more considerable means of intellectual improvement, if
they derived nothing from the discoveries and sagacity of their ancestors,
if each individual had to begin absolutely de novo in the discipline and
arrangement of his ideas, blood or whatever other circumstances distinguish
one man from another at the period of his nativity would produce as memorable
effects in man as they now do in those classes of animals that are deprived
of our advantages. Even in the case of brutes, education and care on the
part of the man seem to be nearly indispensable, if we would not have the
foal of the finest racer degenerate to the level of the cart-horse. In plants
the peculiarities of soil decide in a great degree upon the future properties
of each. But who would think of forming the character of a human being by
the operations of heat and cold, dryness and moisture upon the animal frame?
With us moral considerations swallow up the effects of every other accident.
Present a pursuit to the mind, convey to it the apprehension of calamity
or advantage, excite it by motives of aversion or motives of affection, and
the slow and silent influence of material causes perishes like dews at the
rising of the sun.




The result of these considerations is that at the moment of birth man
has really a certain character, and each man a character different from his
fellows. The accidents which pass during the months of percipiency in the
womb of the mother produce a real effect. Various external accidents, unlimited
as to the period of their commencement, modify in different ways the elements
of the animal frame. Everything in the universe is linked and united together.
No event, however minute and imperceptible, is barren of a train of consequences,
however comparatively evanescent those consequences may in some instances
be found. If there have been philosophers that have asserted otherwise, and
taught that all minds from the period of birth were precisely alike, they
have reflected discredit by such an incautious statement upon the truth they
proposed to defend.




But, though the original differences of man and man be arithmetically
speaking something, speaking in the way of a general and comprehensive estimate
they may be said to be almost nothing. If the early impressions of our childhood
may by a skilful observer be as it were obliterated almost as soon as made,
how much less can the confused and unpronounced impressions of the womb be
expected to resist the multiplicity of ideas that successively contribute
to wear out their traces? If the temper of the man appear in many instances
to be totally changed, how can it be supposed that there is anything permanent
and inflexible in the propensities of a new-born infant? and, if not in the
character of the disposition, how much less in that of the understanding?




Speak the language of truth and reason to your child, and be under no
apprehension for the result. Show him that what you recommend is valuable
and desirable, and fear not but he will desire it. Convince his understanding,
and you enlist all his powers animal and intellectual in your service. How
long has the genius of education been disheartened and unnerved by the pretence
that man is born all that it is possible for him to become? How long has
the jargon imposed upon the world which would persuade us that in instructing
a man you do not add to, but unfold his stores? The miscarriages of education
do not proceed from the boundedness of its powers, but from the mistakes
with which it is accompanied. We often inspire disgust, where we mean to
infuse desire. We are wrapped up in ourselves, and do not observe, as we
ought, step by step the sensations that pass in the mind of our hearer. We
mistake compulsion for persuasion, and delude ourselves into the belief
that despotism is the road to the heart.




Education will proceed with a firm step and with genuine lustre when those
who conduct it shall know what a vast field it embraces; when they shall
be aware that the effect, the question whether the pupil shall be a man of
perseverance and enterprise or a stupid and inanimate dolt, depends upon
the powers of those under whose direction he is placed and the skill with
which those powers shall be applied. Industry will be exerted with tenfold
alacrity when it shall be generally confessed that there are no obstacles
to our improvement which do not yield to the powers of industry. Multitudes
will never exert the energy necessary to extraordinary success, till they
shall dismiss the prejudices that fetter them, get rid of the chilling system
of occult and inexplicable causes, and consider the human mind as an intelligent
agent, guided by motives and prospects presented to the understanding, and
not by causes of which we have no proper cognisance and can form no calculation.




Apply these considerations to the subject of politics, and they will authorize
us to infer that the excellencies and defects of the human character are
not derived from causes beyond the reach of ingenuity to modify and correct.
If we entertain false views and be involved in pernicious mistakes, this
disadvantage is not the offspring of an irresistible destiny. We have been
ignorant, we have been hasty, or we have been misled. Remove the causes of
this ignorance or this miscalculation, and the effects will cease. Show me
in the clearest and most unambiguous manner that a certain mode of proceeding
is most reasonable in itself or most conducive to my interest, and I shall
infallibly pursue that mode, as long as the views you suggested to me continue
present to my mind. The conduct of human beings in every situation is governed
by the judgements they make and the sensations that are communicated to them.




It has appeared that the characters of men are determined in all their
most essential circumstances by education. By education in this place I would
be understood to convey the most comprehensive sense that can possibly be
annexed to that word, including every incident that produces an idea in the
mind, and can give birth to a train of reflections. It may be of use for
a clearer understanding of the subject we here examine to consider education
under three heads: the education of accident, or those impressions we receive
independently of any design on the part of the preceptor; education commonly
so called, or the impressions which he intentionally communicates; and political
education, or the modification our ideas receive from the form of government
under which we live. In the course of this successive review we shall be
enabled in some degree to ascertain the respective influence which is to
be attributed to each.




It is not unusual to hear persons dwell with emphasis on the wide difference
of the results in two young persons who have been educated together; and
this has been produced as a decisive argument in favour of the essential
differences we are supposed to bring into the world with us. But this could
scarcely have happened but from extreme inattention in the persons who have
so argued. Innumerable ideas, or changes in the state of the percipient being,
probably occur in every moment of time. How many of these enter into the
plan of the preceptor? Two children walk out together. One busies himself
in plucking flowers or running after butterflies, the other walks in the
hand of their conductor. Two men view a picture. They never see it from the
same point of view, and therefore strictly speaking never see the same picture.
If they sit down to hear a lecture or any piece of instruction, they never
sit down with the same degree of attention, seriousness or good humour. The
previous state of mind is different, and therefore the impression received
cannot be the same. It has been found in the history of several eminent men,
and probably would have been found much oftener had their juvenile adventures
been more accurately recorded, that the most trivial circumstance has sometimes
furnished the original occasion of awakening the ardour of their minds and
determining the bent of their studies.




It may however reasonably be suspected whether the education of design
be not, intrinsically considered, more powerful than the education of accident.
If at any time it appear impotent, this is probably owing to mistake in the
project. The instructor continually fails in wisdom of contrivance, or conciliation
of manner, or both. It may often happen, either from the pedantry of his
habits, or the impatience of his temper, that his recommendation shall operate
rather as an antidote than an attraction. Preceptors are apt to pique themselves
upon disclosing part and concealing part of the truth, upon a sort of common
place, cant exhortation to be addressed to youth, which it would be an insult
to offer to the understandings of men. But children are not inclined to consider
him entirely as their friend whom they detect in an attempt to impose upon
them. Were it otherwise, were we sufficiently frank and sufficiently skilful,
did we apply ourselves to excite the sympathy of the young and to gain their
confidence, it is not to be believed but that the systematical measures of
the preceptor would have a decisive advantage over the desultory influence
of accidental impression. Children are a sort of raw material put into our
hands, a ductile and yielding substance, which, if we do not ultimately mould
in conformity to our wishes, it is because we throw away the power committed
to us, by the folly with which we are accustomed to exert it. But there is
another error not less decisive. The object we choose is an improper one.
Our labour is expended, not in teaching truth, but in teaching falsehood.
When that is the case, education is necessarily and happily maimed of half
its powers. The success of an attempt to mislead can never be complete. We
continually communicate in spite of ourselves the materials of just reasoning;
reason is the genuine exercise, and truth the native element of an intellectual
nature; it is no wonder therefore that, with a crude and abortive plan to
govern his efforts, the preceptor is perpetually baffled, and the pupil,
who has been thus stored with systematic delusions, and partial, obscure,
and disfigured truths, should come out anything rather than that which his
instructor intended him.




It remains to be considered what share political institution and forms
of government occupy in the education of every human being. Their degree
of influence depends upon two essential circumstances.




First, it is nearly impossible to oppose the education of the preceptor,
and the education we derive from the forms of government under which we live,
to each other; and therefore, however powerful the former of these may be,
absolutely considered, it can never enter the lists with the latter upon
equal terms. Should anyone talk to us of rescuing a young person from the
sinister influence of a corrupt government by the power of education, it
will be fair to ask who is the preceptor by whom this talk is to be effected?
Is he born in the ordinary mode of generation, or does he descend among us
from the skies? Has his character been in no degree modified by that very
influence he undertakes to counteract? It is beyond all controversy that
men who live in a state of equality, or that approaches equality, will be
frank, ingenuous and intrepid in their carriage; while those who inhabit
where a great disparity of ranks has prevailed will be distinguished by coldness,
irresoluteness, timidity and caution. Will the preceptor in question be altogether
superior to these qualities? Which of us is there who utters his thoughts
in the fearless and explicit manner that true wisdom would prescribe? Who,
that is sufficiently critical and severe, does not detect himself every hour
in some act of falsehood or equivocation that example and early habits have
planted too deeply to be eradicated? But the question is not what extraordinary
persons can be found who may shine illustrious exceptions to the prevailing
degeneracy of their neighbours. As long as parents and teachers in general
shall fall under the established rule, it is clear that politics and modes
of government will educate and infect us all. They poison our minds before
we can resist, or so much as suspect their malignity. Like the barbarous
directors of the Eastern seraglios, they deprive us of our virility, and
fit us for their despicable employment from the cradle. So false is the opinion
that has too generally prevailed that politics is an affair with which ordinary
men have little concern.




Secondly, supposing the preceptor had all the qualifications that can
reasonably be imputed, let us recollect for a moment what are the influences
with which he would have to struggle. Political institution, by the consequences
with which it is pregnant, strongly suggests to everyone who enters within
its sphere what is the path he should avoid, as well as what he should pursue.
Under a government fundamentally erroneous, he will see intrepid virtue proscribed,
and a servile and corrupt spirit uniformly encouraged. But morality itself
is nothing but a calculation of consequences. What strange confusion will
the spectacle of that knavery which is universally practised through all
the existing classes of society produce in the mind? The preceptor cannot
go out of the world, or prevent the intercourse of his pupil with human beings
of a character different from his own. Attempts of this kind are generally
unhappy, stamped with the impression of artifice, intolerance and usurpation.
From earliest infancy therefore there will be two principles contending for
empire, the peculiar and elevated system of the preceptor, and the grovelling
views of the great mass of mankind. These will generate confusion, uncertainty
and irresolution. At no period of life will the effect correspond to what
it would have been if the community were virtuous and wise. But its effect,
obscure and imperceptible for a time, may be expected to burst into explosion
at the period of puberty. When the pupil first becomes master of his own
actions, and chooses his avocations and his associates, he will necessarily
be acquainted with many things of which before he had very slender notions.
At this time the follies of the world wear their most alluring face. He can
scarcely avoid imagining that he has hitherto laboured under some species
of delusion. Delusion, when detected, causes him upon whom it was practised
to be indignant and restive. The only chance which remains is that, after
a time, he should be recalled and awakened: and against this chance there
are the progressive enticements of society; sensuality, ambition, sordid
interest, false ridicule and the incessant decay of that unblemished purity
which attended him in his outset. The best that can be expected is that he
should return at last to sobriety and truth, with a mind debilitated and
relaxed by repeated errors, and a moral constitution in which the seeds of
degeneracy have been deeply and extensively sown.




NOTES:




1. In the plan of this work it was originally conceived that it was advisable
not to press matters of close and laborious speculation in the outset. It
appeared as if moral and political philosophy might assume something more
than had been usual of a popular form, without deducting from the justness
and depth of its investigation. Upon revisal however, it was found that the
inferences of the First Book had been materially injured by an overscrupulousness
in that point. The fruit of the discovery was this and the following chapter,
as they now stand. It is recommended, to the reader who finds himself deterred
by their apparent difficulty, to pass on to the remaining divisions of the
enquiry.




2. Some persons have of late suggested doubts concerning the propriety
of the use of the word mind. An accurate philosophy has led modern enquirers
to question the existence of two classes of substances in the universe, to
reject the metaphysical denominations of spirit and soul, and even to doubt
whether human beings have any satisfactory acquaintance with the properties
of matter. The same accuracy, it has been said, ought to teach us to discard
the term mind. But this objection seems to be premature. We are indeed wholly
uncertain whether the causes of our sensations, heat, colour, hardness and
extension (the two former of these properties have been questioned in a very
forcible manner by Locke, Human Understanding, the two latter by Berkeley
and Hume) be in any respect similar to the ideas they produce. We know nothing
of the substance or substratum of matter, or of that which is the recipient
of thought and perception. We do not even know that the idea annexed to the
word substance is correct, or has any counterpart in the reality of existence.
But, if there be any one thing that we know more certainly than another,
it is the existence of our own thoughts, ideas, perceptions or sensations
(by whatever term we may choose to express them), and that they are ordinarily
linked together so as to produce the complex notion of unity or personal
identity. Now it is this series of thoughts thus linked together, without
considering whether they reside in any or what substratum, that is most aptly
expressed by the term mind; and in this sense the term is intended to be
used throughout the following work.




CHAPTER V




THE VOLUNTARY ACTIONS OF MEN ORIGINATE IN THEIR OPINIONS




If by the reasons already given, we have removed the supposition of any
original bias in the mind that is inaccessible to human skill, and shown
that the defects to which we are now subject are not irrevocably entailed
upon us, there is another question of no less importance to be decided, before
the ground can appear to be sufficiently cleared for political melioration.
There is a doctrine the advocates of which have not been less numerous than
those for innate principles and instincts, teaching "that the conduct
of human beings in many important particulars is not determined upon any
grounds of reasoning and comparison, but by immediate and irresistible impression,
in defiance of the conclusions and conviction of the understanding Man is
a compound being," say the favourers of this hypothesis, "made
up of powers of reasoning and powers of sensation. These two principles are
in perpetual hostility; and, as reason will in some cases subdue all the
allurements of sense, so there are others ill which the headlong impulses
of sense will for ever defeat the tardy decisions of judgement. He that should
attempt to regulate man entirely by his understanding, and supersede the
irregular influences of material excitement; or that should imagine it practicable
by any process and in any length of time to reduce the human species under
the influence of general truth;(1*) would show himself profoundly ignorant
of some of the first laws of our nature."




This doctrine, which in many cases has passed so current as to be thought
scarcely a topic for examination, is highly worthy of a minute analysis.
If true, it no less than the doctrine of innate principles opposes a bar
to the efforts of philanthropy, and the improvement of social institutions.
Certain it is that our prospects of melioration depend upon the progress
of enquiry and the general advancement of knowledge. If therefore there be
points, and those important ones, in which, so to express myself, knowledge
and the thinking principle in man cannot be brought into contact, if, however
great be the improvement of his reason, he will not the less certainly in
many cases act in a way irrational and absurd, this consideration must greatly
overcloud the prospect of the moral reformer.




There is another consequence that will flow from the vulgarly received
doctrine upon this subject. If man be, by the very constitution of his nature,
the subject of opinion, and if truth and reason when properly displayed give
us a complete hold upon his choice, then the search of the political enquirer
will be much simplified. Then we have only to discover what form of civil
society is most conformable to reason, and we may rest assured that, as soon
as men shall be persuaded from conviction to adopt that form, they will have
acquired to themselves an invaluable benefit. But, if reason be frequently
inadequate to its task, if there be an opposite principle in man resting
upon its own ground, and maintaining a separate jurisdiction, the most rational
principles of society may be rendered abortive, it may be necessary to call
in mere sensible causes to encounter causes of the same nature, folly may
be the fittest instrument to effect the purposes of wisdom, and vice to disseminate
and establish the public benefit. In that case the salutary prejudices and
useful delusions (as they have been called) of aristocracy, the glittering
diadem, the magnificent canopy, the ribands, stars and titles of an illustrious
rank, may at last be found the fittest instruments for guiding and alluring
to his proper ends the savage, man.(2*)




Such is the nature of the question to be examined, and such its connection
with the enquiry concerning the influence of political institutions.




The more accurately to conceive the topic before us, it is necessary to
observe that it relates to the voluntary actions of man.




The distinction between voluntary and involuntary action, if properly
stated, is exceedingly simple. That action is involuntary which takes place
in us either without foresight on our part, or contrary to the full bent
of our inclinations. Thus, if a child or a person of mature age burst into
tears in a manner unexpected or unforeseen by himself, or if he burst into
tears though his pride or any other principle make him exert every effort
to restrain them, this action is involuntary. Voluntary action is where the
event is foreseen previously to its occurrence, and the hope or fear of that
event forms the excitement, or, as it is most frequently termed, the motive,(3*)
inducing us, if hope be the passion, to endeavour to forward, and, if fear,
to endeavour to prevent it. It is this motion, in this manner generated,
to which we annex the idea of voluntariness. Let it be observed that the
word action is here used in the sense of natural philosophers, as descriptive
of a charge taking place in any part of the universe, without entering into
the question whether that change be necessary or free.




Now let us consider what are the inferences that immediately result from
the above simple and unquestionable explanation of voluntary action.




'Voluntary action is accompanied with foresight; the hope or fear of a
certain event is its motive.' But foresight is not an affair of simple and
immediate impulse: it implies a series of observations so extensive as to
enable us from like antecedents to infer like consequents. Voluntary action
is occasioned by the idea of consequences to result. Wine is set before me,
and I fill my glass. I do this either because I foresee that the flavour
will be agreeable to my palate, or that its effect will be to produce gaiety
and exhilaration, or that my drinking it will prove the kindness and good
humour I feel towards the company with which I am engaged. If in any case
my action in filling dwindle into mechanical or semi-mechanical, done with
little or no adverting of the mind to its performance, it so far becomes
an involuntary action. But, if every voluntary action be performed for the
sake of its consequences, then in every voluntary action there is comparison
and judgement. Every such action proceeds upon the apprehended truth of some
proposition. The mind decides "this is good" or "desirable;"
and immediately upon that decision, if accompanied with a persuasion that
we are competent to accomplish this good or desirable thing, the limbs proceed
to their office. The mind decides "this is better than something else;"
either wine and cordials are before me, and I choose the wine rather than
the cordials; or the wine only is presented or thought of, and I decide that
to take the wine is better than to abstain from it. Thus it appears that
in every voluntary action there is preference or choice, which indeed are
synonymous terms.




This full elucidation of the nature of voluntary action enables us to
proceed a step further. Hence it appears that the voluntary actions of men
in all cases originate in their opinions. The actions of men, it will readily
be admitted, originate in the state of their minds immediately previous to
those actions. Actions therefore which are preceded by a judgement "this
is good," or "this is desirable," originate in the state of
judgement or opinion upon that subject. It may happen that the opinion may
be exceedingly fugitive; it may have been preceded by aversion and followed
by remorse; but it was unquestionably the opinion of the mind at the instant
in which the action commenced.




It is by no means uninstructive to remark how those persons who seem most
to have discarded the use of their reason have frequently fallen by accident,
as it were, upon important truths. There has been a sect of Christians who
taught that the only point which was to determine the future everlasting
happiness or misery of mankind was their faith. Being pressed with the shocking
immorality of their doctrine, and the cruel and tyrannical character it imputed
to the author of the universe, some of the most ingenious of them have explained
themselves thus.




"Man is made up of two parts, his internal sentiments and his external
conduct. Between these two there is a close and indissoluble connection;
as are his sentiments so is his conduct. Faith, that faith which alone entitles
to salvation, is indeed a man's opinion, but not every opinion he may happen
openly to profess, not every opinion which floats idly in his brain, and
is only recollected when he is gravely questioned upon the subject. Faith
is the opinion that is always present to the mind, that lives in the memory,
or at least infallibly suggests itself when any article of conduct is considered
with which it is materially connected. Faith is that strong, permanent and
lively persuasion of the understanding with which no delusive temptations
will ever be able successfully to contend. Faith modifies the conduct, gives
a new direction to the dispositions, and renders the whole character pure
and heavenly. But heavenly dispositions only can fit a man for the enjoyment
of heaven. Heaven in reality is not so properly a place as a state of the
mind; and, if a wicked man could be introduced into the society of 'saints
made perfect,' he would be miserable. God therefore, when he requires faith
alone as a qualification for heaven, is so far from being arbitrary that
he merely executes the laws of reason, and does the only thing it was possible
for him to do."




In this system there are enormous absurdities, but the view it exhibits
of the source of voluntary action, sufficiently corresponds with the analysis
we have given of the subject.




The author of the Characteristics has illustrated this branch of the nature
of man in a very masterly manner. He observes: "There are few who think
always consistently, or according to one certain hypothesis upon any subject
so abstruse and intricate as the cause of all things and the economy or government
of the universe. For it is evident in the case of the most devout people,
even by their own confession, that there are times when their faith hardly
can support them in the belief of a supreme, wisdom; and that they are often
tempted to judge disadvantageously of a providence and just administration
in the whole.




"That alone therefore is to be called a man's opinion, which is of
any other the most habitual to him, and occurs upon most occasions. So that
it is hard to pronounce certainly of any man, that he is an atheist; because,
unless his whole thoughts are at all seasons and on all occasions steadily
bent against all supposition or imagination of design in things, he is no
perfect atheist. In the same manner, if a man's thoughts are not at all times
steady and resolute against all imagination of chance, fortune, or ill design
in things, he is no perfect theist. But, if any one believes more of chance
and confusion than of design, he is to be esteemed more an atheist than a
theist (this is surely not a very accurate or liberal view of the atheistical
system) from that which most predominates, or has the ascendant. And, in
case he believes more of the prevalency of an ill designing principle than
of a good one, he is rather a demonist, and may be justly so called, from
the side to which the balance or his judgement most inclines.'(4*)




From this view of the subject we shall easily be led to perceive how little
the fact of the variableness and inconstancy of human conduct is incompatible
with the principle here delivered, that the voluntary actions of men in all
cases originate in their opinions. The persuasion that exists in the mind
of the drunkard in committing his first act of intoxication, that in so doing
he complies with the most cogent and irresistible reason capable of being
assigned upon the subject, may be exceedingly temporary; but it is the clear
and unequivocal persuasion of his mind at the moment that he determines
upon the action. The thoughts of the murderer will frequently be in a state
of the most tempestuous fluctuation; he may make and unmake his diabolical
purpose fifty times in an hour; his mind may be torn a thousand ways by terror
and fury, malignity and remorse. But, whenever his resolution is formed,
it is formed upon the suggestions of the rational faculty; and, when he
ultimately works up his mind to the perpetration, he is then most strongly
impressed with the superior recommendations of the conduct he pursues. One
of the fallacies by which we are most frequently induced to a conduct which
our habitual judgement disapproves is that our attention becomes so engrossed
by a particular view of the subject as wholly to forget, for the moment,
those considerations which at other times were accustomed to determine our
opinion. In such cases it frequently happens that the neglected consideration
recurs the instant the hurry of action has subsided, and we stand astonished
at our own infatuation and folly.




This reasoning, however clear and irresistible it may appear, is yet exposed
to one very striking objection. "According to the ideas here delivered,
men always proceed in their voluntary actions upon judgements extant to their
understanding. Such judgements must be attended with consciousness; and,
were this hypothesis a sound one, nothing could be more easy than for a man
in all cases to assign the precise reason that induced him to any particular
action. The human mind would then be a very simple machine, always aware
of the grounds upon which it proceeded, and self-deception would be impossible.
But this statement is completely in opposition to experience and history.
Ask a man the reason why he puts on his clothes, why he eats his dinner,
or performs any other ordinary action of his life. He immediately hesitates,
endeavours to recollect himself, and often assigns a reason the most remote
from what the true philosophy of motive would have led us to expect. Nothing
is more dear than that of the moving cause of this action was not expressly
present to his apprehension at the time he performed it. Self-deception is
so far from impossible that it is one of the most ordinary phenomena with
which we are acquainted. Nothing is more usual than for a man to impute his
actions to honourable motives, when it is nearly demonstrable that they flowed
from some corrupt and contemptible source. On the other hand many persons
suppose themselves to be worse than an impartial spectator will find any
good reason to believe them. A penetrating observer will frequently be able
to convince his neighbour that upon such an occasion he was actuated by motives
very different from what he imagined. Philosophers to this hour dispute whether
human beings in their most virtuous exertions are under the power of disinterested
benevolence, or merely of an enlightened self-interest. Here then we are
presented, in one or other of these sets of philosophers, with a striking
instance of men's acting from motives diametrically opposite to those which
they suppose to be the guides of their conduct. Self-examination is to a
proverb one of the most arduous of those tasks which true virtue imposes.
Are not these facts in express contradiction to the doctrine that the voluntary
actions of men in all cases originate in the judgements of the understanding?"




Undoubtedly the facts which have been here enumerated appear to be strictly
true. To determine how far they affect the doctrine of the present chapter,
it is necessary to return to our analysis of the phenomena of the human mind.
Hitherto we have considered the actions of human beings only under two classes,
voluntary and involuntary. In strictness however there is a third class,
which belongs to neither, yet partakes of the nature of both.




We have already defined voluntary action to be that of which certain consequences,
foreseen, and considered either as objects of desire or aversion, are the
motive. Foresight and volition are inseparable. But what is foreseen must,
by the very terms, be present to the understanding. Every action therefore,
so far as it is perfectly voluntary, flows solely from the decision of the
judgement. But the actions above cited, such as relate to our garments and
our food, are only imperfectly voluntary.(5*)




In respect of volition there appear to be two stages in the history of
the human mind. Foresight is the result of experience; therefore foresight,
and by parity of reasoning volition, cannot enter into the earliest actions
of a human being. As soon however as the infant perceives the connection
between certain attitudes and gestures and the circumstance of receiving
such, for example, he is brought to desire those preliminaries for the sake
of that result. Here, so far as relates to volition and the judgement of
the understanding, the action is as simple as can well be imagined. Yet,
even in this instance, the motive may be said to be complex. Habit, or custom,
has its share. This habit is founded in actions originally involuntary and
mechanical, and modifies after various methods such of our actions as are
voluntary.




But there are habits of a second sort. In proportion as our experience
enlarges, the subjects of voluntary action become more numerous. In this
state of the human being, he soon comes to perceive a considerable similarity
between situation and situation. In consequence he feels inclined to abridge
the process of deliberation, and to act today conformably to the determination
of yesterday. Thus the understanding fixes for itself resting places, is
no longer a novice, and is not at the trouble continually to go back and
revise the original reasons which determined it to a course of action. Thus
the man acquire habits from which it is very difficult to wean him, and which
he obeys without being able to assign either to himself or others any explicit
reason for his proceeding. This is the history of prepossession and prejudice.




Let us consider how much there is of voluntary, and how much of involuntary
in this species of action. Let the instance be of a man going to church today.
He has been accustomed, suppose, to a certain routine of this kind from his
childhood. Most undoubtedly then, in performing this function today, his
motive does not singly consist of inducements present to his understanding.
His feelings are not of the same nature as those of a man who should be persuaded
by a train of reasoning to perform that function for the first time in his
life. His case is partly similar to that of a scholar who has gone through
a course of geometry, and who now believes the truth of the propositions
upon the testimony of his memory, though the proofs are by no means present
to his understanding. Thus the person in question, is partly induced to go
to church by reasons which once appeared sufficient to his understanding,
and the effects of which remain, though the reasons are now forgotten, or
at least are not continually recollected. He goes partly for the sake of
decorum, character, and to secure the good will of his neighbours. A part
of his inducement also perhaps is that his parents accustomed him to go to
church at first, from the mere force of authority, and that the omission
of a habit to which we have been formed is apt to fit awkwardly and uneasily
upon the human mind. Thus it happens that a man who should scrupulously examine
his own conduct in going to church would find great difficulty in satisfying
his mind as to the precise motive, or proportion contributed by different
motives, which maintained his adherence to that practice.




It is probable however that, when he goes to church, he determines that
this action is right, proper or expedient, referring for the reasons which
prove this rectitude or expediency to the complex impression which remains
in his mind, from the inducements that at different times inclined him to
that practice. It is still more reasonable to believe that, when he sets
out, there is an express volition, foresight or apprehended motive inducing
him to that particular action, and that he proceeds in such a direction
because he knows it leads to the church. Now, so much of this action as
proceeds from actually existing foresight and apprehended motive, it is proper
to call perfectly voluntary. So much as proceeds upon a motive, out of sight,
and the operation of which depends upon habit, is imperfectly voluntary.




This sort of habit however must be admitted to retain something of the
nature of voluntariness for two reasons. First, it proceeds upon judgement,
or apprehended motives, though the reasons of that judgement be out of sight
and forgotten; at the time the individual performed the first action of the
kind, his proceeding was perfectly voluntary. Secondly, the custom of language
authorizes us in denominating every action as in some degree voluntary which
a volition, foresight or apprehended motive in contrary direction might have
prevented from taking place.




Perhaps no action of a man arrived at years of maturity is, in the sense
above defined, perfectly voluntary; as there is no demonstration in the higher
branches of the mathematics which contains the whole of its proof within
itself, and does not depend upon former propositions, the proofs of which
are not present to the mind of the learner. The subtlety of the human mind
in this respect is incredible. Many single actions, if carefully analysed
and traced to their remotest source, would be found to be the complex result
of different motives, to the amount perhaps of some hundreds.




In the meantime it is obvious to remark that the perfection of the human
character consists in approaching as nearly as possible to the perfectly
voluntary state. We ought to be upon all occasions prepared to render a reason
of our actions. We should remove ourselves to the furthest distance from
the state of mere inanimate machines, acted upon by causes of which they
have no understanding. We should be cautious of thinking it a sufficient
reason for an action that we are accustomed to perform it, and that we once
thought it right. The human understanding has so powerful a tendency to improvement
that it is more than probable that, in many instances, the arguments which
once appeared to us sufficient would upon re-examination appear inadequate
and futile. We should therefore subject them to perpetual revisal. In our
speculative opinions and our practical principles we should never consider
the book of enquiry as shut. We should accustom ourselves not to forget the
reasons that produced our determination, but be ready upon all occasions
clearly to announce and fully to enumerate them.




Having thus explained the nature of human actions, involuntary, imperfectly
voluntary and voluntary, let us consider how far this explanation affects
the doctrine of the present chapter. Now it should seem that the great practical
political principle remains as entire as ever. Still volition and foresight,
in their strict and accurate construction, are inseparable. All the most
important occasions of our lives are capable of being subjected at pleasure
to a decision, as nearly as possible, perfectly voluntary. Still it remains
true that, when the understanding clearly perceives rectitude, propriety
and eligibility to belong to a certain conduct, and so long as it has that
perception, that conduct will infallibly be adopted. A perception of truth
will inevitably be produced by a clear evidence brought home to the understanding,
and the constancy of the perception will be proportioned to the apprehended
value of the thing perceived. Reason therefore and conviction still appear
to be the proper instrument, and the sufficient instrument for regulating
the actions of mankind.




Having sufficiently established the principle that in all cases of volition
we act, not from impulse, but opinion, there is a further obstacle to be
removed before this reasoning can be usefully applied to the subject of political
melioration. It may be objected, by a person who should admit the force of
the above arguments, "that little was gained by this exposition to the
cause it was intended to promote. Whether or no the actions of men frequently
arise, as some authors have asserted, from immediate impression, it cannot
however be denied that the perturbations of sense frequently seduce the judgement,
and that the ideas and temporary notions they produce are too strong for
any force that can be brought against them. But, what man is now in this
respect he will always to a certain degree remain. He will always have senses,
and, in spite of all the attempts which can be made to mortify them, their
pleasures will always be accompanied with irritation and allurement. Hence
it appears that all ideas of vast and extraordinary improvement in man are
visionary, that he will always remain in some degree the dupe of illusion,
and that reason, and absolute, impartial truth, can never hope to possess
him entire."




The first observation that suggests itself upon this statement is that
the points already established tend in some degree to set this new question
in a clearer light. From them it may be inferred that the contending forces
of reason and sense, in the power they exercise over our conduct, at least
pass through the same medium, and assume the same form. It is opinion contending
with opinion, and judgement with judgement; and this consideration is not
unattended with encouragement. When we discourse of the comparative powers
of appetite and reason, we speak of those actions which have the consent
of the mind, and partake of the nature of voluntary. The question neither
is nor deserves to be respecting cases where no choice is exerted, and no
preference shown. Every man is aware that the cases into which volition enters
either for a part or the whole are sufficiently numerous to decide upon all
that is most important in the events of our life. It follows therefore that,
in the contention of sense and reason, it cannot be improbable to hope that
the opinion which is intrinsically the best founded shall ultimately prevail.




But let us examine a little minutely these pleasures of sense, the attractions
of which are supposed to be so irresistible. In reality they are in no way
enabled to maintain their hold upon us but by means of the adscititious ornaments
with which they are assiduously connected. Reduce them to their true nakedness,
and they would be generally despised. Where almost is the man who would sit
down with impatient eagerness to the most splendid feast, the most exquisite
viands and highly flavoured wines, "taste after taste upheld with kindliest
change,"(6*) if he must sit down alone, and it were not relieved and
assisted by the more exalted charms of society, conversation and mutual benevolence?
Strip the commerce of the sexes of all its attendant circumstances; and the
effect would be similar. Tell a man that all women, so far as sense is concerned,
are nearly alike. Bid him therefore take a partner without any attention
to the symmetry of her person, her vivacity, the voluptuous softness of her
temper, the affectionate kindness of her feelings, her imagination or her
wit. You would probably instantly convince him that the commerce itself,
which by superficial observers is put for the whole, is the least important
branch of the complicated consideration to which it belongs. It is probable
that he who should form himself with the greatest care upon a system of solitary
sensualism would come at last to a decision not very different from that
which Epicurus is said to have adopted in favour of fresh herbs and water
from the spring.




"But let it be confessed that the pleasures of sense are unimportant
and trivial. It is next to be asked whether, trifling as they are, they may
not nevertheless possess a delusive and treacherous power by means of which
they may often be enabled to overcome every opposition?"




The better to determine this question, let us suppose a man to be engaged
in the progressive voluptuousness of the most sensual scene. Here, if ever,
we may expect sensation to be triumphant. Passion is in this case in its
full career. He impatiently shuts out every consideration that may disturb
his enjoyment; moral views and dissuasives can no longer obtrude themselves
into his mind; he resigns himself, without power of resistance, to his predominant
idea. Alas, in this situation, nothing is so easy as to extinguish his sensuality!
Tell him at this moment that his father is dead, that he has lost or gained
a considerable sum of money, or even that his favourite horse is stolen from
the meadow, and his whole passion shall be instantly annihilated: so vast
is the power which a mere proposition possesses over the mind of man. So
conscious are we of the precariousness of the fascination of the senses that
upon such occasions we provide against the slightest interruption. If our
little finger ached, we might probably immediately bid adieu to the empire
of this supposed almighty power. It is said to be an experiment successfully
made by sailors and persons in that class of society, to lay a wager with
their comrades that the sexual intercourse shall not take place between them
and their bedfellow the ensuing night, and to trust to their veracity for
a confession of the event. The only means probably by which any man ever
succeeds in indulging the pleasures of sense, in contradiction to the habitual
persuasion of his judgement, is by contriving to forget everything that can
be offered against them. If, notwithstanding all his endeavours, the unwished
for idea intrudes, the indulgence instantly becomes impossible. Is it to
be supposed that the power of sensual allurement, which must be carefully
kept alive, and which the slightest accident overthrows, can be invincible
only to the artillery of reason, and that the most irresistible considerations
of justice, interest and happiness will never be able habitually to control
it?




To consider the subject in another point of view. It seems to be a strange
absurdity to hear men assert that the attractions of sensual pleasure are
irresistible, in contradiction to the multiplied experience of all ages and
countries. Are all good stories of our nature false? Did no man ever resist
temptation? On the contrary, have not all the considerations which have power
over our hopes, our fears, or our weaknesses been, in competition with a
firm and manly virtue, employed in vain? But what has been done may be done
again. What has been done by individuals cannot be impossible, in a widely
different state of society, to be done by the whole species.




The system we are here combating, of the irresistible power of sensual
allurements, has been numerously supported, and a variety of arguments has
been adduced in its behalf. Among other things it has been remarked "that,
as the human mind has no innate and original principles, so all the information
it has is derived from sensation; and everything that passes within it is
either direct impression upon our external organs, or the substance of such
impressions modified and refined through certain intellectual strainers and
alembics. It is therefore reasonable to conclude that the original substance
should be most powerful in its properties, and the pleasures of external
sense more genuine than any other pleasure. Every sensation is, by its very
nature, accompanied with the idea of pleasure or pain in a vigorous or feeble
degree. The only thing which can or ought to excite desire is happiness or
agreeable sensation. It is impossible that the hand can be stretched out
to obtain anything except so far as it is considered as desirable; and to
be desirable is the same thing as to have a tendency to communicate pleasure.
Thus, after all the complexities of philosophy, we are brought back to this
simple and irresistible proposition, that man is an animal purely sensual.
Hence it follows that in all his transactions much must depend upon immediate
impression, and little is to be attributed to the generalities of ratiocination."




All the premises in the objection here stated are unquestionably true.
Man is just such an animal as the objection describes. Everything within
him that has a tendency to voluntary action is an affair of external or internal
sense, and has relation to pleasure or pain. But it does not follow from
hence that the pleasures of our external organs are more exquisite than any
other pleasures. It is by no means unexampled for the result of a combination
of materials to be more excellent than the materials themselves. Let us consider
the materials by means of which an admirable poem, or, if you will, the author
of an admirable poem, is constructed, and we shall immediately acknowledge
this to be the case. In reality the pleasures of a savage, or, which is much
the same thing, of a brute, are feeble indeed compared with those of the
man of civilization and refinement. Our sensual pleasures, commonly so called,
would be almost universally despised had we not the art to combine them with
the pleasures of intellect and cultivation. No man ever performed an act
of exalted benevolence without having sufficient reason to know, at least
so long as the sensation was present to his mind, that all the gratifications
of appetite were contemptible in the comparison. That which gives the last
zest to our enjoyments is the approbation of our own minds, the consciousness
that the exertion we have made was such as was called for by impartial justice
and reason; and this consciousness will be clear and satisfying in proportion
as our decision in that respect is unmixed with error. Our perceptions can
never be so luminous and accurate in the belief of falsehood as of truth.




The great advantage possessed by the allurements of sense is "that
the ideas suggested by them are definite and precise, while those which deal
in generalities are apt to be faint and obscure. The difference is like that
between things absent and present; of the recommendations possessed by the
latter we have a more vivid perception, and seem to have a better assurance
of the probability of their attainment. These circumstances must necessarily,
in the comparison instituted by the mind in all similar cases, to a certain
degree incline the balance towards that side. Add to which, that what is
present forces itself upon our attention, while that which is absent depends
for its recurrence upon the capriciousness of memory."




But these advantages are seen upon the very face of them to be of a precarious
nature. If my ideas of virtue, benevolence and justice, or whatever it is
that ought to restrain me from an improper leaning to the pleasures of sense,
be now less definite and precise, they may be gradually and unlimitedly improved.
If I do not now sufficiently perceive all the recommendations they possess,
and their clear superiority over the allurements of sense, there is surely
no natural impossibility in my being made to understand a distinct proposition,
or in my being fully convinced by an unanswerable argument. As to recollection,
that is certainly a faculty of the mind which is capable of improvement;
and the point, of which I have been once intimately convinced and have had
a lively and profound impression, will not easily be forgotten when the period
of action shall arrive.




It has been said "that a rainy day will frequently convert a man
of valour into a coward." If that should be the case, there is no presumption
in affirming that his courage was produced by very slight and inadequate
motives. How long would a sensation of this kind be able to hold out against
the idea of the benefits to arise from his valour, safety to his family and
children, defeat to an unjust and formidable assailant, and freedom and felicity
to be secured to his country? In reality, the atmosphere, instead of considerably
affecting the mass of mankind, affects in an eminent degree only a small
part of that mass. The majority are either above or below it; are either
too gross to feel strongly these minute variations, or too busy to attend
to them. The case is to a considerable degree the same with the rest of our
animal sensations. "Indigestion," it has been said, "perhaps
a fit of the tooth ache, renders a man incapable of strong thinking and spirited
exertion." How far would they be able to maintain their ground against
an unexpected piece of intelligence of the most delightful nature? Pain
is probably more formidable in its attacks upon us, and more exquisitely
felt than any species of bodily pleasure. Yet all history affords us examples
where pain has been contemned and defied by the energies of intellectual
resolution. Do we not read of Mutius Scaevola who suffered his hand to be
destroyed by fire without betraying any symptom of emotion, and archbishop
Cranmer who endured the same trial two hundred years ago in our own country?
Is it not recorded of Anaxarchus that, while suffering the most excruciating
tortures, he exclaimed, "Beat on, tyrant! Thou mayest destroy the shell
of Anaxarchus, but thou canst not touch Anaxarchus himself?" The very
savage Indians sing amidst the wanton tortures that are inflicted on them,
and tauntingly provoke their tormentors to more ingenious cruelty. When we
read such stories, we recognize in them the genuine characteristics of man.
Man is not a vegetable to be governed by sensations of heat and cold, dryness
and moisture. He is a reasonable creature, capable of perceiving what is
eligible and right, of fixing indelibly certain principles upon his mind,
and adhering inflexibly to the resolutions he has made.




Let us attend for a moment to the general result of the preceding discussions.
The tendency of the whole is to ascertain an important principle in the science
of the human mind. If the arguments here adduced to be admitted to be valid,
it necessarily follows that whatever can be adequately brought home to the
conviction of the understanding may be depended upon as affording a secure
hold upon the conduct. We are no longer at liberty to consider man as divided
between two independent principles, or to imagine that his inclinations are
in any case inaccessible through the medium of his reason. We find the principle
within us to be uniform and simple; in consequence of which we are entitled
to conclude, that it is in every respect the proper subject of education
and persuasion, and is susceptible of unlimited improvement. There is no
conduct, in itself reasonable, which the refutation of error, and dissipating
of uncertainty, will not make appear to be such. There is no conduct which
can be shown to be reasonable, the reasons of which may not sooner or later
be made impressive, irresistible and matter of habitual recollection. Lastly,
there is no conduct, the reasons of which are thus conclusive and thus communicated,
which will not infallibly and uniformly be adopted by the man to whom they
are communicated.




It may not be improper to attend a little to the light which may be derived
from these speculations upon certain maxims, almost universally received,
but which, as they convey no distinct ideas, may be productive of mischief,
and can scarcely be productive of good.




The first of these is that the passions ought to be purified, but not
to be eradicated. Another, conveying nearly the same lesson, but in different
words, is that passion is not to be conquered by reason, but by bringing
some other passion into contention with it.




The word passion is a term extremely vague in its signification. It is
used principally in three senses. It either represents the ardour and vehemence
of mind with which any object is purified; or secondly, that temporary persuasion
of excellence and desirableness which accompanies any action performed by
us contrary to our more customary and usual habits of thinking; or lastly,
those external modes or necessities to which the whole human species is alike
subject, such as hunger, the passion between the sexes, and others. In which
of these senses is the word to be understood in the maxims above stated?




In the first sense, it has sufficiently appeared that none of our sensations,
or, which is the same thing, none of our ideas, are unaccompanied with a
consciousness of pleasure or pain; consequently all our volitions are attended
with complacence or aversion. In this sense without doubt passion cannot
be eradicated; but in this sense also passion is so far from being incompatible
with reason that it is inseparable from it. Virtue, sincerity, justice and
all those principles which are begotten and cherished in us by a due exercise
of reason will never be very strenuously espoused till they are ardently
loved; that is, till their value is clearly perceived and adequately understood.
In this sense nothing is necessary but to show us that a thing is truly good
and worthy to be desired, in order to excite in us a passion for its attainment.
If therefore this be the meaning of passion in the above proposition, it
is true that passion ought not to be eradicated, but it is equally true that
it cannot be eradicated: it is true that the only way to conquer one passion
is by the introduction of another; but it is equally true that, if we employ
our rational faculties, we cannot fail of thus conquering our erroneous propensities.
The maxims therefore are nugatory.




In the second sense, our passions are ambition, avarice, the love of power,
the love of fame, envy, revenge and innumerable others. Miserable indeed
would be our condition if we could only expel one bad passion by another
of the same kind, and there was no way of rooting out delusion from the mind
but by substituting another delusion in its place. But it has been demonstrated
at large that this is not the case. Truth is not less powerful, or less friendly
to ardent exertion, than error, and needs not fear its encounter. Falsehood
is not, as such a principle would suppose, the only element in which the
human mind can exist, so that, if the space which the mind occupies be too
much rarefied and cleared, its existence or health will be in some degree
injured. On the contrary, we need not fear any sinister consequences from
the subversion of error, and introducing as much truth into the mind as we
can possibly accumulate. All those notions by which we are accustomed to
ascribe to anything a value which it does not really possess should be eradicated
without mercy; and truth, a sound and just estimate of things, which is not
less favourable to zeal or activity, should be earnestly and incessantly
cultivated.




In the third sense of the word passion, as it describes the result of
those circumstances which are common to the whole species, such as hunger
and the propensity to the intercourse of the sexes, it seems sufficiently
reasonable to say that no attempt ought to be made to eradicate them. But
this sentiment was hardly worth the formality of a maxim. So far as these
propensities ought to be conquered or restrained, there is no reason why
this should not he effected by the due exercise of the understanding. From
these illustrations it is sufficiently apparent that the care recommended
to us not to extinguish or seek to extinguish our passions is founded in
a confused or mistaken view of the subject.




Another maxim not inferior in reputation to those above recited is that
of following nature. But the term nature here is still more loose and unintelligible
than the term passion was before. If it be meant that we ought to accommodate
ourselves to hunger and the other appetites which are common to our species,
this is probably true. But these appetites, some of them in particular, lead
to excess, and the mischief with which they are pregnant is to be corrected,
not by consulting our appetites, but our reason. If it be meant that we should
follow instinct, it has been proved that we have no instincts. The advocates
of this maxim are apt to consider whatever now exists among mankind as inherent
and perpetual, and to conclude that this is to be maintained, not in proportion
as it can be shown to be reasonable, but because it is natural. Thus it has
been said that man is naturally a religious animal, and for this reason,
and not in proportion to our power of demonstrating the being of a God or
the truth of Christianity, religion is to be maintained. Thus again it has
been called natural that men should form themselves into immense tribes or
nations, and go to war with each other. Thus persons of narrow views and
observation regard everything as natural and right that happens, however
capriciously or for however short a time, to prevail in the society in which
they live. The only things which can be said to compose the nature or constitution
of man are our external structure, which itself is capable of being modified
with indefinite variety; the appetites and impressions growing out of that
structure; and the capacity of combining ideas and inferring conclusions.
The appetites common to the species we cannot wholly destroy: the faculty
of reason it would be absurd systematically to counteract, since it is only
by some sort of reasoning, bad or good, that we can so much as adopt any
system. In this sense therefore no doubt we ought to follow nature, that
is, to employ our understandings and increase our discernment. But, by conforming
ourselves to the principles of our constitution in this respect, we most
effectually exclude all following, or implicit assent. If we would fully
comport ourselves in a manner correspondent to our properties and powers,
we must bring everything to the standard of reason. Nothing must be admitted
either as principle or precept that will not support this trial. Nothing
must be sustained because it is ancient, because we have been accustomed
to regard it as sacred, or because it has been unusual to bring its validity
into question. Finally, if by following nature be understood that we must
fix our preference upon things that will conduce to human happiness, in this
there is some truth. But the truth it contains is extremely darkened by the
phraseology in which it is couched. We must consider our external structure
so far as relates to the mere question of our preservation. As to the rest,
whatever will make a reasonable nature happy will make us happy; and our
preference ought to be bestowed upon that species of pleasure which has most
independence and most animation.




The corollaries respecting political truth, deducible from the simple
proposition, which seems clearly established by the reasonings of the present
chapter, that the voluntary actions of men are in all instances conformable
to the deductions of their understanding, are of the highest importance.
Hence we may infer what are the hopes and prospects of human improvement.
The doctrine which may be founded upon these principles may perhaps best
be expressed in the five following propositions: Sound reasoning and truth,
when adequately communicated, must always be victorious over error: Sound
reasoning and truth are capable of being so communicated: Truth is omnipotent:
The vices and moral weakness of man are not invincible: Man is perfectible,
or in other words susceptible of perpetual improvement.




These propositions will be found in part synonymous with each other. But
the time of the enquirer will not be unprofitably spent in copiously clearing
up the foundations of moral and political system. It is extremely beneficial
that truth should be viewed on all sides, and examined under different aspects.
The propositions are even little more than so many different modes of stating
the principal topic of this chapter. But, if they will not admit each of
a distinct train of arguments in its support, it may not however be useless
to bestow upon each a short illustration.




The first of these propositions is so evident that it needs only be stated
in order to the being universally admitted. Is there anyone who can imagine
that, when sound argument and sophistry are fairly brought into comparison,
the victory can be doubtful? Sophistry may assume a plausible appearance,
and contrive to a certain extent to bewilder the understanding. But it is
one of the prerogatives of truth, to follow it in its mazes and strip it
of disguise. Nor does any difficulty from this consideration interfere with
the establishment of the present proposition. We suppose truth not merely
to be exhibited, but adequately communicated; that is, in other words, distinctly
apprehended by the person to whom it is addressed. In this case the victory
is too sure to admit of being controverted by the most inveterate scepticism.




The second proposition is that sound reasoning and truth are capable of
being adequately communicated by one man to another. This proposition may
be understood of such communication, either as it affects the individual,
or the species. First of the individual.




In order to its due application in this point of view, opportunity for
the communication must necessarily be supposed. The incapacity of human intellect
at present requires that this opportunity should be of long duration or repeated
recurrence. We do not always know how to communicate all the evidence we
are capable of communicating in a single conversation, and much less in a
single instant. But, if the communicator be sufficiently master of his subject,
and if the truth be altogether on his side, he must ultimately succeed in
his undertaking. We suppose him to have sufficient urbanity to conciliate
the good will, and sufficient energy to engage the attention, of the party
concerned. In that case, there is no prejudice, no blind reverence for established
systems, no false fear of the inferences to be drawn, that can resist him.
He will encounter these one after the other, and he will encounter them with
success. Our prejudices, our undue reverence, and imaginary fears, flow out
of some views the mind has been induced to entertain; they are founded in
the belief of some propositions. But every one of these propositions is capable
of being refuted. The champion we describe proceeds from point to point;
if in any his success have been doubtful, that he will retrace and put out
of the reach of mistake; and it is evidently impossible that with such qualifications
and such perseverance he should not ultimately accomplish his purpose.




Such is the appearance which this proposition assumes when examined in
a loose and practical view. In strict consideration it will not admit of
debate. Man is a rational being. If there be any man who is incapable of
making inferences for himself, or of understanding, when stated in the most
explicit terms, the inferences of another, him we consider as an abortive
production, and not in strictness belonging to the human species. It is absurd
therefore to say that sound reasoning and truth cannot be communicated by
one man to another. Whenever in any case he fails, it is that he is not sufficiently
laborious, patient and dear. We suppose of course the person who undertakes
to communicate the truth really to possess it, and be master of his subject;
for it is scarcely worth an observation to say that that which he has not
himself he cannot communicate to another.




If truth therefore can be brought home to the conviction of the individual,
let us see how it stands with the public or the world. Now in the first place,
it is extremely clear that, if no individual can resist the force of truth,
it can only be necessary to apply this proposition from individual to individual,
and we shall at length comprehend the whole. Thus the affirmation in its
literal sense is completely established.




With respect to the chance of success, this will depend, first, upon the
precluding all extraordinary convulsions of nature, and after this upon the
activity and energy of those to whose hands the sacred cause of truth may
be entrusted. It is apparent that, if justice be done to its merits, it includes
in it the indestructible germ of ultimate victory. Every new convert that
is made to its cause, if he be taught its excellence as well as its reality,
is a fresh apostle to extend its illuminations through a wider sphere. In
this respect it resembles the motion of a falling body, which increases its
rapidity in proportion to the squares of the distances. Add to which, that,
when a convert to truth has been adequately informed it is barely possible
that he should ever fail in his adherence; whereas error contains in it the
principle of its own mortality. Thus the advocates of falsehood and mistake
must continually diminish, and the well informed adherents of truth incessantly
multiply.




It has sometimes been affirmed that, whenever a question is ably brought
forward for examination, the decision of the human species must ultimately
be on the right side. But this proposition is to be understood with allowances.
Civil policy, magnificent emoluments, and sinister motives may upon many
occasions, by distracting the attention, cause the worse reason to pass as
if it were the better. It is not absolutely certain that, in the controversy
brought forward by Clarke and Whiston against the doctrine of the Trinity,
or by Collins and Woolston against the Christian revelation, the innovators
had altogether the worst of the argument. Yet fifty years after the agitation
of these controversies, their effects could scarcely be traced, and things
appeared on all sides as if the controversies had never existed. Perhaps
it will be said that, though the effects of truth may be obscured for a time,
they will break out in the sequel with double lustre. But this at least depends
upon circumstances. No comet must come in the meantime and sweep away the
human species: no Attila must have it in his power once again to lead back
the flood of barbarism to deluge the civilized world: and the disciples,
or at least the books of the original champions must remain, or their discoveries
and demonstrations must be nearly lost to the world.




The third of the propositions enumerated is that truth is omnipotent.
This proposition, which is convenient for its brevity, must be understood
with limitations. It would be absurd to affirm that truth, unaccompanied
by the evidence which proves it to be such, or when that evidence is partially
and imperfectly stated, has any such property. But it has sufficiently appeared
from the arguments already adduced that truth, when adequately communicated,
is, so far as relates to the conviction of the understanding, irresistible.
There may indeed be propositions which, though true in themselves, may be
beyond the sphere of human knowledge, or respecting which human beings have
not yet discovered sufficient arguments for their support. In that case,
though true in themselves, they are not truths to us. The reasoning by which
they are attempted to be established is not sound reasoning. It may perhaps
be found that the human mind is not capable of arriving at absolute certainty
upon any subject of enquiry; and it must be admitted that human science is
attended with all degrees of certainty, from the highest moral evidence
to the slightest balance of probability. But human beings are capable of
apprehending and weighing all these degrees; and to know the exact quantity
of probability which I ought to ascribe to any proposition may be said to
be in one sense the possessing certain knowledge. It would further be absurd,
if we regard truth in relation to its empire over our conduct, to suppose
that it is not limited in its operations by the faculties of our frame. It
may be compared to a connoisseur who, however consummate be his talents,
can extract from a given instrument only such tones as that instrument will
afford. But, within these limits, the deduction which forms the principal
substance of this chapter proves to us that whatever is brought home to the
conviction of the understanding, so long as it is present to the mind, possesses
an undisputed empire over the conduct. Nor will he who is sufficiently conversant
with the science of intellect be hasty in assigning the bounds of our capacity.
There are some things which the structure of our bodies will render us forever
unable to effect; but in many cases the lines which appear to prescribe a
term to our efforts will, like the mists that arise from a lake, retire further
and further, the more closely we endeavour to approach them.




Fourthly, the vices and moral weakness of man are not invincible. This
is the preceding proposition with a very slight variation in the statement.
Vice and weakness are founded upon ignorance and error; but truth is more
powerful than any champion that can be brought into the field against it;
consequently truth has the faculty of expelling weakness and vice, and placing
nobler and more beneficent principles in their stead.




Lastly, man is perfectible. This proposition needs some explanation.




By perfectible, it is not meant that he is capable of being brought to
perfection. But the word seems sufficiently adapted to express the faculty
of being continually made better and receiving perpetual improvement; and
in this sense it is here to be understood. The term perfectible, thus explained,
not only does not imply the capacity of being brought to perfection, but
stands in express opposition to it. If we could arrive at perfection, there
would be an end to our improvement. There is however one thing of great importance
that it does imply: every perfection or excellence that human beings are
competent to conceive, human beings, unless in cases that are palpably and
unequivocally excluded by the structure of their frame, are competent to
attain.




This is an inference which immediately follows from the omnipotence of
truth. Every truth that is capable of being communicated is capable of being
brought home to the conviction of the mind. Every principle which can be
brought home to the conviction of the mind will infallibly produce a correspondent
effect upon the conduct. If there were not something in the nature of man
incompatible with absolute perfection, the doctrine of the omnipotence of
truth would afford no small probability that he would one day reach it. Why
is the perfection of man impossible?




The idea of absolute perfection is scarcely within the grasp of human
understanding. If science were more familiarized to speculations of this
sort, we should perhaps discover that the notion itself was pregnant with
absurdity and contradiction.




It is not necessary in this argument to dwell upon the limited nature
of the human faculties. We can neither be present to all places nor to all
times. We cannot penetrate into the essences of things, or rather we have
no sound and satisfactory knowledge of things external to ourselves, but
merely of our own sensations. We cannot discover the causes of things, or
ascertain that in the antecedent which connects it with the consequent, and
discern nothing but their contiguity.(7*) With what pretence can a being
thus shut in on all sides lay claim to absolute perfection?




But, not to insist upon these considerations, there is one principle in
the human mind which must forever exclude us from arriving at a close of
our acquisitions and confine us to perpetual progress. The human mind so
far as we are acquainted with it, is nothing else but a faculty of perception.
All our knowledge, all our ideas everything we possess as intelligent beings,
comes from impression. All the minds that exist set out from absolute ignorance.
They received first one impression, and then a second. As the impressions
became more numerous, and were stored by the help of memory, and combined
by the faculty of association, so the experience increased, and with the
experience the knowledge, the wisdom, everything that distinguishes man from
what we understand by a "clod of the valley." This seems to be
a simple an incontrovertible history of intellectual being; and, if it be
true, then as our accumulations have been incessant in the time that is gone,
so, as long as we continue to perceive, to remember or reflect, they must
perpetually increase.




NOTES:




1. Objections have been started to the use of the word truth in this absolute
construction, as if it implied in the mind of the writer the notion of something
having an independent and separate existence, whereas nothing can be more
certain than that truth, that is, affirmative and negative propositions,
has strictly no existence but in the mind of him who utters or hears it.
But these objections seem to have been taken up too hastily. It cannot be
denied that there are some propositions which are believed for a time and
afterwards refuted; and others, such as most of the theorems of mathematics,
and many of those of natural philosophy, respecting which there is no probability
that they ever will be refuted. Every subject of enquiry is susceptible of
affirmation and negation; and those propositions concerning it which describe
the real relations of things may in a certain sense, whether we be or be
not aware that they do so, be said to be true. Taken in this sense, truth
is immutable. He that speaks of its immutability does nothing more than predict
with greater or less probability, and say, "This is what I believe,
and what all reasonable beings, till they shall fall short of me in their
degree of information, will continue to believe."




2. Book V, Chapter XV.




3. The term motive is applicable in all cases where the regular operations
of inanimate matter are superseded by the interference of intelligence. Whatever
sensation or perception in the mind is capable of influencing this interference
is called motive. Motive therefore is applicable to the case of all actions
originating in sensation or perception, whether voluntary or involuntary.




4. Characteristics; Treatise IV., B. I., Part i., section 2.




5. This distribution is in substance the same as that of Hartley; but
is here introduced without any attention to adopt the peculiarities of his
phraseology. Observations on Man, Chapter I, section iii., Prop. 21.




6. Milton: Paradise Lost, b. v.




7. Book IV, Chapter VII.




CHAPTER VI




OF THE INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE




Two points further are necessary to be illustrated, in order to render
our view of man in his social capacity impartial and complete. There are
certain physical causes which have commonly been supposed to oppose an immovable
barrier to the political improvement of our species: climate, which is imagined
to render the introduction of liberal principles upon this subject in some
cases impossible: and luxury, which, in addition to this disqualification,
precludes their revival even in countries where they had once most eminently
flourished.




An answer to both these objections is included in what has been offered
upon the subject of the voluntary actions of man. If truth, when properly
displayed, be omnipotent, then neither climate nor luxury are invincible
obstacles. But so much stress has been laid upon these topics, and they have
been so eloquently enforced by poets and men like poets, that it seems necessary
to bestow upon them a distinct examination.




"It is impossible," say some, "to establish a system of
political liberty in certain warm and effeminate climates." To enable
us to judge of the reasonableness of this affirmation, let us consider what
process would be necessary in order to introduce political liberty into any
country.




The answer to this question is to be found in the answer to that other,
whether freedom have any real and solid advantages over slavery? If it have,
then our mode of proceeding respecting it ought to be exactly parallel to
that we should employ in recommending any other benefit. If I would persuade
a man to accept a great estate, supposing that possession to be a real advantage;
if I would induce him to select for his companion a beautiful and accomplished
woman, or for his friend a wise, a brave and disinterested man; if I would
persuade him to prefer ease to pain, and gratification to torture, what more
is necessary than that I should inform his understanding, and make him see
these things in their true and genuine colours? Should I find it necessary
to enquire first of what climate he was a native, and whether that were favourable
to the possession of a great estate, a fine woman, or a generous friend?




The advantages of liberty over slavery are not less real, though unfortunately
they have been made less palpable in their application to the welfare of
communities at large, than the advantages to accrue in the cases above enumerated.
Every man has a confused sense of the real state of the question; but he
has been taught to believe that men would tear each other to pieces if they
had not priests to direct their consciences, lords to consult for their tranquillity,
and kings to pilot them in safety through the dangers of the political ocean.
But whether they be misled by these or other prejudices, whatever be the
fancied terror that induces them quietly to submit to have their hands bound
behind them, and the scourge vibrated over their heads, all these are questions
of reason. Truth may be presented to them in such irresistible evidence,
perhaps by such just degrees familiarized to their apprehension, as ultimately
to conquer the most obstinate prepossessions. Let the press find its way
into Persia or Indostan, let the political truths discovered by the best
of the European sages be transfused into their language, and it is impossible
that a few solitary converts should not be made. It is the property of truth
to spread; and, exclusively of any powerful counteraction, its advocates
in each succeeding year will be somewhat more numerous than in that which
went before. The causes which suspend its progress arise, not from climate,
but from the watchful and intolerant jealousy of despotic sovereigns. - What
is here stated is in fact little more than a branch of the principle which
has been so generally recognized, "that government is founded in opinion."(1*)




Let us suppose then that the majority of a nation, by however slow a progress,
is convinced of the desirableness, or, which amounts to the same, the practicability
of freedom. The supposition would be parallel if we were to imagine ten thousand
men of sound intellect, shut up in a madhouse, and superintended by a set
of three or four keepers. Hitherto they have been persuaded, for what absurdity
has been too great for human intellect to entertain? that they were destitute
of reason, and that the superintendence under which they were placed was
necessary for their preservation. They have therefore submitted to whips
and straw and bread and water, and perhaps imagined this tyranny to be a
blessing. But a suspicion is at length by some means propagated among them
that all they have hitherto endured has been an imposition. The suspicion
spreads, they reflect, they reason, the idea is communicated from one to
another through the chinks of their cells, and at certain times when the
vigilance of their keepers has not precluded them from mutual society. It
becomes the clear perception, the settled persuasion of the majority of the
persons confined.




What will be the consequence of this opinion? Will the influence of climate
prevent them from embracing the obvious means of their happiness? Is there
any human understanding that will not perceive a truth like this, when forcibly
and repeatedly presented? Is there a mind that will conceive no impatience
of so horrible a tyranny? In reality the chains fall off of themselves when
the magic of opinion is dissolved. When a great majority of any society are
persuaded to secure any benefit to themselves, there is no need of tumult
or violence to effect it. The effort would be to resist reason, not to obey
it. The prisoners are collected in their common hall, and the keepers inform
them that it is time to return to their cells. They have no longer the power
to obey. They look at the impotence of their late masters, and smile at their
presumption. They quietly leave the mansion where they were hitherto immured,
and partake of the blessings of light and air like other men.




It may perhaps be useful to consider how far these reasonings upon the
subject of liberty are confirmed to us by general experience as to the comparative
inefficacy of climate, and the superior influence of circumstances, political
and social. The following instances are for the most part abridged from the
judicious collections of Hume upon the subject.(2*)




1. If the theory here asserted be true, we may expect to find the inhabitants
of neighbouring provinces in different states widely discriminated by the
influence of government, and little assimilated by resemblance of climate.
Thus the Gascons are the gayest people in France; but the moment we pass
the Pyrenees, we find the serious and saturine character of the Spaniard.
Thus the Athenians were lively, penetrating and ingenious; but the Thebans
unpolished, phlegmatic and dull. 2. It would be reasonable to expect that
different races of men, intermixed with each other, but differently governed,
would afford a strong and visible contrast. Thus the Turks are brave, open
and sincere; but the modern Greeks mean, cowardly and deceitful. 3. Wandering
tribes closely connected among themselves, and having little sympathy with
the people with whom they reside, may be expected to have great similarity
of manners. Their situation renders them conspicuous, the faults of individuals
reflect dishonour upon the whole, and their manners will be particularly
sober and reputable, unless they should happen to labour under so peculiar
an odium as to render all endeavour after reputation fruitless. Thus the
Armenians in the East are as universally distinguished among the nations
with whom they reside as the Jews in Europe; but the Armenians are noted
for probity, and the Jews for extortion. 4. What resemblance is there between
the ancient and the modern Greeks, between the old Romans and the present
inhabitants of Italy, between the Gauls and the French? Diodorus Siculus
describes the Gauls as particularly given to taciturnity, and Aristotle affirms
that they are the only warlike nation who are negligent of women.




If on the contrary climate were principally concerned in forming the characters
of nations, we might expect to find that heat and cold producing an extraordinary
effect upon men, as they do upon plants and inferior animals. But the reverse
of this appears to be the fact. Is it supposed that the neighbourhood of
the sun renders men gay, fantastic and ingenious? While the French, the Greeks
and the Persians have been remarkable for their gaiety, the Spaniards, the
Turks and the Chinese are not less distinguished by the seriousness of their
deportment. It was the opinion of the ancients that the northern nations
were incapable of civilization and improvement; but the moderns have found
that the English are not inferior in literary eminence to any nation in the
world. Is it asserted that the northern nations are more hardy and courageous,
and that conquest has usually travelled from that to the opposite quarter?
It would have been truer to say that conquest is usually made by poverty
upon plenty. The Turks, who from the deserts of Tartary invaded the fertile
provinces of the Roman empire, met the Saracens half way, who were advancing
with similar views from the no less dreary deserts of Arabia. In their extreme
perhaps heat and cold may determine the characters of nations, of the negroes
for example on one side, and the Laplanders on the other. Not but that, in
this very instance, much may be ascribed to the wretchedness of a sterile
climate on the one hand, and to the indolence consequent upon a spontaneous
fertility on the other. As to what is more than this, the remedy has not
yet been discovered. Physical causes have already appeared to be powerful
till moral ones can be brought into operation.




Has it been alleged that carnivorous nations are endowed with the greatest
courage? The Swedes, whose nutriment is meagre and sparing, have ranked with
the most distinguished modern nations in the operations of war.




It is usually said that northern nations are most addicted to wine, and
southern to women. Admitting this observation in its full force, it would
only prove that climate may operate upon the grosser particles of our frame,
not that it influences those finer organs upon which the operations of intellect
depend. But the truth of the first of these remarks may well be doubted.
The Greeks appear to have been sufficiently addicted to the pleasures of
the bottle. Among the Persians no character was more coveted than that of
a hard drinker. It is easy to obtain anything of the negroes, even their
wives and children, in exchange for liquor.




As to women the circumstances may be accounted for from moral causes.
The heat of the climate obliges both sexes to go half naked. The animal arrives
sooner at maturity in hot countries. And both these circumstances produce
vigilance and jealousy, causes which inevitably tend to inflame the passions.




The result of these reasonings is of the utmost importance to him who
speculates upon principles of government. There have been writers on this
subject who, admitting and even occasionally declaiming with enthusiasm upon
the advantages of liberty and the equal claims of mankind to every social
benefit, have yet concluded "that the corruptions of despotism, and
the usurpations of aristocracy, were congenial to certain ages and divisions
of the world, and under proper limitations entitled to our approbation."
But this hypothesis will be found unable to endure the test of serious reflection.
There is no state of mankind that renders them incapable of the exercise
of reason. There is no period in which it is necessary to hold the human
species in a condition of pupillage. If there were, it would seem but reasonable
that their superintendents and guardians, as in the case of infants of another
sort, should provide for the means of their subsistence without calling upon
them for the exertions of their own understanding. Wherever men are competent
to look the first duties of humanity in the face, and to provide for their
defence against the invasions of hunger and the inclemencies of the sky,
it can scarcely be thought that they are not equally capable of every other
exertion that may be essential to their security and welfare.




The real enemies of liberty in any country are not the people, but those
higher orders who find their imaginary profit in a contrary system. Infuse
just views of society into a certain number of the liberally educated and
reflecting members; give to the people guides and instructors; and the business
is done. This however is not to be accomplished but in a gradual manner,
as will more fully appear in the sequel. The error lies, not in tolerating
the worst forms of government for a time, but in supporting a change impracticable,
and not incessantly looking forward to its accomplishment.




NOTES:




1. Hume's Essays, Part I., Essay iv.




2. Essays; Part I., Essay xxi.




CHAPTER VII




OF THE INFLUENCE OF LUXURY




The second objection to the principles already established, is derived
from the influence of luxury, and affirms "that nations, like individuals,
are subject to the phenomena of youth and old age, and that, when a people
by effeminacy and depravation of manners have sunk into decrepitude, it is
not within the compass of human ability to restore them to vigour and innocence."




This idea has been partly founded upon the romantic notions of pastoral
life and the golden age. Innocence is not virtue. Virtue demands the active
employment of an ardent mind in the promotion of the general good. No man
can be eminently virtuous who is not accustomed to an extensive range of
reflection. He must see all the benefits to arise from a disinterested proceeding,
and must understand the proper method of producing those benefits. Ignorance,
the slothful habits and limited views of uncultivated life, have not in them
more of true virtue, though they may be more harmless, than luxury, vanity
and extravagance. Individuals of exquisite feeling, whose disgust has been
excited by the hardened selfishness or the unblushing corruption which have
prevailed in their own times, have recurred in imagination to the forests
of Norway or the bleak and uncomfortable Highlands of Scotland in search
of a purer race of mankind. This imagination has been the offspring of disappointment,
not the dictate of reason and philosophy.




It may be true, that ignorance is nearer than prejudice to the reception
of wisdom, and that the absence of virtue is a condition more auspicious
than the presence of its opposite. In this case it would have been juster
to compare a nation sunk in luxury to an individual with confirmed habits
of wrong, than to an individual whom a debilitated constitution was bringing
fast to the grave. But neither would that comparison have been fair and equitable.




The condition of nations is more fluctuating, and will be found less
obstinate in its resistance to a consistent endeavour for their improvement,
than that of individuals. In nations some of their members will be less
confirmed in error than others. A certain number will be only in a very small
degree indisposed to listen to the voice of truth. This number, from the
very nature of just sentiments, must in the ordinary course of things perpetually
increase. Every new convert will be the means of converting others. In proportion
as the body of disciples is augmented, the modes of attack upon the prejudices
of others will be varied, and suited to the variety of men's tempers and
prepossessions.




Add to this that generations of men are perpetually going off the stage,
while other generations succeed. The next generation will not have so many
prejudices to subdue. Suppose a despotic nation by some revolution in its
affairs to become possessed of the advantages of freedom. The children of
the present race will be bred in more firm and independent habits of thinking;
the suppleness, the timidity, and the vicious dexterity of their fathers,
will give place to an erect mien and a clear and decisive judgement. The
partial and imperfect change of character which was introduced at first will
in the succeeding age become more unalloyed and complete.




Lastly, the power of reasonable and just ideas in changing the character
of nations is in one respect infinitely greater than any power which can
be brought to bear upon a solitary individual. The case is not of that customary
sort, where the force of theory alone is tried in curing any person of his
errors; but is as if he should be placed in an entirely new situation. His
habits are broken through, and his motives of action changed. Instead of
being perpetually recalled to vicious practices by the recurrence of his
former connections, the whole society receives an impulse from the same cause
that acts upon the individual. New ideas are suggested, and the languor and
imbecility which might be incident to each are counteracted by the spectacle
of general enthusiasm and concert.




But it has been further alleged, "that, even should a luxurious nation
be induced, by intolerable grievances, and notorious usurpation, to embrace
just principles of human society, they would be unable to perpetuate them,
and would soon be led back by their evil habits to their former vices and
corruption:" that is, they would be capable of the heroic energy that
should expel the usurper, but not of the moderate resolution that should
prevent his return. They would rouse themselves so far from their lethargy
as to assume a new character and enter into different views; but, after having
for some time acted upon their convictions, they would suddenly become incapable
of understanding the truth of their principles and feeling their influence.




Men always act upon their apprehensions of preferableness. There are few
errors of which they are guilty which may not be resolved into a narrow and
inadequate view of the alternative presented for their choice. Present pleasure
may appear more certain and eligible than distant good. But they never choose
evil as apprehended to be evil. Wherever a clear and unanswerable notion
of any subject is presented to their view, a correspondent action or course
of actions inevitably follows. Having thus gained one step in the acquisition
of truth, it cannot easily be conceived as lost. A body of men, having detected
the injurious consequences of an evil under which they have long laboured,
and having shaken it off, will scarcely voluntarily restore the mischief
they have annihilated. No recollection of past error can reasonably be supposed
to have strength enough to lead back, into absurdity and uncompensated subjection,
men who have once been thoroughly awakened to the perception of truth.




CHAPTER VIII




HUMAN INVENTIONS SUSCEPTIBLE OF PERPETUAL IMPROVEMENT




Before we proceed to the direct subject of the present enquiry, it may
not be improper to resume the subject of human improvableness, and consider
it in a somewhat greater detail. An opinion has been extensively entertained
"that the differences of the human species in different ages and countries,
particularly so far as relates to moral principles of conduct, are extremely
insignificant and trifling; that we are deceived in this respect by distance
and confounded by glare; but that in reality the virtues and vices of men,
collectively taken, always have remained, and of consequence," it is
said, "always will remain, nearly at the same point."




The erroneousness of this opinion will perhaps be more completely exposed,
by a summary recollection of the actual history of our species, than by the
closest deductions of abstract reason. We will in this place simply remind
the reader of the great changes which man has undergone as an intellectual
being, entitling us to infer the probability of improvements not less essential,
to be realized in future. The conclusion to be deduced from this delineation,
that his moral improvements will in some degree keep pace with his intellectual,
and his actions correspond with his opinions, must depend for its force upon
the train of reasoning which has already been brought forward under that
head.(1*)




Let us carry back our minds to man in his original state, a being capable
of impressions and knowledge to an unbounded extent, but not having as yet
received the one or cultivated the other; let us contrast this being with
all that science and genius have effected; and from hence we may form some
idea what it is of which human nature is capable. It is to be remembered
that this being did not, as now, derive assistance from the communications
of his fellows, nor had his feeble and crude conceptions amended by the experience
of successive centuries; but that in the state we are figuring all men were
equally ignorant. The field of improvement was before them~ but for every
step in advance they were to be indebted to their untutored efforts. Nor
is it of consequence whether such was actually the progress of mind, or whether,
as others teach, the progress was abridged, and man was immediately advanced
half way to the end of his career by the interposition of the author of his
nature. In any case it is an allowable, and will be found no unimproving
speculation, to consider mind as it is in itself, and to enquire what would
have been its history if, immediately upon its production, it had been left
to be acted upon by those ordinary laws of the universe with whose operation
we are acquainted.




One of the acquisitions most evidently requisite as a preliminary to our
present improvements is that of language. But it is impossible to conceive
an acquisition that must have been in its origin more different from what
at present it is found, or that less promised that copiousness and refinement
it has since exhibited.




Its beginning was probably from those involuntary cries which infants,
for example, are found to utter in the earliest stages of their existence,
and which, previously to the idea of exciting pity or procuring assistance,
spontaneously arise from the operation of pain upon our animal frame. These
cries, when actually uttered, become a subject of perception to him by whom
they are uttered; and, being observed to be constantly associated with certain
antecedent impressions and to excite the idea of those impressions in the
hearer, may afterwards be repeated from reflection and the desire of relief.
Eager desire to communicate any information to another will also prompt us
to utter some simple sound for the purpose of exciting attention: this sound
will probably frequently recur to organs unpractised to variety, and will
at length stand as it were by convention for the information intended to
be conveyed. But the distance is extreme from these simple modes of communication,
which we possess in common with some of the inferior animals, to all the
analysis and abstraction which languages require.




Abstraction indeed, though, as it is commonly understood, it be one of
the sublimest operations of mind, is in some sort coeval with and inseparable
from the existence of mind.(2*) The next step to simple perception is that
of comparison, or the coupling together of two ideas and the perception of
their resemblances and differences. Without comparison there can be no preference,
and without preference no voluntary action: though it must be acknowledged,
that this comparison is an operation which may be performed by the mind without
adverting to its nature, and that neither the brute nor the savage has a
consciousness of the several steps of the intellectual progress. Comparison
immediately leads to imperfect abstraction. The sensation of to-day is classed,
if similar, with the sensation of yesterday, and an inference is made respecting
the conduct to be adopted. Without this degree of abstraction, the faint
dawnings of language already described, could never have existed. Abstraction,
which was necessary to the first existence of language, is again assisted
in its operations by language. That generalization, which is implied in the
very notion of a thinking being, being thus embodied and rendered a matter
of sensible impression, makes the mind acquainted with its own powers, and
creates a restless desire after further progress.




But, though it be by no means impossible to trace the causes that concurred
to the production of language, and to prove them adequate to their effect,
it does not the less appear that this is an acquisition of slow growth and
inestimable value. The very steps, were we to pursue them, would appear like
an endless labyrinth. The distance is immeasurable between the three or four
vague and inarticulate sounds uttered by animals, and the copiousness of
lexicography or the regularity of grammar. The general and special names
by which things are at first complicated and afterwards divided, the names
by which properties are separated from their substances, and powers from
both, the comprehensive distribution of parts of speech, verbs, adjectives
and particles, the inflections of words by which the change of their terminations
changes their meaning through a variety of shadings, their concords and their
governments, all of them present us with such a boundless catalogue of science
that he who on the one hand did not know that the task had been actually
performed, or who on the other was not intimately acquainted with the progressive
nature of mind, would pronounce the accomplishment of them impossible.




A second invention, well calculated to impress us with a sense of the
progressive nature of man, is that of alphabetical writing. Hieroglyphical
or picture-writing appears at some time to have been universal, and the difficulty
of conceiving the gradation from this to alphabetical is so great as to have
induced Hartley, one of the most acute philosophical writers, to have recourse
to miraculous interposition as the only adequate solution. In reality no
problem can be imagined more operose than that of decomposing the sounds
of words into four and twenty simple elements or letters, and again finding
these elements in all other words. When we have examined the subject a little
more closely, and perceived the steps by which this labour was accomplished,
perhaps the immensity of the labour will rather gain upon us, as he that
shall have counted a million of units will have a vaster idea upon the subject
than he that only considers them in the gross.




In China hieroglyphical writing has never been superseded by alphabetical,
and this from the very nature of their language, which is considerably monosyllabic,
the same sound being made to signify a great variety of objects, by means
of certain shadings of tone too delicate for an alphabet to represent. They
have however two kinds of writing, one for the learned, and another for the
vulgar. The learned adhere closely to their hieroglyphical writing, representing
every word by its corresponding picture; but the vulgar are frequent in their
deviations from it.




Hieroglyphical writing and speech may indeed be considered in the first
instance as two languages running parallel to each other, but with no necessary
connection. The picture and the word, each of them, represent the idea, one
as immediately as the other. But, though independent, they will become accidentally
associated; the picture at first imperfectly, and afterwards more constantly
suggesting the idea of its correspondent sound. It is in this manner that
the mercantile classes of China began to corrupt, as it is styled, their
hieroglyphical writing. They had a word suppose of two syllables to write.
The character appropriate to that word they were not acquainted with, or
it failed to suggest itself to their memory. Each of the syllables however
was a distinct word in the language, and the characters belonging to them
perfectly familiar. The expedient that suggested itself was to write these
two characters with a mark signifying their union, though in reality the
characters had hitherto been appropriated to ideas of a different sort, wholly
unconnected with that now intended to be conveyed. Thus a sort of rebus or
charade was produced. In other cases the word, though monosyllabic, was capable
of being divided into two sounds, and the same process was employed. This
is a first step towards alphabetical analysis. Some word, such as the interjection
O! or the particle A, is already a sound perfectly simple, and thus furnishes
a first stone to the edifice. But, though these ideas may perhaps present
us with a faint view of the manner in which an alphabet was produced, yet
the actual production of a complete alphabet is perhaps of all human discoveries
that which required the most persevering reflection, the luckiest concurrence
of circumstances, and the most patient and gradual progress.




Let us however suppose man to have gained the two first elements of knowledge,
speaking and writing; let us trace him through all his subsequent improvements,
through whatever constitutes the inequality between Newton and the ploughman,
and indeed much more than this, since the most ignorant ploughman in civilized
society is infinitely different from what he would have been when stripped
of all the benefits he has derived from literature and the arts. Let us survey
the earth covered with the labours of man, houses, enclosures, harvests,
manufactures, instruments, machines, together with all the wonders of painting,
poetry, eloquence and philosophy.




Such was man in his original state, and such is man as we at present behold
him. Is it possible for us to contemplate what he has already done without
being impressed with a strong presentiment of the improvements he has yet
to accomplish? There is no science that is not capable of additions; there
is no art that may not be carried to a still higher perfection. If this be
true of all other sciences, why not of morals? If this be true of all other
arts, why not of social institution? The very conception of this as possible
is in the highest degree encouraging. If we can still further demonstrate
it to be a part of the natural and regular progress of mind, our confidence
and our hopes will then be complete. This is the temper with which we ought
to engage in the study of political truth. Let us look back, that we may
profit by the experience of mankind; but let us not look back, as if the
wisdom of our ancestors was such, as to leave no room for future improvement.




NOTES:




1. Chapter V.




2. The question whether or not the human mind is capable of forming abstract
ideas, has been the subject of much profound and serious disquisition. It
is certain that we have a general standard of some sort, in consequence of
which, if an animal is presented to our view, we can in most cases decide
that it is, or is not a horse, a man, &c.; nor is it to be imagined that
we should be unable to form such judgements, even if we were denied the use
of speech.




It is a curious fact, and on that account worthy to be mentioned in this
place, that the human mind is perhaps incapable of entertaining any but general
ideas. Take, for example, a wine glass. If, after this glass is withdrawn,
I present to you another from the same set, you will probably be unable to
determine whether it is another or the same. It is with a like inattention
that people in general view a flock of sheep. The shepherd only distinguishes
the features of every one of his sheep from the features of every other.
But it is impossible so to individualize our remarks as to cause our idea
to be truly particular, and not special. Thus there are memorable instances
of one man so nearly resembling another, as to be able to pass himself upon
the wife and all the relatives of this man, as if he were the same.




The opposition which has been so ingeniously maintained against the doctrine
of abstract ideas seems chiefly to have arisen from a habit of wing the term
idea, not, as Locke has done, for every conception that can exist in the
mind, but as constantly descriptive of an image, or picture. The following
view of the subject will perhaps serve in some degree to remove any ambiguity
that might continue to rest upon it.




Ideas, considering that term as comprehending all perceptions, both primary,
or of the senses, and secondary, or of the memory, may be divided into four
classes: 1. perfect. The existence of these we have disproved. 2. imperfect,
such as those which are produced in us by a near and careful inspection of
any visible object. 3. imperfect, such as those produced by a slight and
distant view. 4. imperfect, so as to have no resemblance to an image of any
external object. The perception produced in us in slight and current discourse
by the words river, field, are of this nature; and have no more resemblance
to the image of any visible object than the perception ordinarily produced
in us by the words conquest, government, virtue.




The subject of this last class of ideas is very ingeniously treated by
Burke, in his Enquiry into the Sublime, Part V. He has however committed
one material error in the discussion, by representing these as instances
of the employment of "words without ideas." If we recollect that
brutes have similar abstractions, and a general conception, of the female
of their own species, of man, of food, of the smart of a whip, &c., we
shall probably admit that such perceptions (and in all events they are perceptions,
or, according to the established language upon the subject, ideas) are not
necessarily connected with the employment of words.