vast capitals, and was at that time countenanced and aggravated by the example of their superiors. Another part doubtless arose from the barbarising power of absolute government, or, in other words, of injustice in high places. A narration of those events attests, as strongly as Roman history, though in a somewhat different manner, the humanising efficacy of the family virtues, by the consequences of the want of them in the higher classes, whose profuse and ostentatious sensuality inspired the labouring and suffering portion of mankind with contempt, disgust, envy, and hatred.

The Inquiry is disfigured by another speck of more frivolous paradox. It consists in the attempt to give the name of Virtue to qualities of the Understanding; and it would not have deserved the single remark about to be made on it, had it been the paradox of an inferior man. He has altogether omitted the circumstance on which depends the difference of our sentiments regarding moral and intellectual qualities. We admire intellectual excellence, but we bestow no moral approbation on it. Such approbation has no tendency directly to increase it, because it is not voluntary. We cultivate our natural disposition to esteem and love benevolence and justice, because these moral sentiments, and the expression of them. directly and materially dispose others, as well as ourselves, to cultivate these two virtues. We cultivate a natural anger against oppression, which guards ourselves against the practice of that vice, and because the manifestation of it deters others from its exercise. The first rude resentment of a child is against every instrument of hurt: we confine it to intentional hurt, when we are taught by experience that it prevents only that species of hurt; and at last it is still further limited to wrong done to ourselves or others, and in that case becomes a purely moral sentiment. We morally approve industry, desire of knowledge, love of Truth, and all the habits by which

the Understanding is strengthened and rectified, because their formation is subject to the Will*; but we do not feel moral anger against folly or ignorance, because they are involuntary. No one but the religious persecutor, a mischievous and overgrown child, wreaks his vengeance on involuntary, inevitable, compulsory acts or states of the Understanding, which are no more affected by blame than the stone which the foolish child beats for hurting him. Reasonable men apply to every thing which they wish to move, the agent which is capable of moving it;force to outward substances, arguments to the Understanding, and blame, together with all other motives, whether moral or personal, to the Will alone. It is as absurd to entertain an abhorrence of intellectual inferiority or error, however extensive or mischievous, as it would be to cherish a warm indignation against earthquakes or hurricanes. It is singular that a philosopher who needed the most liberal toleration should, by representing states of the Understanding as moral or immoral, have offered the most philosophical apology for persecution.

That general utility constitutes a uniform ground of moral distinctions, is a part of Mr. Hume's ethical theory which never can be impugned, until some example can be produced of a virtue generally pernicious, or of a vice generally beneficial. The religious philosopher who, with Butler, holds that benevolence must be the actuating principle of the Divine mind, will, with Berkeley, maintain that pure benevolence can prescribe no rules of human conduct but such as are beneficial to men; thus bestowing on the theory of moral distinctions the certainty of demonstration in the eyes of all who believe in God.

The other question of moral philosophy which relates to the theory of moral approbation, has been

"In hâc quæstione primas tenet Voluntas, quâ, ut ait Augustinus, peccatur, et recte vivitur."— Erasmus, Diatribe adversus Lutherum.

by no means so distinctly and satisfactorily handled by Mr. Hume. His general doctrine is, that an interest in the well-being of others, implanted by nature, which he calls "sympathy" in his Treatise of Human Nature, and much less happily "benevolence" in his subsequent Inquiry, prompts us to be pleased with all generally beneficial actions. In this respect his doctrine nearly resembles that of Hutcheson. He does not trace his principle through the variety of forms which our moral sentiments assume there are very important parts of them, of which it affords no solution. For example, though he truly represents our approbation, in others, of qualities useful to the individual, as a proof of benevolence, he makes no attempt to explain our moral approbation of such virtues as temperance and fortitude in ourselves. He entirely overlooks that consciousness of the rightful supremacy of the Moral Faculty over every other principle of human action, without an explanation of which, ethical theory is wanting in one of its vital organs.

Notwithstanding these considerable defects, his proof from induction of the beneficial tendency of Virtue, his conclusive arguments for human disinterestedness, and his decisive observations on the respective provinces of Reason and Sentiment in Morals, concur in ranking the Inquiry with the ethical treatises of the highest merit in our language,

with Shaftesbury's Inquiry concerning Virtue, Butler's Sermons, and Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments.

ADAM SMITH.†

The great name of Adam Smith rests upon the Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations; perhaps the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irrevocable change in

* Essays and Treatises, vol. ii. † Born, 1723; died, 1790.

some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilised states. The works of Grotius, of Locke, and of Montesquieu, which bear a resemblance to it in character, and had no inconsiderable analogy to it in the extent of their popular influence, were productive only of a general amendment, not so conspicuous in particular instances, as discoverable, after a time, in the improved condition of human affairs. The work of Smith, as it touched those matters which may be numbered, and measured, and weighed, bore more visible and palpable fruit. In a few years it began to alter laws and treaties, and has made its way, throughout the convulsions of revolution and conquest, to a due ascendant over the minds of men, with far less than the average of those obstructions of prejudice and clamour, which ordinarily choke the channels through which truth flows into practice.* The most eminent of those who have since cultivated and improved the science will be the foremost to address their immortal master,

Tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen
Qui primus potuisti, inlustrans commoda vitæ,
Te sequor!†

In a science more difficult, because both ascending to more simple general principles, and running down through more minute applications, though the success of Smith has been less complete, his genius is not less conspicuous. Perhaps there is no ethical work since Cicero's Offices, of which an abridgment enables the reader so inadequately to estimate the merit, as the Theory of Moral Sentiments. This is not chiefly owing to the beauty of diction, as in the case of Cicero; but to the variety of explanations of life and manners which embellish the book often more than they illuminate the theory. Yet, on the other hand, it must be owned that, for purely philosophical purposes, few books more need abridgment; for the † Lucret. lib. iii.

*See Note S.

most careful reader frequently loses sight of principles buried under illustrations. The naturally copious and flowing style of the author is generally redundant; and the repetition of certain formularies of the system is, in the later editions, so frequent as to be wearisome, and sometimes ludicrous. Perhaps Smith and Hobbes may be considered as forming the two extremes of good style in our philosophy; the first of graceful fulness falling into flaccidity; while the masterly concision of the second is oftener carried forward into dictatorial dryness. Hume and Berkeley, though they are nearer the extreme of abundance are probably the least distant from perfection.

That mankind are so constituted as to sympathise with each other's feelings, and to feel pleasure in the accordance of these feelings, are the only facts required by Dr. Smith; and they certainly must be granted to him. To adopt the feelings of another, is to approve them. When the sentiments of another are such as would be excited in us by the same objects, we approve them as morally proper. To obtain this accordance, it becomes necessary for him who enjoys, or suffers, to lower the expression of his feeling to the point to which the by-stander can raise his fellowfeelings; on this attempt are founded all the high virtues of self-denial and self-command: and it is equally necessary for the by-stander to raise his sympathy as near as he can to the level of the original feeling. In all unsocial passions, such as anger, we have a divided sympathy between him who feels them, and those who are the objects of them. Hence the propriety of extremely moderating them. Pure malice is always to be concealed or disguised, because all sympathy is arrayed against it. In the private passions, where there is only a simple sympathy, sympathy, that with the original passion,-the expression has more

This remark is chiefly applicable to Hume's Essays. His Treatise of Human Nature is more Hobbian in its general tenor, though it has Ciceronian passages.