28*2 PURPOSE AND GENERAL CONDITION OF 



the re-action which they produce in the feelings of our neigh- 

 bour and of society, and also the offence which they give to our 

 own conscientiousness and benevolence. On the other hand, 

 when we endeavour to promote the efforts of our fellow- 

 creatures to attain happiness, we produce a re-action of the 

 contrary kind, the tendency of which is towards our own 

 benefit. The one course of action tends to the injury, the other 

 to the benefit, of ourselves and others. By the one course, the 

 general design of the Creator towards his creatures is thwarted ; 

 by the other it is favoured. And thus we can readily see the 

 most substantial grounds for regarding all moral emotions and 

 doings as divine in their nature, and as a means of rising to 

 and communing with God. Obedience is not selfishness, 

 which it would otherwise be it is worship. The merest bar- 

 barians have a glimmering sense of this philosophy, and it 

 continually shines out more and more clearly as men advance 

 in intelligence. JSTor are individuals alone concerned here. 

 The same rule applies as between one great body or class of 

 men and another, and also between nations. Thus, if one set 

 of men keep others in the condition of slaves this being a 

 gross injustice to the subjected party, the mental manifesta- 

 tions of that party to the masters will be such as to mar the 

 comfort of their lives ; the minds of the masters themselves 

 will be degraded by the association with beings so degraded ; 

 and thus, with some immediate or apparent benefit from keep- 

 ing slaves, there will be, in a far greater degree, an experience 

 of evil. So also, if one portion of a nation, engaged in a 

 particular department of industry, grasp at some advantages 

 injurious to the other sections of the people, the first effect 

 will be an injury to those other portions of the nation, and the 

 second a re-active injury to the injurers, making iheir guilt 

 their punishment. And so when one nation commits an 

 aggression upon the property or rights of another, or even pur- 

 sues towards it a sordid or ungracious policy, the effects are 

 sure to be redoubled evil from the offended party. All of these 

 things are under laws which make the effects, on a large range, 

 absolutely certain ; and an individual, a party, a people, can 

 no more act unjustly with safety, than I could with safety place 

 my leg in the track of a coming wain, or attempt to fast thirty 

 days. We have been constituted on the principle of only being 

 able to realize happiness for ourselves when our fellow-creatures 

 are also happy ; it is therefore necessary that we both do to 

 others only as we would have others to do to us, and endeavour 



