CHAMBERS'S INFORMATION FOR THE PEOPLE. 



senses and lower passions, but those more im- 

 perious requirements which take their rise in the 

 more refined emotions and in the region of the 

 ideas and of reason. The prudential virtues are 

 clearly and avowedly founded on the pleasure- 

 and-pain principle. The man who has a portion 

 of food that must last him for two days, resists 

 the inclination to eat it all the first day, solely 

 because he knows he will have more enjoyment 

 and less suffering the one way than the other, 

 and, under that conviction, the eating of the last 

 half would not give him satisfaction even at the 

 moment. In the social virtues, however many 

 of which seem to consist in the abnegation of our 

 own pleasure, and the courting of pain it is 

 thought we must admit other grounds. As before 

 observed, we cannot conceive a conscious being 

 acting on any other ; nor do any other seem to 

 be required. In everything, ' happiness is our 

 being's end and aim.' Even when most forgetting 

 ourselves, and seeming most absorbed in seeking 

 the good of others, we are virtually and directly 

 gratifying ourselves. The mother who puts the 

 morsel of food past her own mouth into that of 

 her famishing child, does that which gratifies 

 herself the most She had felt his hunger more 

 than her own to such intensity does sympathy 

 in many instances go and to allay it was more 

 imperative and more satisfying to her whole nature. 

 Do we destroy the beauty and disinterestedness 

 of the action by thus representing it ? No, we only 

 render her conduct intelligible, conceivable. Her 

 action is no less one of self-sacrifice. Self is her 

 own narrow personal sensations, which she for- 

 gets, to live and feel in another's. Selfishness 

 consists in seeking happiness which is confined 

 to our own personal consciousness ; disinterested- 

 ness consists in seeking our own happiness in 

 the happiness of others. Disinterested actions, 

 in the sense of actions having no relation to 

 the happiness of the actor, are inconceivable ; 

 were our own happiness not involved, we should 

 not act at all Theories of virtue which strive to 

 exclude all consideration of the actor's happiness 

 from his motives, are always logically incoherent, 

 and mostly consist of sentimental declamation. 

 The repugnance felt by many to the happiness 

 principle, arises from their confounding the being 

 actuated by the desire of happiness, with selfish- 

 ness. Now, selfishness is the most hateful of all 

 sins. Of all sins against our neighbour it is the 

 very essence. And even sins against ourselves 

 may in one sense be called selfish. For a sin 

 against one's self consists, as we have seen, in 

 allowing the passions of the present to triumph 

 over the consideration of the future ; and what 

 is this but the narrow man of now treating the 

 enlarged man of all time as a stranger, and 

 sacrificing him to his selfish impulses ? Selfish- 

 ness, then, is justly held in abhorrence ; not, how- 

 ever, because it is the seeking of our own happi- 

 ness, but because it is the seeking of that happi- 

 ness in wrong objects. But, by an abuse of 

 language, it is often allowed to stand for seeking 

 our own happiness in general ; and hence the 

 dislike felt by many to allow the desire for happi- 

 ness to be considered as entering into the motive 

 of what are called generous actions. 



The happiness principle, too, is sometimes ex- 



384 



pounded by its advocates in a way that makes it 

 both false and odious. They represent humane 

 and generous actions as proceeding upon a cal- 

 culation of ulterior consequences to the actor. If 

 we were to act less generously to others, it is 

 argued, others would act less generously to us, 

 and we should on the whole be losers. Now, 

 anything done for the good of another from such 

 a calculation of the returns to be expected, can 

 have no title to being called a generous action ; 

 it is essentially selfish, for the pleasure in view is 

 some advantage to be enjoyed by the actor per- 

 sonally. The only healthy impulse from which 

 a good action can proceed is the direct one, lying 

 in the gratification afforded by the action itself. 

 If I am truly benevolent, I bestow a gift upon my 

 neighbour, thinking of no ulterior consequences 

 to myself, and only of the happiness it will afford 

 him, but deriving at the same time more enjoy- 

 ment from the thought of his happiness, than the 

 use of the gift in my own person would have 

 afforded. 



Paley defines virtue to be ' the doing good to 

 mankind, in obedience to the will of God, and 

 for the sake of everlasting happiness.' This is 

 perhaps the most repulsive light in which the 

 happiness principle could be put. It is pure 

 selfishness in the real sense of that word ; and 

 the removing of the happiness sought into another 

 life only makes the self-seeking more intense and 

 unmitigated. 



In all the points remarked on, we have strictly 

 confined ourselves, it will be observed, to con- 

 siderations respecting this life, and to the know- 

 ledge men acquire by the exercise of their natural 

 faculties ; because the object was to shew, that 

 as an inhabitant of this world man is subject to 

 moral laws which make themselves felt by him, 

 and which he both may and does learn to read, 

 more or less imperfectly, without the aid of revela- 

 tion. To treat of morality viewing man as an 

 immortal being and the subject of direct instruc- 

 tion from Heaven, belongs to revealed theology. 

 But even a system of theological morality is only 

 an extension of that natural morality which we 

 have been considering, and must rest upon it as 

 a foundation. The soundest and most enlightened 

 defenders of revealed religion rest the proof of 

 its truth on the testimony that it finds in man's 

 natural moral perceptions ; and precepts given 

 with a special view to the life that is to come, are 

 enforced on the plea that they secure also the 

 happiness of this life. Supposing it, however, 

 granted that it is possible for the human race to 

 discover the rules of conduct necessary for their 

 happiness, it by no means follows that a revela- 

 tion is not necessary. The discovery of right 

 conduct is confessedly slow, the work of ages, 

 and what is to become of the race in the mean- 

 time ? And what is perhaps of more importance, 

 even when man does know his duty, his moral 

 force is weak compared with his impulsive feel- 

 ings, so that he often does the thing he would not. 

 Who will deny the desirableness that light from 

 above should shine upon the dark paths of 

 duty, and that man's frail purpose should be 

 strengthened by the admonitions of a voice speak- 

 ing with supreme authority ? 



