1^6 ON THE PHILOSOPHY 



to the morals and jurisprudence of the Asiatics, on 

 which I could expatiate, if the occasion admitted a 

 full discussion of the subject, with correctness and 

 confidence, 



III. That both ethics and abstract law might 

 be reduced to the method of science, cannot surely be 

 doubted ; but, although such a method would be of 

 infinite use in a system of universal, or even of na- 

 tional jurisprudence, yet the principles of morality 

 are so few, so luminous, and so ready to present 

 themselves on every occasion, that the practical 

 utility of a scientifical arrangement, in a treatise on 

 ethics, may very justly be questioned. The moral- 

 ists of the east have, in general, chosen to deliver 

 their precepts in short sententious maxims, to illus- 

 trate them by sprightly comparisons, or to inculcate 

 them in the very ancient form of agreeable apologues. 

 There are indeed, both in Arabic and Persian, 

 philosophical tracts on ethics, written with sound 

 ratiocination and elegant perspicuity; but in every 

 part of this eastern world, from Pekin to Damascus, 

 the popular teachers of moral wisdom have immemo- 

 rially been poets, and there would be no end of enu* 

 rnerating their works, which are still extant in tb& 

 five principal languages of Asia. Our divine reiigi- > 

 the truth of which (if any history be true) is abun- 

 dantly proved by historical evidence, has no need of 

 such aids, as many are willing to give it, by assen- 

 ting, that the wisest men of this world were ignorant 

 of the two great maxims, that we must act in respect 

 of others, as zve shoidd -zvisk them to act in respect of our- 

 selves* 



