ON HUMAN HAPPiNESS. 



389 



returns upon us : What proof have we of the existence of such innate ideas 

 or instinctive impulse 1 of the intrinsic beauty of virtue 1 that it is useful to us, 

 productive of our happiness, or that it is the will of God it should be culti- 

 vated? or rather, what proof have we that the original position is true, and 

 that there is a something in human nature in general, which induces us to 

 prefer virtue to vice 1 



The original position is true, but the reasons urged in support of it are 

 neither equally true nor equally adequate, even where they are true. 



It is not true that we have either nuiate ideas or moral instincts that impel 

 us to a love of virtue; for in such cases the most savage tribes among man- 

 kind would be the most virtuous ; their praecogniia, or innate ideas, being 

 but little disturbed by foreign ideas, acquired by education or extensive com- 

 merce with the world; and their moral instincts as little disturbed by foreign 

 habits acquired from the same causes. 



There has often arisen in the mind an unaccountable whim, of supposing 

 that a savage life, or state of nature, is the best and purest mode of human 

 existence ; and novelists, poets, and sometimes even philosophers have 

 equally ranted upon the paucity of its wants, the simplicity of its pursuits, 

 the solidity of its pleasures, and the strength and constancy of its attach- 

 ments. It is here, we have been told, that the human soul developes its pro- 

 per energies, and displays itself in all its native benevolence and dignity: 

 here all things belong equally to every one ; the only law is the will of the 

 individual, the only feeling a sublime, unselfish philanthropy. This whim 

 became epidemic in France about the beginning of the French Revolution, 

 and was, in fact, the monster mania that led to it. And the contagion, not 

 long afterward, began to show itself among many individuals of our own 

 country, who, in the height of their phrensy, laboured earnestly to promote 

 the same kind of trials among ourselves that our neighbours were actually 

 exhibiting. The history is fresh in the mind of every one, and it is not 

 necessary to pursue it. It is sufficient to observe, that it led, in a short time, 

 to consequences so mischievous, as to work their own cure ; and to afford 

 another living proof of the fact I endeavoured pointedly to establish in a late 

 lecture, that barbarism, vice, and misery are, by an immutable law of nature, 

 the inseparable associates of each other.* Throw your eyes to whatever 

 part of the globe or to whatever history of mankind you please, and you will 

 find it so without an exception. Other animals have instincts that control 

 their appetites, and lead them insensibly to the perfection of their respective 

 kinds; that inculcate constancy where constancy is necessary, and compel 

 them to provide for and take the charge of their young. Man has no such 

 instincts, whatever ; he has reason, indeed, a more ennobling and efficient faculty, 

 but it must be called forth, for it is a dormant priciple in savage life. And hence, 

 destitute of the one, and uninfluenced by the other, he is the perpetual slave 

 of his ungovcrned and ungovernable passions, and is the only animal in the 

 world that has been known to kill or abandon its own offspring in a state of 

 destitute and helpless infancy; and to murder its own kind for the purpose of 

 feasting upon it : a fact too well established to be doubted of; and which, instead 

 of being confined to a single climate or a single people, has apparently been 

 common to all countries, when under the influence of gross barbarism ; which 

 still exists among various tribes in Africa, South America, and Australia, 

 and particularly among the islands of the South Sea, and which, according to 

 the concurrent testimony of the best Greek and Roman writers, as Herodotus, 

 Pliny, Strabo, and Pomponius Mela, was formerly to be traced among the 

 Scythians, Tartars, and Massagetae of Asia, and the Lestrigons of Europe. 

 Strabo, indeed, ascribes the same practice even to the Irish in his day, andCaelius 

 Rhodriginus to their neighbours of Scotland; while Thevenot asserts fhat, 

 when he was in India in 1665, human flesh was publicly sold in the market 

 at Debca, about forty leagues from Baroche. 



Consentaneous to this view of the subject are the foUov/ing remarks of 



* Series ii. Lecture xiii. 



