438 



ON HUMAN HAPPINESS. 



founding virtue with vice, or of writing a treatise on the benefit of commit^ 

 ting crimes. Let us search where we will, we shall find that there is 

 a something in human nature, when once emerged from the barbarism of 

 savage life, that leads the learned and the unlearned to approve the one 

 and to condemn the other, even where their own conduct is involved in 

 the condemnation. 



And what is this something in human nature that conducts to so gene- 

 ral a conclusion. A set or system of innate ideas and first principles, 

 replies one class of philosophers ; a moral instinct or impulse of common 

 sense, replies another class ; the intrinsic loveliness and beauty of virtue 

 itself, replies a third ; because the attributes of virtue are useful and agree- 

 able either to ourselves or to others, replies a fourth ; because it conducts 

 to human happiness, replies a fifth ; and because it is the will of God, 

 replies a sixth. 



But while all thus agree in the conclusion, the question that leads to it 

 still returns upon us : What proof have we of the existence of such in- 

 nate ideas or instinctive impulse ; of the intrinsic beauty of virtue; that it 

 is useful to us, productive of our happiness, or that it is the will of God it 

 should be cultivated ; 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. 



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 eitlier innate ideas or moral instincts that 

 impel us to a love of virtue ; for in such cases the most savage tribes 

 among mankind would be the most virtuous ; their preecognita, or innate 

 ideas, being but little disturbed by foreign ideas, acquired by education or 

 extensive commerce 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 novellists, 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 

 proper energies, and displays itself in all its native benevolence and dig- 

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

 of the individual, the only feeling a subHme, unselfish philanthropy. This 

 whim became epidemic in France about the beginning of the French 

 Revolution, and was, in fact, the morlster mania that led to it. And the 

 contagion, not long afterwards began to show itself among many indi- 

 viduals of our own country, who, in the height of their phrenzy, laboured 

 earnestly to promote the same kind of trials among ourselves that our 

 neighbours were actually exhibiting. Th*- history is fresh in the minds 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 afibrd another living proof of the fact I endeavoured 

 pointedly to estabhsh 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 

 ^nstory of mankind you please, and you will find it so without an excep- 



* Ser. n. Lect. XIH. 



