upon this account, becomes neceffary to him, and whatever tends to its fupport and welfare, he confiders as having a remote tendency to his own interest, and, on the contrary, whatever is likely to difturb or destroy it, he regards as in fome measure hurtful or pernicious to himself. Virtue is the great fupport, and vice the great disturber of human fociety. The former, therefore, is agreeable, and the latter offenfive to every man; as from the one he forefees the profperity, and from the other the ruin and diforder of what is fo neceffary for the comfort and fecurity of his existence.

That the tendency of virtue to promote, and of vice to disturb the order of society, when we confider it coolly and philofophically, reflects a very great beauty upon the one, and a very great deformity upon the other, cannot, as I have obferved upon a former occafion, be called in queftion. Human fociety, when we contemplate it in a certain abstract and philofophical light, appears like a great, an immense machine, whose regular and harmonious movements produce a thousand agreeable effects. As in any other beautiful and noble machine that was the production of human art, whatever tended to render its movements more fmooth and eafy, would derive a beauty from this effect, and, on the contrary, whatever tended to obftruct them would difplease upon that account: fo virtue, which is, as it were, the fine polish to the wheels of fociety, neceffarily pleases; while vice, like the vile ruft, which makes them jar and grate upon one another, is as neceffarily offenfive. This account, therefore, of the origin of approbation and disapprobation, fo far as it derives them from a regard to the order of society, runs into

that

that principle which gives beauty to utility, and which I have explained upon a former occafion; and it is from thence that this fyftem derives all that appearance of probability which it poffeffes. When thofe authors defcribe the innumerable advantages of a cultivated and focial, above a favage and folitary life; when they expatiate upon the neceffity of virtue and good order for the maintenance of the one, and demonstrate how infallibly the prevalence of vice and difobedience to the laws tend to bring back the other, the reader is charmed with the novelty and grandeur of those views which they open to him : he fees plainly a new beauty in virtue, and a new deformity in vice, which he had never taken notice of before, and is commonly fo delighted with the discovery, that he feldom takes time to reflect, that this political view, having never occurred to him in his life before, cannot poffibly be the ground of that approbation and difapprobation with which he has always been accustomed to confider those different qualities.

When those authors, on the other hand, deduce from felf-love the intereft which we take in the welfare of fociety, and the esteem which upon that account we bestow upon virtue, they do not mean, that when we in this age applaud the virtue of Cato, and deteft the villainy of Catiline, our sentiments are influenced by the notion of any benefit we receive from the one, or of any detriment we fuffer from the other. It was hot because the profperity or fubverfion of fociety, in thofe remote ages and nations, was apprehended to have any influence upon our happines mifery in the prefent times; that according to thofe philofophers, we efteemed the vir

tuous,

tuous, and blamed the diforderly character. They never imagined that our fentiments were influenced by any benefit or damage which we fuppofed actually to redound to us, from either; but by that which might have redounded to us, had we lived in those diftant ages and countries; or by that which might ftill } redound to us, if in our own times we should meet with characters of the fame kind. The idea, in short, which those authors were groping about, but which they were never able to unfold diftinctly, was that indirect fympathy which we feel with the gratitude or refentment of those who received the benefit or fuffered the damage refulting from fuch oppofite characters and it was this which they were indiftinctly pointing at, when they faid, that it was not the thought of what we had gained or fuffered which prompted our applaufe or indignation, but the conception or imagination of what we might gain or suffer if we were to act in fociety with fuch affociates.

Sympathy, however, cannot, in any fenfe, be regarded as a selfish principle. When I fympathize with your forrow or your indignation, it may be pretended, indeed, that my emotion is founded in felf-love, because it arifes from bringing your cafe home to myfelf, from putting myself in your fituation, and thence conceiving what I fhould feel in the like circumstances. But though fympathy is very properly faid to arife from an imaginary change of fituations with the perfon principally concerned, yet this imaginary change is not fuppofed to happen to me in my own perfon and character, but in that of the person with whom I fympathize. When I condole with you for the lofs of your only fon, in order to enter into your grief, I do not confider what I, a

perfon

person of fuch a character and profeffion, should fuffer, if I had a fon, and if that fon was unfortunately to die but I confider what I should suffer if I was really you, and I not only change circumftances with you, but I change perfons and characters. My grief, therefore, is entirely upon your account, and not in the least upon my own. It is not, therefore, in the least selfish. How can that be regarded as a felfish paffion, which does not arife even from the imagination of any thing that has befallen, or that relates to myself, in my own proper person and character, but which is entirely occupied about what relates to you? A man may fympathize with a woman in child-bed; though it is impoffible that he should conceive himself as fuffering her pains in his own proper perfon and character. That whole account of human nature, however, which deduces all fentiments and affections from felf-love, which has made so much noife in the world, but which, fo far as I know, has never yet been fully and diftinctly explained, feems to me to have arifen from fome confused misapprehenfion of the fyftem of sympathy.

CHA P. II.

Of thofe fyftems which make reason the principle of approbation.

It is well known to have been the doctrine of

T

Mr. Hobbes, that a state of nature, is a state of war; and that antecedent to the inftitution of civil government, there could be no fafe or peaceable fociety among men. To preserve society, therefore, ac

cording

cording to him, was to fupport civil government, and to destroy civil government was the fame thing as to put an end to fociety. But the existence of civil government depends upon the obedience that is paid to the fupreme magiftrate. The moment he loses his authority, all government is at an end. As selfpreservation, therefore, teaches men to applaud whatever tends to promote the welfare of fociety, and to blame whatever is likely to hurt it; fo the fame principle, if they would think and fpeak confiftently, ought to teach them to applaud upon all ocafions obedience to the civil magiftrate, and to blame all difobedience and rebellion. The very ideas of laudable and blameable, ought to be the fame with thofe of obedience and difobedience. The laws of the civil magiftrate, therefore, ought to be regarded as the fole ultimate standards of what was just and unjust, of what was right and wrong.

It was the avowed intention of Mr. Hobbes, by propagating these notions, to fubject the confciences of men immediately to the civil, and not to the ecclefiaftical powers, whofe turbulence and ambition, he had been taught, by the example of his own times, to regard as the principal fource of the diforders of fociety. His doctrine, upon this account, was peculiarly offenfive to Theologians, who accordingly did not fail to vent their indignation against him with great afperity and bitterness. It was likewife offenfive to all found moralifts, as it fuppofed that there was no natural diftinction between right and wrong, that these were mutable and changeable, and depended upon the mere arbitrary will of the civil magiftrate. This account of things, therefore,

was

E