Classic Poem

It is foreign to the general scope of this little treatise to encumber
a simple argument by controverting any of the trite objections of
habit or fanaticism. But there are two; the first, the basis of all
political mistake, and the second, the prolific cause and effect
of religious error, which it seems useful to refute.

First, it is inquired, 'Wherefore should a man be benevolent and
just?' The answer has been given in the preceding chapter.

If a man persists to inquire why he ought to promote the happiness
of mankind, he demands a mathematical or metaphysical reason for
a moral action. The absurdity of this scepticism is more apparent,
but not less real than the exacting a moral reason for a mathematical
or metaphysical fact. If any person should refuse to admit that all
the radii of a circle are of equal length, or that human actions
are necessarily determined by motives, until it could be proved that
these radii and these actions uniformly tended to the production of
the greatest general good, who would not wonder at the unreasonable
and capricious association of his ideas?

The writer of a philosophical treatise may, I imagine, at this
advanced era of human intellect, be held excused from entering into
a controversy with those reasoners, if such there are, who would
claim an exemption from its decrees in favour of any one among those
diversified systems of obscure opinion respecting morals, which,
under the name of religions, have in various ages and countries
prevailed among mankind. Besides that if, as these reasoners have
pretended, eternal torture or happiness will ensue as the consequence
of certain actions, we should be no nearer the possession of a
standard to determine what actions were right and wrong, even if this
pretended revelation, which is by no means the case, had furnished
us with a complete catalogue of them. The character of actions as
virtuous or vicious would by no means be determined alone by the
personal advantage or disadvantage of each moral agent individually
considered. Indeed, an action is often virtuous in proportion to
the greatness of the personal calamity which the author willingly
draws upon himself by daring to perform it. It is because an
action produces an overbalance of pleasure or pain to the greatest
number of sentient beings, and not merely because its consequences
are beneficial or injurious to the author of that action, that it
is good or evil. Nay, this latter consideration has a tendency to
pollute the purity of virtue, inasmuch as it consists in the motive
rather than in the consequences of an action. A person who should
labour for the happiness of mankind lest he should be tormented
eternally in Hell, would, with reference to that motive, possess as
little claim to the epithet of virtuous, as he who should torture,
imprison, and burn them alive, a more usual and natural consequence
of such principles, for the sake of the enjoyments of Heaven.

My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may direct me to perform
or to refrain from a particular action; indicating a certain arbitrary
penalty in the event of disobedience within power to inflict.
My action, if modified by his menaces, can no degree participate
in virtue. He has afforded me no criterion as to what is right or
wrong. A king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation
affixing any penalty to any particular action, but that is not
immoral because such penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident
than that the epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the refraining
from that action on account of the evil arbitrarily attached to it.
If the action is in itself beneficial, virtue would rather consist
in not refraining from it, but in firmly defying the personal
consequences attached to its performance.

Some usurper of supernatural energy might subdue the whole globe
to his power; he might possess new and unheard-of resources for
enduing his punishments with the most terrible attributes or pain.
The torments of his victims might be intense in their degree,
and protracted to an infinite duration. Still the 'will of the
lawgiver' would afford no surer criterion as to what actions were
right or wrong. It would only increase the possible virtue of those
who refuse to become the instruments of his tyranny.


II--MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFERENCE, NOT THE
RESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS

The internal influence, derived from the constitution of the mind
from which they flow, produces that peculiar modification of actions,
which makes them intrinsically good or evil.

To attain an apprehension of the importance of this distinction,
let us visit, in imagination, the proceedings of some metropolis.
Consider the multitude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey,
in thought, the actions of the several classes into which they are
divided. Their obvious actions are apparently uniform: the stability
of human society seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformity
of the conduct of its members, both with regard to themselves,
and with regard to others. The labourer arises at a certain hour,
and applies himself to the task enjoined him. The functionaries
of government and law are regularly employed in their offices and
courts. The trader holds a train of conduct from which he never
deviates. The ministers of religion employ an accustomed language,
and maintain a decent and equable regard. The army is drawn forth,
the motions of every soldier are such as they were expected to be;
the general commands, and his words are echoed from troop to troop.
The domestic actions of men are, for the most part, undistinguishable
one from the other, at a superficial glance. The actions which
are classed under the general appellation of marriage, education,
friendship, &c., are perpetually going on, and to a superficial
glance, are similar one to the other.

But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of
this fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action
has, when considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblance
with any other. Each individual, who composes the vast multitude
which we have been contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind,
which, whilst the features of the great mass of his actions remain
uniform, impresses the minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues.
Thus, whilst his life, as a whole, is like the lives of other men,
in detail, it is most unlike; and the more subdivided the actions
become; that is, the more they enter into that class which have
a vital influence on the happiness of others and his own, so much
the more are they distinct from those of other men.

Those little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love,

as well as those deadly outrages which are inflicted by a look,
a word--or less--the very refraining from some faint and most
evanescent expression of countenance; these flow from a profounder
source than the series of our habitual conduct, which, it has
been already said, derives its origin from without. These are the
actions, and such as these, which make human life what it is, and
are the fountains of all the good and evil with which its entire
surface is so widely and impartially overspread; and though they are
called minute, they are called so in compliance with the blindness
of those who cannot estimate their importance. It is in the due
appreciating the general effects of their peculiarities, and in
cultivating the habit of acquiring decisive knowledge respecting
the tendencies arising out of them in particular cases, that the
most important part of moral science consists. The deepest abyss
of these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary that we
should visit.

This is the difference between social and individual man. Not that
this distinction is to be considered definite, or characteristic
of one human being as compared with another; it denotes rather two
classes of agency, common in a degree to every human being. None
is exempt, indeed, from that species of influence which affects, as
it were, the surface of his being, and gives the specific outline
to his conduct. Almost all that is ostensible submits to that
legislature created by the general representation of the past
feelings of mankind--imperfect as it is from a variety of causes,
as it exists in the government, the religion, and domestic habits.
Those who do not nominally, yet actually, submit to the same power.
The external features of their conduct, indeed, can no more escape
it, than the clouds can escape from the stream of the wind; and
his opinion, which he often hopes he has dispassionately secured
from all contagion of prejudice and vulgarity, would be found, on
examination, to be the inevitable excrescence of the very usages
from which he vehemently dissents. Internally all is conducted
otherwise; the efficiency, the essence, the vitality of actions,
derives its colour from what is no ways contributed to from any
external source. Like the plant which while it derives the accident
of its size and shape from the soil in which it springs, and is
cankered, or distorted, or inflated, yet retains those qualities
which essentially divide it from all others; so that hemlock
continues to be poison, and the violet does not cease to emit its
odour in whatever soil it may grow.

We consider our own nature too superficially. We look on all that
in ourselves with which we can discover a resemblance in others;
and consider those resemblances as the materials of moral knowledge.
It is in the differences that it actually consists.

{1815; publ. 1840}