or,what is still more probable,he knew not that the subject had been so much as touched upon by that penetrating and acute metaphysician,whose works lie so much out of the beaten track of Academic reading.But here,as it happens,there is no matter for such fears.Those men,who are most alarmed at the dangers of a free enquiry;those who are most intimately convinced that the surest way to truth is by hearing nothing but on one side,will,I dare answer almost,find nothing of that which they deem poison in this third volume.I would not wish to send the Reader to any other than this,which,if I recollect aright,stands clear of the objections that have of late been urged,with so much vehemence,against the work in general.[By Dr BEATTIE,in his Essay on the Immutability of Truth.]
As to the two first,the Author himself,I am inclined to think,is not ill disposed,at present,to join with those who are of opinion,that they nsight,without any great loss to the science of Human Nature,be dispensed with.The like might be said,perhaps,of a considerable part,even of this.But,after all retrenchments,there will still remain enough to have laid mankind under indelible obligations.That the foundations of all virtue are laid in utility,is there demonstrated,after a few exceptions made,with the strongest force of evidence:but I see not,any more than Helvetius saw,what need there was for the exceptions.
2.For my own part,I well remember,no sooner had I read that part of the work which touches on this subject,than I felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes,I then,for the first time,learnt to call the cause of the people the cause of Virtue.
Perhaps a short sketch of the wanderings of a raw but well-intentioned mind,in its researches after moral truth,may,on this occasion,be not unuseful:for the history of one mind is the history of many.The writings of the honest,but prejudiced,Earl of Clarendon to whose integrity nothing was wanting,and to whose wisdom little,but the fortune of living something later;and the contagion of a monkish atmosphere;these,and other concurrent causes,had listed my infant affections on the side of despotism.The Genius of the place I dwelt in,the authority of the state,the voice of the Church in her solemn offices;all these taught me to call Charles a Martyr,and his opponents rebels.I saw innovation,where indeed innovation,but a glorious innovation,was,in their efforts to withstand him.I saw falsehood,where indeed falsehood was,in their disavowals of innovation.I saw selfishness,and an obedience to the call of passion,in the efforts of the oppressed to rescue themselves from oppression.I saw strong countenance lent in the sacred writings to monarchic government:and none to any other.I saw passive obedience deep stamped with the seal of the Christian Virtues of humility and self-denial.
Conversing with Lawyers,I found them full of the virtues of their Original Contract,as a recipe of sovereign efficacy for reconciling the accidental necessity of resistance with the general duty of submission.This drug of theirs they administered to me to calm my scruples.But my unpractised stomach revolted against their opiate.I bid them open to me that page of history in which the solemnization of this important contract was recorded.
They shrunk from this challenge;nor could they,when thus pressed,do otherwise than our Author has done,confess the whole to be a fiction.
This,methought,looked ill.It seemed tome the acknowledgment of a bad cause,the bringing a fiction to support it.`To prove fiction,indeed,'said I,`there is need of fiction;but it is the characteristic of truth to need no proof but truth.Have you then really any such privilege as that of coining facts?You are spending argument to no purpose.Indulge yourselves in the licence of supposing that to be true which is not,and as well may you suppose that proposition itself to be true,which you wish to prove,as that other whereby you hope to prove it.'Thus continued Iunsatisfying,and unsatisfied,till I learnt to see that utility was the test and measure of all virtue;of loyalty as much as any;and that the obligation to minister to general happiness,was an obligation paramount to and inclusive of every other.Having thus got the instruction I stood in need of,I sat down to make my profit of it.I bid adieu to the original contract:and I left it to those to amuse themselves with this rattle,who could think they needed it.
53.A compact or contract (for the two words on this occasion,at least,are used in the same sense)may,I think,be defined,a pair of promises,by two persons reciprocally given,the one promise in consideration of the other.
54.The importance which the observance of promises is of to the happiness of society,is placed in a very striking and satisfactory point of view,in a little apologue of Montesquieu,entitled,The History of the Troglocytes.[See the Collection of his Works.]The Troglodytes are a people who pay no regard to promises.By the natural consequences of this disposition,they fall from one scene of misery into another;and are at last exterminated.The same Philosopher,in his Spirit ofLaws,copying and refining upon the current jargon,feigns a LAW for this and other purposes,after defining a LAW to be a relation.How much more instructive on this head is the fable of the Troglodytes than the pseudo-metaphysical sophistry of the Esprit des Loix!
55.To this denomination,has of late been added,or substituted,the greatest happiness or greatest felicity principle:
