not the disapprobation of other men always distinguishable from disapprobation of ourselves? Is not sympathy a part of our nature, and do we not desire to be approved by others when we are approved by ourselves? In what manner I ask then, does the feeling of remorse deceive us? Surely it does not make us impute to ourselves actions which we never performed. It does not make us confound actions, generally supposed to be right, with actions generally supposed to be wrong. It even compels us to separate them whensoever it exists. It does not obstruct or enfeeble our self-approbation when we do right. It puts forth its own energies then, and then only, when we conceive ourselves to have done wrong. Independently of the judgment which other men may pass upon us, it is always accompanied with inward self-abasement; and so far, it is intelligibly and uniformly the reverse of the feeling which we have, when we approve of ourselves. It implies sorrow, that we have acted thus and thus. It is generally attended by a near or a remote wish, that we had not so acted. To sorrow may be added fear, the fear, I mean, that the crime, now known only to ourselves, may by some chance be known to some other men: and when discovered, may expose us to their contempt or their displeasure. Is that contempt or that displeasure a fallacious feeling, when it is excited, as, in point of fact, it is alone excited, by objects which imply liberty in the agent ? Do the phenomena at all justify us in supposing for a moment, that we should despise or hate any of our fellow-creatures, if we believe them

to act under an over-ruling and invincible necessity? If then the feelings of the observer be not fallacious, why should fallacy be imputed to the feeling of the agent? Such then is our condition as social beings, observing and observed; and in consequence of mutual observation, commended or blamed.

Some of the advocates for necessity allow our responsibility to God; and the consciousness of this responsibility points our fears to another object. We know that our actions are perceived by our moral Governor, and we are apprehensive of punishment from him sooner or later, in proportion to our guilt. Is the feeling, then, of remorse fallacious, and are we safe from punishment when we do not experience it? Shall it be called an useless feeling? Let us look to the fact in ourselves and in other men. Is the joy we feel in doing good no incentive to doing good again? Has the grief we feel for doing wrong no efficacy to restrain us from doing wrong again? And does not that grief, enter, as one ingredient into the complex feeling which we call remorse? It is an obvious, and it is an unalterable law of the human mind to seek for agreeable feelings, and to shrink from disagreeable. Remorse is one disagreeable feeling, and we are conscious, that in order to escape it, we must be on our guard against the actions which are the causes of it. In the eagerness of ingenious and ardent disputants to display the consequences of their own. tenets, it has been rashly and erroneously said, that remorse is a feeling even pernicious. How can this

assertion be reconciled to experience? How can the painful feeling stimulate us to the action, which should subject us to it again and again, in direct opposition to those instincts, which upon all other occasions give the remembrance of pain a tendency to make us employ some effort for avoiding it? But further, we feel, and cannot but feel remorse, when the opportunity for better conduct has passed away. This very consideration increases and sharpens the remorse. The criminal who is doomed to expiate his offences by death, feels not only anguish for those offences, but an exacerbation of anguish, because the hour of amendment is gone by. If, indeed, he were innocent of the crime imputed to him, he might suffer sorrow and dread punishment; but his sorrow and his dread would, in some measure, be alleviated by the absence of remorse, as it implies self-condemnation-a feeling distinct from sorrow and fear, but almost universally conjoined with them.

Such is the imperfection of our nature, that remorse is necessary both to the good and to the bad. It is felt, and it must be felt by both of them. Neither of them is secretly ashamed of the feeling. Few of them can review their own lives without a firm conviction that, if they had not been stung with remorse, they would oftener have left undone what they ought to do, and would oftener have done what they ought not to do. Of such a feeling then, why are we to be told, that it is useless, and sometimes even pernicious? For my part, I know not any feeling the reality of which can be less doubted by that common sense, to which we may

safely all appeal from paradoxical assumption and ingenious sophistry; and by which, in despite of both, we practically approve and disapprove of ourselves and other men.

With great convenience to us in the prosecution of sound philosophy, some great writers have introduced the word, self-complacency as unmixed with inordinate self-love, and unbecoming self-conceit. Do the Necessarians, who speak contemptuously of selfcondemnation, intend to go further, and to maintain, that the opposite feeling of self-complacency is fallacious, useless, or pernicious? Is this the language, or is this the sentiment of mankind, when we assist a friend, forgive an enemy, relieve the indigent, console the afflicted, resist strong temptations to gratify avarice or ambition, rescue at the hazard of our lives the ship-wrecked sailor from destruction, and cheer the drooping spirits of the widow and the orphan? I am aware, that the advocates of necessity are not unprovided with a term which, according to their system, sufficiently discriminates the man called virtuous from the man called vicious. They cannot consistently allow the virtuous man to be meritorious, but they speak of him as fortunate. Now, in the common course of human affairs, we rejoice with the fortunate who do rejoice, and we mourn with the unfortunate who mourn; but our joy and our mourning are very different from our approbation and our disapprobation of voluntary deeds. When a criminal is going to execution, the tender and amiable compassion of mankind leads them to say he is unfortunate; but our indignation 2 D

VOL. V.

would rise up against the authority of laws, if there were not a concomitant, though latent, conviction, that his sufferings, which we, under particular circumstances, call misfortunes, were in reality the effects of misdeeds, which he ought to have avoided and did not. If in his dying moments he is observed to feel remorse, we are inclined to applaud as well as pity him; but if he be obdurate, pity gives way to unabated abhorrence.

Let us turn to the case of the virtuous man. On the performance of actions, which require great selfdenial and great self-command, is he content to say of himself that he is only fortunate? Is he not sensible, that with the power, he had also the inclination to act meritoriously? He does not feel that he was forced so to act. He does feel that he intended so to act. His fellow-creatures see no traces of force. They do see many proofs of good intention; and is it then credible, that there should always be a fallacy in the repeated and uniform recurrence of these feelings, as experienced respectively by the observer and the agent?

Suppose that we were eye-witnesses to the deliverer of his country from a foreign or domestic oppressor, or to martyrs meekly laying down their lives for the sake of truth, and aspiring to a heavenly reward. If, concerning such men, we were to say only, they are fortunate, we should ascribe to chance or to some unknown cause those actions, which are visibly the result of design; and strangely must the man be deluded by philosophical pedantry, who should deliberately attempt to con