5. The superiority and right use of Human Reason.

NECESSARY agents employ all their powers conformably to the laws of nature, in promoting the same end, that is, in carrying on the physical system. So rational agents should employ all their faculties in preserving the order of the moral system, which reason discovers to be their common duty, and reason and experience to be their common interest. There are great deviations in both, with a double difference relatively to the state of mankind. The former are wholly independent, the latter in great measure dependent on man, notwithstanding the strength of his passions, and the weakness of his reason. The former are not only rare, and the latter frequent; but the consequences of the latter become much more fatal to the happiness of mankind in general, than those of the former. From hence it results very evidently that the wisdom of God, which you may call his goodness, has given man by what is in his power very ample means to make himself amends for that which is out of his power. Atheists and divines find fault with the whole. They cannot, or they will not conceive, that the seeming imperfection of the parts is necessary to the real perfection of the whole. The entire scheme of the works of God must be altered to please them. Nothing, even inconvenient to these delicate persons, must be suffered in it. They must be physically invulnerable, and morally impeccable, or the divine providence must interpose continually to shield every particular man from evils of one sort, and to check him, like the daemon of Socrates, when he is about to commit those of another...

If men come helpless into the world like other animals; if they require even longer than other animals to be nursed and educated by the tender instinct of their parents, and if

they are able much later to provide for themselves; it is because they have more to learn and more to do; it is because they are prepared for a more improved state and for greater happiness. Sense and instinct direct all animals to their several ends. Some of them profit more by experience, acquire more knowledge, and think and reason better than others both in different species and in the same. Man is at the head of these, he profits still more by experience, he acquires still more knowledge, he thinks and reasons better than all other animals; for he who is born too stupid to do so, is not a human creature: he sinks into an inferior species, though he be made after the image of man. Man is able by his intellectual superiority to foresee, and to provide more effectually against the evils that threaten him, as well as to procure to himself the necessaries, the comforts, and the pleasures of life. All his natural wants are easily supplied, and God has proportioned them to the abilities of those who remain in the lowest form of rational creatures. The Tartar under his tent, and the Savage in his hut enjoys them. Such is the general state of mankind. Of what then do we complain? His happiness exceeds that of his fellow creatures, at least as much as the dignity of his nature exceeds the dignity of theirs and is not this enough?

We ought to think that it is enough: and yet God has done more for us. He has made us happy, and he has put it into our power to make ourselves happier by a due use of our reason, which leads us to the practice of moral virtue and of all the duties of society. We are designed to be social, not solitary creatures. Mutual wants unite us: and natural benevolence and political order, on which our happiness depends, are founded in them. This is the law of our nature; and though every man is not able for different reasons to discern it, or discerning it to apply it, yet so many

are able to do this that they serve as guides to the rest. The rest submit, for the advantages they find in this submission. They learn by experience that servitude to law is real liberty, and that the regulation of pleasure is real happiness. Pleasures are the objects of self-love, happiness that of reason. Reason is so far from depriving us of the first, that happiness consists in a series of them: and as this can be neither attained nor enjoyed securely out of society, a due use of our reason makes social and self-love coincide, or even become in effect the same. The condition wherein we are born and bred, the very condition so much complained of prepares us for this coincidence, the foundation of all human happiness; and our whole nature, appetite, passion, and reason concur to promote it. As our parents loved themselves in us, so we love ourselves in our children, and in those to whom we are most nearly related by blood. Thus far instinct improves self-love. Reason improves it further. We love ourselves in our neighbours, and in our friends too, with Tully's leave; for if friendship is formed by a kind of sympathy, it is cultivated by good offices. Reason proceeds. We love ourselves in loving the political body whose members we are, and we love ourselves when we extend our benevolence to all mankind. . . .

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Human reason is given for several necessary uses, and principally to lead us to all the happiness we are made capable of attaining, by a proper application of it, which rational experience is sufficient to teach us. ...

Neither the strength of our reason, nor the too frequent use of it, but the contrary, are to be apprehended: and if the sick man's wine must be mingled with water to do him good, reason, the medicina animi, must be employed pure and unmixed. . . .

It is not reason, but perverse will, that makes us fall short

of attainable happiness. The rule is so certain, and the means so sufficient, that they who deviate from them are self-condemned at the time they do so; for he, who breaks the laws of nature, or of his country, will concur to preserve them inviolate from others. As a member of society, he acknowledges the general rule. As an individual, he endeavours to be a particular exception to it. . . .

It is true, indeed, that governments shift and change not only their administrations, but their forms. Good princes and magistrates carry on the work of God, and by making men better make them happier. When these are corrupt, the infection spreads. They corrupt the people, the people them, social love is extinguished, and passion divides those whom reason united. When the abuse is confined within certain bounds, the condition of many men may be happy, and that of all may be still tolerable: and when the abuse exceeds such degrees, and when confusion or oppression becomes intolerable, we are to consider that they who suffer deserve to suffer. Good government cannot grow excessively bad, nor liberty be turned into slavery, unless the body of a people co-operate to their own ruin. The laws, by which societies are governed regard particulars, and individuals are rewarded, or punished, by men. But the laws by which the moral as well as the physical world is governed, regard generals: and communities are rewarded or punished by God according to the nature of things in the ordinary course of his providence, and even without any extraordinary interposition. Look round the world ancient and modern, you will observe the general state of mankind to increase in happiness, or decline to misery, as virtue or vice prevails in their several societies. Thus the author of nature has been pleased to constitute the human system, and he must be mad who thinks that any of the atheistical, theological, or philo

sophical makers, and menders of worlds, could have constituted it better. The saying of Alphonsus, king of Castile, who found so many faults in the construction of the material world that he pronounced himself able to have given the supreme architect a better plan, has been heard with horror by every theist. . . .

My meditations would have been very different, more just, and more reverential towards the Supreme Being. I should have been very sure that neither lifeless matter nor the vegetative tribe have any reflex thoughts, nor any thoughts at all. I should have been convinced that the faculty of thinking is given to sensitive animals, as we call them, in a lower degree than to man. But I should not have been convinced that they have the power of exercising it in respect of present objects only. The contrary would appear to me, on some occasions, as manifest in them, or in some of them, as it appears on others, and on more, in the man who is born dumb. I should feel the superiority of my species, but I should acknowledge the community of our kind. I should rouse in my mind a grateful sense of these advantages above all others, that I am a creature capable of knowing, of adoring, and worshipping my Creator, capable of discovering his will in the law of my nature, and capable of promoting my happiness by obeying it. I should acknowledge thankfully that I am able, by the superiority of my intellectual faculties, much better than my fellow-creatures, to avoid some evils and to soften others, which are common to us and to them. I should confess that as I proved myself more rational than they by employing my reason to this purpose, so I should prove myself less rational by repining at my state here, and by complaining that there are any unavoidable evils. I should confess that neither perfect virtue, nor perfect happiness are to be found among the sons of men and