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and useful maxim-sacrifice true dignity and manly virtue at the idolatrous shrine of courtliness; and even the disinterested virtue inculcated by the sentimental Rousseau, excluding himself from the sphere of his own benevolence, wrought in his mind misanthropy and discontent: separated, as all these have been, from a purely intellectual morality.

1200. But if, after all, ethical systems should be deemed to have little immediate influence either on individuals or the bulk of mankind, it must be acknowledged that virtues are habits more immediately dependent on education or discipline than on doctrines-that the vicious seek not, but reject moral instruction and that the virtues and vices of men in general, like their style and language, are those of the time and country they live in, to which few rise much superior, and few sink very far beneath.

1201. Moralists and divines may reclaim a few ill-disposed, or improve and confirm some welldisposed, but the multitude of mankind is modelled by the laws and customs of society, aided by the force of fashion, imitation, association, and the influence of rank and example: in a word, its morals are of the class we call institutional and arbitrary.

1202. Hence the necessity of political institution to supply the absence of self-direction and control in the individual and multitude, and hence the connexion of particular morals with political

science; rulers and politicians, leaders of fashion, and, above all, mothers, heads of families, and heads of states, are therefore chiefly responsible for the moral practices of mankind. To these, therefore, the framers and regulators of the customs, education, laws, habits, and fashions of society, and the dispensers, under Divinity, of the happiness or misery of their species, belongs the chief importance of a right system: for knowledge must ever precede rule and action with those who act not blindly, but with intelligence.

1203. If Political science, which connects men in community, be thus intimately allied to the morals of individuals, how much more intimately are these connected with religion, which embraces all intelligence in one family under the parentage of Divinity! the sole sufficient guarantee of the morality of states and individuals.

1204. As every complete system comprehends principles, means, and purpose essentially, the system which is built upon either of these exclusively must be defective; yet some philosophic moralists place all ethical virtue on natural good principle, and vindicate their system and practice by the merit of their maxim: other religious moralists place it on the known righteousness of their means, and justify their actions by their lawfulness; and, lastly, there are those who moralize according to art, craftily, and place all virtue on purpose, or right aim or intention, and defend their

principles and means by the expediency of their design or purpose.

1205. The first of these enjoins us to act according to principle, mechanically; the second, according to right means, knowingly; and the last, according to expedience or good intention, artfully so long, however, as principles, means, and purpose are correlative and coincident, will these moral dogmatists oppose each other with all the forces of scepticism; each, right in his own point of view, impugning with seeming cogency the dogmas of the others.

1206. Hence the philosophist condemns means and purpose as insufficient motives to reason, and demands a principle as a rule of action; but principles, however plausible and good, are general, and actions are particular: principles, also, when imperfect, as assumed principles are apt to be, will propagate their defects, and conduct us in error.

1207. The religionist, with less danger, condemns these human principles; and, regardful of the means, commands us not to do evil by any means that good may come of it in the end, which is future, hidden, and contingent.

1208. Lastly, the politician and statist asserts, with equal plausibility, that principles and means are invalid and nugatory independent of their end -that lawful means do not justify evil purposeand that it is the end which should govern themeans; a maxim which is, when arbitrarily em

ployed, as infamous in morals as it is admirable in material science and art.

1209. Nevertheless, in the promulgating of Ethics, as in the communicating of all other knowledge, they are to be regarded variously as disciplines, doctrines or sciences, and as arts.

1210. In youth and in the early state of society, ere the understanding, individual and social, is qualified for the intricate correlations of doctrine, and when habits and customs are to be established, morals are to be regarded and communicated in the way of discipline. Principles and duties are to be then inculcated by the parent and the patriot, lawgivers and instructors; and then it is that virtue is to be practised for its own sake: for the habit of virtue is then the end of action.

1211. As man, individually and socially, approaches manhood, and the moral and intellectual faculties become developed, the media and relations, doctrine and system of morality, are objects of principal regard; Ethics are then to be treated as a science, as they were previously as a discipline, that habit may expand itself rightly, or under the proper regulation of reason and intelligence.

1212. And in the mature state of manhood and society, morals are to be regarded entirely for practice as art, and more immediately for their ends; not for the sole sake of virtue, but for happiness, which is its purpose.

1213. Yet not all this, nor either of these, but

in subordination, for virtue, reward, and their means, are never to be wholly separated; but when morals are to be regarded as discipline, virtue is to be held as principal, when regarded as science, their means and relations are the chief object,— and, when regarded as art, their end and reward are supreme; and in each case the correlative objects are to be held subordinate to their principal.

1214. In regarding Ethics under these three distinctions, the latter become respectively principal; and, viewing Ethics as a whole, it must be inferred that the end is of most importance, and that happiness is the principal object and purpose of Ethics; and since arts and institutions are equally for ends, inasmuch as morals are practical, they are also institutional and technical, and chiefly, therefore, for an end.

1215. We conclude, nevertheless, that there can be no perfect system of Ethics in which the rules of moral action, or virtue, present not a suitable accordance of principles, means, and purpose, wherein duty and interest concur in harmony with nature and right institution: a conclusion applicable to individuals and communities, and warranted throughout all moral history.

1216. If, accordingly, moralists, legislators, and divines have hitherto found their precepts inadequate to the control of the vicious, it becomes the more necessary, in these times of advancement,

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