the ends of Ethics, and subvert the great purpose of truth and religion. And if simplicity be a principal source and condition of excellence in the inferior, and of the beautiful in the fine arts, how much more must the perfection of these highest of all arts be dependent upon it!

1285. How wide an illustration presents itself here in the history of religious and political institutions, and in the moral practices of past times! Nevertheless, the ethical artist has to guard equally against the extreme whereby duties and difficulties are multiplied to the prevention of practice, and that by which the aim at simplicity and ease fails equally of duty and the attainment of excellence; for, according to the Attic proverb, fine works are difficult in every art: more especially so are they in moral art, to which all other arts should be subordinate.

1286. The first requisite of moral instruction and discipline, according to the doctrine we have inculcated, and with regard to practice, is to establish the indefeasible connexion of duty and interest; nor will it be enough that this be established in the abstract, but it must to the utmost be demonstrated that from every particular of rightdoing there results a reward, and that in no instance whatever is a moral wrong committed, or perpetrated, that is not succeeded by a moral reaction or punishment.

1287. These are moral maxims, which we hold

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THE ANALOGY OF THE MORAL SCIENces.

to be grounded upon an irrefragable basis; maxims which the immoral man, expose with ignorance and cunning, laying snares for his own punishment and that of others, through a gross and blind selfishness; and the virtuous man, on the other hand, by wisdom and discretion in all his acts, providing benefits for himself and others. And this doctrine squares with the best maxims of morals, and the truth of nature and experience.

1288. All of which evinces the great importance of the study of moral ends, in connexion with the neglected science of Teleology, that man may become the sufficient judge of his interest in all things, and more especially for determining on what his chief, and most permanent and true, interest depends; for it is, we repeat, the narrowness of selfishness alone that debases it.

1289. From these preliminary reflections upon the literary, practical, and prevailing systems of Ethics, and the true nature and purpose of Morals, we pass to the consideration of their theoretical and scientific relations, which respect principally the forms of Morals, Politics, and Theology; and if in this introduction we have roved beyond the just limits of our plan, we may plead the high importance of the subject, and that a well-grounded morality is pre-essential to, and the best security for, well-regulated politics and true religion.

CHAPTER I.

ETHICS.

1290. THE terms ETHICS and Morals denote, in their original acceptation, the science of human manners, or of the self-government of man; and the first of these terms has preserved its original sense, while the term moral, in its widest signification, has been opposed to the material. In the present sketch they are confined to a signification not quite so contracted as that of the former, nor so extended as the latter, which is nearly synonymous with the term intellectual.

1291. Intellect comprehends an active or practical power, or will, and a contemplative or passive power,* consciousness or conscience, which concur in the faculty of understanding, as they do also in the moral faculty, and all ethical science. Yet the will, or practical faculty, has been regarded as

• Pure mind, or intellect, has previously been regarded as an active faculty; but there is no action without reaction, no agent without a patient: these terms are, therefore, correlative and convertible.

merely ethical, or moral, notwithstanding morals have been principally employed for the subduing of this faculty; and it involves the entire sphere of art, or doing, and the whole science of ends, or Teleology.

1292. But Art divides universally into three primary genera,- the material or physical, the sensible or esthetical, and the intellectual; of which latter, the ethical or moral are principal: and as all art, act, or practice, implies design, end, or purpose, so the end or purpose of ethical art is happiness or felicity.

1293. Ethics involve, therefore, the theory and practice, the science and art of happiness, and may be regarded, in these respects, as a doctrine, or as a discipline to the first of which belong the forms and relations of Ethics, which are the subject of present inquiry, although Ethics in themselves, belonging to active intellect or will, are more particularly allied to art and practice.

1294. The science of Ethics comprehends, then, the moral relations of all intellectual beings; and as the prime relations of all science are internal, medial, and external, so do the first divisions or genera of Ethics correspond to the same relations.

1295. First, on the one extreme, in external relation, is moral science, or particular morals, which regulate the moral conduct of individuals; secondly, in medial relation, is political science, which is of general reference, and regulates the

conduct of man in community; and, thirdly, in internal relation, is religious science, or Theology, which is of universal reference to all intellectual beings, and to the fountain of pure intelligence and morality. We have accordingly divided Ethics into Morals, Politics, and Theology, agreeably to universal analogy.

1296. Although these have been properly treated of as distinct sciences, they are nevertheless dependent upon the same original principles which we have shewn to be the active or practical power of will, and the contemplative, controlling, passive power of conscience or consciousness,* between which lie the understanding and judgment as guides.

1297. These are original powers of the mind which render a man at once dependent and free; a position of apparent contradiction, and so much opposed to common apprehension and the opinions founded thereon, that it is expedient, ere we proceed in the developement of these sciences, that we should briefly attempt what some have regarded as the hopeless task of reconciling this apparent discordance, upon which has been raised one of the seemingly interminable disputes of moralists and metaphysicians.

1298. That the doctrines of the freedom and necessity of human actions, or free-will and fate,

The terms consciousness and conscience, denoting the same power, are distinguished by the first being of logical, and the latter of moral import.