philanthropy, overlay duty, and are indecorous and injurious to friends, the community, and the species: but, above all, the love and idolatry of false and imaginary gods, accompanied by immoral rites and sacrifices, are offences to decorum, and the extremest violations of decency.

1355. To this virtue belongs especially the affection of gratitude, and whatever is graceful in morals and manners: such as generosity or gratuitous favour, and graciousness or polished benevolence. Hence the antient Greeks erected temples to the Graces in every city, that they might be honoured by acts of gratitude and grace; hence the decorum of apostrophizing heaven with gratitude at our meals is aptly called a grace; and hence the ordinances of mercy with which sovereigns honour, or morally and gratefully decorate happy occasions, are called acts of grace. Related to this virtue is also the Christian grace of humility spoken of by the apostle, so gracefully expressed by Christ himself, " Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly of heart;" and such, finally, is Almighty benevolence, called the grace of God. In all of which becomingness and decorum are implied, and they spring from the same root and analogy. In like manner we might instance of all the passions as subject to the rules of decorum.

1356. Aristotle availed himself of the reciprocal

* Romans, xii. 3.

convertibility of the moral forms, to which we have alluded, in constructing his own highly plausible and edifying system of Ethics, by reducing all virtue to temperance, or the observance of the mean in moral actions, which had been obscurely indicated by the golden mean of Pythagoras; and the keeping of this mean in view is the best guide to decorum and politeness, at the same time that it is one of the best general rules for moral conduct, more especially in youth.

;

1357. Aristotle exhibited, therefore, great judgment, through this convertibility of the moral genera, in his "Nichomachian Ethics," which were addressed to his son, by treating all the virtues as species of temperance, or the observance of the mean, which is, according to our view, decorum ; for youth in particular, and mankind in general, are prone to extremes in thought, passion, and action: and his design was synthetical, disciplinal, and adapted to particulars and practice, as the analytical or doctrinal method is to theory, science, and universals.

1358. Decorum is, indeed, strictly the morals of the mean, no less than it is the mean in morals: it is also the morals of good taste and polished manners, well suited to a polite and attic people like the antient Greeks and modern French; as the stoical system, which reduced all virtue to fortitude, was to military nations, like the Roman

and American-Indian; or prudence and economy to a calculating, commercial, and laborious people, like the Dutch; and as a greater range of moral system, in which equity or justice predominates, is characteristic of a more general, free, and philosophic people like the English; or, finally, as a variously mixed morality is of a more mixed people, such as the Anglo-American. Not, indeed, that any virtue is peculiar to any soil, but prevalent only by predominance; and, as to the vices, they become popular, in a similar manner, by inversion.

1359. This predominance of the virtues which distinguishes national characters, qualities, and destinies, is yet more remarkable in individual man, and prevails throughout his nature, determining and determined by even his form and structure. The Physiognomist discovers these moral characteristics and fortunes in the face of man, and some have found them in the hand. Palmistry has had its day, and so has Physiognomy. The Phrenologist points them out upon the skull— the Artist observes them in all the forms of the body-the Anatomist detects them in the various vital systems, and throughout his whole organization the Physician prescribes from structure, habit, and symptoms. But the Man of fine sense and observation views them in his gestures and demeanour, while the Intellectual Moralist finds them in his acts, sentiments, and judgments; and

all these with more or less evidence and truth. The whole subject abounds with interest, and the field of its analogies is endless.

SECTION IV.

1360. The third and last department, in this distribution of morals, is the SCIENCE OF EQUITY, or equality of right and duty, which goes to the principle of all moral responsibility, according to which the rational mind is bound to adjudicate a moral equivalent for whatever is received to do as it would others should do-to render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and unto God the things that are God's: thus extending equity to the whole of Ethics, moral, political, and religious.

1361. With reference, however, to Morals in particular, EQUITY requires, on the one extreme, that we should not deprive others of their external goods, wealth, power, or possessions, by selfish and injurious means- that, in the mean, we should not offend wantonly, or for self-gratification, the feelings and sensible enjoyments of others-and that, on the other extreme, we should not be subject to illiberal, prejudicial, unequitable control, the internal free-will and conscience of others, by enforcing partial laws and opinions of our own.

1362. Thus it appears how equity pervades the whole system of Morals, and why they have been commonly regarded as a doctrine of equity only,

VOL. II.

T

and more vulgarly and degenerately as the rules of mere polity and custom in the adjudication of external possessions.

1363. As economy is related to power, and decorum to inclination, so is equity related to reason or intelligence; for, without such relations, they have no objects whereby they can be realized. 1364. As the external is subordinate to the medial, so is power subordinate to inclination; and as the medial and external are subordinate to the internal, so are both power and inclination subordinate to reason and will.

1365. When man acts by the determinative of power, he acts tyrannically; when he acts by the determinative of inclination, he acts mercenarily ; and when he acts by the determinative of reason and will, he acts freely. Thus, through uncontrolled power, he becomes a tyrant; through indulgence of inclination, a slave; but through reason and will only is he free.

1366. The purpose of the external is the beautiful and useful, and to these ends.

power and economy operate; the purpose of the medial is pleasure or the agreeable, and to this end inclination and decorum operate; and the purpose of the internal is happiness and the good, and to these ends reason and equity operate.

1367. It has It has happened, accordingly, that Morals have been variously interpreted as

science of beauty, a science of pleasure, and a