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Page 14
My neighbour, presuming on his strength, may direct me to perform
or to refrain from a particular action; indicating a certain arbitrary
penalty in the event of disobedience within power to inflict.
My action, if modified by his menaces, can no degree participate
in virtue. He has afforded me no criterion as to what is right or
wrong. A king, or an assembly of men, may publish a proclamation
affixing any penalty to any particular action, but that is not
immoral because such penalty is affixed. Nothing is more evident
than that the epithet of virtue is inapplicable to the refraining
from that action on account of the evil arbitrarily attached to it.
If the action is in itself beneficial, virtue would rather consist
in not refraining from it, but in firmly defying the personal
consequences attached to its performance.
Some usurper of supernatural energy might subdue the whole globe
to his power; he might possess new and unheard-of resources for
enduing his punishments with the most terrible attributes or pain.
The torments of his victims might be intense in their degree,
and protracted to an infinite duration. Still the 'will of the
lawgiver' would afford no surer criterion as to what actions were
right or wrong. It would only increase the possible virtue of those
who refuse to become the instruments of his tyranny.
II--MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFERENCE, NOT THE
RESEMBLANCE, OF PERSONS
The internal influence, derived from the constitution of the mind
from which they flow, produces that peculiar modification of actions,
which makes them intrinsically good or evil.
To attain an apprehension of the importance of this distinction,
let us visit, in imagination, the proceedings of some metropolis.
Consider the multitude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey,
in thought, the actions of the several classes into which they are
divided. Their obvious actions are apparently uniform: the stability
of human society seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformity
of the conduct of its members, both with regard to themselves,
and with regard to others. The labourer arises at a certain hour,
and applies himself to the task enjoined him. The functionaries
of government and law are regularly employed in their offices and
courts. The trader holds a train of conduct from which he never
deviates. The ministers of religion employ an accustomed language,
and maintain a decent and equable regard. The army is drawn forth,
the motions of every soldier are such as they were expected to be;
the general commands, and his words are echoed from troop to troop.
The domestic actions of men are, for the most part, undistinguishable
one from the other, at a superficial glance. The actions which
are classed under the general appellation of marriage, education,
friendship, &c., are perpetually going on, and to a superficial
glance, are similar one to the other.
But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped of
this fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one action
has, when considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblance
with any other. Each individual, who composes the vast multitude
which we have been contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind,
which, whilst the features of the great mass of his actions remain
uniform, impresses the minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues.
Thus, whilst his life, as a whole, is like the lives of other men,
in detail, it is most unlike; and the more subdivided the actions
become; that is, the more they enter into that class which have
a vital influence on the happiness of others and his own, so much
the more are they distinct from those of other men.
Those little, nameless, unremembered acts
Of kindness and of love,
as well as those deadly outrages which are inflicted by a look,
a word--or less--the very refraining from some faint and most
evanescent expression of countenance; these flow from a profounder
source than the series of our habitual conduct, which, it has
been already said, derives its origin from without. These are the
actions, and such as these, which make human life what it is, and
are the fountains of all the good and evil with which its entire
surface is so widely and impartially overspread; and though they are
called minute, they are called so in compliance with the blindness
of those who cannot estimate their importance. It is in the due
appreciating the general effects of their peculiarities, and in
cultivating the habit of acquiring decisive knowledge respecting
the tendencies arising out of them in particular cases, that the
most important part of moral science consists. The deepest abyss
of these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary that we
should visit.
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