he expects happiness or pleasure, so far more miserable as he expects misery or pain. XXII. Every being must suffer pain or uneasiness in being prevented from doing what he would will or choose to do. XXIII. Every being must suffer pain or uneasiness in being deprived of any means of enjoyment of which he is in possession, or in expectation. XXIV. Every being must find pleasure in the consciousness and contemplation of virtue, and vice versa. XXV. Every being must experience pain and uneasiness in being injured, or treated unjustly. From the axioms and definitions may be formed certain theorems or demonstrations, which are also universal truths in morals: thus It is more fit that happiness should be promoted than misery. But whatever it is fit should be, it is fit should be in a great degree, or to a great extent, rather than in a small degree, or to a small extent. Therefore it is fit that a being should be made happy in a great, rather than in a small degree; that many should be made happy rather than a few, &c. It is fit that happiness should be equally, rather than unequally divided. But whatever is fit to be in itself, is fit to be in a great degree, &c. Therefore it is fit that happiness should be more, rather than less, equally divided. But, by definition, happiness is more equally divided, when each of a number has an equal share, than when each has only an equal chance. Therefore it is more fit that happiness should be divided in equal shares to each, than only by equal chances. These are offered merely as instances of strict demonstration occurring in morals; * and to shew that certain propositions which might otherwise be thought first principles, are really not such, but deductions from principles. As demonstrations, they must, - for reasons already assigned, 一 appear trifling. For the proper use and application of the axioms now stated, two remarks require to be offered ; both of which, as relating to a very abstract subject, can scarcely be expressed but in technical terms; but will yet admit of plain enough illustration. First. What is, in every axiom, predicated of a certain subject, being involved in the conception we form of that subject, must be a necessary truth, and therefore general, and holding good under every circumstance. It only holds good however in relation to that subject, and so far only as that subject is concerned; and not in regard to any * See also note in page 217. other subject with which that one may be mixed or connected. For instance; we say, it is fit that happiness should be promoted rather than misery: but again, that a guilty agent should be in a worse state than otherwise, on account of his guilt: that is, taking the notion of happiness, and of a living being in the abstract, and without regard to any other consideration, it is, so far, or in this single respect, - whatever it may be in others, -fit that he should enjoy happiness rather than suffer misery. To another consideration, namely, that of his guilt, another predicate applies; and in any case of this sort, the first axiom must fail in its application, not because it does not still remain equally true, and so far applicable, but because another is as true, and more applicable. The effect of the remark now made is just to this purpose, that we must understand every axiom as having some such qualification as one of these attached to it - " so far, and excluding all other circumstances but what are stated," - "abstractedly from all other considerations," "all other things being alike." Secondly. The subject of a predicate may be what we have not been able to acquire a notion of, until this very predicate has itself been made the subject of another predicate; nor does this involve circular reasoning. It is fit that an agent who wills to perform his duty, should be rewarded. Here, a proposition, asserting some thing to be fit, supposes the notion of obligation or duty: but the notion of obligation itself supposes the previous one of fitness. The matter proceeds in this course :-The promotion of happiness is fit. What is thus fit in itself, is obligatory on a moral agent. If one moral agent wills to do what is thus fit, another wills to do the contrary, it is fit, again, that the first should be rewarded, the second punished. Other illustrations of this sort of sequence will be found in the course of this work: but all proceeding from a perception that something is fit, originally, of itself, and on its own ac count. It has now been found that the general affirmation made regarding any action, that it is good, or the contrary, may contain, or stand for a variety of propositions; some of which are propositions, or truths, in the strict meaning - asserting something; others, only definitions - naming something. In an inquiry into the mode in which such propositions or truths are discovered, I have ascribed such discovery to the faculty of reason; and, finally, have attempted an enumeration of these truths, as not only containing the first principles of moral science, but as thence forming the source of all our other moral notions, the names of which I have also attempted to define. It will now fall to be inquired, how far these principles and definitions are just, and answer the purpose they are intended to serve: namely, to explain in general what actions are good or bad, in all the senses in which this may be affirmed. The inquiry will fall to be conducted both according to an analytic and a synthetic method: that is, it will be attempted to be shewn, that to whatever actions or agents the common judgments or feelings of mankind apply any moral quality or distinction, such quality or distinction is reducible, in the mode of its application, to some or other of the attributes above specified, under the names of fitness, obligation, virtue or depravity, merit or guilt; and that the degree in which any action or character is conceived to possess any of these attributes, will correspond with the principles and definitions above stated : and also, on the other hand, that, from these principles and definitions, again, may be deduced, by direct reasoning, the ordinary doctrines of practical morality, and the rules according to which virtue and vice, merit and guilt, are estimated. Between these two modes of illustration, however, it is not proposed to maintain a regular separation ; but to employ both promiscuously, as occasion may suggest. |