the validity of this or any other hypothesis as to the faculty by which they are discovered. Even if approbation and disapprobation are mere feelings - yet if these axioms are the most general expressions to which those feelings can be reduced, they are entitled to be considered as first principles of morals. All the difference is, that one person would say - reason perceives that happiness ought, misery ought not to be promoted ; another the promotion of happiness is viewed with a pleasing, of misery with a painful emotion. In the inquiries then that are now to be followed, we meet on common ground. By whatever faculty we distinguish right and wrong, there is still a question what that faculty perceives to be right, and what it perceives to be wrong. Upon this question, and upon what others may rise out of it, we who maintain, and you who deny the instrumentality of reason in our moral determinations, may, indifferently, either split or agree, without any regard to what may be our respective opinions upon that head.

207

CHAP. II.

OF THE MORAL FITNESS OF CERTAIN ENDS OR EFFECTS.

LITTLE requires to be said upon this subject, as the axioms relating to fitness convey all that can well be stated, and illustrations without number will at once suggest themselves.

It will perhaps occur that if it is morally fit that there should be happiness rather than misery, much rather than little happiness, that many should be happy rather than few, then, as no number of happy beings, no degree of happiness, can be imagined, but what would admit of increase, it would become morally fit that there should be an infinite number of beings infinitely happy-which is absurd. Now of these two propositions-on the one hand, that the number of living beings and the degree of their happiness must each have finite bounds; on the other, that their number and the degree of their happiness ought always to be great rather than small of these two propositions, all that we can say is, that we can see where they would cross one another,

but we cannot give up either. And I apprehend it cannot be so properly said that they contradict or falsify, as that, at some point, they necessarily touch and bound one another.

It is a question that has always presented itself to the philosophical inquirer, how infinite power, guided by infinite wisdom, and prompted by infinite benevolence, could have suffered the existence of that host of moral and physical evils that afflict our earthly condition.

The question is not more natural to be asked, than difficult to be answered. Yet it would seem, if I mistake not, that the difficulty or even impossibility of solving this problem has induced few or none to suppose a limitation of the divine attributes. There seems, so to speak, to be an answer to the difficulty lying somewhere in the recesses of the human breast, though we cannot drag it into light. We cannot persuade ourselves that there is either a want of power, a want of wisdom, or a want of goodness, in the Being who formed us, and the universe in which we dwell. But in whatever way we may strive to approximate the solution - whether we try to satisfy ourselves with the reflection that in whatever position of comfort and happiness the living creation might have been placed, a greater extension, a greater degree of comfort and happiness would still have been possible ad infinitum, so that the same difficulty, why were not things better ordered, must have existed under any cir

cumstances ;- whether we suppose that there are bounds to possibility undiscoverable by us, which (as the supposition would involve a contradiction) even omnipotence itself cannot pass;-or whether we suppose that the Deity has voluntarily and purposely confined himself within a limited circle of means, a definite range of possibilities, in order to manifest his power and wisdom to his creatures ; (for how, it might be asked, could wisdom appear in contriving means, where the end was to be attained without means? how could power be shewn where no opposing tendencies or obstacles were permitted to exist ?) - or whether we suppose that, as regards the case of a created being, an experience of evil is necessary for an otherwise unattainable relish for future good; that happiness which is not increasing, ceases to be happiness; or that victory over trials and difficulties, in the exercise of free agency, is necessary to the perfection of a species of moral excellence, and felicity springing from it, not otherwise to be acquired; or that the perfect justice of the Deity cannot dispense happiness to those who have not deserved it by patience, fortitude, diligence, superiority to temptations, (all supposing the existence of evil,) -whatever of these solutions we adopt, whether we adopt them all, or a part of them, or adopt others, we shall never adopt the supposition that it could have seemed to the Deity morally right to inflict pain simply for the sake of doing

so: more easily than we could suppose this, indeed, we could suppose the Deity but imperfectly bent on doing what was morally fit, imperfectly able to contrive, or imperfectly able to fulfil. The existence of the question, then, why was pain or evil permitted, fortifies the truth of the proposition, that happiness is essentially fit, misery unfit; the difficulty or impossibility of answering the question does not affect the truth of that proposition. We can perhaps suppose that happiness might be so excessive as to become uneasiness; we unavoidably perceive that the degree and extent of happiness must be finite; but this can never cease to appear morally fit, that happiness should be, rather than misery; happiness great, rather than small in degree; happiness widely, rather than narrowly distributed. This much at least is certain and indisputable, that whatever might be the divine purpose in permitting or occasioning the existence of evil, there is no principle in our intellectual or moral constitution that teaches us, in any case, that evil as evil, and for the sake of its being evil, ought by us to be permitted or occasioned - no principle which, if it teaches any thing, does not teach the contrary. So far as our reason or our conscience informs us, so far as we can penetrate into the intentions of God and nature, so far as the will of God has been explicitly revealed to us, there is, in every case, a moral fitness in the promotion of happiness, as such, -in the preven