CHAPTER VI.

STATE OF MORALITY.

A popular Error confuted, by tracing the origins of Morality, Religion, and Philosophy-Importance of studying Morality as a Science-Invariable Injury both to Religion and Morals, where Ecclesiastics alone have taught Morality-Advantage to Religion in the cultivation of Moral Science-The English backward in the Science, hence Faults in their Morality-Erroneous Laws-Distinction between public and private Virtue-Regard to Appearances -Anecdote of the Opera-dancer-Abstract Science necessary to practical Results-Religious Rules misapplied-Bishop, the Murderer-Public Charities-Too much Influence assigned to Fear-Want of Morality shown in Taxes—Gin-drinking-Progress of Intemperance—Singular Evidence on that Point-Too exclusive a regard for Sexual Decorum baffles itself-State of Licentiousness in this Country-All our Notions vague and vacillatingWant of Moral Science leaves the Influences to the World, hence exaggerated respect to Wealth and Station.

THERE are many persons who desire that we should never learn Morality as a separate science--they would confine it solely to theological expositions, and make ecclesiastics its only lecturers and professors-this is a common error in English opinion, it proceeds, from the best intentions-it produces very dangerous consequences both to morality and to religion

itself.

These reasoners imagine and contend that religion and morality have the same origin, that they are inseparable. Right notions on this head are very important; let us see the origin of the two; I fancy we shall find by one minute's inquiry that nothing can be more distinctly separate-we shall see the mode by which they become connected, and the inquiry will prove the vital expedience of cultivating morality as a science in itself.

When men first witness the greater or the less accustomed phenomena of Nature, they tremble, they admire, they feel the workings of a superior power, and they acknowledge a god! Behold the origin of all Religion, save that of Revelation!

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ORIGINS OF MORALITY,

4

When men herd together, when they appoint a chief or build a hut, or individualize property in a bow or a canoe, they feel the necessity of obligation and restraint—they form laws—they term it a duty to obey them.* In that duty (the result of utility), behold the origin of Morality! +

But the Deity whom they have bodied forth from their wonder and their awe, men are naturally desirous to propitiate -they seek to guess what will the most please or the most offend their unknown Divinity. They invest him with their own human attributes, carried only to a greater extent; by those attributes they judge him: naturally, therefore, they imagine that such violations of morality as interrupt the harmony of their own state must be displeasing to the Deity who presides over them. To the terror of the Law they add that of the anger of God. Hence the origin of the connexion between Religion and Morality.

These two great principles of social order were originally distinct, the result of utterly different operations of mind. Man, alone in the desert, would have equally conceived Religion; it is only when he mixes with others, that he conceives Morality.

But men anxious to please the Deity-to comprehend the laws by which He acts upon the physical and mental nature— beginning first to adore, proceed shortly to examine. Behold the origin of Philosophy!-Survey the early tribes of the world. ⚫ Philosophy is invariably the offspring of Religion. From the Theocracy of the East came the young Sciences, and Reason commenced her progress amidst the clouds and darkness gathered round the mystic creeds of Egypt, of Persia, and of Ind. But inquiring into the nature of the Creator, and the consequent duties of man, Philosophy, if the result of religion, becomes necessarily the science of morals. Examining the

* If we adopt the metaphysics of certain schools, we may suppose the origin both of religion and of morality to be in inherent principles of the mind; but even so, it might be easily shown that they are the result either of different principles or of utterly distinct operations of the same principle.

† Thus, the origin of law and morals is simultaneous, but not exactly similar. The necessity of framing a law originates law, the utility of obeying law originates morality.

A flash of lightning may strike upon the mind the sense of a Superior Being; but man must be in fear of man before he learns the utility of moral

restraint.

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY.

188

first, it elucidated the last; and as human wisdom is more felicitous in its dealings with the Known and Seen that with the Unexperienced and the Invisible, so the only redeemer of the ancient extravagance in religion has been the ancient exposition of morals. The creeds are dead the morals survive-and to this very day make the main part of our own principles, and (kneaded up with the christian code) are the imperishable heritage that we must transmit (but that we ought also to augment) to our posterity.

Thus then have I briefly shown the distinctive origin of Religion and of Morals; how Philosophy naturally born from the first, enlightens the last, and how fortunate it hath been for the world that philosophy, not confining its speculations to theology, has cultivated also morality as a science.

How, in an artificial society, is it possible to look to religion alone for our entire comprehension of all morals? Religion is founded in one age, and one country; it is transmitted, with its body of laws, to another age and country, in which vast and complicated relations have grown up with time, which those laws are no longer sufficient to embrace. As society has augmented its machinery, it is more than ever necessary to preserve Morality as the science that is to guide its innumerable wheels. Hence the necessity of not taking our moral knowledge only from the ecclesiastics; or, in pondering over truths which the religion of a different age and time transmits to us, disdain the truths which religion has necessarily omitted; for religion could not be embraced by every tribe, if it had prescribed the minutiæ necessary only to one. Consequently we find in history, that in those ages have existed the most flagrant abuses and misconceptions in Morality, wherein Religious Tuition has been the only elucidator of its code. Why refer you to the more distant periods of the world-to those of Egyptian and Indian, and Celtic and Gothic, priesterafts-take only the earlier Papacy and the Middle Ages-Philosophy banished to the puerilities grafted upon an emasculated Aristotelism, inquiring "whether stars were animals; and, in that case, whether they were blest with an appetite, and enjoyed the luxuries of the table"-left Morality the sole appanage and monopoly of the priests. Hence, as the Priests were but human, they prostituted the science to human purposes; they made

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IMPORTANCE OF STUDYING

religious wars, and donations to the church, the great Shibboleth of Virtue; and the monopoly of Morality became the corruption of Religion.

It is right, therefore, that the science of moral philosophy should be pursued and cultivated in all its freedom and boldness, as the means, not to supplant, but to corroborate-to furnish and follow out to purify and to enlarge the sphere of religious instruction. Even such of its expounders as have militated against revealed religion, and have wandered into the Material and the Sceptical, have only tended in a twofold degree to support the life and energies of religion. For in the first place, arousing the ability, and stimulating the learning of the Church, they have called forth that great army of its defenders which constitute its pride; and without its maligners, and its foes, we should not have been enabled, at this day, to boast of the high names which are its ornaments and its bulwark. In the second place, the vigilance of philosophy operates as a guardian over the purity of religion, and preserves it free from its two corruptions the ferocity of fanaticism, and the lethargy of superstition. So that as Rome was said to preserve its virtue by the constant energy and exercice to which it was compelled by the active power of Carthage, the vigour of religion is preserved by the free and perpetual energy of philosophical science.*

It is, sir, I think partly owing to some unconsidered prejudices in regard to this truth, some ignorant fear for religion, if morality should be elucidated as a distinct and individual science, that we see a fatal supiness in this country towards the exercise of metaphysical pursuits, that we feel an obstacle to the correction of public errors in the apathy of public opinion, and that at this moment we are so immeasurably behind either Germany or France in the progress of ethical science. Not so in that country which your birth and labours have adorned. While for more than a century we have remained cabined and confined in the unennobling materialism of Locke, Scotland

* Dr. Reid has said, with great beauty of language, "I consider the sceptical writers to be a set of men whose business it is to pick holes in the fabric of knowledge wherever it is weak and faulty, and when those places are properly repaired, the whole building becomes more firm and solid than it was formerly."

MORALITY AS A SCIENCE.

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has at least advanced some steps towards a larger and brighter principle of science; the effect of the study of philosophy has been visible in the maintenance of religion. I firmly believe that Scotland would not at this moment be so religious and reverent a community, but for the thousand invisible and latent channels which have diffused through its heart the passion for moral investigation. And the love for analytical discussion that commenced with Hutcheson has produced the dematerializing philosophy of Reid.

A

Wherever I look around on the state of morality in this country, I see the want of the cultivation of moral science. thousand of the most shallow and jejune observations, upon every point of morality that occurs, are put forth by the press, and listened to by the legislature. Laws are made, and opinions formed, and institutions recommended upon the most erroneous views of human nature, and the necessary operations of the mind. A chasm has taken place between private and public virtue; they are supposed to be separable qualities; and a man may be called a most rascally politician, with an assurance from his asperser "that he does not mean the smallest disrespect to his private character!" Propping morality merely on decorums, we suffer a low and vulgar standard of opinion to establish itself amongst us; and the levelling habits of a commercial life are wholly unrelieved and unelevated by the more spiritual and lofty notions, that a well-cultivated philosophy ever diffuses throughout a people.

I have heard an anecdote of a gentleman advertising for a governess for his daughters-an opera-dancer applied for the situation; the father demurred at the offer: "What!" cries the lady, "am I not fit for the office? Can I not teach dancing, and music, and French, and manners ?"-"Very possiblybut still—an opera-dancer-just consider!"—"Oh! if that be all," said the would-be governess, "I can change my name!" I admire the naïveté of the dancer less than her sagacity; she knew that nine times out of ten, when the English ask for virtues, they look only to the name!.

By a blind and narrow folly, we suppose in England that the abstract and the practical knowledge are at variance. Yet just consider: every new law that will not apply itself to the people,that fails,-that becomes a dead letter,-is a proof