Essays on the formation and publication of opinions: and on other subjects

7^7^*-

University of California.

FROM THK LIBRARY OF

R A N C I S L I E B i: f^

rn'icsfui vi iii.^tory and Law in Columbia College, Isew York,

I

THK GIFT OK

MICHAEL REESE,

0/ Sail Francisco.
1 S 7 3 .

Hwwfpw>wimw »wiiii

— 1

A

Digitized by tine Internet Arciiive

in 2007 witii funding from

IVIicrosoft Corporation

littp://www.arcliive.org/details/essaysonformatioOObailricli

^

Just published^ by R. W, Pomeroy^

ESSAYS ON THE FORMATION AND PUBLI-
CATION OF OPINIONS, AND OTHER
SUBJECTS. 1 vol. 12mo.

ALSO,

By the same AvXhor,

ESSAYS ON THE PURSUIT OF TRUTH, ON THE
PROGRESS OF KNOWLEDGE, AND THE FUNDA-
MENTAL PRINCIPLE OF ALL EVIDENCE AND
EXPECTATION. 1 voL 12mo.

" If a man could be offered the paternity of any comparatively
modern book that he chose, he would not hazard much by decid-
ing, that next after the ' Wealth of Nations,' he would request
to be honoured with a relationship to the ' Essays on the Forma-
tion and Publication of Opinions.' It would have been a glori-
ous thing to have been the father of the mathematics of grown
gentlemen — to have saved nations from fraud, by inventing the
science of detecting the pillage of the few upon the many * * * *
but next to this, it would have been a pleasant and honourable
memory, to have written a book so totus teres atque rotundus, so
finished in its parts, and so perfect in their union, as ' Essays on
the Formation of Opinions.' Like one of the great statues of an-
tiquity, it might have been broken into fragments, and each
separated limb would have pointed to the existence of some in-
teresting whole, of which the value might be surmised from the
beauty of the specimen." Westminster Review.

Speaking of the Essays on the Pursuit of Truth, the
same Review says,

" Another book from the same author must have a powerful
claim to the attention of those who have been delighted with
the first. It is in fact but a prolongation of the other ; or relates
to subjects so closely joined, that it may bo a question whether
the two make two existences, or one." ^-

ESSAYS

ON THE

FORMATION AND PUBLICATION

OF

OPINIONS,

AND

ON OTHER SUBJECTS

I \

From the last London Edition.

PHILADELPHIA— R. W. POMEROY.

A. WALDIE, PRINTER.

183L

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION.

It has been frequently objected to metaphysical
speculations, that they subserve no useful purpose ;
and it must be allowed, that there are many inquiries
in this department of intellectual exertion, which
lead, in appearance, and even in reality, to no
practical result. This is however a defect in-
herent in every pursuit, and can be brought as no
specific objection against the philosophy of mind.
How many substances are analysed by the chemist,
which can never be rendered useful ; how many
V plants are minutely described by the naturalist,

^ which might have remained in obscurity without the

least possible detriment to the world ; and how

, many events are narrated by the historian, from

I which no beneficial inference can be drawn! It
seems to be a necessary condition of human science,
that we should learn many useless things, in order

IV PREFACE.

to become acquainted with those which are of
service ; and as it is impossible, antecedently to
experience, to know the value of our acquisitions,
the only way in which mankind can secure all the
advantages of knowledge is to prosecute their in-
quiries in every possible direction. There can be
no greater impediment to the progress of science
than a perpetual and anxious reference at every
step to palpable utility. Assured that the general
result will be beneficial, it is not wise to be too
solicitous as to the immediate value of every indi-
vidual effort. Besides, there is a certain completeness
to be attained in every science, for which we are
obliged to acquire many particulars not otherwise of
any worth. Nor is it to be forgotten, that trivial
and apparently useless acquisitions are often the
necessary preparatives to important discoveries.
The labours of the antiquary, the verbal critic, the
collater of mouldering manuscripts, the describer of
microscopic objects, (labours which may appear to
many out of all proportion to the value of the result,)
may be preparing the way for the achievements of
some splendid genius, who may combine their
minute details into a magnificent system, or evolve

I

PREFACE. V

from a multitude of particulars, collected with pain-
ful toil, some general principle destined to illuminate
the career of future ages. To no one perhaps are
the labours of his predecessors, even when they are
apparently trifling or unsuccessful, of more service
than to the metaphysician : and he who is well
acquainted with the science can scarcely fail to
perceive, that many of its inquiries are gradually
converging to important results. Unallied as they
may appear to present utility, it is not hazarding
much to assert, that the world must hereafter be
indebted to them for the extirpation of many mis-
chievous errors, and the correction of a great part
of those loose and illogical opinions by which society
is now pervaded.

The principal Essays in the following work are
attempts to throw the light of metaphysical inves-
tigation on subjects intimately connected with the
affairs and the happiness of mankind. The import-
ance of the topics discussed in the two Essays to
which the volume owes its title will be acknow-
ledged by all, and will be perceived by the attentive
inquirer, that the principles which the author has
there attempted to establish, lead to the most mo-

1*

VI PREFACE.

mentous conclusions, many of which he has con-
tented himself with leaving to the sagacity of his
readers. K any one will take the trouble of rigidly
pursuing the main principle of the first Essay to all
its consequences, he will find them of a magnitude
and importance of which he was originally perhaps
little aware.

In venturing upon these remarks, the author
would not be conceived as making any undue claims
to originality. Most of the principles, which he has
advanced, have been repeatedly asserted, and have
had an influence on mankind of which they them^
selves were probably unconscious. It often happens,
that an important principle is vaguely apprehended,
and incidentally expressed, long before it is reduced
to a definite form, or fixed by regular proof: but
while it floats in this state on the surface of men's
understandings, it is only of casual and limited
utility ; it is sometimes forgotten and sometimes
abandoned, seldom pursued to its consequences,
and frequently denied in its modifications. It is
only after it has been clearly established by an
indisputable process of reasoning, explored in its
bearings, and exhibited in all its force, that it be-

PREFACE.

Vll

comes of uniform and essential service ; it is only
then that it can be decisively appealed to both in
controversy and in practice, and that it exerts the
whole extent of its influence on private manners
and public institutions.

February, 1821.

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.

A new Edition of the following work being
called for, the author has only to state, for the
Satisfaction of his readers, that the text of the
present impression differs from that of the last in
nothing hut a few verbal alterations. The additions,
which he has deemed it expedient to make, he has
thrown into the form of an appendix of Notes
and Illustrations, in which he has attempted to
extend, support, and elucidate some of the doctrines
contained in the Essays.

April, 1826.

CONTENTS.

ESSAY I.

ON THE FORMATION OF OPINIONS.

S^ection I. On the Terms Belief, Assent, and Opinion,
II. On the Independence of Belief on the Will,
III. On the Opinions of Locke and some other
Writers on this subject, -

On the Circumstances which have led men
to regard Belief as voluntary,

On the Sources of Differences of Opinion,

The same Subject continued. Sources of
Differences of Opinion in the Feelings
and Passions of Mankind,

On Belief and Opinions, as objects of Moral
Approbation and Disapprobation, Re-
wards and Punishments,

On the Evil Consequences of the Common
Errors on this Subject - . _

Page.
13
19

25

30
37

47

57

64

ESSAY ir.

ON THE PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS.

_Section I. Introduction. - - - - - 81
II. On the Mischiefs of Error and the Advan-
tages of Truth, - - . . 85
III. Continuation of the same Subject, - - 94

Xii CONTENTS.

Page.
Section IV. On Freedom of Discussion as the Means of

attaining Truth, - - - - 101
V. On the Assumptions involved in all Restraints

on the Publication of Opinions, - 107
VI. On the Free Publication of Opinions as af-
fecting the People at large, - - 114
VII. On the ultimate Inefficacy of Restraints on
the Publication of Opinions, and their
bad Effects in disturbing the natural
Course of Improvement, - - 122

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.

Essay III. On Facts and Inferences, - - _ 131
IV. On the Influence of Reason on the Feelings, 140
V, On inattention to the Dependence of Causes
and Effects in moral conduct.

Part I. 152

Part II. 162

VI. On some of the Causes and Consequences

of Individual Character, - - 168

VIL On the Vicissitudes of Life, - - - 176
VIII. On the Variety of Intellectual Pursuits, 186

IX. On Practical and Speculative Ability, 194

X. On the Mutability of Human Feelings, - 210
Notes and Illustrations, - _ . - 217

ES SAY

ON THE

FORMATION OF OPINIONS.

ES8AY !•

ON

THE FORMATION OF OPINIONS.

SECTION I.

ON THE TERMS BELIEF, ASSENT, AND OPINION.

Every proposition presented to the mind, the
terms of which are understood, necessarily occa-
sions either belief, doubt, or disbelief. These are
states or aifections of the mind on which definition
can throw no light, but which no one can be at a
loss to understand ; resembling, in this respect, all
the other simple operations and emotions of which
we are conscious. Although we cannot define or
illustrate them, we may, nevertheless, enlarge or
limit the application of the terms by which they
are distinguished.

By some writers the term belief has been re-
stricted to the state of the understanding in relation
to propositions of a probable nature. Locke, for
instance, makes a distinction between the percep-
tion of truth in propositions which are certain, and

16 ON THE TERMS BELIEF,

the entertainment, as he expresses it, given by the
mind to those which are only probable ; styling the
former knowledge, the latter belief, assent, or opi-
nion.* This distinction, however, is not sanctioned
by the practice of the generality of metaphysicians,
who constantly employ the term belief in reference
to facts and propositions of all kinds. They speak
of the belief, not only of our own identity, of the
existence of an external world, and of the being of
a God, but of the axioms and theorems of geometry.
Nor does there appear to be any ground for the dis-
tinction when we appeal to our own consciousness.
The nature of the affection is the same, whatever
be the nature of the subject which has occasioned
it. It is a state, indeed, which admits of various
modifications ; or, in other words, the belief of
some things may be more firm and lively than of
others. This strength and liveliness, however, do
not at all depend on the logical nature of the pro-
positions entertained. We believe as firmly, that
there was a sanguinary contest between the English
and French on the field of Waterloo, as that the -

* " Probability is likeness to be true, the very notation of
the word signifying such a proposition, for which there be ar-
guments or proofs, to make it pass or be received for true.
The entertainment the mind gives this sort of propositions is
called belief, assent, or opinion, which is the admitting or re-
ceiving any proposition for true, upon arguments, or proofs,
that are found to persuade us to receive it as true, without cer-
tain knowledge that it is so." — Essaj/ on the Understandings
book iv. chapter 15.

ASSENT, AND OPINION.

three angles of a triangle are equal to two right
angles, although the one would be ranked by logi-
cians annongst probable, and the other amongst cer-
tain propositions.

\^ There are two other ternns sometimes employ-
ed as synonymous with belief, viz. assent and
opinion, but all the three have their respective
shades of meaning. Assent appears to denote the
state of the understanding in relation only to propo-
sitions ; while belief has a more comprehensive
acceptation, expressing the state of the mind in re-
lation to any fact or circumstance, although that
fact or circumstance may never have occured to it

l^in the form of a proposition, or, what is the same
thing, may never have been reduced by it into
words. Every body believes in his own identity,
and in the existence of an external world, although
comparatively few have thought of these truths in
express terms. It would, therefore, be more proper
to speak of a man's belief in his identity than of his
assent to his identity ; of his belief in the existence
of matter than of his assent to it; but we might
with perfect propriety speak of his assent to the
proposition that matter exists.

IB '^'he term opinion is used by Locke, in some
passages of his Essay, as synonymous with belief
and assent, but there is a wide difference in its
general acceptation. It is seldom, if ever, used in
reference to subjects which are certain or demon-
strable. We talk of a person's opinions in religion

1^

18 ON BELIEF, ASSENTj AND OPINION.

or politics, but not in algebra or geometry, and so
far the last named philosopher and common usage
are in accordance ; but he appears to have some-
times forgotten that the term, in its ordinary sense,
denotes not the state of the mind, but the subject of
belief, the thing or the proposition believed. Thus
we say to receive, to hold, and to renounce an
opinion.

The distinctions here pointed out are not, how- i
ever, very closely observed. On the contrary, it
is surprising that words of so much importance
should be employed with so little precision. Belief
is often indiscriminately used to express a state or
affection of the understanding, a proposition be-
lieved, a doctrine, and a collection of doctrines.
In the following pages it will simply denote the
state or affection of the mind, while the term opi-
nion will be employed (in reference to propositions
of a probable nature) to designate that which is be-
lieved.

It may be remarked, that whatever we believe
may be thrown into the form of a proposition ; and
when we say of such a proposition that we believe
it, it is equivalent to saying that it appears to us to •
be true. The expressions are exactly synonymous,
or convertible ; for it would be a manifest contra-
diction to assert that we believed a proposition
which did not appear true to us, or that a proposi-
tion appeared true which we did not believe.

V

SECTION II.

ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF BELIEF ON THE WILL.

It has been frequently asserted, and still more
frequently assumed, that belief is, in many cases, a
voluntary act of the mind. In what cases, how-
ever, it is dependent on the will, few writers have
ventured to state in direct terms ; nor do 1 know
that the subject has ever been examined with that
closeness of attention which its importance de-
serves. If it were a point of mere speculative
curiosity, it would scarcely be worth while to rescue
it from the vagueness in which it has hitherto re-
mained ; but the fact is, that many of the actions,
as well as many of the moral judgments of mankind,
proceed on an assumption of the voluntary nature
of belief, and it therefore becomes of practical mo-
ment to ascertain how far that assumption is found-
ed in truth. Of the justness of this remark we
shall have occasion in the sequel to adduce ample
proof.

It may be observed, in the first place, that there
are a great number of facts and propositions, in re-
gard to our belief of which it is universally allowed
that the will can have no power, and motives no
efficacy. A mathematical axiom, for instance, can-

2(K ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF

not be doubted by any man who comprehends the
terms in which it is expressed, however ardent may
be his desire to disbeheve it. Threats and torments
would be in vain employed to compel a geometri-
cian to dissent from a proposition in Euchd. He
might be compelled to assert the falsity of the pro-
position, but all the powers in the universe could not
make him believe what he thus asserted. In the
same way, no hopes nor fears, no menaces nor al-
lurements, could at all affect a man's belief in a
matter of fact which happened under his own ob-
servation. The remark is also true of innumerable
facts which we have received on the testimony of
others. That there have been such men as Caesar
and Cicero, Pope and Newton, and that there are
at present such cities as Paris and Vienna, it is im-
possible to disbelieve by any effort of the will.

In those cases, therefore, where the evidence is
of such a nature as to produce universal assent, it
is acknowledged by all that the will can have no
power over our convictions. If it exercises any
control at all, we must look for it in those subjects
which admit of diversity of opinion. But the belief,
doubt, or disbelief, which a man entertains of any
proposition, which others regard with different sen-
timents, may be the same in strength and every
other respect as the belief, doubt, or disbelief which
he entertains of a proposition in regard to which
there is entire unanimity ; and if in the latter case
his opinion is involuntary, there can be no reason

I

BELIEP ON THE WILL, 21

to suppose it otherwise in the former. The mere
circumstance of others taking a different view of the
subject (of which he may be altogether unaware)
can have no tendency to render his behef more ha-
ble to be affected by motives, or, in other words, to
bring it under the control of the will.

It will, perhaps, be generally granted, that de-
cided belief, or decided disbelief, when once engen-
dered in the mind, cannot be affected by volition.
This influence is usually placed in the middle re-
gion of suspense and doubt, and it is supposed, that
when the understanding is in a state of fluctuation
between two opinions, it is in the power of the will
to determine the decision. The state of doubt,
however, will be found to be no more subject to
the will than any other state of the intellect. All
the various degrees of belief and disbelief, from
the fullest conviction to doubt, and from doubt to
absolute incredulity, correspond to the degree of
evidence, or to the nature of the considerations
present to the mind. To be in doubt is to want that
degree or kind of evidence which produces belief;
and while the evidence remains the same without ad-
dition or diminution, the mind must continue in
doubt.* The understanding, it is clear, cannot

* Belief appears to be the firmest when there are no hostile
or contrary considerations for the mind to rest upon. In pro-
portion to the number and importance of contrary considera-
tions belief is impaired, and if they are increased to a certain
extent, it fades into doubt. The latter is often a state of osciU

22 ON THE INDEPENDENCE OF

believe a proposition on precisely the same evi-
dence as that on which it previously doubted it ;
and yet to ascribe to mere volition a change from
doubt to conviction, is asserting that this may take
place ; it is affirming that a man, without the
slightest reason, may, if he please, believe to-day
what he doubted yesterday.

It may be alleged, perhaps, that it is not neces-
sary to suppose the understanding to believe a
proposition on the same evidence as that on which
it previously doubted it, since the will may have
the power of changing the character of the evi-
dence. This implies that it may be capable either
of raising additional ideas in the mind, or of de-
taching some of the ideas already there from the
rest with which they are associated, and dismissing
them from view. But it is acknowledged by our
best metaphysical writers,* that by mere volition
we cannot call up any idea, nor, therefore, any
number of ideas forming an argument ; such an
operation necessarily implying the actual presence
of the ideas before the will is exerted : it is also

lation, in which the mind passes from one class of arguments
to another, the predominant affection of the moment according
with the arguments on which the contemplation happens to
be fixed. The mind may also be said to be in doubt when it
is acquainted with neither side of a question, and has there-
fore no grounds for a determinate opinion. The one may be
called active or positive, the other passive or negative doubt.

* See Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism, and Dugald
Stewart's Philosophy of the Human Mind,

BELIEF ON THE WILL. 23

impossible for us to choose what ideas shall be
introduced into the mind by any topic on which we
bestow our attention ; and it is manifest, that when
ideas have been once joined together, we cannot
prevent them from suggesting each other according
to the regular laws of association. In the exami-
nation of any subject, therefore, certain ideas will
arise in our minds independently of the will, and
as long as we fix our attention on that subject, we
cannot avoid the consequent suggestions, nor single
out any part and forget the rest. We may, it is
true, by the help of external means, or even by an
internal effort, dismiss a subject entirely from our
thoughts ; we may get rid of it by turning our at-
tention to something else ; hut while we continue
to reflect upon it, we cannot prevent it from sug-
gesting those ideas, which, from the habits, charac-
ter, and constitution of our minds, it is calculated to
excite.

We come then to the conclusion, that since the
same considerations present to the mind must in-
variably produce the same belief, doubt, or disbe-
lief; and since volition can neither introduce any
additional considerations, nor dismiss what are
already present, the will can have no influence on
belief; or, in other words, belief, doubt, and disbe-
lief, are involuntary states of the intellect.

But the proof of the involuntary nature of belief
depends not on the justness of any metaphysical
argument. Every one may bring the question to

24 OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF

the test of experiment ; he may appeal to his own
consciousness, and try whether, in any conceivable
case, he can at pleasure change his opinion, and he
will soon become sensible of the inefficacy of the
attempt.* Take any controverted fact in history ;
let a man make himself perfectly acquainted with
the statements and authorities on both sides, and,
at the end of his investigation, he will either be-
lieve, doubt, or disbelieve the fact in question. Now
apply any possible motive to his mind. Blame him,
praise him, intimidate him by threats, or allure him
by promises, and after all your efforts, how far will
you have succeeded in changing the state of his in-
tellect in relation to the fact ? How far will you
have altered the connection which he discerns be-
tween certain premises and certain conclusions ?
To affect his belief you must affect the subject of
it, by producing new arguments or considerations.
The understanding being passive as to the impres-
sions made upon it, if you wish to change those
impressions you must change the cause which pro-
duces them. You can alter perceptions only by
altering the thing perceived. Every man's con-
sciousness will tell him, that the will can no more
modify the effect of an argument on the understand-
ing, than it can change the taste of sugar to the
palate, or the fragrance of a rose to the smell ; and
that nothing can weaken its force, as apprehended
by the intellect, but another argument opposed to it.

* Sea Note A.

SECTION III.

ON THE OPINIONS OF LOCKE AND SOME OTHER WRITERS

ON THIS SUBJECT.

The view which we have just taken, of the invo-
luntary nature of belief, coincides with that which
Locke has presented to us in the following passage,
as well as in other parts of his Essay.

" As knowledge," says he, " is no more arbitrary
than perception ; so I think assent is no more in
our power than knowledge. When the agreement
of any two ideas appears to our minds, whether
immediately or by the assistance of reason, I can no
more refuse to perceive, no more avoid knowing it,
than I can avoid seeing those objects which 1 turn
my eyes to, and look on in daylight : and what upon
full examination I find the most probable, 1 cannot
deny my assent to. But though we cannot hinder
our knowledge, where the agreement is once per-
ceived, nor our assent, where the probability mani-
festly appears upon due consideration of all the
measures of it ; yet we can hinder both knowledge
and assent, by stopping our inquiry, and not em-
ploying our faculties in the search of any truth."*

It is not to be concealed, however, that this

* £ssay on the Understanding, book iv. chapter 20.
3

26 ON THE OPINION OF LOCKE AND

powerful rcasoner frequently makes use of language
implying belief to be an affair of the will, although
there is only one case which he specifically points
out as an exception to the general remark in the
preceding extract.

" I think," says he, " we may conclude, that in
propositions, where though the proofs in view are
of most moment, yet there are sufficient grounds to
suspect that there is either fallacy in words, or cer-
tain proofs as considerable to be produced on the
contrary side ; there assent, suspense, or dissent,
are often voluntary actions."*

Here he has evidently mistaken the effect of an
argument on the understanding for an act of the
will. To have " sufficient grounds to suspect either
fallacy in words, or certain proofs as considerable
to be produced on the contrary side," is to be al-
readyjn doubt, or in the state called suspense ; and
consequently our suspense cannot be occasioned by
subsequent volition, much less can it be converted
by the will into assent or dissent.

Locke has in fact asserted, first, that the mind
may be in doubt from a consideration presented to
the understanding, and then, that in consequence of
this doubt it, may voluntarily suspend its opinion ;
or in other words, voluntarily doubt what it before
doubted involuntarily.

The case adduced is analogous to that of a sur-

* Essay on the Understanding, book iv. chapter 20.

SOME OTHERS ON THIS SURJlECT. 27

veyor, who in taking the dimensions of a piece of
timber, should be led to suspect the correctness of
the instrument which he employed. The suspicion
would be manifestly involuntary, and could be re-
moved only by a proof of its being unfounded.
That in the instance alleged by Locke, or in any
instance, assent, suspense, and dissent, are voluntary
actions, is moreover inconsistent with his former
admission, that assent must follow or be determin-
ed by the greater manifest probability. For, if
a greater apparent probability unavoidably pro-
duces assent, a smaller apparent probability op-
posed to it must produce dissent ; and two equal
probabilities poised against each other (which is
the only remaining case that can possibly occur)
must either produce uncertainty, or one of them
must produce the same effect as a greater proba-
bility, and the other the same effect as a smaller
probability. Thus two opposite and unequal effects
would be made to result from two equal causes.
And if to believe a proposition is the same thing as
for that proposition to appear to the mind more
probable than its opposite, then to say, that a man
may believe if he choose one of two equally pro-
bable propositions, and disbelieve the other, is to
say, that by an act of the will two propositions may
appear equally and unequally probable at the same
time.

In the writings of another celebrated philoso-
pher. Dr. Reid, we find the doctrine, that belief is

28 ON THE OPINION OF LOCKE AND

independent of the will, stated without any such
exception as that which has been the subject of the
preceding animadversions.

" It is not in our power," says this acute writer,
"to judge as we will. The judgment is carried
along necessarily by the evidence, real or seeming,
which appears to us at the time. But in proposi-
tions that are submitted to our judgment there is
this great difference ; some are of such a nature
that a man of ripe understanding may apprehend
them distinctly, and perfectly understand their
meaning without finding himself under any neces-
sity of believing them to be true or false, probable
or improbable. The judgment remains in suspense,
until it is inclined on one side or another by reasons
or arguments."*

That Dr. Reid did not ascribe this suspense of
the judgment to any exertion of the will is suffi-
ciently evident from the manner in which he ex-
presses himself. It is scarcely necessary to adduce
the following passage by way of corroboration, but
it is too explicit and too much in point not to be
presented to the reader.

" Every degree of evidence, perceived by the
mind, produces a proportioned degree of assent or
belief. The judgment may be in perfect suspense
between two contradictory opinions, when there is
no evidence for either, or equal evidence for both,

* Essays on the Intellectual Powers, page 555, 4to. edition.

SOME OTHERS ON THIS SUBJECT. 29

The least preponderancy on one side inclines the
judgment in proportion. Belief is mixed with
doubt, more or less, until we come to the highest
degree of evidence, when all doubt vanishes, and
the belief is firm and immoveable. This degree of
evidence, the highest the human faculties can at-
tain, we call certainty."*

Lord Bacon, in several parts of his writings, ap-
pears to have entertained similar views on thiis
subject, although, as he never made it a matter of
separate consideration, and only incidentally men-
tions it, his language cannot be expected to be uni-
formly consistent. In one remarkable passage he
directly asserts the independence of belief on the
will, and distinctly points out the only way in
which it can be controlled.

" The commandment of knowledge," says he,
" is yet higher than the commandment over the
will ; for it is a commandment over the reason, be-
lief, and understanding of man, which is the highest
part of the mind, and giveth law to the will itself:
for there is no power on earth, which setteth up a
throne, or chair of state, in the spirits and souls of
men, and in their cogitations, imaginations, opi-
nions, and beliefs, but knowledge and learning."!

* Essays oa the Intellectual Powers, page 691, 4to. edition,
t Of the Proficience and Advancement of Learning, book i.

3*

SECTION IV.

ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES WHICH HAVE LED MEN TO
REGARD BELIEF AS VOLUNTARY.

It is natural to inquire, why the affection or state
of mind, which we term behef, should be considered
as depending on the will any more than other affec-
tions or states of mind ; why the discernment of
truth and error should be considered as voluntary,
and the discernment of other qualities as involun-
tary. We cannot alter at pleasure the appearances
of objects, nor the sentiments which they occasion.
Jf we open our eyes we must see things as they
are, and receive the impressions which they are
fitted to produce. Fields will appear barren or
fertile, hills low or lofty, rivers wide or narrow,
men and women handsome or ugly, pleasant or
disagreeable. \( we take up a book its language
will appear to us refined or vulgar, its figures apt
or inappropriate, its images beautiful or inelegant,
its matter well or ill arranged, its narrative pathe-
tic, or lively, or uninteresting; and we think not
of ascribing these impressions to the will ; why,
then, when we go a step farther, and find its argu-
ments convincing, or doubtful, or inconclusive,
should that be considered as a voluntary act?

The c-ommon error, of regarding belief as depen-

BELIEF REGARDED AS VOLUNTARY. 31

dant on volition, may perhaps be mainly ascribed
to the intimate connection subsisting between belief
and the expression or declaration of it, the latter
of which is at all times an act of the will. So close
is this connection, and so frequently do they coin-
cide, that the same language is often applicable to
both. It is not, therefore, surprising, that they
have been confounded together, and even received
one common appellation, for the term assent is used
to express the intimation of our concurrence with
an opinion as well as the concurrence itself, our
ostensible as well as our real belief By this inti-
mate connection and frequent coincidence, men
have been inadvertently led to attribute the pro-
perties belonging to an external sign to the state or
affection of the mind, and have drawn their infer-
ences as if the two things were exactly identical.
As we can refuse to express our agreement with a
proposition, so, it has been assumed, we can refuse
to believe it ; and as motives have power to induce
a man to declare his assent, so it has been taken
for granted they have the power of inducing him to
yield his credence.

Our best writers and acutest metaphysicians speak
of yielding or withholding our belief, granting or
refusing our assent, all which are evidently phrases
transferred from the external profession to the inter-
nal act. They can be regarded with propriety only
as figurative expressions ; and if they are defensible
on the ground of the necessity of explaining the

32 WHY BELIEF HAS BEEN

phenomena of the mind by a reference to physical
events, their figurative character should never be
overlooked.

It is trite to remark, that, in treating of the men-
tal powers, it is but too common to found conclu-
sions on the Hteral interpretation of metaphorical
phrases, as if the operations of the mind corres-
ponded exactly with those physical operations which
supplied the language used in describing them.

We cannot keep too steadily in view the distinc-
tion here pointed out, between the state of the
understanding and the outward declaration, between
internal and external assent. To the neglect of it
may be traced almost all the vagueness, sophistry,
and inconsistency on the subject of behef, which
abound, as well in the writings of moralists and me-
taphysicians, as in the opinions, practices, and in-
stitutions of society. We ought always to bear in
mind, that what a man affirms may be totally at
variance with what he believes : and that whatever
power we may exert over his professions by allure-
ments or intimidation, by the application of pleasure
or of pain, his internal conviction can be reached by
nothingbut considerations addressed to his intellect.

Another source of error on this subject has pro-
bably been the practice of confounding the consent
of the understanding with that of the will or the
feelings. The term assent is often applied indis-
criminately to both, and doubtless this confusion has
sometimes suggested wrong inferences. Dr. John-

REGARDED AS VOLUNTARY. 33

son has furnished an instance of the ease with which
these two very ditferent things may be confounded
by their common right to the same term. He de-
fines assent to be " the act of agreeing to any thing,"
and supports his interpretation by the following
examples : —

" Without the king's assent or knowledge
You wrought to be a legate."

Shakespeare, Henry VIII.

"All the arguments on both sides must be laid in balance,
and, upon the whole, the understanding determine its assent.^^

Locke.

In the first of these examples, the term is evident-
ly used, not to express opinion or belief, but the
consent or concurrence of the will ; in the second,
it implies the consent of the understanding. The
expression, "act of agreeing," may be employed in-
differently for either; but agreeing to a measure or
a proposal is obviously a very different thing from
agreeing with an argument or a proposition.

In attempting to account for the error of regard-
ing belief as voluntary, it is important to remark,
that it may have arisen, in some degree, from the
circumstance of many people having no real con-
ception of the truth or falsehood of those opinions
which they profess. They adopt an opinion ac-
cording to their interest or their passions ; or, in
other words, they undertake to assert some parti-
cular doctrine, and regard as adversaries all who
oppose it. Without any reference to its import,

I

34 WHY BELIEF HAS BEEN

they look upon it as a thing to be maintained, a
post to be defended. In this sense, and with such
people, opinions may be said to be voluntary, and
being mere professions, forming a sort of party
badge, and having no dependence on the under-
standing, they may be assumed and discarded at
pleasure.

It may perhaps be asserted with truth, that in
regard to some subjects or other, all mankind are
in this predicament ; and opinions thus taken up are
often maintained with more violence than such as
are founded on the most thorough conviction. They
are maintained, not for the sake of truth, nor from
the desire natural to man of impressing upon others
what he sincerely believes, but for the support of
that interest, or the gratification of that passion, on
account of which they were originally adopted. By
thus defending opinions of which they have no clear
conviction, people often succeed in imposing on
themselves as well as on others. Paradoxical as it
may seem, it is nevertheless true, that they are not
always aware of the exact state of their own minds;
they frequently imagine themselves to believe more
than they are actually convinced of. On many
questions they are not able to form any definite de-
cision, and yet, from the necessity of professing some
opinion, or joining some party, and from the habit
of making assertions, and even arguing in favour of
what they are thus pledged to support, they come
to regard themselves as entertaining positive senti-

I

REGARDED AS VOLUNTARY. 35

ments on points about which they are really in
doubt.

To solve this apparent paradox it is necessary to
reflect, that as it is impossible for us to have all the
considerations on which our opinions are founded
at once and all subjects present to the mind, our
opinions are on most occasions simply objects of
memory, results at which we recollect to have ar-
rived without at the moment recollecting the pro-
cess. In this way we believe propositions on the
strength of our recollection, and perhaps the con-
siderations on which they are founded present
themselves only on occasions when it is necessary,
for our own satisfaction or for the conviction of
others, to retrace or restate them. Hence it is ob-
viously possible for even an acute logician to be
mistaken as to the opinions about which he has at-
tained a decisive conviction, and not to find out his
mistake till he is reduced to the necessity of recol-
lecting, or rather repeating, the process through
which he had originally gone. When he is thus
driven back on the merits of the question, he finds
and feels himself doubtful as to points on which he
imagined his mind to have been previously satisfied.
If men, who are capable of estimating evidence, of
pursuing a train of argument, and of reflecting on
the operations of their own minds, are sometimes
liable to this kind of deception, we need not wonder
to find it common amongst such as have scarcely any
definite notions, or any power of self-introspection.

36 WHY BELIEF, &;C.

To return to the remark which led to this digres-
sion, it may be observed, that the practice of adopt-
ing and maintaining opinions without any actual
conviction, must necessarily give, them the appear-
ance of depending on the will ; and what is true of
mere professions, is naturally and easily transferred
to opinions which have really possession of the un-
derstanding.

SECTION V.

ON THE SOURCES OF DIFFERENCES OP OPINION.

Although belief is an involuntary state of the
mind, yet, like many other involuntary affections
and events, it may, in some circumstances, be par-
tially controlled by our voluntary actions. Sleep is
involuntary, but it may, to a certain extent, be pre-
vented or induced according to our pleasure ; and
in a similar manner, although we have no power
to believe or disbelieve as we choose, yet there are
cases in which we may imperfectly modify our be-
lief, by subjecting our minds to the operation of
such evidence as promises to gratify our inclination
in its result. We may, at any time, be unfair and
partial in the examination of a question. We may
turn our attention from the arguments on one side,
and direct all its keenness to those on the other;
and notwithstanding some latent suspicions of a
contrary nature, springing from the consciousness
of a want of candour, we may possibly by such
means lessen our doubts about an opinion which
we desire to think true.

If we had already a clear and full conviction of
the truth of any doctrine, perhaps no partiality of
attention in favour of the opposite side could effect
an alteration in our opinion ; but in all cases where

4

38 ON THE SOURCES OF

our views were vague, or our minds uninformed, an
exclusive devotion to one side of the evidence might
have a material influence on our conclusions, in
such cases, a man has in some degree the power of
making his opinions follow in the track of his incli-
nations.

Let us suppose the case of one, who perceived
that it would be greatly to his interest to hold a
certain doctrine, on which he had hitherto be-
stowed only a vague consideration. Unless he had
more than common magnanimity, he would natu-
rally endeavour to free himself from any doubts
which might be floating in his mind. He would,
therefore, make himself acquainted with all the ar-
guments which had been urged on that side of the
question to which his inclinations were directed,
and shun all of a contrary nature, and by such a
system of exclusion he might be successful in his
object. Kven in this case, however, considerations
might present themselves to his mind which would
counteract all his efforts, and force upon him the
very conviction he was endeavouring to avoid.
Though he might choose what written or oral argu-
ments should operate on his understanding, he could
have no power over the result ; he would have no
control over the intellectual machinery which those
arguments might set in motion in his own mind.

This wilful partiality of attention or examination
is the only way in which our opinions can be pur-
posely afl'ected by our actions, or in which we can

DIFFERENCES OF OPINIONS. 39

exercise any control over the formation of our opi-
nions ; and its effects are obviously very circum-
scribed and uncertain. By a cursory glance at
those sources of diversity of opinion which have no
dependence on the will, it will be seen that they
are perfectly sufficient to account for most of the
differences which exist ; and that an intentional
partiality in our investigations can have but a slen-
der influence amidst the operation of causes so
much more powerful.

The external circumstances in which men are
placed, as they vary in the case of every indivi-
dual, must necessarily occasion different ideas to be
presented to each mind, different associations to be
established even amongst the same ideas, and of
course different opinions to be formed. It may be
truly said, indeed, that in no instance have the
ideas presented to two individuals, throughout the
course of their lives, collectively agreed or cor-
responded precisely in their order and connection.
Amongst the external circumstances here allud-
ed to, perhaps the most striking are those which
we see operating on whole nations. In general, the
casualty of being brought into the world in a par-
ticular country inevitably determines the greater
part of a man's opinions ; and of the rest, there
are few which do not owe their origin to the rank
and family in which he happens to be born, and
to the characters of the other human beings by
whom he is surrounded. Even the extraordinary

40 ON THE SOURCES OF

views, which open to the man of original genius,
are often the result of various ideas suggested by
his pecuHar situation, and presented to his concep-
tion in a particular order and concomitance.

A great portion of the opinions of mankind are
notoriously propagated by transmission from one
generation to another, without any [possible option
on the part of those into whose minds they are
instilled. A child regards as true whatever his
teachers choose to inculcate, and whatever he
discovers to be believed by those around him.
His creed is thus insensibly formed, and he will
continue in after-life to believe the same things,
without any proof, provided his knowledge and
experience do not happen to impinge on their
falsehood. Mere instillation is sufficient to make
him believe any proposition, although he should
be utterly ignorant of the foundation on which it
rests, or the evidence by which it is supported.
It may create in his mind a belief of the most
palpable absurdities ; things, as it ^appears to
others, not only contradicted by his reason, but
at variance with the testimony of his senses ; and
in the boundless field, which the senses do not
reach, there is nothing too preposterous to be
palmed on his credulity. The religious opinions
of the majority of mankind are necessarily acquir-
ed in this way ; from the nature of the case they
cannot be otherwise than derivative, and they are
as firmly believed, without the least particle of evi-

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 41

dence, as the theorems of Euclid by those who
understand the demonstrations. Men do not sus-
pect their rehgious creed to be false, because the
grounds of its truth or its falsity lie altogether with-
out the pale of their knowledge and remote from
the path of their experience, and because, when
they have been accustomed to connect certain
ideas together in their infancy, it grows beyond
the power of their imagination to disjoin them.
Nor is it merely definite opinions which are ac-
quired in this manner, but a thousand associations
are established in the mind, which influence their
judgments in matters with which they subsequently
become conversant.

Thus the external circumstances in which men
are placed unavoidably occasion, without any choice
on their part, the chief diversities of opinion exist-
ing in the world. National circumstances occasion
national, and individual circumstances individual
peculiarities of thinking. On this point, indeed,
there can be no dispute. The most strenuous ad-
vocates (if such there are) for the power of the will
over belief, will not deny the influence of the causes
adduced : they will readily acknowledge that it is
impossible for all men to think ahke, when their
circumstances are so essentially dissimilar. The
principal question to consider, and that which
bears more peculiarly on the design of the present
essay, is not why so many various opinions arc pre-
valent in the world, but how, if belief is perfectly

4*

42 ON THE SOURCES OF

independent of the will, shall we account for the
fact, that the same events or the same arguments
produce different effects on different minds, or, in
other words, give rise to different opinions.

This fact, which is a matter of common obser-
vation, may at first sight appear to be inconsistent
with the position maintained in a former chapter,
that the same considerations present to the mind
will invariably produce the same opinion. The
inconsistency, however, will vanish when we re-
flect, that in the one case are meant only the ex-
ternal or ostensible arguments, the considerations
expressed in language and submitted to the senses ;
but, in the other case, the whole combination of
ideas in view of the understanding. Were lan-
guage so perfect, that the same words would con-
vey precisely the same ideas to every individual,
and could the understanding be strictly limited to
the ideas alone conveyed by the words employed,
then the arguments submitted to our eyes or ears,
and the considerations present to the mind, would
exactly coincide, and there could be no difference
of opinion respecting any proposition whatever.

This remark indicates the sources whence dif-
ferent conclusions from the same arguments must
arise. They must originate either in that defect of
language, in consequence of which the terms em-
ployed do not convey to every mind the same
ideas, or in those circumstances which occasion
other ideas, besides those actually expressed, (and

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 43'

different ideas in the case of different individuals,)
to present themselves to the understanding: to
which we nnay add such circumstances as, when
the original arguments or consequent suggestions
are numerous and complicated, have a tendency to
fix the attention of different persons on different
parts, and thereby occasion different considerations
to remain ultimately in view.

That the terms employed, in many subjects, do
not convey the same ideas to every understanding,
is a defect in language, as an instrument of com-
munication, which has often been explained and
lamented. Since language is conventional, involv-
ing an arbitrary connection between ideas and
sounds, all men have to learn as well as they can
to aflix the same notions to the same signs. In re-
gard to complex ideas this cannot always be ac-
complished, and hence a term may stand for one
thing in the mind of one person, and for a different
thing in the mind of another. When such terms,
therefore, are used in any proposition, it is not
surprising that various opinions are entertained of
its verisimilitude. This is so obvious a source of
diversity of opinion, that it requires no farther
exposition. We may, therefore, proceed to the
consideration of the other circumstances which
occasion different conclusions from the same
arguments.

If we examine the procedure of the under-
standing, when it is considering any train of argu-

44 ON THE SOURCES OF

ment offered to it, we shall find that almost every
idea, at least every proposition in the train, awakens
other ideas and propositions ; and the ultimate im-
pression left on the mind is the joint result of both.
It is not only what a book expresses but what it
suggests which determines its effect on the reader ;
and, consequently, whatever occasions the same
arguments to suggest different considerations or
combinations of thought to different minds, may^be
ranked amongst those sources of discrepancies in
opinion which we are investigating.

One circumstance, which must have a powerful
effect in determining the character of these sugges-
tions, is the natural constitution of the mind. The
endless variety of original talent, and degrees of in-
tellectual power, to be found amongst men, implies
as endless a variety in the modes in which their
ideas are associated and suggested. Hence a di-
versity of judgment will inevitably ensue. Or, if
we choose to vary the phraseology, we may say,
that the povi^ers of conception and discrimination
in different persons are unequal, and since their in-
tellectual vision extends not to the same depth
and distance, their views cannot be alike. What-
ever language we employ on this subject, it is suffi-
ciently manifest, that the natural disparity in the
understandings of mankind must be a cause of diver-
sity in the trains of thought which any occasion
may suggest, and must thus beget contrarieties of
judgment.

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 45

A still more powerful circumstance tending to
modify the combinations of thought, suggested by
any set of arguments, is the nature of the ideas, as-
sociations, prejudices, and opinions, already in the
mind. The train of ideas and considerations, which
rises at the contemplation of an object, may not, as
a whole, resemble any antecedent train, but its va-
rious parts must evidently be composed of ideas
preconceived and familiar. Hence the diversities
of opinion which the external circumstances of man-
kind have created, the peculiarities of thinking in
sects and nations, the intellectual habits of profes-
sions, and the local prejudices of individuals, may
all become causes of various conclusions from the
same arguments. To feel the full force of this re-
mark, we have only to consider what different ideas
would crowd upon the mind of a whig and a tory
during the perusal of the same political essay ; or
how totally dissimilar would be the train of thought,
awakened by the same theological treatise, in the
understanding of an Italian monk and an English
dissenter. Of all the circumstances, which deter-
mine the various judgments of mankind on any par-
ticular subject, perhaps that which we have just
noticed is not only of the greatest force but of the
greatest importance, since it has the principal share
in moulding their opinions in moral, theological,
and political science. It is, however, so complete-
ly obvious as to sujiersede the necessity of any
farther endeavour to illustrate it ; and we shall,

46 OF THE SOURCES, &IC,

therefore, proceed in the next section to the con-
sideration of a not less interesting source of di-
versity of judgment, to be found in the influence
possessed by the sensitive over the intellectual part
of our nature.*

* It may probably appear, that in this section we arc resolv-
ing all reasoning into association, which has been termed (with
what justice we cannot stop to examine) a mere verbal general-
ization. In reality, however, we are only proceeding on the
indisputable fact, that, in the examination of any subject, cer-
tain ideas and propositions do come into the mind. There must
be some cause or causes why every one of these presents itself :
the will is evidently not one of these causes, for reasons before
assigned : and we are endeavouring to point out what they are»
or at least such of them as vary in different individuals.

SECTION VI,

THE SAME SUBJECT CONTINUED. SOURCES OF DIFFER-
ENCES OF OPINION IN THE FEELINGS AND I'ASSIONS
OF MANKIND.

In entering upon the subject of the present sec-
tion it may be well to repeat the remark, that the
causes of the various conclusions, which men draw
from the same arguments, are to be sought for in
the imperfection of language, in the circumstances
which regulate our trains of thought, and in what-
ever tends to excite or fix the attention in a partial
manner. It is in the power of producing the two
latter effects, that the peculiar influence possessed
by the sensitive over the intellectual part of our
nature seems to consist. There is no remark more
frequent, no maxim more current in the world,
than that a man's opinions are influenced by his
interest and passions.* This is so manifest, that
we can often predict, from a knowledge of his situ-
ation and relations in society, what sentiments, on a
given subject, he will profess and maintain. Much
of the influence thus apparently exerted by passion

* " Intellectus humanus," says Lord Bacon, " luminis sicci

t!st ; sed recipit infusionem a voluntale et affectibus." —
n Organum, lib. i.

48 SOURCES or ditfehences of

on the opinions of mankind, extends however, in
reality, only to their professions. Many doctrines,
as we have already remarked, are adopted without
any real conviction : they are merely ostensible as-
sumptions, not indications of the actual state of the
understanding ; and what a man thus professes may
be expected, of course, to accord with his interest
or passions. But laying all these out of the ques-
tion, there is indisputably an influence exerted by
emotions and passions over the understanding
itself. They have sometimes the effect of making
that argument appear valid to one man which is
regarded as inconclusive by another : in a word,
of begetting various opinions on the same subject.

This effect is partly to be accounted for, as be-
fore stated, by their power of awakening peculiar
trains of ideas. The same words, or the same ob-
jects, will rouse combinations of thought in the mind
when it is labouring under melancholy, of a totally
different character from those which they suggest
during a state of cheerfulness ; and, in a similar
manner, all the various emotions and passions, by
which we are affected, occasionally operate as prin-
ciples of suggestion. If, therefore, the effect of any
arguments on the understanding depends both on
the arguments themselves, and the ideas and con-
siderations which they suggest, the various effects
of the same arguments, on such as attend them,
may be partly ascribed to the state of feeling in
which such persons happen to be.

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 49

The other way in which the passions and emo-
tions of men influence their opinions, and cause
them to receive different impressions from the same
arguments, may deserve a fuller elucidation. When
those arguments form a train or series of considera^
ble length and complexity, it is obviously impossible
that they should all be present to the mind toge-
ther, or at the same moment. The understanding
must survey them in detail ; and its ultimate deci-
sion will depend on those which have chiefly ex-
cited its attention, and remain in view at the close
of the scrutiny. Whatever, therefore, occasions
any of the arguments to come before the min4 more
frequently, and remain in view more permanently,
than the rest, or, in other words, whatever fixes the
attention on some more than others, will naturally
affect its decision. The remark applies not only to
the arguments actually submitted to us, but also to
all the ideas and considerations which they suggest.

This attribute, of drawing and fixing the atten-
tion, belongs in a remarkable degree to all strong
emotions. Every one must have felt, while he has
been affected by any particular passion, that he
could scarcely attend to any thing but what had
some connection with it ; he must have experienced
its power of presenting exclusive and strong views,
its despotism in banishing all but its own ideas.
Fear, for example, may so concentrate our thoughts
on some particular features of our situation, may so
absorb our attention, that we may overlook all

5

66 ON THE SOURCES OP

other circumstances, and be led to conclusions
which would be instantly rejected by a dispassion-
ate understanding.

While the mind is in this state of excitement, it
has a sort of elective attraction (if we may borrow
an illustration from chemical science) for some
ideas to the neglect of all others. It singles out
from the number presented to it those which are
connected with the prevailing emotion, while the
rest are overlooked and forgotten. In examining
any question, it may really comprehend all the argu-
ments submitted to it; but, at the conclusion of the
review, those only are retained which have been
illuminated by the predominant passion ; and since
opinions, as we have seen, are the result of the con-
siderations which have been attended to and are in
sight, not of such as have been overlooked and have
vanished, it is those by which the judgment will be
determined.

In this way self-interest, hope, fear, love, hatred,
and the other passions, may any of them draw the
mind from a perfect survey of a subject, and fix its
attention on a partial view, may exaggerate the im-
portance of some objects and diminish that of others,
and by this virtual distortion of appearances affect
its perceptions of truth.

The peculiar effects of passion, which we have
been describing, are evidently involuntary, and per-
haps few are conscious of them in their own case,
but such as have been accustomed to examine the

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 51

movements of their sensitive and intellectual pow-
ers. It deserves to be remarked, likewise, that our
good as well as our bad passions, our kind as well
as our malevolent feelings, may equally operate as
principles of suggestion ; and being also equally con-
ducive to that partiality of attention, that peculiar
vividness of ideas, which we have attempted to ex-
plain, are of course equally liable to mislead the
judgment.

We are prepared by these observations to exa-
mine the justness of the common saying, "quod vo-
lumus, facile credimus," "we readily believe what
is agreeable to our wishes," a saying which may at
first sight seem at variance with our former conclu-
sions. This, like many other maxims current in
the world, points at a truth without much preci-
sion. Mere wishes have in fact no influence on
the understanding; they are totally inoperative till
there appears to be some reason for expecting what
we wish, till, in short, they are transformed into
hope, and then we are strongly disposed to believe
what is consonant with our anticipations. If instead
of having a ground for hope, we have a reason for
fear, our apprehension disposes us, in the same
way, to believe the reverse of what we wish. Thus,
so far is it from being true, that mere wishes tend to
beget readiness of belief, we here see that there are
cases in which we have a readiness to believe whai
is repugnant to our wishes.

52 ON THE SOURCES OF

In the instances both of hope and of fear, there
must be considerations presented to the understand-
ing to produce them ; and those passions subse-
quently react upon the intellect, by concentrating
its attention upon the considerations to which they
owe their birth, and upon others of a similar ten-
dency. This effect is evidently not attributable to
the will, on which hope and fear are themselves
perfectly independent.

The manner, in which the emotions of any one
operate on his belief, may receive illustration from
what takes place when the peculiar circumstances,
by which a man is surrounded, tend to keep some
considerations appertaining to a disputable subject
more steadily before his attention than others. If
it be true, that our feelings affect our belief by the
vividness which they impart to particular ideas, or,
what is the same thing, by turning the attention
more intensely on such ideas ; then whatever has
the tendency to create the same partiality of atten-
tion, must have a corresponding effect on our opi-
nions. Such a cause may be found in the sentiments
of those amongst whom a man happens to be thrown,
in the majority of instances, however dissimilar the
opinions of an individual may have originally been,
they will gradually conform to those of the commu-
nity at large, or at least of his immediate associates ;
an effect which takes place, not because the argu-
ments for the latter are stronger than those of the

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 53

opposite side, but because they are perpetually kept
before his mind, to the exclusion of adverse consi-
derations.* Thus we sonietimes see instances of
men, who are led to entertain a peculiar opinion,
but who, on finding all around them dissent from it,
and discovering it to be the object of reproach and
invective, begin to be staggered in their faith, and
grow more and more doubtful, till the general voice
has triumphed over their sentiments and reduced
them to acquiescence. In this case, the circumstance
of the general opinion being against them withdraws
their attention from their own peculiar views, forci-
bly and continually fixing it on the considerations
which influence others. The sentiments of their
fellow creatures draw around them a circle of at-
traction, from which they can rarely step to con-
template other objects ; and they gradually lose their
peculiarities of thinking, from the mere circumstance
of the considerations on which they are founded be-
ing seldom presented to their understandings. It is
on the same principle that some of the most striking
effects of eloquence are to be accounted for. Who,
that has listened to some masterly exhibition of
opinions, contrary to his own, but has felt his mind

* " Our opinions of all kinds," says Hume, " are strongly
affected by society and sympathy, and it is almost impossible
for us to support any principle or sentiment against the univer-
sal consent of every one, with whom we have any friendship or
correspondence." — A Dissertation on the Passions.

5*

54 ON THE SOURCES OF

shaken from his confirmed principles, till the vivid-
ness of the impression has died away, and suffered
other considerations to reappear?

In regard to a single and perfectly independent
proposition, there is evidently no room for any dif-
ference of opinion, except that which may arise from
affixing different ideas to the same terms. As few
propositions, nevertheless, are so independent as not
to be connected in some way with others, when any
one is singly presented to the mind we generally
form our estimate of it by the application of argu-
ments and considerations, which are naturally sug-
gested in the various modes already described. But
when a question involves a long train of proposi-
tions, each of which may depend on many others,
there is infinitely more room for the operation of
ambiguities of language, preconceived notions, ine-
qualities of intellect, and diversities of feeling. In
considering such a question, moreover, it is impossi-
ble to have all the arguments which bear upon it
present at once to the recollection ; a thousand con-
siderations will pass before the mind, prompted by
passion or prejudice, or other causes ; and those, to
which the state of our feelings or any other cir-
cumstance has given an adventitious prominence,
will naturally remain in view and determine our
opinions.

Emotions, it is obvious, have less room to operate
in proportion to the perspicuity of our views. With
regard to opinions of which we have a distinct and

DIFFERENCES OF OPINION. 55

thorough conviction, the state of our feelings can
make no difference.

The process of reasoning, by which we perceive
them to be demonstrated, may be so clear and for-
cible, that the passions can have as little effect as
in the consideration of a geometrical theorem. It
is only in regard to vague opinions, arising from the
complicated and doubtful nature of the subject, or
from partial and indistinct views, that the feelings
can have any great influence ; and they may accord-
ingly be expected to have considerable power in
the consideration of questions which furnish various
conflicting arguments, and in the case of men whose
notions are loose and undefined, without the ties of
logical dependence aad consistent principle.

Jt would be vain, perhaps, to attempt an estimate
of the comparative efficiency of the causes produc-
ing diversity of opinion, since they doubtless affect
different minds in different proportions. Some men
are infinitely less affected by hereditary prejudices
than others ; some are full of feeling; some dispas-
sionate ; some are of weak and confused, and some
ordear and vigorous intellects.

With regard to the major part of mankind, how-
ever, it will not be disputed, that traditionary pre-
judices and early associations have a predominant
influence, imparting a tincture to every subject, and
leaving traces in every conclusion.

Any of the causes, which have been enumerated,
acting singly, might be expected to create consider-

56 SOURCES OF DIFFERENCES OF OPINION.

able diversities of sentiment ; but when we reflect,
that several are generally in operation at the same
time, we cannot hesitate to pronounce them per-
fectly adequate to account for all those varieties of
opinion, in relation to the same subject, which are
daily exposed to our observation.

1

SECTION VII.

ON BELIEF AND OPINIONS AS OBJECTS OF MORAL AP-
PROBATION AND DISAPPROBATION, REWARDS AND
PUNISHMENTS.

The remarks in the preceding part of this essay,
if they are correct, necessarily lead to some im-
portant conclusions. By the universal consent of
the reason and feelings of mankind, what is involun-
tary cannot involve any merit or demerit on the
part of the agent. Results which are not the con-
sequences of volition cannot be the proper objects
of moral praise and blame.* These are the dic-

* Hume, indeed, has controverted this, hut it would not, I
think, be a difficult task to show the sources of his erroneous
conclusions on the subject, were it necessary to combat a doc-
trine at variance with the whole of our moral feelings. See
his Treatise on Morals. The common, or rather universal sen-
timent on this point, is thus expressed by Bishop Butler : " We
never, in the moral way, applaud or blame either ourselves or
others for what we enjoy or what we suffer, or for having im-
pressions made upon us which we consider as altogether out of
our power ; but only for what we do, or would have done, had
it been in our power ; or for what we leave undone which we
might have done, or would have left undone, though we could
haverdone it." — Dissertation on the Nature of Virtue.

58 ON BELIEF AND OPINIONS AS

tales of nature, truths felt by all : even the child,
who is reprehended by his parent for accidental
mischief, instinctively prefers the plea, that ho
could not help it ; and if we inquire into the final
cause of this part of our nature, the reason of our
being so constituted as to feel moral approbation
and disapprobation only at those actions which are
voluntary, we shall probably find it in the obvious
circumstance, that it is such actions alone which
praise and blame can promote and prevent.

It follows, that those states of the understanding
which we term belief, doubt, and disbelief, inas-
much as they are not voluntary, nor the result of
any exertion of the will, imply neither merit nor
demerit in him who is the subject of them. What-
ever be the state of a man*'s understanding in rela-
tion to any possible proposition, it is a state or
affection devoid equally of desert and culpability.
The nature of an opinion cannot make it criminal.
In relation to the same subject, one may believe,
another doubt, and a third disbelieve, and all with
equal innocence.

There may, it is true, be considerable merit or
demerit attached to the manner in which an in-
quiry is prosecuted. The labour and research
which a man bestows, in order to determine any
important question, and the impartiality with which
he conducts the examination, may be entitled to our
warmest applause. On the other hand, it is repre-
hensible for any one to be swayed in his conduct by

OBJECTS OF MORAL APPROBATION, &;C. 59

interest or passion, to reject opportunities of infor-
mation, to be designedly partial in examining evi-
dence, to be deaf to whatever is urged on one side
of a question, and lend all his attention to the other.
These acts, although they may be totally ineflfectual
in accomplishing their aim, are all proper subjects
of moral obloquy, and may be left to the indigna-
tion and contempt which they deserve ; but they
relate to the conduct of men as to the selection of
those circumstances or ideas which they allow to
operate on their minds, and are not to be confounded
with the states or affections of the understanding,
on which it is possible, after all, that they may not
produce the slightest effect.*

No one, perhaps, will dispute, that when a man
acts without intentional partiahty in the examina-
tion of a question, he cannot be at all culpable for
the effect which follows, whether the research ter-
minate in faith or incredulity ; because it is the
necessary and involuntary consequence of the views
presented to his understanding, without the slightest
interference of choice : but it will probably be al-
leged, that in so far as belief, doubt, and disbehef,
have been the result of wilful partiality of attention,
they may be regarded with propriety as culpable,

* It deserves to be remarked, that all institutions annexing
advantages to the belief, or rather to the profession, of any
fixed doctrines, have a tendency to beget this partiality of in-
vestigation; since every man, not totally destitute of integrity,
will strive to make his opinions conformable to his professions.

so ON BELIEF AND OPINIONS AS

since it is common to blame a man for those things,
"which, although involuntary in themselves, are the
result of voluntary acts. To this it may be replied,
that it is, to say the least, a want of precision to ap-
ply blame in such a manner ; it is always more cor-
rect to regard men as culpable on account of their
voluntary acts, than on account of the results over
which volition has no immediate control. There
would, nevertheless, be little objection to consider-
ing opinions as reprehensible in so far as they were
the result of unfair investigation, if it could be ren-
dered a useful or practical principle. In all cases
where we make involuntary effects the objects of
moral reprehension, it is because they are certain
proofs or positive indications of the voluntary acts
which have preceded them. Opinions, however,
are not effects of this kind ; they are not positive
indications of any voluntary acts ; they furnish no
criterion of the fairness or unfairness of investiga-
tion, since the most opposite results, the most con-
trary opinions, may ensue from the same degree of
impartiality and application. Voluntary partiality
of attention, as we have already seen, can be at the
utmost but of slight and casual efficiency in the
formation of opinions ; it has often no effect what-
ever, and its influence will always be mingled with
that of more powerful causes. Hence the share
which it has had in the production of belief, doubt,
or disbelief, can never be ascertained by the nature
of the result. Whether a man has been partial or

OBJECTS OF MORAL APPROBATION, &€. 61

impartial, in the process by which he has acquired
his opinions, must be determined hy extrinsic cir-
cumstances, and not by the character of the opi-
nions themselves. Belief, doubt, and disbelief,
therefore, can never, even in the character of indi-
cations of antecedent voluntary acts, be the proper
objects of moral reprehension or commendation.
Our approbation and disapprobation, if they fall
any where, should be directed to the conduct of
men in their researches, to the use which they make
of their opportunities of information, and to the par-
tiality and impartiality visible in their actions.

If belief, doubt, and disbelief, are involuntary
states of the understanding, which cannot be affect-
ed by the application of motives, and which can
involve no moral merit or demerit, it follows, as a
necessary consequence, that they do not fall within
the province of legislation ; that they are not proper
subjects of rewards and punishments.

The only rational aim of rewards and punish-
ments is to encourage and repress those actions or
events to which they are applied. When they
have no tendency to produce these effects it is evi-
dently absurd to apply them, since it is an employ-
ment of means which have no connection with the
end to be produced. In this predicament is the
application of rewards and punishments to the state
of the understanding, or, in other words, to opinions.
The allurements and the menaces of power are
alike incapable of establishing opinions in the mind,

6

G2 ON BELIEF AND OPINIONS AS

or eradicating those which are already there. They
may dravA' hypocritical professions from avarice and
ambition, or extort verbal renunciations from fear
and feebleness : but this is all they can accomplish.
The way to alter belief is not to address motives to
the will, but arguments to the intellect. To do
otherwise, to apply rewards and punishments to
opinions, is as absurd as to raise men to the peerage
for their ruddy complexions, to whip them for the
gout, and hang them for the scrofula. The fatal
consequences of regarding opinions as proper ob-
jects of penal laws, will claim our notice in the en-
suing section. It will suffice at present to draw the
conclusion, that all pain, mental or physical, inflicted
with a view to punish a man for his opinions, is
nothing less than useless and wanton cruelty, vio-
lating the plain dictate of nature, which forbids the
production of evil in all cases where it is not con-
secrated by superior beneficial effects.

In contending that neither merit nor demerit can
be imputed to any one for his opinions, it is almost
unnecessary to say, we are not contending that it is
of no importance what opinions he entertains. We
are advocating the innocence of the man, not the
harmlessness of his views. Errors, as we shall
have occasion to show in a subsequent essay, are
by their nature injurious to society ; and while he
who really believes them ought to be regarded as
perfectly free from culpability, every one who sees
them in a different light is justified in endeavouring.

OBJECTS OF MORAL APPROBATION, &C.

63

by proper means, to lessen their influence ; which
is to be effected, not by the application of obloquy
and punishment, but by addressing arguments to the
understanding.

A distinction is also to be made between the
state of the understanding and the manifestation of
that state; or, in other words, between holding opi-
nions and expressing them. While the former is
independent of the will, and, therefore, free from
moral culpability, the latter is always a voluntary
act, and, being neutral in itself, may be commenda-
ble or reprehensible according to the circumstances
in which it takes place. Whether it is a proper
object of rewards and punishments will form here-
after a separate topic of consideration.

SECTION VIII.

ON THE EVIL CONSEaUENCES OF THE COMMON ERRORS ON

THIS SUBJECT.

Few speculative errors appear to have produced
evil consequences so many and so extensive, as the
notion that belief, doubt, and disbelief, are volun-
tary acts involving moral merit and demerit. One
of its most obvious effects has been to draw man-
kind from an attention to moral conduct, and lead
them to regard the belief of certain tenets as far
more deserving of approbation than a course of the
most consistent virtue. Where such a doctrine
prevails, where opinions are considered of para-
mount importance to actions, it is no wonder if the
ties of morality are loosened. The error under
consideration has also produced much secret misery,
by loading the minds of the timid and conscientious
with the imaginary guilt of holding opinions which
they regarded with horror while they could not
avoid them. What is still worse, it has frequently
alarmed the inquirer into an abandonment of the
pursuit of truth. Under a confused supposition of
criminality in the belief of particular doctrines, men
have with reason been deterred from examining
evidence, lest it should irresistibly lead them to
views which it might be culpable to entertain. If

COMMON ERRORS ON THIS SUBJECT. G5

it is really true, indeed, that the least deviation from
a given line of opinion will be attended with guilt,
the only safe course is to exclude all examination,
to shun every research which might, by possibility,
terminate in any such result. When it is already
fixed and determined, that an investigation must
end in a prescribed way, otherwise the inquirer
will be involved in criminality, all inquiry becomes
not only useless but foolish. This apprehension of
the consequences of research once extended even to
natural philosophy ; and there is little doubt that it
may be justly charged by moral science with much
of the slowness of its progress. If the former has
long since emancipated itself from this error, the
latter still confessedly labours under its oppression.
The intellect is still intimidated into a desertion
of every track which appears to lead to conclusions
at variance with the prescribed modes of thinking.*

"Men grow pale
Lest their own judgments should become too bright,
And their free thoughts be crimes, and earth have too much
light."t

* See Note B.

t Such are evidently not to be ranked amongst the disciples
of Bacon, who says, "Let no man, upon a weak conceit of so-
briety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain, that a
man can search too far, or be too well studied in the book of
God's word, or in the book of God's works, divinity or philo-
sophy ; but, rather, let men endeavour an endless progress or
Iproficience in both." — 0/ the Projicienee and Advancement of
Learning ^hook i.
*6

66 ON THE EVIli CONSEQUENCES OF THE

If it be objected to this representation, that those
who regard behef as a voluntary act cannot con-
sistently fear the result of examination on their
own minds, since, according to their fundamental
position, it will always be in their power to think
as they please ; it may be a sufficient reply to say,
that it is not intended to accuse them of reasoning
consistently from the principles which they assume.
The truth is, there has been the utmost confusion
in this respect. Although men must, in all proba-
bility, have had a notion, however vague and ob-
scure, that behef was dependent on the will, before
they could have inferred it to be criminal, yet they
have often retained the conclusion and dropped the
premises. They have sometimes thought and act-
ed as if opinions were voluntary and criminal,
sometimes as if they were at once criminal and
involuntary. If the mistaken principle, that belief
is governed by volition, had been rigorously pur-
sued through all its consequences, it would have
been immediately exploded. It is to the want of
precise and consistent thinking on the subject that
so many evil consequences are to be traced.

It is probable, that the same error with regard
to the nature of belief has been one principal cause
of requiring subscriptions, or other outward mani-
festations of assent, to a long list of abstruse, com-
plex, and often unintelligible doctrines, in order to
qualify the aspirant not only for ecclesiastical, but
even for civil and military offices. On no other

COMMON ERRORS ON THIS SUBJECT. 67

lypothesis, at least, could the practice be justified
of making the profession of certain opinions the
indispensable preliniinary to personal exaltation,
the stepping-stone to fortune and to power. Had
not those who first devised this mode of obtaining
unanimity had strong, although perhaps undefined
impressions of the voluntary character of belief,
they would, in ail likelihood, have fallen upon the
far more rational expedient of requiring, instead of
a positive profession of faith, a pledge not to avow
nor to inculcate any doctrines contrary to what
were prescribed. This, though not free from nu-
merous objections, would at least have been requir-
ing what it was in every man's power to perform,
while it would have presented no temptation to
sacrifice, at the entrance of his career, his candour,
or at all events his veracity.

Whether we acquiesce or not, however, in the
supposition, that an impression of the voluntary
nature of belief had a considerable share in the
first institution of articles and subscriptions, it is
plain that the practice could not have been consist-
ently enforced under the general prevalence of the
contrary doctrine.

There is one thing, indeed, which even then
might have justified the enforcement of such a re-
gulation, the improbability of any one subscribing
a creed who could not conscientiously do it. On
this point, let those decide who are aware of the
causes which necessarily generate diversities of

68 ON THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE

opinion, and who can, at the same time, estimate
the chance which, in such an alFair, the scruples of
conscience have of maintaining their ground against
the temptations of interest or the blandishments of
power.

But the most fatal consequences of the specula-
tive error under consideration are to be found in
the repeated attempts to regulate men's creeds by
the application of intimidation and punishment; in
the intolerance and persecution which have dis-
graced the history of the human race. The na-
tural consequence of imputing guilt to opinions
was an endeavour to prevent and to punish them ;
and, as such a course coincided with the gratifica-
tion of the malignant passions of our nature, no-
thing less could be expected than that it would be
pursued with eagerness and marked by cruelty.

It will probably be urged, that since a man's
opinions are not to be read in his gestures or coun-
tenance, punishments cannot be applied till the
opinions are expressed ; and that when they have
been inflicted, it has been done, not to alter his
creed nor to punish Jiim for holding it, but to pre-
vent its propagation. ft\we look, however, into
the history of mankind, we shall discover, that to
prevent the propagation of opinions has not been
the sole object of such penal inflictions. We shall
find, that the aim of the persecutor has been, not
only to prevent obnoxious opinions from spreading,
but to punish the presumed guilt of holding them.

COMMON ERRORS ON THIS SUBJECT. 69

and sometimes to convert the sufferers. He has
accordingly directed his fury against innocent ac-
tions, merely expressive or indicative of opinions,
and having no tendency to propagate them, and
has relented when his victims have been brought
to profess a renunciation of their errors ; his con-
duct evidently proceeding on the two assumptions,
that belief was voluntary, so that a man might be
induced or compelled to relinquish it ; and, second-
ly, that if it differed from his own it was criminal,
and therefore deserved to be punished.

The universal treatment of the Jews, from whom
no contamination of faith could possibly be appre-
hended, is a standing proof of the prevalence and
effects of these pernicious errors ; and we need not
go farther than the pages of our own history for
additional instances and ample corroboration. " The
persons condemned to these punishments," says
Hume, in reference to the persecutions in the reign
of the bloody and bigoted Mary, " were not con-
victed of teaching or dogmatising, contrary to the
established religion ; they were seized merely on
suspicion, and articles being offered them to sub-
scribe, they were immediately upon their refusal
condemned to the flames."

These persecutors, it is plain, (unless they were
actuated solely by the vilest motives,) must either
have thought it possible to eradicate opinions from
the mind by violence, and force others upon it, or
have laboured under the strange infatuation of con-

70 ON THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE

ceiving, that they could render God and man service
by destroying the sincerity of their fellow creatures,
and compelHng them to make professions at variance
with their real conviction. Perhaps, sometimes one
and sometimes the other of these notions actuated
the minds of the bigots. Sometimes they might
think, that if a poor wretch could be forced by in-
timidation or torture to acknowledge the truth of a
creed he would really believe it ; and sometimes,
that it was a valuable triumph to extort a few words
from the weakness of nature, how contrary soever
they might be to the real sentiments of their victims.
It is probable, however, that their minds were never
entirely free from confused notions of the voluntary
nature of belief, of the consequent possibility of al-
tering opinions by the application of motives, and
of the criminality of holding any creed but their
own. These principles seem to have actuated more
or less all religious persecutors. Even the victims
themselves appear, in many instances, not to have
called in question the right of persecution, but only
the propriety of its exercise on their own persons.
Both the persecutors and the persecuted have united
in maintaining, that the holders of wrong opinions
deserved the vengeance of the community, and dif-
fered only as to the objects on whom it ought to
fall. In reading the history of intolerance, our pity
for the sufferers is often neutralized by a detesta-
tion of their principles, by a knowledge that they
would have inflicted equal tortures on their adver-

COMMON ERRORS ON THIS SUBJECT. 71

saries, had they had equal power ; and all that is left
for us to do is to mourn over the degradation of our
common nature. Thus vvc find many of the reform-
ers in England, Switzerland, and Germany, as un-
sparing in their persecution of those who departed
from their tenets as the most bigoted adherents to
the ancient religion. Of this a striking and memo-
rable instance is furnished by our own annals in the
case of a Dr. Barnes. This man, who had himself
renounced the established doctrine regarding tran-
substantiation, was exasperated that another person,
of the name of Lambert, had taken a different ground
in his dissent from it.

" By the present laws and practice," says Hume,
" Barnes was no less exposed to the stake than Lam-
bert; yet such was the persecuting rage which pre-
vailed, that he was determined to bring this man to
condign punishment ; because, in their common de-
parture from the ancient faith, he had dared to go
one step farther than himself." It is almost need-
less to add, that this wretched bigot succeeded in
his object; and the reader of his history, in the first
warmth of indignation, hardly regrets that he met
with a persecutor in his turn and perished at the"
stake.

We find even Cranmer, the mild, the moderate,
the amiable, the beneficent, (it is thus he is repre-
sented by historians,) we find even such a character
consigning a poor female to the flames because her
opinions were not quite orthodox. Nor is it to be

■

72 ON THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE

forgotten, that the gentle and dispassionate Melanc-
thon expressed his decided approbation of the burn-
ing of Servetus, and his wonder that any body could
be found to condemn it. Nothing can nnore strikingly
show the pernicious influence of this single error.

But although it is scarcely to be conceived, that
intolerance and persecution would have been car-
ried to such an excess, had it not been for the fun-
damental error here noticed, it is not to be denied,
that many other causes have mingled their influence ;
and it will not be altogether foreign to the tenor of
this essay to bestow upon them a passing notice.
There seems to be a principle inherent in the na-
ture of man, that leads him to seek for the appro-
bation of his fellow creatures, not only in his actions,
but in his modes of thinking. He covets the con-
currence of others, and is uneasy under dissent and
disagreement. Objections to his opinions seem to
place a disagreeable impediment in the way of his
imagination ; they disturb his self-complacency, and
render him restless and uneasy. This, of itself, is
sufiScient to make him regard with displeasure and
resentment all those who are of a different opinion
from his own. Men, even of the best regulated
minds and mildest dispositions, find it diflfiicult to
argue with uniform coolness and temper. A debate,
from a contest of arguments often becomes a contest
of passions. We resent, not only the opposition to
our doctrines, but the presumption of the opponent,
and grow eager to chastise it. Love of truth, if we

COMMON ERRORS ON THIS SUBJECT.

originally had it, is soon lost in the desire of aveng-
ing our mortified vanity; and the rancour of our
feelings being exasperated by every detection of the
weakness of our arguments, recourse is had to vio-
lence to overwhelm those whom we cannot confute.
As we partly seek for the concurrence of others
on account of the corroboration which it affords of
the truth of our own sentiments, it is observable,
that those men in general are the least hurt at op-
position, who, having a clear discernment of the
foundation of their tenets, least require the support
of other people's approbation ; and that the preju-
diced and the ignorant, men of narrow views and
confused notions, always display the most inveterate
intolerance. " While men," to borrow the words
of the classical historian already quoted, " zealously
maintain what they neither clearly comprehend, nor
entirely believe, they are shaken in their imagined
faith by the opposite persuasion, or even doubts of
other men ; and vent on their antagonists that im-
patience, which is the natural result of so disagree-
able a state of the understanding."^ The state of

* It is a curious fact, which, I think, may be observed in the
history of persecution, that men are generally more inclined to
punish those who believe less than they themselves do, than
those wlio believe more. We pity rather than condemn the ex-
travagances of fanaticism, and the absurdities of superstition ;
but are apt to grow angry at the speculations of scepticism. If
any one superadds something to the established creed, his con-
duct is viewed with tolerable composure ; it is when he attempts
to subtract from it, that he provokes indignation. Is it that wc
;7

74 ON THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE

doubt is, indeed, a state of trouble, to which every
one will be averse in proportion as he is unaccus-
tomed to intellectual exertion and candid inquiry.
Hence, whoever takes his opinions on trust, has a
thorough repugnance to be disturbed by contrary
arguments. This, as Berkeley remarks, is observ-
able even in the literary world. " Two sorts of
learned men there are," says he: "one, who can-
didly seek truth by rational means. These are never
averse to have their principles looked into, and ex-
amined by the test of reason. Another sort there
is, who learn by rote a. set of principles and a way
of thinking, which happen to be in vogue. These
betray themselves by their anger and surprise, when-
ever their principles are freely canvassed."*

But the mortification arising from controversy, and
the uneasiness of doubt, are comparatively transient
and irregular motives of persecution. We may find
more fixed and steady sources of intolerance in the
connection often subsisting between men's perma-
nent interests, or favourite objects, and the mainte-
nance of certain doctrines. Those persons are pecu-
liarly rancorous against dissent and opposition, who
have assumed an opinion, probably without compre-
hending it, and without the least concern about its

feel a sort of superiorky at perceiving the absurdity of what
others believe, and, on the other hand, are mortified when any
body else appears to arrogate the same superiority over our-
selves? See Note C.

* A Defence of Free Thinking in Mathematics.

COMMON ERRORS ON THIS SUBJECtJ^BJ. 75

truth, from selfish and mercenary views. When the
emolument, power, pride, personal consequence, or
gratification of any one, becomes identified with a
doctrine or system, he is impatient and resentful at
the slightest doubt ; because every doubt is of the
nature of a personal attack, and threatens danger to
the objects of his regard. It is this identification of
personal interests with systems of opinions, which
has in all ages been one of the greatest sources of
intolerance on the part of the priesthood. It is this
which has led them to represent, with so much zeal,
a departure from their dogmas as one of the worst
of crimes, and often caused them to pursue with re-
morseless cruelty all aberrations from that creed on
which their power and importance depended.

It becomes an interesting inquiry, how far these
causes of intolerance continue in action in the pre-
sent day, and in our own country. In the first place,
with regard to such as are discoverable in the pas-
sions of mankind, we can only look for a mitigation
in so far as those passions are weakened, or placed
under stricter control. Men are still inflamed with
resentment and opposition, and are ready to defend,
by other than intellectual means, the doctrines with
which their interest, power, and importance are in-
dissolubly interwoven. But besides that the spirits
of all such are probably softened by the improve-
ment of the age (for it is the tendency of civilization
to mitigate the irascible passions), they are no
longer permitted by the moral sympathies of man-

Z6, ON THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE

kind to manifest their resentment and mortification
by the same violent methods. Reproach and in-
vective must now, in most cases, content that selfish
bigotry, which, in a former age, would have had re-
course to more formidable weapons.

In the second place, if the practices of the world
receive any amelioration from its advancement in
knowledge, if the one keep pace with the other, we
may rationally expect to see a diminution of into-
lerance, in so far as it is founded in ignorance and
error. Society, accordingly, no longer presents us
with the same outrageous scenes of persecution, and
mad attempts on men's understandings. We no
longer witness the same compulsory methods of ob-
taining subscriptions to creeds, nor do we even hear
the same violent denunciations against heresy and
dissent. The fundamental error, of imputing guilt
to a man on account of his opinions, has shrunk
within narrower bounds ; but it is nevertheless far
from being exterminated. Men have extended their
sphere of liberality, they have expanded their system
of toleration, but it is not yet without limits. There
is still a boundary in speculation, beyond which no
one is allowed to proceed ; at which innocence ter-
minates and guilt commences ; a boundary not fixed
and determinate, but varying with the creed of
every party.

Although the advanced civilization of the age re-
jects the palpably abs«rd application of torture and
death, it is not to be concealed, that, amongst a nu-

COMMON ERRORS ON THIS SUBJECT.

77

merous class, there is an analogous, though less bar-
barous persecution, of all who depart from received
doctrines — the persecution of private antipathy and
public odium. They are looked upon as a species
of criminals, and their deviations from established
opinions, or, if any one prefers the phrase, their spe-
:ula(ive errors, are regarded by many with as much
horror as flagrant violations of morality. In the
ordinary ranks of men, where exploded prejudices
often linger for ages, this is scarcely to be wondered
it ; but it is painful, and on a first view unaccount-
able, to witness the prevalence of the same spirit
in the republic of letters ; to see mistakes in specu-
lation pursued with all the warmth of moral indig-
lation and reproach. He who believes an opinion
on the authority of others, who has taken no pains
to investigate its claims to credibility, nor weighed
the objections to the evidence on which it rests, is
lauded for his acquiescence, while obloquy from
every side is too often heaped on the man who has
minutely searched into the subject, and been led to
an opposite conclusion. There are few things more
disgusting to an enlightened mind than to see a num-
ber of men, a mob, whether learned or illiterate,
who have never scrutinized the foundation of their
opinions, assailing with contumely an individual,
who, after the labour of research and reflection,
has adopted different sentiments from theirs, and
pluming themselves on the notion of superior virtue,

7* "

78 ON THE EVIL CONSEQUENCES OF THE

because their understandings have been tenacious
of prejudice.*

This conduct is the more remarkable, as on every
side we meet with the admission, that belief is not
dependent on the will ; and yet the same men, by
whom this admission is readily niade, will argue and
inveigh on the virtual assumption of the contrary.

This is a striking proof, amongst a multitude of
others, of what the thinking mind must have fre-
quently observed, that a principle is often retained
in its applications, long after it has been discarded
as an abstract proposition. In a subject of so much
importance, however, it behoves intelligent men
to be rigidly consistent. If our opinions are not
voluntary, but independent of the will, the contrary
doctrine and all its consequences ought to be prac-
tically abandoned ; they ought to be weeded from
the sentiments, habits, and institutions of society.
We may venture to assert, that neither the virtue
nor the happiness of man will ever be placed on a
perfectly firm basis, till this fundamental error has
been extirpated from the human mind.

* See Note D.

ESSAY

ON THE

PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS.

ESSAY II

ON

THE PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS.

SECTION I.
INTRODUCTION.

ft has been shown in the preceding essay, that
belief is an involuntary act or state of the under-
standing, which cannot be affected by rewards and
punishments ; and that, consequently, opinions are
not the proper subjects of legislation. The pub-
lication of opinions, however, being a voluntary
act, the propriety or impropriety of interfering
with it must be determined by other principles.
The advocates of restraint on the freedom of public
discussion, renouncing the criminality of opinions
as a ground of legislative enactments, may be con-
ceived as urging the following arguments.

" The formation of opinions may not depend on
the will ; but the communication of them being
voluntary, it is surely wise to prevent the dissemi-

82 INTRODUCTION.

nation of such as have an injurious tendency, which
can be effected only by attaching a punishment to
it. In the same way that we are justified in re-
straining the liberty of a man who arrives from a
country infected with the plague, by making him
perform quarantine, we are justified in restraining
the liberty of every man who entertains opinions
of an evil tendency, by requiring him to keep them
to himself. And as in the former case it is neces-
sary to punish him who breaks through so salutary
a restraint, so it is in the latter. This is all for which
we contend. In either case there may be no cri-
minality attaching to the individual, on account of
his body or his mind being the seat of a noxious
principle ; but the community has a right to impose
upon him whatever regulations are necessary^ to
prevent its diffusion, and to inflict a penalty on the
transgression of regulations so imposed."

That the general principle involved in this rea-
soning is correct there can be no doubt. A society
has a perfect right to adopt such regulations, for
its own government, as have a preponderance of
advantages. Utility, therefore, in the most com-
prehensive acceptation of the term, is the test by
which every institution, every law, and every
course of action must be tried. Restrictions of any
kind must be acknowledged to be proper, if, taking
in the whole of their consequences, they can be
proved to be beneficial to the community, although
they may be directed against actions involving no

INTRODUCTION. 83

moral turpitude. The only point is to establish (/5
their beneficial tendency. The laws of quarantine
furnish a good illustration of the general principle,
but do not form a case at all analogous to that of
restrictions on the publication of opinions. To ren-
der the cases parallel, it would be necessary to sup-
pose the phenomena of the human constitution to
be different from what they are ; that health was of
a communicable nature, and could be imported
into a country as well as disease, and that no regu-
lations could be devised to admit the one without
the other.

In this case, if the people were already afflicted
with various disorders, and if it could be proved
that the salubrious would on the whole preponde- * '
rate over the noxious conta«;ion, it is evident, that
any restraints imposed with a view to prevent the
importation of disease, would debar the nation from
a positive accession to their stock of health.

It is a similar effect to this, which, we shall en-
deavour to show, would ensue from restraints
on the publication of opinions. Trutli and error,
in the one case, are as much intermixed, and as in-
separable by human regulations, as health and dis-
ease would be in the other: they can only be
admitted and excluded together ; and, of the two,
there are the strongest grounds for" believing that
the former must greatly prevail and finally triumph.
Restrictions, therefore, on the publication of any
opinions, would retard the advancement and dis-

84 INTRODUCTION.

*^ \ semination of truth as much as any precautionary
laws, under the circumstances supposed, would im-
pede the propagation of health. These views it
will be the aim of the following pages to illustrate.
But as it may be questioned whether the happiness
of mankind is promoted by truth and injured by
error, a position on which the whole argument
depends, it will be necessary to offer a few prelimi-
nary considerations in support of that important
doctrine. After endeavouring to establish the con-
clusion, that the attainment of truth ought to be the
sole object of all regulations affecting the publica-
tion of opinions, because error is injurious ; we shall
proceed to show, that the extrication of mankind
Q^/A*-''^ from error will be most readily and effectually ac-
^'^f^^^^^'"^^^^ complished by perfect freedom of discussion ; ^at to
check inquiry and attempt to regulate the progress
and direction of opinions, by proscriptions and penal-
ties, is to disturb the order of nature, and is analo-
gous, in its mischievous tendency, to the system of
forcing the capital and industry of the community
into channels, which they would never sponta-
neously seek, instead of suffering private interest to
direct them to their most profitable employment.

SECTION IL

ON THE MISCHIEFS OF ERROR AND THE ADVANTAGES

OF TRUTH.

Our inquiry into the mischiefs of error and the
advantages of truth may be simphfied by laying
aside the sciences which have a reference to the
material world ; as no one will be found to doubt,
that mistakes in physical knowledge must be injuri-
ous, and their overthrow beneficial. Or supposing
that errors in tbftse sciences may exist, without af-
fecting the ha{)piness*of man, it is unquestionable,
that the detection of such errors must also be harm-
less ; and it will scarcely be contested, that the
utility of these departments of knowledge must con-
sist in the truth of their principles and the justness'
of their application.

We may, therefore, limit our inquiry to the ef-
fects of truth in those sciences which treat of the
powers, conduct, character, and condition of intel-
ligent beings. The ultimate problem to be solved
in all these sciences is, what is most conducive to
the real happiness of mankind. Amidst the innu-
merable questions in theology, metaphysics, morals,

8

86 ON THE MISCHIEFS OF ERROR

and politics, it may not always be easy to discern,
that to solve this problem is their final and their
only rational aim: but it is, in reality, on the suc-
cess with which they point out the true path of
happiness, that their whole value depends, beyond
what they possess as an exercise for the faculties,
in common with a game at chess or a scholastic
disputation, and what belongs to them as sources of
sublime and pleasurable emotion, in common with
the fictions of the poet and the painter. What is
theology, but a comprehensive examination into the
course of action and condition of mind, which will
please the Being who has the fate of mankind in
his hands ? What is metaphysics, but an inquiry
into the nature of man, the extent of his faculties,
his relations to the existences around him, and the
bearing of all these on his condition? What is the
science of morals, but an endeavour to find out
what conducF will ultimately tend to his felicity?
And what is that of politics, but a similar attempt
to discover what public measures will promote the
same end ?

If the object of all these sciences is to inquire,
what is most conducive to the happiness of man-
kind, and if their value is proportioned to the
success of that inquiry, error must of course be per-
nicious, or, on the most favourable supposition,
useless. This proposition is, indeed, implied in
the terms used. That we should be benefited by

AND ADVANTAGES OF TRUTH. 87

mistakes relative to the means of obtaining hap-
piness is as palpable an absurdity as can be con-
ceived.

In these moral inquiries, then, the nearer man-
kind approach to truth, the happier they will be,
the better will they be able to avoid what is inju-
rious, and adopt measures of positive utility. All
errors must be deviations from the path of real
good ; and whether they tend to give man too high
or too low an opinion of his nature and destiny, to
fill his mind with fancied relations which do not
exist, or destroy his belief in those which are in
being ; whether they give him mistaken ideas of
moral obligation, or impose a wrong standard of
moral conduct ; whether they mislead him in his
social or in his political measures, they are alike
detrimental, although they may ^differ in the degree
of their mischievous tendency. In a word, what-
ever is the real condition, nature, and destination
of man, it is important for him to know the truth,
that his conduct may be regulated accordingly, that
his efforts after happiness may be properly directed,
that he may be the sport of neither delusive hopes
nor groundless fears, that he may not sink under
remediable evils, nor lose attainable good.

To argue that truth is not beneficial, is to contend

Lthat it is useless to know the direct road to the
place which is the object of our journey ; to affirm
that error is not injurious, is to advocate the harm-

88 ON THE MISCHIEFS OF ERROR

lessness or the advantages of wandering in ignorance
and being led astray by deception.*

There are errors, it is true, whichmay be allowed
to produce accidental benefit, and others, which, by
supplying in some degree the place of truths, may
be the source of partial good, and the subversion of
which may be attended with temporary evil. The
discovery of truth may occasionally resemble in its
effects the invention of mechanical improvements,
which, on their first introduction, sometimes beget
injury to individuals, and even transitory inconve-
nience to society. But partial and transitory evil
can be no solid objection to the introduction of ge-
neral and permanent good. There is not the sem-
blance of a reason, why the welfare of the community
at large should be sacrificed to the advantage of a
few ; or why a small and transient injury should not
be endured for the sake of a great and lasting be-
nefit. If errors are ever useful, they are less useful
than truth, and are therefore absolute evils.t " Uti-
lity and truth are not to be divided," says Bishop
Berkeley, " the general good of mankind being the
rule or measure of moral truth. "J

* See Note E.

f En efFet le caractere distinctif de la v^rit^ est d*6tre ^gale-
ment et constamment avantageuse a tous les partis, tandis que
le mensonge, utile pour quelques instans seulement a quelques
individus, est toujours nuisible a tous les autres." — Du Marsais '
on Prejudice, as quoted in the Retrospective RevieiOy page 75.

X A Discourse addressed to Magistrates and Men in Authority.

A^D At)VANTAGES OF TRUTH. 89

With regard to the collateral advantages of the
various branches of knowledge, consisting in the
improvement of the faculties, and the pleasure
which they immediately impart, irrespective of their
ulterior usefulness, it will scarcely be necessary to
prove, that truth cannot be inimical to either. It
will be admitted, at least, that the efficiency of any
science in improving the powers of the mind can
borrow nothing from its incorrectness; and we may,
therefore, pass on to the second collateral advan-
tage, and inquire whether error can be superior to
truth as a source of immediate gratification.

Plausible and erroneous theories may be admitted,
in some cases, to impart a pleasure to the mind,
while they impose themselves upon it as true, equal
to that which can be derived from the most accurate
speculations ; but if they sometimes confer an equal
they cannot in general be supposed to confer a
superior pleasure. If we allow that the hypothesis
of Descartes imparted ideas and emotions to the
astronomers of those days nowise inferior in point
of interest and sublimity to those excited, at a later
period, by the discoveries of Newton, it is the
utmost limit of supposition, and we have not the
shadow of a reason for giving the superiority to the
former. On the contrary, unless we choose to
suppose, that the chimeras of man's imagination are
better calculated to excite pleasure and admiration
than the real order and constitution of nature, we
must admit, that every discovery of her laws, every

8*

90 ON THE MISCHIEFS OF ERROR

detection of error, and every advance in true know-
ledge, must have a tendency to exalt our sources of
enjoyment. In the physical sciences, at least, we
may take it for granted, that error cannot bring a
real increase of pleasure ; but in religion, morals,
metaphysics, and politics, may not there be pleasant
delusions ; falsehoods, which delight while they do
no harm ; dreams, the scene of which is placed
beyond the reach of earthly changes, and which,
as they are not assailable by time, may be cherished
without the risk of being destroyed, and without
any possible train of pernicious consequences ; and
may not these delusions bestow consolation and hap-
piness superior to the cold realities of truth ? May
not the benevolent mind derive more gratification
from extravagant expectations of the extinction of
vice and misery, and the perfectibility of man, than
from juster views of the constitution of human na-
ture ? And may not the enthusiast extract from his
dreams of beatitude more real enjoyment, a greater
sum of pleasurable emotion, than the rigid reasoner
from more probable anticipations ? Since the human
mind is so constituted as to be capable of connect-
ing its happiness with almost any opinions, a man
may certainly derive considerable pleasure from
such delusions as these, and suffer pain from their
destruction ;* yet it may be doubted whether, in

• On this point every one will agree with Lord Bacon :
*' Doth any man doubt," he asks, " that if there were taken out

AND ADVANTAGES OF TRUTH. 91

general, juster speculations would not have afforded
equal, and even superior gratification, had he ori-
ginally formed them. But granting the contrary,
in its utmost extent, it could happen only in the
case of a few individnals. Men are so engaged with
the objects immediately around them, that mere
visionary notions of this sort could never be a com-
mon and abundant source of enjoyment ; or, at least,
could never possess any superiority in that character
over sober and rational views ; and if they were
formed on insufficient grounds, as by the supposition
they must be, that insufficiency would be liable
occasionally to appear and throw the mind into
doubt. So that, regarded even in this aspect, truth
is the only sure and stable basis of happiness. But
all the direct pleasure, which such delusions, how
flattering soever to the imagination, could afford,

of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations,
imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the
minds of a number of men poor, shrunken things, full of melan-
choly and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?" — Essay
on Truth. His lordship, however, although he thus strongly
portrays the disagreeable effects which would follow the de-
struction of these " baseless fabrics," is not to be considered as
contending that they are a positive good, for in another passage
he expressly marks their evil tendency. " How many things
are there," he exclaims, " which we imagine not ! How many
things do we esteem and value otherwise than they are ! This
ill-proportioned estimation, these vain imaginations, these be
the clouds of error that turn into the storms of perturbation." —
In Praise of Knowledge.

92 ON THE MISCHIEFS OF ERROR

would be no compensation for the ultimate evils
attendant upon them. None of the dreams of en-
thusiasm are destitute of some bearing on practice.
However remote they may appear from the present
scene, and from the conduct of Ufe, inferences will
not fail to be drawn and applied from one to the
other. These sanguine creations, and celestial
visions, will be linked to the business of the world
in the same way that the motions of the heavenly
bodies, which were at first matters of mere curiosity
to a few shepherds, were soon connected by the ima-
ginations of men with human affairs, and rendered
subservient to gross and wretched superstitions.
The influence of delusions will be always detrimen-
tal to happiness, inasmuch as they have a tendency
to withdraw men's attention from those subjects in
which their welfare is really implicated, and lead
to eccentric modes of action, incompatible with the
regular and beneficial course of duty and discretion.
They are liable, too, to be exalted into sacred
articles of faith, and to swell into an imaginary im-
portance, which rouses all the energy of the passions
in their support. It is thus that discord and dissen-
sion, intolerance and persecution, have sometimes
been the bitter fruits of what was, at first, an ap-
parently harmless and improbable dream. Nor is
it to be forgotten, that delusions of this kind could
never prevail without some weakness of under-
standing or imperfection of knowledge, incompatible
with a thorough insight into the means of happiness,

AND ADVANTAGES OF TRUTH.

93

and therefore inconsistent with the highest state of
felicity. A belief in them would necessarily involve
logical errors, the consequences of which could not
be confined to a single subject, but would extend
themselves to others, where they might be highly
injurious. The same fallacious principles, which
deluded mankind on one occasion, with perhaps
little detriment, would carry them from the direct
path of their real interest, in affairs where such
aberrations might be of vital importance.

SECTION III.

CONTINUATION OF THE SAME SUBJECT.

A doubt may, perhaps, be raised, whether the
conclusions, which we have attempted to establish,
as to the advantages of truth, are corroborated by
the actual state of facts and the experience of man-
kind : whether error has in reality been found
replete with such evils as theoretical deductions
lead us to suppose.

• Reasoning on the passions and principles of the
human mind, perceiving its power of accommoda-
tion to circumstances, and how much man's real
felicity depends on his peculiar temper and conduct,
as well as on other causes which spring up and
expire with himself; comparing various ages and
nations under different laws, customs, and religious
institutions, and seeing in all the same round of
business and pleasure, the same passions, the same
hilarity in youth and sobriety in manhood, the same
ardour of love between the sexes, the same attach-
ment among friends, the same pursuit of wealth,
power, and reputation, the same dissensions, the
same crimes, and the same scenes of affliction, dis-
ease, and death ; the philosopher may be induced to

ADVANTAGES OF TRUTH. 95

conclude, that, amidst the operation of so many
principles, the state of opinions can have but a feeble
influence on the happiness of private life. He may
be ready to exclaim with the poet,

" How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure !"*

And, extending the remark to moral science, con-
clude, that beyond the circle of common knowledge
which is forced on every mind, truth and error can
be of importance only to speculative men ; that it
is of little moment what opinions prevail, while the
results, on a comprehensive estimate, are so nearly
similar and equal.

But, if he reason thus, he will overlook a thou-
sand points at which the state of moral, theologi-
cal, and political opinions, touches on public wel-
fare and private happiness. Knowledge of truth is
essential to correctness of practice ; and this is
true, not only of individuals, but of communities.
The prevalence of error may, therefore, be expect-
ed to manifest itself in absurd and pernicious prac-
tices and institutions ; and we have only to look
into the history of superstition and barbarism, to
see its effects on the happiness of private life. Al-
though that happiness may essentially depend on
the qualities of individuals and their peculiar cir-
cumstances, is it of no importance that it should

* Goldsmith.

96 ON THE MISCHIEFS OF ERROR

be secured from the violent interference of others ?
that even the chances of evil should be lessened ?
Is it no advantage to be free from the gloomy fears
of superstition, to be absolved from the burden of
fanatical rites, from absurd and mischievous in-
stitutions, from oppressive laws, and from a state
of society in which unmeaning ceremonies are sub-
stituted for the duties of virtue? Are unrestrained
liberty of innocent action, and security of property
and existence, worthless ? Is it nothing to be re-
moved from the risk of the dungeon and the stake,
for the conscientious profession of opinions ; to be
rid of the alternative of the scaffold on the one
hand, and, on the other, the sacrifice of conscience
and honour?

These are all causes by which the train of events
constituting a man's life is evidently liable to be
modified. They have a material share in shaping
the circumstances of the individual, and even en-
ter largely into the formation of his character ; so
that even those features of his condition, which
appear the most remote from such an influence,
often derive their complexion from it. And what
is it, that has extirpated these barbarities and pro-
duced these benefits but the progress of truth, the
discovery of the real nature and tendencies of such
practices and institutions ? Let him that is scepti-
cal as to the vast importance of truth, cast his eye
down the long catalogue of crimes and cruelties
which stain the annals of the past, and examine the

AND ADVANTAGES OP TRUTH. 97

melioration which has taken place in the practices
of the world, and he will not again inquire into the
nature of those advantages which follow the de-
struction of error. All the liberality of thinking
which now prevails, the spirit of resistance to ty-
ranny, the contempt of priestcraft, the comparative
rarity and mildness of religious persecution, the
mitigation of national prejudices, the disappearance
of a number of mischievous superstitions, the aboli-
tion of superfluous, absurd, and sanguinary laws,
are so many exemplifications of the benefits result-
ing from the progress of moral and political truth.
They are triumphs, all of them, over established
error, and imply, respectively, either the removal
of a source of misery, or a positive addition to the
sources of happiness. It is impossible for a mo-
ment to imagine, that if moral and political science
had been thoroughly understood, the barbarities
here noticed would have existed. A pernicious
custom or an absurd law can never long prevail
amidst a complete and universal appreciation of
its character.

The science of political economy, that noble
creation of modern times, throws the strongest
lights on the extent to which the welfare of man-
kind may be affected by fallacious prejudices and
I false conclusions in national policy. To pass over
the evils of restrictions on the commercial inter-
course of nations, from blind jealousy and absurd
rivalship, the barriers every where opposed to the

98 ON THE MISCHIEFS OF ERROR

free exercise of industry, and the shackles by
which enterprise has universally been crippled ;
we have only to appeal to the principles on which
governments have regulated the circulating medium
of their respective countries (more especially our
own) to show the vast influence, which an appa-
rently slight mistake may possess on the transac-
tions and the condition of millions of the human
race.

In the science of morals, the operation of a
wrong speculative principle on society cannot, per-
haps, be more strongly exemplified, than in the
consequences of the particular error which formed
a principal topic of the preceding essay. The
most cursory glance at the history of persecution
is sufficient to discover, that intolerance never could
have existed in such intensity had it not been for
the almost universal prevalence of the notion, that
guilt might be incurred by opinions. In various
ages and countries, deviations from the received
faith have been looked upon, by the community at
large, with more abhorrence than the most criminal
actions ; and the consequence of this has been the
perpetration of cruelties at which modern civiliza-
tion shudders with horror. Let those, who con-
tend that speculative error can have but little
influence on the happiness of private life, reflect
a moment on the numbers of innocent and con-
scientious victims who have been destroyed by the
Inquisition. It cannot surely be supposed, that

AND ADVANTAGES OF TRUTH. 99

these persecutions would ever have taken place,
had the people at large been clearly convinced
of the truth, that belief is an involuntary and
therefore a guiltless slate of the mind ; or, in other
words, had they not laboured under the delusion,
that opinions are the proper objects of punish-
ment. Persecution would be necessarilv exter-
minated in any nation which universally felt its
injustice and absurdity. The moral sympathies of
mankind, which had been perverted by false no-
tions, would resume their natural direction, and
would never suffer punishment to fall upon those,
who, in the apprehension of all, had been guilty
of no crime. What else but the general preva-
lence of the error already mentioned, could have in-
duced men, otherwise uninterested, to witness with
tameness, nay, even with satisfaction and delight,
the most detestable barbarities inflicted by religi-
ous zeal ? We are told, that in Spain and Portu-
gal the spectators, who crowded to the executions
for heresy, frequently testified extravagant joy.
Even ladies would laugh and exult over the vic-
tims who were slowly consuming at the stake. Jn
reviewing such scenes, we are pained to think how
awfully mankind may be deluded, how their saga-
city may be blinded, their sense of justice extin-
guished, their best feelings subverted, by fallacies
of judgment ; and we become ready to question,
whether even vice itself ever produced half the
evils of false notions and mistaken views.

100 ON THE MISCHIEFS OF ERROR, ikc,

" The observer must be blind indeed," says
an elegant author and enlightened philosopher,
" who does not perceive the vastness of the scale
on which speculative principles, both right and
wrong, have operated upon the present condition
of mankind ; or who does not now feel and ac-
knowledge how deeply the morals and the happi-
ness of private life, as well as the order of political
society, are involved in the final issue of the contest
between true and false philosophy."*

* Dugald Stewart's Philosophical Essays, page 67.

SECTION IV.

ON FREEDOM OF DISCUSSION AS THE MEANS OF AT-
TAINING TRUTH.

The considerations offered in the preceding sec-
tion are sufficient to show the extreme importance
of just principles, and that mankind can never err
in their speculative views without endangering
their real welfare^ It follows, as a necessary con-
sequence, that the sole end of inquiry ought to be,
not the support of any particular doctrines, but the
attainment of truth, whatever may be the result to
established systems. If, indeed, we admit the per-
niciousness of error, it is impossible to maintain any
other object with even the appearance of reason.
It is the sacred principle from which we ought
never to swerve.* The inquiry, how truth is to
be attained, becomes, therefore, in the highest de-
gree interesting and important.

Nothing more, it is manifest, would be required
for the destruction of error than some fixed and in-

* The reader will find some excellent remarks on the sub-
ject of this section in Paley's Principles of Moral and Political
Philosophy. See the chapter on Toleration.

9*

102 ON FREEDOM OF DISCUSSION AS

variable standard of truth, which could be at once
appealed to and be decisive of every controversy
to the satisfaction of all mankind ; but that no such
standard exists, the slightest consideration will be
sufficient to evince. If it be asserted, that on
points of religion the sacred writings are such a
standard, it may be urged in reply, that this is only
an apparent exception ; for, in the first place, we
have no standard by which the authenticity of those
writings can be determined beyond all liability to
dispute ; and, in the second place, supposing we
had a test of this nature, or that the authenticity of
the Scriptures was too evident to admit of the least
doubt from the most perverse understanding, yet
we have no decisive standard of interpretation.

Neither can we discover a standard of truth in
the opinions of the majority of mankind, otherwise
we might ascertain all truth by the simple process
of counting votes. The majority of mankind are
seldom free from error; they have often held
opinions the most absurd, and at different times
have entertained contradictory propositions.

It would be equally vain to look for a standard
of truth in the judgment of any particular class of
human beings. No rank, no office, no privileges,
no attainments in wisdom or science, can be a se-
curity from error. Bodies of men, who have
assumed infallibility, have, hitherto, always been
mistaken.

Since, then, we have no fixed standard by which

THE MEANS OP ATTAINING TRUTH. 103

we can in all cases try the validity of opinions, as
we can measure time and space ; since we have no
oracles of indisputable authenticity, or at least of
incontrovertible meaning ; since we cannot ascer-
tain truth by putting opinions to the vote, nor by
an appeal to any class or order of men, how are
we to attain it, or by what means escape from
error ?

Although we ha^ye no absolute. testjofJruth, yet
we have faculties to discern it, and it is only by the
unrestrained exercise of those faculties that we can
hope to attain correct opinions. Our success in
every subject will essentially depend on the com-
pleteness of the examination. But no individual
mind is so acute and comprehensive, so free from
passion and prejudice, and placed in such favour-
able circumstances, as in any complex question to
see all the possible arguments on both sides in their
full force. Hence the co-operation of various
minds becomes indispensably requisite. The greater
the number of inquirers, the greater the probability
of a successful result. Some will come to the in-
quiry under circumstances peculiarly favourable to
success, some with faculties capable of penetrating
where less acute ones fail, and some disengaged
from passions and prejudices with which others are
encumbered. While one directs his scrutiny to a
particular view of the subject, another will regard

I it in a different aspect, a third will see it from a
position inaccessible to his predecessors ; and, by

!04 ON FREEDOM OF DISCUSSION AS

the comparison and collision of opinions, truth will
be separated from error and emerge from obscurity.
If attainable by human faculties, it must by such a
process be ultimately evolved.

The way, then, to obtain this result is to permit
all to be said on a subject that can be said. All
error is the consequence of narrow and partial views,
and can be removed only by having a question pre-
sented in all its possible bearings, or, in other words,
by unlimited discussion. Where there is perfect
freedom of examination, there is the greatest pro-
bability which it is possible to have that the truth
will be ultimately attained. To impose the least
restraint is to diminish this probability. It is to de-
clare that we will not take into consideration all the
possible arguments which can be presented, but
that we will form our opinions on partial views. It
is, therefore, to increase the probability of error.
Nor need we, under the utmost freedom of discus-
sion, be in any fear of an inundation of crude and
preposterous speculations. All such will meet with
a proper and effectual check in the neglect or ridi-
cule of the public : none will have much influence
but those which possess the plausibility bestowed
by a considerable admixture of truth, and which it
is of importance should appear, that, amidst the
contention of controversy, what is true may be se-
parated from what is false.*

* See Note F.

THE MEANS OF ATTAINING TRUTH. 105

The objection, that the plan of unlimited discus-
sion would introduce a multiplicity of erroneous
speculations, is in reality directed against the very
means of attaining the end. Though error is an
absolute evil, it is frequently necessary to go through
it to arrive at truth ; as a man, to ascertain the
nearest road from one place to another, may be ob-
liged to make frequent deviations from the direct
line. In the physical sciences through how many
errors has the path to truth frequently lain ! What
would have been the present state of knowledge, if
no step had been hazarded without a perfect assur-
ance of being right ? Even the ideal theory of
Berkeley and the scepticism of Hume have had their
use in establishing human science on its just found-
ation.* We are midway in the stream of ignorance
and error ; and it is a poor argument against an at-
tempt to reach the shore, that every step will be a
plunge into the very element from which we are
anxious to escape. Mankind, it is obvious, are not
endowed with faculties to possess themselves at
once of correct opinions on all subjects. On many
questions they must expend painful and persevering
efforts ; they must often be mistaken, and often be
set right, before they completely succeed. To stop
them at any point in their career, to erect a barrier,
and say, thus far your inquiries have proceeded, but
here they must terminate, can scarcely fail to fix

* See Note G.

106 ON FREEDOM OF DISCUSSION, &LC,

them in the midst of some error. It is prejudging
all future efforts and all future opportunities of dis-
covery, without a knowledge of their nature and
extent. It is proclaiming, that whatever events
may hereafter take place, whatever new princi-
ples may be evolved, whatever established falla-
cies may be exploded, how much soever the methods
of investigating truth may be enlarged and enhanced
in efficacy, and how gigantic soever may be the
progress of the human mind in other departments of
knowledge ; yet no application of any of these im-
provements and discoveries shall be made to cer-
tain particular subjects, which shall be as fixed
spots, immoveable stations, amidst all the vicissi-
tudes and advancement of science.

y

SECTION y.

ON THE ASSUMrXIONS INVOLVED IN ALL RESTRAINTS ON
THE PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS.

The arguments adduced in the last section have
brought us to the conclusion, that unrestrained free-
dom of inquiry is the only, or at least the best and
readiest way, of arriving at correct opinions. It
may deserve a little attention, in the next place, to
investigate the grounds on which all restrictions, if
they are honestly intended for the benefit of the
community, must proceed. They must evidently
be founded, either on the position that the preva-
lence of truth would be productive of pernicious
consequences, or, admitting its good consequences,
on the positions, first, that truth has been attained,
and secondly, that, having been attained, it stands
in need of the protection and assistance of power in
its contest with error.

That the prevalence of truth would contribute to
the happiness of man has already been enforced at
some length ; and in showing that there is no fixed
standard or positive test of truth, we have, perhaps,
sufficiently exposed the presumption of assuming,
that truth has been infallibly attained. Nothing, in

108 ON RESTRAINTS ON THE

fact, could justify such an assumption but the pos-
session of faculties not liable to mistake, or such
palpable evidence on a subject as would render all
restraints perfectly superfluous and absurd. The
most thorough conviction of the truth of any opi-
nions is far from being a proof of their correctness,
or the slightest justification of any attempt at the
forcible suppression of contrary sentiments. Had
our predecessors, who were equally convinced of
the truth of their tenets, succeeded in stifling inves-
tigation, the world would have been still immersed
in the darkness of superstition, and bound as fast as
ever by the fetters of prejudice. They felt them-
selves, nevertheless, as firmly in the right as the
present age can possibly feel, and were equally jus-
tified in acts of intolerance and persecution. Amidst
the overwhelming proof afforded by the annals of
the past, that mankind are continually liable to be
deceived in their strongest convictions, it is a pre-
posterous and unpardonable presumption, in any
man, to set up the firmness of his own belief as an
absolute criterion of truth.*

Every one must of course think his own opi-
nions right ; for if he thought them wrong, they
would no longer be his opinions : but there is a wide
difference between regarding ourselves as infallible,
and being firmly convinced of the truth of our creed.
When a man reflects on any particular doctrine, he
may be impressed with a thorough conviction of

* See Note H.

PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS. 109

the improbability, or even impossibility of its being
false : and so he may feel with regard to all his other
opinions when he makes them objects of separate
contemplations. And yet, when he views them in
the aggregate, when he reflects that not a single
being on the earth holds collectively the same, when
he looks at the past history and present state of
mankind, and observes the various creeds of different
ages and nations, the peculiar modes of thinking of
sects, and bodies, and individuals, the notions once
firmly held which have been exploded, the preju-
dices once universally prevalent which have been
removed, and the endless controversies which have
distracted those who have made it the business of
their lives to arrive at the truth ; and when he fur-
ther dwells on the consideration, that many of these
his fellow creatures have had a conviction of the
justness of their respective sentiments equal to his
own, he cannot help the obvious inference, that in
his own opinions it is next to impossible that there
is not an admixture of error; that there is an infi-
nitely greater probability of his being wrong in some
than right in all.

Every man of common sense and common can-
dour, although he may have no suspicion where his
mistakes lie, must have this general suspicion of his
own falHbility ; and, if he act consistently, he will
not seek to suppress opinions by force, because in
in so doing he might be at once lending support to
error, and destroying the only means of its detec-

10

110 ON RESTRAINTS ON THE

tion. In endeavouring to spread his opinions, and
to suppress all others by the arm of power, the ut-
most success would have no tendency to lay open
the least of those mistakes which had insinuated
themselves into his creed ; but in propagating his
opinions by arguments, by appeals to the discrimi-
nation of his fellow men, he would be contributing
alike to the detection of his own errors, and to the
overthrow of those of his antagonists.

It remains to consider, in the next place, the
assumption, implied in all restrictions on inquiry,
that truth, in its contest with error, stands in need
of the protection of human authority.

Men have long since found out how ridiculous is
the interferenceof authority in physical and mathe-
matical science ; when will they learn to smile at its
officious and impotent attempts at the protection of
truth in moral and political inquiries? The doctrine,
that, under perfect freedom of discussion, falsehood
would ultimately prevail, virtually implies the hu-
man faculties to be so constituted, as, all other things
being the same, to cleave to error rather than to
truth; in which case the pursuit of knowledge would
be folly, since every step and every effort would
carry us farther from our object. But the supposi-
tion of the ultimate triumph of falsehood is a fallacy
disproved by the experience of mankind. Error
may subvert error, one false doctrine may super-
sede another, and truth may be long undiscovered,
and make its way slowly against the tide of preju-

PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS. Ill

dice ; but that it has not only the power of over-
coming its antagonist in equal circumstances, but
also of surmounting every intellectual obstacle, every
impediment but mere brute force, is proved by the
general advancement of knowledge. If we trace the
history of any science, we shall find it a record of
mistakes and misconceptions, a narrative of misdi-
rected and often fruitless efforts ; yet if amidst all
these the science has made a progress, the struggles
through which it has passed, far from evincing that
the human mind is prone to error rather than to
truth, furnish a decisive proof of the contrary, and
an illustration of the fact, that, in the actual condi-
tion of humanity, mistakes are the necessary instru-
ments by which truth is brought to light, or, at least,
indispensable conditions of the process.

No one, perhaps, in the present day, although he
might be the advocate of restraints on the discussion
of theological and political topics, would be hardy
enough to contest the justness of this remark, or
contend for the utility of restrictions in mathematical
and physical science : and yet, in this respect, all the
various departments of knowledge stand on the same
ground. Let those who think otherwise show us
the distinctive charJicteristics which render it
proper and expedient to shackle the discussion of
particular topics, while every other subject is aban-

Idoned, without fear or precaution, alike to the
conflicting play of the acutest intellects, and to the
blunders of ignorance and imbecility.

■ft-

1 12 ON RESTRAINTS ON THE

What, however, we have to prove on the present
occasion, is not that truth if left to its own energy
will tinally triumph over prevailing error, but the
less questionable position, that novel errors are not
y capable of overturning truths already established.
• ,/ The exercise of authority is, of course, always in
support of established opinions ; and since to be
justifiable it must proceed on the assumption of their
freedom from error, all that is necessary for our
purpose is to show, that if they are as true as they
are assumed to be, they cannot be subverted by the
utmost latitude of discussion.

If they are true, then is there the highest proba-
bility, that every fresh examination to which they
may be subjected will terminate in placing them in
a clearer light; because every argument levelled
against them must involve some fallacy which is
liable to detection, and the exposure of which will
tend to propagate and confirm them. The only
cause why any opinions need to apprehend the
touch of discussion is, that there is a certain process
of reasoning by which they may be proved to be
wrong, and the discovery of which may result from
the conflict of arguments. The nature of this pre-
dicament, in which true opinions can never stand,
and all objections to them must ever remain, con-
stitutes of itself a sufficient barrier against the en-
, * croachments of falsehood, were there no other to be
found in the fixed habits and dispositions of the com-
munity. It is a work of difficulty to overturn even

PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS^ 113

established error, because the interests, passions,
and prejudices of so many are engaged in its sup-
port, and long resist the strongest arguments and the
clearest demonstration : why then need we fear the
overthrow of established truth by the utmost license
of discussion, when not only prescription, interest,
prejudice, and passion, are in its favour, but the
powerful alliance of reason itself?

In stating the grounds on which all restrictions
must proceed, we limited our remarks to restrictions
honestly intended for the benefit of the community,
because no others can be openly maintained ; and
whatever may be the real motives of those who im-
pose or advocate them, the good of the public must
be their ostensible aim. It is obvious, however, that
restraints of this kind much more frequently owe
their origin to the selfish fears and purposes of part
of the community, than to just and liberal intentions
with regard to the whole. Established opinions arc
so interwoven with the interests of individuals, that
the subversion of one often threatens the ruin of the
other. Hence the energy which strains every nerve
in their support, and hence much of the rancour
with which the slightest deviation is pursued.

10*

SECTION VI.

ON THE FREE PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS AS AFFECTING
THE PEOPLE AT LARGE.

We now come to a question naturally springing
out of the present subject, and of no mean import-
ance. It may be urged, that, granting the justness
of the observations in the preceding chapter, there
are other considerations of too momentous a nature
to be overlooked. Free discussion may be the best
means of promoting the progress of truth ; but is the
unbounded license of disseminating all opinions the
best way of propagating truth amongst those who
may be presumed, from their situation in life, to be
incompetent to judge for themselves ? Would it not
be wise to interpose some restraint to prevent the
poor and the ignorant from being deluded from false-
hood?

There are several strong reasons why any restric-
tions, imposed with a view to guard the lower classes
from error, would prove abortive, and even inju-
rious. All restraints of this kind, would imply, on
the part of those who imposed them, that they them-
selves could infallibly determine what was true and
what was false. But it is plain, as we have already

PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS. 115

"remarked, that if such an assumption had always
been acted upon, authority would have been fre-
quently employed in suppressing truth and lending
assistance to error ; nor can we have better grounds
for acting upon it now than the same strong convic-
tion which clung to our predecessors. To see the
matter in its proper light, we have only for a mo-
ment to consider what would have been the state of
society in Europe, if the principle of guarding the
poor from what the established authorities regarded
as error, had been always successfully enforced. The
whole experience of mankind on this subject pro-
claims, that regulations to keep the people from
opinions which have been pronounced to be errors
by fallible men, if they could accomplish their ob-
ject, would prove the most effectual engines that
could be devised for perpetuating ignorance and
falsehood.

Were it possible, nevertheless, for any set of men
to discriminate the true nature of opinions with un-
erring accuracy, yet, in an age of improvement and
a land of liberty, they could not confine the minds
of the people to those ideas which they chose to
impart to them. Unless the lower classes were
kept in total darkness by the most intolerable des-
potism, it would be impossible to prevent them from
participating in the discussions of their superiors in
rank and knowledge. There are a thousand chan-
nels of communication which cannot be closed, and
on every controvertible subject there is a certain

116 ON THE FREE

train of doubts, difficulties, and objections, which
nothing but utter ignorance can suppress. Truths,
which have been the gradual result of inquiry and
induction, of suppositions disproved and mistakes
rectified, cannot always be introduced into the mind
without a process somewhat similar to that by which
they have been originally obtained.

Since then the poorer classes cannot be brought
to limit their enquiries to what their superiors choose
to set before them ; since doubts and difficulties will
necessarily start up in their minds, it becomes very
questionable whether, even on the supposition of
established opinions being true, more error would
not prevail under a system of restriction than
under perfect freedom of inquiry. All that autho-
rity could do in regard to contrary doctrines would
be to prohibit their open expression or promulgation ;
it would have no power to extirpate them from the
mind. Under a system of restraint, therefore, it
is probable, that a multiplicity of errors would
secretly exist ; and as they would not be allow^ed to
find public vent, they could not be refuted. They
would, consequently, bid fair to have a far more
durable and extensive prevalence than if they were
openly expressed, and exposed to the rigorous test
of general examination. It seems, indeed, an
obvious if not an unavoidable policy, rather to
encourage than repress the expression of dissent
from established notions. A government, whose
fundamental principle was the happiness of the

PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS. 117

community, would act, in this respect, like a wise
teacher, who encourages his pupils to propose the
doubts and objections to which the imperfection of
their knowledge may have given birth, and which
can be removed from their minds only when they
are known. The surest way of contracting the
empire of error, is to increase the general power of
discerning its character. In the present stage of
civilization this is, in fact, all that can be done.
The days of concealment and mystery are past.
There is now no resource but in a system of
fairness and open dealing ; no feasible mode of
preserving and propagating truth but by exalting
ignorance into knowledge.

The universal education of the poor, which no
earthly power can prevent, although it may retard
it, is loudly demanded by the united voices of the
moralist and politician. But if the people are to be
enlightened at all, it is unavailing and inconsistent
to resort to half measures and timid expedients ; to
treat them at once as men and as children ; to endow
them with the power of thinking and at the same
time to fetter its exercise ; to make an appeal to
their reason and yet to distrust its result ; to give
them the stomach of a lion and feed them with the
aliment of a lamb. The promoters of the universal
education of the poor ought to be aware, that they
are setting in motion, or at least accelerating the
action of an engine too powerful to be controlled at
their pleasure, and likely to prove fatal to all those

118 ON THE FREE

parts of their own systems, which rest not on the
sohd foundation of reahty. They ought to know,
that they are necessarily giving birth to a great deal
of doubt and investigation ; that they are under-
mining the power of prejudice, and the influence
of mere authority and prescription ; that they are
creating an immense number of keen inquirers and
original thinkers, whose intellectual force will be
turned, in the first instance, upon those subjects
which are dearest to the heart and of most im-
portance to society.

In the further prosecution of this subject, it may
be asked of the advocates of restrictive measures,
by what conceivable regulations they could guard
those from error, who w^ere not able to judge for
themselves, and at the same time secure the sub-
stantial advantages of unlimited discussion to the
rest ?

No human ingenuity could combine these two
objects. No line of demarcation could be drawn
between those who should be left to the operation
of all arguments, which could be adduced, and those
whose weakness or ignorance required the paternal
arm of authority to shield them from falsehood.
There can be no distinction made between the rich
and the poor in these cases. Not to insist upon
the fact, that many in the inferior ranks are quite as
competent to the examination of any question,
which bears upon moral or political conduct, as
many in the highest stations; it is impracticable to

PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS. Ml

devise a measure which shall exclude any particular
classes, and leave the right of free examination
unimpaired to the rest ; so that, if we were under
the necessity of allowing that some evils might
arise from admitting the poor to be a party in the
examination of a subject, it might still be contended,
that such evils would be wisely encountered for the
sake of those inestimable advantages, which follow
the progress of truth, and which can be purchased
only by liberty of public discussion, it may be
further urged, to show the importance of maintain-
ing this liberty unshackled, that the intelligence of
the lower classes, the diminution of ignorance and
error amongst them, must necessarily depend on
the general progress of knowledge. While those,
who have the best opportunities of information, are
in darkness, those, who are in inferior stations,
cannot be expected to be otherwise than propor-
tionably more so. Whatever therefore tends to
keep the former from becoming enlightened (as all
restrictions inevitably do) must have a correspond-
ing effect on the latter, or in other words, tend to
keep them in that state from which it is the professed
object of restrictions to preserve them.

It is necessary to recollect that the real question
is, not whether it is desirable that the poorer classes,
or all classes, should be preserved from error (about
which there can be no dispute at this stage of our dis-
cussion,) but whether it would be proper and expe-
dient to attempt the accomplishmeiit of that object by

120 OF THE FREE

the interposition of authority. There are many acts
which are highly injurious to society, but which we
never attempt to suppress by legal enactments,
because such a procedure would be either abortive
or pregnant with greater evils than the evils against
which it was directed. On this principle, ingrati-
tude, cruelty, treachery, incontinence, and a number
of other vices, are not touched by the laws, but left
to the natural discouragements imposed by the moral
sentiments of the community. On the same grounds,
although erroneous opinions are injurious to society,
and it would be an important benefit if their dis-
semination could be prevented, yet it would be
inexpedient to endeavour to accomplish that object
by legal restrictions. The attempt would be im-
politic, because, as we have already shown, not
only is it impossible to discriminate infallibly what
is true from what is false, so as to avoid suppressing
truth and propagating falsehood ; but all restraints
would be likely to defeat their own ends, or at all
events would never be effectual unless pushed to
the extreme of tyranny, and could not be imposed
so as to accomplish their object without impeding
the progress of knowledge.

But the people are not \e(i to the inundation of
falsehood without a remedy or protection. Re-
straints on the promulgation of opinions, even if
they were proper and expedient on the supposition
of their efficacy, and of the infallibility of those who
imposed them, seem peculiarly unnecessary, since

ON THE FREE PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS. 121

there is always a powerful means of counteracting
what we conceive to be errors. Fallacies may be
exposed, misstatements detected, absurdities ridi-
culed. These are the natural and appropriate
modes of repression ; and while they must be ulti-
mately successful amongst all classes of people,
unless the human mind is better adapted to the re-
ception of falsehood than of truth, (in which case
pursuit of knowledge would be folly,) they possess
the additional recommendation of contributing to
the detection of those fallacies which have mingled
themselves with the sentiments of the most accurate
judges. Here we have a legitimate method of dis-
seminating our tenets, in which we may indulge
without restraint, assured that whether right or
wrong we shall contribute to the ultimate triumph
of truth. In detecting falsehood and exposing it to
general observation, we are far more effectually
guarding all ranks from its influence, than by mys-
terious reserve and timorous precautions, which
are always suspected of being employed in the sup-
port of opinions not capable of standing by their
own strength.*

• See Note I.

u

SECTION VIL

ON THE ULTIMATE INEPFICACY OF RESTRAINTS ON THE
PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS, AND THEIR BAD EFFECTS IN
DISTURBING THE NATURAL COURSE OF IMPROVEMENT

«

In the present state of the world, it is question-
able, whether the progress of opinion can be much
retarded by restraint and persecution; and it is cer-
tain, that it cannot be stopped. Where the arts
and sciences are cultivated, and the press is in
operation, restrictions on particular subjects must
be in a great measure inefficacious, except in pro-
ducing irritation and violence. The various branch-
es of knowledge are so intimately connected, that it
is a vain attempt to shackle any of them while the
rest are at liberty. The general improvement of
science will inevitably throw light on any prohibited
subjects, and suggest conclusions with regard to them
which no authority can preclude from universal
adoption.

Even if restraints partially succeed in their ob-
ject, they will only retard the consummation, which
they cannot prevent ; they will only detain the com-
munity longer amidst that struggle of truth and false-
hood, which must inevitably take place. Since

INEFFICACY OF RESTRAINTS, &C. 123

there is a sort of regular process^ which must be
gone through, a course of doubts, and difficulties,
and objections, before any disputable truth can be
firmly settled in the minds of thinking men, the
sooner this is accomplished the better ; the sooner
the objections and their answers, the difficulties
and their solutions, are put on record, the greater
the number of people who will be saved from un-
certainty and from the trouble of winding through
all the intricacies of the dispute. The interference
of power cannot obviate this necessity, nor can it
prevent the operation of those general causes, which
are constantly at work on the understandings of
men, and produce certain opinions in certain states
of society and stages of civihzation. The utmost,
then, that authority can do, is to retard the action
of the general causes, to prolong the period of hesi-
tation and uncertainty, and to disturb the natural
progress of human improvement. It even some-
times happens, (as we have already had occasion to
notice,) that restrictive measures defeat their own
object, and accelerate the event they are intended
to arrest or counteract. The mere attempt to sup-
press a doctrine has often been found to disseminate
it more widely. There is a charm in secrecy, which
often attracts the public mind to proscribed opi-
nions. The curiosity roused by their being pro-
hibited, a repugnance to oppression, an undefined
suspicion, or tacit inference, that what requires the
arm of power to suppress it must have some strong

124 INEFFICACY OF RESTRAINTS ON

claims to credence, and various other circum-
stances, draw the attention of numbers, in whose
eyes the matter in controversy, had it been freely
discussed, would have been totally destitute of in-
terest. Whatever is the severity of the law, some
bold spirit every now and then sets it at defiance,
and by so doing spreads the obnoxious doctrine far
more rapidly than it would have diffused itself had
it been left unmolested.

In proportion to the inefficacy of restraints on
the publication of opinions, the objections, which
we have brought against them, would of course be
weakened or removed. If they did not succeed in
their object, they would be no impediment to the
progress of truth ; but although they should be ulti-
mately ineffectual, they would still beget positive
evils, by disturbing the natural course of improve-
ment. In a country, or community, where no such
restraints existed, it is obvious that no changes of
opinion could well be sudden. Truth, at the best,
makes but slow advances. Its light is at first con-
fined to men of high station, learning, and abilities,
and gradually spreads down to the other classes of
society. The reluctance of the human mind to re-
ceive ideas contrary to its usual habits of thinking
would be a sufficient security from violent transi-
tions, did we not already possess another in the
slowness with which the understanding makes its
discoveries. Arguments, by which prescriptive er-
ror is overturned, however plain and forcible they

THE PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS. 125

may be, are found out with difficulty, and in the
first instance can be entered into only by enlarged
and liberal minds, by whom they are subsequently
familiarized and disseminated to others.

Now all restraints on the free examination of any
subject are an interference with the natural and
regular process here described, and produce mis-
chievous irregularities. The gradual progress of
opinion cannot be stopped, but it is interrupted.
We no longer find it so insensibly progressive, that
we can hardly mark the change but by comparing
two distant periods. Under a system of restraint
and coercion, we see apparently sudden revolutions
in public sentiment. Opinions are cherished and
spread, in the secrecy of fear, till the ardour with
which they are entertained can no longer be re-
pressed, and bursts forth into outrage and disorder.
The passions become exasperated ; the natural sense
of injustice, which men will deeply feel as long as
the world lasts, at the proscription or persecution of
opinions, is roused into action, and a zeal is kindled
for the propagation of doctrines, endeared to the
heart by obloquy and sutfering.

Such ebullitions are to be feared only where the
natural operation of inquiry has been obstructed.
As in the physical so in the moral world, it is re-
pression which produces violence. Public opinion
resembles the vapour, which, in the open air, is as
harmless as the breeze, but which may be compress-
ed into an element of tremendous power. When

11*

126 INEFnCACY OF RESTRAINTS ON

novel doctrines are kept down by force, they
naturally resort to force to free themselves from
restraints. Their advocates would seldom pursue
violent measures, if such measures had not been
first directed against them. What partly contributes
to this violence is the effect produced by restraint
on the moral qualities of men's minds. Compulsory
silence, the necessity of confining to his own breast
ardently cherished opinions, can never have a good
influence on the character of any one. It has a ten-
dency to make men morose and hypocritical, dis-
contented and designing, and ready to risk much in
order to rid themselves of their trammels ; while the
liberty of uttering opinions, without obloquy and
punishment, promotes satisfaction of mind and sin-
cerity of conduct.

Jf these representations are correct, they distinctly
mark out the course of enlightened policy. Whether
established opinions are false or true, it is alike the
interest of the community, that investigation should
be unrestrained ; in order that, if false, they may be
discarded, and, if true, rendered conspicuous to all.
The only way of fully attaining the benefits of truth
is to suffer opinions to maintain themselves against
attack, or fall in the contest. The terrors of the
law are wretched replies to argument, disgraceful
to a good, and feeble auxiliaries to a bad cause. If
there was any fixed and unquestionable standard, by
which the validity of opinions could be tried, there
might be some sense, and some utility, in checking

THE PUBLICATION OF OPINIONS. 127

the extravagances of opinion by legal interference;
but since there is no other standard than the gene-
ral reason of mankind, discussion is the only method
of trying the correctness of all doctrines whatever;
and it is the highest presumption in any man, or
any body of men, to erect their own tenets into a
criterion of truth, and overwhelm dissent and op-
position by penal inflictions. Such conduct can
proceed on no principle, which would not justify all
persecutions, that disgrace the page of ecclesiastical
history. Let established opinions be defended with
the utmost power of reason ; let the learning of
schools and colleges be brought to their support ; let
elegance and taste display them in their most en-
chanting colours ; let no labour, no expense, no ar-
guments, no fascination, be spared in upholding their
authority ; but in the name of humanity resort not
to the aid of the pillory and the dungeon. When
they cannot be maintained by knowledge and rea-
son, it will surely be time to suspect, that judicial
severities will be but a feeble protection.

Whoever has attentively meditated on the pro-
gress of the human race cannot fail to discern, that
there is now a spirit of inquiry amongst men, which
nothing can stop, or even materially control. Re-
proach and obloquy, threats and persecution, will
be vain. They may embitter opposition and engen-
der violence, but they cannot abate the keenness of
research. There is a silent march of thought, which
no power can arrest, and which it is not difficult to

128 INEFPICACY or RESTRAINTS, (fec.

foresee will be marked by important events. Man-
kind were never before in the situation in which
they now stand. The press has been operating upon
them for several centuries, with an influence scarce-
ly perceptible at its commencement, but daily be-
coming more palpable, and acquiring accelerated
force. It is rousing the intellect of nations, and
happy will it be for them if there be no rash inter-
ference with the natural progress of knowledge ;
and if, by a judicious and gradual adaptation of their
institutions to the inevitable changes of opinion,
they are saved from those convulsions, which the
pride, prejudices, and obstinacy of a few may oc-
casion to the whole.*

* See Note K.

MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS.

Mr

ESSAY III.

ON

FACTS AND INFERENCES.

Dr. Reid, in that part of his Essays on the Intel-
lectual Powers where he treats of the supposed
fallacy of the senses, points out an important distinc-
tion between what our senses actually testify, and
the conclusions which we draw from their testi-
mony.

" Many things," says he, " called deceptions of
the senses, are only conclusions rashly drawn from
the testimony of the senses. In these cases the
testimony of the senses is true, but we rashly draw
a conclusion from it, which does not necessarily
follow. We are disposed to impute our errors
rather to false information than to inconclusive
reasoning, and to blame our senses for the wrong
conclusions we draw from their testimony.

" Thus," he continues, " when a man has taken a
counterfeit guinea for a true one, he says his senses
deceived him ; but he lays the blame where it
ought not to be laid : for we must ask him, did

132 ON FACTS

your senses give a false testimony of the colour, or
of the figure, or of the impression ? No. But this
is all that they testified, and this they testified truly :
from these premises you concluded that it was a
true guinea, but this conclusion does not follow ;
you erred therefore, not by relying upon the testi-
mony of sense, but by judging rashly from its
testimony."*

This confounding of facts and inferences, so
acutely exposed by Dr. Reid, is not, however, con-
fined to cases in which we have the testimony of
our own senses. The remark may be extended to
every department of knowledge which depends on
observation, for in all we are continually liable to
the same mistake. Jf we attend to the understand-
ings of the majority of mankind, we shall discover
an utter confusion in this respect. Their opinions
are a confused and indiscriminate mass, in which
facts and inferences, realities and suppositions, are
blended together, and conceived, not only as of
equal authority, but as possessing the same charac-
ter. In other words, inferences, or assumptions
from facts, are regarded as forming part of the
facts. This is particularly observable with regard
to the relation of cause and effect. That one thing
is the cause of another may be either actually wit-
nessed, or merely inferred ; the connection of two
events may be, to us, either a fact, or a conclusion

* Essays on the Intellectual Powers, page 291.

AND INFERENCES. 133

deduced from appearances ; a difference which
may be easily illustrated. For this purpose, let us
suppose the case of a stone falling from a rock, and
crushing a flower at its base. To an eye-witness,
it would be a fact, and not an inference, that the
falling of the stone was the cause of the injury sus-
tained by the flower. But suppose a man passed
by, after the rock had fallen, and, perceiving a
flower crushed and a stone near it which appeared
to be a fragment recently disjoined from the cliff's
above, pronounced, that the flower had been crush-
ed by the stone, he would not be stating a fact but
making an inference. The man, who saw the
piece of rock fall upon the flower, and crush it,
could not be mistaken ; but he who inferred the
same thing from the appearance of the cliffs and
the proximity of the stone, might be wrong, be-
cause the flower might possibly have been crushed
in some other manner. There would evidently be
an opening for error. It would be possible, for in-
stance, although it might be highly improbable,
that some person had purposely taken off a piece
from the rock, and, after crushing the flower with
his foot, had laid the stone by its side, in order to
mislead any body that came after him. If we
analyse this case, and separate the facts from the
inferences, we shall find the whole of the facts to be
these ; that a flower was crushed, that a stone lay
near it, and that the cliffs above exhibited a certain
peculiar appearance. The inferences from these

12

134 ON FACTS

facts are, that the stone fell from the cliffs and
crushed the flower in its descent. By this separa-
tion of facts and inferences we clearly see where
there is perfect certainty, and where there is a pos-
sibility of error.

There cannot be a better illustration of the mis-
takes into which a neglect of this distinction leads,
than the general opinion of the ignorant part of
mankind, that the sun revolves round the earth,
which is manifestly an inference drawn from ob-
serving that the earth and the sun change their re-
lative position. This is the whole of the fact : that
the sun makes a revolution round the earth is an
inference to account for the phenomenon ; yet so
immediately is this inference suggested, so closely
does it follow on appearances, that it is almost uni-
versally received as a matter of fact ; and a man
might as well attempt to dislodge the sun from his
position, as to displace the opinion from the mind
of one who had grown up to maturity in the belief
of it. He would probably ask, if you wished to
persuade him that he could not see, or whether it
was likely that he could acquiesce in your argu-
ments rather than the evidence of his senses.

It is this blending of facts and inferences, which
is at the bottom of the objections of mere matter-
of-fact men to the conclusions of political economy,
and of the assumptions continually made with re-,
gard to that science, that theory and experience
are at war. We may discern it in the common

AND INFERENCES. 135

prejudices against machinery for superseding ma-
nual labour. A matter-of-fact man, as soon as he
sees a number of workmen destitute of employment,
from the fluctuations incident to commerce, begins
to lament, that, in modern times, so much machi-
nery should be employed, when so many labourers
are idle, and regards it as an indisputable fact, that
the machinery has occasioned the mischief. " Do
we not see," exclaim persons of this class, " that
these machines perform operations that would re-
quire hundreds of human beings, and thereby de-
prive them of employment? Is it not clear, that if
no machines existed these idle hands would be set
to work ; and would you persuade us not to believe
our own eyes V The only facts in this case, how-
ever, are, that the machinery is in operation, and
the men are destitute of employment. That one is
the cause of the other (which may or may not be
true) is an inference to account for the state of af-
fairs ; and an inference which, though it may some-
times be just, on the first introduction of machinery,
is in general at variance with the clearest principles
of political science.

IV The utility of the distinction here pointed out is
very perceptible in all questions of national policy.
In public affairs there is commonly such a multi-
plicity of principles in operation, so many concur-
ring and counteracting circumstances, such an

1^ intermixture of design and accident, that the utmost
caution is necessary in referring events to their ori-

136 ON FACTS

gin ; while in no subject of human speculation, per-
haps, is there a greater confusion of realities and
assumptions. It is sufficient for the majority of
political reasoners, that two events are coexistent
or consecutive. To their conception it immediately
becomes a fact, that one is the cause of the other.
They see a minister in office, or an abuse in ex-
istence, or a factious demagogue at work, during
the prevalence of national distress or disorder; and
by a compendious logic they identify the minister,
or the abuse, or the demagogue, with the evil, and
make it an article in their creed, that the removal
of one would be the removal of both. The coex-
istence, however, of these two things is not sufficient
to establish their connection, and all beyond their
coexistence is inferential, and requires to be sup-
ported by proof.

We cannot more aptly elucidate this part of our
subject than by referring to the discussion of such
questions as the policy of educating the poor. To
prove the advantages of this measure, an advocate
for the diffiision of knowledge generally brings an
instance of some country where education has ex-
tensively prevailed through all ranks, and which
has at the same time been distinguished for moral
excellence. This is called an appeal to facts ; but
it is obvious, that the only facts are the coexistence
of a system of education with virtuous conduct,
and that the main force of the arguments lies, not
in a fact, but in an inference, that one is the cause

AND INFERENCES. "^^^ 137

of the other. This inference may be highly prob-
able, but it requires to be proved itself before it
can be admitted as a positive proof of any thing
else.* The same observation applies to the argu-
ments of those speculators, who begin to doubt the
advantages of the plan of education lately pursued
with the poor in England, on the ground, that im-
morality appears to increase. Assuming it to be
true, that immorality has increased since the intro-
duction of the plan, yet this by no means estabUshes
it as a fact, that one has been the effect of the other.
A careful induction of circumstances, or a clear
process of reasoning from general principles, would
be necessary to prove such a connection between
them.

The tendency to confound these two different
things is not the least remarkable in the practice of
medicine. It extensively pervades the pretended
knowledge of ignorant practitioners, and the em-
piricism of people in all ranks of life. If any par-
ticular change ensues after taking a drug, the drug
is at once assumed to be the cause of the change ;
it is immediately set down as an indisputable fact,
that such a medicine is a certain remedy for such
a complaint. It is in reality, however, one of the

* It may be added, that the proofs necessary to establish the
inference are altogether different from the proofs of the facts
themselves.

12*

138 ON FACTS

most delicate tasks, and forms one of the greatest
difficulties of medical practice, to discriminate,
amidst a complication of circumstances preceding
any effect, that particular circumstance which has
occasioned it. In no cases, perhaps, are men more
liable to err than these ; in none is patient investiga-
tion less attended to, or more necessary, and pre-
cipitancy of inference more carefully to be avoided.
In none is it of more importance to make the dis-
tinction, which it has been the object of this essay
to point out.

These remarks serve to show, what may at first
sight appear paradoxical, that those men, who are
generally designated as practical and experienced,
have often as much of the hypothetical interwoven
in their opinions as the most speculative theorists.
Half of their facts are mere inferences, rashly and
erroneously drawn. They may have no systematic
hypotheses in their minds, but they are full of as-
sumptions without being aware of it. It is impossi-
ble that men should witness simultaneous or conse-
cutive events without connecting them in their
imaginations as causes and effects. There is a con-
tinual propensity in the human mind to establish
these relations amongst the phenomena subjected to
its observation, and to consider them as possessing
the character of facts. But in doing this there is
great liability to error, and the opinions of a man,
who has formed them from whit lord Bacon calls

AND INFERENCES.

139

" mera palpatio," purely from what he has come in
personal contact with, cannot but abound with rash
and fallacious conclusions, for which he fancies
himself to have the authority of his own senses, or
of indisputable experience.

ESSAY IV

ON THE

INFLUENCE OF REASON ON THE FEELINGS.

Some philosophers have proposed, as a curious
subject of investigation, the mutual influence of the
mind and the body, and the laws which regulate
their connection. It would not perhaps be less
curious, though it would be far more difficult, to
trace the influence of the sensitive and intellectual
parts of our nature upon each other. The under-
standing is affected in various ways by the feelings
and passions ; and on the other hand the state of the
passions greatly depends on the combination of ideas
before the mind, or, in other words, on the state of
the intellect. To investigate all the laws of this
reciprocal action would require powers of close ob-
servation and acute analysis, greater than we could
hope to bring to the task. In a former essay we
touched upon the subject, in attempting to explain
the influence which the passions exert on the judg-
ments of the understanding; and we shall now offer

REASON ON THE FEELINGS. 141

a few remarks on the influence which the conclu-
sions of our reason exert on the passions.

Our speculative conclusions, it will be immedi-
ately acknowledged, have not always complete
power over our feelings ; or, in other words, our
feelings do not invariably conform to the previous
convictions of our judgment. The opinion, that we
ought to feel in a certain manner on a certain occa-
sion, is often ineffectual in producing the proper
emotion. Our view of the impropriety and absurdity
of a passion does not allay it. A man, for example,
may feel painfully vexed at some trivial circum-
stances, and although he is sensible of the folly of
suffering his tranquillity to be disturbed by a thing
of no importance, yet this consideration fails to re-
store the tone of his mind, and it would probably be
incapable of preventing the same emotion on a re-
currence of the same circumstances. Even the phi-
losopher, who from the heights of contemplation,
from the " edita doctrina sapientum templa serena,"
looks down on the vain pursuits of his fellow crea-
tures, and distinctly sees their worthlessness, and
the folly of the passions which they engender, is un-
able to resist the domination of the same influences
when he descends from his elevation and mingles
with the crowd.

This insubordination of the sensitive to the intel-
lectual part of our nature, is more particularly re-
markable in those associations of thought and feel-
ing, which we have acquired in early life. Before

142 ON THE INFLUENCE OP

we have well emerged from infancy, our moral and
intellectual constitution has been so far formed, that
certain ideas or circumstances awaken peculiar emo-
tions in the breast, with almost as much precision as
the touch of the finger elicits from the keys of a'
harpsichord their respective musical notes. In the
progress of life, however, we discover that some of
these feelings are improper and inappropriate to the
occasions on which they arise ; and yet, even after
this discovery, they still beset us whenever the same
occasions recur. Present objects awaken our dor-
mant associations, and the cool conclusions of our
reason sink forgotten from the mind. The preju-
dices of the nursery have been commonly adduced
in illustration of this principle of our mental consti-
tution. Few persons (to take a trite example) who
have been taught in their infancy to dread the ap-
pearance of ghosts in the dark, are enabled so en-
tirely to shake off their early associations, as, at all
times and in all places, to feel perfectly free from
apprehension in the dead of night, however strong
their conviction may be of the absurdity of their
fears.

We may observe the like pertinacious adherence
of feelings, at variance with our reason, in those
who are subject to the passion of mauvaise honte.
To this passion some are doubtless constitutionally
more prone than others ; but the strength of it, and
the occasions on which it is evinced, depend greatly
on the associations of ideas and feelings formed in

REASON ON THE FEELINGS. 143

early life. If a child is brought up, for instance, in
a family where receiving and paying visits are re-
garded as extraordinary events, and attended by
formality and constraint of manner, company be-
comes formidable to his imagination ; and it will
require frequent intercourse with society in after-
life to overcome the effects of such an impression.
Notwithstanding the clearest perception of the ab-
surdity of feeling embarrassed before his fellow
creatures, he will often find himself disconcerted in
their presence, and throw^n into confusion by trifles
which his good sense thoroughly despises. In the
same manner, an involuntary deference for rank may
be observed amidst the strongest conviction of the
emptiness of aristocratical distinctions, and the most
decided republican principles. The lingering spirit
of the feudal system, and the general forms and in-
stitutions of society in Europe, have a tendency to
infuse into the minds of certain classes such feelings
of respect for the greatness of high life, as, when
they find themselves in its presence, sometimes
overpower the opposite influence of mature opi-
nions.* It is the force of such impressions that

* The powerful effect of such associations is forcibly depicted
by Madame de Stael, in the following passage of her posthum-
ous work, where she exhibits the sentiments of the lower class-
es towards the aristocracy during the French Revolution : —

"One would have said that nobody in France could look at
a man of consequence, that no member of the Tiers Etat could
approach a person belonging to the court, without feeling him-
self in subjection. Such are the melancholy effects of arbitrary

144 ON THE INFLUENCE OP

produces so much awkwardness in the manners of
our peasantry, and it is freedom from them that
often gives an air of dignity to the deportment of
the savage.

In religion, the strong power of associations in
opposition to the convictions of the understanding,
is pecuharly worthy of notice, especially in the case
of changes from a superstitious to a more rational and
liberal creed. The force of a man's education has per-
haps long held him in bondage, and his whole feelings
have become interwoven with the tenets of his sect.
By the enlargement of his knowledge, however, he
discovers his early opinions to be erroneous ; differ-
ent conclusions force themselves on his understand-
ing, and his faith undergoes a radical alteration.
Yet his former feelings still cling to his mind. A
long time must often elapse before he can cast off
the authority of his old prepossessions. It is not
always that the mind can keep itself at a proper
elevation for viewing such subjects in a clear light;
and, till it has acquired the power of retaining its
vantage-ground, it may be reduced to its former
state by the influence of vivid recollections, cus-

government, and of too exclusive distinctions of rank ! The
animadversions of the lower orders on the aristocratic body
have not the effect of destroying its ascendancy, even over those
by whom it is hated ; the inferior classes, in the sequel, inflicted
death on their former masters, as the only method of ceasing
to obey them." — Considerations on the Principal Events of the
French Revolution, \o].i. page 348 (English Translation.)

REASON ON THE FEELINGS.

145

tomary circumstances, general opinion, or any thing
which may occasionally overpower its vigour, or
dim its perspicacity. Thus men, who have rejected
vulgar creeds in the days of health and prosperity,
manfully opposing their clear and comprehensive
views to prevailing superstitions, have sometimes
exhibited the melancholy spectacle of again stoop-
ing to their shackles in the hour of sickness, and at
the approach of death ; not because their under-
standings were convinced of error by any fresh light,
but because they were unable to keep their rational
conclusions steadily in view ; because that intellec-
tual strength, which repelled absurd dogmas, had
sunk beneath the pressure of disease, or the fears
of nature, and left the defenceless spirit to the pre-
dominance of early associations, and to the inroads
of superstitious terror. Such men are replunged into
their old prejudices, exactly in the same way as he,
who has thrown off the superstitions of the nursery,
is overpowered, as he passes through a churchyard
at midnight, by his infantile associations.*

It has been somewhere remarked, that in the soar-
ing of a bird there is a contest between its muscu-
lar power and the force of gravitation ; and that,
although the former always overcomes the latter,
when the bird chooses to exert it, yet the force of
gravity is sure to prevail in the end, and bring the
wearied pinions to the ground. Thus it is with as-

♦ See Note L.
13

146 ^ ON THE INFLUENCE OF

sociations, which have laid firm hold of the mind
in early youth, which have mixed themselves with
every incident, and wound themselves round every
object. The mind may frequently rise above them,
discard them, despise them, and leave them at an
infinite distance ; but it is still held by the fine and
invisible attraction of its antiquated feelings and
opinions, which, whenever its vigour relaxes, draws
it back into the limits from which it had burst away
in the plenitude of its powers.

It is worthy of remark, that there are moments
when old associations are revived with peculiar
vividness by very trivial circumstances. A noble
author has described such moments with his usual
felicity, in the two following stanzas. What he so
happily says of sorrowful emotions, may be extended,
with little qualification, to almost every passion of
the human breast.

But ever and anon of griefs subdued
There comes a token like a scorpion's sting,
Scarce seen, but witli fresh bitterness imbued ;
And slight wilhal may be the things which bring
Back on the heart the weight which it would fling.
Aside for ever : it may be a sound —
A tone of music — summer's eve — or spring,
A flower — the wind — the ocean — which shall wound,
Striking the electric chain svherewith we are darkly bound ;

And how, and why we know not, nor can trace
Home to its cloud this lightning of the mind.
But feel the shock renewed, nor can efface

REASON ON THE PEELINGS. 147

The blight and blackening which it leaves behind,
Which out of things familiar, undesigned,
When least we deem of such, calls up to view
The spectres whom no exorcism can bind,
The cold — the changed — perchance the dead — anew.
The mourned, the loved, the lost — too many ! — ^yet how few !*

It is in general very difficult, and even imprac-
ticable, to recall at w^ill the peculiar emotions which
have affected us at some distant period of life ; be-
cause, though we may remember the circumstances
wherein we were placed, they no longer operate
on our sensibility in the same way. We may re-
collect our joy or our sorrow, but we cannot re-
produce in ourselves the same affections. What,
however, we are pnable purposely to effect, is
frequently accomplished by a few touches on the
harpsichord, by the fragrance of a flower, or the
song of a bird. These simple instruments have
the power of awakening emotions which have been
dormant for years, and calling up the images, the
impressions, the associations of some almost forgot-
ten moment of past hfe, with all the vividness
which they originally possessed. Our recollection
seizes from obhvion the very hue which every
thing then wore around us. Our heart catches the
very tone which then impressed it. A sudden
gleam of renovated feeling rescues one spot from
the surrounding darkness of the past.

To return from this digression: the effect, which

* Childe Harold^ canto iv.

148 ON THE INFLUENCE OF

we before attempted to describe, seems to spring
from the power of the passion to engross and con-
centrate our attention to its objects, and by neces-
sary consequence to withdraw it from all others.
The passion is strongly associated with certain
ideas or circumstances ; when those ideas or cir-
cumstances are presented to the mind the passion
is roused, and when roused absorbs the attention,
to the inevitable exclusion of sober and rational
views.*

Has reason then no power whatever in these
and similar cases ? Is it of no use to attain clear
and rational convictions, since they thus desert us
in the hour when we most require their assistance?
These questions are important, and we will venture
a few remarks by way of reply to them.

It is evident, in the first place, that we are only

* The effect of prevailing passion (however excited) is not
ill described by the pen of a celebrated female writer of the
present day : —

" Under the influence of any passion the perception of pain
and pleasure alters as much as the perceptions of a person in
a fever vary from those of the same man in sound health.
The whole scale of individual happiness, as well as of general
good and evil, virtue and vice, is often disturbed at the very
rising of the passion, and totally overthrown in the hurricane
of the soul. Then, in the most perilous and critical moments,
the conviction of the understanding is, if not reversed, suspend-
ed. Those, who have lived long in the world, and who have
seen examples of these truths, feel that these are not mere
words." — Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworthy vol. ii. p. 403.

REASON ON THE FEELINGS. 149

occasionally liable to those relapses in which the
feelings overpower the judgment; it is only when
our understanding is enfeebled and its views be-
clouded, or when we are placed within the sphere
of some strong exciting cause. During the greatest
part of our time, our deliberate convictions will
necessarily regulate our feelings and our actions.
A man convinced of the absurdity of a belief in
spectral appearances will feel and act throughout
the day, and commonly in the night, agreeably to
that conviction ; it can only be under some striking
circumstances that his old associations will predo-
minate. In the same way, an individual, who feels
more deference perhaps in the personal presence
of a great man than he chooses to acknowledge,
may at other periods be perfectly independent of
him, and altogether uninfluenced by any such emo-
tion. The utility, therefore, of acquiring just views,
will not be materially impaired by the difiiculty of
conforming our emotions to them on particular oc-
casions. And it may be further remarked, that the
value of such views lies, not so much in the efli-
cacy of their counteraction during the access of
any passion, as in enabling us to avoid the occa-
sions on which it will be improperly excited ; and
in rendering the mind less hable to be thrown into
that state, or to have its sensibilities improperly
awakened. The fear of nocturnal apparitions, it
is obvious, would not be so easily roused in one
who had freed himself from the prejudices of the

*13

150 ON THE INFLUENCE OP

nursery, although not altogether from the power of
the associations there formed, as in one whose
belief and associations on that subject were in
harmony.

But the conclusions of our reason have not only
the power of rendering the mind less susceptible of
emotions when brought within the sphere of the
exciting cause, less liable to have opposite associa-
tions roused, they have sometimes a still farther
effect. A conviction may be so strongly wrought
into the understanding, so powerfully impressed
on the imagination, as entirely to subvert former
associations. Clear and comprehensive views, ha-
bitually entertained, may completely subdue the
insubordination of the sensitive part of our nature ;
and so effectually dissolve the combinations of feel-
ing formed in early life, as to reduce them to mere
objects of cool reminiscence. The conclusions of
our reason may, in time, be so strongly associated
with the objects as to be suggested by them more
readily than the feelings with which those objects
were so intimately blended. This, however, must
be the work of time, the gradual effect of habitual
thought. In the endeavour so to discipline his mind,
a man may expect to be repeatedly baffled, but he
must still return to his purpose ; he must keep his dis-
passionate conclusions steadily before him, till they
come to form part of the familiar views of his un-
derstanding, and are interwoven with his habitual
feelings. Success may follow such an attempt on

REASON ON THE FEELINGS.

151

the part of the philosopher, and indeed some de-
gree of the effect will necessarily attend every ac-
quisition of sound knowledge; but in general the
erroneous associations of mankind will be found of
too inveterate a nature to be thoroughly eradicated,
and will maintain an occasional ascendency amidst
all the advances of truth and the triumphs of reason.

ESSAY V.

ON INATTENTION TO THE DEPENDENCE OF
CAUSES AND EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT.

PART I.

In the physical world, to whatever part we turn
our eyes, we are presented with a regular succes-
sion of causes and effects. By gradual, and almost
imperceptible experience, man learns to accommo-
date his actions to the fixed laws and ascertainable
properties of matter ; and by observing the con-
junction and succession of phenomena, he acquires
the power of foreseeing events in their causes. Nor
is he a mere spectator of the operations of nature,
but in many cases he interferes with her processes,
and after gathering her laws from observation, he
employs their agency in the production of novel
results for the accomplishment of his purposes.
By observing the train of physical events, which
lie beyond his control, he can frequently regulate
his actions in such a manner as to avoid hurtful,
and derive advantage from beneficial effects, which
he cannot prevent or produce : and where he is

CAUSES AND EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT. 153

enabled actively to interfere with her processes he
c^n do more, he can arrest or avert evils, and create
positive benetits.

What a man can do in the material, he may also
accomplish in a similar manner in the moral world.
The moral and intellectual qualities of the human
race present an equal field for observation and sa-
gacity. Certain actions lead to certain results, or
are means connected with certain ends ; and by ob-
serving the faculties and conduct of himself and
others, he may trace the connections thus subsisting
between them. If he desires a good, depending on
the state of his own mind, or of the minds of his fel-
low creatures, he must find out and employ the
means with which it is conjoined ; if he wishes to
shun an evil of the same nature, he must ascertain
and avoid the actions of which it is the effect. The
happiness of his life will thus essentially depend on
a strict attention to the tendencies and conse-
quences of human actions. Many of the practical
errors of mankind seem to spring from a heedless-
ness of these tendencies ; from an ignorance or
misconception of the course of events, or, in other
words, from a wrong or inadequate apprehension of
the dependence of causes and effects. In their
plans, pursuits, and general conduct, they too often
betray a negligence of consequences, a hope
against experience, a defiance of probabilities, a
vagueness of anticipation, which looks for results
where no proper means have been employed to

154 DEPENDENCE OF CAUSES AND

produce them : their actions frequently seem to in-
dicate a blind expectation that the order of nature
will be violated in their favour, and that, amidst the
apparently irregular incidents and fortuitous vicis-
situdes of the world, they as individuals will escape
the common lot, and prove exceptions to general
rules. All this principally arises from the want of
a little vigorous attention, and close reasoning.
Nothing, perhaps, gives its possessor such a decided
superiority over the multitude as the power of
clearly tracing the consequences of actions, the con-
catenation of mental causes and effects, and the
adaptation of moral means to ends. It is a sagacity
of the utmost importance in the conduct of life.

The errors, which have been adverted to, mani-
fest themselves in various ways. The vague
expectation of gaining advantages without employ-
ing proper means may be seen in those who are
perpetually in search of short and easy roads to
knowledge ; flattering themselves, that by the indo-
lent perusal of abridgments and compendiums, or
the sacrifice of an occasional hour at a popular lec-
ture, they will, without much application, imbibe
that learning, which they see confers so much dis-
tinction on others. They forget, that, from the very
nature of the case, science cannot be obtained with-
out labour ; that ideas must be frequently presented
to the mind before they become familiar to it; that
the faculties must be vigorously exerted to possess
much efficiency ; that skill is the eilbct of habit ;

EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT. 155

and that habit is acquired by the frequent repetition
of the same act. Application is the only means of
securing the end at which they aim ; and they may
rest assured, that all schemes to put them in pos-
session of intellectual treasures, without any regular
or strenuous efforts on their part, all promises to
insinuate learning into their minds at so small an
expense of time and labour that they shall scarcely
be sensible of the process, are mere delusions, which
can terminate in nothing but disappointment and
mortification. It cannot be too deeply impressed
on the mind, that application is the price to be paid
for mental acquisitions, and that it is as absurd to
expect them without it, as to hope for a harvest
where we have not sown the seed.

As men often deceive themselves with the hope
of acquiring knowledge without application, so they
calculate on acquiring wealth without industry and
economy, and repine that another should bear
away the prize which they have made no effort to
secure. Or, perhaps, impatient of this slow though
certain process, they attempt to seize the end by
some extraordinary means, and carry by a single
stroke what humbler individuals are content to win
by regular and tedious approaches. They see the
schemes of other adventurers continually failing,
yet they press forward in the same course, in defi-
ance of probability, and in the hope of proving
singular exceptions to the general doom. Their
bold speculations, it is true, may sometimes sue-

156 DEPENDENCE OF CAUSES AND

ceed, but they usually terminate in ruin. Disaster
is the highly probable issue, and their certain con-
sequence is a state of anxiety and suspense for
which no success can atone.

But the nnost important mistakes of the class
under consideration are those into which men fall
in their moral conduct. Misery in one shape or
other is the inevitable consquence of all vice ; and
a man can scarcely be under a greater delusion
than to suppose, that he can in any instance add to
his happiness by a sacrifice of principle. Yet, from
the want of a clear perception of the tendencies of
actions, it is too often assumed, that vice would be
pleasant enough were it not forbidden ; and many
a one indulge his guilty passions because he knows
the pleasure to be certain, while the punishment,
he flatters himself, is only contingent. Every de-
parture from virtue, however, draws after it a train
of evils, which no art can escape. The ruin of
health is the consequence of intemperance and
debauchery, the contempt and mistrust of mankind
follow upon deceit and dishonesty, and all other
deviations from moral rectitude are attended by
their respective evil effects. Some of these con-
sequences are certain and uniform, and if others do
not invariably follow, they ought to be considered
in practice as inevitable from the rarity of the
anomalous instances. Between acting against pos-
sibility, and against a high degree of probability,
there is little difference in point of wisdom. General

EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT. 157

rules will fail, or appear unnecessary, in particular
instances ; but as these instances cannot be foreseen,
and are few in number, he who wishes to secure
the end which the general rule has in view must
observe-it, and would be guilty of folly to speculate
on its exceptions. If a man wishes to be a long
liver, he must adopt habits of sobriety and tem-
perance, as the most likely way of obtaining his
purpose, notwithstanding the instances of a few
individuals who have reached a good old age in
direct violation of this precept. Men should re-
collect, too, before cheating themselves into the
hope of impunity in vice, that however they may
escape some of the peculiar effects, they can have
no security against its general consequences. All
vices are accompanied by self-degradation, as the
substance by the shadow ; by a deterioration of
character fraught with incalculable mischief to our
future peace ; by the contempt, suspicion, or indig-
nation of our fellow-creatures on their discovery ;
and whether discovered or undiscovered, they are
pursued by that secret uneasiness, which, by the
constitution of our nature, is the doom of guilt,
however successful, or however concealed. A man
may, indeed, proceed for a time in the career of ini-
quity, with a seeming carelessness, and enjoyment,
and obduracy of conscience ; but as long as the
human mind retains its present structure, he can
never be sure, that the next moment will not plunge
him into the acutest agonies of remorse.

14

158 DEPENDENCE OF CAUSES AND

Virtuous actions, and virtuous qualities, on the
contrary, may be regarded as the necessary, or most
hkely means to secure certain good ends ; as roads
terminating in pleasant places. Thus honesty is
the means of inspiring confidence, veracity of ob-
taining credit for what we say, and temperance of
preserving health. If v^e would be esteemed, loved,
and confided in, we must evince qualities which are
estimable, amiable, and calculated to attract con-
fidence. The error of many consists in expecting
to arrive at the place without travelling the road.
They imagine that they can retain health of body
and peace of mind amidst sensuality, cruelty, and
injustice, and calculate on the respect of their
neighbours in the face of actions almost beneath
contempt. It would be as rational to form expecta-
tions of reaching London by pursuing a northerly
route from Edinburgh, or of prolonging life by
poisoned nutriment.

Nor let any man suppose, that he can reap the
advantages of virtue by hypocritical pretension.
There is a consistency of conduct which a hypocrite
can scarcely maintain ; and even if he could secure
some of the particular ends, which virtuous qualities
are the means of gaining, there is a general result in
serenity of mind, purity of taste, and elevation of
character, which lies infinitely beyond his reach.

These errors, this disregard of consequences and
irrational expectation of advantages, without adopt-
ing appropriate measures to obtain them, may be

EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT. 159

particularly observed to prevail in domestic life.
Of the miscalculation, that v^^e shall be loved and
respected without evincing amiable and estimable
qualities, we may there see abundant instances.
Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers
and sisters, reciprocally complain of each other's
deficiency of affection, and think it hard, that the
tie of relationship should not secure invariable
kindness and indestructible love. They expect
some secret influence of blood, some physical sym-
pathy, some natural attraction, to retain the affection
of their relatives, without any solicitude on their
part to cherish or confirm it. They forget, that man
is so constituted as to love only what in some way
or other, directly or indirectly, immediately or
remotely, gives him pleasure ; that even natural
affection is the result of pleasurable associations in
his mind, or at least may be overcome by associa-
tions of an opposite character, and that the sure
way to make themselves beloved is to display
amiable qualities to those whose regard they wish
K to obtain, if our friends appear to look upon us
with little interest, if our arrival is seen without
pleasure, and our departure without regret, instead
of charging them with a deficiency of feeling, we
should turn our scrutiny upon ourselves. The well-
directed eye of self-examination might probably
find out, that their inditFerence arises from a want

Ion our part of those qualities which are requisite to
inspire affection ; that it is the natural and necessary
I

160 DEPENDENCE OF CAUSES AND

consequence of our own character and deportment.
It is a folly to flatter ourselves, that our estimation,
either in the circle of our friends or in the world at
large, will not take its colour from the nature of our
conduct. There is scarcely one of our actions, our
hahits, or our expressions, which may not have its
share in that complex feeling with which we are
regarded by others.

It is true, that all the pleasurable associations,
formed with regard to each other in the minds of
those who are connected by blood, do not depend
on the personal character of their object, and that
some of them can scarcely be eradicated by any
possible errors of conduct. A mother's love is the
result of an extensive combination of ideas and feel-
ings, in which, for a long time, the moral and mental
qualities of her child can have little share ; but even
her affection, supported as it is by all the strength
of such associations, may be weakened, if not de-
stroyed, by the ill-temper, ingratitude, or worthless-
ness of her offspring. The affection subsisting be-
tween other relatives must of course be far more
liable to be impaired by similar causes, and must
chiefly depend for its continuance on personal cha-
racter. As vicious qualities may prove too strong
for natural affection, so, on the other hand, amiable
qualities are frequently found to inspire love, even
under circumstances of a very contrary tendency ;
as may be seen in the attachment sometimes evinced
by beautiful women to men of ugly features or de-

EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT.

161

formed persons. To see the same countenance,
however defective in form, constantly preserving an
expression of tenderness amidst all the cares and
disappointments of life, to hear language of uniform
kindness, and be the object of nameless acts of re-
gard, can hardly fail, whatever other circumstances
may operate, to beget feelings of reciprocal atfection.

14*

ESSAY V,

ON

INATTENTION TO THE DEPENDENCE OF CAUSES
AND EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT.

PART IL

While it will be found, that many circumstances,
in every man's condition, are exactly such as might
be expected to result from the qualities of his mind,
and the tenor of his conduct, it must not be over-
looked, that there are many others over which he
has no control. Human life is a voyage, in which
he can choose neither the vessel nor the weather,
although much may be done in the management of
the sails and the guidance of the helm. There are
a thousand unavoidable accidents which circum-
scribe the command he possesses over his own for-
tune. With the greatest industry he may be sud-
denly plunged into poverty ; amidst the strictest ob-
^ servance of temperance he may be afflicted with
disease ; and in the practice of every virtue that
adorns human life he may be the victim of misfor-
tune, from the ingratitude and baseness of his fellow
men, the untimely dissolution of cherished connec-

EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT. 163

tions, or the wreck of schemes prudently formed,
and of hopes wisely cherished.

Miseries and misfortunes like these, not depend-
ing on the conduct or character, it would be unrea-
sonable to expect that conduct to be able to avert ;
but amidst them all he will not cease to feel, in va-
rious ways, the beneficial consequences and conso-
latory influence of his good actions. In the estima-
tion of some people, a virtuous man ought never to
be subject to accidental calamity ; but it would
probably be difficult to assign a reason why he
should be more exempt than a man of contrary cha-
racter, from the misery arising out of occurrences
beyond human control. Why, it may be asked,
should the vicious man suffer any thing but the con-
sequences of his vices, including of course the re-
proaches of his own conscience, and the actions as
well as sentiments which his conduct occasions in
others ? These bad consequences, and the loss of
that happiness which virtue would have brought in
her train, constitute, it may be said, the proper dif-
ference between his fate and the fate of the virtuous
man, and form a natural and sufficient reason, both
to himself and others, for acting differently in fu-
ture. Other evils which may happen to him can
never operate to deter him from his guilty career,
because he can see no connection that they have
with it.

Whatever opinion we mfay entertain, however,
as to the reasonableness of all men being on a level

164 DEPENDENCE OF CAUSES AND

with regard to accidental and uncontrollable evils,
the fact is certain, that in the actual condition of
mankind we do not see the virtuous enjoying an ex-
emption from any evils but such as are the peculiar
consequences of those vices from which they re-
frain ; nor, on the other hand, do we see the vicious
deprived of any benefits but such as are to be at-
tained exclusively by virtuous conduct. We should
expect, therefore, from virtuous actions and quali-
ties only their peculiar consequences ; and in re-
commending them to others, we should be careful
to do it on just and proper grounds. It is injurious
to the cause of good morals to invest virtue with
false powers, because every day's experience may
detect the fallacy ; and he who has proved the un-
soundness of part of our recommendation, may rea-
sonably grow suspicious of the whole. Many of our
writers of fiction, with the best intentions, injure the
cause which they support, by rewarding virtuous
conduct with accidental good fortune. After in-
volving a good man, for example, in a combination
of calamitous circumstances, in which he conducts
himself with scrupulous honour and integrity, they
extricate him from his difficulties, as a reward for
his virtue, by the unexpected discovery of a rich
uncle, who was supposed to have died in poverty ;
or by a large legacy from a distant relation, who
happened most opportunely to quit the world at the
required crisis. All such representations, leading
as they do to the expectation of fortuitous advan-

EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT. 165

tages in recompense of good actions, cannot be
otherwise than pernicious. If writers wish to re-
present a good man, contending with misfortune,
(by which they may certainly convey a most excel-
lent lesson,) their aim ought to be, to exhibit the
sources of consolation which he finds, as well in his
own consciousness, as in the impression which his
conduct has made on those around him ; in the
esteem, gratitude, and affection of those amongst
whom he has lived, and in the actions on their part
to which these sentiments give birth.

The true moral of fictitious writings lies in the
clear exhibition of the tendencies of actions ; and if
any thing is conceded to the production of effect, it
ought to be, not a change in the character of these
tendencies, but a more lucid development of them
than life actually presents. Although the painter
is allowed to unite beauties on his canvass which
are rarely presented by nature in actual combina-
tion, and to sink all those attendant circumstances,
which, however commonly occurring, would im-
pair the effect to be produced, still he must faith-
fully adhere to the qualities of natural objects ; and,
in the same way, although the dramatist may give us
a selection of actions and incidents disentangled
from superfluous details and accompaniments, he
must exhibit them according to their true tendencies
and relations.

t There is another consideration relative to the
present subject which is deserving of notice. What

166 DEPENDENCE OP CAUSES AND

appears the inevitable consequence of circumstances
not in our power, is frequently the natural effect of
some subordinate part of our character. The indus-
trious man, who appears at first sight to have been
ruined by the misconduct of others, or by some un-
expected revolution in the business of society, may
in reality owe his ruin to a want of circumspection,
prudence or foresight. The natural consequence of
his indus^y was prosperity, but the natural conse-
quence of his imprudence was loss and misfortune.
We must not expect that the exercise of one virtue
will be followed by the beneficial consequences of
all ; neither must we conclude that the indulgence
of any vice will be pursued by unmixed evil, and
destroy the good effects of better qualities. All the
virtues and the vices have their respective good and
evil consequences, which will be felt in proportion
as each vice and virtue is exercised. Industry, eco-
nomy, shrewdness, and caution, for instance, with-
out any great admixture of moral worth, or even in
conjunction with meanness and fraudulence, may
often be successful in the attainment of wealth;
while these qualities, so attended, can never yield
the fruits of integrity, ease of conscience, elevation
of character, and the esteem of the good.

From all that has been said it sufficiently appears,
that although our fortune, our rank in life, our bodily
organization, and many other circumstances of our
condition, may not be materially subject to our con-
trol, yet that our health, our peace of mind, our

N

N

V

EFFECTS IN MORAL CONDUCT. , 167

estimation in the world, our place in the affections
of our friends, and our happiness in general, will
inevitably be more or less regulated by the part
which we act and the properties of our character.
Jt is a serious consideration, and one which ought
to have more weight in the world than it appears
to possess, that all our actions and all our qualities
have some certain tendency, and may greatly affect
our well-being ; that in every thing we do, we may
be possibly laying a train of consequences, the ope-
ration of which may terminate only with our exist-
ence ; and that a steady adherence to the rules of
virtue and a conformity to the dictates of discretion,
are the only securities we can provide for the hap-
piness of our future destiny.

ESSAY VI.

ON

SOME OF THE CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES OF
INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER.

Whatever subsequent circumstances may effect,
it can scarcely be questioned, that all human beings
come into the world with the germs of peculiar
mental, as well as physical qualities. Attempts,
indeed, have been made to resolve all mental va-
rieties into the effects of dissimilar external circum-
stances, but with too little success to require any
formal refutation. We are, then, naturally led to
inquire, how are these original peculiarities occa-
sioned? Whence arise those qualities of mind
which constitute the individuality of men? There
must be causes why the mind as well as the body
of one man differs constitutionally from that of
another ; what are they ? Perhaps all that can be
said in reply to these inquiries is, that the mental,
like the bodily constitution of every individual.

or INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 169

depends, in some inexplicable way, on the conjoint
qualities of his parents. It depends, evidently, not
on the qualities of one of the parents only, but on
those of both. A moment's reflection will teach us,
that the individuality of any human being, that ever
existed, was absolutely dependent on the union of
one particular man with one particular woman. If
either the husband or the wife had been different, a
different being would have come into the world.
For the production of the individual called Shake-
speare, it was necessary that his father should marry
the identical woman whom he did marry. Had he
selected any other wife, the world have would had
no Shakespeare. He might have had a son, but that
son would have been an essentially different indi-
vidual ; he would have been the same neither in
mental nor physical qualities ; he would have been
placed in a different position amongst mankind, and
subject to the operation of different circumstances.
It seems highly probable, also, that if a marriage
had taken place between the same male and female,
either at an earlier or a later period of their lives,
the age at which they came together would have
affected the identity of the progeny. If they had
been married, for instance, in the year 1810, their
eldest son would not be the same being as if they
had been married ten years sooner. It may be re-
marked, too, that not only the time at which persons
are married, but their mode of living, and their
habits generally, as they have the power to affect

15

170 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

the physical constitution of their progeny, may also
affect the constitution of their minds, and occasion
beings to be brought into the world absolutely dif-
ferent from those who would have seen the light
under other circumstances.

With regard to physical conformation, every one
knows that the face and figure are frequently trans-
mitted from parents to their offspring. Sometimes
the father's form and lineaments seem to predomi-
nate, sometimes the mother's, and sometimes there
is a variety produced unlike either of the parents ;
but by what principles these proportions and mo-
difications are regulated, it is impossible to ascer-
tain. The transmission of mental qualities is not,
perhaps, equally apparent, but it is equally capri-
cious. In some cases we see the characteristics of
the parents perpetuated in their offspring, and in
other cases no resemblance is to be discovered.
The passions and temper appear to be frequently
inherited; and although the proneness of children
to imitation may partly account for the appearance,
it cannot be admitted as a complete explanation,
since the same spirit will manifest itself where pa-
rents and children have never lived together. The
resemblance between their intellectual properties
is seldom equally striking. In these, though there
is no reason to suppose that they are not equally
transmissible, there is at least less room for imita-
tion. It is a common remark, that the sons of emi-
nent men are themselves rarely conspicuous for

OF INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 171

talents; and yet, on the other hand, intellectual
characteristics are sometimes known to run through
whole families.

We have already intimated, that both the mental
and physical constitution seem to depend on the
united qualities of both the parents ; not solely,
however, for we every day see phenomena both of
mind and body, which we can refer only to inex-
plicable accidents. Such are idiotism and mal-
organization. The instances which may be cited
of dull children being the offspring of parents, both
of whom have been remarkable for quickness of
intellect, present no greater difficulty than analo-
gous instances with regard to corporeal qualities.
It is as easily conceivable that two peculiar consti-
tutions, which separately occasioned or were at-
tended by intellectual quickness, may produce the
reverse in the offspring, as that a fair child may be
born of parents both of whom have dark com-
plexions.

These cursory observations naturally lead us to
reflect on the long chain of consequences of which
the marriage of two persons may be the first link ;
and what an important influence such an union may
have on human affairs. If two men and two women
founded a colony, by removing to some uninhabited
district or island, where they were cut off from all
intercourse with the rest of their species ; the whole
train of subsequent events in that colony to the end
of time would depend on the manner in which they

172 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

paired. If the older man married the older woman,
a different train of affairs, it is manifest, would en-
sue, from that which would take place if the older
man married the younger woman. In the first case,
the offspring of the marriage would be totally dif-
ferent individuals from those which would have
been brought into the world in the second case.
They would think, feel, and act, in a widely differ-
ent manner, and not a single event depending on
human action would be precisely the same as any
event in the other case.

As a farther illustration, it may not be devoid of
amusement to trace the consequences which would
have ensued, or rather which would have been pre-
vented, had the father of some eminent character
formed a different matrimonial connection. Suppose
the father of Bonaparte had married any other lady
than the one who was actually destined to become
his mother. Agreeably to the tenor of the preceding
observations, it is obvious that Bonaparte himself
would not have appeared in the world. The affairs
of France would have fallen into different hands, and
would have been conducted in another manner. The
measures of the British cabinet, the debates in par-
liament, the subsidies to foreign powers, the battles
by sea and land, the marches and countermarches,
the wounds, deaths, and promotions, the fears, and
hopes, and anxieties of a thousand individuals, would
all have been different. The speculations of those
writers and speakers who employed themselves in

OP INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 173

nscussing these various subjects, and canvassing
the conduct of this celebrated man, would not have
been called forth. The train of ideas in everj mind
interested in public affairs would not have been
the same. Pitt would not have made the same
speeches, nor Fox the same replies. Lord Byron's
poetry would have wanted some splendid passages.
The Duke of Wellington might have still been plain
Arthur Wellesley. Mr. Warden would not have
written his book, nor the Edinburgh critic his re-
view of it; nor could the author of this essay have
availed himself of his present illustration. The
imagination of the reader will easily carry him
through all the various consequences to soldiers and
sailors, tradesmen and artisans, printers and book-
sellers, downward through every gradation of so-
ciety. In a word, when we take into account these
various consequences, and the thousand ways in
which the mere intelligence of Bonaparte's proceed-
ings, and of the measures pursued to counteract
them, influenced the feelings, the speech, and the
actions of mankind, it is scarcely too much to say,
that the single circumstance of Bonaparte's father
marrying as he did has more or less affected almost
every individual in Europe, as well as a numerous
multitude in the other quarters of the globe.

We see from the preceding glance, what an im-
portant share an individual may have in modifying
the course of events, and how his influence may
extend, in some way or other, through the minutest

15*

174 CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES

ramifications of society. Yet amidst all this influ-
ence, we may also perceive the operation of gen-
eral causes ; of those principles of the mind common
to all individuals, and of the physical circumstances
by which they are surrounded. The individual
character itself, indeed, partly receives its tone and
properties from general causes, and much of the re-
action which it exerts may be, in an indirect sense,
ascribed to them. Thus, although the marriage of
Bonaparte's father and mother, the connection of
those particular persons, was the cause of his ex-
istence, and of many of the peculiarities by which
he was distinguished, yet his character and conduct
were in no small degree moulded by the spirit of
the age. There are many general causes, it is ob-
vious, which would have operated, although any
given person had never come into the world.
There is a certain progress or course of affairs,
that holds on, amidst all the various impressions,
the checks, and the impulses, which it receives
from individual character. If Bonaparte had never
existed, the nations of the earth would, in all likeli-
hood, have been in much the same relative situa-
tion as they are, and, at all events, they would have
made similar advances in political knowledge. The
violence of the French Revolution would probably
have been directed by some other ambitious leader
against the states of Europe ; it might have lasted
nearly the same time, and subsided in a similar
way. But although the general result might have

OP INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER. 175

been in many respects similar, the train of political
events would have been altogether different ; there
would have been quite a different mass of materials
for the future historian.

The remark may be extended, with still more
certainty, to almost all the arts and sciences. Com-
posed as their history necessarily is of the achieve-
ments of individuals, their advancement is the result
of general causes, and independent in a certain sense
on individual character. The inventions of print-
ing and gunpowder, the discovery of the virtues of
the loadstone, and even the inductive logic of Ba-
con, were sure to mark the progress of human af-
fairs, and were not owing to the mere personal
qualities, nor necessarily bound to the destiny of
those who promulgated them to the world. The
discoveries of modern astronomy would doubtless
have been ultimately attained, although such a
person as Sir Isaac Newton had never seen the
light ; but they would not have been attained in
the same way, nor perhaps at the same period.
The science, it is probable, would have been ex-
tremely dissimilar in the detail, in the rapidity of
its progress, and the order of its discoveries, while
there is every reason to think it would have been
much the same in its final result*

ESSAY VII.

ON

THE VICISSITUDES OF LIFE.

Although the events of our lives appear in the
retrospect naturally enough connected with each
other, yet if we compare two widely distant periods
of the past, we shall often find them so discordant
as to excite our surprise that the same being should
have been placed in circumstances so essentially
dissimilar. And if we could foresee some of the
circumstances of our future lives, it would fre-
quently appear quite out of the limits of possibility
that we should be brought into them. Our present
state would seem so full of insurmountable obsta-
cles to such a charge, that we could not form a
conjecture by what instrumentality it was to be ef-
fected ; we could not conceive how the current of
our destiny was to be so strangely diverted from its
original course, nor how the barriers, which cir-
cumscribe our condition, were to be so entirely
overthrown. But time gradually elaborates appa-

ON THE VICISSITUDES OF LIFE. 177

rent impossibilities into very natural and consistent
events. A friend is lost by death ; a rival is re-
moved from the sphere of competition ; a superior
falls and leaves a vacancy in society to be filled up ;
a series of events renders a measure advisable, of
which a few years before we never dreamed ; new
circumstances bring around us new persons'; novel
connections open fresh prospects ; objects before
unknown excite passions before dormant, and rouse
talents of which we were scarcely conscious ; and
our whole ideas and feelings varying and keeping
pace with these revolutions, we are at length
brought quite naturally into the very condition,
which a few years ago seemed utterly irreconcil-
able with our position in the world and our rela-
tions to society. Many circumstances of our lives
would appear like dreams, if we were abruptly
thrown into them, without perceiving the succes-
sion of events by which we came there. We should
feel like the poor man in the Arabian Tales, who,
while under the influence of a sleeping-draught, was
divested of his clothes, and attired like a prince,
and on awaking was strangely perplexed to find
himself surrounded by all the outward appendages
of royalty, and by a crowd of attendants who treated
him as their monarch. It is the gradual develope-
ment of events, their connection and dependence
on each other, and the corresponding changes in
our views, which give the character of reality to
actual hfe, as they confer it on the fictions of ima-

178 ON THE VICISSITUDES OP LIFE.

gination. A succession of trivial changes carries
the mind without abruptness to a wide distance
from its former station, as a staircase conducts us
to a lofty eminence by a series of minute eleva-
tions. Hence it is that men seldom suffer those
extreme sensations from a change of circumstances
which we are sometimes led to expect. Persons
in low life are apt to think that the splendour, to
which a man of their own class has raised himself
by industry and talents, must teem with uninter-
rupted enjoyment ; that the contrast of his former
lowliness with his present elevation must be a peren-
nial spring of pleasurable emotion. It may indeed
occasionally yield him gratifying reflections, but it
is seldom in his power to feel the full force of the
difference. It is not in nature that at one and the
same time he should feel ardent admiration of
splendour and familiarity with it ; the panting de-
sire for an object and the satisfied sense of enjoy-
ment. He cannot combine at the same moment
the possession of the feelings of two remote periods
of his life, so as alternately to pass from one to the
other, and revel in the full rapture of the contrast.
No power of imagination can present him at once
with two vivid landscapes of his mental condition
at two different junctures, so as to enable him to
bring into distinct comparison all their lights, and
shades, and colours. The hand of time has been
constantly at work to wear out the impressions of
his past existence. While he has been led from

.-;

ON THE VICISSITUDES OP LIFE. 179

one vicissitude to another, from one state of mind
to a different state, almost all the peculiarities of
his original views and feelings have been succes-
sively dropped in his progress, till it has become
an effort, if not an impossibility, to recollect them
with any sort of clearness and precision.

The same revolution of feeling takes place when
a man sinks into adversity, although memory per-
haps is then more active and tenacious. A wonder
is sometimes expressed, that one who has been un-
fortunate in the world should be able to retain so
much cheerfulness amidst the recollection of for-
mer times, which must press on his mind ; times
when friends thronged around him, when every
eye seemed to greet him with pleasure, and every
object to share his satisfaction. Now destitute,
forsaken, obscure, how is it that he is not over-
powered by the contrast ? There are moments,
it cannot be doubted, when he acutely feels the
transition, but this cannot be the ordinary state of
his mind. Many of his views having been displaced
by others, his feelings having gradually conformed
to his circumstances, and his attention being occu-
pied with present objects, he has not that oppres-
sive, habitual sense of the change, which a mere
looker-on is apt to suppose. An indifferent ob-
server, indeed, is often more powerfully struck
with the contrast than the subject of it, not
having to look at the former state through -^ all
the intermediate ideas and emotions, and being

180 ON THE VICISSITUDES OF LIFE.

occupied only with the difference in external
appearances. He contrasts (if we may have re-
course to our former figure) only the base and
the summit of the tower, while the staircase which
connects them is concealed from his view.

It is certain that men frequently bear calamities
much better than they themselves would have pre-
viously expected. Jn misfortunes which are of
gradual growth, every change contracts and re-
duces their views, and prepares them for another ;
and they at length find themselves involved in the
gloom of adversity without any violent transition.
How many have there been, who, while basking in
the smiles of fortune, and revelling in the luxuries
of opulence, would have been completely over-
powered by a revelation of their future doom;
yet when the vicissitudes of life have brought them
into those circumstances, they have met their mis-
fortunes with calmness and resignation. The re-
cords of the French Revolution abound with
instances of extraordinary fortitude in those from
whom it could have been least expected, and who,
a few years before, would probably have shrunk with
horror from the bare imagination of their own fate.
Women, as well as men, were seen to perish on the
scaffold without betraying the least symptom of fear.

Even when calamity suddenly assails us, it is
remarkable how soon we become familiarized with
our novel situation. After the agony of the first
shock has subsided, the mind seems to relinquish

ON THE VICISSITUDES OP LIFE. 181

its hold on its former pleasures, to call in its affec-
tions from the various objects on which they had
fixed themselves, and to endeavour to concentrate
them on the few solaces remaining. By the force
of perpetual and intense rumination, the rugged
and broken path, by which the imagination passes
from its present to its former state, is worn smooth
and rendered continuous ; and the aspect of sur-
rounding objects becoming familiar, loses half the
horror lent to it by the first agitated survey.

V If it be thus true, that men in general bear cala-
mities much better than they themselves would
have expected, and that affliction brings along with
it a portion of its own antidote, it is a fact which
may serve to cheer us in the hour of gloomy
anticipation. To reflect, that what would be
agony to us in our present state of mind, with
our present views, feelings, and associations, may
at a future time prove a very tolerable evil, be-
cause the state of our mind will be different ; that
in the greatest misfortunes which may befall us,
we shall probably possess suflicient strength and
equanimity to bear the burden of our calamity,
may be of some use in dispelling those melancholy
forebodings which are too apt to disturb the short
period of life. It may lead us to more cheerful
views of human existence.

1^ There are few men of reflection to whose minds
the fragility of human happiness has not been for-
cibly suggested by the very instances in which that

182 ON THE VICISSITUDES OF LIFE.

happiness appears in its brightest colours. They
have hung over it as over the early floweret of spring,
which the next blast may destroy. As the lovely
bride, blooming with health and animated with love
and hope, has passed by in the day of her triumph,
they have contrasted the transitory happiness of the
hour with the long train of disappointments and ca-
lamities, diseases and deaths, with which the most
fortunate life is familiar, and many of which inevi-
tably spring from the event which the beautiful
creature before them, unconscious of all but the
immediate prospect, is welcoming with a heart full
of happiness and a countenance radiant with smiles.
She seems a victim, on whom a momentary illumi-
nation has fallen only to be followed by deeper
gloom. "Ah!" said a poor emaciated but still
youthful woman, as she was standing at the door of
her cottage while a gay bridal party were returning
from church," they little think what they are about.
I was left a widow with two children at the age of
twenty-one."

It was in the same spirit that Gray wrote his
Ode on the Prospect of Eton College. After de-
scribing the sports of the schoolboys in strains fa-
miliar to every reader, he makes a natural and
beautiful transition to their future destiny.

Alas ! regardless of their doom,

The little victims play I
No sense have they of ills to come,

Nor care beyond to-day ;

ON THE VICISSITUDES OF LIEE. 183

Yet see how all around them wait
The ministers of human fate,

And black misfortune's baleful train !
Ah ! show them where in ambush stand,
To seize their prey, the murd'rous band !

Ah ! tell them they are men.

In the indulgence of such reflections, however,
it is to be remembered that we are contrasting dis-
tant events of life, bringing together extreme situa-
tions, of which to pass suddenly from one to the
other might be intolerable anguish, and that we are
suppressing all the circumstances which lie between,
and prepare a comparatively easy and gradual tran-
sition.

It is evident, from the tenor of the preceding ob-
servations, that most of the intense pleasures and
poignant sorrows of mankind must be experienced
in passing from one condition to another, not in any
permanent state ; and that the intensity of the feel-
ing will materially depend on the suddenness of the
change.

On comparing the condition of a peasant and a
peer, we cannot perhaps perceive much superiority
of happiness in either. The ideas and feelings of
the peasant are adjusted to the circumstances by
which he is surrounded, and the coarseness of his
fare and the homeliness of his dwelling excite no
emotions of uneasiness. The notions of the peer
are equally well adjusted to the pomp and refine-
ments of rank and affluence. Luxurious dainties .

184 ON THE VICISSITUI>ES OF LIFE.

and splendid decorations, courteous deference and
vulgar homage, are too familiar to raise any pecu-
liar emotions of pleasure. But if a poor man rises
to affluence, or a rich marpsinks into poverty, such
circumstances are no longer neutral. The former
feels delight in his new acquisitions, and the latter
is pained by the want of his habitual luxuries and
accustomed splendour. In the same manner that
a substance may feel cold to one hand and warm
to another, according to the different temperatures
to which they have been antecedently exposed, so
any rank or situation in life may yield pleasure or
pain according to the previous condition of the per-
son who is placed in it.

Hence we may perceive the error of such moral-
ists as contend, that fame, wealth, power, or any
other acquisition, is not worth pursuit, because
those who are in possession of it are not happier
than their fellow creatures. They may not indeed
be happier, but this by no means proves that the
object is not worth pursuing, since there may be
much pleasure, not only in the chase, but in the
novelty of the acquisition. The fortune, which a
man acquires by some successful effort, may not
after a while afford him more gratification than his
former moderate competence ; but in order to es-
timate its value, we must take into account all the
pleasurable emotions which would flow in upon
him until a perfect familiarity with his new circum-
stances had established itself in his mind.

ON THE VICISSITUDES OF LIFE,

185

Such moralists seem to forget, that man, by the
necessity of his nature, must have some end which
he can pursue w^ith ardour ; that to be without aim
and object is to be miserable ; that the necessary
business of life requires, on the part of many, an
ardent aspiration after wealth, power, and reputa-
tion ; and that it is not the pursuits themselves, but
the vices with which they may be connected, that
are proper objects of reprobation. It is, in fact, by
yielding to the passions and principles of his consti-
tution, within proper limits, and under proper re-
strictions, not by the vain attempt to suppress them,
that man promotes the happiness of himself and
society.

16^

ESSAY VIII.

ON THE

VARIETY OF INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS.

The various arts and sciences may be compared
to the pictures in a large gallery. Every one who
has passed through one of these magnificent reposi-
tories, knows how vain is the attempt to understand
the subject, and estimate the merits, of all the speci-
mens of art exposed to his view, in the short space
of time usually allotted to the survey. As he
throws his glances around, his eye is dazzled and
his mind confused by the diversity of representa-
tions, and he at length finds it expedient to limit
his attention to a few, which may have been pointed
out by particular circumstances or general celeb-
rity. In the same manner, the subjects of knowledge
are too numerous and complicated, and human life
far too short, to allow even the highest intellect to
embrace the whole. As we look through the vast
accumulation of science, our minds would be op-
pressed by the various objects which present them-
selves, did we not take them in detail, and concen-

INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS. 187

trate our observation on a part. Those, therefore,
who wish to excel in intellectual pursuits, find it
necessary to direct their principal efforts to some
particular science or branch of literature. They
thus escape the perplexity and superficialness of
such as dissipate their attention on a multitude of
subjects, and are far more likely to enlarge the
boundaries of knowledge than by a more indiscrimi-
nate application. This division of labour in the
intellectual world, however, is not without its dis-
advantages. As the artisan, who is chained down
to the drudgery of one mechanical operation, is a
much inferior being to the savage, who is continu-
ally thrown upon the resources of his own mind in
novel circumstances ; who has to devise and exe-
cute plans of aggression and defence, to extricate
himself from difficulties and encounter dangers, and
who thus acquires a wonderful versatility of talent ;
so the man, who has devoted himself to one science,
often loses by a comparison with him who has suf-
fered his mind to wander over all the various and •
beautiful regions of knowledge. What the former
gains in accuracy and nicety of tact, he loses in
copiousness of ideas and comprehensiveness of
views ; and thus it sometimes appears in the intel-
lectual, as well as in the civil world, as if the
perfection of individual character must be sacrificed
to the general progress of society. Although there
is this tendency in the rapid advance of knowledge,
and although a concentrated attention is requisite

188 ON THE VARIETY OF

to success, yet it is by no means necessary that
men should devote themselves exclusively to their
favourite subjects. The sciences are so connected,
if by nothing else, at least by the general logical
principles pervading the whole, that they throw
light on each other; and he has the fairest chance
of success in any one career, who starts well furnish-
ed with general information, while he possesses the
only means of saving himself from becoming an in-
tellectual artisan.

Another disadvantage attending the multiplicity
of knowledge, and the consequent division of intel-
lectual labour, lies in forming classes of men having
little fellow-feeling, inasmuch as they cannot readily
enter with interest into each other's darling pur-
suits. The mathematician hears of a new species
of plants with all possible apathy, and the antiqua-
rian scarcely gives himself the trouble of inquiring
after the most brilliant discoveries of the chemist.
In proportion, too, as a science becomes complex
and extensive, requiring minute application, it is
removed from general participation and sympathy.
It cannot be expected that the various acquire-
ments of scientific men should be duly estimated
and relished by that numerous body of people not
destitute of mental culture, who come under the
denomination of general readers. Almost all the
sciences are defended by a host of peculiar ideas
and technicahties in language, which effectually bar
the approach of such as have not gone through a

INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS. 189

regular process of initiation. The acutest mind
might expend its efforts in vain on subjects of which
it did not comprehend the terms. Pope has well
described the effect which would ensue from a sud-
den plunge into mathematical science.

*' Full in the midst af Euclid dip at once,
And petrify a genius to a dunce."

There is, however, a large class of subjects, in
which almost all men of cultivated minds can take
an equal interest; subjects which relate to man
himself, and chiefly to those phenomena of his
nature which lie exposed to common observation.
The elementary knowledge required in topics rela-
ting to morals, manners, and taste, is possessed by
all, the terms in which they are treated of form the
common language of daily intercourse, and every
mind feels itself competent to pronounce on the
positions in the expression of which they are em-
ployed. That the sum of the squares of the two
sides of a right-angled triangle is equal to the
square of the hypothenuse, can be fully comprehend-
ed by such only as have gone through a previous
course of insttuction ; but every one can under-
stand, on the first enunciation, that it is ridiculous
in a country girl to affect the fine lady, and base in
a man to fawn on the minions of power. There
are also other and stronger reasons wdiy, while the
subjects alluded to attract so much, many of the
sciences attract so small a portion of general

190 ON THE VARIETY OP

interest. The latter address themselves to the
intellect alone. They are fraught with none of
those interesting associations of hope, and joy, and
sympathy, which cling to the productions of the
poet, the moralist, and the historian. They teem
not with passion and feeling ; they call not into
play the sensibilities of our nature ; they make no
appeal to the experience of our hearts. They can-
not therefore appear otherwise than dry and
devoid of attraction to those whose views are cir-
cumscribed by the ordinary affairs of life, who have
never leapt the boundaries which encircle the re-
gions of abstract truth and recondite knowledge,
nor learned to invest them with those pleasurable
associations, which a vigorous effort to master their
difficulties has created in others.

It may be remarked, however, that this want of
the power of awakening the feelings, this defect of
vital warmth in the abstruser sciences, is not with-
out its advantages. Some of the finest pleasures of
our nature are those of pure intellect, without any
mixture of human passion. When the mind has
been agitated by the cares of the world, irritated by
folly, or disgusted by vice, it is an attainment of no
despicable importance to be able for a while to di-
vest itself of its connection with mankind, by taking
refuge in the abstractions of science, where there is
no object to drag it back to the events of the past,
or revive the fever of its sensibility. It is such a
welcome transition as we experience in passing

INTELLECTUAL POWERS. 191

from the burning rays of a vertical sun to the deli-
cious coolness of a grotto.

VVe may gather, from the preceding observations,
that in works of polite literature, more especially
works of imagination, too much care cannot be em-
ployed in avoiding the peculiar characteristics of
science. To be generally interesting, their subjects
and phraseology should carry along with them their
own light ; and their success will also greatly depend
on the frequency and effect with which they appeal
to the feelings possessed in common by all well in-
formed readers. One of the most noted instances
of the neglect of both these points is Dr. Darwin's
poem of the Botanic Garden, which, though it con-
tains passages of dazzling splendour, fails to interest,
because it is loaded with the obscurities of scientific
nomenclature and allusion ; and full of topics, vast
and magnificent, but not within the range of ordi-
nary feeling; bright and imposing, but without
warmth and vitality.

The same principles will also serve to explain
>yhy poems, founded on the superstitions and man-
ners of other nations, excite a comparatively weak
and transient interest. In the first place, a poem
of this class must necessarily be a learned poem,
and it requires an effort on the part of the reader
to enter into its allusions, and comprehend the
learning which it exhibits; secondly, the associations
and feelings ascribed to the characters can never
lay hold of his mind with the same power as those

192 ON THE VARIETY OF

which spring from indigenous customs and super-
stitions. No part of the mythology of the Curse of
Kehama could ever excite, in the soul of an Eng-
lishman, so profound an interest as the appearance
of Banquo's ghost, in the tragedy of Macbeth. In
the one case we may admire the skill of the poet,
and even imagine the emotions of his characters ;
in the other, the emotions are our own. The Lalla
Rookh of Moore is another example in point. The
poet has skilfully availed himself of a variety of
oriental illustrations, calculated to delight the fancy,
but they do not fasten on the mind like allusions to
familiar objects ; and it may be questioned whether
his pretty eastern princesses, surrounded with a
profusion of birds, and butterflies, and flowers, have
enabled him to charm his readers as he would have
done by the description of a lovely Englishwoman,
with English manners, and amidst English scenery.
The passions of human nature are no doubt much
the same all over the world, and a vivid represen-
tation of them will be attractive under all the mo-
difications of diiferent habits and manners ; but it
will be more vivid and more attractive when it ap-
peals to our sympathy through the medium of our
usual associations.

The differences already pointed out between
works of science and those of morality and imagi-
nation, necessarily give ri^e to different kinds of
reputation. The fame of a scientific author is in
some measure confined to the circle of those, who

INTELLECTUAL PURSUITS. 193

understand the subject ; or, if it overstep this limit,
it becomes known only as a bare fact on the testi-
mony of others. The fame of a poet, or a moralist,
on the contrary, pervades all society, not as a mat-
ter of fact, but a matter of feeling. It is not merely
the echo of his merits that reaches us, but it is his
own voice to which we listen. His noble senti-
ments, his beautiful images, his brilliant wit, his
felicitous expressions, mingle themselves with our
intellectual being, and constitute a part of the pub-
lic mind.

Newton and Shakespeare are perhaps equally
illustrious, but certainly possess different kinds of
reputation. Newton can be deservedly appreciated
only by those few who can track his gigantic ad-
vances in science ; to the world at large he is a man
who has made discoveries, wonderful enough, but of
which they can form no adequate conception.
Shakespeare, on the other hand, is read and ad-
mired by all ; they speak in his words, and think in
his thoughts. Not only the fame, but the manifest-
ations of his genius live in their recollection, and
his sentiments and expressions rise spontaneously
as their own. Newton shines to the world like
a remote though brilHant star. Shakespeare like
the sun, which warms mankind as well as enlight-
ens them.

17

ESSAY IX.

ON

PRACTICAL AND SPECULATIVE ABILITY.

In the intercourse of the world every one must
have observed two kinds of talent, so distinct from
each other as to admit of different appellations, al-
though frequently united in the same person. One
has reference exclusively to the operations of the
mind, and may be called speculative ability ; the
other has reference to the application of know-
ledge, or to action, and may be called practical
ability. Speculative ability may be seen in the
composition of a poem, the solution of a problem,
the formation of a chain of reasoning, or the inven-
tion of a story. In these performances nothing is
required but an exertion of the mental powers : they
are purely internal operations, and although they may
be assisted by the employment of external means, it
would be possible to carry them on without it.

Practical ability may be seen in every department
of active life. It consists in the dexterous appli-
cation of means for the attainment of ends. The

PRACTICAL AND SPECULATIVE ABILITY. 195

term may be extended to every sort of skill, whether
exerted in important or trivial matters ; but it is
here meant to designate, not so much any technical
dexterity, or that which a man evinces in the
employment of his physical powers on inanimate
objects, as that higher skill by which he directs the
talents and passions of his fellow-creatures to the
accomplishment of his purposes, and seizes the
opportunities of action presented by successive
events ; and which enables him to conduct himself
with propriety and success, in any circumstances
into which he may be thrown.

The two kinds of ability here pointed out must
exist more or less in every individual, but they are
often combined in very unequal proportions. A
high degree of speculative is frequently found in
conjunction with a low degree of practical ability,
and conversely, the practical talents are sometimes
superior to the speculative. Men, who have ex-
hibited the greatest powers of mind in their writings,
have been found altogether inefficient in active life,
and incapable of availing themselves of their own
wisdom. With comprehensive views and a capacity
for profound reasoning on human affairs, they have
felt bewildered in actual emergencies : keen and
close observers of the characters, the failings, and
the accomplishments of others, they have not had
the power of conforming their own conduct to their
theoretical standard of excellence. Giants in the
closet, they have proved but children in the world.

196 ON PRACTICAL AND

This destitution of practical talent in men of fine
intellect often excites the wonder of the crowd.
They seem to expect that he, who has shown powers
of mind bespeaking an almost all-comprehensive
intelligence, and who has perhaps poured a flood of
light on the path of action to be pursued by others,
should, as a matter of course, be able to achieve
any enterprise and master any difficulties himself.
Such expectations, however, are unreasonable and
ill-founded. Excellence in one thins; does not ne-
cessarily confer excellence in all, or even in things
requiring the exercise of the same faculties. Both
practical and speculative ability are no doubt mo-
difications of mental power : but one, on that
account, by no means implies the other, any more
than dexterity in reefing a sail involves the art of
leaping a five-barred gate, though they are both
instances of physical skill.

It would be just as reasonable, indeed, to expect
that a good sailor should be necessarily a clever
horseman, as that a man of fine speculative powers
should in consequence be also a man of practical
talent. The want of practical ability then, in such
a man, may arise simply from an exclusive attention
to processes purely mental. Where the mind is
entirely absorbed by the relations of science, or
where its powers are habitually concentrated on its
own creations, it is perfectly natural that the arts
of active Hfe should not be acquired. To a man so
occupied, common objects and occurrences have

SPECULATIVE ABILITY. 197

little interest, and it is with effort that he commands
his attention sufficiently to avoid egregious mistakes,
and to gain a passable dexterity in things which all
the world are expected to know and to perform.
The understanding, moreover, that is accustomed
to pursue a regular and connected train of ideas,
becomes in some measure incapacitated for those
quick and versatile movements which are learned
in the commerce of the world, and are indispensable
to those who act a part in it. Deep thinking and
practical talents require indeed habits of mind so
essentially dissimilar, that while a man is striving
after the one he will be unavoidably in danger of
losing the other. The justness of these observations
might be supported, if necessary, by a reference to
the characters of a number of men distinguished by
their literary and scientific accomplishments. It
will be sufficient to adduce the instance of the
celebrated author of the Wealth of Nations. Few
writers have carried profound and systematic think-
ing farther, or attained more comprehensive views
of human policy; and the effects on his character,
as might have been anticipated, were seen in a
want of the proper qualifications for bustle and
business. " He was certainly," says his biographer,
" not fitted for the general commerce of the world,
or for the business of active life. The comprehen-
sive speculations with which he had been occupied
from his youth, and the variety of materials which
his own invention continually supplied to his

17*

198 ON PRACTICAL AND

thoughts, rendered him habitually inattentive to
familiar objects, and to common occurrences ; and
he frequently exhibited instances of absence, which
have scarcely been surpassed by the fancy of La
Bruyere. Even in company he was apt to be en-
grossed with his studies ; and appeared, at times,
by the motion of his lips, as well as by his looks and
gestures, to be in the fervour of composition."*

The want of practical talent, in other cases, may
be accounted for by a certain gentleness, reserved-
ness, or timidity of disposition, which causes its
possessor to shrink from the encounter of his fel-
low creatures. Whatever it proceeds from, whether
it is the effect of natural constitution, weakness of
nerves, dehcacy of organization, or the faulty asso-
ciations of early hfe, it is certain that this disposition
is frequently the accompaniment of superior genius.
We are told that Virgil possessed it in a remark-
able degree ; Addison seems to have had a similar
temperament ; and it was the prominent weakness
of Cowper. In the latter, indeed, it assumed a deci-
dedly morbid character, and appears to have been
either the cause of his insanity or a strong symptom
of its approach. To such an extreme did it oppress
him, that, according to his own declaration, a pub-
lic exhibition of himself was mortal poison to his
feelings.

I * An Account of the Life and Writings of Dr. Adam Smith,
by Dugald Stewart.

SPECULATIVE ABILITY. 199

Where this imperfection of character exists, it
must be an insuperable obstacle to success in active
life. That power of intellect, nevertheless, which
is thus circumscribed, is not destroyed. Power,
whether of body or mind, has always an uncon-
querable tendency to exert itself; and he, who is
not endowed with the energy of temperament ne-
cessary to bring his intellect into play amidst the
conflict of worldly interests, will turn its whole
force to those pursuits in which his timidity will be
no incumbrance. Thus both Addison and Cowper,
although they were ill calculated to make a figure
when the manifestation of their talents depended
on personal action, could accomplish more than
most of their species, when they entered the free
field of composition, unimpeded by the restraints of
external circumstances. The character of Addison,
indeed, may be selected as a striking instance of
admirable speculative powers, combined with a
deficiency o?' practical talent, in circumstances fa-
vourable to its cultivation. By the force of his
genius, without the aid of hereditary fortune or
^family connections, he rose to an important office
■ in the state, and had every opportunity of qualify-
ing himself to discharge its duties with credit and
effect. The course of his education, and the career
through which he subsequently passed, seemed to
combine whatever was necessary to form and direct
the powers of a practical statesman : yet, notwith-
standing all his advantages, all his accomplishments.

200 ON PRACTICAL AND

he was found incompetent to fill the situation to
which his general abilities, rather than any obvious
fitness in the eyes of others, may be presumed to
have raised him. "In the year 1717 he rose,"
says Dr. Johnson, " to his highest elevation, be-
ing made secretary of state. For this employ-
ment he might be justly supposed qualified by long
practice of business, and by his regular ascent
through other offices ; but expectation is often dis-
appointed ; it is universally confessed that he was
unequal to the duties of his place. In the house of
commons he could not speak, and therefore was
useless to the defence of the government. In the
oflSce, says Pope, he could not issue an order with-
out losing his time in quest of fine expressions.
What he gained in rank, he lost in credit; and
finding by experience his own inability, was forced
to solicit his dismission with a pension of fifteen
hundred pounds a year."*

It is perhaps quite as common to mt^t with the
reverse of the phenomenon which we have been
considering ; to find considerable practical talents
combined with comparatively feeble powers of
speculation. The language and conduct of men of
business, both in private life and in the administra-
tion of public affairs, frequently involve principles
decidedly erroneous, and when brought to the test
of scientific investigation, even palpably absurd ;

* Lives of the Poets.

SPECULATIVE ABILITY. 201

and yet it is almost as difficult to convince them of
^ their error, and to place their minds in a position
B for viewing the subject aright, as to give an idea of
colours to the blind. Hence it is years, and almost
ages, before the discoveries of science and philoso-
phy are adopted in practice. The habit of looking
at present expedients, and forming hasty conclu-
sions from superficial appearances, seems to inca-
pacitate such men for raising their views to remote
' consequences, and tracing the operation of general
™ principles. Their incapacity for mere intellectual
processes, except of the simplest sort, is in truth as
remarkable as the awkwardness of the philosopher
in the active pursuits of life.
\M This superiority of their practical talents to their
speculative powers may be explained on much the
same grounds as the contrary case : it is occasioned
by the exclusive application of their talents to busi-
ness, and the intellectual habits thus created. We
see in it another exemplification of the general prin-
ciple, that a man will excel in that to which he
lends the greatest attention. But there are some
dispositions more quahfied by nature for the busi-
JK ness of the world than others. It has been already
remarked, that the mind is frequently turned to
speculative pursuits by constitutional timidity ; and
it is frequently determined to active pursuits by
|V energy of temperament. Energy itself, without su-
periority of intellect, suffices to make a man of
practical talent. It puts all his faculties to their

r:

202 ON PRACTICAL AND

utmost stretch, and gives him a decided control
over all who are less bold and resolute than him-
self. Intellectual ability is, in fact, only an inert
instrument : it is passion which is the moving
power, and which brings it into operation ; and a
small measure of understanding may often do more
when urged on by strong passion, or a determined
will, than an infinitely larger portion with no vigour
to set it in motion.

There is another quality of mind, not exactly the
same as energy, but often combined with it, which
has usually a large share in the composition of
practical talent, and that is, the presence of mind,
or self-possession, which enables a man at all times
to employ his powers to advantage. Madame de
Stael, in her delineation of Bonaparte, remarks
with her usual sagacity, that it was rather because
other men did not act upon him than because he
acted upon them that he became their master.
This power of not being acted upon by others gives
a man a wonderful command over such as have
less coolness than himself; and the susceptibility
of being acted upon unfits him who is extremely
subject to it for success in active life.

To the qualities already mentioned, as entering
into the composition of practical ability, we may
add, what is perhaps rather a habit than a natural
property ; a certain versatility of feeling as well as
of intellect. A man of business, accustomed to
pass rapidly from one thing to another, can enter

SPECULATIVE ABILITY. 203

with a proper degree of interest into any affair in
which he finds himself engaged. He possesses a
facihty of transferring his attention and the exercise
of his powers to successive objects, not only with-

Iout distraction, but with proper confidence in him-
self; and from this property of his mind, together
with the others already enumerated, he derives
such a perfect command over his faculties as to
bring them to bear with effect on every occasion.
■ Some of the highest functions which a man can
!^ be called to discharge, obviously require a consider-
able degree of both practical and speculative ability.
K This remark applies to the art of public speaking,
which is materially indebted in its greatest excel-

*lence to grace of action, agreeable enunciation,
skilful pliancy of tone, readiness of mind, acuteness
and nicety of tact, boldness and self-possession ;

» while all the beauty and logical force of an oration
are the result of speculative power. But a man of
only moderate speculative talents will often make
_ a popular orator by an imposing manner, a perfect
iH command over his ideas and feelings, and a grace-
|r ful use of his personal advantages : and on the other
hand, a man devoid of all these, a man of no prac-
tical ability, without making his way through our
senses by the charms of voice or gesture, and even
1^ without the aid of perfect expression, will astonish
and delight us by the mere potency of his thoughts.
It is the soul of the speaker that seizes upon his

204 ON PRACTICAL AND

auditors without the intervention of external ar-
tifice.

There is a subordinate kind of practical ability,
which consists in the easy and perfect management
of ourselves in social intercourse. It may be termed
ability of manner, and seems to depend in a great
measure on the same qualities as other kinds of
practical ability. It is occasionally found in a very
high degree without much power of understanding.
The man, who has attained it, can conduct himself
with propriety, and without embarrassment, in any
company into which he happens to be thrown, and
•' go through all the ceremonies of life with facility and
grace. He has not only an instantaneous perception
of what is proper to be said and done, on every
occasion, but he has at command his language, his
gestures, and even the expression of his counte-
nance ; so that he can always act up to his own
sense of propriety, and exhibit to advantage what-
ever share he possesses of intellect and acquirements.
As one ingredient or accompaniment, or embel-
lishment of ability of manner, we may mention that
ready talent for conversation with which some are
endowed, either by nature or education. Their
ideas flow without effort, and clothe themselves in
easy and appropriate language. Every thing around
them ; all that they see and hear, seems to awaken
their memory or imagination. They are always
fertile in topics, and expression never deserts them.

SPECULATIVE ABILITY. 205

It is not uncommon for men of eminent talents
to want this ability of manner, and to evince a con-
siderable degree of awkwardness and embarrass-
ment in the interchange of civilities. Though they
may have a delicate perception of what is proper,
yet having neither the facility which is acquired by
practice, nor the self-possession of less susceptible
minds, they fail to exemplify their own ideas of
propriety. The presence of a number of their fel-
^ low creatures appears to oppress them with a con-
straint, which fetters all their powers, particularly
their powers of conversation. In vain do they task

I their minds for suitable topics of discourse. Their
ideas seem to have vanished from their recollection,
and their language is marked by hesitation and in-
felicity.
\m The character of Addison furnishes an illustration
also of this part of our subject. It appears, that all
his commerce with society, and his intercourse with
high life, had failed to give him the easy and unem-
barrassed carriage of a man of the world. Accord-
ing to Lord Chesterfield, he was the most timorous
and awkward man that he ever saw. Dr. Johnson,
who thinks this representation hyperbolical, never-
theless admits, that he was deficient in readiness of
conversation, and that every testimony concurs to
prove his having been oppressed by an improper
and ungraceful timidity. That his taciturnity arose
from constraint, and not from want of power, is

18

II

206 ON PRACTICAL AND

decided by the testimony of those, who best knew
him, to the attractive qualities of his conversation,
when amongst his intimate friends. "Addison's
conversation," says Pope, "had something in it
more charming than I have found in any other man.
But this was only when familiar ; before strangers,
or perhaps a single stranger, he preserved his dig-
nity by a stiff silence."

Gray may be cited as another instance of the
want of ability of manner, if reliance is to be placed
on the representation of Horace Walpole, who thus
speaks of him in one of his letters : "I agree with
you most absolutely in your opinion about Gray;
he is the worst company in the world. From a
melancholy turn, from living reclusely, and from a
little too much dignity, he never converses easily.
All his words are measured and chosen. His
writings are admirable. He himself is not agree-
able." In this representation, some ill-nature and
exaggeration may be reasonably suspected, but the
writer would scarcely have hazarded a portrait
devoid of all resemblance to the original.

To these instances we may add the account given
us of the manners of Adam Smith, by his biographer,
Mr. Stewart : " In the company of strangers his
tendency to absence, and perhaps still more his
consciousness of that tendency, rendered his manner
somewhat embarrassed ; an effect which was pro-
bably not a little heightened b}' those speculative

SPECULATIVE ABILITY. 207

ideas of propriety, which his recluse habits tended
at once to perfect in his conception, and to diminish
his power of realizing."

Although constraint or embarrassment, in the
presence of others, must of itself impair a man's
powers of conversation, other causes conspire to
produce a deficiency of conversational talent in men
of profound genius. It seems partly to arise from a
want of versatility of mind, and from the nature of
those relations by which their ideas are connected.
Men of profundity are not versatile, because from
pursuing logical deductions and regular inventions,
they grow accustomed to proceed with order and
method. Their associations are of too strict a
character to admit of rapid transitions from one
subject to another ; whereas the ideas of a man of
the world, being connected by a thousand accidental
ties, and superficial relations, are liable to be roused
by any object or event which may present itself.
What knowledge he possesses he has always at
command ; it may be of small amount, but his
promptness at producing it frequently enables him
to triumph over the philosopher, whose slow habits
and abstract associations form a sort of ponderous
machinery, requiring to be methodically worked to
raise his ideas from the depths of his mind. But on
this particular subject it would be idle to expatiate,
since the world is already in possession of the elo-
quent and philosophical explanation of Stewart.

«

208 ON PRACTICAL AND

After illustrating " the advantages which the phi-
losopher derives, in the pursuits of science, from
that sort of systematic memory, which his habits of
arrangement give him," he proceeds as follows : —
" It may however be doubted, whether such
habits be equally favourable to a talent for agreeable
conversation ; at least for that lively, varied, and
unstudied conversation, which forms the principal
charm of a promiscuous society. The conversation,
which pleases generally, must unite the recommen-
dations of quickness, of ease, and of variety : and
in all these three respects, that of the philosopher
is apt to be deficient. It is deficient in quickness,
because his ideas are connected by relations which
occur only to an attentive and collected mind. It
is deficient in ease, because these relations are not
the casual and obvious ones by which ideas are
associated in ordinary memories, but the slow
discoveries of patient and often painful exertion.
As the ideas, too, which he associates together, are
commonly of the same class, or at least are referred
to the same general principles, he is in danger of
becoming tedious by indulging himself in long and
systematical discourses ; while another, possessed
of the most inferior accomplishments, by laying his
mind completely open to impressions from without,
and by accommodating continually the course of his
own ideas, not only to the ideas which are started
by his companions, but to every trifling and unex-

SPECULATIVE ABILITY. 209

pected accident that may occur to give them a new-
direction, is the life and soul of every society into
which he enters."*

To this may be added, that the philosopher can
feel little interest in many of those events which
occasion fervent emotion in the minds of ordinary
people ; and since to feel an interest in any thing is
to have the ideas excited, and the imagination
awakened, his conversation will frequently fail in
vivacity, because his feelings are not roused by a
number of inconsiderable circumstances, about
which others are vividly affected.

* Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, vol. i.
page 422, &c.

18^

ESSAY X.

ON THE

MUTABILITY OF HUMAN FEELINGS.

Man is a mutable being. Objects are in con-
tinual fluctuation around him, and his views,
feehngs, and faculties, are subject to the same law.
Let any one compare the state of his mind at two
distant periods of his life, and he will perceive a
revolution, not only in his external relations, but
in his moral and mental being : he is no longer the
same man ; his purposes, motives, affections, and
views of hfe, have been the subjects of a change,
gradual perhaps in its progress, but great in its con-
summation. The object which he once regarded
with all the enthusiasm of feeling, which seemed to
be the very sun of his existence, and the bare men-
tion of which thrilled through his heart, has totally
vanished from his thoughts. The prospect which
formerly looked so enchanting, is now cold and
cheerless to his eye. He looks back, and cannot
refrain from wondering, that, on circumstances of
so trifling a nature, his heart should have wasted such

MUTABILITY OF HUMAN FEELINGS. 211

excess of passion. As a plain mansion meets his
mature eye in the building, which to his infant gaze
wore the appearance of a stately palace, so he dis-
cerns nothing but insignificance in those pursuits,
which once filled and inflamed his imagination
with their importance. A livelier description of
such a change of feeling cannot perhaps be found,
than that which Lord Chesterfield has left us in a
letter written a short time before his death: "I
have run," says his lordship, " the silly round of
business and pleasure, and have done with them
all. 1 have enjoyed all pleasures of the world, and
consequently know their futility, and do not regret
their loss. I appraise them at their real value,
which is, in truth, very low : whereas those, that
have not experienced, always overrate them. They
only see their gay outside, and are dazzled with
the glare ; but I have seen behind the scenes ; I
have seen all the coarse pullies and dirty ropes,
which exhibit and move the gaudy machine ; I
have seen and smelt the tallow candles, which il-
luminate the whole decoration, to the astonishment
and admiration of an ignorant audience. When I
reflect back npon what I have seen, what 1 have
heard, and what I have done, I can hardly persuade
myself that all that frivolous hurry, and bustle, and
pleasure of this world, had any reality ; but I look
npon all that has passed as one of the romantic
dreams, which opium commonly occasions, and T

212 ON THE MUTABILITY OF

do by no means desire to repeat the nauseous dose,
for the sake of the fugitive dream."

But besides these more important mental revolu-
tions, there are others of a subordinate character,
less remarked and less remembered. What a variety
of desires, and passions, and tones of feeling, the same
individual passes through in the course of a week !
What alternations of hope and fear, humility and ex-
ultation, gladness and melancholy ! What a change
in our views of life, as we look upon it through the
transient media, which successive passions rapidly
interpose between the mind and its objects ! Even
the most uniform state is diversified by a train of
little passions and desires, followed by disappoint-
ment or gratification ; and with many, the very
days of the week and hours of the day have each
their different sets of feelings and associations.

No stage or condition of life is free from that
copious source of mental changes, the attainment
of our desires. This principle of mutation runs
through life, through every hour and every day,
although it may attract our notice only on impor-
tant occasions. The revolution of feeling will of
course be proportioned to the intensity of desire
with which we have pursued our object ; and
youth, as it is more liable to be inflamed and delu-
ded by hope, will be peculiarly the season of such
vicissitudes. In regard to almost every object of
pursuit, we may say what the poet says of woman.

HUMAN FEELINGS. 213

" The lovely toy so fiercely sought

Hath lost its charm by being caught."*

Many of the changes of feeling already noticed,
are manifestly experienced without appearing in
our actions : they are bubbles on the stream, which
rise and disappear without any kind of conse-
quences. Others prompt our actions without mak-
ing any permanent difference in our habitual con-
duct. It is indeed astonishing what a number of
various emotions may pass through a man's mind,
and sway his actions, without affecting the perma-
nent tone of his character, on which they seem to
leave as little trace behind them as an arrow of its
flight through the air. There are others of a third
class, however, which produce a considerable effect
on the tenor of his character and conduct. Perhaps
the principle of these are the revolutions of mind
in which its affections are transferred from one set
of objects, or one pursuit, to another. In the lapse
of time they must occur to every one ; but although
all are subject to them, it is by no means in an
equal degree. While some preserve a steadiness of
taste and purpose, not to be suddenly altered by
any of the vicissitudes of life, others bend to every
impulse, and fluctuate with every variation ; a mu-
tability which, if not under the control of strong
sense, will inevitably lead to inconsistency of cha-
racter. Such men seem to possess a constant sus-

* Lord Byron's Giaour.

I

214 ON THE MUTABILITY OF

ceptibility of being inflamed with ardour towards
any object which happens to strike the imagination.
For a short time the chase is kept up with a vigour
and enthusiasm, which amaze the ordinary class of
mortals, and leave competition at a distance ; but
their preternatural energy soon relaxes, and ulti-
mately dies away, till it is revived by some other
caprice, and starts off in a new direction.

This fickleness of character is doubtless in many
cases constitutional, but it is often promoted, if not
engendered, by an imperfect education, which has
suffered the youthful mind to form its most import-
ant associations by chance. Hence the man not
only becomes variable in his moods, but suffers from
the vacillation arising out of the simultaneous
importunities of desires which are incompatible.
Thrown in childhood amidst multiform characters
and circumstances, his mind has been made up of
impressions without any regulating principle to keep
them in just subordination, or modify their effects.
Happiness must be held on a precarious tenure by
a man, who is thus subject to the opposite influence
of inconsistent attractions, and who is continually
liable to have his tranquillity ruffled and his pur-
poses disturbed by some novel event or contact with
some new character. With a mind full of associa-
tions, which can be acted upon by impulses the
most contrary, he is the slave of circumstances,
which seem to snatch the guidance of his conduct
out of his own hands, and impel him forward, till

HUMAN FEELINGS. 215

other events overpower their influence, and having
usurped the same ascendency exercise the same
despotism. Such fickleness of character can be
avoided only by acting on fixed principles and de-
terminate aims, not to be abandoned in the tran-
sient humours which every day brings and every
day sees expire. Man, amidst the fluctuations of
his own feelings and of passing events, ought to re-
semble the ship, which currents may carry and
winds may impel from her course, but which,
amidst every deviation, still presses onward to her
port with unremitted perseverance. Jn the coolness
of reflection, he ought to survey his affairs with a
dispassionate and comprehensive eye, and having
fixed on this plan, take the necessary steps to ac-
complish it, regardless of the temporary mutations
of his mind, the monotony of the same track, the
apathy of exhausted attention, or the blandishments
of new projects.

The folly of sacrificing settled purposes to tran-
sient humours cannot be kept too steadily in view.
In a man of susceptible mind these moods of feeling
often chase each other in rapid succession ; and if
he is also a wise man, it will powerfully restrain
their influence on his actions, to reflect, that next
month, or next week, or even to-morrow, he will
experience nothing of the melancholy, or vexation,
or ardour, or desire, which predominates to-day.
He should therefore make his considerate determi-
nation the fixed point round which his passions, and

216 MUTABILITY OF HUMAN FEELINGS.

feelings, and humours might play, with as little
power to move it as the clouds possess on the sted-
fastness of Skiddaw.

The place of such a consistent perseverance, as
here described, is in many individuals supplied by
a devoted attachment to some particular pursuit ;
and although this strong determination of the taste
may cause absurdities in the character, it is perhaps
on the whole conducive to happiness. A man with
such a bias is surely happier than he who is per-
petually subject to fickleness of taste and passion ;
or he who spends life in the vacuity arising from
the want of a definite purpose. As instincts supply
the place of knowledge, so does such a decided
partiality produce many of the good effects of a
perseverance in designs formed on mature and com-
prehensive reflection.

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

NOTE A (page 24.)

This argument is so ingeniously put in the following
passage, which I met with after the publication of the first
edition of the present work, that I am happy in the opportu-
nity to present it to my readers, especially as it also coincides
with the practical application of the doctrine in the sequel of
this essay :

" One thing there is which, verily, I could never understand
but to be altogether void of reason. That he who is thought
to have taught something false and impious should be forced to
recant, which if he do, he shall not be punished. To what
purpose, I pray you, serves this practice ? What good is there
gotten, if, for the avoiding of punishment against his con-
science, an heretic should recant his opinion ? There is only
one thing that may be alleged for it ; viz. that such as are
possessed of the same error, and unknown perhaps, will do the
like in their own hearts, yea, will counsel others to do the
same. That opinion must needs have a very light impression,
which can so easily be plucked out of men's minds. Have we
■^ no reason to suspect that such a recantation is rather for fear
of punishment than from the heart ? Will there not rather
much heart-burning by this means arise, if the magistrates
shall seem not only to kill the body, but to plot the ruine of
the soul? Are we, indeed, so ill-furnished with weapons to
vanquish error, as to be forced to defend ourselves with a lye,
to put our trust in recantations made through fear ? But some
may say, this is not what we desire, to force men to any kind
of recantation, but that an heretic may acknowledge his error,

19

218 NOTES.

not so much with his mouth as with his heart. This were ex-
cellent, indeed, if these could bring him to it. But what work
is there for threats or blandishments in this case ? These have
some power, indeed, to prevail with the will, but thy business is
with the understanding : it is changed neither by threats, nor
flatteries, nor allurements. These cannot cause that what
formerly seemed true should now seem false, though the party
may very much desire to change his judgment, which, if it
seem a new and wonderful thing to thee, I shall not need many
arguments to convince thee of the truth thereof. You suppose
that a man may change his judgment when he will, without
any new reason to persuade him to think otherwise. I deny
that he can do so. Make you, therefore, an experiment upon
yourself, and see if you can for the least space of time draw
yourself to think otherwise than you do in the question between
us, so as to make yourself believe as I do, ^ that a man cannot
change his judgment when he pleases,' without question you
shall finde that you cannot do it. But take heed you mistake
not an imagination for a persuasion, for nothing hinders but
that thou mayest imagine what thou wilt. I pray thee like-
wise to consider again, that in case thou fear any thing, as, for
example, lest any business may not have a good issue, lest
fiomethinge should come to pass much against thy minde, so
that thou canst not sleep for the trouble thereof, thou need but
change thy opinion concerning such a thing, so as to hope that
all will be well, and thy trouble shall be at an end. O most
easie and ready medicine to take away the greatest part of that
trouble of minde which men sustain in this life ! O short phi-
losophy ! If whatsoever evil a man shall fear may betide him,
he may believe (if he will) that it will not come to pass ; what-
soever molests a man, because he takes it to be an evil, (when
as oft times there is no evil in such a thing,) he may persuade
himself when he pleases that it is not an evil. But experience
shows that none of these things can be." — Satan's Stratagems,
by Acontius or Aconzio, translated by John Goodwin, 1648.

I am indebted for the above extract to the Monthly Reposi-
tory, No. 188, page 458.

NOTES. 219

NOTE B (page 65.)

y There are people in the world, and people even of intelli-
gence, who are afraid of associating with others of opposite
opinions to their own, or of reading books in which such
opinions are maintained ; and they justify their fears by alleg-
ing, that they wish to avoid the contamination of their minds;
that no one can associate with free-thinkers without having his
faith shaken, or with republicans without some inroads on his
veneration for monarchy. It is true enough, as we have had
occasion to observe in the text, that our opinions are greatly
influenced by our associates ; but it is those opinions only
which have been instilled into our minds without any exa-

^mination on our part, or which have never assumed a distinct
and definite form ; which we have never analysed, and which
we cannot trace from any rational premises. Whatever there-
fore may be said in justification of such fears on the part of
the illiterate, no man who professes to think for himself, or to
be an inquirer after truth, can consistently be afraid of any
arguments, any opinions. To him they are subjects of exa-
mination, and he rejoices if he finds in them a new principle.
They can come to form part of his own opinions only by their
clearness and cogency. Before any proposition can be receiv-
ed into his mind as true, it must appear to him logically de-
duced from undeniable premises. What is there, therefore, in
any opinion, which can cause him a moment's alarm ? If it
comes before him without proper evidence, it makes no impres-
sion : if it is supported by irresistible proof, he has gained a
new truth. What possible evil then can arise from subjecting
his mind to the operation of any arguments whatever ?

It is different in the case of the imagination, or, in other
words, with ideas connected by other than logical relations,
with those mere conceptions which are continually rising in
the mind. The evil of a false argument is not in its being
perceived by the understanding, but in its being regarded as

I

220 NOTES.

true : hence the perception of its fallacy annihilates its in-
fluence, and, however often it may occur to the recollection, it
is perfectly harmless : but in the case of horrid or disgusting
image?, it is the mere conception of them which constitutes
the evil, and the most thorough insight into their character
cannot remedy the mischief.

Hence, while he who has formed his conclusions for himself,
and clearly sees their dependence on indubitable evidence, is
unaffected in his opinions amidst the thickest warfare of so-
phistry, and comes unharmed out of the contest, a man of the
most virtuous disposition and the purest intentions is at the
mercy, as it regards his imagination, of the ideas oflenest pre-
sented to him, and can hardly escape contamination from a
frequent exhibition of such as are unseemly and improper.

For these reasons, a man of thought, although he would
forfeit the character of a philosopher, and deserve the pity if
not the contempt of every inquirer after truth, by evincing the
slightest fear of any arguments, by avoiding any book, lest it
should produce a change in his opinions, would be perfectly
justified in shunning such company or such writings as have a
tendency to pervert the imagination. In the one case he can
receive no impression which he can have any proper reason
for avoiding ; in the other, he is exposed to disgusting or de-
grading images, which, when they have once become familiar,
may intrude amidst the purest and most serious meditations.

NOTE C (page 74.)

I have left the foot-note to the text in this page exactly as
it appeared in the first edition ; but it by no means solves the
whole of the question, why we are apt to take greater offence
at an endeavour to subvert part of our creed, than at an at-
tempt to enlarge it by further additions. It must be partly
accounted for by the fact, that our affections attach them-
selves to a doctrine as well as to any external object. If early
and deeply fixed, a multitude of interesting associations na-

NOTES. 221

turally gather round it ; it becomes endeared to us by being
connected with pleasurable circumstances, the rallying point
of pleasant thoughts. We are alarmed and indignant, there-
fore, at any design to shake its validity : the removal of it
from our minds would be the destruction of a whole system of
associations, and perhaps active habits, of which it is the
nucleus or centre ; the bare suggestion of its being erroneous
infuses all the inquietude of doubt, and obstructs the course
of our habitual thoughts and feelings, and our first impulse is
to resent the attack. But it is obvious that a new article of
faith, which suffers our old opinions to remain, and merely
offers something additional to our thoughts, produces none of
these effects. It overturns no superstructure of association ; it
interposes no chasm in the regular track of our imagination,
no sudden hiatus in the circle of our feelings, no doubts to
impede our intellectual movements. It occasions therefore no
alarm, and no resentment, no laceration of mind (to borrow an
expression of Dr. Johnson's), while it inspires that self-com-
placency attendant on a perception of the superiority of our
own views.

In the Essay on the Influence of Reason on the Feelings,
we have shown how liable the mind is, in certain circum-
stances, to the recurrence of these feelings, even in opposition
to the convictions of the understanding. It seems to have been
a similar view of the subject, arising probably from his own
consciousness and experience (for we all know how tenaciously
his early prejudices clung to his mind), which led Dr. Johnson
to maintain, in the passage which supplied the expression just
quoted, that no reliance could be placed on a conversion from
the Roman Catholic to the Protestant faith.

" A man," he observes, " who is converted from Protestant-
ism to Popery, may be sincere : he parts with nothing ; he is
only superadding to what he already had. But a convert
from Popery to Protestantism gives up so much of what he
has held as sacred as any thing that he retains, there is so
much laceration of mind in such a conversion, that it can

hardly be sincere and lasting."

19*

222 NOTES.

We may trace to the same source, namely, to the pleasurable
ideas and emotions which gather round a doctrine, those fre-
quent declamations which we hear against cold reasoning and
hard-hearted logic, and pathetic appeals to one part of our
nature against the other. An original thinker, a reformer in
moral science, will thus often appear a hard and insensible
character. He goes beyond the feelings and associations of
the age ; he leaves them behind him ; he shocks our old pre-
judices: it is reserved for a subsequent generation, to whom
his views have been unfolded from their infancy, and in whose
minds all the interesting associations have collected round
them, which formerly encircled the exploded opinions, to re-
gard his discoveries with unmingled pleasure. Hence an au-
thor, who aspires after popularity, must not project his powers
in advance of the age ; but throw them back amongst the re-
collections and associations of past times.

NOTE D (page 78.)

Many good men, who have wished to be liberal to such as
differed from them in opinion, have perplexed themselves as to
the extent to which their liberality should be carried. Some,
with the inconclusiveness of conscientious feeling, combined
with feeble powers of logical deduction, have sagely inferred
that it ought not to be carried too far ; while others, in the true
spirit of persecution, have denounced any indulgence to im-
portant differences as spurious liberality.

The principles unfolded in the present work relieve us from
all difficulty on this point. True liberality consists in not im-
puting to others any moral turpitude because their opinions
differ from our own. It does not consist in ostensibly yielding
to the opinions of others, in refraining from a rigorous exami-
nation of their soundness, or from detecting and exposing the
fallacies which they involve ; but in regarding those who hold
them as free from consequent culpability, and abstaining from
casting upon them that moral odium, with which men have

NOTES. 223

been ready in all ages to overwhelm such as deviated in the
least from the miserable compound of truth and error, which
they liugged to their own bosoms.

NOTE E (page 8S.)

It is not often that we can meet with any direct arguments
against the utility of truth — at least in a quarter which entitles
them to attention. The following passage, therefore, from the
Edinburgh Review may be considered of some value, as a spe-
cimen of what can be alleged against the doctrine. It shows
the feebleness of acknowledged talent when engaged on the
side of sophistry.

The extract is from a Review of Belsham's Elements of the
Philosophy of the Mind.

" Mr. Belsham has one short argument, that whatever is true
cannot be hurtful. It is the motto of his title page, and is af-
terwards repeated with equal emphasis, at every time of need.
* If the doctrine be true,' he contends, ' the diffusion of it can
do no harm. It is an established and undeniable principle, that
truth must be favourable to virtue.' To us, however, this prin-
ciple, instead of being undeniable, has always appeared the
most questionable of postulates. In the declamation of Cato,
or the poetry of Akenside, we admit it with little scruple, be-
cause we do not read Plato or Akenside for the truths they
may chance to contain ; but we always feel more than scepti-
cism, when we are assailed by it in a treatise of pure philosophy :
nor can we account for an almost universal assent it has re-
ceived, from any other circumstance than the profession and
habits of the first teachers of morals in our schools, and of the
greater number of their successors. It was a maxim of religion,
before it became a maxim of philosophy ; though, even as a
religious maxim, it formed a very inconsistent part of the op-
timism in which it was combined. The Deity wills happiness;
he loves truth : truth therefore must be productive of good.
Such is the reasoning of the optimist. But he forgets, that, in

224 NOTES.

his system, error too must have been beneficial, because error
has been; and that the employment of falsehood for the pro-
duction of good cannot be more unworthy of the Divine Being,
than the acknowledged employment of rapine and murder for
the same purpose. There is, therefore, nothing in the abstract
consideration of truth and Deity, which justifies the adoption
of such a maxim ; and as little is it justified by our practical
experience. In the small events of that familiar and hourly
intercourse, which forms almost the whole of human life, how
much is happiness increased by the general adoption of a sys-
tem of concerted and limited deceit ! for it is either in that
actual falsehood, which must, as falsehood, be productive of
evil, or in the suppression of that truth, which, as truth, must
have been productive of good, that the chief happiness of
civilized manners consists ; and he from whose doctrine it flows,
that we are to be in no case hypocrites, would, in mere man-
ners, reduce us to a degree of barbarism beyond that of the
rudest savage, who, in the simple hospitalities of his hut, or
the ceremonial of the public assemblies of his tribe, has still
some courtesies, which he fulfils with all the exactness of polite
dissimulation. In the greater events of life, how often might
the advantage of erroneous belief be felt I If, for example, it
were a superstition of every mind, that the murderer, imme-
diately on the perpetration of his guilt, must himself expire by
sympathy, a new motive would be added to the side of virtue ;
and the only circumstance to be regretted would be, not that
the falsehood would produce effect, since that effect would be
only serviceable, but that perhaps the good effect would not be
of long duration, as it would be destroyed for ever by the rash-
ness of the first daring experimenter. The visitation of the
murderer by the nightly ghost, which exists in the superstition
of so many countries, and which forms a great part of that
complex and unanalysed horror with which the crime continues
to be considered after the belief of the superstition itself has
ceased, has probably been of more service to mankind than the
truths of all the sermons, that have been preached on the cor-
responding prohibition in the Decalogue. It is unfortunate,

IK

NOTES. 225

that with this beneficial awe unnecessary horrors have been
connected ; for the place continues to be haunted, as well as
the person; and the dread of our infancy is thus directed,
rather to the supernatural appearance than to the crime. But
if superstition could exist, and be modified, at the will of an
enlightened legislator, so as to be deprived of its terrors to the
innocent, and turned wholly against the guilty, we know no
principle of our nature on wliich it would be so much for the
interest of mankind to operate. It would be a species of pro-
hibitive religion, more impressive, at the moment of beginning
crime, than religion itself; because its penalties would be more
conceivable and immediate. Innumerable cases may be ima-
gined, in which other errors of belief would be of moral ad-
vantage ; and we may therefore assume, as established and
undeniable, that there is nothing in the nature of truth which
makes it necessarily good ; that in the greater number of in-
stances, truth is beneficial ; but that, of the whole number of
truths and falsehoods, a certain number are productive of good,
and others of evil. To which number any particular truth or
falsehood belongs, must be shown, in the usual way, by rea-
sonings of direct experience or analogy ; and hence, in a ques-
tion of utility, the demonstration of mere logical truth cannot
justly be adduced as superseding the necessity of other inqui-
ries. Even though the contrary of that postulate, which Mr.
Belsham has assumed, could not have been shown from other
cases, it would not therefore have been applicable, without
proof, to the great questions which he discusses ; for these
questions comprehend all the truths that are of most importance
in human life, which are thus the very truths from which the
justness of the assumed principle is most fully to be demon-
strated or denied."

It may be remarked in the first place, that this argument
begins by confounding two essentially different things, the
veracity of men and the knowledge of truth. The advantages
of a system of conventional simulation and dissimulation we
may pass over with the remark, that if it is really beneficial to
society, it is so exactly in proportion as its character is accu-

226 NOTES.

rately appreciated by those engaged in it. Where it is per-
fectly well understood, as it generally is, it does the least
harm, and produces the most benefit. If any individual is de-
ceived by it, if he misconstrues the current professions of social
intercourse in their literal sense, he usually suffers for his error,
which proves, that, even in this case, a knowledge of the truth
is a necessary protection against evil.

Dismissing, however, the consideration of veracity, let us
proceed to the real question, whether truth is beneficial, and
examine the arguments adduced in support of the negative.

The writer of the passage appears from first to last to pro-
ceed on the principle, that the true consequences of evil actions
are not the most efficacious motives to deter men from com-
mitting those actions, but that it is useful for them to appre-
hend other and more alarming results, consequences of greater
magnitude, capable of producing more vivid impressions on the
imagination : that since mankind do not always act from a con-
viction of what is best, but from the predominant appetite or
passion of the moment, it is expedient to call in the aid of some
counter passion, founded on false views, whose influence shall
operate in the direction which the most enlightened judgment
would point out. The first thing which strikes the mind in
this view of the matter, is the needlessness of any extraneous
motives, in cases which have an abundant supply within them-
selves. If human actions are morally bad only in proportion
as they are pernicious to society, and to the agent himself, a
perfect knowledge of their consequences seems to be all that is
lequisite to deter him from them ; and to excite a dread of some-
thing more terrible would be a superfluous and wanton pres-
sure on the feelings. We may admit, nevertheless, for our
present purpose, that any groundless fears, which served to
corroborate the eflfect of just apprehensions, would be so far
useful; but whether they were absolutely beneficial would ob-
viously depend on their not being necessarily accompanied by
circumstances of an opposite character and of greater moment.
That they would be inevitably attended by circumstances of
this latter description, both in the instances supposed by the

NOTES. 227

writer before us and in every consistently imaginable instance,
I shall endeavour to show as succinctly as the subject permits.
An apprehension of false consequences must evidently be
founded on an incorrect knowledge of facts, or on wrong in-
ferences from facts accurately ascertained. In either case the

1^ existence of the error implies a state of ignorance, and, if it re-'
gards actions important to mankind, ignorance of a deep and
dangerous character.

Let us take, for instance, the first case imagined by the critic :
let us suppose the universal prevalence of the belief, that a
murderer would expire by sympathy immediately on the com-
mission of the crime. The mass of moral and physical igno-

|V ranee and misconception which must exist to support a belief
of this nature in any society, cannot fail to rise before the un-
derstanding of every one who reflects a moment on the subject.
>It is not to be supposed that mankind could be involved in so
gross an error, while they were in other respects at all enlight-
ened. On the contrary, its prevalence would imply a total
ignorance of the laws of animal life, of the piienomena of the
human mind, of the rules of evidence, and the principles of
reasoning, a blindness in the human race to every thing within
and without them. These would be necessary conditions for
the bare existence of so absurd a doctrine ; they would be es-
sential to its support, and would give birth to a multitude of
evils infinitely greater than any which it would prevent. Al-

I though no clandestine assassinations might be committed, a
thousand public butcheries would probably take place, execu-
tions for witchcraft, human sacrifices, self-immolations, legal
murders of heresy and dissent. The mischief would be with-
out assignable limits. Laws restrictive of innocent or bene-
ficial actions, gloomy superstitions, absurd customs, fanatical
rites, wars of vengeance, slavery scarcely conscious of its own
baseness, some or all of these would be the inevitable accom-
paniments, sooner or later, of such an erroneous belief. Even
supposing the delusion to exist amongst a gentle and harmless
race, who were free from the grossest of the evils here enumer-
ated, such a state of society could never be secure from them.

228 NOTES.

There is no barrier against the irruption of the evils of igno-
rance but true knowledge. Hence the peaceable, the almost
happy condition in which uncivilized nations may occasionally
be found, is a state of fragile tranquillity, liable to be crushed
from without or shattered from within, by those spontaneous
ebullitions of caprice and enthusiasm, against which the human
mind has no security but in the full light of science and reason.
What principles, amidst such ignorance, could prove a defence
against any absurdity which a man of cunning and audacity
might find his advantage in maintaining? At the mercy of im-
postors and fanatics or of that mongrel race which partakes of
the complexion of both,* such a society would be in continual
danger of an intestine ferment, which (if I may borrow an im-
age from an exploded doctrine) might at any time burst out
into the equivocal generation of vice and misery.

This writer must have had strange views of the nature of the
human mind, and have made little use of the lessons to be
gathered from the history of the race, to suppose, what is ne-
cessarily implied in his argument, that a gross error could exist
independent and insulated, deprived of all its pernicious rela-
tions and accompaniments, stripped of its power in every way,
except in that particular direction which he has chosen to
imagine.

He seems to have fallen into the common practice of look-
ing only at a single direct and immediate consequence of the
error, unconscious of the necessity of expanding his view over
the whole circle of its influence and connections. A single
appeal to our own consciousness, a single glance at our fellow
men, suffices to show that one doctrine is necessarily connected
with other doctrines ; that when one truth is established, other
dependent truths spring up around it; that for any given error
to prevail, a number of other errors must prevail at the same
time. This is the reason universally applicable why error,
taking in the whole of its concomitants and consequences, never
can be beneficial. It never can have a preponderance of good

* «

Fingunt, simul creduntque."— Tacitus.

NOTES. 229

effects, because its existence implies related, collateral, co-ordi-
nate errors, and is incompatible with that completeness of
knowledge and perfection of reason, which are indispensable to
the highest degree of human happiness.

The other hypothetical case adduced is exposed to the same
arguments. Assuming that a belief in apparitions really ope-
rates to prevent murders, we have on the one hand a good
attained, and on the other we have, as in the former case, all
the error and ignorance which such a belief implies, with their
incalculable train of pernicious consequences, which it is un-
necessary to recapitulate. The argument is already abundant-
ly conclusive. If a false apprehension of consequences in
these important cases would be accompanied by the evils
which we have endeavoured to show would be inseparable
from it, the assistance which it might furnish in deterring
from crime would be a subordinate consideration. But it is
by no means evident that it would lend any assistance worth
regarding. The whole good accomplished is not to be placed
to the account of the error ; it is only the superiority of its effi-
cacy in deterring from the crime, over the salutary influence
of those other circumstances which would operate in the same
direction, if such a belief did not exist. The natural horror
at taking the life of a fellow creature, the infamy of detection,
the vengeance of society, and the other necessary or probable
consequences of the deed, would still be left to produce their
effect : and it would be difficult to show, that the addition of
an absurd belief would materially enhance the motives to ab-
stain from this consummation of wickedness. It may be oven
questioned whether the power of the motives would not be
impaired, when it is considered that such a belief would be
incompatible with that clear view of all the real consequences
of the crime which an enlightened mind can alone fully pos-
sess, and which, except under the despotism of some passion
that puts all consequences out of sight, would be sufficient to
save any individual from a deed so irreparably destructive of
his own happiness. We must recollect, too, that it is one of
the beneficial effects of a clear and correct view of the conse-

20

/

230 NOTES.

quenccs of actions to dispossess passion of this power, and that
the tempest which obscures the intellectual vision is most
likely to arise, and produce its melancholy results, in a mind
already clouded by error and ignorance.

To all these considerations it may be added, that a morality
founded on the exhibition of false consequences to the ima-
gination is insecure and unstable. The delusion is constantly
open to suspicion and exposure. The imputed consequences
are often obscurely felt, if »ot clearly seen, to be fictitious,
and a degree of practical scepticism is induced, which destroys
their influence on the conduct without replacing it by motives
of a higher, because of a more rational character.

On the whole, the philosophy of the critic reminds one
strongly of the profound policy of those mothers, who raise up
dark and dismal images of dustmen, beggars, chimney-sweeps,
and other nursery bugbears, to enforce their authority over un-
manageable children ; nor is the one entitled to less credit and
clemency than the other. To the principles of the philosopher
and the conduct of the parent an equal tribute of admiration
is due, and the errors which the former commends in theory
are just as well adapted to raise mankind to the dignity and
happiness of rational beings, as those which the latter reduces
into practice.

A-fter this general view of the subject, which is sufficient to
expose the futility of these and all similar objections to the
doctrine which teaches the necessary perniciousness of error, it
is scarcely perhaps worth while to descend to a minuter scrutiny
of the logical blunder committed by the critic in his elaborate
culogium on the hypothetical utility of spectres. I have re-
garded rather the general scope of his reasoning, than the form
into which he has put it. Yet, it is too curious an instance of
the slips of sophistry to be entirely passed over. " If," says
he, " superstition could exist, and be modified, at the will of
an enlightened legislator, so as to be deprived of its terrors
to the innocent, and turned wholly against the guilty, we
know no principle of our nature, on which it would be so much
for the interest of mankind to operate." He then proceeds to

NOTES. 23 1

draw the conclusion, that therefore error is not necessarily in-
jurious, "that there is nothing in the nature of truth which
makes it necessarily good." This is surely one of the strangest
pieces of reasoning ever hazarded. Had the critic alleged,
that supersition could be modified at the will of an enlightened
legislator, and rendered serviceable to mankind, then, however
the proposition might be disputed, there would have been some
coherence of argument in proceeding to say, that therefore it
is not necessarily hurtful, but to say, that if it could be so
modified it would be highly beneficial, and that therefore it is
not necessarily injurious, is a perfect instance of inconsequen-
tial reasoning. From merely conditional or hypothetical pre-
mises, he has drawn a positive and absolute conclusion. It is
as if any one should contend, that arsenic is not necessarily
poisonous ; because, if it could be received into the stomach
without injury it would not be destructive of life. In a word,
the writer does not say, that if A were equal to B and B equal
to C, then A and C would be equal ; but in utter defiance of
rules of logic and forms of reasoning, if A were equal to Band
B to C, therefore A and C are equal.

He has, it is true, interposed another sentence between the
premises and the conclusion, which we have here brought to-
gether, and it may perhaps bo imagined, that the inference
deduced was meant to be drawn from this intermediate propo-
sition. To suppose this, however, would be to presume that
the author had taken the trouble of inventing instances, and
had then dismissed them without applying them to ihe purpose
for which he had tasked his invention. If this indeed were
true, if the sentence in question, namely, "innumerable cases
may be imagined in which other errors of belief may be of mo-
ral advantage," were to be considered as the proposition on
which the conclusion depends, the formal logical absurdity
would certainly be got quit of, but only to be replaced by a
substantial error equally glaring. The argument would then
amount to this, that if we can imagine a thing to exist without
its essential properties, it is a proof that they are not essential ;
a principle which carries its own refutation along with it. We

232 NOTES.

have already seen what, in Ihe case of error, these essential
properties arc. It was the province of the critic to show,
either by reasoning from admitted principles or by the induction
of facts, that properties of this kind are not necessarily connect-
ed with it, and not to content himself with asserting'that they
might be separated in imagination. Error may certainly be
imagined in one sense to prevail without attendant £vil, just as
lead may be conceived to float in water ; but what should we
say to the natural philosopher, who contended that the metal
is not necessarily the heavier substance, because we may ima-
gine it to possess buoyancy when placed in the liquid ?

Perhaps more than enough has been said in reply to this vin-
dication of error, but the principle involved so well deserves a
complete elucidation, that the prolixity of the present note will
be excused. From the internal evidence afforded by the style
and matter of the article in the Edinburgh Review, from which
the passage here commented on is extracted, one would suspect
it to have proceeded from the pen of the late Dr. Thomas
Brown. If so, he lived to outgrow such philosophy, for pas-
sages of an opposite tendency might easily be quoted from his
subsequent writings. Here, it is evident, he was only trying
his wings, and he seems to have been more ambitious to dis-
play the brilliancy of the plumage than to prove the strength of
the pinions ; more intent on showing the grace and agility of
his evolutions than the boldness and precision of his flight.

NOTE F (page 104.)

It is an interesting inquiry, what are those circumstances
which form the best external criterion of the truth of a doctrine,
or under which there is the greatest probability of its being true.''

In answer to this question, I think it may be said, that we
have the best test of the truth of any doctrine, the greatest pos-
sible assurance which external circumstances can give, when it
is universally believed amidst the fullest liberty of scrutinizing
its pretensions. If both these circumstanscs do not concur, the

NOTES.

233

doctrine may be pronounced doubtful. The universal belief of
a doctrine is no argument for its truth, if dissent and contro-
versy are prohibited. And, on the other hand, if a doctrine is
believed by only a part of those who have examined it, although
the fullest freedom of inquiry prevails, it may be considered
as not grounded on satisfactory evidence ; or at least that the
evidence in favour of it has not been hitlierto exhibited in all
its force. If this is true, it necessarily follows, that to protect
a doctrine from examination, is to exclude that combination of
circumstances which constitutes the best external evidence,
and gives us the greatest possible assurance of its validity.

NOTE G (page 105.)

ft

^K A very apposite confirmation of this remark may be found
in the following letter from Dr. Reid to Dr. Gregory : " It
would be want of candour not to own, that I think there is
some merii in what you arc pleased to call my philosophy ; but I
think it lies chiefly in having called in question the common
theory o? ideas, or images of things in the mind, being the only

l^bjects of thouglit ; a theory founded on natural prejudices,
and so universally received as to be 'interwoven ^wilh the
structure of language. Yet were I to give you a detail of
what led me to call in question this theory, after I had long
held it as self-evident and unquestionable, you would think, as
I do, that there was much of chance in the matter. The dis-
covery was the birth of time, not of genius ; and Berkeley and
Hume did more to bring it to light than the man that hit upon
it. I think there is hardly any thing that can be called mine in
the philosophy of the mind, which does not follow with ease
from the detection of this prejudice.

Up " I must, therefore, beg of you most earnestly to make no
contrast in my favour, to the disparagement of my predeces-
sors in the same pursuit. I can truly say of them, and shall
always avow, what you are pleased to say of me, that but for

20

*

234 NOTES.

the assistance I have received from their writings I never could
have wrote or thought what I have done." — Life of Dr. Reid
hy Dugald Slewart, page 122.

NOTE H (page 108.)

It may perhaps be argued, that although a man might be
presumptuous in maintaining that he himself was infallible in
his opinions, or in setting up his own belief as a criterion of
truth, yet he may, without such presumption, nay even with
great modesty and diffidence in his own faculties, repose im-
plicit confidence in the infallibility of another, and act upon it
accordingly. But on strict examination it will be found, that
he who acts on the infallibility of another, proceeds also on the
assumption of his own infallibility ; for the conclusion that the
other party is infallible is necessarily the judgment of his own
understanding, and it is therefore, at the bottom, on the judg-
ment of his own understanding that he acts.

Whether we assert a doctrine to be true from our own views
of it, or whether we assert the opinions of others concerning
it to be correct, wc are equally laying down a judgment of
our own ; a judgment, in the one case directly on a doctrine,
in the other case on the correctness of other people's views,
but in both cases equally a conclusion of our own minds :
and if we at any time act on the assumption, that such a
conclusion cannot possibly be wrong, we take for granted our
own infallibility.

A similar position, namely, that whoever maintains the in-
fallibility of another person, does in reality maintain the same
of himself, is thus illustrated in a letter from the eccentric
author of Sandford and Merton.

" I cannot help," says he, " digressing here to propose a
curious argument, derived from this principle, against the
church of Rome ; which I do not remember to have seen. He
that asserts the infallibility of another, must also assert his
own ; otherwise he may be deceived in the judgment he makes
of that infallibility, as well as in any other judgment. But if

NOTES. 235

he allow that all his own judgments are fallible, and may be
erroneous, then bis particular opinion of the infallibility may
be erroneous too, unless he can show a particular reason for
the exception. In this manner it may be shown, that the real
confidence every one has in his own judgment is much the
same, since it must always precede his having a confidence in
any one else."*

Thus no one can escape from the necessity of ultimately re-
l3'ing and acting on his own judgment. Even in the case of
that apparently utter prostration of mind, in which a man re-
gards a fellow creature, or a number of fellow creatures, as
above the reach of error, it is still the same. Such a state of
mind implies a greater degree of rashness and presumption
than is generally imagined ; for what an extensive comprehen-
sion of human nature, and the affairs of the world, and the
relations of man to all around him, would be necessary before
even the grounds of such an opinion could be brought together ?

NOTE I (page 121.)

t must be observed, that we are here treating the matter as
^question of policy, not of morality, that is, we are inquiring
whether it is expedient to allow an unlimited freedom of pub-
lication, not under what circumstances men are justified in
availing themselves of that liberty. On the latter point, how-
ever, we may be here permitted to offer two remarks.

1. It is a consequence of the principles in the text, that he
who publishes his opinions, however erroneous they may ulti-
mately prove to be, is conferring, as far as it is in his power, a
benefit on society, provided he communicates them in a proper
manner. There is as much merit in the publication of an opi-
nion which is false, as in that of an opinion which is true,
other circumstances being the same, and the publisher in each
instance having the same conviction that he is promulgating
truth. '

* Letter from Mr. Day, in Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth, vol. ii. page 89.

236 NOTES.

2. It is also a remark of some importance, that in the ex-
pression and publication of opinions, the opinions themselves
are not the only things manifested. Various moral as well as
intellectual qualities are displayed. Truth itself may be urged
in rude and indecorous language, with base and malevolent
feelings. Such manifestations of bad passions are of course
worthy of moral reprehension, in whatever cause they are em-
ployed. Whether they appear in connection with true or false
doctrines, is a circumstance perfectly immaterial, and which
can neither extenuate nor aggravate their culpability. The
morality of the press is a subject worthy of some able pen.
The public sentiment wants rousing and directing against a
variety of acts, which although viewed with apathy when com-
mitted through the medium of the press, would not be a mo-
ment tolerated in private society.

NOTE K (page 128.)

The principles developed and established in the two preced-
ing essays form the proper basis of that liberty, which has passed
under the several names of toleration, religious liberty, and
liberty of conscience ; the liberty of worshipping God in the
way which approves itself to the judgment of each individual,
without incurring any pain, loss, or disability.

The grounds for interfering with this liberty may be sup-
posed of several kinds : first, to protect the honour of God ; se-
condly, to punish erroneous opinions ; thirdly, to prevent those
opinions from spreading.

The first object is evidently not proper for human interfe-
rence. The very supposition of our ability to accomplish it,
involves a similar error to that of the anthropomorphites, a
reduction of the Deity to the nature and constitution of man.
But if it were a proper object, who shall judge between two
individuals, or two sects, which has adopted the form of wor-
ship, and the doctrines most agreeable to the dignity of the
Eternal Being ? Or again, if one body of men could infallibly

NOTES. 237

know that they were in the right, how could they possibly do
honour to God, or protect him from dishonour, by forcing upon
their fellow creatures a form and manner of worship which they
could not conscientiously adopt, or even by suppressing creeds
and observances of an erroneous nature? To attempt the former
would be proceeding on one of the most monstrous suppositions
which ever entered into the human imagination, that the Su-
preme Being could be pleased with hypocrisy and insincerity ;
nor would it be much more rational to endeavour to effect the
latter. If a man entertains any doctrine derogatory to the
character of the Deity, the only way to remove it from his
creed is to address ourselves to his understanding. To forbid
the expression of that doctrine, as it cannot extirpate it from
the mind, is doing God no honour, for in what possible way can
the expression of a thought derogatory to his character disho-
nour him more than the thought itself? In every view, then,
the object of protecting the honour of the Deity should have
no place in human regulations. It is far beyond their reach,
and ought to be sacred from their presumption.

With regard to the second object, the punishment of erro-
neous opinions, its absurdity has been sufficiently exposed. It
would be the punishment of innocence for no possible good.
The only object of restrictions on the liberty of worship, that
can be maintained with a show of reason, is the third. This
liberty can come under the cognizance of the legislator only as
a mode of propagating opinions. The manner in which a man
worships God, provided it involves no breach of moral duty,
cannot affect the community in any other way ; and all the
arguments which have been adduced, in favour of perfect free-
dom of public discussion, are of equal force in favour of ^/sifect
freedom of worship. But there are some peculiar evils attend-
ing restrictions on the latter. A person may entertain an
opinion, and yet not feel under any conscientious obligation to
express it ; but he who thinks a certain form of worship right,
feels an obligation to adopt it. Restraint, therefore, even were
it submitted to, would produce much secret misery. But in
general it would not be submitted to. In the mind of such a

238 NOTES.

one, there would be what he considered as his duty to God op-
posed to his duty to men, and he must of course prefer the
former, or be degraded in his moral feelings. Either way the
community must suffer : it must be either disturbed by the re-
sistance of some of its members to the authority of the state,
and the consequent excitation of a thousand malign at passions,
or injured by destroying their moral integrity, by hardening
the conscience and debasing the character.

And what, after all, would be attained by these imbecile re-
strictions ? The only thing which they could accomplish, if
they were attended by perfect success, would be uniformity of
worship and profession. But this might be either a good or
an evil. A uniformity in religious observances, forms, and
doctrines, which were in all respects true and proper, and in
the adoption and profession of which every individual was
sincere, would be a good ; but a uniformity in those which
were not in all respects true and proper, and in the adoption
and profession of which many of the community would be
acting a feigned part, is the only uniformity which restraints
could secure, and that would be an evil. It would be far bet-
ter to have a variety than a sameness of error, because there
would be a better prospect of attaining truth by the collision
of opinions ; and that it would be infinitely preferable to have
a variety of professions according to actual belief, than a uni-
formity of professions not sincere, it would be an insult to any
mind of common moral feeling to atten>pt to prove.

The true grounds, the grand principles of toleration, or (to
avoid a term which men ought never to have been under the
necessity of employing) of religious liberty and liberty of con-
science, are thus the principles which it was the object of the
two preceding essays to establish — that opinions are involun-
tary, and involve no merit or demerit, and that the free publi-
cation of opinions is beneficial to society, because it is the
means of arriving at truth. They are both founded on the
unalterable nature of the human mind, and are sure, sooner
or later, to bo universally recognised and applied.

Under the general prevalence of these truths, society would

NOTES. 239

soon present a different aspect. Every species of intolerance
would vanish ; because, how much soever it might be the inte-
rest of men to suppress opinions contrary to their own, there

K would be no longer any pretext for compulsion or oppression.
Difference of sentiment would no longer engender the same
degree of passion and ill-will. The irritation, virulence, and
invective of controversy would be in a great measure sobered
down into cool argumentation. The intercourse of private
life would cease to be embittered by the odium of heterodoxy,
and all the benevolent affections would have more room for
expansion. Men would discover, that although their neigh-
bours differed in opinion from themselves, they might possess

i equal moral worth, and equal claims to affection and esteem.

V' A difference in civil privileges, that eternal source of discon-
tent and disorder, that canker in the happiness of society,
which can be cured only by being exterminated, would be
swept away, and in a few years a wonder would arise that ra-
tional beings could have been inveigled into its support.

K Another important consequence would be a more general

^ union of mankind in the pursuit of truth. Since errors would
no longer be regarded as involving moral turpitude, every
effort to obtain the grand object in view, however unsuccess-
ful, would be received with indulgence, if not applause. There
would be more exertion, because there would be more encou-
ragement. If moral science has already gradually advanced,
shackled as it has been by inveterate prejudices, what would
be the rapidity of its march under a system, which, far from
opposing obstacles, presented facilities to its progress ?

h

NOTE L (page 145.)

The following is a singularly apposite illustration of the re-
marks in the text.

"The emperors of China, her statesmen, her merchants,
her peo])le, and her philosophers also, are all idolaters. For,
though many of the learned affect to despise the popular su-

240 NOTES.

perstitions, and to deride all worship, except that paid to the
great and visible objects of nature, heaven and the earth ; yet
their own system is incapable of raising them above that
which they affect to contemn; and at the hour of death, find-
ing that some god is necessary, and not knowing the true God,
they send for the priests of false gods, to pray for their restora-
tion to health, and for the rest of their spirits after dissolution,
and a happy return to the world again. It is remarkable, that
the Yu-Keaou, or sect of the learned, though in health they
laugli at the fooleries of the more idolatrous sects ; yet gene-
tally in sickness, in the prospect of death, and at funerals,
employ the Ho-Chang and Taou-sze, to offer masses; recite
the king (standard books, of a religious and moral kind, thus
denominated) ; write charms ; ring bells ; chant prayers ;
and entreat the gods. Admitting the influence which univer-
sal custom has over them in these things, we may perhaps also
conclude, that they feel their own system uncomfortable to die
with. In that awful hour, when ' heart and flesh fail,' human
beings generally feel the necessity of resorting to some system,
either true or false, which professes to afford any hope of es-
caping or mitigating those evils, which a consciousness of
sin compels them to fear, and of attaining that happiness,
the desire of which is identified with our nature." — A Re-
trospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to
China, by William Milne, p. 29—31.

THE END.

vt

Thi

HOME USE

CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT

MAIN LIBRARY

This book is due on the last date stamped below.
1-month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405.
6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books

to Circulation Desk.

Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior

to due date.

ALL BOOKS ARE SUBJECT TO RECALL 7 DAYS
AFTER DATE CHECKED OUT.

JUN

BCD QRC DEPT JUL 3 074

OAN

DEC

1

JANl-

5ERIC

' LD21— A-40m-5,'74

(R8191L)

General Library

University of California

Berkeley

M

21-lOOm-

YB

TV,

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY

1^

i