not as involving the fulfilment or violation one of them dissented from the praise of of duties." Now, this is exactly the same patriotic zeal, of justice, of temperance, of thing as saying that he has translated the veracity. You hear of nobody but a scouninquiry from the ought to the is; which drel Spartan (always too illiterate to write translation Sir James views as an important on Ethics) that ever thought of recommendchange; and not, as may be fancied, im- ing immodesty to young women, or the portant for the general field of philosophy, picking of pockets to boys, or the flagellabut expressly for "the territory of Ethics." tion of innocent children as an agreeable In reality, the merest practical guide to gymnastic exercise to grown-up gentlemen. morals cannot evade continual glimpses Allowing for these denaturalized wretches into regions of pure theory. And, confin- on the banks of the Eurotas, all Greeks had ing ourselves to the great polemic systems practically the same final views in Ethics. of morality, amongst which it is that Sir What they differed in was the way of arJames's business lies, we must all be aware riving at these final views; from what founthat their differences are not with respect tains they were to be derived; and, in passto what should be done and left undone, but ing down from these fountains, through with respect to the grounds of doing and what particular obstructions or collisions of forbearing, or with respect to the method principle they had to fight their way. It is of deducing these grounds. It was a mis- the will, the ought, the practical, which is take of the same nature which led Coleridge concerned in the final maxims of Ethics; to speak scornfully of a man's fancying any but it is the intellect, the is, the theoretic, room, at this time of day, for innovation in which is concerned chiefly in the early Ethics, whether in the way of improvement stages of its deduction. or addition. To be novel, to be original, One consequence, and an unfortunate was upon this view unavoidably to be false; consequence, from what I have here noticed and no road, it seems, is open to truth in as an oversight in Sir James, is, that he has morals, except through the monotony of an- not examined the various opinions among cient common-places. But all this I vehe- the ancient Greek schools as to the Summently deny. In days of old, the Academ-mum Bonum; nor apparently has adverted ic, the Peripatetic, the Stoic, the Epicu- to the importance of such an examination. rean, sought for originality-not by patron- These conflicting opinions formed for them izing separate modes of action, but by deriving from separate principles the same modes, or by unfolding the various relations of objects that were still the same.* Not the rudders, or regulative principles, of their moral theories. We in Christendom have two concurrent sets of such theories: one of worldly ethics, in which "vice" and *In speaking of Ethics, and of the room which of their new country, rights of the aborigines as it allows for vast variety of views, I confine my- against the colonists, these questions, with countself naturally in the text to the part which con-less others of the same class, are rising by germs cerns theory and speculation; that being the part with which Sir James is occupied, and that being precisely the part which Coleridge overlooked in the passage referred to. But, even as regards the practical part, I cannot forbear calling the reader's attention to the gross blindness of that common sentiment which bids us look for nothing new in Ethics. What an instance of "seeing but not perceiving, hearing but not under-tanding!" o far from being stationary, Ethics, even as a practical system, is always moving and advancing; and without aid, or needing aid, from colleges or professors. A great part of our political life and struggling is but one vast laboratory for sifting and ascertaining the rights, the interests, the duties, of the unnumbered and increasing parties to our complex form of social life. Questions of rights (and consequently of duties) that were never heard of one and two centuries ago, rights of captives, rights of public criminals, rights of pauperism, rights of daily labor, rights of private property among belligerents, rights of children born in camps, rights of creditors, rights of debtrights of colonists as against the mother country, rights of colonists as against the aborigines ors, and fractions in every newspaper that one takes others of his faction made between utility as a test or criterion of morality, and utility as a ground of morality. Taking it even in the limited sense of a test, (that is, as the means by which we know an act to be moral, but not therefore as any ground or reason which makes the act to be moral,) the doctrine is a mere barren theorem, perfectly inert and without value for practical application; since the consequences of all important actions expand themselves through a series of alternate undulations, expressing successfully good and evil; and of this series no summation is possible to a effects, a given act shall be useful in its secondary effects, which we may distinguish as the undulation B, it shall become perhaps mischievous (mischievous, I mean, now that it has reached a new order of subjects :) in C, the tertiary undulation, it shall revive into beneficial agencies; and in remoter cycles travel again into evil. Take for instance the French Revolution, or any single act by which a disinterested man should have deliberately hastened on that awful event; in what blindness must he have stood at the time, say about 1789, as to the ultimate results of his own daring "virtue" are the prevailing terms; another of Christian ethics, in which the terms are "sin" and "holiness." And singular it is, that these separate systems flow oftentimes quite apart, each deaf to the other, and nobody taking any notice of their collisions, or seeking for any harmony between them. The first class reposes chiefly on good sense, and the prudential experience of life; the second, upon the revealed will of God. But, upon any graver or more solemn interest of morals coming forward, recourse is usually had to some principles or other, more or less truly stated, professing to derive themselves from revelation. finite intellect. In its earliest and instinct So that, in modern Europe, the Scriptures are a primary source of morals to some theorists, and a supplementary source to all. But the ancients, it must be remembered, had no such resources in revelation. Real or pretended revelation never existed for them; consequently, the revealed will of God, which at once settles, amongst us, what is the true summum bonum for man and his race, could not be appealed to, either as furnishing a foundation for ethical systems, or as furnishing their integration. In default of such a resource, never, in fact, having heard or conceived of such a resource, which way could the Greeks turn step! First came a smiling dawn and the themselves? Naturally, and indeed neces- loveliest promise of good for man. Next sarily, they set themselves to investigate came a dreadful overcasting, in which the summum bonum, so far as it was fitted nothing could be seen distinctly; storms for a human nature. What was the su- and darkness, under cover of which innopreme object after which man should cent blood was shed like water, fields were strive ? Was it pleasure, was it power, fought, frenzies of hatred gathered among wisdom, happiness, or freedom from pas- nations, such as cried to heaven for help sion? Because, according to the decision, and for retribution. That woe is past; the arose a corresponding economy of morals. second undulation is gone by: and now, The supreme good, whatever that were when the third is below our eyes, we are found to be, formed the nucleus around becoming sensible that all that havock and which the system of moralities crystallized fury, though sad to witness or to remember, and arranged themselves. Sir James re- were not thrown away; the chaos has setgrets, with reason, the wrecked condition tled into order, and a new morning with a in which all the elder systems of Greek new prospect has arisen for man. Yet even ethics are now lying. Excepting the Pla- here the series of undulations is not comtonic remains generally, and the two works plete. It is perhaps barely beginning: of Aristotle on this subject, we have no other undulations, moving through other authentic documents to steer by. But by revolutions, and perhaps fiercer revolutions, collecting all the fragments, and looking will soon begin to travel forward. And if back to the presiding view of the summum a man should fancy that he would wait for bonum, we might rebuild the ontlines of the final result, before he made up his mind the old ethics; at least, as a fossil megathe- as to the question of moral verdict to be rium is rebuilt, not so as to display its liv-pronounced upon the original movement, ing power, but enough of its structure to he would make a resolution like that of a furnish a basis for comparison. It is singular that Sir James, with all his scholastic subtlety, should not have remarked the confusion which Paley and child who proposes to chase the rainbow. As a criterion, therefore, the principle of utility could not be of any practical value for appraising an act or system of acts; since this utility is never known, even by | because the latter sort of debt cannot be approximation, until long after the election recovered compulsorily; but the other may. of the act must have been made. But a This power in the creditor, though it does worse fault in Paley is, that he has mistaken not relieve you from the duty of paying his own position, and lost in his perplexity him, most properly relieves you from the the real object which he was then in search stress upon your honor. Honor creates a of. This was exactly what the schoolmen sanctity in that only which is confided to would have called the form, i. e. formal the keeping and sanction of honor. It is principle or essence of virtue; the ratio good for so much as it undertakes. But, if essendi; what, in fact, it is that constitutes this were even otherwise, how is Paley enthe common ground, or internal principle titled to presume, in any law, a counteof agreement between two acts, (one, sup-nance to crimes of which that law simply pose, an act of justice, one an act of tem- takes no cognizance? "His chapter," perance,) so as to bring them equally under (says Sir James,)" on what he calls the the common denomination of virtue.* Law of Honor, is unjust even in its own Perhaps the perfection of acuteness ap- small sphere, because it supposes Honor to pears in Sir James Mackintosh's refutation allow what it does not forbid; though the of Paley upon the law of honor. Rarely truth be that the vices enumerated by him has a false idea been more suddenly caused are only not forbidden because they are not to founder and to show out. At one sling within its jurisdiction." Honor tells a man it is dispersed into smoke. And the reader to repay a friend who lent him money at a is the more gratified, because in fact Paley critical moment of distress, and who holds was doing a bit of sycophancy to public no voucher for that money; but honor never cant when he said the thing which Mackin- told a man not to pay his shoemaker. That tosh exposes. What he said was this::- sort of debt indeed honor does not enforce, the principle called the law of honor coun- though far from discountenancing its paytenances many criminal acts. An ordinary ment, simply because such a case does not debt, for instance, to a tradesman may be fall within its proper cognizance. But as neglected with no wound to a man's honor: well might the court of Chancery be renot so a gaming debt; this becomes an proached for not trying the crime of murobligation of honor. And very properly: der, or the chief justice of the Queen's Bench for not lecturing defendants in cases of crim. con. * Paley's error was therefore, when scholastically expressed, a confusion between the ratio esThere are two most weighty remarks at sendi, and the ratio cognoscendi. About a hundred years ago, Daries and some other followers P. 106, connected by Sir James, with this of Leibnitz and Wolff, made an effort to recall subject of Paley. One is that, even if the this important distinction; that is, to force the at- law of honor ceased as a separate mode of tention upon the importance of keeping apart the obligation (not contradicting general moral index or criterion of any object from its essential laws, but only unequally enforcing them), or differential principle. Some readers may fancy still there would remain a natural and tranit more easy to keep these ideas apart, than systematically to confound them. But very many scendent law of sexual morality, as much cases, and this of Paley's in particular, show that distinct from the higher ethics as the worldthere is a natural tendency to such a confusion. ly principle of honor, viz., that morality And upon looking more rigorously, I perceive that Sir James Mackintosh has not overlooked it; which makes the characteristic virtue of a he has in fact expressed it repeatedly; but always man to lie in courage, of a woman in chasin terms that would hardly have conveyed the tity. Great good is done, and much of sofull meaning to my mind, if I had not been ex- cial welfare is upheld, by such a morality; pressly seeking for such a meaning. At p. 14, and also, as by the rule of honor, some (vol. i.) he thus distinguishes :-"These momentous inquiries relate to at least two perfectly dis- wrong-because much practical partiality, tinct subjects-I. The nature of the distinction and oftentimes much disproportion in our between Right and Wrong in human conduct; judgments. Yet here is a mode of moraliand, II. The nature of those feelings with which ty, imperfect as honor is imperfect, but not Right and Wrong are contemplated by human beings. The discrimination has seldom been therefore false, and which still works for made by moral philosophers; the difference be good, and which all the Paleys in this tween the two problems has never been uniformly world will fortunately never be able to observed by any of them." At p. 15, he taxes shake. both Paley and Bentham with having confounded them; and subsequently, at p. 193, he taxes the latter still more pointedly with this capital con fusion. The other remark concerns the tendency of Paley's philosophy, which, having little grandeur or enthusiasm to support it, was morbidly disposed to compromise with evil, the larva of the future chrysalis becomes and to go for" as much good as seemed safe; whilst otherwise it is in constant conveniently to be got. Most justly does peril. Mackintosh tax it with looking in the same direction as the worst ethics of the Roman Catholics, that is, the ethics of Escobar and the most intensely worldly amongst the Jesuits. Upon that he argues that no philosophy can be so unfitted for the training of the moral sense, or for the culture of the noble and the enthusiastic, as it exists in early manhood. Oxford, but more especially Cambridge, as carried by old connexion too naturally to an exaggerated estimate of Paley, would do well to think of this. Paley's talents, within lower spheres of speculation, were prodigious. But he wanted every thing that should have fitted him for what is subtlest in philosophy, or what is grandest in ethics. Continue to honor the man as the most philosophic amongst the essentially worldly-minded; but do not ratify and countersign his hybrid morality by making it a chief text of your ethics, and an examination-book for the young aristocracy of England. MACKINTOSH ON MACHIAVEL. What suggests this train of thought is the fact that Machiavel was amongst the first who " stooped to conquer," by laying aside the pomps of a learned language; being an Italian, he wrote Italian; he adapted himself to the popular mind amongst his countrymen; he spoke to them in their mothertongue. By such an effort a man sacrifices a little momentary rank in the estimate of critics, to regain it a hundred-fold in an influence wide and lasting over the general heart. The choice of Machiavel was wise; and yet, perhaps, not made in the spirit of wisdom, but of rancorous passions. He could not reach his enemies by his republican patriotism, or his fierce miso-tramontanism without Italian; he could not reach his friends by counsels that should guide their exterminating swords, unless through a familiar dialect. The same malicious and destroying wisdom, in the same service of a vindictive heart, burns in the most famous of his works, The Prince. This work it is, and the true interpretation of its reckless insensibility to the wickedness of the machinery by which it works, that probably constituted the reason to Sir James Mackintosh for at all turning his attention upon Machiavel. There is a short but fine and very important exordium* to the paper on Machi- It has always been a riddle whether The avel, exposing the relations of literature to Prince of Machiavel were meant for a Tiscience, to ethics, and to speculative phi- tan satire upon the profligacy of political losophy. That function of literature, by agents, or very seriously for a Titan theory which it reacts upon all these great inte- of evil arts as the only weapons commensurests, so as to diffuse them, to popularize rate to the unscrupulous wickedness of men them, to protect them, and to root them, is armed with power. It is Sir James Mackapt enough to escape the notice of most intosh's wish to side with the former view men, who regard literature as a mere em- of the question:-"The Prince," says bellishment of life, not as one of its deep-he, "is an account of the means by which sunk props. And yet, as Sir James truly tyrannical power is to be acquired and preremarks, in times when the whole philoso- served; it is a theory of that class of phephic speculation of a country gathers itself nomena. into cloistral retreats, and when as yet there is no general literature to diffuse its results and to naturalize its capital problems amongst the people, nothing is more liable to sudden blights than such insulated advances in culture; which, on the other hand, become ineradicable when once they have knit themselves on to the general mind of the people by the intertexture of literature. Spinning this kind of nidus for itself, It is essential to its purpose, therefore, that it should contain an exposition of tyrannical arts. But it is also plain that the calm statement of tyrannical arts is the bitterest of all satires against them." Yes, for him who has already preconceived such a view of tyrannical arts; but no satire at all for him who has reconciled himself to such arts, as the indispensable means of placing men upon a level with their enemies, and cities upon equal terms with their rivals. When Gulliver talked with coolness and smiling amateurship of every art used in Christian warfare for hacking, hewing, slashing, maiming, or burning the frame-work of human bodies, he was viewed | sort of reading backwards; they compose a by his royal auditor, after hearing him cool-good, honest, and straightforward assertion. ly to the end, as the most horrid little mon- of wholesale wickedness as absolutely esster on the terraqueous globe. But Gulli-sential to prosperity and comfort of mind in ver had so little suspected any liability in this shocking world. Many have fancied his own opinions to such a construction, that, if challenged as an elaborate jester in that he had talked with the self-satisfied air masquerade, Machiavel would have burst of a benevolent philosopher teaching the old into explosions of laughter. Far from it; idea how to shoot. he would have looked as angry and disconcerted as Gulliver, and would have said, probably, "Oh, if you come to virtue, and all that sort of thing, really I pretend to no opinions on the subject; I am addressing myself to men of sense, and simply taking "A philosophical treatise on poisons would," says Mackintosh, "determine the quantity of each poisonous substance capable of producing death, the circumstances favorable or adverse to its operation, and every other information essential to the pur-it for granted, that, as such, in a world of pose of the poisoner, though not intended universal kicking and being kicked, they for his use." Something like this has been will wish to kick back in every direction." pleaded on behalf of Machiavel by others. But the defect of Sir James Mackintosh's But in fact it will not bear a critical scru- paper, is the neglect of positive extracts tiny. For all depends on the mode of pre- from The Prince, given in their true consenting the poisonous arts. In a little nexion. Such a treatment would soon have chemico-medical manual lying before me at dispersed any doubts about the final drift of this moment, the Parisian author, speaking the work. For, suppose that, in a work on of the modes employed to color wines, says, poisons, (to adopt Mackintosh's own illus"On peut jaunir ces liquides" (white wines) tration), you met with a little section like "à l'aide du gaz acide sulfureux; cette this:" With respect to the proper mode fraude est dangereuse, si l'acide se trouve of despatching young toothless infants, I en assez grande quantité." Now here there always set my face against the use of poiis something not strictly correct; for the son. I do so on moral principle, and also writer teaches a secret which he knows to as a man of refinement. It is evident that be profitable on one hand and dangerous on poison in such a case is quite needless : the other, with a slight caution that he you may operate more speedily by a little might easily have made a full one. The se-lavender-water; this will be agreeable to cret is likely to be tried, it is likely to cause both parties-yourself and the child; pour danger; whilst the simple means for evad- a few spoonfuls into a slop-basin; hold the ing the danger, viz., by stating the proper little human kitten with its face downwards proportions, he is too indolent to report. in this, and it will hardly have time to mew Yet still, though blameable, this author is before the trick will be done. Now, obfar above being suspected of any wish to serve the difference of circumstances with teach murderous arts. And what is the respect to an adult. How pleasing it is to proof of this? Why, that he never intro- the benign heart, that nature should have duces any substance for the mere purpose provided so vast a gamut in the art of murof showing its uses as a poison; but, when der! To the philosophic mind it suggests other uses have obliged him to notice it, he the idea, that perhaps no two people ought takes occasion to caution the reader as to to be murdered in the same manner. those which are dangerous. If a man were pose, for instance, the subject marked for answerable for all the indirect or inverse immediate despatch to be your uncle; a modes of reading his book, then every wri- huge, broad-shouldered monster, evidently ter on medical jurisprudence would be lia- quite unfit to live any longer. I should say, ble to indictment; for such works may be now, that a dose of corrosive sublimate always turned to account as reversely sys- would be the correct thing for him. Phletems of poisoning; the artifices for detect-botomy would never do with such a bullock ing guilt may always be applied by a Locusta [Sueton. in Claudio] or a Brinvilliers as so many directions for aiding its operations; just as the Lord's Prayer, read backwards, was, of old times, the shortest means for evoking the fiend. Now, Machiavel's arts of tyranny are not collected from this Sup as that. He would turn a mill with his blood, and the place of operating would become a mere shambles. If, again, you attempted to repeat upon him the experiment that had succeeded with the infant, surprising and holding him down in the water, when washing his face, the refractory ruf |