as corresponds with the constitution of man; theirs is an utility which might be conceived for another creature than man;-for a being of less mind, less spirit, and more matter. Secondly; they have divided man into parts and fragments, losing sight, practically at the least, if not theoretically, of the unity which the creative power has given to man, equally with its other productions. Hence some very subordinate and perhaps trifling enjoyment, passes into a great and ultimate good, and man is encouraged to live, not for the whole of his nature, but even for its meaner appetites. I am not sure but an example might be found in a literal translation of the words of Socrates which we have taken as our motto. They might read thus ;-Not to live, but to live well, should be deemed the thing of greatest worth. To LIVE WELL! Who could ask a better phrase, were it rightly interpreted? So far is it, however, from such an interpretation, so far from signifying what the philosopher meant, a good, virtuous, righteous life, that it suggests to every mind the notion, however dignified, certainly very different, of habitual good eating! Here we have man first degraded by lowering the very term, live, to express either bare sustenance or pernicious luxury, and out of his complex physical nature a single appetite selected as equivalent to his whole being. The nobler Greek did not thus understand life. It was reserved for others so to debase and impair it. Nor has it been enough to materialize men; the very matter must be disintegrated.

I think my view of utility cannot now be mistaken. It is, in one word, the good of man as man, in whole, not in part. Good eating and drinking may, for ought I know, be the good, the chief good of beast, bird, or fish; but really man has something nobler in his make than the sublime capacities of relishing sweet wines and delicious meats. Something nobler he surely has, than any or all of his capacities for outward things. Wherefore for man to live well, is to live according to this his nobler element, it is to live healthfully, intellectually, morally, religiously. To live thus is the condition and characteristic of utility, concurring, as it does, with that law of universal harmony seated in the bosom of God, which from the unsightly pebble to the most glorious orb of light binds part to part, subordinates the less to the greater, and adapts each to the oneness of the whole. To what results, let me ask, does this view of utility

lead us? I answer, first,-it urges us to put and to keep the body in a condition to serve the mind. It does not encourage the covetous accumulation of wealth by means of exhausting labour; it does not demand an ostentatious parade of dress and fashion; it does not set men upon the eager gratification of any bodily appetite. If it did, this were to make the mind the servant of the body, not the body the servant to the mind. This were to overload, to overburden, to crush the mind. Instead of which the true utility proposes and enjoins our pursuing for the outward man just so much and just such kinds of gratification, of exercise, of healthy vigour, as will give it most power and most freedom to assist the mind, and to obey the mind. So that good health, a sound body, and other outward comforts are to be sought as means, not ends,-as instruments, not ultimate effects.

I answer, secondly; our view of utility urges us to contemplate and treat the mind as of greater value than all outward things. No true philosophy can reject or set aside this conclusion. It is among the plainest of facts that mind is the source, the centre, the seat of whatever solid happiness or real suffering is within our experience; that as its qualities are thus exalted, so its office is predominant: that the mind is formed and fitted to govern, and the body to serve. Yet how is this plain fact overlooked! How often does the mind yield itself up as the mere thrall and bond-slave of the body! How are the dignity and welfare of man measured? not by the loftiness and range which his spirit takes, but by the money or worldly rank which he has inherited or accidentally gained! Oh! mind is not the fall of the eagle soaring with undazzled eye to the glorious sun; it is a very emanation of the unquenched beam, a portion of the divine light itself, broken off and fallen, its lustre lost or dimmed amidst smoke and dust and a soiled air! Now whenever utility contemplates the ennobling, and not this degradation of man, every objection ceases. What good man will ever resist it, when it says to man,Thy mind is thy first element. Let it be reverenced as the centre, the essence, the governing power, the chief end of thine existence. Know thyself; and shape thy thoughts, thy purposes, thy conduct, to thy spiritual nature, to thine exalted destiny.

Thirdly; our view of utility urges us to regard the moral

principle in man as of higher excellence than any merely intellectual faculty. There are who rise to loftier conceptions than those of the animal nature, and yet seem to ascribe supremacy to intellect. The reason which searches out the depths of science, the imagination which enshrines beautiful ideas in beautiful forms, the judgement which determines what is expedient action, these and kindred powers too many idolize as the greatest distinction of the human As nature has produced sensible objects without life, and living agents without reason, so these idolaters of intellect erect to themselves out of their own species a form of being, of life, of reason, without conscience and moral power. With them, it is true, man is not intellectual matter; but he is godless intellect. The shrine remains, but the deity is lost. Such, for example, are of abstruse philosophers, those who live or rather are lost in abstractions; of men of business, those who exercise craft and skilful management to gratify the pride of superiour understanding; of poets, those who dwell but in faery visions,

race.

"Gay creatures of the element,

That in the colours of the rainbow live,
And play in the plighted clouds."

Such, in one word, are of every class of men those who, in admiration of splendid intellectual exhibitions, render idolatrous homage to mind divested of its higher power, divorced from the rightful supremacy and lordship of virtue. As it is both to degrade man and to deprive him of his unity, to identify that which is useful with any state of his animal constitution, merely, so must we deem it also the degradation and divulsion of his nature, to sever conscience from intellect, to deem men complete through means of every excellence which may be reached without virtue. No doctrine of utility, however it may encourage the growth of genius, can ever be useful or true, but as it says to man, Conscience is thine, and thine the obligation of virtue. For thy life, acknowledge the claims of the one, and obey the voice of the other.

Our view of utility leads us, fourthly, to the exercise of religion. The nature of man calls for religion. It can never be well with man devoid of religion. Reason demands it, as the condition of intellectual satisfaction; con

science demands it, as the condition of moral perfection; the physical constitution demands it, as the rule, the limit, the restraint of its own propensities. We know not how it is with other creatures; they may be supported of God and satisfied without the consciousness or acknowledgement of his presence. Not so with man. Just as actually as his eye seeks after light, as his ear rejoices in musical sound, as his vital powers need and are sustained by air; so actually, and, I had almost said, to the same degree, does his mind want the consciousness and the love of God. The good man feels the want, and exclaims, "As the hart panteth after the water-brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God!" The bad man, on the other hand, reluctantly testifies the same want in his sense of desolation, in his dissatisfied, restless wishes, in his feeling of guilt, in his inward remorse; everywhere and always he testifies, if it be but silently and indirectly, how deep, how insatiable, is his want of God. His very vices testify it. Human nature, even in its silent, most down-trodden estate, can never cease to carry with it, graven as it were into it, the tokens-in this estate, if possible, most affecting-of these its everlasting necessities, of its want which nothing else can meet, of God, of Religion, of Heavenly Truth and Hope. This want, let it be added, and remembered, this irresistible aspiration after God, conjoined with the power of conscience, forms the greatest distinction of man, and is withal the principle of unity in his constitution; to this, all other gifts and faculties, both of body and of mind, converge and are subordinate. Therefore, I repeat, religion is an essential element, and moreover the highest element of utility to man.

So far I would have it well understood that I am speaking of virtue and religion as involved in the true utility, not on the ground of their reality and obligation out of ourselves, but on the ground of inward necessities and permanent elements of our inward being. The nature of man, considered in itself alone, physical, intellectual, moral, is such that to him as he is, MIND, sound in virtue because sound in religion, connected with healthful bodily influences, is the thing truly good and useful. To state the same doctrine in other words; as Butler quaintly remarks in the Preface to his Ethical Discourses, and it is a very profound observation, "every thing is what it is, and not another thing;" so I would add, man, by being what he is, and not another thing, is incapable of

finding aught that is useful but in what is suited to himself, not to something else; that is, his well-being consists in a healthful body obeying a sound mind, in body and mind obeying conscience, in his whole self sanctified by religion. This is a physiological, not less than an ethical and theological, truth; Non tu corpus eras sine pectore.

That this train of thought may be still more plain, I shall endeavour to illustrate it by reference to an analogous subject. It is well known that some writers have denied the outward and objective existence of the material world. This vast globe with all it contains, the vaster sun, the moon, the stars, every object of sense, our own bodies as much as any thing else, they fancied to be not external realities, but inward ideas projected, so to speak, out of the mind, and accompanied with a deceptive feeling that their subsistence is external. At the same time as these things are all real to the mind, they have supposed the same course of conduct, the same modes of agency and intercourse with the material world, to be proper and necessary, as if it had a separate outward existence. Existing in and to the mind, the mind must recognize the fact and act upon it. Now what I wish to say is this: Grant even to the atheist, that there were no material world, no body, not even an invisible governor of the universe, nothing but our own thoughts and feelings. It is conversive of most evident truth, we know; the assumption of atheism is palpably false; but yet grant it, and our doctrine, practically considered, still holds true. All objects, the world, man, and God exist in and to the mind, if not otherwise. Man still has wants, still has sources of joy and sorrow. There are still things useful to him and the contrary; and his necessities are not relieved by universal scepticism. His necessities are forever those of religion and virtue. Now what meets and satisfies those necessities, that is, religion and virtue, are useful to him, however it may be when their necessities are unfelt. Thus we show the coincidence of utility with virtue and religion, the identity which Plato ascribes to what is well with what is morally beautiful and upright, without resorting to any other evidence than the physiological fact, the actual consciousness of the mind itself. To support the argument, we have not so much as to affirm that any thing exists in the universe but our own ideas and actual necessities. How appropriate to such a view of our subject the language quoted by Leighton from a Grecian philosopher!