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of which no human being could have had any suspicion; but no man, that I know of, pretends to discover four or five new passions, neither can any thing very new be discovered of those passions and faculties with which mankind are already familiar. We are, in natural philosophy, perpetually making discoveries of new properties in bodies, with whose existence we have been acquainted for centuries: Sir James Hall has just discovered that lime can be melted by carbonic acid; — but who hopes that he can discover any new flux for avarice? or any improved method of judging, and comparing? We have had no occasion to busy ourselves with the chromian or Titanian metal; but we have commonly employed our minds for twenty or thirty years, before we begin to speculate upon them.

There may, indeed, be speculative discoveries made with respect to the human mind; for instance, Mr. Dugald Stewart contends that attention should be classed among our faculties. Now if attention be a faculty, it is certainly a discovery, for nobody had ever so classed it before Mr. Stewart: but whether it be so, or only a mode of other faculties, is of no consequence in practice; for nobody has ever been ignorant of the importance and efficacy of attention, whether it be one thing, or whether it be the other.

So with that notion of the Rev. Mr. Gay's, that all our passions are explicable upon the principle of association; if this opinion be true, it is a discovery, and a curious one. But then it affords no practical rule, for mankind are too much acquainted with practical rules to allow of such pure novelty as would constitute discovery.

Of the uses of this science of Moral Philosophy one is-the vigour and acuteness, which it is apt to communicate to the faculties. The slow and cautious pace of mathematics is not fit for the rough road of life; it

teaches no habits which will be of use to us when we come to march in good earnest: it will not do, when men come to real business, to be calling for axioms, and definitions, and to admit nothing without full proof, and perfect deduction: we must decide sometimes upon the slightest evidence, catch the faintest surmise, and get to the end of an affair before a mathematical head could decide about its commencement. I am not comparing the general value of the two sciences, but merely their value as preparatory exercises for the mind; and there, it appears to me that the science of Moral Philosophy is much better calculated to form intellectual habits, useful in real life. The subtleties about mind, and matter, cause, and effect, perception, and sensation, may be forgotten; but the power of nice discrimination, of arresting and examining the most subtle and evanescent ideas, and of striking rapidly, and boldly, into the faintest track of analogy; to see where it leads, and what it will produce; an emancipation from the tyranny of words, an undaunted intrepidity to push opinions up to their first causes; all these virtues. remain, in the dexterous politician, the acute advocate, and the unerring judge.

I have said that no practical discoveries can be made in Moral Philosophy, because I think the word discovery implies so much originality, and novelty, that I can hardly suppose they will be met with in a subject with which mankind are so familiar. But then opinions may be discoveries to the individual, which are not discoveries to the world at large. It may be of incalculable advantage to me, at an early period of life, to guard my understanding from the pernicious effects of association; though those effects cannot now be pointed out for the first time; I might have learned something about association without the aid of this science, by the mere intercourse of life, but I should not have learned

that lesson so early, and so well. I am no longer left to gather this important law of my nature from accidental and disconnected remark, but it is brought fully and luminously before me; - I see that one man differs from another in the rank and nobleness of his understanding, in proportion as he counteracts this intellectual attraction of cohesion; I become permanently, and vigilantly, suspicious of this principle in my own mind; and when called upon, in the great occasions of life, to think, and to act, I separate my judgment from the mere accidents of my life, and decide, not according to the casualties of my fortune, but the unbiassed dictates of my reason without this science, I might have had a general, and faint suspicion,- with it, I have a rooted and operative conviction-of the errors to which my understanding is exposed. If it be useful to our talents, and virtues, to turn the mind inwardly upon itself, and to observe attentively the facts relative to our passions and faculties, this is the value, and this the object, of Moral Philosophy. It teaches, for the conduct of the understanding, a variety of delicate rules which can result only from such sort of meditation; and it gradually subjects the most impetuous feelings to patient examination and wise control: it inures the youthful mind to intellectual difficulty, and to enterprise in thinking; and makes it as keen as an eagle, and as unwearied as the wing of an angel. In looking round the region of spirit, from the mind of the brute and the reptile, to the sublimest exertions of the human understanding, this philosophy lays deep the foundations of a fervent and grateful piety, for those intellectual riches which have been dealt out to us with no scanty measure. With sensation alone, we might have possessed the earth, as it is possessed by the lowest order of beings: but we have talents which bend all the laws of nature to our service; memory for the past, provi

dence for the future, -senses which mingle pleasure with intelligence, the surprise of novelty, the boundless energy of imagination, accuracy in comparing, and severity in judging; an original affection, which binds us together in society; a swiftness to pity; a fear of shame; a love of esteem; a detestation of all that is cruel, mean, and unjust. All these things Moral Philosophy observes, and, observing, adores the Being from whence they proceed.

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LECTURE II.

HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

I PURPOSE to give, in this lecture, a succinct history of opinions, both in the intellectual and active divisions of Moral Philosophy: from the formation of the great schools in Greece, to the present time.

Of the principles from which the obligations to virtue proceed, most sects have given an account which is at least intelligible, however each particular persuasion may vary from that which precedes it: but the speculations of many of the ancients on the human understanding, are so confused, and so purely hypothetical, that their greatest admirers are not agreed upon their meaning; and whenever we can procure a plain statement of their doctrines, all other modes of refuting them appear to be wholly superfluous.

Whoever is fond of picking up little bits of wisdom, in great heaps of folly, and of seeing Moral Philosophy and common sense beaming through the gross darkness of polytheism and poetical fiction, may sit down and trace this science from Zoroaster the Chaldean, Belus the Assyrian, and Berosus, who taught the Chaldean learning to the Greeks. He will find a very pleasant obscurity in all that we know of the opinions of Zoroaster, of the Persian Magi, Hystaspes, and Hostanes. Of those celebrated men Cadmus, and Sanchoniathon, and poor Moschus the Phoenician, so heartily abused by Dr. Cudworth, he may pick up some acute remarks of

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