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The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12)

by Edmund Burke · English · Gutenberg #15043 · 922,025 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 01 (of 12)

Author: Edmund Burke


        
Release date: February 14, 2005 [eBook #15043]
                Most recently updated: December 10, 2020

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORKS OF THE RIGHT HONOURABLE EDMUND BURKE, VOL. 01 (OF 12) ***




Produced by Paul Murray, Michael Punch and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team. This file was produced from
images generously made available by the Bibliothèque
nationale de France (BnF/Gallica) at http://gallica.bnf.fr






BURKE'S WRITINGS AND SPEECHES




VOLUME THE FIRST


[Illustration: EDMUND BURKE.]




THE WORKS

OF

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

EDMUND BURKE


IN TWELVE VOLUMES


VOLUME THE FIRST


[Illustration: Burke Coat of Arms.]


London
JOHN C. NIMMO
14, KING WILLIAM STREET, STRAND, W.C.
MDCCCLXXXVII




CONTENTS OF VOL. I.


ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER, PREFIXED TO THE FIRST OCTAVO EDITION      v

ADVERTISEMENT TO THE SECOND OCTAVO EDITION                          xvii

A VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY: OR, A VIEW OF THE MISERIES AND
  EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND FROM EVERY SPECIES OF ARTIFICIAL SOCIETY    1

A PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF THE SUBLIME
  AND BEAUTIFUL; WITH AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE CONCERNING TASTE      67

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF A LATE SHORT ADMINISTRATION                       263

OBSERVATIONS ON A LATE PUBLICATION, INTITULED,
  "THE PRESENT STATE OF THE NATION"                                  269

THOUGHTS ON THE CAUSE OF THE PRESENT DISCONTENTS                     433




ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE READER.[1]


The late Mr. Burke, from a principle of unaffected humility, which they
who were the most intimately acquainted with his character best know to
have been in his estimation one of the most important moral duties,
never himself made any collection of the various publications with
which, during a period of forty years, he adorned and enriched the
literature of this country. When, however, the rapid and unexampled
demand for his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" had
unequivocally testified his celebrity as a writer, some of his friends
so far prevailed upon him, that he permitted them to put forth a regular
edition of his works. Accordingly, three volumes in quarto appeared
under that title in 1792, printed for the late Mr. Dodsley. That
edition, therefore, has been made the foundation of the present, for
which a form has been chosen better adapted to public convenience. Such
errors of the press as have been discovered in it are here rectified: in
other respects it is faithfully followed, except that in one instance
an accident of little moment has occasioned a slight deviation from the
strict chronological arrangement, and that, on the other hand, a speech
of conspicuous excellence, on his declining the poll at Bristol, in
1780, is here, for the first time, inserted in its proper place.

As the activity of the author's mind, and the lively interest which he
took in the welfare of his country, ceased only with his life, many
subsequent productions issued from his pen, which were received in a
manner corresponding with his distinguished reputation. He wrote also
various tracts, of a less popular description, which he designed for
private circulation in quarters where he supposed they might produce
most benefit to the community, but which, with some other papers, have
been printed since his death, from copies which he left behind him
fairly transcribed, and most of them corrected as for the press. All
these, now first collected together, form the contents of the last two
volumes.[2] They are disposed in chronological order, with the exception
of the "Preface to Brissot's Address," which having appeared in the
author's lifetime, and from delicacy not being avowed by him, did not
come within the plan of this edition, but has been placed at the end of
the last volume, on its being found deficient in its just bulk.

The several posthumous publications, as they from time to time made
their appearance, were accompanied by appropriate prefaces. These,
however, as they were principally intended for temporary purposes, have
been omitted. Some few explanations only, which they contained, seem
here to be necessary.

The "Observations on the Conduct of the Minority" in the Session of 1793
had been written and sent by Mr. Burke as a paper entirely and strictly
confidential; but it crept surreptitiously into the world, through the
fraud and treachery of the man whom he had employed to transcribe it,
and, as usually happens in such cases, came forth in a very mangled
state, under a false title, and without the introductory letter. The
friends of the author, without waiting to consult him, instantly
obtained an injunction from the Court of Chancery to stop the sale. What
he himself felt, on receiving intelligence of the injury done him by one
from whom his kindness deserved a very different return, will be best
conveyed in his own words. The following is an extract of a letter to a
friend, which he dictated on this subject from a sick-bed.

BATH, 15th Feb., 1797.

"My Dear Laurence,--

"On the appearance of the advertisement, all newspapers and all letters
have been kept back from me till this time. Mrs. Burke opened yours,
and finding that all the measures in the power of Dr. King, yourself,
and Mr. Woodford, had been taken to suppress the publication, she
ventured to deliver me the letters to-day, which were read to me in my
bed, about two o'clock.

"This affair does vex me; but I am not in a state of health at present
to be deeply vexed at anything. Whenever this matter comes into
discussion, I authorize you to contradict the infamous reports which (I
am informed) have been given out, that this paper had been circulated
through the ministry, and was intended gradually to slide into the
press. To the best of my recollection I never had a clean copy of it but
one, which is now in my possession; I never communicated that, but to
the Duke of Portland, from whom I had it back again. But the Duke will
set this matter to rights, if in reality there were two copies, and he
has one. I never showed it, as they know, to any one of the ministry. If
the Duke has really a copy, I believe his and mine are the only ones
that exist, except what was taken by fraud from loose and incorrect
papers by S----, to whom I gave the letter to copy. As soon as I began
to suspect him capable of any such scandalous breach of trust, you know
with what anxiety I got the loose papers out of his hands, not having
reason to think that he kept any other. Neither do I believe in fact
(unless he meditated this villany long ago) that he did or does now
possess any clean copy. I never communicated that paper to any one out
of the very small circle of those private friends from whom I concealed
nothing.

"But I beg you and my friends to be cautious how you let it be
understood that I disclaim anything but the mere act and intention of
publication. I do not retract any one of the sentiments contained in
that memorial, which was and is my justification, addressed to the
friends for whose use alone I intended it. Had I designed it for the
public, I should have been more exact and full. It was written in a tone
of indignation, in consequence of the resolutions of the Whig Club,
which were directly pointed against myself and others, and occasioned
our secession from that club; which is the last act of my life that I
shall under any circumstances repent. Many temperaments and explanations
there would have been, if I had ever had a notion that it should meet
the public eye."


In the mean time a large impression, amounting, it is believed, to three
thousand copies, had been dispersed over the country. To recall these
was impossible; to have expected that any acknowledged production of Mr.
Burke, full of matter likely to interest the future historian, could
remain forever in obscurity, would have been folly; and to have passed
it over in silent neglect, on the one hand, or, on the other, to have
then made any considerable changes in it, might have seemed an
abandonment of the principles which it contained. The author, therefore,
discovering, that, with the exception of the introductory letter, he had
not in fact kept any clean copy, as he had supposed, corrected one of
the pamphlets with his own hand. From this, which was found preserved
with his other papers, his friends afterwards thought it their duty to
give an authentic edition.

The "Thoughts and Details on Scarcity" were originally presented in the
form of a memorial to Mr. Pitt. The author proposed afterwards to recast
the same matter in a new shape. He even advertised the intended work
under the title of "Letters on Rural Economics, addressed to Mr. Arthur
Young"; but he seems to have finished only two or three detached
fragments of the first letter. These being too imperfect to be printed
alone, his friends inserted them in the memorial, where they seemed best
to cohere. The memorial had been fairly copied, but did not appear to
have been examined or corrected, as some trifling errors of the
transcriber were perceptible in it. The manuscript of the fragments was
a rough draft from the author's own hand, much blotted and very
confused.

The Third Letter on the Proposals for Peace was in its progress through
the press when the author died. About one half of it was actually
revised in print by himself, though not in the exact order of the pages
as they now stand. He enlarged his first draft, and separated one great
member of his subject, for the purpose of introducing some other matter
between. The different parcels of manuscript designed to intervene were
discovered. One of them he seemed to have gone over himself, and to have
improved and augmented. The other (fortunately the smaller) was much
more imperfect, just as it was taken from his mouth by dictation. The
former reaches from the two hundred and forty-sixth to near the end of
the two hundred and sixty-second page; the latter nearly occupies the
twelve pages which follow.[3] No important change, none at all affecting
the meaning of any passage, has been made in either, though in the more
imperfect parcel some latitude of discretion in subordinate points was
necessarily used.

There is, however, a considerable member for the greater part of which
Mr. Burke's reputation is not responsible: this is the inquiry into the
condition of the higher classes, which commences in the two hundred and
ninety-fifth page.[4] The summary of the whole topic, indeed, nearly as
it stands in the three hundred and seventy-third and fourth pages,[5]
was found, together with a marginal reference to the Bankrupt List, in
his own handwriting; and the actual conclusion of the Letter was
dictated by him, but never received his subsequent correction. He had
also preserved, as materials for this branch of his subject, some
scattered hints, documents, and parts of a correspondence on the state
of the country. He was, however, prevented from working on them by the
want of some authentic and official information, for which he had been
long anxiously waiting, in order to ascertain, to the satisfaction of
the public, what, with his usual sagacity, he had fully anticipated from
his own personal observation, to his own private conviction. At length
the reports of the different committees which had been appointed by the
two Houses of Parliament amply furnished him with evidence for this
purpose. Accordingly he read and considered them with attention: but for
anything beyond this the season was now past. The Supreme Disposer of
All, against whose inscrutable counsels it is vain as well as impious to
murmur, did not permit him to enter on the execution of the task which
he meditated. It was resolved, therefore, by one of his friends, after
much hesitation, and under a very painful responsibility, to make such
an attempt as he could at supplying the void; especially because the
insufficiency of our resources for the continuance of the war was
understood to have been the principal objection urged against the two
former Letters on the Proposals for Peace. In performing with
reverential diffidence this duty of friendship, care has been taken not
to attribute to Mr. Burke any sentiment which is not most explicitly
known, from repeated conversations, and from much correspondence, to
have been decidedly entertained by that illustrious man. One passage of
nearly three pages, containing a censure of our defensive system, is
borrowed from a private letter, which he began to dictate with an
intention of comprising in it the short result of his opinions, but
which he afterwards abandoned, when, a little time before his death, his
health appeared in some degree to amend, and he hoped that Providence
might have spared him at least to complete the larger public letter,
which he then proposed to resume.

In the preface to the former edition of this Letter a fourth was
mentioned as being in possession of Mr. Burke's friends. It was in fact
announced by the author himself, in the conclusion of the second, which
it was then designed to follow. He intended, he said, to proceed next on
the question of the facilities possessed by the French Republic, _from
the internal state of other nations, and particularly of this_, for
obtaining her ends,--and as his notions were controverted, to take
notice of what, in that way, had been recommended to him. The vehicle
which he had chosen for this part of his plan was an answer to a
pamphlet which was supposed to come from high authority, and was
circulated by ministers with great industry, at the time of its
appearance, in October, 1795, immediately previous to that session of
Parliament when his Majesty for the first time declared that the
appearance of any disposition in the enemy to negotiate for general
peace should not fail to be met with an earnest desire to give it the
fullest and speediest effect. In truth, the answer, which is full of
spirit and vivacity, was written the latter end of the same year, but
was laid aside when the question assumed a more serious aspect, from the
commencement of an actual negotiation, which gave rise to the series of
printed letters. Afterwards, he began to rewrite it, with a view of
accommodating it to his new purpose. The greater part, however, still
remained in its original state; and several heroes of the Revolution,
who are there celebrated, having in the interval passed off the public
stage, a greater liberty of insertion and alteration than his friends on
consideration have thought allowable would be necessary to adapt it to
that place in the series for which it was ultimately designed by the
author. This piece, therefore, addressed, as the title originally stood,
to his noble friend, Earl Fitzwilliam, will be given the first in the
supplemental volumes which will be hereafter added to complete this
edition of the author's works.

The tracts, most of them in manuscript, which have been already selected
as fit for this purpose, will probably furnish four or five volumes
more, to be printed uniformly with this edition. The principal piece is
an Essay on the History of England, from the earliest period to the
conclusion of the reign of King John. It is written with much depth of
antiquarian research, directed by the mind of an intelligent statesman.
This alone, as far as can be conjectured, will form more than one
volume. Another entire volume also, at least, will be filled with his
letters to public men on public affairs, especially those of France.
This supplement will be sent to the press without delay.

Mr. Burke's more familiar correspondence will be reserved as authorities
to accompany a narrative of his life, which will conclude the whole. The
period during which he flourished was one of the most memorable of our
annals. It comprehended the acquisition of one empire in the East, the
loss of another in the West, and the total subversion of the ancient
system of Europe by the French Revolution, with all which events the
history of his life is necessarily and intimately connected,--as indeed
it also is, much more than is generally known, with the state of
literature and the elegant arts. Such a subject of biography cannot be
dismissed with a slight and rapid touch; nor can it be treated in a
manner worthy of it, from the information, however authentic and
extensive, which the industry of any one man may have accumulated. Many
important communications have been received; but some materials, which
relate to the pursuits of his early years, and which are known to be in
existence, have been hitherto kept back, notwithstanding repeated
inquiries and applications. It is, therefore, once more earnestly
requested, that all persons who call themselves the friends or admirers
of the late Edmund Burke will have the goodness to transmit, without
delay, any notices of that or of any other kind which may happen to be
in their possession or within their reach, to Messrs. Rivingtons,--a
respect and kindness to his memory which will be thankfully acknowledged
by those friends to whom, in dying, he committed the sacred trust of his
reputation.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Prefixed to the first octavo edition: London, F. and C. Rivington,
1801: comprising Vols. I.-VIII. of the edition in sixteen volumes issued
by these publishers at intervals between the years 1801 and 1827.

[2] Comprising the last four papers of the fourth volume, and the whole
of the fifth volume, of the present edition.

[3] The former comprising the matter included between the paragraph
commencing, "I hear it has been said," &c., and that ending with the
words, "there were little or no materials"; and the latter extending
through the paragraph concluding with the words, "disgraced and plagued
mankind."

[4] At the paragraph commencing with the words, "In turning our view
from the lower to the higher classes," &c.

[5] In the first half of the paragraph commencing, "If, then, the real
state of this nation," &c.




ADVERTISEMENT

TO THE SECOND OCTAVO EDITION.[6]


A new edition of the works of Mr. Burke having been called for by the
public, the opportunity has been taken to make some slight changes, it
is hoped for the better.

A different distribution of the contents, while it has made the volumes,
with the exception of the first and sixth, more nearly equal in their
respective bulk, has, at the same time, been fortunately found to
produce a more methodical arrangement of the whole. The first and second
volumes, as before, severally contain those literary and philosophical
works by which Mr. Burke was known previous to the commencement of his
public life as a statesman, and the political pieces which were written
by him between the time of his first becoming connected with the Marquis
of Rockingham and his being chosen member for Bristol. In the third are
comprehended all his speeches and pamphlets from his first arrival at
Bristol, as a candidate, in the year 1774, to his farewell address from
the hustings of that city, in the year 1780. What he himself published
relative to the affairs of India occupies the fourth volume. The
remaining four comprise his works since the French Revolution, with the
exception of the Letter to Lord Kenmare on the Penal Laws against Irish
Catholics, which was probably inserted where it stands from its relation
to the subject of the Letter addressed by him, at a later period, to Sir
Hercules Langrishe. With the same exception, too, strict regard has been
paid to chronological order, which, in the last edition, was in some
instances broken, to insert pieces that wore not discovered till it was
too late to introduce them in their proper places.

In the Appendix to the Speech on the Nabob of Arcot's Debts the
references were found to be confused, and, in many places, erroneous.
This probably had arisen from the circumstance that a larger and
differently constructed appendix seems to have been originally designed
by Mr. Burke, which, however, he afterwards abridged and altered, while
the speech and the notes upon it remained as they were. The text and the
documents that support it have throughout been accommodated to each
other.

The orthography has been in many cases altered, and an attempt made to
reduce it to some certain standard. The rule laid down for the discharge
of this task was, that, whenever Mr. Burke could be perceived to have
been uniform in his mode of spelling, that was considered as decisive;
but where he varied, (and as he was in the habit of writing by
dictation, and leaving to others the superintendence of the press, he
was peculiarly liable to variations of this sort) the best received
authorities were directed to be followed. The reader, it is trusted,
will find this object, too much disregarded in modern books, has here
been kept in view throughout. The quotations which are interspersed
through the works of Mr Burke, and which were frequently made by him
from memory, have been generally compared with the original authors.
Several mistakes in printing, of one word for another, by which the
sense was either perverted or obscured, are now rectified. Two or three
small insertions have also been made from a quarto copy corrected by Mr.
Burke himself. From the same source something more has been drawn in the
shape of notes, to which are subscribed his initials. Of this number is
the explanation of that celebrated phrase, "the swinish multitude": an
explanation which was uniformly given by him to his friends, in
conversation on the subject. But another note will probably interest the
reader still more, as being strongly expressive of that parental
affection which formed so amiable a feature in the character of Mr.
Burke. It is in page 203 of Vol. V., where he points out a considerable
passage as having been supplied by his "lost son".[7] Several other
parts, possibly amounting altogether to a page or thereabout, were
indicated in the same manner; but, as they in general consist of single
sentences, and as the meaning of the mark by which they were
distinguished was not actually expressed, it has not been thought
necessary to notice them particularly.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] London, F. and C. Rivington, 1803. 8 vols.

[7] In "Reflections on the Revolution in France,"--indicated by
foot-note _in loco_.




A

VINDICATION OF NATURAL SOCIETY:

OR,

A VIEW OF THE MISERIES AND EVILS ARISING TO MANKIND
FROM EVERY SPECIES OF ARTIFICIAL SOCIETY.

IN A LETTER TO LORD ****,

BY A LATE NOBLE WRITER.

1756.




PREFACE.


Before the philosophical works of Lord Bolingbroke had appeared, great
things were expected from the leisure of a man, who, from the splendid
scene of action in which his talents had enabled him to make so
conspicuous a figure, had retired to employ those talents in the
investigation of truth. Philosophy began to congratulate herself upon
such a proselyte from the world of business, and hoped to have extended
her power under the auspices of such a leader. In the midst of these
pleasing expectations, the works themselves at last appeared in _full
body_, and with great pomp. Those who searched in them for new
discoveries in the mysteries of nature; those who expected something
which might explain or direct the operations of the mind; those who
hoped to see morality illustrated and enforced; those who looked for new
helps to society and government; those who desired to see the characters
and passions of mankind delineated; in short, all who consider such
things as philosophy, and require some of them at least in every
philosophical work, all these were certainly disappointed; they found
the landmarks of science precisely in their former places: and they
thought they received but a poor recompense for this disappointment, in
seeing every mode of religion attacked in a lively manner, and the
foundation of every virtue, and of all government, sapped with great art
and much ingenuity. What advantage do we derive from such writings? What
delight can a man find in employing a capacity which might be usefully
exerted for the noblest purposes, in a sort of sullen labor, in which,
if the author could succeed, he is obliged to own, that nothing could be
more fatal to mankind than his success?

I cannot conceive how this sort of writers propose to compass the
designs they pretend to have in view, by the instruments which they
employ. Do they pretend to exalt the mind of man, by proving him no
better than a beast? Do they think to enforce the practice of virtue, by
denying that vice and virtue are distinguished by good or ill fortune
here, or by happiness or misery hereafter? Do they imagine they shall
increase our piety, and our reliance on God, by exploding his
providence, and insisting that he is neither just nor good? Such are the
doctrines which, sometimes concealed, sometimes openly and fully avowed,
are found to prevail throughout the writings of Lord Bolingbroke; and
such are the reasonings which this noble writer and several others have
been pleased to dignify with the name of philosophy. If these are
delivered in a specious manner, and in a style above the common, they
cannot want a number of admirers of as much docility as can be wished
for in disciples. To these the editor of the following little piece has
addressed it: there is no reason to conceal the design of it any longer.

The design was to show that, without the exertion of any considerable
forces, the same engines which were employed for the destruction of
religion, might be employed with equal success for the subversion of
government; and that specious arguments might be used against those
things which they, who doubt of everything else, will never permit to be
questioned. It is an observation which I think Isocrates makes in one of
his orations against the sophists, that it is far more easy to maintain
a wrong cause, and to support paradoxical opinions to the satisfaction
of a common auditory, than to establish a doubtful truth by solid and
conclusive arguments. When men find that something can be said in favor
of what, on the very proposal, they have thought utterly indefensible,
they grow doubtful of their own reason; they are thrown into a sort of
pleasing surprise; they run along with the speaker, charmed and
captivated to find such a plentiful harvest of reasoning, where all
seemed barren and unpromising. This is the fairy land of philosophy. And
it very frequently happens, that those pleasing impressions on the
imagination subsist and produce their effect, even after the
understanding has been satisfied of their unsubstantial nature. There is
a sort of gloss upon ingenious falsehoods that dazzles the imagination,
but which neither belongs to, nor becomes the sober aspect of truth. I
have met with a quotation in Lord Coke's Reports that pleased me very
much, though I do not know from whence he has taken it: "_Interdum
fucata falsitas_ (says he), _in multis est probabilior, at sæpe
rationibus vincit nudam veritatem_." In such cases the writer has a
certain fire and alacrity inspired into him by a consciousness, that,
let it fare how it will with the subject, his ingenuity will be sure of
applause; and this alacrity becomes much greater if he acts upon the
offensive, by the impetuosity that always accompanies an attack, and
the unfortunate propensity which mankind have to the finding and
exaggerating faults. The editor is satisfied that a mind which has no
restraint from a sense of its own weakness, of its subordinate rank in
the creation, and of the extreme danger of letting the imagination loose
upon some subjects, may very plausibly attack everything the most
excellent and venerable; that it would not be difficult to criticise the
creation itself; and that if we were to examine the divine fabrics by
our ideas of reason and fitness, and to use the same method of attack by
which some men have assaulted revealed religion, we might with as good
color, and with the same success, make the wisdom and power of God in
his creation appear to many no better than foolishness. There is an air
of plausibility which accompanies vulgar reasonings and notions, taken
from the beaten circle of ordinary experience, that is admirably suited
to the narrow capacities of some, and to the laziness of others. But
this advantage is in a great measure lost, when a painful, comprehensive
survey of a very complicated matter, and which requires a great variety
of considerations, is to be made; when we must seek in a profound
subject, not only for arguments, but for new materials of argument,
their measures and their method of arrangement; when we must go out of
the sphere of our ordinary ideas, and when we can never walk surely, but
by being sensible of our blindness. And this we must do, or we do
nothing, whenever we examine the result of a reason which is not our
own. Even in matters which are, as it were, just within our reach, what
would become of the world, if the practice of all moral duties, and the
foundations of society, rested upon having their reasons made clear and
demonstrative to every individual?

The editor knows that the subject of this letter is not so fully handled
as obviously it might; it was not his design to say all that could
possibly be said. It had been inexcusable to fill a large volume with
the abuse of reason; nor would such an abuse have been tolerable, even
for a few pages, if some under-plot, of more consequence than the
apparent design, had not been carried on.

Some persons have thought that the advantages of the state of nature
ought to have been more fully displayed. This had undoubtedly been a
very ample subject for declamation; but they do not consider the
character of the piece. The writers against religion, whilst they oppose
every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own. If
some inaccuracies in calculation, in reasoning, or in method, be found,
perhaps these will not be looked upon as faults by the admirers of Lord
Bolingbroke; who will, the editor is afraid, observe much more of his
lordship's character in such particulars of the following letter, than
they are likely to find of that rapid torrent of an impetuous and
overbearing eloquence, and the variety of rich imagery for which that
writer is justly admired.




A LETTER TO LORD ****.


Shall I venture to say, my lord, that in our late conversation, you were
inclined to the party which you adopted rather by the feelings of your
good nature, than by the conviction of your judgment? We laid open the
foundations of society; and you feared that the curiosity of this search
might endanger the ruin of the whole fabric. You would readily have
allowed my principle, but you dreaded the consequences; you thought,
that having once entered upon these reasonings, we might be carried
insensibly and irresistibly farther than at first we could either have
imagined or wished. But for my part, my lord, I then thought, and am
still of the same opinion, that error, and not truth of any kind, is
dangerous; that ill conclusions can only flow from false propositions;
and that, to know whether any proposition be true or false, it is a
preposterous method to examine it by its apparent consequences.

These were the reasons which induced me to go so far into that inquiry;
and they are the reasons which direct me in all my inquiries. I had
indeed often reflected on that subject before I could prevail on myself
to communicate my reflections to anybody. They were generally melancholy
enough; as those usually are which carry us beyond the mere surface of
things; and which would undoubtedly make the lives of all thinking men
extremely miserable, if the same philosophy which caused the grief, did
not at the same time administer the comfort.

On considering political societies, their origin, their constitution,
and their effects, I have sometimes been in a good deal more than doubt,
whether the Creator did ever really intend man for a state of happiness.
He has mixed in his cup a number of natural evils, (in spite of the
boasts of stoicism they are evils,) and every endeavor which the art and
policy of mankind has used from the beginning of the world to this day,
in order to alleviate or cure them, has only served to introduce new
mischiefs, or to aggravate and inflame the old. Besides this, the mind
of man itself is too active and restless a principle ever to settle on
the true point of quiet. It discovers every day some craving want in a
body, which really wants but little. It every day invents some new
artificial rule to guide that nature which, if left to itself, were the
best and surest guide. It finds out imaginary beings prescribing
imaginary laws; and then, it raises imaginary terrors to support a
belief in the beings, and an obedience to the laws.--Many things have
been said, and very well undoubtedly, on the subjection in which we
should preserve our bodies to the government of our understanding; but
enough has not been said upon the restraint which our bodily necessities
ought to lay on the extravagant sublimities and eccentric rovings of our
minds. The body, or as some love to call it, our inferior nature, is
wiser in its own plain way, and attends its own business more directly
than the mind with all its boasted subtlety.

In the state of nature, without question, mankind was subjected to many
and great inconveniences. Want of union, want of mutual assistance, want
of a common arbitrator to resort to in their differences. These were
evils which they could not but have felt pretty severely on many
occasions. The original children of the earth lived with their brethren
of the other kinds in much equality. Their diet must have been confined
almost wholly to the vegetable kind; and the same tree, which in its
flourishing state produced them berries, in its decay gave them an
habitation. The mutual desires of the sexes uniting their bodies and
affections, and the children which are the results of these
intercourses, introduced first the notion of society, and taught its
conveniences. This society, founded in natural appetites and instincts,
and not in any positive institution, I shall call _natural society_.
Thus far nature went and succeeded: but man would go farther. The great
error of our nature is, not to know where to stop, not to be satisfied
with any reasonable acquirement; not to compound with our condition; but
to lose all we have gained by an insatiable pursuit after more. Man
found a considerable advantage by this union of many persons to form one
family; he therefore judged that he would find his account
proportionably in an union of many families into one body politic. And
as nature has formed no bond of union to hold them together, he supplied
this defect by _laws_.

This is _political society_. And hence the sources of what are usually
called states, civil societies, or governments; into some form of which,
more extended or restrained, all mankind have gradually fallen. And
since it has so happened, and that we owe an implicit reverence to all
the institutions of our ancestors, we shall consider these institutions
with all that modesty with which we ought to conduct ourselves in
examining a received opinion; but with all that freedom and candor which
we owe to truth wherever we find it, or however it may contradict our
own notions, or oppose our own interests. There is a most absurd and
audacious method of reasoning avowed by some bigots and enthusiasts, and
through fear assented to by some wiser and better men; it is this: they
argue against a fair discussion of popular prejudices, because, say
they, though they would be found without any reasonable support, yet the
discovery might be productive of the most dangerous consequences. Absurd
and blasphemous notion! as if all happiness was not connected with the
practice of virtue, which necessarily depends upon the knowledge of
truth; that is, upon the knowledge of those unalterable relations which
Providence has ordained that every thing should bear to every other.
These relations, which are truth itself, the foundation of virtue, and
consequently the only measures of happiness, should be likewise the only
measures by which we should direct our reasoning. To these we should
conform in good earnest; and not think to force nature, and the whole
order of her system, by a compliance with our pride and folly, to
conform to our artificial regulations. It is by a conformity to this
method we owe the discovery of the few truths we know, and the little
liberty and rational happiness we enjoy. We have something fairer play
than a reasoner could have expected formerly; and we derive advantages
from it which are very visible.

The fabric of superstition has in this our age and nation received much
ruder shocks than it had ever felt before; and through the chinks and
breaches of our prison, we see such glimmerings of light, and feel such
refreshing airs of liberty, as daily raise our ardor for more. The
miseries derived to mankind from superstition under the name of
religion, and of ecclesiastical tyranny under the name of church
government, have been clearly and usefully exposed. We begin to think
and to act from reason and from nature alone. This is true of several,
but by far the majority is still in the same old state of blindness and
slavery; and much is it to be feared that we shall perpetually relapse,
whilst the real productive cause of all this superstitious folly,
enthusiastical nonsense, and holy tyranny, holds a reverend place in the
estimation even of those who are otherwise enlightened.

Civil government borrows a strength from ecclesiastical; and artificial
laws receive a sanction from artificial revelations. The ideas of
religion and government are closely connected; and whilst we receive
government as a thing necessary, or even useful to our well-being, we
shall in spite of us draw in, as a necessary, though undesirable
consequence, an artificial religion of some kind or other. To this the
vulgar will always be voluntary slaves; and even those of a rank of
understanding superior, will now and then involuntarily feel its
influence. It is therefore of the deepest concernment to us to be set
right in this point; and to be well satisfied whether civil government
be such a protector from natural evils, and such a nurse and increaser
of blessings, as those of warm imaginations promise. In such a
discussion, far am I from proposing in the least to reflect on our most
wise form of government; no more than I would, in the freer parts of my
philosophical writings, mean to object to the piety, truth, and
perfection of our most excellent Church. Both, I am sensible, have their
foundations on a rock. No discovery of truth can prejudice them. On the
contrary, the more closely the origin of religion and government is
examined, the more clearly their excellences must appear. They come
purified from the fire. My business is not with them. Having entered a
protest against all objections from these quarters, I may the more
freely inquire, from history and experience, how far policy has
contributed in all times to alleviate those evils which Providence, that
perhaps has designed us for a state of imperfection, has imposed; how
far our physical skill has cured our constitutional disorders; and
whether it may not have introduced new ones, curable perhaps by no
skill.

In looking over any state to form a judgment on it, it presents itself
in two lights; the external, and the internal. The first, that relation
which it bears in point of friendship or enmity to other states. The
second, that relation which its component parts, the governing and the
governed, bear to each other. The first part of the external view of all
states, their relation as friends, makes so trifling a figure in
history, that I am very sorry to say, it affords me but little matter on
which to expatiate. The good offices done by one nation to its
neighbor;[8] the support given in public distress; the relief afforded
in general calamity; the protection granted in emergent danger; the
mutual return of kindness and civility, would afford a very ample and
very pleasing subject for history. But, alas! all the history of all
times, concerning all nations, does not afford matter enough to fill ten
pages, though it should be spun out by the wire-drawing amplification of
a Guicciardini himself. The glaring side is that of enmity. War is the
matter which fills all history, and consequently the only or almost the
only view in which we can see the external of political society is in a
hostile shape; and the only actions to which we have always seen, and
still see all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one
another. "War," says Machiavel, "ought to be the only study of a
prince"; and by a prince, he means every sort of state, however
constituted. "He ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider
peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and
furnishes ability to execute military plans." A meditation on the
conduct of political societies made old Hobbes imagine, that war was the
state of nature; and truly, if a man judged of the individuals of our
race by their conduct when united and packed into nations and kingdoms,
he might imagine that every sort of virtue was unnatural and foreign to
the mind of man.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their
butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early
periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into
parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and
indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated,
was their mutual destruction. All ancient history is dark and
uncertain. One thing, however, is clear,--there were conquerors, and
conquests in those days; and, consequently, all that devastation by
which they are formed, and all that oppression by which they are
maintained. We know little of Sesostris, but that he led out of Egypt an
army of above 700,000 men; that he overran the Mediterranean coast as
far as Colchis; that in some places he met but little resistance, and of
course shed not a great deal of blood; but that he found in others a
people who knew the value of their liberties, and sold them dear.
Whoever considers the army this conqueror headed, the space he
traversed, and the opposition he frequently met, with the natural
accidents of sickness, and the dearth and badness of provision to which
he must have been subject in the variety of climates and countries his
march lay through, if he knows anything, he must know that even the
conqueror's army must have suffered greatly; and that of this immense
number but a very small part could have returned to enjoy the plunder
accumulated by the loss of so many of their companions, and the
devastation of so considerable a part of the world. Considering, I say,
the vast army headed by this conqueror, whose unwieldy weight was almost
alone sufficient to wear down its strength, it will be far from excess
to suppose that one half was lost in the expedition. If this was the
state of the victorious, and from the circumstances it must have been
this at the least; the vanquished must have had a much heavier loss, as
the greatest slaughter is always in the flight, and great carnage did in
those times and countries ever attend the first rage of conquest. It
will, therefore, be very reasonable to allow on their account as much
as, added to the losses of the conqueror, may amount to a million of
deaths, and then we shall see this conqueror, the oldest we have on the
records of history, (though, as we have observed before, the chronology
of these remote times is extremely uncertain), opening the scene by a
destruction of at least one million of his species, unprovoked but by
his ambition, without any motives but pride, cruelty, and madness, and
without any benefit to himself (for Justin expressly tells us he did not
maintain his conquests), but solely to make so many people, in so
distant countries, feel experimentally how severe a scourge Providence
intends for the human race, when he gives one man the power over many,
and arms his naturally impotent and feeble rage with the hands of
millions, who know no common principle of action, but a blind obedience
to the passions of their ruler.

The next personage who figures in the tragedies of this ancient theatre
is Semiramis; for we have no particulars of Ninus, but that he made
immense and rapid conquests, which doubtless were not compassed without
the usual carnage. We see an army of about three millions employed by
this martial queen in a war against the Indians. We see the Indians
arming a yet greater; and we behold a war continued with much fury, and
with various success. This ends in the retreat of the queen, with scarce
a third of the troops employed in the expedition; an expedition which,
at this rate, must have cost two millions of souls on her part; and it
is not unreasonable to judge that the country which was the seat of war
must have been an equal sufferer. But I am content to detract from this,
and to suppose that the Indians lost only half so much, and then the
account stands thus: in this war alone (for Semiramis had other wars) in
this single reign, and in this one spot of the globe, did three millions
of souls expire, with all the horrid and shocking circumstances which
attend all wars, and in a quarrel, in which none of the sufferers could
have the least rational concern.

The Babylonian, Assyrian, Median, and Persian monarchies must have
poured out seas of blood in their formation, and in their destruction.
The armies and fleets of Xerxes, their numbers, the glorious stand made
against them, and the unfortunate event of all his mighty preparations,
are known to everybody. In this expedition, draining half Asia of its
inhabitants, he led an army of about two millions to be slaughtered, and
wasted by a thousand fatal accidents, in the same place where his
predecessors had before by a similar madness consumed the flower of so
many kingdoms, and wasted the force of so extensive an empire. It is a
cheap calculation to say, that the Persian empire, in its wars against
the Greeks and Scythians, threw away at least four millions of its
subjects; to say nothing of its other wars, and the losses sustained in
them. These were their losses abroad; but the war was brought home to
them, first by Agesilaus, and afterwards by Alexander. I have not, in
this retreat, the books necessary to make very exact calculations; nor
is it necessary to give more than hints to one of your lordship's
erudition. You will recollect his uninterrupted series of success. You
will run over his battles. You will call to mind the carnage which was
made. You will give a glance at the whole, and you will agree with me,
that to form this hero no less than twelve hundred thousand lives must
have been sacrificed; but no sooner had he fallen himself a sacrifice to
his vices, than a thousand breaches were made for ruin to enter, and
give the last hand to this scene of misery and destruction. His kingdom
was rent and divided; which served to employ the more distinct parts to
tear each other to pieces, and bury the whole in blood and slaughter.
The kings of Syria and of Egypt, the kings of Pergamus and Macedon,
without intermission worried each other for above two hundred years;
until at last a strong power, arising in the west, rushed in upon them
and silenced their tumults, by involving all the contending parties in
the same destruction. It is little to say, that the contentions between
the successors of Alexander depopulated that part of the world of at
least two millions.

The struggle between the Macedonians and Greeks, and, before that, the
disputes of the Greek commonwealths among themselves, for an
unprofitable superiority, form one of the bloodiest scenes in history.
One is astonished how such a small spot could furnish men sufficient to
sacrifice to the pitiful ambition of possessing five or six thousand
more acres, or two or three more villages; yet to see the acrimony and
bitterness with which this was disputed between the Athenians and
Lacedemonians; what armies cut off; what fleets sunk and burnt; what a
number of cities sacked, and their inhabitants slaughtered and captived;
one would be induced to believe the decision of the fate of mankind, at
least, depended upon it! But those disputes ended as all such ever have
done, and ever will do; in a real weakness of all parties; a momentary
shadow, and dream of power in some one; and the subjection of all to the
yoke of a stranger, who knows how to profit of their divisions. This,
at least, was the case of the Greeks; and surely, from the earliest
accounts of them, to their absorption into the Roman empire, we cannot
judge that their intestine divisions, and their foreign wars, consumed
less than three millions of their inhabitants.

What an Aceldama, what a field of blood Sicily has been in ancient
times, whilst the mode of its government was controverted between the
republican and tyrannical parties, and the possession struggled for by
the natives, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, and the Romans, your
lordship will easily recollect. You will remember the total destruction
of such bodies as an army of 300,000 men. You will find every page of
its history dyed in blood, and blotted and confounded by tumults,
rebellions, massacres, assassinations, proscriptions, and a series of
horror beyond the histories perhaps of any other nation in the world;
though the histories of all nations are made up of similar matter. I
once more excuse myself in point of exactness for want of books. But I
shall estimate the slaughters in this island but at two millions; which
your lordship will find much short of the reality.

Let us pass by the wars, and the consequences of them, which wasted
Grecia-Magna, before the Roman power prevailed in that part of Italy.
They are perhaps exaggerated; therefore I shall only rate them at one
million. Let us hasten to open that great scene which establishes the
Roman empire, and forms the grand catastrophe of the ancient drama. This
empire, whilst in its infancy, began by an effusion of human blood
scarcely credible. The neighboring little states teemed for new
destruction: the Sabines, the Samnites, the Æqui, the Volsci, the
Hetrurians, were broken by a series of slaughters which had no
interruption, for some hundreds of years; slaughters which upon all
sides consumed more than two millions of the wretched people. The Gauls,
rushing into Italy about this time, added the total destruction of their
own armies to those of the ancient inhabitants. In short, it were hardly
possible to conceive a more horrid and bloody picture, if that the Punic
wars that ensued soon after did not present one that far exceeds it.
Here we find that climax of devastation, and ruin, which seemed to shake
the whole earth. The extent of this war, which vexed so many nations,
and both elements, and the havoc of the human species caused in both,
really astonishes beyond expression, when it is nakedly considered, and
those matters which are apt to divert our attention from it, the
characters, actions, and designs of the persons concerned, are not taken
into the account. These wars, I mean those called the Punic wars, could
not have stood the human race in less than three millions of the
species. And yet this forms but a part only, and a very small part, of
the havoc caused by the Roman ambition. The war with Mithridates was
very little less bloody; that prince cut off at one stroke 150,000
Romans by a massacre. In that war Sylla destroyed 300,000 men at
Cheronea. He defeated Mithridates' army under Dorilaus, and slew
300,000. This great and unfortunate prince lost another 300,000 before
Cyzicum. In the course of the war he had innumerable other losses; and
having many intervals of success, he revenged them severely. He was at
last totally overthrown; and he crushed to pieces the king of Armenia,
his ally, by the greatness of his ruin. All who had connections with him
shared the same fate. The merciless genius of Sylla had its full scope;
and the streets of Athens were not the only ones which ran with blood.
At this period, the sword, glutted with foreign slaughter, turned its
edge upon the bowels of the Roman republic itself; and presented a scene
of cruelties and treasons enough almost to obliterate the memory of all
the external devastations. I intended, my lord, to have proceeded in a
sort of method in estimating the numbers of mankind cut off in these
wars which we have on record. But I am obliged to alter my design. Such
a tragical uniformity of havoc and murder would disgust your lordship as
much as it would me; and I confess I already feel my eyes ache by
keeping them so long intent on so bloody a prospect. I shall observe
little on the Servile, the Social, the Gallic, and Spanish wars; nor
upon those with Jugurtha, nor Antiochus, nor many others equally
important, and carried on with equal fury. The butcheries of Julius
Cæsar alone are calculated by somebody else; the numbers he has been the
means of destroying have been reckoned at 1,200,000. But to give your
lordship an idea that may serve as a standard, by which to measure, in
some degree, the others; you will turn your eyes on Judea; a very
inconsiderable spot of the earth in itself, though ennobled by the
singular events which had their rise in that country.

This spot happened, it matters not here by what means, to become at
several times extremely populous, and to supply men for slaughters
scarcely credible, if other well-known and well-attested ones had not
given them a color. The first settling of the Jews here was attended by
an almost entire extirpation of all the former inhabitants. Their own
civil wars, and those with their petty neighbors, consumed vast
multitudes almost every year for several centuries; and the irruptions
of the kings of Babylon and Assyria made immense ravages. Yet we have
their history but partially, in an indistinct, confused manner; so that
I shall only throw the strong point of light upon that part which
coincides with Roman history, and of that part only on the point of time
when they received the great and final stroke which made them, no more a
nation; a stroke which is allowed to have cut off little less than two
millions of that people. I say nothing of the loppings made from that
stock whilst it stood; nor from the suckers that grew out of the old
root ever since. But if, in this inconsiderable part of the globe, such
a carnage has been made in two or three short reigns, and that this
great carnage, great as it is, makes but a minute part of what the
histories of that people inform us they suffered; what shall we judge of
countries more extended, and which have waged wars by far more
considerable?

Instances of this sort compose the uniform of history. But there have
been periods when no less than universal destruction to the race of
mankind seems to have been threatened. Such was that when the Goths, the
Vandals, and the Huns, poured into Gaul, Italy, Spain, Greece, and
Africa, carrying destruction before them as they advanced, and leaving
horrid deserts every way behind them. _Vastum ubique silentium, secreti
colles; fumantia procul tecta; nemo exploratoribus obvius_, is what
Tacitus calls _facies victoriæ_. It is always so; but was here
emphatically so. From the north proceeded the swarms of Goths, Vandals,
Huns, Ostrogoths, who ran towards the south, into Africa itself, which
suffered as all to the north had done. About this time, another torrent
of barbarians, animated by the same fury, and encouraged by the same
success, poured out of the south, and ravaged all to the northeast and
west, to the remotest parts of Persia on one hand, and to the banks of
the Loire or farther on the other; destroying all the proud and curious
monuments of human art, that not even the memory might seem to survive
of the former inhabitants. What has been done since, and what will
continue to be done while the same inducements to war continue, I shall
not dwell upon. I shall only in one word mention the horrid effects of
bigotry and avarice, in the conquest of Spanish America; a conquest, on
a low estimation, effected by the murder of ten millions of the species.
I shall draw to a conclusion of this part, by making a general
calculation of the whole. I think I have actually mentioned above
thirty-six millions. I have not particularized any more. I don't pretend
to exactness; therefore, for the sake of a general view, I shall lay
together all those actually slain in battles, or who have perished in a
no less miserable manner by the other destructive consequences of war
from the beginning of the world to this day, in the four parts of it, at
a thousand times as much; no exaggerated calculation, allowing for time
and extent. We have not perhaps spoke of the five-hundredth part; I am
sure I have not of what is actually ascertained in history; but how much
of these butcheries are only expressed in generals, what part of time
history has never reached, and what vast spaces of the habitable globe
it has not embraced, I need not mention to your lordship. I need not
enlarge on those torrents of silent and inglorious blood which have
glutted the thirsty sands of Afric, or discolored the polar snow, or
fed the savage forests of America for so many ages of continual war.
Shall I, to justify my calculations from the charge of extravagance, add
to the account those skirmishes which happen in all wars, without being
singly of sufficient dignity in mischief, to merit a place in history,
but which by their frequency compensate for this comparative innocence?
shall I inflame the account by those general massacres which have
devoured whole cities and nations; those wasting pestilences, those
consuming famines, and all those furies that follow in the train of war?
I have no need to exaggerate; and I have purposely avoided a parade of
eloquence on this occasion. I should despise it upon any occasion; else
in mentioning these slaughters, it is obvious how much the whole might
be heightened, by an affecting description of the horrors that attend
the wasting of kingdoms, and sacking of cities. But I do not write to
the vulgar, nor to that which only governs the vulgar, their passions. I
go upon a naked and moderate calculation, just enough, without a
pedantical exactness, to give your lordship some feeling of the effects
of political society. I charge the whole of these effects on political
society. I avow the charge, and I shall presently make it good to your
lordship's satisfaction. The numbers I particularized are about
thirty-six millions. Besides those killed in battles I have said
something, not half what the matter would have justified, but something
I have said concerning the consequences of war even more dreadful than
that monstrous carnage itself which shocks our humanity, and almost
staggers our belief. So that, allowing me in my exuberance one way for
my deficiencies in the other, you will find me not unreasonable. I
think the numbers of men now upon earth are computed at five hundred
millions at the most. Here the slaughter of mankind, on what you will
call a small calculation, amounts to upwards of seventy times the number
of souls this day on the globe: a point which may furnish matter of
reflection to one less inclined to draw consequences than your lordship.

I now come to show that political society is justly chargeable with much
the greatest part of this destruction of the species. To give the
fairest play to every side of the question, I will own that there is a
haughtiness and fierceness in human nature, which will cause innumerable
broils, place men in what situation you please; but owning this, I still
insist in charging it to political regulations, that these broils are so
frequent, so cruel, and attended with consequences so deplorable. In a
state of nature, it had been impossible to find a number of men,
sufficient for such slaughters, agreed in the same bloody purpose; or
allowing that they might have come to such an agreement (an impossible
supposition), yet the means that simple nature has supplied them with,
are by no means adequate to such an end; many scratches, many bruises
undoubtedly would be received upon all hands; but only a few, a very few
deaths. Society and politics, which have given us these destructive
views, have given us also the means of satisfying them. From the
earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been
sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude
essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery,
cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all those species of artificial,
learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which
make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is
our principal glory.

How far mere nature would have carried us, we may judge by the example
of those animals who still follow her laws, and even of those to whom
she has given dispositions more fierce, and arms more terrible than ever
she intended we should use. It is an incontestable truth that there is
more havoc made in one year by men of men, than has been made by all the
lions, tigers, panthers, ounces, leopards, hyenas, rhinoceroses,
elephants, bears and wolves, upon their several species, since the
beginning of the world; though these agree ill enough with each other,
and have a much greater proportion of rage and fury in their composition
than we have. But with respect to you, ye legislators, ye civilizers of
mankind! ye Orpheuses, Moseses, Minoses, Solons, Theseuses, Lycurguses,
Numas! with respect to you be it spoken, your regulations have done more
mischief in cold blood, than all the rage of the fiercest animals in
their greatest terrors, or furies, has ever done, or ever could do!

These evils are not accidental. Whoever will take the pains to consider
the nature of society will find that they result directly from its
constitution. For as _subordination_, or, in other words, the
reciprocation of tyranny and slavery, is requisite to support these
societies; the interest, the ambition, the malice, or the revenge, nay,
even the whim and caprice of one ruling man among them, is enough to arm
all the rest, without any private views of their own, to the worst and
blackest purposes: and what is at once lamentable, and ridiculous, these
wretches engage under those banners with a fury greater than if they
were animated by revenge for their own proper wrongs.

It is no less worth observing, that this artificial division of mankind
into separate societies is a perpetual source in itself of hatred and
dissension among them. The names which distinguish them are enough to
blow up hatred and rage. Examine history; consult present experience;
and you will find that far the greater part of the quarrels between
several nations had scarce any other occasion than that these nations
were different combinations of people, and called by different names: to
an Englishman, the name of a Frenchman, a Spaniard, an Italian, much
more a Turk, or a Tartar, raises of course ideas of hatred and contempt.
If you would inspire this compatriot of ours with pity or regard for one
of these, would you not hide that distinction? You would not pray him to
compassionate the poor Frenchman, or the unhappy German. Far from it;
you would speak of him as a _foreigner_; an accident to which all are
liable. You would represent him as a _man_; one partaking with us of the
same common nature, and subject to the same law. There is something so
averse from our nature in these artificial political distinctions, that
we need no other trumpet to kindle us to war and destruction. But there
is something so benign and healing in the general voice of humanity
that, maugre all our regulations to prevent it, the simple name of man
applied properly, never fails to work a salutary effect.

This natural unpremeditated effect of policy on the unpossessed passions
of mankind appears on other occasions. The very name of a politician, a
statesman, is sure to cause terror and hatred; it has always connected
with it the ideas of treachery, cruelty, fraud, and tyranny; and those
writers who have faithfully unveiled the mysteries of state-freemasonry,
have ever been held in general detestation, for even knowing so
perfectly a theory so detestable. The case of Machiavel seems at first
sight something hard in that respect. He is obliged to bear the
iniquities of those whose maxims and rules of government he published.
His speculation is more abhorred than their practice.

But if there were no other arguments against artificial society than
this I am going to mention, methinks it ought to fall by this one only.
All writers on the science of policy are agreed, and they agree with
experience, that, all governments must frequently infringe the rules of
justice to support themselves; that truth must give way to
dissimulation; honesty to convenience; and humanity itself to the
reigning interest. The whole of this mystery of iniquity is called the
reason of state. It is a reason which I own I cannot penetrate. What
sort of a protection is this of the general right, that is maintained by
infringing the rights of particulars? What sort of justice is this,
which is enforced by breaches of its own laws? These paradoxes I leave
to be solved by the able heads of legislators and politicians. For my
part, I say what a plain man would say on such an occasion. I can never
believe that any institution, agreeable to nature, and proper for
mankind, could find it necessary, or even expedient, in any case
whatsoever, to do what the best and worthiest instincts of mankind warn
us to avoid. But no wonder, that what is set up in opposition to the
state of nature should preserve itself by trampling upon the law of
nature.

To prove that these sorts of policed societies are a violation offered
to nature, and a constraint upon the human mind, it needs only to look
upon the sanguinary measures, and instruments of violence, which are
everywhere used to support them. Let us take a review of the dungeons,
whips, chains, racks, gibbets, with which every society is abundantly
stored; by which hundreds of victims are annually offered up to support
a dozen or two in pride and madness, and millions in an abject servitude
and dependence. There was a time when I looked with a reverential awe on
these mysteries of policy; but age, experience, and philosophy, have
rent the veil; and I view this _sanctum sanctorum_, at least, without
any enthusiastic admiration. I acknowledge, indeed, the necessity of
such a proceeding in such institutions; but I must have a very mean
opinion of institutions where such proceedings are necessary.

It is a misfortune that in no part of the globe natural liberty and
natural religion are to be found pure, and free from the mixture of
political adulterations. Yet we have implanted in us by Providence,
ideas, axioms, rules, of what is pious, just, fair, honest, which no
political craft, nor learned sophistry can entirely expel from our
breasts. By these we judge, and we cannot otherwise judge, of the
several artificial modes of religion and society, and determine of them
as they approach to or recede from this standard.

The simplest form of government is _despotism_, where all the inferior
orbs of power are moved merely by the will of the Supreme, and all that
are subjected to them directed in the same manner, merely by the
occasional will of the magistrate. This form, as it is the most simple,
so it is infinitely the most general. Scarcely any part of the world is
exempted from its power. And in those few places where men enjoy what
they call liberty, it is continually in a tottering situation, and makes
greater and greater strides to that gulf of despotism which at last
swallows up every species of government. The manner of ruling being
directed merely by the will of the weakest, and generally the worst man
in the society, becomes the most foolish and capricious thing, at the
same time that it is the most terrible and destructive that well can be
conceived. In a despotism, the principal person finds that, let the
want, misery, and indigence of his subjects be what they will, he can
yet possess abundantly of everything to gratify his most insatiable
wishes. He does more. He finds that these gratifications increase in
proportion to the wretchedness and slavery of his subjects. Thus
encouraged both by passion and interest to trample on the public
welfare, and by his station placed above both shame and fear, he
proceeds to the most horrid and shocking outrages upon mankind. Their
persons become victims of his suspicions. The slightest displeasure is
death; and a disagreeable aspect is often as great a crime as high
treason. In the court of Nero, a person of learning, of unquestioned
merit, and of unsuspected loyalty, was put to death for no other reason,
than that he had a pedantic countenance which displeased the emperor.
This very monster of mankind appeared in the beginning of his reign to
be a person of virtue. Many of the greatest tyrants on the records of
history have begun their reigns in the fairest manner. But the truth
is, this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding.
And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by
a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him
from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice
are utterly erased from his mind. When Alexander had in his fury
inhumanly butchered one of his best friends and bravest captains; on the
return of reason he began to conceive an horror suitable to the guilt of
such a murder. In this juncture his council came to his assistance. But
what did his council? They found him out a philosopher who gave him
comfort. And in what manner did this philosopher comfort him for the
loss of such a man, and heal his conscience, flagrant with the smart of
such a crime? You have the matter at length in Plutarch. He told him,
"_that let a sovereign do what he wilt, all his actions are just and
lawful, because they are his_." The palaces of all princes abound with
such courtly philosophers. The consequence was such as might be
expected. He grew every day a monster more abandoned to unnatural lust,
to debauchery, to drunkenness, and to murder. And yet this was
originally a great man, of uncommon capacity, and a strong propensity to
virtue. But unbounded power proceeds step by step, until it has
eradicated every laudable principle. It has been remarked, that there is
no prince so bad, whose favorites and ministers are not worse. There is
hardly any prince without a favorite, by whom he is governed in as
arbitrary a manner as he governs the wretches subjected to him. Here the
tyranny is doubled. There are two courts, and two interests; both very
different from the interests of the people. The favorite knows that the
regard of a tyrant is as unconstant and capricious as that of a woman;
and concluding his time to be short, he makes haste to fill up the
measure of his iniquity, in rapine, in luxury, and in revenge. Every
avenue to the throne is shut up. He oppresses and ruins the people,
whilst he persuades the prince that those murmurs raised by his own
oppression are the effects of disaffection to the prince's government.
Then is the natural violence of despotism inflamed and aggravated by
hatred and revenge. To deserve well of the state is a crime against the
prince. To be popular, and to be a traitor, are considered as synonymous
terms. Even virtue is dangerous, as an aspiring quality, that claims an
esteem by itself, and independent of the countenance of the court. What
has been said of the chief, is true of the inferior officers of this
species of government; each in his province exercising the same tyranny,
and grinding the people by an oppression, the more severely felt, as it
is near them, and exercised by base and subordinate persons. For the
gross of the people, they are considered as a mere herd of cattle; and
really in a little time become no better; all principle of honest pride,
all sense of the dignity of their nature, is lost in their slavery. The
day, says Homer, which makes a man a slave, takes away half his worth;
and, in fact, he loses every impulse to action, but that low and base
one of fear. In this kind of government human nature is not only abused
and insulted, but it is actually degraded and sunk into a species of
brutality. The consideration of this made Mr. Locke say, with great
justice, that a government of this kind was worse than anarchy: indeed
it is so abhorred and detested by all who live under forms that have a
milder appearance, that there is scarcely a rational man in Europe that
would not prefer death to Asiatic despotism. Here then we have the
acknowledgment of a great philosopher, that an irregular state of nature
is preferable to such a government; we have the consent of all sensible
and generous men, who carry it yet further, and avow that death itself
is preferable; and yet this species of government, so justly condemned,
and so generally detested, is what infinitely the greater part of
mankind groan under, and have groaned under from the beginning. So that,
by sure and uncontested principles, the greatest part of the governments
on earth must be concluded tyrannies, impostures, violations of the
natural rights of mankind, and worse than the most disorderly anarchies.
How much other forms exceed this we shall consider immediately.

In all parts of the world, mankind, however debased, retains still the
sense of _feeling_; the weight of tyranny at last becomes insupportable;
but the remedy is not so easy: in general, the only remedy by which they
attempt to cure the tyranny is to change the tyrant. This is, and always
was, the case for the greater part. In some countries, however, were
found men of more penetration, who discovered "_that to live by one
man's will was the cause of all men's misery_." They therefore changed
their former method, and assembling the men in their several societies
the most respectable for their understanding and fortunes, they confided
to them the charge of the public welfare. This originally formed what is
called an _aristocracy_. They hoped it would be impossible that such a
number could ever join in any design against the general good; and they
promised themselves a great deal of security and happiness from the
united counsels of so many able and experienced persons. But it is now
found by abundant experience, that an _aristocracy_, and a _despotism_,
differ but in name; and that a people who are in general excluded from
any share of the legislative, are, to all intents and purposes, as much
slaves, when twenty, independent of them, govern, as when but one
domineers. The tyranny is even more felt, as every individual of the
nobles has the haughtiness of a sultan; the people are more miserable,
as they seem on the verge of liberty, from which they are forever
debarred; this fallacious idea of liberty, whilst it presents a vain
shadow of happiness to the subject, binds faster the chains of his
subjection. What is left undone by the natural avarice and pride of
those who are raised above the others, is completed by their suspicions,
and their dread of losing an authority, which has no support in the
common utility of the nation. A Genoese or a Venetian republic is a
concealed _despotism_; where you find the same pride of the rulers, the
same base subjection of the people, the same bloody maxims of a
suspicious policy. In one respect the _aristocracy_ is worse than the
_despotism_. A body politic, whilst it retains its authority, never
changes its maxims; a _despotism_, which is this day horrible to a
supreme degree, by the caprice natural to the heart of man, may, by the
same caprice otherwise exerted, be as lovely the next; in a succession,
it is possible to meet with some good princes. If there have been
Tiberiuses, Caligulas, Neros, there have been likewise the serener days
of Vespasians, Tituses, Trajans, and Antonines; but a body politic is
not influenced by caprice or whim, it proceeds in a regular manner, its
succession is insensible; and every man as he enters it, either has, or
soon attains, the spirit of the whole body. Never was it known that an
_aristocracy_, which was haughty and tyrannical in one century, became
easy and mild in the next. In effect, the yoke of this species of
government is so galling, that whenever the people have got the least
power, they have shaken it off with the utmost indignation, and
established a popular form. And when they have not had strength enough
to support themselves, they have thrown themselves into the arms of
_despotism_, as the more eligible of the two evils. This latter was the
case of Denmark, who sought a refuge from the oppression of its
nobility, in the strong hold of arbitrary power. Poland has at present
the name of republic, and it is one of the _aristocratic_ form; but it
is well known that the little finger of this government is heavier than
the loins of arbitrary power in most nations. The people are not only
politically, but personally slaves, and treated with the utmost
indignity. The republic of Venice is somewhat more moderate; yet even
here, so heavy is the _aristocratic_ yoke, that the nobles have been
obliged to enervate the spirit of their subjects by every sort of
debauchery; they have denied them the liberty of reason, and they have
made them amends by what a base soul will think a more valuable liberty,
by not only allowing, but encouraging them to corrupt themselves in the
most scandalous manner. They consider their subjects as the farmer does
the hog he keeps to feast upon. He holds him fast in his sty, but allows
him to wallow as much as he pleases in his beloved filth and gluttony.
So scandalously debauched a people as that of Venice is to be met with
nowhere else. High, low, men, women, clergy, and laity, are all alike.
The ruling nobility are no less afraid of one another than they are of
the people; and, for that reason, politically enervate their own body by
the same effeminate luxury by which they corrupt their subjects. They
are impoverished by every means which can be invented; and they are kept
in a perpetual terror by the horrors of a state inquisition. Here you
see a people deprived of all rational freedom, and tyrannized over by
about two thousand men; and yet this body of two thousand are so far
from enjoying any liberty by the subjection of the rest, that they are
in an infinitely severer state of slavery; they make themselves the most
degenerate and unhappy of mankind, for no other purpose than that they
may the more effectually contribute to the misery of a whole nation. In
short, the regular and methodical proceedings of an _aristocracy_ are
more intolerable than the very excesses of a _despotism_, and, in
general, much further from any remedy.

Thus, my lord, we have pursued _aristocracy_ through its whole progress;
we have seen the seeds, the growth, and the fruit. It could boast none
of the advantages of a _despotism_, miserable as those advantages were,
and it was overloaded with an exuberance of mischiefs, unknown even to
_despotism_ itself. In effect, it is no more than a disorderly tyranny.
This form, therefore, could be little approved, even in speculation, by
those who were capable of thinking, and could be less borne in practice
by any who were capable of feeling. However, the fruitful policy of man
was not yet exhausted. He had yet another farthing candle to supply the
deficiencies of the sun. This was the third form, known by political
writers under the name of _democracy_. Here the people transacted all
public business, or the greater part of it, in their own persons; their
laws were made by themselves, and, upon any failure of duty, their
officers were accountable to themselves, and to them only. In all
appearance, they had secured by this method the advantages of order and
good government, without paying their liberty for the purchase. Now, my
lord, we are come to the masterpiece of Grecian refinement, and Roman
solidity,--a popular government. The earliest and most celebrated
republic of this model was that of Athens. It was constructed by no less
an artist than the celebrated poet and philosopher, Solon. But no sooner
was this political vessel launched from the stocks, than it overset,
even in the lifetime of the builder. A tyranny immediately supervened;
not by a foreign conquest, not by accident, but by the very nature and
constitution of a _democracy_. An artful man became popular, the people
had power in their hands, and they devolved a considerable share of
their power upon their favorite; and the only use he made of this power
was, to plunge those who gave it into slavery. Accident restored their
liberty, and the same good fortune produced men of uncommon abilities
and uncommon virtues amongst them. But these abilities were suffered to
be of little service either to their possessors or to the state. Some of
these men, for whose sakes alone we read their history, they banished;
others they imprisoned, and all they treated with various circumstances
of the most shameful ingratitude. Republics have many things in the
spirit of absolute monarchy, but none more than this. A shining merit
is ever hated or suspected in a popular assembly, as well as in a court;
and all services done the state are looked upon as dangerous to the
rulers, whether sultans or senators. The _ostracism_ at Athens was built
upon this principle. The giddy people whom we have now under
consideration, being elated with some flashes of success, which they
owed to nothing less than any merit of their own, began to tyrannize
over their equals, who had associated with them for their common
defence. With their prudence they renounced all appearance of justice.
They entered into wars rashly and wantonly. If they were unsuccessful,
instead of growing wiser by their misfortune, they threw the whole blame
of their own misconduct on the ministers who had advised, and the
generals who had conducted, those wars; until by degrees they had cut
off all who could serve them in their councils or their battles. If at
any time these wars had a happier issue, it was no less difficult to
deal with them on account of their pride and insolence. Furious in their
adversity, tyrannical in their successes, a commander had more trouble
to concert his defence before the people, than to plan the operations of
the campaign. It was not uncommon for a general, under the horrid
_despotism_ of the Roman emperors, to be ill received in proportion to
the greatness of his services. Agricola is a strong instance of this. No
man had done greater things, nor with more honest ambition. Yet, on his
return to court, he was obliged to enter Rome with all the secrecy of a
criminal. He went to the palace, not like a victorious commander who had
merited and might demand the greatest rewards, but like an offender who
had come to supplicate a pardon for his crimes. His reception was
answerable; "_Exceptusque brevi osculo et nullo sermone, turbæ
servientium immixtus est_." Yet in that worst season of this worst of
monarchical[9] tyrannies, modesty, discretion, and a coolness of temper,
formed some kind of security, even for the highest merit. But at Athens,
the nicest and best studied behavior was not a sufficient guard for a
man of great capacity. Some of their bravest commanders were obliged to
fly their country, some to enter into the service of its enemies, rather
than abide a popular determination on their conduct, lest, as one of
them said, their giddiness might make the people condemn where they
meant to acquit; to throw in a black bean even when they intended a
white one.

The Athenians made a very rapid progress to the most enormous excesses.
The people, under no restraint, soon grew dissolute, luxurious, and
idle. They renounced all labor, and began to subsist themselves from the
public revenues. They lost all concern for their common honor or safety,
and could bear no advice that tended to reform them. At this time truth
became offensive to those lords the people, and most highly dangerous to
the speaker. The orators no longer ascended the _rostrum_, but to
corrupt them further with the most fulsome adulation. These orators were
all bribed by foreign princes on the one side or the other. And besides
its own parties, in this city there were parties, and avowed ones too,
for the Persians, Spartans, and Macedonians, supported each of them by
one or more demagogues pensioned and bribed to this iniquitous service.
The people, forgetful of all virtue and public spirit, and intoxicated
with the flatteries of their orators (these courtiers of republics, and
endowed with the distinguishing characteristics of all other courtiers),
this people, I say, at last arrived at that pitch of madness, that they
coolly and deliberately, by an express law, made it capital for any man
to propose an application of the immense sums squandered in public
shows, even to the most necessary purposes of the state. When you see
the people of this republic banishing and murdering their best and
ablest citizens, dissipating the public treasure with the most senseless
extravagance, and spending their whole time, as spectators or actors, in
playing, fiddling, dancing, and singing, does it not, my lord, strike
your imagination with the image of a sort of complex Nero? And does it
not strike you with the greater horror, when you observe, not one man
only, but a whole city, grown drunk with pride and power, running with a
rage of folly into the same mean and senseless debauchery and
extravagance? But if this people resembled Nero in their extravagance,
much more did they resemble and even exceed him in cruelty and
injustice. In the time of Pericles, one of the most celebrated times in
the history of that commonwealth, a king of Egypt sent them a donation
of corn. This they were mean enough to accept. And had the Egyptian
prince intended the ruin of this city of wicked Bedlamites, he could not
have taken a more effectual method to do it than by such an ensnaring
largess. The distribution of this bounty caused a quarrel; the majority
set on foot an inquiry into the title of the citizens; and upon a vain
pretence of illegitimacy, newly and occasionally set up, they deprived
of their share of the royal donation no less than five thousand of
their own body. They went further; they disfranchised them; and, having
once begun with an act of injustice, they could set no bounds to it. Not
content with cutting them off from the rights of citizens, they
plundered these unfortunate wretches of all their substance; and, to
crown this masterpiece of violence and tyranny, they actually sold every
man of the five thousand as slaves in the public market. Observe, my
lord, that the five thousand we here speak of were cut off from a body
of no more than nineteen thousand; for the entire number of citizens was
no greater at that time. Could the tyrant who wished the Roman people
but one neck; could the tyrant Caligula himself have done, nay, he could
scarcely wish for, a greater mischief than to have cut off, at one
stroke, a fourth of his people? Or has the cruelty of that series of
sanguine tyrants, the Cæsars, ever presented such a piece of flagrant
and extensive wickedness? The whole history of this celebrated republic
is but one tissue of rashness, folly, ingratitude, injustice, tumult,
violence, and tyranny, and, indeed, of every species of wickedness that
can well be imagined. This was a city of wise men, in which a minister
could not exercise his functions; a warlike people, amongst whom a
general did not dare either to gain or lose a battle; a learned nation,
in which a philosopher could not venture on a free inquiry. This was the
city which banished Themistocles, starved Aristides, forced into exile
Miltiades, drove out Anaxagoras, and poisoned Socrates. This was a city
which changed the form of its government with the moon; eternal
conspiracies, revolutions daily, nothing fixed and established. A
republic, as an ancient philosopher has observed, is no one species of
government, but a magazine of every species; here you find every sort of
it, and that in the worst form. As there is a perpetual change, one
rising and the other falling, you have all the violence and wicked
policy by which a beginning power must always acquire its strength, and
all the weakness by which falling states are brought to a complete
destruction.

Rome has a more venerable aspect than Athens; and she conducted her
affairs, so far as related to the ruin and oppression of the greatest
part of the world, with greater wisdom and more uniformity. But the
domestic economy of these two states was nearly or altogether the same.
An internal dissension constantly tore to pieces the bowels of the Roman
commonwealth. You find the same confusion, the same factions, which
subsisted at Athens, the same tumults, the same revolutions, and, in
fine, the same slavery; if, perhaps, their former condition did not
deserve that name altogether as well. All other republics were of the
same character. Florence was a transcript of Athens. And the modern
republics, as they approach more or less to the democratic form, partake
more or less of the nature of those which I have described.

We are now at the close of our review of the three simple forms of
artificial society; and we have shown them, however they may differ in
name, or in some slight circumstances, to be all alike in effect: in
effect, to be all tyrannies. But suppose we were inclined to make the
most ample concessions; let us concede Athens, Rome, Carthage, and two
or three more of the ancient, and as many of the modern, commonwealths,
to have been, or to be, free and happy, and to owe their freedom and
happiness to their political constitution. Yet, allowing all this, what
defence does this make for artificial society in general, that these
inconsiderable spots of the globe have for some short space of time
stood as exceptions to a charge so general? But when we call these
governments free, or concede that their citizens were happier than those
which lived under different forms, it is merely _ex abundanti_. For we
should be greatly mistaken, if we really thought that the majority of
the people which filled these cities enjoyed even that nominal political
freedom of which I have spoken so much already. In reality, they had no
part of it. In Athens there were usually from ten to thirty thousand
freemen; this was the utmost. But the slaves usually amounted to four
hundred thousand, and sometimes to a great many more. The freemen of
Sparta and Rome were not more numerous in proportion to those whom they
held in a slavery even more terrible than the Athenian. Therefore state
the matter fairly: the free states never formed, though they were taken
altogether, the thousandth part of the habitable globe; the freemen in
these states were never the twentieth part of the people, and the time
they subsisted is scarce anything in that immense ocean of duration in
which time and slavery are so nearly commensurate. Therefore call these
free states, or popular governments, or what you please; when we
consider the majority of their inhabitants, and regard the natural
rights of mankind, they must appear, in reality and truth, no better
than pitiful and oppressive oligarchies.

After so fair an examen, wherein nothing has been exaggerated; no fact
produced which cannot be proved, and none which has been produced in
any wise forced or strained, while thousands have, for brevity, been
omitted; after so candid a discussion in all respects; what slave so
passive, what bigot so blind, what enthusiast so headlong, what
politician so hardened, as to stand up in defence of a system calculated
for a curse to mankind? a curse under which they smart and groan to this
hour, without thoroughly knowing the nature of the disease, and wanting
understanding or courage to supply the remedy.

I need not excuse myself to your lordship, nor, I think, to any honest
man, for the zeal I have shown in this cause; for it is an honest zeal,
and in a good cause. I have defended natural religion against a
confederacy of atheists and divines. I now plead for natural society
against politicians, and for natural reason against all three. When the
world is in a fitter temper than it is at present to hear truth, or when
I shall be more indifferent about its temper, my thoughts may become
more public. In the mean time, let them repose in my own bosom, and in
the bosoms of such men as are fit to be initiated in the sober mysteries
of truth and reason. My antagonists have already done as much as I could
desire. Parties in religion and politics make sufficient discoveries
concerning each other, to give a sober man a proper caution against them
all. The monarchic, and aristocratical, and popular partisans, have been
jointly laying their axes to the root of all government, and have, in
their turns, proved each other absurd and inconvenient. In vain you tell
me that artificial government is good, but that I fall out only with the
abuse. The thing! the thing itself is the abuse! Observe, my lord, I
pray you, that grand error upon which all artificial legislative power
is founded. It was observed, that men had ungovernable passions, which
made it necessary to guard against the violence they might offer to each
other. They appointed governors over them for this reason. But a worse
and more perplexing difficulty arises, how to be defended against the
governors? _Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?_ In vain they change from a
single person to a few. These few have the passions of the one; and they
unite to strengthen themselves, and to secure the gratification of their
lawless passions at the expense of the general good. In vain do we fly
to the many. The case is worse; their passions are less under the
government of reason, they are augmented by the contagion, and defended
against all attacks by their multitude.

I have purposely avoided the mention of the mixed form of government,
for reasons that will be very obvious to your lordship. But my caution
can avail me but little. You will not fail to urge it against me in
favor of political society. You will not fail to show how the errors of
the several simple modes are corrected by a mixture of all of them, and
a proper balance of the several powers in such a state. I confess, my
lord, that this has been long a darling mistake of my own; and that of
all the sacrifices I have made to truth, this has been by far the
greatest. When I confess that I think this notion a mistake, I know to
whom I am speaking, for I am satisfied that reasons are like liquors,
and there are some of such a nature as none but strong heads can bear.
There are few with whom I can communicate so freely as with Pope. But
Pope cannot bear every truth. He has a timidity which hinders the full
exertion of his faculties, almost as effectually as bigotry cramps those
of the general herd of mankind. But whoever is a genuine follower of
truth keeps his eye steady upon his guide, indifferent whither he is
led, provided that she is the leader. And, my lord, if it be properly
considered, it were infinitely better to remain possessed by the whole
legion of vulgar mistakes, than to reject some, and at the same time to
retain a fondness for others altogether as absurd and irrational. The
first has at least a consistency, that makes a man, however erroneously,
uniform at least; but the latter way of proceeding is such an
inconsistent chimera and jumble of philosophy and vulgar prejudice, that
hardly anything more ridiculous can be conceived. Let us therefore
freely, and without fear or prejudice, examine this last contrivance of
policy. And, without considering how near the quick our instruments may
come, let us search it to the bottom.

First, then, all men are agreed that this junction of regal,
aristocratic, and popular power, must form a very complex, nice, and
intricate machine, which being composed of such a variety of parts, with
such opposite tendencies and movements, it must be liable on every
accident to be disordered. To speak without metaphor, such a government
must be liable to frequent cabals, tumults, and revolutions, from its
very constitution. These are undoubtedly as ill effects as can happen in
a society; for in such a case, the closeness acquired by community,
instead of serving for mutual defence, serves only to increase the
danger. Such a system is like a city, where trades that require constant
fires are much exercised, where the houses are built of combustible
materials, and where they stand extremely close.

In the second place, the several constituent parts having their distinct
rights, and these many of them so necessary to be determined with
exactness, are yet so indeterminate in their nature, that it becomes a
new and constant source of debate and confusion. Hence it is, that
whilst the business of government should be carrying on, the question
is, Who has a right to exercise this or that function of it, or what men
have power to keep their offices in any function? Whilst this contest
continues, and whilst the balance in any sort continues, it has never
any remission; all manner of abuses and villanies in officers remain
unpunished; the greatest frauds and robberies in the public revenues are
committed in defiance of justice; and abuses grow, by time and impunity,
into customs; until they prescribe against the laws, and grow too
inveterate often to admit a cure, unless such as may be as bad as the
disease.

Thirdly, the several parts of this species of government, though united,
preserve the spirit which each form has separately. Kings are ambitious;
the nobility haughty; and the populace tumultuous and ungovernable. Each
party, however in appearance peaceable, carries on a design upon the
others; and it is owing to this, that in all questions, whether
concerning foreign or domestic affairs, the whole generally turns more
upon some party-matter than upon the nature of the thing itself; whether
such a step will diminish or augment the power of the crown, or how far
the privileges of the subject are likely to be extended or restricted by
it. And these questions are constantly resolved, without any
consideration of the merits of the cause, merely as the parties who
uphold these jarring interests may chance to prevail; and as they
prevail, the balance is overset, now upon one side, now upon the other.
The government is, one day, arbitrary power in a single person; another,
a juggling confederacy of a few to cheat the prince and enslave the
people; and the third, a frantic and unmanageable democracy. The great
instrument of all these changes, and what infuses a peculiar venom into
all of them, is party. It is of no consequence what the principles of
any party, or what their pretensions are; the spirit which actuates all
parties is the same; the spirit of ambition, of self-interest, of
oppression and treachery. This spirit entirely reverses all the
principles which a benevolent nature has erected within us; all honesty,
all equal justice, and even the ties of natural society, the natural
affections. In a word, my lord, we have all _seen_, and, if any outward
considerations were worthy the lasting concern of a wise man, we have
some of us _felt_, such oppression from party government as no other
tyranny can parallel. We behold daily the most important rights, rights
upon which all the others depend, we behold these rights determined in
the last resort, without the least attention even to the appearance or
color of justice; we behold this without emotion, because we have grown
up in the constant view of such practices; and we are not surprised to
hear a man requested to be a knave and a traitor, with as much
indifference as if the most ordinary favor were asked; and we hear this
request refused, not because it is a most unjust and unreasonable
desire, but because this worthy has already engaged his injustice to
another. These and many more points I am for from spreading to their
full extent. You are sensible that I do not put forth half my strength;
and you cannot be at a loss for the reason. A man is allowed sufficient
freedom of thought, provided he knows how to choose his subject
properly. You may criticise freely upon the Chinese constitution, and
observe with as much severity as you please upon the absurd tricks, or
destructive bigotry of the bonzees. But the scene is changed as you come
homeward, and atheism or treason may be the names given in Britain, to
what would be reason and truth if asserted of China. I submit to the
condition, and though I have a notorious advantage before me, I waive
the pursuit. For else, my lord, it is very obvious what a picture might
be drawn of the excesses of party even in our own nation. I could show,
that the same faction has, in one reign, promoted popular seditions,
and, in the next, been a patron of tyranny: I could show that they have
all of them betrayed the public safety at all times, and have very
frequently with equal perfidy made a market of their own cause and their
own associates. I could show how vehemently they have contended for
names, and how silently they have passed over things of the last
importance. And I could demonstrate that they have had the opportunity
of doing all this mischief, nay, that they themselves had their origin
and growth from that complex form of government, which we are wisely
taught to look upon as so great a blessing. Revolve, my lord, our
history from the Conquest. We scarcely ever had a prince, who, by fraud
or violence, had not made some infringement on the constitution. We
scarcely ever had a Parliament which knew, when it attempted to set
limits to the royal authority, how to set limits to its own. Evils we
have had continually calling for reformation, and reformations more
grievous than any evils. Our boasted liberty sometimes trodden down,
sometimes giddily set up, and ever precariously fluctuating and
unsettled; it has only been kept alive by the blasts of continual feuds,
wars, and conspiracies. In no country in Europe has the scaffold so
often blushed with the blood of its nobility. Confiscations,
banishments, attainders, executions, make a large part of the history of
such of our families as are not utterly extinguished by them. Formerly,
indeed, things had a more ferocious appearance than they have at this
day. In these early and unrefined ages, the jarring part of a certain
chaotic constitution supported their several pretensions by the sword.
Experience and policy have since taught other methods.

     At nunc res agitur tenui pulmone rubetæ.

But how far corruption, venality, the contempt of honor, the oblivion of
all duty to our country, and the most abandoned public prostitution, are
preferable to the more glaring and violent effects of faction, I will
not presume to determine. Sure I am that they are very great evils.

I have done with the forms of government. During the course of my
inquiry you may have observed a very material difference between my
manner of reasoning and that which is in use amongst the abettors of
artificial society. They form their plans upon what seems most eligible
to their imaginations, for the ordering of mankind. I discover the
mistakes in those plans, from the real known consequences which have
resulted from them. They have enlisted reason to fight against itself,
and employ its whole force to prove that it is an insufficient guide to
them in the conduct of their lives. But unhappily for us, in proportion
as we have deviated from the plain rule of our nature, and turned our
reason against itself, in that proportion have we increased the follies
and miseries of mankind. The more deeply we penetrate into the labyrinth
of art, the further we find ourselves from those ends for which we
entered it. This has happened in almost every species of artificial
society, and in all times. We found, or we thought we found, an
inconvenience in having every man the judge of his own cause. Therefore
judges were set up, at first, with discretionary powers. But it was soon
found a miserable slavery to have our lives and properties precarious,
and hanging upon the arbitrary determination of any one man, or set of
men. We fled to laws as a remedy for this evil. By these we persuaded
ourselves we might know with some certainty upon what ground we stood.
But lo! differences arose upon the sense and interpretation of those
laws. Thus we were brought back to our old incertitude. New laws were
made to expound the old; and new difficulties arose upon the new laws;
as words multiplied, opportunities of cavilling upon them multiplied
also. Then recourse was had to notes, comments, glosses, reports,
_responsa prudentum_, learned readings: eagle stood against eagle:
authority was set up against authority. Some were allured by the modern,
others reverenced the ancient. The new were more enlightened, the old
were more venerable. Some adopted the comment, others stuck to the text.
The confusion increased, the mist thickened, until it could be
discovered no longer what was allowed or forbidden, what things were in
property, and what common. In this uncertainty, (uncertain even to the
professors, an Egyptian darkness to the rest of mankind), the contending
parties felt themselves more effectually ruined by the delay, than they
could have been by the injustice of any decision. Our inheritances are
become a prize for disputation; and disputes and litigations are become
an inheritance.

The professors of artificial law have always walked hand in hand with
the professors of artificial theology. As their end, in confounding the
reason of man, and abridging his natural freedom, is exactly the same,
they have adjusted the means to that end in a way entirely similar. The
divine thunders out his _anathemas_ with more noise and terror against
the breach of one of his positive institutions, or the neglect of some
of his trivial forms, than against the neglect or breach of those duties
and commandments of natural religion, which by these forms and
institutions he pretends to enforce. The lawyer has his forms, and his
positive institutions too, and he adheres to them with a veneration
altogether as religious. The worst cause cannot be so prejudicial to the
litigant, as his advocate's or attorney's ignorance or neglect of these
forms. A lawsuit is like an ill-managed dispute, in which the first
object is soon out of sight, and the parties end upon a matter wholly
foreign to that on which they began. In a lawsuit the question is, who
has a right to a certain house or farm? And this question is daily
determined, not upon the evidence of the right, but upon the observance
or neglect of some forms of words in use with the gentlemen of the robe,
about which there is even amongst themselves such a disagreement, that
the most experienced veterans in the profession can never be positively
assured that they are not mistaken.

Let us expostulate with these learned sages, these priests of the sacred
temple of justice. Are we judges of our own property? By no means. You
then, who are initiated into the mysteries of the blindfold goddess,
inform me whether I have a right to eat the bread I have earned by the
hazard of my life or the sweat of my brow? The grave doctor answers me
in the affirmative; the reverend serjeant replies in the negative; the
learned barrister reasons upon one side and upon the other, and
concludes nothing. What shall I do? An antagonist starts up and presses
me hard. I enter the field, and retain these three persons to defend my
cause. My cause, which two farmers from the plough could have decided in
half an hour, takes the court twenty years. I am however at the end of
my labor, and have in reward for all my toil and vexation a judgment in
my favor. But hold--a sagacious commander, in the adversary's army, has
found a flaw in the proceeding. My triumph is turned into mourning. I
have used _or_, instead of _and_, or some mistake, small in appearance,
but dreadful in its consequences; and have the whole of my success
quashed in a writ of error. I remove my suit; I shift from court to
court; I fly from equity to law, and from law to equity; equal
uncertainty attends me everywhere; and a mistake in which I had no
share, decides at once upon my liberty and property, sending me from the
court to a prison, and adjudging my family to beggary and famine. I am
innocent, gentlemen, of the darkness and uncertainty of your science. I
never darkened it with absurd and contradictory notions, nor confounded
it with chicane and sophistry. You have excluded me from any share in
the conduct of my own cause; the science was too deep for me; I
acknowledged it; but it was too deep even for yourselves: you have made
the way so intricate, that you are yourselves lost in it; you err, and
you punish me for your errors.

The delay of the law is, your lordship will tell me, a trite topic, and
which of its abuses have not been too severely felt not to be complained
of? A man's property is to serve for the purposes of his support; and
therefore, to delay a determination concerning that, is the worst
injustice, because it cuts off the very end and purpose for which I
applied to the judicature for relief. Quite contrary in the case of a
man's life; there the determination can hardly be too much protracted.
Mistakes in this case are as often fallen into as many other; and if the
judgment is sudden, the mistakes are the most irretrievable of all
others. Of this the gentlemen of the robe are themselves sensible, and
they have brought it into a maxim. _De morte hominis nulla est cunctatio
longa._ But what could have induced them to reverse the rules, and to
contradict that reason which dictated them, I am utterly unable to
guess. A point concerning property, which ought, for the reasons I have
just mentioned, to be most speedily decided, frequently exercises the
wit of successions of lawyers, for many generations. _Multa virûm
volvens durando sæcula vincit._ But the question concerning a man's
life, that great question in which no delay ought to be counted tedious,
is commonly determined in twenty-four hours at the utmost. It is not to
be wondered at, that injustice and absurdity should be inseparable
companions.

Ask of politicians the end for which laws were originally designed; and
they will answer, that the laws were designed as a protection for the
poor and weak, against the oppression of the rich and powerful. But
surely no pretence can be so ridiculous; a man might as well tell me he
has taken off my load, because he has changed the burden. If the poor
man is not able to support his suit, according to the vexatious and
expensive manner established in civilized countries, has not the rich as
great an advantage over him as the strong has over the weak in a state
of nature? But we will not place the state of nature, which is the reign
of God, in competition with political society, which is the absurd
usurpation of man. In a state of nature, it is true that a man of
superior force may beat or rob me; but then it is true, that I am at
full liberty to defend myself, or make reprisal by surprise or by
cunning, or by any other way in which I may be superior to him. But in
political society, a rich man may rob me in another way. I cannot defend
myself; for money is the only weapon with which we are allowed to fight.
And if I attempt to avenge myself the whole force of that society is
ready to complete my ruin.

A good parson once said, that where mystery begins, religion ends.
Cannot I say, as truly at least, of human laws, that where mystery
begins, justice ends? It is hard to say, whether the doctors of law or
divinity have made the greater advances in the lucrative business of
mystery. The lawyers, as well as the theologians, have erected another
reason besides natural reason; and the result has been, another justice
besides natural justice. They have so bewildered the world and
themselves in unmeaning forms and ceremonies, and so perplexed the
plainest matters with metaphysical jargon, that it carries the highest
danger to a man out of that profession, to make the least step without
their advice and assistance. Thus, by confining to themselves the
knowledge of the foundation of all men's lives and properties, they have
reduced all mankind into the most abject and servile dependence. We are
tenants at the will of these gentlemen for everything; and a
metaphysical quibble is to decide whether the greatest villain breathing
shall meet his deserts, or escape with impunity, or whether the best man
in the society shall not be reduced to the lowest and most despicable
condition it affords. In a word, my lord, the injustice, delay,
puerility, false refinement, and affected mystery of the law are such,
that many who live under it come to admire and envy the expedition,
simplicity, and equality of arbitrary judgments. I need insist the less
on this article to your lordship, as you have frequently lamented the
miseries derived to us from artificial law, and your candor is the more
to be admired and applauded in this, as your lordship's noble house has
derived its wealth and its honors from that profession.

Before we finish our examination of artificial society, I shall lead
your lordship into a closer consideration of the relations which it
gives birth to, and the benefits, if such they are, which result from
these relations. The most obvious division of society is into rich and
poor; and it is no less obvious, that the number of the former bear a
great disproportion to those of the latter. The whole business of the
poor is to administer to the idleness, folly, and luxury of the rich;
and that of the rich, in return, is to find the best methods of
confirming the slavery and increasing the burdens of the poor. In a
state of nature, it is an invariable law, that a man's acquisitions are
in proportion to his labors. In a state of artificial society, it is a
law as constant and as invariable, that those who labor most enjoy the
fewest things; and that those who labor not at all have the greatest
number of enjoyments. A constitution of things this, strange and
ridiculous beyond expression! We scarce believe a thing when we are told
it, which we actually see before our eyes every day without being in the
least surprised. I suppose that there are in Great Britain upwards of a
hundred thousand people employed in lead, tin, iron, copper, and coal
mines; these unhappy wretches scarce ever see the light of the sun; they
are buried in the bowels of the earth; there they work at a severe and
dismal task, without the least prospect of being delivered from it; they
subsist upon the coarsest and worst sort of fare; they have their health
miserably impaired, and their lives cut short, by being perpetually
confined in the close vapor of these malignant minerals. A hundred
thousand more at least are tortured without remission by the suffocating
smoke, intense fires, and constant drudgery necessary in refining and
managing the products of those mines. If any man informed us that two
hundred thousand innocent persons were condemned to so intolerable
slavery, how should we pity the unhappy sufferers, and how great would
be our just indignation against those who inflicted so cruel and
ignominious a punishment! This is an instance--I could not wish a
stronger--of the numberless things which we pass by in their common
dress, yet which shock us when they are nakedly represented. But this
number, considerable as it is, and the slavery, with all its baseness
and horror, which we have at home, is nothing to what the rest of the
world affords of the same nature. Millions daily bathed in the
poisonous damps and destructive effluvia of lead, silver, copper, and
arsenic. To say nothing of those other employments, those stations of
wretchedness and contempt, in which civil society has placed the
numerous _enfans perdus_ of her army. Would any rational man submit to
one of the most tolerable of these drudgeries, for all the artificial
enjoyments which policy has made to result from them? By no means. And
yet need I suggest to your lordship, that those who find the means, and
those who arrive at the end, are not at all the same persons? On
considering the strange and unaccountable fancies and contrivances of
artificial reason, I have somewhere called this earth the Bedlam of our
system. Looking now upon the effects of some of those fancies, may we
not with equal reason call it likewise the Newgate and the Bridewell of
the universe? Indeed the blindness of one part of mankind co-operating
with the frenzy and villany of the other, has been the real builder of
this respectable fabric of political society: and as the blindness of
mankind has caused their slavery, in return their state of slavery is
made a pretence for continuing them in a state of blindness; for the
politician will tell you gravely, that their life of servitude
disqualifies the greater part of the race of man for a search of truth,
and supplies them with no other than mean and insufficient ideas. This
is but too true; and this is one of the reasons for which I blame such
institutions.

In a misery of this sort, admitting some few lenitives, and those too
but a few, nine parts in ten of the whole race of mankind drudge through
life. It may be urged perhaps, in palliation of this, that at least the
rich few find a considerable and real benefit from the wretchedness of
the many. But is this so in fact? Let us examine the point with a little
more attention. For this purpose the rich in all societies may he thrown
into two classes. The first is of those who are powerful as well as
rich, and conduct the operations of the vast political machine. The
other is of those who employ their riches wholly in the acquisition of
pleasure. As to the first sort, their continual care and anxiety, their
toilsome days, and sleepless nights, are next to proverbial. These
circumstances are sufficient almost to level their condition to that of
the unhappy majority; but there are other circumstances which place
them, in a far lower condition. Not only their understandings labor
continually, which is the severest labor, but their hearts are torn by
the worst, most troublesome, and insatiable of all passions, by avarice,
by ambition, by fear and jealousy. No part of the mind has rest. Power
gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue. Pity,
benevolence, friendship, are things almost unknown in high stations.
_Veræ amicitiæ rarissime inveniuntur in iis qui in honoribus reque
publica versantur_, says Cicero. And indeed courts are the schools where
cruelty, pride, dissimulation, and treachery are studied and taught in
the most vicious perfection. This is a point so clear and acknowledged,
that if it did not make a necessary part of my subject, I should pass it
by entirely. And this has hindered me from drawing at full length, and
in the most striking colors, this shocking picture of the degeneracy and
wretchedness of human nature, in that part which is vulgarly thought its
happiest and most amiable state. You know from what originals I could
copy such pictures. Happy are they who know enough of them to know the
little value of the possessors of such things, and of all that they
possess; and happy they who have been snatched from that post of danger
which they occupy, with the remains of their virtue; loss of honors,
wealth, titles, and even the loss of one's country, is nothing in
balance with so great an advantage.

Let us now view the other species of the rich, those who devote their
time and fortunes to idleness and pleasure. How much happier are they?
The pleasures which are agreeable to nature are within the reach of all,
and therefore can form no distinction in favor of the rich. The
pleasures which art forces up are seldom sincere, and never satisfying.
What is worse, this constant application to pleasure takes away from the
enjoyment, or rather turns it into the nature of a very burdensome and
laborious business. It has consequences much more fatal. It produces a
weak valetudinary state of body, attended by all those horrid disorders,
and yet more horrid methods of cure, which are the result of luxury on
the one hand, and the weak and ridiculous efforts of human art on the
other. The pleasures of such men are scarcely felt as pleasures; at the
same time that they bring on pains and diseases, which are felt but too
severely. The mind has its share of the misfortune; it grows lazy and
enervate, unwilling and unable to search for truth, and utterly
uncapable of knowing, much less of relishing, real happiness. The poor
by their excessive labor, and the rich by their enormous luxury, are set
upon a level, and rendered equally ignorant of any knowledge which might
conduce to their happiness. A dismal view of the interior of all civil
society! The lower part broken and ground down by the most cruel
oppression; and the rich by their artificial method of life bringing
worse evils on themselves than their tyranny could possibly inflict on
those below them. Very different is the prospect of the natural state.
Here there are no wants which nature gives, and in this state men can be
sensible of no other wants, which are not to be supplied by a very
moderate degree of labor; therefore there is no slavery. Neither is
there any luxury, because no single man can supply the materials of it.
Life is simple, and therefore it is happy.

I am conscious, my lord, that your politician will urge in his defence,
that this unequal state is highly useful. That without dooming some part
of mankind to extraordinary toil, the arts which cultivate life could
not be exercised. But I demand of this politician, how such arts came to
be necessary? He answers, that civil society could not well exist
without them. So that these arts are necessary to civil society, and
civil society necessary again to these arts. Thus are we running in a
circle, without modesty, and without end, and making one error and
extravagance an excuse for the other. My sentiments about these arts and
their cause, I have often discoursed with my friends at large. Pope has
expressed them in good verse, where he talks with so much force of
reason and elegance of language, in praise of the state of nature:

   "Then was not pride, nor arts that pride to aid,
    Man walked with beast, joint tenant of the shade."


On the whole, my lord, if political society, in whatever form, has still
made the many the property of the few; if it has introduced labors
unnecessary, vices and diseases unknown, and pleasures incompatible
with nature; if in all countries it abridges the lives of millions, and
renders those of millions more utterly abject and miserable, shall we
still worship so destructive an idol, and daily sacrifice to it our
health, our liberty, and our peace? Or shall we pass by this monstrous
heap of absurd notions, and abominable practices, thinking we have
sufficiently discharged our duty in exposing the trifling, cheats, and
ridiculous juggles of a few mad, designing, or ambitious priests? Alas!
my lord, we labor under a mortal consumption, whilst we are so anxious
about the cure of a sore finger. For has not this leviathan of civil
power overflowed the earth with a deluge of blood, as if he were made to
disport and play therein? We have shown that political society, on a
moderate calculation, has been the means of murdering several times the
number of inhabitants now upon the earth, during its short existence,
not upwards of four thousand years in any accounts to be depended on.
But we have said nothing of the other, and perhaps as bad, consequence
of these wars, which have spilled such seas of blood, and reduced so
many millions to a merciless slavery. But these are only the ceremonies
performed in the porch of the political temple. Much more horrid ones
are seen as you enter it. The several species of government vie with
each other in the absurdity of their constitutions, and the oppression
which they make their subjects endure. Take them under what form you
please, they are in effect but a despotism, and they fall, both in
effect and appearance too, after a very short period, into that cruel
and detestable species of tyranny: which I rather call it, because we
have been educated under another form, than that this is of worse
consequences to mankind. For the free governments, for the point of
their space, and the moment of their duration, have felt more confusion,
and committed more flagrant acts of tyranny, than the most perfect
despotic governments which we have ever known. Turn your eye next to the
labyrinth of the law, and the iniquity conceived in its intricate
recesses. Consider the ravages committed in the bowels of all
commonwealths by ambition, by avarice, envy, fraud, open injustice, and
pretended friendship; vices which could draw little support from a state
of nature, but which blossom and flourish in the rankness of political
society. Revolve our whole discourse; add to it all those reflections
which your own good understanding shall suggest, and make a strenuous
effort beyond the reach of vulgar philosophy, to confess that the cause
of artificial society is more defenceless even than that of artificial
religion; that it is as derogatory from the honor of the Creator, as
subversive of human reason, and productive of infinitely more mischief
to the human race.

If pretended revelations have caused wars where they were opposed, and
slavery where they were received, the pretended wise inventions of
politicians have done the same. But the slavery has been much heavier,
the wars far more bloody, and both more universal by many degrees. Show
me any mischief produced by the madness or wickedness of theologians,
and I will show you a hundred resulting from the ambition and villany of
conquerors and statesmen. Show me an absurdity in religion, and I will
undertake to show you a hundred for one in political laws and
institutions. If you say that natural religion is a sufficient guide
without the foreign aid of revelation, on what principle should
political laws become necessary? Is not the same reason available in
theology and in politics? If the laws of nature are the laws of God, is
it consistent with the Divine wisdom to prescribe rules to us, and leave
the enforcement of them to the folly of human institutions? Will you
follow truth but to a certain point?

We are indebted for all our miseries to our distrust of that guide which
Providence thought sufficient for our condition, our own natural reason,
which rejecting both in human and divine things, we have given our necks
to the yoke of political and theological slavery. We have renounced the
prerogative of man, and it is no wonder that we should be treated like
beasts. But our misery is much greater than theirs, as the crime we
commit in rejecting the lawful dominion of our reason is greater than
any which they can commit. If, after all, you should confess all these
things, yet plead the necessity of political institutions, weak and
wicked as they are, I can argue with equal, perhaps superior, force,
concerning the necessity of artificial religion; and every step you
advance in your argument, you add a strength to mine. So that if we are
resolved to submit our reason, and our liberty to civil usurpation, we
have nothing to do but to conform as quietly as we can to the vulgar
notions which are connected with this, and take up the theology of the
vulgar as well as their politics. But if we think this necessity rather
imaginary than real, we should renounce their dreams of society,
together with their visions of religion, and vindicate ourselves into
perfect liberty.

You are, my lord, but just entering into the world; I am going out of
it. I have played long enough to be heartily tired of the drama. Whether
I have acted my part in it well or ill, posterity will judge with more
candor than I, or than the present age, with our present passions, can
possibly pretend to. For my part, I quit it without a sigh, and submit
to the sovereign order without murmuring. The nearer we approach to the
goal of life, the better we begin to understand the true value of our
existence, and the real weight of our opinions. We set out much in love
with both; but we leave much behind us as we advance. We first throw
away the tales along with the rattles of our nurses: those of the priest
keep their hold a little longer; those of our governors the longest of
all. But the passions which prop these opinions are withdrawn one after
another; and the cool light of reason, at the setting of our life, shows
us what a false splendor played upon these objects during our more
sanguine seasons. Happy, my lord, if instructed by my experience, and
even by my errors, you come early to make such an estimate of things, as
may give freedom and ease to your life. I am happy that such an estimate
promises me comfort at my death.


FOOTNOTES:

[8] Had his lordship lived to our days, to have seen the noble relief
given by this nation to the distressed Portuguese, he had perhaps owned
this part of his argument a little weakened; but we do not think
ourselves entitled to alter his lordship's words, but that we are bound
to follow him exactly.

[9] Sciant quibus moris illicita mirari, posse etiam sub malis
principibus magnos viros, &c. See 42, to the end of it.




A

PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF

THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL

WITH

AN INTRODUCTORY DISCOURSE

CONCERNING

TASTE,

AND SEVERAL OTHER ADDITIONS

*** _The first edition of this work was published in 1756;
     the second with large additions, in the year 1757._




PREFACE.


I have endeavored to make this edition something more full and
satisfactory than the first. I have sought with the utmost care, and
read with equal attention, everything which has appeared in public
against my opinions; I have taken advantage of the candid liberty of my
friends; and if by these means I have been better enabled to discover
the imperfections of the work, the indulgence it has received, imperfect
as it was, furnished me with a new motive to spare no reasonable pains
for its improvement. Though I have not found sufficient reason, or what
appeared to me sufficient, for making any material change in my theory,
I have found it necessary in many places to explain, illustrate, and
enforce it. I have prefixed an introductory discourse concerning Taste;
it is a matter curious in itself; and it leads naturally enough to the
principal inquiry. This, with the other explanations, has made the work
considerably larger; and by increasing its bulk has, I am afraid, added
to its faults; so that notwithstanding all my attention, it may stand in
need of a yet greater share of indulgence than it required at its first
appearance.

They who are accustomed to studies of this nature will expect, and they
will allow too for many faults. They know that many of the objects of
our inquiry are in themselves obscure and intricate; and that many
others have been rendered so by affected refinements, or false learning;
they know that there are many impediments in the subject, in the
prejudices of others, and even in our own, that render it a matter of no
small difficulty to show in a clear light the genuine face of nature.
They know that whilst the mind is intent on the general scheme of
things, some particular parts must be neglected; that we must often
submit the style to the matter, and frequently give up the praise of
elegance, satisfied with being clear.

The characters of nature are legible, it is true; but they are not plain
enough to enable those who run, to read them. We must make use of a
cautious, I had almost said, a timorous method of proceeding. We must
not attempt to fly, when we can scarcely pretend to creep. In
considering any complex matter, we ought to examine every distinct
ingredient in the composition, one by one; and reduce everything to the
utmost simplicity; since the condition of our nature binds us to a
strict law and very narrow limits. We ought afterwards to re-examine the
principles by the effect of the composition, as well as the composition
by that of the principles. We ought to compare our subject with things
of a similar nature, and even with things of a contrary nature; for
discoveries may be, and often are made by the contrast, which would
escape us on the single view. The greater number of the comparisons we
make, the more general and the more certain our knowledge is likely to
prove, as built upon a more extensive and perfect induction.

If an inquiry thus carefully conducted should fail at last of
discovering the truth, it may answer an end perhaps as useful, in
discovering to us the weakness of our own understanding. If it does not
make us knowing, it may make us modest. If it does not preserve us from
error, it may at least from the spirit of error; and may make us
cautious of pronouncing with positiveness or with haste, when so much
labor may end in so much uncertainty.

I could wish that, in examining this theory, the same method were
pursued which I endeavored to observe in forming it. The objections, in
my opinion, ought to be proposed, either to the several principles as
they are distinctly considered, or to the justness of the conclusion
which is drawn from them. But it is common to pass over both the
premises and conclusion in silence, and to produce, as an objection,
some poetical passage which does not seem easily accounted for upon the
principles I endeavor to establish. This manner of proceeding I should
think very improper. The task would be infinite, if we could establish
no principle until we had previously unravelled the complex texture of
every image or description to be found in poets and orators. And though
we should never be able to reconcile the effect of such images to our
principles, this can never overturn the theory itself, whilst it is
founded on certain and indisputable facts. A theory founded on
experiment, and not assumed, is always good for so much as it explains.
Our inability to push it indefinitely is no argument at all against it.
This inability may be owing to our ignorance of some necessary
_mediums_; to a want of proper application; to many other causes besides
a defect in the principles we employ. In reality, the subject requires a
much closer attention than we dare claim from our manner of treating
it.

If it should not appear on the face of the work, I must caution the
reader against imagining that I intended a full dissertation on the
Sublime and Beautiful. My inquiry went no farther than to the origin of
these ideas. If the qualities which I have ranged under the head of the
Sublime be all found consistent with each other, and all different from
those which I place under the head of Beauty; and if those which compose
the class of the Beautiful have the same consistency with themselves,
and the same opposition to those which are classed under the
denomination of Sublime, I am in little pain whether anybody chooses to
follow the name I give them or not, provided he allows that what I
dispose under different heads are in reality different things in nature.
The use I make of the words may be blamed, as too confined or too
extended; my meaning cannot well be misunderstood.

To conclude: whatever progress may be made towards the discovery of
truth in this matter, I do not repent the pains I have taken in it. The
use of such inquiries may be very considerable. Whatever turns the soul
inward on itself, tends to concentre its forces, and to fit it for
greater and stronger flights of science. By looking into physical causes
our minds are opened and enlarged; and in this pursuit, whether we take
or whether we lose our game, the chase is certainly of service. Cicero,
true as he was to the academic philosophy, and consequently led to
reject the certainty of physical, as of every other kind of knowledge,
yet freely confesses its great importance to the human understanding:
"_Est animorum ingeniorumque nostrorum naturale quoddam quasi pabulum
consideratio contemplatioque naturæ_." If we can direct the lights we
derive from such exalted speculations upon the humbler field of the
imagination, whilst we investigate the springs, and trace the courses of
our passions, we may not only communicate to the taste a sort of
philosophical solidity, but we may reflect back on the severer sciences
some of the graces and elegances of taste, without which the greatest
proficiency in those sciences will always have the appearance of
something illiberal.




CONTENTS.

INTRODUCTION: On Taste                                                79


PART I

I.     Novelty                                                       101

II.    Pain and Pleasure                                             102

III.   The Difference between the Removal of Pain and Positive
       Pleasure                                                      104

IV.    Of Delight and Pleasure, as opposed to each other             106

V.     Joy and Grief                                                 108

VI.    Of the Passions which belong to Self-Preservation             110

VII.   Of the Sublime                                                110

VIII.  Of the Passions which belong to Society                       111

IX.    The Final Cause of the Difference between the Passions
       belonging to Self-Preservation, and those which regard
       the Society of the Sexes                                      113

X.     Of Beauty                                                     114

XI.    Society and Solitude                                          115

XII.   Sympathy, Imitation, and Ambition                             116

XIII.  Sympathy                                                      117

XIV.   The Effects of Sympathy in the Distresses of Others           119

XV.    Of the Effects of Tragedy                                     120

XVI.   Imitation                                                     122

XVII.  Ambition                                                      123

XVIII. The Recapitulation                                            125

XIX.   The Conclusion                                                126


PART II.

I.     Of the Passion caused by the Sublime                          130

II.    Terror                                                        130

III.   Obscurity                                                     132

IV.    Of the Difference between Clearness and Obscurity
       with regard to the Passions                                   133

[IV.]  The Same Subject continued                                    134

V.     Power                                                         138

VI.    Privation                                                     146

VII.   Vastness                                                      147

VIII.  Infinity                                                      148

IX.    Succession and Uniformity                                     149

X.     Magnitude in Building                                         152

XI.    Infinity in Pleasing Objects                                  153

XII.   Difficulty                                                    153

XIII.  Magnificence                                                  154

XIV.   Light                                                         156

XV.    Light in Building                                             157

XVI.   Color considered as productive of the Sublime                 158

XVII.  Sound and Loudness                                            159

XVIII. Suddenness                                                    160

XIX.   Intermitting                                                  160

XX.    The Cries of Animals                                          161

XXI.   Smell and Taste--Bitters and Stenches                         162

XXII.  Feeling.--Pain                                                164


PART III.

I.     Of Beauty                                                     165

II.    Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Vegetables              166

III.   Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in Animals                 170

IV.    Proportion not the Cause of Beauty in the Human Species       172

V.     Proportion further considered                                 178

VI.    Fitness not the Cause of Beauty                               181

VII.   The Real Effects of Fitness                                   184

VIII.  The Recapitulation                                            187

IX.    Perfection not the Cause of Beauty                            187

X.     How far the Idea of Beauty may be applied to the
       Qualities of the Mind                                         188

XI.    How far the Idea of Beauty may be applied to Virtue           190

XII.   The Real Cause of Beauty                                      191

XIII.  Beautiful Objects Small                                       191

XIV.   Smoothness                                                    193

XV.    Gradual Variation                                             194

XVI.   Delicacy                                                      195

XVII.  Beauty in Color                                               196

XVIII. Recapitulation                                                197

XIX.   The Physiognomy                                               198

XX.    The Eye                                                       198

XXI.   Ugliness                                                      199

XXII.  Grace                                                         200

XXIII. Elegance and Speciousness                                     200

XXIV.  The Beautiful in Feeling                                      201

XXV.   The Beautiful in Sounds                                       203

XXVI.  Taste and Smell                                               205

XXVII. The Sublime and Beautiful compared                            205


PART IV.

I.     Of the Efficient Cause of the Sublime and Beautiful           208

II.    Association                                                   209

III.   Cause of Pain and Fear                                        210

IV.    Continued                                                     212

V.     How the Sublime is produced                                   215

VI.    How Pain can be a Cause of Delight                            215

VII.   Exercise necessary for the Finer Organs                       216

VIII.  Why Things not Dangerous sometimes produce a
       Passion like Terror                                           217

IX.    Why Visual Objects of Great Dimensions are Sublime            217

X.     Unity, why requisite to Vastness                              219

XI.    The Artificial Infinite                                       220

XII.   The Vibrations must be Similar                                222

XIII.  The Effects of Succession in Visual Objects explained         222

XIV.   Locke's Opinion concerning Darkness considered                225

XV.    Darkness Terrible in its own Nature                           226

XVI.   Why Darkness is Terrible                                      227

XVII.  The Effects of Blackness                                      229

XVIII. The Effects of Blackness moderated                            231

XIX.   The Physical Cause of Love                                    232

XX.    Why Smoothness is Beautiful                                   234

XXI.   Sweetness, its Nature                                         235

XXII.  Sweetness relaxing                                            237

XXIII. Variation, why Beautiful                                      239

XXIV.  Concerning Smallness                                          240

XXV.   Of Color                                                      244


PART V.

I.     Of Words                                                      246

II.    The Common Effect of Poetry, not by raising Ideas of Things   246

III.   General Words before Ideas                                    249

IV.    The Effect of Words                                           250

V.     Examples that Words may affect without raising Images         252

VI.    Poetry not strictly an Imitative Art                          257

VII.   How Words influence the Passions                              258




INTRODUCTION.

ON TASTE.


On a superficial view we may seem to differ very widely from each other
in our reasonings, and no less in our pleasures: but, notwithstanding
this difference, which I think to be rather apparent than real, it is
probable that the standard both of reason and taste is the same in all
human creatures. For if there were not some principles of judgment as
well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be
taken either on their reason or their passions, sufficient to maintain
the ordinary correspondence of life. It appears, indeed, to be generally
acknowledged, that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something
fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain
tests and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and are supposed to
be established in our common nature. But there is not the same obvious
concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which relate to taste.
It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and aerial faculty,
which seems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition,
cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any standard.
There is so continual a call for the exercise of the reasoning facility;
and it is so much strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain
maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled amongst the most
ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science, and reduced
those maxims into a system. If taste has not been so happily cultivated,
it was not that the subject was barren, but that the laborers were few
or negligent; for, to say the truth, there are not the same interesting
motives to impel us to fix the one, which urge us to ascertain the
other. And, after all, if men differ in their opinion concerning such
matters, their difference is not attended with the same important
consequences; else I make no doubt but that the logic of taste, if I may
be allowed the expression, might very possibly be as well digested, and
we might come to discuss matters of this nature with as much certainty,
as those which seem more immediately within the province of mere reason.
And, indeed, it is very necessary, at the entrance into such an inquiry
as our present, to make this point as clear as possible; for if taste
has no fixed principles, if the imagination is not affected according to
some invariable and certain laws, our labor is likely to be employed to
very little purpose; as it must be judged an useless, if not an absurd
undertaking, to lay down rules for caprice, and to set up for a
legislator of whims and fancies.

The term taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely
accurate; the thing which we understand by it is far from a simple and
determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to
uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion of a definition, the
celebrated remedy for the cure of this disorder. For, when we define, we
seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own
notions, which we often take up by hazard or embrace on trust, or form
out of a limited and partial consideration of the object before us;
instead of extending our ideas to take in all that nature comprehends,
according to her manner of combining. We are limited in our inquiry by
the strict laws to which we have submitted at our setting out.

        Circa vilem patulumque morabimur orbem,
    Unde pudor proferre pedem vetat aut operis lex.


A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards
informing us of the nature of the thing defined; but let the virtue of a
definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to
follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be considered
as the result. It must be acknowledged that the methods of disquisition
and teaching may be sometimes different, and on very good reason
undoubtedly; but, for my part, I am convinced that the method of
teaching which approaches most nearly to the method of investigation is
incomparably the best; since, not content with serving up a few barren
and lifeless truths, it leads to the stock on which they grew; it tends
to set the reader himself in the track of invention, and to direct him
into those paths in which the author has made his own discoveries, if he
should be so happy as to have made any that are valuable.

But to cut off all pretence for cavilling, I mean by the word taste, no
more than that faculty or those faculties of the mind, which are
affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagination and
the elegant arts. This is, I think, the most general idea of that word,
and what is the least connected with any particular theory. And my point
in this inquiry is, to find whether there are any principles, on which
the imagination is affected, so common to all, so grounded and certain,
as to supply the means of reasoning satisfactorily about them. And such
principles of taste I fancy there are; however paradoxical it may seem
to those, who on a superficial view imagine that there is so great a
diversity of tastes, both in kind and degree, that nothing can be more
indeterminate.

All the natural powers in man, which I know, that are conversant about
external objects, are the senses; the imagination; and the judgment. And
first with regard to the senses. We do and we must suppose, that as the
conformation of their organs are nearly or altogether the same in all
men, so the manner of perceiving external objects is in all men the
same, or with little difference. We are satisfied that what appears to
be light to one eye, appears light to another; that what seems sweet to
one palate, is sweet to another; that what is dark and bitter to this
man, is likewise dark and bitter to that; and we conclude in the same
manner of great and little, hard and soft, hot and cold, rough and
smooth; and indeed of all the natural qualities and affections of
bodies. If we suffer ourselves to imagine, that their senses present to
different men different images of things, this sceptical proceeding will
make every sort of reasoning on every subject vain and frivolous, even
that sceptical reasoning itself which had persuaded us to entertain a
doubt concerning the agreement of our perceptions. But as there will be
little doubt that bodies present similar images to the whole species, it
must necessarily be allowed, that the pleasures and the pains which
every object excites in one man, it must raise in all mankind, whilst
it operates naturally, simply, and by its proper powers only: for if we
deny this, we must imagine that the same cause, operating in the same
manner, and on subjects of the same kind, will produce different
effects; which would be highly absurd. Let us first consider this point
in the sense of taste, and the rather as the faculty in question has
taken its name from that sense. All men are agreed to call vinegar sour,
honey sweet, and aloes bitter; and as they are all agreed in finding
those qualities in those objects, they do not in the least differ
concerning their effects with regard to pleasure and pain. They all
concur in calling sweetness pleasant, and sourness and bitterness
unpleasant. Here there is no diversity in their sentiments; and that
there is not, appears fully from the consent of all men in the metaphors
which are taken, from the souse of taste. A sour temper, bitter
expressions, bitter curses, a bitter fate, are terms well and strongly
understood by all. And we are altogether as well understood when we say,
a sweet disposition, a sweet person, a sweet condition and the like. It
is confessed, that custom and some other causes have made many
deviations from the natural pleasures or pains which belong to these
several tastes; but then the power of distinguishing between the natural
and the acquired relish remains to the very last. A man frequently comes
to prefer the taste of tobacco to that of sugar, and the flavor of
vinegar to that of milk; but this makes no confusion in tastes, whilst
he is sensible that the tobacco and vinegar are not sweet, and whilst he
knows that habit alone has reconciled his palate to these alien
pleasures. Even with such a person we may speak, and with sufficient
precision, concerning tastes. But should any man be found who declares,
that to him tobacco has a taste like sugar, and that he cannot
distinguish between milk and vinegar; or that tobacco and vinegar are
sweet, milk bitter, and sugar sour; we immediately conclude that the
organs of this man are out of order, and that his palate is utterly
vitiated. We are as far from conferring with such a person upon tastes,
as from reasoning concerning the relations of quantity with one who
should deny that all the parts together were equal to the whole. We do
not call a man of this kind wrong in his notions, but absolutely mad.
Exceptions of this sort, in either way, do not at all impeach our
general rule, nor make us conclude that men have various principles
concerning the relations of quantity or the taste of things. So that
when it is said, taste cannot be disputed, it can only mean, that no one
can strictly answer what pleasure or pain some particular man may find
from the taste of some particular thing. This indeed cannot be disputed;
but we may dispute, and with sufficient clearness too, concerning the
things which are naturally pleasing or disagreeable to the sense. But
when we talk of any peculiar or acquired relish, then we must know the
habits, the prejudices, or the distempers of this particular man, and we
must draw our conclusion from those.

This agreement of mankind is not confined to the taste solely. The
principle of pleasure derived from sight is the same in all. Light is
more pleasing than darkness. Summer, when the earth is clad in green,
when the heavens are serene and bright, is more agreeable than winter,
when everything makes a different appearance. I never remember that
anything beautiful, whether a man, a beast, a bird, or a plant, was
ever shown, though it were to a hundred people, that they did not all
immediately agree that it was beautiful, though some might have thought
that it fell short of their expectation, or that other things were still
finer. I believe no man thinks a goose to be more beautiful than a swan,
or imagines that what they call a Friesland hen excels a peacock. It
must be observed too, that the pleasures of the sight are not near so
complicated, and confused, and altered by unnatural habits and
associations, as the pleasures of the taste are; because the pleasures
of the sight more commonly acquiesce in themselves; and are not so often
altered by considerations which are independent of the sight itself. But
things do not spontaneously present themselves to the palate as they do
to the sight; they are generally applied to it, either as food or as
medicine; and from the qualities which they possess for nutritive or
medicinal purposes they often form the palate by degrees, and by force
of these associations. Thus opium is pleasing to Turks, on account of
the agreeable delirium it produces. Tobacco is the delight of Dutchmen,
as it diffuses a torpor and pleasing stupefaction. Fermented spirits
please our common people, because they banish care, and all
consideration of future or present evils. All of these would lie
absolutely neglected if their properties had originally gone no further
than the taste; but all these, together with tea and coffee, and some
other things, have passed from the apothecary's shop to our tables, and
were taken for health long before they were thought of for pleasure. The
effect of the drug has made us use it frequently; and frequent use,
combined with the agreeable effect, has made the taste itself at last
agreeable. But this does not in the least perplex our reasoning;
because we distinguish to the last the acquired from the natural relish.
In describing the taste of an unknown fruit, you would scarcely say that
it had a sweet and pleasant flavor like tobacco, opium, or garlic,
although you spoke to those who were in the constant use of those drugs,
and had great pleasure in them. There is in all men a sufficient
remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them
to bring all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to
regulate their feelings and opinions by it. Suppose one who had so
vitiated his palate as to take more pleasure in the taste of opium than
in that of butter or honey, to be presented with a bolus of squills;
there is hardly any doubt but that he would prefer the butter or honey
to this nauseous morsel, or to any other bitter drug to which he had not
been accustomed; which proves that his palate was naturally like that of
other men in all things, that it is still like the palate of other men
in many things, and only vitiated in some particular points. For in
judging of any new thing, even of a taste similar to that which he has
been formed by habit to like, he finds his palate affected in the
natural manner, and on the common principles. Thus the pleasure of all
the senses, of the sight, and even of the taste, that most ambiguous of
the senses, is the same in all, high and low, learned and unlearned.

Besides the ideas, with their annexed pains and pleasures, which are
presented by the sense; the mind of man possesses a sort of creative
power of its own; either in representing at pleasure the images of
things in the order and manner in which they were received by the
senses, or in combining those images in a new manner, and according to
a different order. This power is called imagination; and to this belongs
whatever is called wit, fancy, invention, and the like. But it must be
observed, that this power of the imagination is incapable of producing
anything absolutely new; it can only vary the disposition of those ideas
which it has received from the senses. Now the imagination is the most
extensive province of pleasure and pain, as it is the region of our
fears and our hopes, and of all our passions that are connected with
them; and whatever is calculated to affect the imagination with these
commanding ideas, by force of any original natural impression, must have
the same power pretty equally over all men. For since the imagination is
only the representation of the senses, it can only be pleased or
displeased with the images, from the same principle on which the sense
is pleased or displeased with the realities; and consequently there must
be just as close an agreement in the imaginations as in the senses of
men. A little attention will convince us that this must of necessity be
the case.

But in the imagination, besides the pain or pleasure arising from the
properties of the natural object, a pleasure is perceived from the
resemblance which the imitation has to the original: the imagination, I
conceive, can have no pleasure but what results from one or other of
these causes. And these causes operate pretty uniformly upon all men,
because they operate by principles in nature, and which are not derived
from any particular habits or advantages. Mr. Locke very justly and
finely observes of wit, that it is chiefly conversant in tracing
resemblances; he remarks, at the same time, that the business of
judgment is rather in finding differences. It may perhaps appear, on
this supposition, that there is no material distinction between the wit
and the judgment, as they both seem to result from different operations
of the same faculty of _comparing_. But in reality, whether they are or
are not dependent on the same power of the mind, they differ so very
materially in many respects, that a perfect union of wit and judgment is
one of the rarest things in the world. When two distinct objects are
unlike to each other, it is only what we expect; things are in their
common way; and therefore they make no impression on the imagination:
but when two distinct objects have a resemblance, we are struck, we
attend to them, and we are pleased. The mind of man has naturally a far
greater alacrity and satisfaction in tracing resemblances than in
searching for differences; because by making resemblances we produce
_new images_; we unite, we create, we enlarge our stock; but in making
distinctions we offer no food at all to the imagination; the task itself
is more severe and irksome, and what pleasure we derive from it is
something of a negative and indirect nature. A piece of news is told me
in the morning; this, merely as a piece of news, as a fact added to my
stock, gives me some pleasure. In the evening I find there was nothing
in it. What do I gain by this, but the dissatisfaction to find that I
had been imposed upon? Hence it is that men are much more naturally
inclined to belief than to incredulity. And it is upon this principle,
that the most ignorant and barbarous nations have frequently excelled in
similitudes, comparisons, metaphors, and allegories, who have been weak
and backward in distinguishing and sorting their ideas. And it is for a
reason of this kind, that Homer and the oriental writers, though very
fond of similitudes, and though they often strike out such as are truly
admirable, seldom take care to have them exact; that is, they are taken
with the general resemblance, they paint it strongly, and they take no
notice of the difference which may be found between the things compared.

Now as the pleasure of resemblance is that which principally flatters
the imagination, all men are nearly equal in this point, as far as their
knowledge of the things represented or compared extends. The principle
of this knowledge is very much accidental, as it depends upon experience
and observation, and not on the strength or weakness of any natural
faculty; and it is from this difference in knowledge, that what we
commonly, though with no great exactness, call a difference in taste
proceeds. A man to whom sculpture is new, sees a barber's block, or some
ordinary piece of statuary; he is immediately struck and pleased,
because he sees something like a human figure; and, entirely taken up
with this likeness, he does not at all attend to its defects. No person,
I believe, at the first time of seeing a piece of imitation ever did.
Some time after, we suppose that this novice lights upon a more
artificial work of the same nature; he now begins to look with contempt
on what he admired at first; not that he admired it even then for its
unlikeness to a man, but for that general though inaccurate resemblance
which it bore to the human figure. What he admired at different times in
these so different figures, is strictly the same; and though his
knowledge is improved, his taste is not altered. Hitherto his mistake
was from a want of knowledge in art, and this arose from his
inexperience; but he may be still deficient from a want of knowledge in
nature. For it is possible that the man in question may stop here, and
that the masterpiece of a great hand may please him no more than the
middling performance of a vulgar artist; and this not for want of better
or higher relish, but because all men do not observe with sufficient
accuracy on the human figure to enable them to judge properly of an
imitation of it. And that the critical taste does not depend upon a
superior principle in men, but upon superior knowledge, may appear from
several instances. The story of the ancient painter and the shoemaker is
very well known. The shoemaker set the painter right with regard to some
mistakes he had made in the shoe of one of his figures, which the
painter, who had not made such accurate observations on shoes, and was
content with a general resemblance, had never observed. But this was no
impeachment to the taste of the painter; it only showed some want of
knowledge in the art of making shoes. Let us imagine, that an anatomist
had come into the painter's working-room. His piece is in general well
done, the figure in question in a good attitude, and the parts well
adjusted to their various movements; yet the anatomist, critical in his
art, may observe the swell of some muscle not quite just in the peculiar
action of the figure. Here the anatomist observes what the painter had
not observed; and he passes by what the shoemaker had remarked. But a
want of the last critical knowledge in anatomy no more reflected on the
natural good taste of the painter, or of any common observer of his
piece, than the want of an exact knowledge in the formation of a shoe. A
fine piece of a decollated head of St. John the Baptist was shown to a
Turkish emperor: he praised many things, but he observed one defect: he
observed that the skin did not shrink from the wounded part of the neck.
The sultan on this occasion, though his observation was very just,
discovered no more natural taste than the painter who executed this
piece, or than a thousand European connoisseurs, who probably never
would have made the same observation. His Turkish majesty had indeed
been well acquainted with that terrible spectacle, which the others
could only have represented in their imagination. On the subject of
their dislike there is a difference between all these people, arising
from the different kinds and degrees of their knowledge; but there is
something in common to the painter, the shoemaker, the anatomist, and
the Turkish emperor, the pleasure arising from a natural object, so far
as each perceives it justly imitated; the satisfaction in seeing an
agreeable figure; the sympathy proceeding from a striking and affecting
incident. So far as taste is natural, it is nearly common to all.

In poetry, and other pieces of imagination, the same parity may be
observed. It is true, that one man is charmed with Don Bellianis, and
reads Virgil coldly; whilst another is transported with the Æneid, and
leaves Don Bellianis to children. These two men seem to have a taste
very different from each other; but in fact they differ very little. In
both these pieces, which inspire such opposite sentiments, a tale
exciting admiration is told; both are full of action, both are
passionate; in both are voyages, battles, triumphs, and continual
changes of fortune. The admirer of Don Bellianis perhaps does not
understand the refined language of the Æneid, who, if it was degraded
into the style of the "Pilgrim's Progress," might feel it in all its
energy, on the same principle which made him an admirer of Don
Bellianis.

In his favorite author he is not shocked with the continual breaches of
probability, the confusion of times, the offences against manners, the
trampling upon geography; for he knows nothing of geography and
chronology, and he has never examined the grounds of probability. He
perhaps reads of a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia: wholly taken up
with so interesting an event, and only solicitous for the fate of his
hero, he is not in the least troubled at this extravagant blunder. For
why should he be shocked at a shipwreck on the coast of Bohemia, who
does not know but that Bohemia may be an island in the Atlantic ocean?
and after all, what reflection is this on the natural good taste of the
person here supposed?

So far then as taste belongs to the imagination, its principle is the
same in all men; there is no difference in the manner of their being
affected, nor in the causes of the affection; but in the _degree_ there
is a difference, which arises from two causes principally; either from a
greater degree of natural sensibility, or from a closer and longer
attention to the object. To illustrate this by the procedure of the
senses, in which the same difference is found, let us suppose a very
smooth marble table to be set before two men; they both perceive it to
be smooth, and they are both pleased with it because of this quality. So
far they agree. But suppose another, and after that another table, the
latter still smoother than the former, to be set before them. It is now
very probable that these men, who are so agreed upon what is smooth, and
in the pleasure from thence, will disagree when they come to settle
which table has the advantage in point of polish. Here is indeed the
great difference between tastes, when men come to compare the excess or
diminution of things which are judged by degree and not by measure. Nor
is it easy, when such a difference arises, to settle the point, if the
excess or diminution be not glaring. If we differ in opinion about two
quantities, we can have recourse to a common measure, which may decide
the question with the utmost exactness; and this, I take it, is what
gives mathematical knowledge a greater certainty than any other. But in
things whose excess is not judged by greater or smaller, as smoothness
and roughness, hardness and softness, darkness and light, the shades of
colors, all these are very easily distinguished when the difference is
any way considerable, but not when it is minute, for want of some common
measures, which perhaps may never come to be discovered. In these nice
cases, supposing the acuteness of the sense equal, the greater attention
and habit in such things will have the advantage. In the question about
the tables, the marble-polisher will unquestionably determine the most
accurately. But notwithstanding this want of a common measure for
settling many disputes relative to the senses, and their representative
the imagination, we find that the principles are the same in all, and
that there is no disagreement until we come to examine into the
pre-eminence or difference of things, which brings us within the
province of the judgment.

So long as we are conversant with the sensible qualities of things,
hardly any more than the imagination seems concerned; little more also
than the imagination seems concerned when the passions are represented,
because by the force of natural sympathy they are felt in all men
without any recourse to reasoning, and their justness recognized in
every breast. Love, grief, fear, anger, joy, all these passions have, in
their turns, affected every mind; and they do not affect it in an
arbitrary or casual manner, but upon certain, natural, and uniform
principles. But as many of the works of imagination are not confined to
the representation of sensible objects, nor to efforts upon the
passions, but extend themselves to the manners, the characters, the
actions, and designs of men, their relations, their virtues and vices,
they come within the province of the judgment, which is improved by
attention, and by the habit of reasoning. All these make a very
considerable part of what are considered as the objects of taste; and
Horace sends us to the schools of philosophy and the world for our
instruction in them. Whatever certainty is to be acquired in morality
and the science of life; just the same degree of certainty have we in
what relates to them in works of imitation. Indeed it is for the most
part in our skill in manners, and in the observances of time and place,
and of decency in general, which is only to be learned in those schools
to which Horace recommends us, that what is called taste, by way of
distinction, consists: and which is in reality no other than a more
refined judgment. On the whole, it appears to me, that what is called
taste, in its most general acceptation, is not a simple idea, but is
partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the
secondary pleasures of the imagination, and of the conclusions of the
reasoning faculty, concerning the various relations of these, and
concerning the human passions, manners, and actions. All this is
requisite to form taste, and the groundwork of all these is the same in
the human mind; for as the senses are the great originals of all our
ideas, and consequently of all our pleasures, if they are not uncertain
and arbitrary, the whole groundwork of taste is common to all, and
therefore there is a sufficient foundation for a conclusive reasoning on
these matters.

Whilst we consider taste merely according to its nature and species, we
shall find its principles entirely uniform; but the degree in which
these principles prevail, in the several individuals of mankind, is
altogether as different as the principles themselves are similar. For
sensibility and judgment, which are the qualities that compose what we
commonly call a _taste_, vary exceedingly in various people. From a
defect in the former of these qualities arises a want of taste; a
weakness in the latter constitutes a wrong or a bad one. There are some
men formed with feelings so blunt, with tempers so cold and phlegmatic,
that they can hardly be said to be awake during the whole course of
their lives. Upon such persons the most striking objects make but a
faint and obscure impression. There are others so continually in the
agitation of gross and merely sensual pleasures, or so occupied in the
low drudgery of avarice, or so heated in the chase of honors and
distinction, that their minds, which had been used continually to the
storms of these violent and tempestuous passions, can hardly be put in
motion by the delicate and refined play of the imagination. These men,
though from a different cause, become as stupid and insensible as the
former; but whenever either of these happen to be struck with any
natural elegance or greatness, or with these qualities in any work of
art, they are moved upon the same principle.

The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment. And this may arise
from a natural weakness of understanding (in whatever the strength of
that faculty may consist), or, which is much more commonly the case, it
may arise from a want of a proper and well-directed exercise, which
alone can make it strong and ready. Besides, that ignorance,
inattention, prejudice, rashness, levity, obstinacy, in short, all those
passions, and all those vices, which pervert the judgment in other
matters, prejudice it no less in this its more refined and elegant
province. These causes produce different opinions upon everything which
is an object of the understanding, without inducing us to suppose that
there are no settled principles of reason. And indeed, on the whole, one
may observe, that there is rather less difference upon matters of taste
among mankind, than upon most of those which depend upon the naked
reason; and that men are far better agreed on the excellence of a
description in Virgil, than on the truth or falsehood of a theory of
Aristotle.

A rectitude of judgment in the arts, which may be called a good taste,
does in a great measure depend upon sensibility; because if the mind has
no bent to the pleasures of the imagination, it will never apply itself
sufficiently to works of that species to acquire a competent knowledge
in them. But though a degree of sensibility is requisite to form a good
judgment, yet a good judgment does not necessarily arise from a quick
sensibility of pleasure; it frequently happens that a very poor judge,
merely by force of a greater complexional sensibility, is more affected
by a very poor piece, than the best judge by the most perfect; for as
everything now, extraordinary, grand, or passionate, is well calculated
to affect such a person, and that the faults do not affect him, his
pleasure is more pure and unmixed; and as it is merely a pleasure of the
imagination, it is much higher than any which is derived from a
rectitude of the judgment; the judgment is for the greater part employed
in throwing stumbling-blocks in the way of the imagination, in
dissipating the scenes of its enchantment, and in tying us down to the
disagreeable yoke of our reason: for almost the only pleasure that men
have in judging better than others, consists in a sort of conscious
pride and superiority, which arises from thinking rightly; but then this
is an indirect pleasure, a pleasure which does not immediately result
from the object which is under contemplation. In the morning of our
days, when the senses are unworn and tender, when the whole man is awake
in every part, and the gloss of novelty fresh upon all the objects that
surround us, how lively at that time are our sensations, but how false
and inaccurate the judgments we form of things! I despair of ever
receiving the same degree of pleasure from the most excellent
performances of genius, which I felt at that age from pieces which my
present judgment regards as trifling and contemptible. Every trivial
cause of pleasure is apt to affect the man of too sanguine a complexion:
his appetite is too keen to suffer his taste to be delicate; and he is
in all respects what Ovid says of himself in love,

    Molle meum levibus cor est violabile telis,
    Et semper causa est, cur ego semper amem.

One of this character can never be a refined judge; never what the
comic poet calls _elegans formarum spectator_. The excellence and force
of a composition must always he imperfectly estimated from its effect on
the minds of any, except we know the temper and character of those
minds. The most powerful effects of poetry and music have been
displayed, and perhaps are still displayed, where these arts are but in
a very low and imperfect state. The rude hearer is affected by the
principles which operate in these arts even in their rudest condition;
and he is not skilful enough to perceive the defects. But as the arts
advance towards their perfection, the science of criticism advances with
equal pace, and the pleasure of judges is frequently interrupted by the
faults which we discovered in the most finished compositions.

Before I leave this subject, I cannot help taking notice of an opinion
which many persons entertain, as if the taste were a separate faculty of
the mind, and distinct from the judgment and imagination; a species of
instinct, by which we are struck naturally, and at the first glance,
without any previous reasoning, with the excellences or the defects of a
composition. So far as the imagination, and the passions are concerned,
I believe it true, that the reason is little consulted; but where
disposition, where decorum, where congruity are concerned, in short,
wherever the best taste differs from the worst, I am convinced that the
understanding operates, and nothing else; and its operation is in
reality far from being always sudden, or, when it is sudden, it is often
far from being right. Men of the best taste by consideration come
frequently to change these early and precipitate judgments, which the
mind, from its aversion to neutrality and doubt, loves to form on the
spot. It is known that the taste (whatever it is) is improved exactly
as we improve our judgment, by extending our knowledge, by a steady
attention to our object, and by frequent exercise. They who have not
taken these methods, if their taste decides quickly, it is always
uncertainly; and their quickness is owing to their presumption and
rashness, and not to any sudden irradiation, that in a moment dispels
all darkness from their minds. But they who have cultivated that species
of knowledge which makes the object of taste, by degrees and habitually
attain not only a soundness but a readiness of judgment, as men do by
the same methods on all other occasions. At first they are obliged to
spell, but at last they read with ease and with celerity; but this
celerity of its operation is no proof that the taste is a distinct
faculty. Nobody, I believe, has attended the course of a discussion
which turned upon matters within the sphere of mere naked reason, but
must have observed the extreme readiness with which the whole process of
the argument is carried on, the grounds discovered, the objections
raised and answered, and the conclusions drawn from premises, with a
quickness altogether as great as the taste can be supposed to work with;
and yet where nothing but plain reason either is or can be suspected to
operate. To multiply principles for every different appearance is
useless, and unphilosophical too in a high degree.

This matter might be pursued much farther; but it is not the extent of
the subject which must prescribe our bounds, for what subject does not
branch out to infinity? It is the nature of our particular scheme, and
the single point of view in which we consider it, which ought to put a
stop to our researches.




A

PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY

INTO THE ORIGIN OF OUR IDEAS OF

THE SUBLIME AND BEAUTIFUL


PART I.


SECTION I.

NOVELTY.

The first and the simplest emotion which we discover in the human mind
is curiosity. By curiosity I mean whatever desire we have for, or
whatever pleasure we take in, novelty. We see children perpetually
running from place to place, to hunt out something new: they catch with
great eagerness, and with very little choice, at whatever comes before
them; their attention is engaged by everything, because everything has,
in that stage of life, the charm of novelty to recommend it. But as
those things, which engage us merely by their novelty, cannot attach us
for any length of time, curiosity is the most superficial of all the
affections; it changes its object perpetually; it has an appetite which
is very sharp, but very easily satisfied; and it has always an
appearance of giddiness, restlessness, and anxiety. Curiosity, from its
nature, is a very active principle; it quickly runs over the greatest
part of its objects, and soon exhausts the variety which is commonly to
be met with in nature; the same things make frequent returns, and they
return with less and less of any agreeable effect. In short, the
occurrences of life, by the time we come to know it a little, would be
incapable of affecting the mind with any other sensations than those of
loathing and weariness, if many things were not adapted to affect the
mind by means of other powers besides novelty in them, and of other
passions besides curiosity in ourselves. These powers and passions shall
be considered in their place. But, whatever these powers are, or upon
what principle soever they affect the mind, it is absolutely necessary
that they should not be exerted in those things which a daily and vulgar
use have brought into a stale unaffecting familiarity. Some degree of
novelty must be one of the materials in every instrument which works
upon the mind; and curiosity blends itself more or less with all our
passions.


SECTION II.

PAIN AND PLEASURE.

It seems, then, necessary towards moving the passions of people advanced
in life to any considerable degree, that the objects designed for that
purpose, besides their being in some measure new, should be capable of
exciting pain or pleasure from other causes. Pain and pleasure are
simple ideas, incapable of definition. People are not liable to be
mistaken in their feelings, but they are very frequently wrong in the
names they give them, and in their reasonings about them. Many are of
opinion, that pain arises necessarily from the removal of some pleasure;
as they think pleasure does from the ceasing or diminution of some pain.
For my part, I am rather inclined to imagine, that pain and pleasure,
in their most simple and natural manner of affecting, are each of a
positive nature, and by no means necessarily dependent on each other for
their existence. The human mind is often, and I think it is for the most
part, in a state neither of pain nor pleasure, which I call a state of
indifference. When I am carried from this state into a state of actual
pleasure, it does not appear necessary that I should pass through the
medium of any sort of pain. If in such a state of indifference, or ease,
or tranquillity, or call it what you please, you were to be suddenly
entertained with a concert of music; or suppose some object of a fine
shape, and bright, lively colors, to be presented before you; or imagine
your smell is gratified with the fragrance of a rose; or if, without any
previous thirst, you were to drink of some pleasant kind of wine, or to
taste of some sweetmeat without being hungry; in all the several senses,
of hearing, smelling, and tasting, you undoubtedly find a pleasure; yet,
if I inquire into the state of your mind previous to these
gratifications, you will hardly tell me that they found you in any kind
of pain; or, having satisfied these several senses with their several
pleasures, will you say that any pain has succeeded, though the pleasure
is absolutely over? Suppose, on the other hand, a man in the same state
of indifference to receive a violent blow, or to drink of some bitter
potion, or to have his ears wounded with some harsh and grating sound;
here is no removal of pleasure; and yet here is felt, his every sense
which is affected, a pain very distinguishable. It may be said, perhaps,
that the pain in these cases had its rise from the removal of the
pleasure which the man enjoyed before, though that pleasure was of so
low a degree as to be perceived only by the removal. But this seems to
me a subtilty that is not discoverable in nature. For if, previous to
the pain, I do not feel any actual pleasure, I have no reason to judge
that any such thing exists; since pleasure is only pleasure as it is
felt. The same may be said of pain, and with equal reason. I can never
persuade myself that pleasure and pain are mere relations, which can
only exist as they are contrasted; but I think I can discern clearly
that there are positive pains and pleasures, which do not at all depend
upon each other. Nothing is more certain to my own feelings than this.
There is nothing which I can distinguish in my mind with more clearness
than the three states, of indifference, of pleasure, and of pain. Every
one of these I can perceive without any sort of idea of its relation to
anything else. Caius is afflicted with a fit of the colic; this man is
actually in pain; stretch Caius upon the rack, he will feel a much
greater pain: but does this pain of the rack arise from the removal of
any pleasure? or is the fit of the colic a pleasure or a pain just as we
are pleased to consider it?


SECTION III.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE REMOVAL OF PAIN AND POSITIVE PLEASURE.

We shall carry this proposition yet a step further. We shall venture to
propose, that pain and pleasure are not only not necessarily dependent
for their existence on their mutual diminution or removal, but that, in
reality, the diminution or ceasing of pleasure does not operate like
positive pain; and that the removal or diminution of pain, in its
effect, has very little resemblance to positive pleasure.[10] The former
of these propositions will, I believe, be much more readily allowed than
the latter; because it is very evident that pleasure, when it has run
its career, sets us down very nearly where it found us. Pleasure of
every kind quickly satisfies; and, when it is over, we relapse into
indifference, or, rather, we fall into a soft tranquillity which is
tinged with the agreeable color of the former sensation. I own it is not
at first view so apparent that the removal of a great pain does not
resemble positive pleasure: but let us recollect in what state we have
found our minds upon escaping some imminent danger, or on being released
from the severity of some cruel pain. We have on such occasions found,
if I am not much mistaken, the temper of our minds in a tenor very
remote from that which attends the presence of positive pleasure; we
have found them in a state of much sobriety, impressed with a sense of
awe, in a sort of tranquillity shadowed with horror. The fashion of the
countenance and the gesture of the body on such occasions is so
correspondent to this state of mind, that any person, a stranger to the
cause of the appearance, would rather judge us under some consternation,
than in the enjoyment of anything like positive pleasure.

    [Greek:
    Hôs d' hotan andr' atê pykinê labê, host' eni patrê,
    Phôta katakteinas, allôn exiketo dêmon,
    Andros es aphneiou, thambos d' echei eisoroôntas.]

                                        Iliad, [Greek: Ô]. 480.

   "As when a wretch, who, conscious of his crime,
    Pursued for murder from his native clime,
    Just gains some frontier, breathless, pale, amazed;
    All gaze, all wonder!"

This striking appearance of the man whom Homer supposes to have just
escaped an imminent danger, the sort of mixed passion of terror and
surprise, with which he affects the spectators, paints very strongly the
manner in which we find ourselves affected upon occasions any way
similar. For when we have suffered from any violent emotion, the mind
naturally continues in something like the same condition, after the
cause which first produced it has ceased to operate. The tossing of the
sea remains after the storm; and when this remain of horror has entirely
subsided, all the passion which the accident raised subsides along with
it; and the mind returns to its usual state of indifference. In short,
pleasure (I mean anything either in the inward sensation, or in the
outward appearance, like pleasure from a positive cause) has never, I
imagine, its origin from the removal of pain or danger.


SECTION IV.

OF DELIGHT AND PLEASURE, AS OPPOSED TO EACH OTHER.

But shall we therefore say, that the removal of pain or its diminution
is always simply painful? or affirm that the cessation or the lessening
of pleasure is always attended itself with a pleasure? By no means. What
I advance is no more than this; first, that there are pleasures and
pains of a positive and independent nature; and, secondly, that the
feeling which results from the ceasing or diminution of pain does not
bear a sufficient resemblance to positive pleasure, to have it
considered as of the same nature, or to entitle it to be known by the
same name; and thirdly, that upon the same principle the removal or
qualification of pleasure has no resemblance to positive pain. It is
certain that the former feeling (the removal or moderation of pain) has
something in it far from distressing, or disagreeable in its nature.
This feeling, in many cases so agreeable, but in all so different from
positive pleasure, has no name which I know; but that hinders not its
being a very real one, and very different from all others. It is most
certain, that every species of satisfaction or pleasure, how different
soever in its manner of affecting, is of a positive nature in the mind
of him who feels it. The affection is undoubtedly positive; but the
cause may be, as in this case it certainly is, a sort of _privation_.
And it is very reasonable that we should distinguish by some term two
things so distinct in nature, as a pleasure that is such simply, and
without any relation, from that pleasure which cannot exist without a
relation, and that, too, a relation to pain. Very extraordinary it would
be, if these affections, so distinguishable in their causes, so
different in their effects, should be confounded with each other,
because vulgar use has ranged them under the same general title.
Whenever I have occasion to speak of this species of relative pleasure,
I call it _delight_; and I shall take the best care I can to use that
word in no other sense. I am satisfied the word is not commonly used in
this appropriated signification; but I thought it better to take up a
word already known, and to limit its signification, than to introduce a
new one, which would not perhaps incorporate so well with the language.
I should never have presumed the least alteration in our words, if the
nature of the language, framed for the purposes of business rather than
those of philosophy, and the nature of my subject, that leads me out of
the common track of discourse, did not in a manner necessitate me to it.
I shall make use of this liberty with all possible caution. As I make
use of the word _delight_ to express the sensation which accompanies the
removal of pain or danger, so, when I speak of positive pleasure, I
shall for the most part call it simply _pleasure_.


SECTION V.

JOY AND GRIEF.

It must be observed, that the cessation of pleasure affects the mind
three ways. If it simply ceases after having continued a proper time,
the effect is _indifference_; if it be abruptly broken off, there ensues
an uneasy sense called _disappointment_; if the object be so totally
lost that there is no chance of enjoying it again, a passion arises in
the mind which is called _grief_. Now there is none of these, not even
grief, which is the most violent, that I think has any resemblance to
positive pain. The person who grieves suffers his passion to grow upon
him; he indulges it, he loves it: but this never happens in the case of
actual pain, which no man ever willingly endured for any considerable
time. That grief should be willingly endured, though far from a simply
pleasing sensation, is not so difficult to be understood. It is the
nature of grief to keep its object perpetually in its eye, to present it
in its most pleasurable views, to repeat all the circumstances that
attend it, even to the last minuteness; to go back to every particular
enjoyment, to dwell upon each, and to find a thousand new perfections in
all, that were not sufficiently understood before; in grief, the
_pleasure_ is still uppermost; and the affliction we suffer has no
resemblance to absolute pain, which is always odious, and which we
endeavor to shake off as soon as possible. The Odyssey of Homer, which
abounds with so many natural and affecting images, has none more
striking than those which Menelaus raises of the calamitous fate of his
friends, and his own manner of feeling it. He owns, indeed, that he
often gives himself some intermission from such melancholy reflections;
but he observes, too, that, melancholy as they are, they give him
pleasure.

    [Greek:
    All empês pantas men odyromenos kai acheuôn,
    Pollakis en megaroisi kathêmenos hêmeteroisin,
    Allote men te goô phrena terpomai, allote d' aute
    Pauomai; aipsêros de koros kryeroio gooio]

                                        Hom. Od. [Greek: D]. 100

   "Still in short intervals of _pleasing woe_,
    Regardful of the friendly dues I owe,
    I to the glorious dead, forever dear,
    _Indulge_ the tribute of a _grateful_ tear."

On the other hand, when we recover our health, when we escape an
imminent danger, is it with joy that we are affected? The sense on these
occasions is far from that smooth and voluptuous satisfaction which the
assured prospect of pleasure bestows. The delight which arises from the
modifications of pain confesses the stock from whence it sprung, in its
solid, strong, and severe nature.


SECTION VI.

OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SELF-PRESERVATION.

Most of the ideas which are capable of making a powerful impression on
the mind, whether simply of pain or pleasure, or of the modifications of
those, may be reduced very nearly to these two heads,
_self-preservation_, and _society_; to the ends of one or the other of
which all our passions are calculated to answer. The passions which
concern self-preservation, turn mostly on _pain_ or _danger_. The ideas
of _pain_, _sickness_, and _death_, fill the mind with strong emotions
of horror; but _life_ and _health_, though they put us in a capacity of
being affected with pleasure, make no such impression by the simple
enjoyment. The passions therefore which are conversant about the
preservation of the individual turn chiefly on _pain_ and _danger_, and
they are the most powerful of all the passions.


SECTION VII.

OF THE SUBLIME.

Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain and danger,
that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about
terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a
source of the _sublime_; that is, it is productive of the strongest
emotion which the mind is capable of feeling. I say the strongest
emotion, because I am satisfied the ideas of pain are much more powerful
than those which enter on the part of pleasure. Without all doubt, the
torments which we may be made to suffer are much greater in their
effect on the body and mind, than any pleasures which the most learned
voluptuary could suggest, or than the liveliest imagination, and the
most sound and exquisitely sensible body, could enjoy. Nay, I am in
great doubt whether any man could be found, who would earn a life of the
most perfect satisfaction at the price of ending it in the torments,
which justice inflicted in a few hours on the late unfortunate regicide
in France. But as pain is stronger in its operation than pleasure, so
death is in general a much more affecting idea than pain; because there
are very few pains, however exquisite, which are not preferred to death:
nay, what generally makes pain itself, if I may say so, more painful,
is, that it is considered as an emissary of this king of terrors. When
danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any
delight, and are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with
certain modifications, they may be, and they are, delightful, as we
every day experience. The cause of this I shall endeavor to investigate
hereafter.


SECTION VIII.

OF THE PASSIONS WHICH BELONG TO SOCIETY.

The other head under which I class our passions, is that of _society_,
which may be divided into two sorts. 1. The society of the _sexes_,
which answers the purpose of propagation; and next, that more _general
society_, which we have with men and with other animals, and which we
may in some sort be said to have even with the inanimate world. The
passions belonging to the preservation of the individual turn wholly on
pain and danger: those which belong to _generation_ have their origin in
gratifications and _pleasures_; the pleasure most directly belonging to
this purpose is of a lively character, rapturous and violent, and
confessedly the highest pleasure of sense; yet the absence of this so
great an enjoyment scarce amounts to 

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