est reasoas,) it will then appear a new favour | inconceivable means contribute to the felicity of from the divine munificence; and a man must the inhabitants of the remotest planet. be as absurd to repine at dying, as a traveller would be, who proposed to himself a delightful tour through various unknown countries, to lament that he cannot take up his residence at the first dirty inn which he baits at on the road. How the Origin of Evil is brought nearer to human conception by any inconceivable means, I am not able to discover. We believed that the present system of creation was right, though we could not explain the adaptation of one part to the other, or for the whole succession of causes and consequences. Where has this inquirer added to the little knowledge that we had before? He has told us of the benefits of Evil, which no man feels, and relations between distant parts of the universe, which he cannot himself conceive. There was enough in this question inconceivable before, and we have little only turning round. To think that there is any difference between him that gives no reason, and him that gives a reason, which by his own confession cannot be conceived. "The instability of human life, or of the changes of its successive periods, of which we so frequently complain, are no more than the necessary progress of it to this necessary conclusion; and are so far from being Evils deserving these complaints, that they are the source of our greatest pleasures, as they are the source of all novelty, from which our greatest pleasures are ever derived. The continual succession of sea-advantage from a new inconceivable solution. sons in the human life, by daily presenting to us I do not mean to reproach this author for not new scenes, render it agreeable, and like those knowing what is equally hidden from learning of the year, afford us delights by their change, and from ignorance. The shame is to impose which the choicest of them could not give us by words for ideas upon ourselves or others. To their continuance. In the spring of life, the gild-imagine that we are going forward when we are ing of the sunshine, the verdure of the fields, and the variegated paintings of the sky, are so exquisite in the eyes of infants at their first looking abroad into a new world, as nothing perhaps afterwards can equal. The heat and vigour of But that he may not be thought to conceive the succeeding summer of youth ripens for us nothing but things inconceivable, he has at last new pleasures, the blooming maid, the nightly thought on a way by which human sufferings revel, and the jovial chase; the serene autumn may produce good effects. He imagines that as of complete manhood feasts us with the golden we have not only animals for food, but choose harvests of our worldly pursuits: nor is the some for our diversion, the same privilege may hoary winter of old age destitute of its peculiar be allowed to some beings above us, who may decomforts and enjoyments, of which the recollec-ceive, torment, or destroy us for the ends only of tion and relation of those past are perhaps none their own pleasure or utility. This he again finds. of the least; and at last death opens to us a new impossible to be conceived, but that impossibility prospect, from whence we shall probably look lessens not the probability of the conjecture, which back upon the diversions and occupations of this by analogy is so strongly confirmed. world with the same contempt we do now on our tops and hobbyhorses, and with the same surprise that they could ever so much entertain or engage us." I cannot resist the temptation of contemplating this analogy, which, I think, he might have carried further, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown that these I would not willingly detract from the beauty hunters, whose game is man, have many sports of this paragraph; and in gratitude to him who analogous to our own. As we drown whelps has so well inculcated such important truths, I and kittens, they amuse themselves now and will venture to admonish him, since the chief then with sinking a ship, and stand round the comfort of the old is the recollection of the past, fields of Blenheim or the walls of Prague, as we so to employ his time and his thoughts, that encircle a cockpit. As we shoot a bird flying, when the imbecility of age shall come upon him, they take a man in the midst of his business or he may be able to recreate its languors by the pleasure, and knock him down with an aporemembrance of hours spent, not in presumptu- plexy. Some of them, perhaps, are virtuosi, and ous decisions, but modest inquiries, not in dog-delight in the operations of an asthma, as a matical limitations of Omnipotence, but in hum- human philosopher in the effects of the airble acquiescence and fervent adoration. Old pump. To swell a man with a tympany is as age will show him that much of the book now before us has no other use than to perplex the scrupulous, and to shake the weak, to encourage impious presumption or stimulate idle curiosity. good sport as to blow a frog. Many a merry bout have these frolic beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. As they Having thus despatched the consideration of are wiser and more powerful than we, they have particular evils, he comes at last to a general more exquisite diversions, for we have no way reason for which Evil may be said to be our of procuring any sport so brisk and so lasting, as Good. He is of opinion that there is some in- the paroxysms of the gout and stone, which unconceivable benefit in pain abstractedly consi-doubtedly must make high mirth, especially if the dered; that pain, however inflicted, or wherever felt, communicates some good to the general system of being, and that every animal is some way or other the better for the pain of every other animal. This opinion he carries so far as to suppose that there passes some principle of union through all animal life, as attraction is communicated to all corporeal nature; and that the Evils suffered on this globe, may by some play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. We know not how far their sphere of observation may extend. Perhaps now and then a merry being may place himself in such a situation as to enjoy at once all the varieties of an epidemical disease, or amuse his leisure with the tossings and contur tions of every possible pain exhibited together. One sport the merry malice of these being has found means of enjoying, to which we have | must otherwise have been clear and manifest to nothing equal or similar. They now and then the meanest capacity. Some indeed have decatch a mortal proud of his parts, and flattered nied that there is any such thing, because diffeeither by the submission of those who court his rent ages and nations have entertained different kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him sentiments concerning it: but this is just as to court their head thus prepared for the reasonable as to assert, that there are neither reception of fa... opivas, and the projection of sun, moon, nor stars, because astronomers have vain designs, they easny fill with idle notions, supported different systems of the motions and till in time they make their plaything an author: magnitudes of these celestial bodies. Some their first diversion commonly begins with an have placed it in conformity to truth, some to ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political the fitness of things, and others to the will of irony, and is at last brought to its height, by a God. But all this is merely superficial: they treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor resolve us not why truth, or the fitness of things, animal to entangle himself in sophisms, and are either eligible or obligatory, or why God flounder in absurdity, to talk confidently of the should require us to act in one manner rather scale of being, and to give solutions which him- than another. The true reason of which can self confesses impossible to be understood. Some-possibly be no other than this, because some times, however, it happens that their pleasure is actions produce happiness, and others misery: without much mischief. The author feels no so that all moral Good and Evil are nothing pain, but while they are wondering at the extra-more than the production of natural. This alone vagance of his opinion, and pointing him out to it is that makes truth preferable to falsehood, one another as a new example of human folly, this that determines the fitness of things, and he is enjoying his own applause, and that of his this that induces God to command some actions, companions, and perhaps is elevated with the and forbid others. They who extol the truth, hope of standing at the head of a new sect. beauty, and harmony of virtue, exclusive of its consequences, deal but in pompous nonsense; and they who would persuade us that Good and Evil are things indifferent, depending wholly on the will of God, do but confound the nature of things, as well as all our notions of God himself, by representing him capable of willing contradiction; that is, that we should be, and be happy, and at the same time that we should torment and destroy each other; for injuries cannot be made benefits, pain cannot be made pleasure, and consequently vice cannot be made virtue, by any power whatever. It is the consequences, therefore, of all human actions that must stamp their value. So far as the general practice of any action tends to produce good, and introduce happiness into the world, so far we may pronounce it virtuous; so much Evil as it occasions, such is the degree of vice it contains. I say the general practice, because we must always remember, in judging by this rule, to apply it only to the general species of actions, and not to particular actions: for the infinite wisdom of God, desirous to set bounds to the destructive consequences which must otherwise have followed from the universal depravity of mankind, has so wonderfully contrived the nature of things, that our most vicious actions may sometimes accidentally and collaterally produce good. Thus, for instance, robbery may disperse useless hoards to the benefit of the public; adultery may bring heirs and good humour too into many families, where they would otherwise have been wanting; and murder free the world from tyrants and oppressors. Luxury maintains its thousands, and vanity its ten thousands. Superstition and arbitrary power contribute to the grandeur of many nations, and the liberties of others are preserved by the perpetual contentions of avarice, knavery, selfishness and ambition; Many of the books which now crowd the world, may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world. Of the productions of the last bounteous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure? The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it: and how will either of those be put more in our power by him who tells us that we are puppets, of which some creature not much wiser than ourselves manages the wires? That sect of beings unseen and unheard, are hovering about us, trying experiments upon our sensibility, putting us in agonies to see our limbs quiver, torturing us to madness, that they may laugh at our vagaries, sometimes obstructing the bile, that they may see how a man looks when he is yellow; sometimes breaking a traveller's bones, to try how he will get home; sometimes wasting a man to a skeleton, and sometimes killing him fat for the greater elegance of his hide. This is an account of natural Evil, which though, like the rest, not quite new, is very entertaining, though I know not how much it may contribute to patience. The only reason why we should contemplate Evil, is that we may bear it better; and I am afraid nothing is much more placidly endured, for the sake of making others sport. The first pages of the fourth Letter are such as incline me both to hope and wish that I shall find nothing to blame in the succeeding part. He offers a criterion of action, on account of virtue and vice, for which I have often contended, and which must be embraced by all who are willing to know why they act, or why they forbear to give any reason of their conduct to themselves or others. and thus the worst of vices, and the worst "In order to find out the true Origin of moral of men, are often compelled by Providence to Evil, it will ne necessary, in the first place, to serve the most beneficial purposes, contrary to inquire into its nature and essence; or what it their own malevolent tendencies and inclinais that constitutes one action evil, and another tions: and thus private vices become public good. Various have been the opinions of va- benefits, by the force only of accidental circumrious authors on this criterion of virtue; and stances. But this impeaches not the truth of the this variety has readered that doubtful, which | criterion of virtue before mentioned, the only in universal benevolence, or, in their language, charity to all men; the other, in the probation of man, and his obedience to his Creator. Sublime and magnificent as was the philosophy of the ancients, all their moral systems were de ficient in these two important articles. They were all built on the sandy foundations of the innate beauty of virtue, or enthusiastic patriotism; and their great point in view was the contemptible reward of human glory; foundations which were by no means able to support the solid foundation on which any true system of ethics can be built, the only plain, simple and uniform rule by which we can pass any judgment on our actions; but by this we may be enabled, not only to determine which are Good, and which are Evil, but almost mathematically to demonstrate the proportion of virtue or vice which belongs to each, by comparing them with the degrees of happiness or misery which they ccasion. But though the production of happiness is the essence of virtue, it is by no means the end; the great end is the probation of man-magnificent structures which they erected upon kind, or the giving them an opportunity of exalt- them; for the beauty of virtue, independent of ing or degrading themselves in another state by its effects, is unmeaning nonsense; patriotism, their behaviour in the present. And thus indeed which injures mankind in general for the sake it answers two most important purposes; those of a particular country, is but a more extended are the conservation of our happiness, and the selfishness, and really criminal; and all human test of our obedience; for had not such a test glory but a mean and ridiculous delusion. The seemed necessary to God's infinite wisdom, and whole affair then of religion and morality, the productive of universal good, he would never subject of so many thousand volumes, is, in have permitted the happiness of men, even in short, no more than this: the Supreme Being, this life, to have depended on so precarious a infinitely good, as well as powerful, desirous to tenure, as their mutual good behaviour to each diffuse happiness by all possible means, has other. For it is observable, that he who best created innumerable ranks and orders of beings, knows our formation, has trusted no one thing all subservient to each other by proper subordiof importance to our reason or virtue; he trusts nation. One of these is occupied by man, a only to our appetites for the support of the indi- creature endued with such a certain degree of vidual, and the continuance of our species; to knowledge, reason, and free-will, as is suitable our vanity or compassion, for our bounty to to his situation, and placed for a time on this others; and to our fears, for the preservation of globe as in a school of probation and education. ourselves; often to our vices for the support of Here he has an opportunity given him of im government, and sometimes to our follies for proving or debasing his nature, in such a man the preservation of our religion. But since some ner as to render himself fit for a rank of higher test of our obedience was necessary, nothing perfection and happiness, or to degrade himself sure could have been commanded for that end to a state of greater imperfection and misery; so fit and proper, and at the same time so use- necessary indeed towards carrying on the busiful, as the practice of virtue: nothing could have ness of the universe, but very grievous and burbeen so justly rewarded with happiness, as the densome to those individuals who, by their own production of happiness in conformity to the will misconduct, are obliged to submit to it. The of God. It is this conformity alone which adds test of this his behaviour, is doing good, that is, merit to virtue, and constitutes the essential dif- co-operating with his Creator, as far as his narference between morality and religion. Morality row sphere of action will permit, in the producobliges men to live honestly and soberly, because tion of happiness. And thus the happiness and such behaviour is most conducive to public hap- misery of a future state will be the just reward piness, and consequently to their own; religion, or punishment of promoting or preventing hapto pursue the same course, because conformable piness in this. So artificially by this means is to the will of their Creator. Morality induces the nature of all human virtue and vice contrived, them to embrace virtue from prudential consi-that their rewards and punishments are woven, derations; religion, from those of gratitude and obedience. Morality, therefore, entirely abstracted from religion, can have nothing meritorious in it; it being but wisdom, prudence, or good economy, which, like health, beauty, or riches, are rather obligations conferred upon us by God, than merits in us towards him; for though we may be justly punished for injuring ourselves, we can claim no reward for self-preservation; as suicide deserves punishment and infamy, but a man deserves no reward or honours Si sic omnia dixisset! To this account of the for not being guilty of it. This I take to be the essence of vice and virtue, it is only necessary meaning of all those passages in our Scriptures, to add, that the consequences of human actions in which works are represented to have no merit being sometimes uncertain, and sometimes rewithout faith; that is, not without believing in mote, it is not possible in many cases for most historical facts, in creeds, and articles; but with-men, nor in all cases for any man, to determine out being done in pursuance of our belief in God, and in obedience to his commands. And now, having mentioned Scripture, I cannot omit observing that the christian is the only religious or moral institution in the world that ever set in a right light these two material points, the essence and the cad of virtue, that ever founded the one in production of happiness, that is, as it were, in their very essence; their immediate effects give us a foretaste of their future, and their fruits in the present life are the proper samples of what they must unavoidably produce in another. We have reason given us to distinguish these consequences, and regulate our conduct; and lest that should neglect its post, conscience also is appointed as an instinctive kind of monitor, perpetually to remind us both of our interest and our duty." what actions will ultimately produce happiness, and therefore it was proper that revelation should lay down a rule to be followed invariably in opposition to appearances, and in every change of circumstances, by which we may be certain to promote the general felicity, and be set free from the dangerous temptation of doing Evil that Goed may come. Because it may easily happen, and in effect | thinks it necessary that man should be debarred, will happen very frequently, that our own pri- because pain is necessary to the good of the univate happiness may be promoted by an act inju-verse; and the pain of one order of beings exrious to others, when yet no man can be obliged tending its salutary influence to innumerable by nature to prefer ultimately the happiness orders above and below, it was necessary that of others to his own; therefore, to the instruc-man should suffer; but because it is not suitable tions of infinite wisdom it was necessary that to justice that pain should be inflicted on innoinfinite power should add penal sanctions. That cence, it was necessary that man should be every man to whom those instructions shall be criminal. imparted may know, that he can never ultimate- This is given as a satisfactory account of the ly injure himself by benefiting others, or ulti-Original of moral Evil, which amounts only to mately by injuring others benefit himself; but this, that God created beings, whose guilt he that however the lot of the good and bad may foreknew, in order that he might have proper be huddled together in the seeming confusion of objects of pain, because the pain of part is, no our present state, the time shall undoubtedly man knows how or why, necessary to the felicity come, when the most virtuous will be most happy. of the whole. I am sorry that the remaining part of this Letter is not equal to the first. The author has indeed engaged in a disquisition in which we need not wonder if he fails, in the solution of questions on which philosophers have employed their abilities from the earliest times, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. He denies that man was created perfect, because the system requires subordination, and because the power of losing his perfection, of "rendering himself wicked and miserable, is the highest imperfection imaginable." Besides, the regular gradations of the scale of being required somewhere "such a creature as man with all his infirmities about him, and the total removal of those would be altering his nature, and when he became perfect he must cease to be man." I have already spent some considerations on the scale of being, of which yet I am obliged to renew the mention whenever a new argument is made to rest upon it; and I must therefore again remark, that consequences cannot have greater certainty than the postulate from which they are drawn, and that no system can be more hypothetical than this, and perhaps no hypothesis more absurd. Man The perfection which man once had, may be so easily conceived, that without any unusual strain of imagination we can figure its revival. All the duties to God or man that are neglected, we may fancy performed; all the crimes that are committed, we may conceive forborne. will then be restored to his moral perfections: and into what head can it enter, that by this change the universal system would be shaken, or the condition of any order of beings altered for the worse? He comes in the fifth Letter to political, and in the sixth to religious Evils. Of political Evil, if we suppose the Origin of moral Evil discovered, the account is by no means difficult : polity being only the conduct of immoral men in public affairs. The evils of each particular kind of government are very clearly and elegantly displayed, and from their secondary causes very rationally deduced; but the first cause lies still in its ancient obscurity. There is in this Letter nothing new, nor any thing eminently instructive; one of his practical deductions, that "from government Evils cannot be eradicated, and their excess only can be prevented," has been always allowed; the question upon which all dissension arises is, when that excess begins, at what point men shall cease to bear, and attempt to remedy. Another of his precepts, though not new, well deserves to be transcribed, because it cannot be too frequently impressed. He again deceives himself with respect to the perfection with which man is held to be originally vested. "That man came perfect, that is, endued with all possible perfection, out of the hands of his Creator, is a false notion, derived from the philosophers.-The universal system "What has here been said of their imperfecrequired subordination, and consequently com- tions and abuses, is by no means intended as a parative imperfection." That man was ever en-defence of them; every wise man ought to redued with all possible perfection, that is, with all perfection of which the idea is not contradictory, or destructive of itself, is undoubtedly false. But it can hardly be called a false notion, because no man ever thought it, nor can it be derived from the philosophers; for without pretending to guess what philosophers he may mean, it is very safe to affirm, that no philosopher ever said it. Of those who now maintain that man was once perfect, who may very easily be found, let the author inquire whether man was ever omniscient, whether he was ever omnipotent, whether he ever had even the lower power of archangels or angels. Their answers will soon inform him, that the supposed perfection of man was not absolute but respective, that he was perfect in a sense consistent enough with subordination, perfect, not as compared with different beings, but with himself in his present degeneracy; not perfect as an angel, but perfect as man. From this perfection, whatever it was, he dress them to the utmost of his power; which can be effected by one method only; that is, by a reformation of manners: for as all political Evils derive their original from moral, these can never be removed until those are first amended. He, therefore, who strictly adheres to virtue and sobriety in his conduct, and enforces them by his example, does more real service to a state, than he who displaces a minister, or dethrones a tyrant; this gives but a temporary relief, but that exterminates the cause of the disease. No immoral man then can possibly be a true patriot : and all those who profess outrageous zeal for the liberty and prosperity of their country, and at the same time infringe her laws, affront her religion, and debauch her people, are but despicable quacks, by fraud or ignorance increasing the disorders they pretend to remedy." Of religion he has said nothing but what he has learned, or might have learned from the dr vines; that it is not universal, because it must found, but here and in Ward, that Cowley was doctor in physic. And whenever any other institution of the same kind shall be attempted, the exact relation of the progress of the Royal Society may furnish precedents. be received upon conviction, and successively re- | admit copiousness than to affect brevity. Many ceived by those whom conviction reached; that informations will be afforded by this book to the its evidences and sanctions are not irresistible, biographer. I know not where else it can be because it was intended to induce, not to compel; and that it is obscure, because we want faculties to comprehend it. What he means by his assertion, that it wants policy, I do not well understand; he does not mean to deny that a good caristian will be a good governor, or a good subect; and he has before justly observed, that the good man only is a patriot. Religion has been, he says, corrupted by the wickedness of those to whom it was communicated, and has lost part of its efficacy by its connexion with temporal interest and human passion. He justly observes, that from all this, no conclusion can be drawn against the divine original of christianity, since the objections arise not from the nature of the revelation, but of him to whom it is communicated. All this is known, and all this is true; but why, we have not yet discovered. Our author, if I understand him right, pursues the argument thus: the religion of man produces evils, because the morality of man is imperfect; his morality is imperfect, that he may be justly a subject of punishment; he is made subject to punishment, because the pain of part is necessary to the happiness of the whole; pain is necessary to happiaess, no mortal can tell why or how. These volumes consist of an exact journal of the Society; of some papers delivered to them, which, though registered and preserved, had been never printed; and of short memoirs of the more eminent members, inserted at the end of the year in which each died. The original of the Society is placed earlier in this history than in that of Dr. Sprat. Theodore Haak, a German of the Palatinate, in 1645, proposed to some inquisitive and learned men a weekly meeting for the cultivation of natural knowledge. The first Associates, whose names ought surely to be preserved, were Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Wallis, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Ent, Dr. Glisson, Dr. Merret, Mr. Foster of Gresham, and Mr. Haak. Sometime afterwards Wilkins, Wallis, and Goddard being removed to Oxford, carried on the same design there by stated meetings, and adopted into their society Dr. Ward, Dr. Bathurst, Dr. Petty, and Dr. Willis. The Oxford Society coming to London in 1659, joined their friends, and augmented their number, and for some time met in Gresham-College. Thus, after having clambered with great labour After the restoration their number was again from one step of argumentation to another, in- increased, and on the 28th of November, 1660, stead of rising into the light of knowledge, we a select party happening to retire for conversaare devolved back into dark ignorance; and all tion to Mr. Rooke's apartment in Greshamour effort ends in belief, that for the Evils of life College, formed the first plan of a regular socithere is some good reason, and in confession, ety. Here Dr. Sprat's history begins, and therethat the reason cannot be found. This is all fore from this period the proceedings are well that has been produced by the revival of Chry-known.* REVIEW OF THE GENERAL HISTORY OF sippus's untractableness of matter, and the Arabian scale of existence. A system has been raised, which is so ready to fall to pieces of itself, that no great praise can be derived from its destruction. To object is always easy, and it has been well observed by a late writer, that the IN FIVE BOOKS, TRANSLATED FROM THE GREEK, hand which cannot build a hovel, may demolish a temple.* REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL POLYBIUS, BY MR. HAMPTON. THIS appears to be one of the books which will long do honour to the present age. It has been by some remarker observed, that no man ever grew immortal by a translation: and undoubtedly translations into the prose of a living language must be laid aside whenever the lan FOR IMPROVING OF NATURAL KNOWLEDGE, FROM ITS guage changes, because the matter being always FIRST RISE. IN WHICH THE MOST CONSIDERABLE to be found in the original, contributes nothing to the preservation of the form superinduced by HAVE HITHERTO NOT BEEN PUBLISHED, ARE INSERTED the translator. But such versions may last long, IN THEIR PROPER ORDER, AS A SUPPLEMENT TO THE THIS book might more properly have been entitled by the author a diary than a history, as it proceeds regularly from day to day so minutely as to number over the members present at each committee, and so slowly, that two large volumes contain only the transactions of the eleven first years from the institution of the Society. though they can scarcely last always; and there is reason to believe that this will grow in reputation while the English tongue continues in its present state. The great difficulty of a translator is to preserve the native form of his language, and the unconstrained manner of an original writer. This Mr. Hampton seems to have attained in a degree of which there are few examples. His book has the dignity of antiquity, and the easy flow of a modern composition. I am yet far from intending to represent this work as useless. Many particularities are of It were, perhaps, to be desired that he had importance to one man, though they appear tri-illustrated with notes an author which must have fling to another, and it is always more safe to many difficulties to an English reader, and par * New Practice of Physic. *From the Literary Magazine, 1756. |
