CHAPTER V.

AN EXAMINATION OF THE SCOTCH INTELLECT DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

To complete the history and analysis of the Scotch mind, I have now to examine the peculiar intellectual movement which appeared in the eighteenth century, and which, for several reasons, deserves careful attention. It was essentially a reaction against that theological spirit which predominated during the seventeenth century. Such a reaction would hardly have been possible, except for the fact which I have already noticed, namely, that the political activity which produced the rebellion against the Stuarts, saved the Scotch mind from stagnating, and prevented that deep slumber into which the progress of superstition would naturally have thrown it. The long and stubborn conflict with a despotic government, kept alive a certain alertness and vigour of understanding, which survived the struggle that gave it birth. When the contest was ended, and peace was restored, the faculties which, for three generations, had been exercised in resisting the executive authority, sought other employment, and found another field in which they could disport themselves. Hence it was, that the boldness which, in the seventeenth century, was practical, became, in the eighteenth century, speculative, and produced a literature, which attempted to unsettle former opinions, and to disturb the ancient landmarks of the human mind. The movement was revolutionary, and bore the same relation to ecclesiastical tyranny, which the previous movement had borne to political tyranny. But this new rebellion had one striking characteristic. In nearly every other country, when the intellect has fairly arrayed itself against the exclusive pretensions of the Church, it has happened that the secular philosophy, which has been engendered, has been an inductive philosophy, taking for its basis individual and specific experience, and seeking, by that means, to overthrow the general and traditional notions, on which all church power is founded. The plan has been, to refuse to accept principles which could not be substantiated by facts; while the opposite and theological plan is, to force the facts to yield to the principles. In the former case, experience precedes theory; in the latter case, theory precedes experience, and controls it. In theology, certain principles are taken for granted; and, it being deemed impious to question them, all that remains for us is to reason from them downwards. This is the deductive method. On the other hand, the inductive method will concede nothing, but insists upon reasoning upwards, and demands that we shall have the liberty of ascertaining the principles for ourselves. In a complete scheme of our knowledge, and when all our resources are fully developed and marshalled into order, as they must eventually be, the two methods will be, not hostile, but supplementary, and will be combined into a single system. At present, however, we are very far from such a result; and not only is every mind more prone to one method than to another, but we find, historically, that different ages and different countries have been characterised by the extent to which one of these two schemes has predominated; and we also find, that a study of this antagonism is the surest way of understanding the intellectual condition of any period.

That the inductive philosophy is even more marked by its secular tendencies than by its scientific ones, will be evident to whoever observes the epochs in which it has been most active, and has possessed most adherents. Of this, the history of the French mind, in the eighteenth century, affords a good instance, where, after the death of Louis XIV., we may clearly trace the connexion between the growth of the inductive method, and the subsequent overthrow of the Gallican Church. In England, too, the rise of the Baconian philosophy, with its determination to subordinate ancient principles to modern experience, was the heaviest blow which has ever been inflicted on the theologians, whose method is to begin, not with experience, but with principles, which are said to be inscrutable, and which we are bound to believe without further difficulty. And I need hardly remind the reader, that scarcely was that philosophy established among us, when it produced those bold inquiries which quickly ended in the downfall of the English Church under Charles I. From that terrible defeat, our clergy did, for a time, partly rally; but as their apparent success, in the reign of Charles II., was owing to political changes, and not to social ones, they were unable to recover their hold over society, and, unless the nation should retrograde, there is no possibility that they ever should recover it. Over the inferior order of minds, they still wield great influence; but the Baconian philosophy, by bringing their favourite method into disrepute, has sapped the very base of their system. From the moment that their mode of investigation was discredited, the secret of their power was gone. From the moment that men began to insist on inquiring into the validity of first principles, instead of accepting them without inquiry, and humbly submitting to them as matters of faith and of necessary belief; from that moment, the theologians, driven from one post to another, and constantly receding before the pressure of advancing knowledge, have been forced to abandon entrenchment after entrenchment, until what they have retained of their former territory is hardly worth the struggle. As a last resource, they, at the close of the eighteenth century, determined to use the weapons of their opponents; and Paley and his successors, enlarging the scheme which Ray and Derham had feebly sketched, endeavoured, by a skilful employment of the inductive method, to compensate their party for the failure of the deductive one. But their project, though ably conceived, has come to naught. It is now generally admitted, that nothing can be made of it, and that it is impossible to establish the old theological premises by a chain of inductive reasoning. Respecting this, the most eminent philosophers agree with the most eminent theologians; and, since the time of Kant in Germany, and of Coleridge in England, none of our ablest men, even among divines themselves, have recurred to a plan which Paley, indeed, pursued with vigour, but of which our Bridgewater Treatises, our Prize-Essays, and such schoolboy productions, are poor and barren imitations.[613] No great thinkers now follow this course in matters of religion. On the contrary, they prefer the safer, as well as the more philosophic, method, of dealing with these subjects on transcendental grounds, frankly confessing that they elude the grasp of that inductive philosophy which, in the department of science, has achieved such signal triumphs.

[613] Of course, I say this merely in reference to their theological bearings. Some of the Bridgewater Treatises, such as Bell's, Buckland's, and Prout's, had great scientific merit at the time of their appearance, and may even now be studied with advantage; but the religious portion of them is pitiable, and shows either that their heart was not in their work, or else that the subject was too wide for them. At all events, it is to be hoped that we shall never again see men of equal eminence hiring themselves out as paid advocates, and receiving fees to support particular opinions. It is truly disgraceful that such great speculative questions, instead of being subjected to fair and disinterested argument, with a view of eliciting the truth, should be turned into a pecuniary transaction, in which any one of much money and little wit, can bribe as many persons as he likes, to prejudice the public ear in favour of his own theories.

The opposition of these two methods, and the inapplicability of the inductive method to theological pursuits being thus apparent, it is not strange that the Scotch should have adopted one of the methods with great zeal, and to the almost complete exclusion of the other. Scotland, being essentially theological, followed the theological plan. The intellectual history of that country, in the seventeenth century, is almost entirely the history of theology. With the single exception of Napier, who was born in the middle of the sixteenth century, all the most vigorous thinkers were divines. In physical science, scarcely anything was done.[614] There was no poetry, no drama, no original philosophy, no fine compositions, no secular literature, now worth reading.[615] The only men of real influence were the clergy. They governed the nation and the pulpit was the chief engine of their power. From the pulpit, they moved all classes and all sorts intellects; the highest as well as the lowest. There, they instructed them, and threatened them; saying whatever they liked, and knowing that what they said would be believed.[616] But all their sermons, and all their controversial writings, are eminently deductive; not of them attempts an inductive argument. The idea of such a thing never entered their heads. They assumed the truth of their own religion and moral notions, most of which they had borrowed from antiquity; they made those notions the major premises of their syllogisms, and from them they reasoned downwards till they obtained their conclusions. They never suspected that premises, taken from ancient times might be the result of the inductions of those times and that, as knowledge advanced, the inductions might need revising. They assumed, that God has given us first principles, and that He, having revealed them it would ill become us to scrutinize them. That He had revealed them, they took for granted, and deemed it unnecessary to prove.[617] Their method being entirely deductive, all they were concerned with was to beware that no error crept in between the premises and the conclusions. And this part of their task they accomplished with great ability. They were acute dialecticians, and rarely blundered in what is termed the formal part of logic. In dealing with their premises after they obtained them, they were extremely skilful; how they obtained them, they were very heedless. That was a point they never examined with anything approaching to impartiality. According to their method, all that was requisite was, to draw inferences from what had been supernaturally communicated. On the other hand, the inductive method would have taught them that the first question was, whether or not they had been supernaturally communicated? They, as deductive reasoners, assumed the very preliminaries which inductive reasoners would have disputed. They proceeded from generals to particulars, instead of from particulars to generals. And they would not allow either themselves or others to sift the general propositions, which were to cover and control the particular facts. It was enough for them that the wider propositions were already established, and were to be treated according to the rules of the old and syllogistic logic. Indeed, they were so convinced of the impropriety of the inductive method, that they did not hesitate to assert, that it was by means of the syllogism that the Deity communicated His wishes to man.[618]

[614] 'It is humiliating to have to remark, that the notices of comets which we derive from Scotch writers down to this time (1682) contain nothing but accounts of the popular fancies regarding them. Practical astronomy seems to have then been unknown in our country; and hence, while in other lands, men were carefully observing, computing, and approaching to just conclusions regarding these illustrious strangers of the sky, our diarists could only tell us how many _yards_ long they seemed to be, what _effects_ were apprehended from them in the way of war and pestilence, and how certain pious divines "improved" them for spiritual edification. Early in this century Scotland had produced one great philosopher, who had supplied his craft with the mathematical instruments by which complex problems, such as the movement of comets, were alone to be solved. It might have been expected that the country of Napier, seventy years after his time, would have had many sons capable of applying his key to such mysteries of nature. But no one had arisen--nor did any rise for fifty years onward, when at length Colin Maclaurin unfolded in the Edinburgh University the sublime philosophy of Newton. There could not be a more expressive signification of the character of the seventeenth century in Scotland. Our unhappy contentions about external religious matters had absorbed the whole genius of the people, rendering to us the age of Cowley, of Waller, and of Milton, as barren of elegant literature, as that of Horrocks, of Halley, and of Newton, was of science.' _Chambers' Domestic Annals of Scotland_, vol. ii. pp. 444, 445.

[615] 'Thus, during the whole seventeenth century, the English were gradually refining their language and their taste; in Scotland, the former was much debased, and the latter almost entirely lost.' _History of Scotland_, book viii., in _Robertson's Works_, p. 260.

'But the taste and science, the genius and the learning of the age, were absorbed in the gulph of religious controversy. At a time when the learning of Selden, and the genius of Milton, conspired to adorn England, the Scots were reduced to such writers as Baillie, Rutherford, Guthrie, and the two Gillespies.' _Laing's History of Scotland_, vol. iii. p. 510. 'From the Restoration down to the Union, the only author of eminence whom Scotland produced was Burnet.' _Ibid._, vol. iv. p. 406.

'The seventeenth century, fatal to the good taste of Italy, threw a total night over Scotland.' ... 'Not one writer who does the least credit to the nation flourished during the century from 1615 to 1715, excepting Burnet, whose name would, indeed, honour the brightest period. In particular, no poet whose works merit preservation arose. By a singular fatality, the century which stands highest in English history and genius, is one of the darkest in those of Scotland.' _Ancient Scotish Poems, edited by John Pinkerton_, vol. i. pp. iii. iv., London, 1786.

[616] Ray, who visited Scotland in 1661, could not suppress a little professional envy, when he saw how much higher ecclesiastics were rated there than in England. He says, 'the people here frequent their churches much better than in England, and have their ministers in more esteem and veneration.' _Ray's Memorials, edited by Dr. Lankester for the Ray Society_, p. 161.

[617] 'Believing ignorance is much better than rash and presumptuous knowledge. Ask not a reason of these things, but rather adore and tremble at the mystery and majesty of them.' _Binning's Sermons_, vol. i. p. 143. Even Biblical criticism was prohibited; and Dickson says of the different books of the Bible, 'We are not to trouble ourselves about the name of the writer, or time of writing of any part thereof, especially because God of set purpose concealeth the name sundry times of the writer, and the time when it was written.' _Dickson's Explication of the Psalms_, p. 291.

[618] 'Christ from heaven proposeth a syllogism to Saul's fury.' _Rutherford's Christ Dying_, p. 180. 'The conclusion of a practical syllogism, whereby the believer concluded from the Gospel that he shall be saved.' _Durham's Law Unsealed_, p. 97. 'All assurance is by practical syllogism, the first whereof must needs be a Scripture truth.' _Gray's Precious Promises_, p. 139.

It was naturally to be expected, that the clergy, holding these views respecting the best means of arriving at truth, should do all in their power to bring over the nation to their side, and should labour to make their own method of investigation entirely supersede the opposite method. Nor was this a very difficult task. The prevailing credulity was one great point in their favour, inasmuch as it made men more willing to accept propositions than to scrutinise them. When the propositions were accepted, nothing was left but to reason from them; and the most active intellects in Scotland, being constantly engaged in this process, acquired complete mastery over it, and the dexterity they displayed increased its repute. Besides this, the clergy, who were its zealous champions, had monopolized all the sources of education, both public and private. In no other Protestant country, have they exercised such control over the universities; not only the doctrines taught, but also the mode of teaching them, being, in Scotland, placed under the supervision of the Church.[619] This power they, of course, used to propagate their own plan of obtaining truth; and, as long as their power remained undiminished, it was hardly possible that the opposite, or inductive, plan should gain a hearing. Over grammar-schools, the clergy possessed an authority fully equal to that which they had in the universities.[620] They also appointed and removed, at their own pleasure, teachers of every grade, from village schoolmasters to tutors in private families.[621] In this way, each generation, as it arose, was brought under their influence, and made subject to their notions. Taking the mind of Scotland while it was young and flexible, they bent it to their own method. Hence, that method became supreme; it reigned every where; not a voice was lifted up against it; and no one had an idea that there was more than one path by which truth could be reached, or that the human understanding was of any use, except to deal deductively with premisses, which were not to be inductively examined.

[619] Bower (_History of the University of Edinburgh_, vol. i. p. 217) says, 'The history of the universities and of the church is, in modern Europe, and perhaps in every other civilized portion of the globe, very nearly connected. They are more nearly connected in Scotland than in any other civilized country called Protestant; because the General Assembly have the legal power of inquiring into the economy of the institutions, both as it respects the mode of teaching, and the doctrines, whether religious, moral, or physical, which are taught.' Spalding, under the year 1639, gives an instance of the power of the General Assembly in 'the College of Old Aberdeen.' _Spalding's History of the Troubles_, vol. i. p. 178. See also, on the authority exercised by the General Assembly over the universities, a curious little book, called _The Government and Order of the Church of Scotland_, Edinburgh, 1690, p. 25.

[620] In 1632, the 'ministers' of Perth were greatly displeased because John Row was made master of the grammar-school without their consent. _The Chronicle of Perth_, p. 33, where it is stated that, consequently, 'thair wes much outcrying in the pulpett.'

[621] See, for instance, _Minutes of the Presbyteries of St. Andrews and Cupar_, pp. 66, 83, 84, 118. One of the entries is, that in January 1648, 'The Presbyterie ordained that all young students, who waittes on noblemen or gentlemen within thir bounds, aither to teach ther children, or catechise and pray in ther families, to frequent the Presbyterie, that the brether may cognosce what they ar reading, and what proficiencie they make in ther studies, and to know also ther behaviour in the said families, and of their affectione to the Covenant and present religione.' p. 118. Compare _Selections from the Registers of the Presbytery of Lanark_, pp. 56, 65.

The inductive or analytic spirit being thus unknown, and the deductive or synthetic spirit being alone favoured, it happened that, when, early in the eighteenth century, the circumstances already mentioned gave rise to a great intellectual movement, that movement, though new in its results, was not new in the method by which the results were obtained. A secular philosophy was, indeed, established, and the ablest men, instead of being theological, became scientific. But so completely had the theological plan occupied Scotland, that even philosophers were unable to escape from its method, and, as I am about to show, the inductive method exercised no influence over them. This most curious fact is the key to the history of Scotland in the eighteenth century, and explains many events which would otherwise appear incompatible with each other. It also suggests an analogy with Germany, where the deductive method has, for a long period, been equally prevalent, owing to precisely the same causes. In both countries, the secular movement of the eighteenth century was unable to become inductive; and this intellectual affinity between two such otherwise different nations, is, I have no doubt, the principal reason why the Scotch and German philosophies have so remarkably acted and reacted upon each other; Kant and Hamilton being the most finished specimens of their intercourse. To this, England forms a complete contrast. For more than a hundred and fifty years after the death of Bacon, the greatest English thinkers, Newton and Harvey excepted, were eminently inductive; nor was it until the nineteenth century that signs were clearly exhibited of a counter-movement, and an attempt was made to return in some degree to the deductive method.[622] This we are, in many respects, justified in doing, because, in the progress of our knowledge, we have, by a long course of induction, arrived at several conclusions which we may safely treat deductively; that is to say, we may make them the major premisses of new arguments. The same process has been seen in France, where the exclusively inductive philosophy of the eighteenth century preceded a partial resuscitation of deductive philosophy in the nineteenth century. In Scotland, however, there have been no such vicissitudes. In that country, men have always been deductive; even the most original thinkers being unable to liberate themselves from the universal tendency, and being forced to accept a method which time had consecrated, and which was interwoven with all the associations of the national mind.

[622] This I have already touched upon in the first volume, pp. 808, 809. Hereafter, and in my special history of the English mind, I shall examine it carefully and in detail. The revival of the old logic is a great symptom of it. Works like those of Whately, De Morgan, and Mansel, could not have been produced in tho eighteenth century, or, at all events, if by some extraordinary combination of events they had been produced, they would have found no readers. As it is, they have exercised a very extensive and very salutary influence; and, although Archbishop Whately was not well acquainted with the history of formal logic, his exposition of its ordinary processes is so admirably clear, that he has probably contributed more than any other man towards impressing his contemporaries with a sense of the value of deductive reasoning. He has, however, not done sufficient justice to the opposite school, and has, indeed, fallen into the old academical error of supposing that all reasoning is by syllogism. We might just as well say that all movement is by descent.

To understand the investigation into which we are about to enter, the reader must firmly seize, and keep before his eyes, the essential difference between deduction, which reasons from principles, and induction, which reasons to principles. He must remember, that induction proceeds from the smaller to the greater; deduction, from the greater to the smaller. Induction is from particulars to generals, and from the senses to the ideas; deduction is from generals to particulars, and from the ideas to the senses. By induction, we rise from the concrete to the abstract; by deduction, we descend from the abstract to the concrete. Accompanying this distinction, there are certain qualities of mind, which, with extremely few exceptions, characterize the age, nation, or individual, in which one of these methods is predominant. The inductive philosopher is naturally cautious, patient, and somewhat creeping; while the deductive philosopher is more remarkable for boldness, dexterity, and often rashness. The deductive thinker invariably assumes certain premisses, which are quite different from the hypotheses essential to the best induction. These premisses are sometimes borrowed from antiquity; sometimes they are taken from the notions which happen to prevail in the surrounding society; sometimes they are the result of a man's own peculiar organization; and sometimes, as we shall presently see, they are deliberately invented, with the object of arriving, not at truth, but at an approximation to truth. Finally, and to sum up the whole, we may say that a deductive habit, being essentially synthetic, always tends to multiply original principles or laws; while the tendency of an inductive habit is to diminish those laws by gradual and successive analysis.

These being the two fundamental divisions of human inquiry, it is surely a most remarkable fact in the history of Scotland, that, during the eighteenth century, all the great thinkers belonged to the former division, and that, in the very few instances of induction which their works contain, it is evident, from the steps they subsequently took, that they regarded such inductions as unimportant in themselves, and as only valuable in so far as they supplied the premisses for another and deductive investigation. As the various departments of our knowledge have never yet been co-ordinated and treated as a whole, probably no one is aware of the universality of this movement in Scotland, and of the extent to which it pervaded every science, and governed every phase of thought. To prove, therefore, the force with which it acted, I now purpose to examine its working in all the principal forms of speculation, whether physical or moral, and to show that in each the same method was adopted. In doing this, I must, for the sake of clearness, proceed according to a natural arrangement of the different topics; but I will, whenever it is possible, also follow the chronological order in which the Scotch mind unfolded itself; so that we may understand, not only the character of that remarkable literature, but likewise the steps of its growth, and the astonishing vigour with which it emancipated itself from the shackles which superstition had imposed.

The beginning of the great secular philosophy of Scotland is undoubtedly due to Francis Hutcheson.[623] This eminent man, though born in Ireland, was of Scotch family, and was educated in the University of Glasgow, where he received the appointment of Professor of Philosophy in the year 1729.[624] By his lectures, and by his works, he diffused a taste for bold inquiries into subjects of the deepest importance, but concerning which it had previously been supposed nothing fresh was to be learned; the Scotch having hitherto been taught, that all truths respecting our own nature, which were essential to be known, had been already revealed. Hutcheson, however, did not fear to construct a system of morals according to a plan entirely secular, and no example of which had been exhibited in Scotland before his time. The principles from which he started, were not theological, but metaphysical. They were collected from what he deemed the natural constitution of the mind, instead of being collected, as heretofore, from what had been supernaturally communicated. He, therefore, shifted the field of study. Though he was a firm believer in revelation, he held that the best rules of conduct could be ascertained without its assistance, and could be arrived at by the unaided wit of man; and that, when arrived at, they were, in their aggregate, to be respected as the Law of Nature.[625] This confidence in the power of the human understanding was altogether new in Scotland, and its appearance forms an epoch in the national literature. Previously, men had been taught that the understanding was a rash and foolish thing, which ought to be repressed, and which was unfit to cope with the problems presented to it.[626] Hutcheson, however, held that it was quite able to deal with them, but that, to do so, it must be free and unfettered. Hence, he strenuously advocated that right of private judgment which the Scotch Kirk had not only assailed, but had almost destroyed. He insisted that each person had a right to form his opinion according to the evidence he possessed, and that, this right being inalienable, none but weak minds would abstain from exercising it.[627] Every one was to judge according to his own light, and nothing could be gained by inducing men to profess sentiments contrary to their convictions.[628] So far, however, was this from being understood, that we found all the little sects quarrelling among themselves, and abusing each other, merely because their views were different. It was strange to hear how the professors of one creed would stigmatize the professors of other creeds as idolatrous, and would demand that penalties should be inflicted on them. In point of fact, all had much that was good; and their only real evil was, this love of persecution.[629] But the vulgar deemed every one a heretic who did not believe what they believed; and this way of thinking had been too much countenanced by the clergy, many of whom felt their vanity offended at the idea of laymen pretending to be wiser than their spiritual teachers, and venturing to disagree with what they said.[630]

[623] See a letter from Sir James Mackintosh to Parr, in _Mackintosh's Memoirs_, London, 1835, vol. i. p. 334. 'To Hutcheson the taste for speculation in Scotland, and all the philosophical opinions (except the Berkleian Humism) may be traced.' M. Cousin (_Histoire de la Philosophie_, première série, vol. iv. p. 35, Paris, 1846) observes, that before Hutcheson 'il n'avait paru en Ecosse ni un écrivain ni un professeur de philosophie un peu remarquable.'

[624] _Tytler's Memoirs of Kames_, Edinburgh, 1814, vol. i. p. 223. _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. iii. London, 1755, 4to.

[625] 'The intention of Moral Philosophy is to direct men to that course of action which tends most effectually to promote their greatest happiness and perfection; as far as it can be done by observations and conclusions discoverable from the constitution of nature, without any aids of supernatural revelation: these maxims or rules of conduct are therefore reputed as laws of nature, and the system or collection of them is called the LAW OF NATURE.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 1.

[626] 'The natural understanding is the most whorish thing in the world.' ... 'The understanding, even in the search of truth amongst the creatures, is a rash, precipitate, and unquiet thing.' _Rutherford's Christ Dying_, p. 181. 'Innocent Adam,' indeed, says Boston, 'Innocent Adam had a stock of gracious abilities, whereby he might have, by the force of moral considerations, brought himself to perform duty aright. But where is that with us?' _Boston's Sermons_, p. 65.

[627] 'A like natural right every intelligent being has about his own opinions, speculative or practical, to judge according to the evidence that appears to him. This right appears from the very constitution of the rational mind, which can assent or dissent solely according to the evidence presented, and naturally desires knowledge. The same considerations show this right to be unalienable: it cannot be subjected to the will of another: though where there is a previous judgment formed concerning the superior wisdom of another, or his infallibility, the opinion of this other, to a weak mind, may become sufficient evidence. As to opinions about the Deity, religion, and virtue, this right is further confirmed by all the noblest desires of the soul; as there can be no virtue, but rather impiety in not adhering to the opinions we think just, and in professing the contrary.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. pp. 295, 296. See also vol. ii. p. 311. 'Every rational creature has a right to judge for itself in these matters: and as men must assent according to the evidence that appears to them, and cannot command their own assent in opposition to it, this right is plainly unalienable.'

[628] 'Thus no man can really change his sentiments, judgments, and inward affections, at the pleasure of another, nor can it tend to any good to make him profess what is contrary to his heart.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. pp. 261, 262.

[629] 'Arians and Socinians are idolaters and denyers of God, say the orthodox. They retort upon the orthodox, that they are Tritheists; and so do other sects; and thus they spirit up magistrates to persecute. While yet it is plain that in all these sects there are all the same motives to all social virtues from a belief of a moral providence, the same acknowledgments that the goodness of God is the source of all the good we enjoy or hope for, and the same gratitude and resignation to him recommended. Nor do any of their schemes excite men to vices, except that horrid tenet, too common to most of them, the right of persecuting.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. ii. p. 316. See also vol. i. p. 160; and _Hutcheson's Inquiry into our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue_, London, 1738, p. 283.

[630] 'We all know the notions entertained by the vulgar concerning all hereticks; we know the pride of schoolmen and many ecclesiasticks; how it galls their insolent vanity that any man should assume to himself to be wiser than they in tenets of religion by differing from them.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 167.

Such large views of liberty were far in advance of the country in which they were propounded, and could exercise no influence, except over a few thinking men. These, and similar doctrines, were, however, repeated by Hutcheson, in his lectures, every year.[631] And strange, indeed, they must have seemed. To those who received them, they were utterly subversive of the prevailing theological spirit, which regarded toleration as impious, and which, seeking to confine the human mind within the limits of foregone conclusions, deemed it a duty to chastise those who overstepped them. In opposition to this, Hutcheson let in the elements of inquiry, of discussion, and of doubt. There is also another point in which his philosophy is memorable, as the beginning of the great rebellion of the Scotch intellect. We saw, in the last chapter, how successfully the teachers of the people had inculcated doctrines of the darkest asceticism, and how naturally those doctrines had arisen out of the enormous authority possessed by the Church. Against such notions, Hutcheson set his face strenuously. He rightly supposed, that an admiration of every kind of beauty, so far from being sinful, is essential to a complete and well-balanced mind; and the most original part of his philosophy consists of the inquiries which he made into the working and origin of our ideas on that subject. Hitherto, the Scotch had been taught that the emotions which beauty excites, were owing to the corruption of our nature, and ought to be repressed. Hutcheson, on the other hand, insisted that they were good in themselves; that they were part of the general scheme of human affairs, and that they deserved a special and scientific study.[632] And with such skill did he investigate them, that, in the opinion of one of the highest living authorities, he is the originator of all subsequent inquiries into these matters; his being the first attempt to deal with the subject of beauty in a broad and comprehensive spirit.[633]

[631] 'As he had occasion every year in the course of his lectures to explain the origin of government, and compare the different forms of it, he took peculiar care, while on that subject, to inculcate the importance of civil and religious liberty to the happiness of mankind.' _Leechman's Life of Hutcheson_, p. xxxv., prefixed to Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy.

[632] 'The ideas of beauty and harmony, like other sensible ideas, are necessarily pleasant to us, as well as immediately so.' _Hutcheson's Inquiry into our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue_, p. 11. 'Our sense of beauty seems designed to give us positive pleasure.' p. 71. 'Beauty gives a favourable presumption of good moral dispositions.' p. 257. 'But it is plain we have not in our power the modelling of our senses or desires, to form them for a private interest; they are fixed for us by the Author of our nature, subservient to the interest of the system; so that each individual is made, previously to his own choice, a member of a great body, and affected with the fortunes of the whole; or at least of many parts of it; nor can he break himself off at pleasure.' _Hutcheson's Essay on the Passions_, pp. 105, 106.

[633] 'Fille de la scholastique, la philosophie moderne est demeurée longtemps étrangère aux grâces, et les _Recherches_ d'Hutcheson présentent, je crois, le premier traité spécial sur le beau, écrit par un moderne. Elles ont paru en 1725. Cette date est presque celle de l'avénement de l'esthétique dans la philosophie européenne. L'ouvrage du père André, en France, est de 1741, celui de Baumgarten, en Allemagne, est de 1750. Ce n'est pas un petit honneur à Hutcheson d'avoir le premier soumis l'idée du beau à une analyse méthodique et régulière.' _Cousin, Histoire de la Philosophie_, première série, vol. iv. p. 84.

Not only in speculative views, but also in practical recommendations, Hutcheson displayed the same tendency; every where endeavouring to break down that gloomy fabric which superstition had built up.[634] His predecessors, and, indeed, nearly all his contemporaries who exercised much influence, represented pleasure as immoral, and opposed themselves to the fine arts, which they considered dangerous, as ministering to our pleasures, and thereby distracting our minds from serious concerns. Hutcheson, however, declared that the fine arts were to be cherished; for, he said, they are not only agreeable, but also reputable, and to employ our time with them is honourable.[635] That such is the case is obvious enough to us, but it was long, indeed, since similar language had been heard in Scotland from a great public teacher, and it was completely opposed to the prevailing notions. But Hutcheson went even further. Not content with raising his voice in favour of wealth,[636] which the Scotch clergy stigmatized as one of the most pernicious and carnal of all things, he fearlessly asserted that all our natural appetites are lawful, and that the gratification of them is consistent with the highest virtue.[637] In his eyes, they were lawful, because they were natural; while, according to the theological theory, their being natural made them unlawful. And here lies the fundamental difference between the practical views of Hutcheson and those previously received. He, like every great thinker since the seventeenth century, loved human nature, and respected it; but he neither loved nor respected those who unduly trammelled it, and thereby weakened its vigour, as well as impaired its beauty. He placed more confidence in mankind, than in the rulers of mankind. The Scotch divines, who preceded him, were the libellers of their species; they calumniated the whole human race. According to them, there was nothing in us but sin and corruption; and, therefore, all our desires were to be checked. It is the peculiar glory of Hutcheson, that he was the first man in Scotland who publicly combated these degrading notions. With a noble and lofty aim did he undertake his task. Venerating the human mind, he was bent on vindicating its dignity against those who disputed its titles. Unhappily, he could not succeed; the prejudices of his time were too strong. Still, he did all that was in his power. He opposed the tide which he was unable to stem; he attacked what it was impossible to destroy; and he cast from his philosophy, with vehement scorn, those base prejudices, which, by aspersing all that is great and magnanimous, had long blinded the eyes of their contemporaries, and, by bringing into fresh prominence the old and mischievous dogma of moral degeneracy, had represented our nature as a compound of vices, and had been unable to see how many virtues we really possess, how much of the spirit of self-sacrifice, and of free disinterested benevolence has always existed; how much of good even the worst of us retain; and how, among the ordinary and average characters of whom the world is composed, the desire of benefiting others is more frequent than the desire of hurting them, kindness is more common than cruelty, and the number of good deeds does, on the whole, far outweigh the number of bad ones.[638]

[634] In his _Inquiry into Beauty and Virtue_, p. 107, he so completely opposed the prevailing notions, as to assert that 'our perception of pleasure is necessary, and nothing is advantageous or naturally good to us, but what is apt to raise pleasure, mediately, or immediately.' Compare what he says at p. 91 respecting 'superstitious prejudices against actions apprehended as offensive to the Deity.'

[635] 'Hence a taste for the ingenious arts of musick, sculpture, painting, and even for the manly diversions, is reputable.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 83. At p. 129 he says, that in them 'our time is agreeably and honourably employed.' See also vol. ii. p. 115.

[636] 'Wealth and power are truly useful, not only for the natural conveniences or pleasures of life, but as a fund for good offices.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 104. Compare _Hutcheson on Beauty and Virtue_, pp. 93-95; and his _Essay on the Passions and Affections_, pp. 8, 9, 99. 'How weak also are the reasonings of some recluse moralists, who condemn in general all pursuits of wealth or power, as below a perfectly virtuous character; since wealth and power are the most effectual means, and the most powerful instruments, even of the greatest virtues, and most generous actions.'

[637] 'The chief happiness of any being must consist in the full enjoyment of all the gratifications its nature desires and is capable of.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 100. 'The highest sensual enjoyments may be experienced by those who employ both mind and body vigorously in social virtuous offices, and allow all the natural appetites to recur in their due seasons.' p. 121. 'Nay, as in fact it is for the good of the system that every desire and sense natural to us, even those of the lowest kinds, should be gratified as far as their gratification is consistent with the nobler enjoyments, and in a just subordination to them; there seems a natural notion of _right_ to attend them all.' pp. 254, 255.

[638] ''Tis pleasant to observe how those authors who paint out our nature as a compound of sensuality, selfishness, and cunning, forget themselves on this subject in their descriptions of youth, when the natural temper is less disguised than in the subsequent parts of life. 'Tis made up of many keen, inconstant passions, many of them generous; 'tis fond of present pleasure, but 'tis also profusely kind and liberal to favourites; careless about distant interests of its own; full of confidence in others; studious of praise for kindness and generosity; prone to friendships, and void of suspicion.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. ii. p. 11. 'Men are often subject to anger, and upon sudden provocations do injuries to each other, and that only from self love without malice; but the greatest part of their lives is employed in offices of natural affection, friendship, innocent self love, or love of a country.' _Hutcheson's Essay on the Passions_, pp. 97, 98. And at p. 165: 'There are no doubt many furious starts of passion, in which malice may seem to have place in our constitution; but how seldom and how short, in comparison of years spent in fixed kind pursuits of the good of a family, a party, a country?' ... 'Here men are apt to let their imaginations run out upon all the robberies, piracies, murders, perjuries, frauds, massacres, assassinations, they have ever either heard of, or read in history; thence concluding all mankind to be very wicked; as if a court of justice were the proper place for making an estimate of the morals of mankind, or an hospital of the healthfulness of a climate. Ought they not to consider that the number of honest citizens and farmers far surpasses that of all sorts of criminals in any state; and that the innocent or kind actions of even criminals themselves, surpass their crimes in numbers? That it is the rarity of crimes, in comparison of innocent or good actions, which engages our attention to them, and makes them be recorded in history; while incomparably more honest, generous, domestic actions are overlooked, only because they are so common; as one great danger, or one month's sickness, shall become a frequently repeated story, during a long life of health and safety.'

Thus much as to the tendency of Hutcheson's philosophy.[639] We have now to ascertain his method, that is to say, the plan which he adopted in order to obtain his results. This is a very important part of our present inquiry; and we shall find that, in the study of moral philosophy, as in the study of all subjects not yet raised to sciences, there are not only two methods, but that each method leads to different consequences. If we proceed by induction, we arrive at one conclusion; if we proceed by deduction, we arrive at another. This difference in the results, is always a proof that the subject, in which the difference exists, is not yet capable of scientific treatment, and that some preliminary difficulties have to be removed, before it can pass from the empirical stage into the scientific one. As soon as those difficulties are got rid of, the results obtained by induction, will correspond with those obtained by deduction; supposing, of course, that both lines of argument are fairly managed. In such case, it will be of no importance whether we reason from particulars to generals, or from generals to particulars. Either plan will yield the same consequences, and this agreement between the consequences, proves that our investigation is, properly speaking, scientific. Thus, for instance, in chemistry, if, by reasoning deductively from general principles, we could always predict what would happen when we united two or more elements, even supposing those elements were new to us; and if, by reasoning inductively from each element, we could arrive at the same conclusion, one process would corroborate the other, and, by their mutual verification, the science would be complete. In chemistry, we cannot do this; therefore, chemistry is not yet a science, although, since the introduction into it, by Dalton, of the ideas of weight and number, there is every prospect of its becoming one. On the other hand, astronomy is a science, because, by employing the deductive weapon of mathematics, we can compute the motions and perturbations of bodies; and, by employing the inductive weapon of observation, the telescope reveals to us the accuracy of our previous, and, as it were, foregone, inferences. The fact agrees with the idea; the particular event confirms the general principle; the principle explains the event; and their unanimity authorizes us to believe that we must be right, since, proceed as we may, the conclusion is the same; and the inductive plan, of striking averages, harmonizes with the deductive plan, of reasoning from ideas.

[639] In 1731, Wodrow, who was the last really great specimen of the old Presbyterian divines, and who was not a little shocked at the changes he saw going on around him, writes: 'When Dr. Calamy heard of Mr. Hutcheson's being called to Glasgow, he smiled, and said, I think to Thomas Randy, that he was not for Scotland, as he thought from his book; and that he would be reckoned there as unorthodox as Mr. Simson. The Doctor has a strange way of fishing out privat storyes and things that pass in Scotland.' _Wodrow's Analecta_, vol. iv. p. 227. It is interesting to compare with this, the remarks which that worldly-minded clergyman, the Rev. Alexander Carlyle, has made upon Hutcheson. See _Carlyle's Autobiography_, Edinburgh, 1860, 2d edit. pp. 82-85.

But, in the study of morals there is no such harmony. Partly from the force of prejudice, and partly from the complexity of the subject, all attempts at a scientific investigation of morals have failed. It is not, therefore, surprising that, in this field, the inductive inquirer arrives at one conclusion, and the deductive inquirer at another. The inductive inquirer endeavours to attain his object by observing the actions of men, and subjecting them to analysis, in order to learn the principles which regulate them. The deductive inquirer, beginning at the other end, assumes certain principles as original, and reasons from them to the facts which actually appear in the world. The former proceeds from the concrete to the abstract; the latter, from the abstract to the concrete. The inductive moralist looks at the history of past society, or at the condition of the present, and takes for granted that the first step is, to assemble the facts, and then to generalize them. The deductive inquirer, using the facts rather to illustrate his principles, than to suggest them, appeals, in the first place, not to external facts, but to internal ideas, and he makes those ideas the major premiss of a syllogistic argument. Both parties agree, that we have the power of judging some actions to be right, and others to be wrong. But as to how we get that power, and as to what that power is, they are at utter variance. The inductive philosopher says, that its object is happiness, that we get it by association, and that it is due to the action and reaction of social causes, which are susceptible of analysis. The deductive philosopher says, that this power of distinguishing between right and wrong, aims, not at happiness, but at truth; that it is inherent, that it cannot be analyzed, that it is a primary conviction, and that we may assume it and reason from it, but can never hope to explain it by reasoning to it.

It requires but a slight acquaintance with the works of Hutcheson to see that he belongs to the latter of these two schools. He assumes, that all men have what he terms a moral faculty, which, being an original principle, does not admit of analysis.[640] He further assumes, that the business of this faculty is to regulate all our powers.[641] From these two assumptions, he reasons downwards to the visible facts of our conduct, and deductively constructs the general scheme of life. His plan being entirely synthetic, he depreciates the analytic method, and complains of it as an artful attempt to diminish the number of our perceptive powers.[642] The truth is, that every such diminution would have taken away some of his original principles, and would thereby have prevented him from using them as the major premisses of separate arguments. And if you deprive a deductive reasoner of his major premisses, you leave him nothing on which to stand. Hutcheson, therefore, like all the philosophers of his school, was extremely jealous of the invasions of the inductive spirit, with its constant tendency to attack convictions supposed to be primary, and seek to resolve them into their elements. He repulsed such encroachments upon his major premisses, because the power and beauty of his method were displayed in reasoning from the premisses, and not in reasoning to them. According to him, the moral faculty, and the authority which it exercised, were impervious to analysis; it was impossible to track them higher, or to resolve them into simpler constituents; and it was in vain that many attempted to refer them to circumstances external to themselves, such as education, custom, or the association of ideas.[643]

[640] In his _Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 52, he calls it 'an original determination or sense in our nature, not capable of being referred to other powers of perception.'

[641] 'This moral sense from its very nature appears to be designed for regulating and controlling all our powers.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 61.

[642] See, in his _Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 79, his complaint against those who 'would reduce all our perceptive powers to a very small number, by one artful reference or another.'

[643] ''Tis in vain here to alledge instruction, education, custom, or association of ideas, as the original of moral approbation.' _Hutcheson's Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 57. Compare his work on _Beauty and Virtue_, p. 84.

Hence, the judgments which men pass upon the conduct of others, or of themselves, are, in their origin, altogether inexplicable; each judgment being merely a different form of one great moral faculty. Inasmuch, however, as that faculty escapes observation, and is only known by its results, it is evident that, for all purposes of reasoning, the judgments must be deemed primary, and arguments are to be constructed from them, as if they were the ultimate and highest conditions of our nature. In this way, Hutcheson was led to that love of multiplying original principles, which Sir James Mackintosh has justly noticed as a characteristic of his philosophy, and, after him, of the Scotch philosophy in general;[644] though the distinguished author of this remark has failed to perceive that such characteristic was but a single part of a far larger scheme, and was intimately connected with those habits of deductive thought which a long train of preceding circumstances had indelibly imprinted on the Scotch mind.

[644] 'To him may also be ascribed that proneness to multiply ultimate and original principles in human nature, which characterised the Scottish School till the second extinction of a passion for metaphysical speculation in Scotland.' _Mackintosh's Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy_, edit. Whewell, Edinburgh, 1837, p. 208.

In Hutcheson, the tendency was so strong, as to make him believe, that, by arguing from a certain number of original principles, he could construct the theory and explain the march of human affairs, with little or no aid from the experience of the past, or, indeed, of the present. His views, for instance, respecting the nature and objects of legislation, criminal, as well as civil, might have been written by a recluse who had never quitted his hermitage, and whose purity was still unsoiled by the realities of the world. Starting from the so-called nature of things, his first steps were ideal, and from them he sought to advance to the actual. In his account of the duties of life, as they existed before the power of government was consolidated, he quotes no evidence to show what really happened among barbarous tribes who were in that state; but he contents himself with deductive inferences from the principles he had previously laid down.[645] Difficult questions relating to the laws of property, are treated in the same manner; that is to say, the conclusions respecting them are arrived at on speculative grounds, and not by comparing how the different enactments have worked in different countries.[646] Experience is either shut out, or made subordinate to theory; and facts are adduced to illustrate the inference, but not to suggest it. So, too, the proper relation between the people and their rulers, and the amount of liberty which the people should possess, instead of being inductively generalized from an historical inquiry into the circumstances which had produced most happiness, might, in the opinion of Hutcheson, be ascertained by reasoning from the nature of government, and from the ends for which it was instituted.[647]

[645] See his ingenious chapter, entitled 'A deduction of the more special laws of nature and duties of life, previous to civil government, and other adventitious states.' _Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 227; and compare vol. ii. pp. 294-309, 'How civil power is acquired.'

[646] See, for example, his remarks on 'the right of possession.' _Moral Philosophy_, vol. i. p. 344; on 'rights by mortgage,' p. 350; and on inheritance, p. 356.

[647] In his _Moral Philosophy_, vol. ii. pp. 346, 347, he sums up a long argument on 'the nature of civil laws,' by saying: 'Thus the general duties of magistrates and subjects are discoverable from the nature of the trust committed to them, and the end of all civil power.'

The next great attempt to study the actions of men scientifically, and to generalize the principles of their conduct without the intervention of supernatural ideas, was made by Adam Smith, who, in 1759, published his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, and, in 1776, his _Wealth of Nations_. To understand the philosophy of this, by far the greatest of all the Scotch thinkers, both works must be taken together, and considered as one; since they are, in reality, the two divisions of a single subject. In the _Moral Sentiments_, he investigates the sympathetic part of human nature; in the _Wealth of Nations_, he investigates its selfish part. And as all of us are sympathetic as well as selfish; in other words, as all of us look without as well as within, and as this classification is a primary and exhaustive division of our motives to action, it is evident, that if Adam Smith had completely accomplished his vast design, he would at once have raised the study of human nature to a science, leaving nothing for subsequent inquirers except to ascertain the minor springs of affairs, all of which would find their place in this general scheme, and be deemed subordinate to it. In his attempt to perform this prodigious task, and to traverse the enormous field which he saw lying before him, he soon perceived that an inductive investigation was impossible, because it would require the labour of many lives even to assemble the materials from which the generalization was to be made. Moved by this reflection, and, probably, moved still more by the intellectual habits which prevailed around him, he resolved on adopting the deductive method instead of the inductive; but, in seeking for the premisses from which he was to reason, and on which his structure was to be built, he resorted to a peculiar artifice, which is perfectly valid, and which he had an undoubted right to employ, though, to make it available, requires such delicate tact, and involves so many refinements, that extremely few writers have used it with effect on social questions either before or since.

The plan to which I allude is, that when any subject becomes unmanageable by the inductive method, whether from the impossibility of experimenting upon it, or from its extreme natural complexity, or from the presence of immense and bewildering details collected around it, we may, in all such cases, make an imaginary separation of inseparable facts; and reason upon trains of events which have no real and independent existence, and which are nowhere to be found except in the mind of the inquirer. A result obtained in this way, cannot be strictly true; but, if we have reasoned accurately, it will be as near truth as were the premisses from which we started. To make it perfectly true, we must confront it with other results, which we have arrived at in a similar way, and from the same subject. These separate inferences may eventually be coördinated into a single system; so that, while each inference contains only an imperfect truth, the whole of the inferences, when put together, will contain perfect truth.

Such hypothetical arguments are evidently based upon an intentional suppression of facts; and the artifice is necessary, because, without the suppression, the facts would be unmanageable. Each argument leads to a conclusion which approximates to truth; hence, whenever the premisses are so comprehensive as almost to exhaust the facts to which they refer, the conclusion will be so near to complete truth as to be of the greatest value, even before it is coördinated with other conclusions drawn from the same department of inquiry.

Geometry exhibits the most perfect example of this logical stratagem. The object of the geometrician is, to generalize the laws of space; in other words, to ascertain the necessary and universal relations of its various parts. Inasmuch, however, as space would have no parts unless it were divided, the geometrician is forced to assume such a division; and he takes the simplest possible form of it, a division by lines. Now, a line considered as a fact, that is, as it is found in the actual world, must always have two qualities, length and breadth. However slight these qualities may be, every line has them both. But if the geometrician took both into consideration, he would find himself in the presence of a problem too complicated for the resources of the human understanding to deal with; or, at all events, too complicated for the present resources of our knowledge. He, therefore, by a scientific artifice, deliberately strikes off one of these qualities, and asserts that a line is length without breadth. He knows that the assertion is false, but he also knows that it is necessary. For, if you deny it, he can prove nothing. If you insist upon his letting into his premisses the idea of breadth, he is unable to proceed, and the whole fabric of geometry falls to the ground. Since, however, the breadth of the faintest line is so slight as to be incapable of measurement, except by an instrument used under the microscope, it follows that the assumption, that there can be lines without breadth, is so nearly true, that our senses, when unassisted by art, cannot detect the error. Formerly, and until the invention of the micrometer, in the seventeenth century, it was impossible to detect it at all. Hence, the conclusions of the geometrician approximate so close to truth, that we are justified in accepting them as true. The flaw is too minute to be perceived. But that there is a flaw, appears to me certain. It appears certain, that whenever something is kept back in the premisses, something must be wanting in the conclusion. In all such cases, the field of inquiry has not been entirely covered; and part of the preliminary facts being suppressed, it must, I think, be admitted, that complete truth is unattainable, and that no problem in geometry has yet been exhaustively solved.[648]

[648] That is, so far as the facts are concerned. Geometry, considered in the most elevated manner, rests on ideas, and from that point of view is impregnable, unless the axioms can be overthrown. But if geometricians will insist on having definitions as well as axioms, they gain, no doubt, increased clearness, but they lose something in accuracy. I apprehend that, without definitions, geometry could not be a science of space, but would be a science of magnitudes, ideally conceived and consequently as pure as ratiocination could make it. This does not touch the question as to the empirical origin of the axioms.

Still, the amazing triumphs effected in this branch of mathematics, show how powerful a weapon that form of deduction is, which proceeds by an artificial separation of facts, in themselves inseparable. So little, however, is the philosophy of the method understood, that when, late in the eighteenth century, political economy assumed a scientific form, many persons, who were otherwise well instructed, reproached its cultivators with their hard-heartedness; such objectors being unable to see, that the science could not be constructed if it were necessary to take in the whole range of generous and benevolent affections. The political economist aims at discovering the laws of wealth, which are far too complicated to be studied under every aspect. He, therefore, selects one of those aspects, and generalizes the laws as they are exhibited in the selfish parts of human nature. And he is right in doing so, simply because men, in the pursuit of wealth, consider their own gratification oftener than the gratification of others. Hence, he, like the geometrician, blots out one part of his premisses, in order that he may manipulate the remaining part with greater ease. But we must always remember, that political economy, though a profound and beautiful science, is only a science of one department of life, and is founded upon a suppression of some of the facts in which all large societies abound. It suppresses, or, what comes to the same thing, it ignores, many high and magnanimous feelings which we could ill afford to lose. We are not, therefore, to allow its conclusions to override all other conclusions. We may accept them in science, and yet reject them in practice. Thus, the political economist, when confining himself to his own department, says, with good reason, that it is both absurd and mischievous for government to undertake to supply the working-classes with employment. This assertion, he, as a political economist, can prove; and yet, notwithstanding its scientific truth, it may be practically right for a government to do the exact opposite. It may be right for a government to supply the employment, when the people are so ignorant as to demand it, and when, at the same time, they are so powerful as to plunge the country into anarchy if the demand is refused. Here, the view of the politician takes in all the premisses of which the political economist had only taken in a portion. In the same way, as a matter of economic science, it is wrong for any one to relieve the poor; since nothing is better established, than that to relieve poverty increases it, by encouraging improvidence. But, in spite of this, the antagonistic principle of sympathy will come into play, and will, in some minds, operate with such force, as to make it advisable, that he who feels it should give alms, because, if he abstains from giving them, the violence which he does to his own nature may inflict more mischief on himself, than his bestowal of charity would inflict on the general interests of society.

It will not, I hope, be considered that, in these remarks, I have digressed from the main argument of the present chapter, since, although, in making them, I have aimed at clearing up a general question respecting the nature of scientific proof, I have only done so with the more particular object of illustrating the philosophy of Adam Smith, and of explaining the method which that most profound and original thinker pursued. We shall now be able to see how entirely his plan was deductive, and what a peculiar form of deduction it was. In his two great works, he first lays down certain ideas, and from them he marches on to the facts of the external world. And, in each work, he reasons from only part of his premisses; supplying the other part in the other work. None of us are exclusively selfish, and none of us are exclusively sympathetic. But Adam Smith separates in speculation qualities which are inseparable in reality. In his _Moral Sentiments_, he ascribes our actions to sympathy; in his _Wealth of Nations_, he ascribes them to selfishness. A short view of these two works will prove the existence of this fundamental difference, and will enable us to perceive that each is supplementary to the other; so that, in order to understand either, it is necessary to study both.

In the _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, Adam Smith lays down one great principle from which he reasons, and to which all the others are subordinate. This principle is, that the rules which we prescribe to ourselves, and which govern our conduct, are solely arrived at by observing the conduct of others.[649] We judge ourselves, because we had previously judged them. Our notions are obtained from without, and not from within. If, therefore, we lived entirely alone, we could have no idea of merit or demerit, and it would be impossible for us to form an opinion as to whether our sentiments were right or wrong.[650] To acquire this knowledge, we must look abroad. Inasmuch, however, as we have no direct experience of what other persons actually feel, we can only gain the information by conceiving what we should feel if we were in their place.[651] Hence, all men are, in imagination, constantly changing situations with others; and though the change is ideal, and lasts but for a moment, it is the foundation of that great and universal impulse which is called Sympathy.[652]

[649] 'Our continual observations upon the conduct of others, insensibly lead us to form to ourselves certain general rules concerning what is fit and proper either to be done or to be avoided.' ... 'It is thus that the general rules of morality are formed. They are ultimately founded upon experience of what, in particular instances, our moral faculties, our natural sense of merit and propriety, approve or disapprove of. We do not originally approve or condemn particular actions; because, upon examination, they appear to be agreeable or inconsistent with a certain general rule. The general rule, on the contrary, is formed by finding from experience that all actions of a certain kind, or circumstanced in a certain manner, are approved of or disapproved of.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. pp. 219, 220. At p. 153: 'We either approve or disapprove of our own conduct according as we feel that, when we place ourselves in the situation of another man, and view it, as it were, with his eyes and from his station, we either can or cannot entirely enter into and sympathize with the sentiments and motives which influenced it.'

[650] 'Were it possible that a human creature could grow up to manhood in some solitary place, without any communication with his own species, he could no more think of his own character, of the propriety or demerit of his own sentiments and conduct, of the beauty or deformity of his own mind, than of the beauty and deformity of his own face.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 154. 'Our first moral criticisms are exercised upon the characters and conduct of other people.' p. 156.

[651] 'As we have no immediate experience of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 2.

[652] 'That imaginary change of situation, upon which their sympathy is founded, is but momentary.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 21. Compare vol. ii. p. 206.

By proceeding from these premisses, a vast number of social phenomena may be explained. We naturally sympathize with joy more than with sorrow.[653] Hence, that admiration for prosperous and successful persons, which is quite independent of any benefit we expect from them; and hence, too, the existence of different ranks and of social distinctions, all of which emanate from the same source.[654] Hence, also, the feeling of loyalty, which is a product, not of reason, nor of fear, nor of a sense of public convenience, but rather of sympathy with those above us, begetting an extraordinary compassion for even their ordinary sufferings.[655] Custom and fashion play a great part in the world, but they owe their origin entirely to sympathy;[656] and so do the various systems of philosophy which have flourished at different times, the disagreement between which depends on the fact, that each philosopher has sympathized with different ideas, some sympathizing with the notion of fitness or congruity, some with that of prudence, some with that of benevolence, and every one developing the conception paramount in his own mind.[657] To sympathy, again, we must ascribe the establishment of rewards and punishments, and the whole of our criminal laws, none of which would have existed but for our disposition to sympathize with those who either do good or suffer harm; for the circumstance of society being protected by penal laws, is a subsequent and subordinate discovery, which confirms our sense of their propriety, but did not suggest it.[658] The same principle causes the difference of character exhibited by different classes, such as the irritability of poets, compared with the coolness of mathematicians;[659] it likewise causes that social difference between the sexes, which makes men more remarkable for generosity, and women for humanity.[660] All these results illustrate the workings of sympathy, and are the remote, but still the direct, operations of that principle. Indeed, we can trace to it some of the minutest divisions of character; pride and vanity, for instance, being dependent on it, although those two passions are often confused together, and are sometimes strangely blended in the same mind.[661]

[653] 'I will venture to affirm that, when there is no envy in the case, our propensity to sympathize with joy is much stronger than our propensity to sympathize with sorrow.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 58. 'It is because mankind are disposed to sympathize more entirely with our joy than with our sorrow, that we make parade of our riches, and conceal our poverty.' p. 65.

[654] 'Upon this disposition of mankind to go along with all the passions of the rich and the powerful, is founded the distinction of ranks, and the order of society. Our obsequiousness to our superiors more frequently arises from our admiration for the advantages of their situation, than from any private expectations of benefit from their good will.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 69. See also vol. ii. p. 72.

[655] See the striking remarks in _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 70-72.

[656] _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. ii. pp. 23 seq.

[657] _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. ii. pp. 131-244. This sketch of the different systems of philosophy is perhaps the ablest part of the book, notwithstanding two or three errors which it contains.

[658] _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. pp. 89, 92, 115, 116. The utmost which he will concede to the notion of social convenience, is that 'we frequently have occasion to confirm our natural sense of the propriety and fitness of punishment, by reflecting how necessary it is for preserving the order of society.' p. 122.

[659] _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. pp. 172-174.

[660] 'Humanity is the virtue of a woman, generosity of a man. The fair sex, who have commonly much more tenderness than ours, have seldom so much generosity.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. ii. p. 19. Sufficient facts have not yet been collected to enable us to test the truth of this remark, and the loose experience of individual observers is worth very little on so wide a subject. Still, I venture to doubt the truth of Adam Smith's distinction. I suspect that women are, on the whole, more generous than men, as well as more tender. But to establish a proposition of this sort, would require the most extensive research, made by a careful and analytic mind; and, at present, there is not even any tolerably good work on the mental characteristics which distinguish the sexes, and there never will be one until physiology is united with biography.

[661] _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. ii. pp. 115-122.

Sympathy, then, is the main-spring of human conduct. It arises, not so much from witnessing the passions of other persons, as from witnessing the situation which excites those passions.[662] To this single process we are indebted, not only for the highest principles, but also for the deepest emotions. For, the greatest affection of which we are capable, is merely sympathy fixed into habit; and the love which exists between the nearest relations, is not inherent, but is derived from this mighty and controlling principle, which governs the whole course of affairs.[663]

[662] 'Sympathy, therefore, does not arise so much from the view of the passion, as from that of the situation which excites it.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. i. p. 6.

[663] 'What is called affection, is, in reality, nothing but habitual sympathy.' _Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. ii. p. 63. 'In some tragedies and romances, we meet with many beautiful and interesting scenes, founded upon what is called the force of blood, or upon the wonderful affection which near relations are supposed to conceive for one another, even before they know that they have any such connection. This force of blood, however, I am afraid, exists nowhere but in tragedies and romances.' p. 66.

By this bold hypothesis, Adam Smith, at one stroke, so narrowed the field of inquiry, as to exclude from it all considerations of selfishness as a primary principle, and only to admit its great antagonist, sympathy. The existence of the antagonism, he distinctly recognizes. For, he will not allow that sympathy is in any way to be deemed a selfish principle.[664] Although he knew that it is pleasurable, and that all pleasure contains an element of selfishness, it did not suit the method of his philosophy to subject the principle of sympathy to such an inductive analysis as would reveal its elements. His business was, to reason from it, and not to it. Concentrating his energy upon the deductive process, and displaying that dialectic skill which is natural to his countrymen, and of which he himself was one of the most consummate masters the world has ever seen, he constructed a system of philosophy, imperfect indeed, because the premisses were imperfect, but approaching truth as closely as it was possible for any one to do who abstained from giving due consideration to the selfish part of human nature. Into the workings of its sympathetic part, he looked with a minuteness, and he reasoned from it with a subtlety, which make his work the most important that has ever been written on this interesting subject. But, inasmuch as his plan involved a deliberate suppression of preliminary and essential facts, the results which he obtained do not strictly correspond to those which are actually observed in the world.[665] This, however, as I have shown, is not a valid objection; since such discrepancy between the ideal and the actual, or between the abstract and the concrete, is the necessary consequence of that still early condition of our knowledge, which forces us to study complicated questions piecemeal, and to raise them to sciences by separate and fragmentary investigations.

[664] 'Sympathy, however, cannot, in any sense, be regarded as a selfish principle.' _Theory of Moral Sentiments_, vol. ii. p. 206. In vol. i. p. 9, he complains of 'those who are fond of deducing all our sentiments from certain refinements of self-love.'

[665] This is noticed by Sir James Mackintosh, whose sketch of Adam Smith is hasty, and somewhat superficial, but who, nevertheless, truly observes, that Smith 'has exposed himself to objections founded on experience, to which it is impossible to attempt any answer.' _Mackintosh's Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy_, pp. 239, 240. See also a letter from Hume to Adam Smith, in _Burton's Life and Correspondence of Hume_, vol. ii. p. 60.

That Adam Smith saw this necessity, and that his seeing it was the cause of the method he pursued, is evident from the fact, that in his next great work he followed the same plan, and, though he argued from new premisses, he carefully avoided arguing from any of the old ones. Convinced that, in his theory of morals, he had reasoned as accurately as possible from the principles supplied by sympathy, his capacious and insatiable mind, deeming that nothing had been done while aught remained to do, urged him to pass on to the opposite passion of selfishness, and treat it in the same manner, so that the whole domain of thought might be covered. This he did in his _Wealth of Nations_, which, though even a greater work than his _Moral Sentiments_, is equally one-sided, in reference to the principles which it assumes. It assumes that selfishness is the main regulator of human affairs, just as his previous work had assumed sympathy to be so. Between the two works there elapsed an interval of seventeen years; the _Wealth of Nations_ not being published till 1776. But what shows that to their author both were part of a single scheme, is the notable circumstance, that, so early as 1753, he had laid down the principles which his later work contains.[666] This was while his former work was still in meditation, and before it had seen the light. It is, therefore, clear, that the study which he made, first of one passion, and then of its opposite, was not a capricious or accidental arrangement, but was the consequence of that vast idea which presided over all his labours, and which, when they are rightly understood, gives to them a magnificent unity. And a glorious object of ambition it was. His aspiring and comprehensive genius, sweeping the distant horizon, and taking in the intermediate space at a glance, sought to traverse the whole ground in two separate and independent directions, indulging the hope, that, by supplying in one line of argument the premisses which were wanting in the other, their opposite conclusions would be compensatory rather than hostile, and would serve as a broad and permanent basis on which one great science of human nature might be safely built.

[666] 'Mr. Smith's political lectures, comprehending the fundamental principles of his "Inquiry," were delivered at Glasgow as early as the year 1752 or 1753.' _Dugald Stewart's Life of Adam Smith_, p. lxxviii., prefixed to _Smith's Posthumous Essays_, London, 4to, 1795.

The _Wealth of Nations_ is, as I have elsewhere observed,[667] probably the most important book which has ever been written, whether we consider the amount of original thought which it contains, or its practical influence. Its practical recommendations were extremely favourable to those doctrines of freedom which the eighteenth century ushered in; and this secured to them an attention which otherwise they would not have received. While, therefore, the _Wealth of Nations_ was the proximate cause of a great change in legislation,[668] a deeper analysis will show, that the success of the book, and, consequently, the alteration of the laws, depended upon the operation of more remote and general causes. It must also be confessed, that those same causes predisposed the mind of Adam Smith to the doctrines of liberty, and gave him a sort of prejudice in favour of conclusions which limited the interference of the legislator. Thus much he borrowed from his age; but one thing he did not borrow. His wide and organizing mind was all his own. This would have made him great under any circumstances; to make him powerful, required a peculiar conjunction of events. That conjunction he enjoyed, and he turned it to good account. The influence of his contemporaries was enough to make him liberal; his own capacity was enough to make him comprehensive. He had, in a most remarkable degree, that exuberance of thought, which is one of the highest forms of genius, but which leads those who possess it into distant excursions, which, though they have one common aim, are often stigmatized as digressions, simply because they who criticize are unable to discern the great principle which pervades the whole, and unites the various parts into a single scheme. This has been especially the case with Adam Smith, whose immortal work has often been exposed to such shallow objections. And certainly, the _Wealth of Nations_ displays a breadth of treatment which those who cannot sympathize with, are very likely to ridicule. The phenomena, not only of wealth, but also of society in general, classified and arranged under their various forms; the origin of the division of labour, and the consequences which that division has produced; the circumstances which gave rise to the invention of money, and to the subsequent changes in its value; the history of those changes traced in different ages, and the history of the relations which the precious metals bear to each other; an examination of the connection between wages and profits, and of the laws which govern the rise and fall of both; another examination of the way in which these are concerned, on the one hand, with the rent of land, and, on the other hand, with the price of commodities; an inquiry into the reason why profits vary in different trades, and at different times; a succinct, but comprehensive, view of the progress of towns in Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire; the fluctuations, during several centuries, in the prices of the food of the people, and a statement of how it is, that, in different stages of society, the relative cost of land and of meat varies; the history of corporation laws and of municipal enactments, and their bearing on the four great classes of apprentices, manufacturers, merchants, and landlords; an account of the immense power and riches formerly enjoyed by the clergy, and of the manner in which, as society advances, they gradually lose their exclusive privileges; the nature of religious dissent, and the reason why the clergy of the established Church can never contend with it on terms of equality, and, therefore, call on the State to help them, and wish to persecute when they cannot persuade; why some sects profess more ascetic principles, and others more luxurious ones; how it was, that, during the feudal times, the nobles acquired their power, and how that power has, ever since, been gradually diminishing; how the rights of territorial jurisdiction originated, and how they died away; how the sovereigns of Europe obtained their revenue, what the sources of it are, and what classes are most heavily taxed in order to supply it; the cause of certain virtues, such as hospitality, flourishing in barbarous ages, and decaying in civilized ones; the influence of inventions and discoveries in altering the distribution of power among the various classes of society; a bold and masterly sketch of the peculiar sort of advantages which Europe derived from the discovery of America and of the passage round the Cape; the origin of universities, their degeneracy from their original plan, the corruption which has gradually crept over them, and the reason why they are so unwilling to adopt improvements, and to keep pace with the wants of the age; a comparison between public and private education, and an estimate of their relative advantages;--these, and a vast number of other subjects, respecting the structure and development of society, such as the feudal system, slavery, emancipation of serfs, origin of standing armies, and of mercenary troops, effects produced by tithes, laws of primogeniture, sumptuary laws, international treaties concerning trade, rise of European banks, national debts, influence of dramatic representations over opinions, influence of foreign travels over opinions, colonies, poor-laws,--all topics of a miscellaneous character, and many of them diverging from each other,--all are fused into one great system, and irradiated by the splendour of one great genius. Into that dense and disorderly mass, did Adam Smith introduce symmetry, method, and law. At his touch, anarchy disappeared, and darkness was succeeded by light. Much, of course, he took from his predecessors, though nothing like so much as is commonly supposed. On this sort of borrowing, the best and strongest of us are dependent. But, after making every possible allowance for what he gathered from others, we must honestly say, that no single man ever took so great a step upon so important a subject, and that no single work which is now preserved, contains so many views, which were novel at the time, but which subsequent experience has ratified. What, however, for our present purpose, is most important to observe, is, that he obtained these results by arguing from principles which the selfish part of human nature exclusively supplied, and that he omitted those sympathetic feelings of which every human being possesses at least some share, but which he could not take into consideration, without producing a problem, the number of whose complications it would have been hopeless to unravel.

[667] _History of Civilization_, vol. i. p. 214.

[668] 'Perhaps the only book which produced an immediate, general, and irrevocable change in some of the most important parts of the legislation of all civilized states.' _Mackintosh's Ethical Philosophy_, p. 232. But this is too strongly expressed, as the economical history of France and Germany decisively proves.

To avoid, therefore, being baffled, he simplified the problem, by erasing from his view of human nature those premisses which he had already handled in his _Theory of Moral Sentiments_. At the beginning of the _Wealth of Nations_, he lays down two propositions: 1st, that all wealth is derived, not from land, but from labour; and 2d, that the amount of the wealth depends, partly on the skill with which the labour is conducted, and partly on the proportion between the number of those who labour and the number of those who do not labour. The rest of the work, is an application of these principles, to explain the growth and mechanism of society. In applying them, he everywhere assumes, that the great moving power of all men, all interests, and all classes, in all ages, and in all countries, is selfishness. The opposite power of sympathy he entirely shuts out; and I hardly remember an instance in which even the word occurs in the whole course of his work. Its fundamental assumption is, that each man exclusively follows his own interest, or what he deems to be his own interest. And one of the peculiar features of his book is, to show that, considering society as a whole, it nearly always happens that men, in promoting their own interest, will unintentionally promote the interest of others. Hence, the great practical lesson is, not to restrain selfishness, but to enlighten it; because there is a provision in the nature of things, by which the selfishness of the individual accelerates the progress of the community. According to this view, the prosperity of a country depends on the amount of its capital; the amount of its capital depends on the habit of saving, that is, on parsimony, as opposed to generosity; while the habit of saving is, in its turn, governed by the desire we all feel of bettering our condition,--a desire so inherent in our nature, that it comes with us from the womb, and only leaves us in the grave.[669]

[669] 'Parsimony, and not industry, is the immediate cause of the increase of capital. Industry, indeed, provides the subject which parsimony accumulates; but whatever industry might acquire, if parsimony did not save and store up, the capital would never be the greater.' ... 'But the principle which prompts to save, is the desire of bettering our condition; a desire which, though generally calm and dispassionate, comes with us from the womb, and never leaves us till we go into the grave.' _Smith's Wealth of Nations_, book ii. chap. iii. pp. 138, 140, edit. Edinb. 1839.

This constant effort of every man, to better his own condition, is so salutary, as well as so powerful, that it is often capable of securing the progress of society, in spite of the folly and extravagance of the rulers of mankind.[670] If it were not for this propensity, improvement would be impossible. For human institutions are constantly stopping our advance, by thwarting our natural inclinations.[671] And no wonder that this should be the case, seeing that the men who are at the head of affairs, and by whom the institutions are contrived, have, perhaps, a certain rough and practical sagacity; but being, from the narrowness of their understandings, incapable of large views, their councils are determined by those mere casual fluctuations which alone they are able to perceive.[672] They do not see that we have prospered, not on account of their enactments, but in the teeth of them; and that the real cause of our prosperity is the fact that we enjoy undisturbed the fruit of our own labour.[673] Whenever this right is tolerably secure, every man will be bent on procuring for himself either present enjoyment or future profit; and if he does not aim at one of these objects, he is void of common understanding.[674] If he possess capital, he will probably aim at both, but, in doing so, he will never consider the interest of others; his sole motive will be his own private profit.[675] And it is well that such should be the case. For, by thus pursuing his personal interest, he aids society more than if his views were generous and exalted. Some people affect to carry on trade for the good of others; but this is mere affectation, though, to say the truth, it is an affectation not very common among merchants, and many words are not needed to dissuade them from so foolish a practice.[676]

[670] 'The uniform, constant, and uninterrupted effort of every man to better his condition, the principle from which public and national, as well as private, opulence is originally derived, is frequently powerful enough to maintain the natural progress of things towards improvement, in spite both of the extravagance of government and of the greatest errors of administration. Like the unknown principle of animal life, it frequently restores health and vigour to the constitution, in spite not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of the doctor.' _Wealth of Nations_, book ii. chap. iii. p. 141. 'The natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone, and without any assistance, not only capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, but of surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.' Book iv. chap. v. p. 221.

[671] See an admirable passage, p. 156, too long to quote, beginning, 'If human institutions had never thwarted those natural inclinations,' &c.

[672] 'That insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs.' _Wealth of Nations_, book iv. chap. ii. p. 190.

[673] 'That security which the laws in Great Britain give to every man, that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own labour, is alone sufficient to make any country flourish, notwithstanding these and twenty other absurd regulations of commerce.' _Wealth of Nations_,