from complaining and fretting is itself a very comfortable consciousness of becoming strength of mind, or manly patience. But which is more, wisdom and virtue are able not seldom to extract goods out of such evils, and to convert them into blessings. In distresses that leave room for thought, the virtuous make reflexions which are of great use to the temper: this all the good, who have been afflicted, know; nor can it be doubted by any, seeing even the vicious are often brought by distress to a just sense of things; and come forth out of the furnace of affliction purified from much dross and corruption: made fitter for the offices of society, better friends and neighbours, more prudent, regular and virtuous in their conduct, and consequently much happier.
III. In fine, the pleasures of virtue never fade or become insipid: who was ever weary of acts of generosity, friendship and goodness? or who was ever disturbed by the consciousness of order, and worth,<168> and of merit, with all good and wise beings? Whence proceed dissatisfaction, fickleness of appetite, and nauseating amidst the greatest affluence of outward enjoyments, but from selfishness and sensuality, from seeking pleasure where it is not placed by nature, and cannot therefore be found; from endeavouring to derive more satisfaction from external objects than they are capable to afford; and from overstraining our bodily senses, while in the mean time the exercises of reason and social affection are quite discarded, and have no place in our pursuits and employments? Ambition of doing good may not have means equal to its generous desires, or may be disappointed; but the inward sense of good intention, sufficiently rewards all its scheming, all its activity. But selfishness is tormented with continual disappointments, and by the want of means equal to its insatiability; and if it reflects upon itself, is yet more so by the inward consciousness of its worthless, base, sordid demands. It has been often justly observed, that with regard to the pleasures of the body and the mind, the virtuous man, or he who is acquainted with the exercises of reason and virtue, is the properest judge to make a decision as to the preference; since none can say the pleasures of sense are less satisfactory to him, and he alone hath fully experimented the other. But we may appeal even to the vicious, the most sensual and selfish, whether their joys are durable, and do not commonly terminate in disgust and discontent? or whether, if at any time they have felt the workings of the good affections excited in them, and they have indulged them for a little, these were not the happiest moments they ever enjoyed; the only moments which they take delight to call to mind and reflect upon. No man is so corrupt, so lost to all sense of humanity, as not to have, on some occasions, felt so much of the pleasure attending virtuous affections, as to be able to<169> judge of the happiness the habitually good must enjoy; how pure, how constant and unchanging it must be: and he who is thoroughly acquainted with the pleasures of knowledge, of the contemplation of order and beauty, and above all of benevolence, places his happiness so entirely in them, that he can desire no reward, but better opportunities of exercising and improving virtue. The only longings of his soul are after more knowledge, larger views of nature, and better occasions of exercising friendship, goodness, and social love. What other happiness, wholly distinct from this, can be offered to him which he would look upon as a recompence? Would he prefer larger draughts of merely sensual joy to an improved mind, and more entensive insight into the beauty, order, wisdom and goodness in nature? Or would he imagine himself bettered for all his generous, benign, social, public-spirited endeavours, by any change of circumstances, into ease and softness, in which he should never again feel those amiable, transporting workings of a good mind, which are now his supreme delight? Virtue alone can be its own reward: There can be nothing in nature superior to virtue, either in worth and excellence, or in pleasure and satisfaction, but higher and more enlarged virtue; and therefore to suppose it recompensed by any other enjoyments, of whatever kind,a is to suppose it rewarded by being sunk into a merely animal state, consisting of no higher gratifications than those of sense, without the exercises of reason and generous affection. For all other enjoyments are necessarily as much inferior to virtue, as merely animal or vegetative life is to reason and intelligence.<170>
In whatever light therefore we consider virtue, it is man’s highest excellence and happiness, and the end to which his whole moral structure points and prompts him. Tho’ one may suffer by the vices of others, since no evil in society can be single, but as in the natural body, so in every system, where one member suffers, the whole must suffer in some proportion, the more adjacent parts chiefly. And tho’ one may also suffer with all his virtue by means of the necessary operation of those very laws on which many portions of his happiness, as a certain species or a part of a system, depend; yet without virtue no person can have any happiness of the rational kind, and but very little even in the sensitive way, or by gratifying common lower appetites. The reason is, as hath been said, because in the nature of things the happiness of an insect or brute will only make an insect or brute happy: A nature with further powers must have further enjoyments; and therefore, man, considering the power she is endowed with, must have another happiness, another set of enjoyments, in order to be satisfied, than a being merely consisting of senses without reason, conscience of merit, a public sense and generous affections.
All I have been now saying, is most feelingly expressed by our excellent moral Poet.
What nothing earthly gives, or can destroy,
The soul’s calm sun-shine, and the heart felt joy,
Is virtue’s prize: — 63
And again,
Know, all the good that individuals find,
Or GOD and nature meant to meer mankind;
Reason’s whole pleasures, all the joys of sense
Lie in three words, health, peace, and competence.<171>
But health consists with temperance alone;
And peace, O virtue! peace is all thy own:
The good or bad the gifts of fortune gain;
But these less taste them, as they worse obtain.
Say, in pursuit of profit or delight,
Who risque the most, who take wrong means or right?
Of vice or virtue, whether blest or curst,
Which meets contempt, or which compassion first?
Count all th’ advantage prosp’rous vice attains,
’Tis but what virtue flies from, and disdains;
And grant the bad what happiness they wou’d,
One they must want, which is, to pass for good.
Essay on man, Epist. 4.64
Conclusions concerning virtue; that it is interest or private good.
Thus then it appears that we are made for virtue; and that it is our truest interest; and that whether we are to subsist after this life or not; it is present happiness, the only present happiness which bears any proportion to our constitution.
Some observations on the disputes among modern moralists about obligation.
I shall conclude this article with observing, that philosophers, ancient and modern, have taken routs, which at first view appear very different in establishing the nature of human duty and happiness, but all these terminate in the same conclusion. Whether we consider the fitness of things, the truth of the case, our interest or
