destroyed, it is ever thwarting the selfish passions, and creating discontent and remorse in a narrow, sordid breast. This truly cannot otherwise be explained, (unless it is affirmed that habits may be contracted by repeated acts,<195> without any design or appointment of the Author of nature that it should be so) but by saying, that though nature has not planted in us originally any social propensions, yet the circumstances of human life are so ordered by the Author of it, that these propensions must necessarily arise in every mind to such a degree of strength, that nothing shall be able afterwards to eradicate them; nay, so much as to hinder them from exciting bitter dissatisfaction with ones self in the selfish mind whether he will or will not; or at least, from creating horrible disturbance and remorse within such breasts, as often as they sincerely ask themselves, whether the selfish conduct be right or wrong, approveable or disapproveable. If he says, the part that man ought or ought not to act, right and wrong, fit and unfit, are cheats, or meer words without any meaning, he is not one bit nearer to the solution required of him for the phenomena now under consideration. Because the question still returns, why are human affairs so ordered; if these words express no moral immutable differences of affections and actions, and correspondent obligations, that yet universally every thinking man, as often as he thinks, must approve or disapprove, according to that deceit or false imagination, and cannot possibly approvea or<196> disapprove according to any other rule, however he may act? For this is as certain as attraction, elasticity, or any other quality of bodies perceived by our senses, that no person ever can, at any time of life, reflect upon his actions, and approve of falsehood, dissimulation and dishonesty, not to say barbarity and cruelty: or not approve truth, veracity, candour, gratitude and benevolence, and public spirit.
The absurdity of supposing social or any affection to be produced by art.
How the mind is differently affected by any ideas or objects, is matter of experience, and therefore the fact rests upon the same indubitable evidence which ascertains other facts, that is, experience. But in accounting for this fact, it is necessary to resolve it ultimately into our being originally so framed as to be so affected; in which case, the original sociality of our nature is acknowledged; or it must be resolved into a secondary intention of nature, to bring about our being so affected by moral objects, which, so far as it has any meaning at all, must be, to all intents and purposes, the same with a primary and original intention or appointment of nature. There is no middle hypothesis between these two, to explain the matter by. And to say that this, or any influence of objects upon the mind, may be totally the effect of education, custom, exercise, or art, or any cause whatsoever, without any intention or appointment of nature that it should be so, must terminate ultimately in saying, that effects may be produced without causes, or without any appointed manner of their being produced. Now how absurd would it appear to every one, if a person should say, that an artist may work matter into any intended form, any how, at random, without any means, or by whatsoever means he pleases; or that he could do it, though there were no certain knowable way of doing it. This would unanimously be owned to shock all common sense: and yet it is the very same thing that must<197> be said by those who ascribe all that is social in our nature to art, custom, and superadded habit, without nature’s having at least appointed the way in which art, custom, and superadded habit may produce such an effect. For were there not originally in us certain qualities for art and exercise to operate upon, according to certain fixed methods of nature’s institution, there would be no materials for art to work upon; nor no means of operating by any moral art or exercise. In moral nature, as well as in the material world, no quality can be superinduced which is entirely the product of art. All arts of the one kind, as well as of the other, are but certain methods of bringing forth into action qualities naturally belonging to subjects, according to the means appointed by nature for bringing them forth into action, in this or the other degree or proportion, and with these or the other appearances. I shall conclude this head with an admirable description of nature, our social nature in particular, by the excellent moral poet so often quoted.
GOD, in the nature of each being, founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as he fram’d a whole, the whole to bless
On mutual wants built mutual happiness:
So from the first eternal order ran,
And creature link’d to creature, man to man.
Whate’er of life all-quick’ning aether keeps,
Or breathes thro’ air, or shoots beneath the deeps,
Or pours profuse on earth; one nature feeds
The vital flame, and swells the genial seeds.
Not man alone, but all that roam the wood,
Or wing the sky, or roll along the flood,
Each loves itself, but not itself alone,
Each sex desires alike, till two are one:
Nor ends the pleasure with the fierce embrace;
They love themselves, a third time, in their race.<198>
Thus beast and bird their common charge attend,
The mothers nurse it, and the sires defend;
The young dismiss’d to wander earth or air,
There stops the instinct, and there ends the care,
The link dissolves, each seeks a fresh embrace,
Another love succeeds, another race.
A longer care man’s helpless kind demands;
That longer care contracts more lasting bands:
Reflection, reason, still the ties improve,
At once extend the int’rest, and the love:
With choice we fix, with simpathy we burn,
Each virtue in each passion takes its turn;
And still new needs, new helps, new habits rise,
That graft benevolence on charities.
Still as one brood, and as another rose,
These nat’ral love maintain’d, habitual those;
The last scarce ripen’d into perfect man,
Saw helpless him from whom their life began:
Mem’ry and forecast, just returns engage,
That pointed back to youth, this on to age:
While pleasure, gratitude, and hope combin’d
Still spread the int’rest, and preserv’d the kind.
Essay
