This, if I mistake not, is the true nature of all law, properly so called. Laws. § 7. The laws that men generally refer their actions to, to judge of their rectitude or obliquity, seem to me to be these three. 1. The divine law. 2. The civil law. 3. The law of opinion or reputation, if I may so call it. By the relation they bear to the first of these, men judge whether their actions are sins or duties; by the second, whether they be criminal or innocent; and by the third, whether they be virtues or vices. Divine law, § 8. First, the divine law, whereby I the measure mean that law which God has set to the of sin and actions of men, whether promulgated to duty. them by the light of nature, or the voice of revelation. That God has given a rule whereby men should govern themselves, I think there is nobody so brutish as to deny. He has a right to do it; we are his creatures: he has goodness and wisdom to direct our actions to that which is best; and he has power to enforce it by rewards and punishments, of infinite weight and duration, in another life; for nobody can take us out of his hands. This is the only true touchstone of moral rectitude; and by comparing them to this law it is that men judge of the most considerable moral good or evil of their actions: that is, whether as duties or sins, they are like to procure them happiness or misery from the hands of the Almighty. Civil law, cence. This $9. Secondly, the civil law, the rule set by the commonwealth to the actions of those who belong to it, is another rule to which men refer their actions, to judge whether they be criminal or no. law nobody overlooks, the rewards and punishments that enforce it being ready at hand, and suitable to the power that makes it; which is the force of the commonwealth, engaged to protect the lives, liberties, and possessions of those who live according to its law; and has power to take away life, liberty, or goods from him who disobeys: which is the punishment of offences committed against this law. Philosophical law the measure of virtue and vice. § 10. Thirdly, the law of opinion or reputation. Virtue and vice are names pretended and supposed every where to stand for actions in their own nature right and wrong; and as far as they really are so applied, they so far are coincident with the divine law above-mentioned. But yet whatever is pretended, this is visible, that these names virtue and vice, in the particular instances of their application, through the several nations and societies of men in the world, are constantly attributed only to such actions as in each country and society are in reputation or discredit. Nor is it to be thought strange that men every where should give the name of virtue to those actions which amongst them are judged praiseworthy; and call that vice which they account blamable: since otherwise they would condemn themselves, if they should think any thing right, to which they allowed not commendation; any thing wrong, which they let pass without blame. Thus the measure of what is every where called and esteemed virtue and vice is the approbation or dislike, praise or blame, which by a secret and tacit consent establishes itself in the several societies, tribes, and clubs of men in the world; whereby several actions come to find credit or disgrace amongst them, according to the judgment, maxims, or fashion of that place. For though men uniting into politic societies have resigned up to the public the disposing of all their force, so that they cannot employ it against any fellow-citizens any farther than the law of the country directs; yet they retain still the power of thinking well or ill, approving or disapproving of the actions of those whom they live amongst and converse with: and by this approbation and dislike they establish amongst themselves what they will call virtue and vice. § 11. That this is the common measure of virtue and vice will appear to any one who considers, that though that passes for vice in one country which is counted a virtue, or at least not vice in another; yet, every where, virtue and praise, vice and blame, go together. Virtue is every where that which is thought praiseworthy; and nothing else but that which has the allowance of public esteem is called virtue*. Virtue and praise are so united that they are called often by the same name. "Sunt sua præmia laudi," says Virgil; and so Cicero, " nihil habet natura præstantius, quam honestatem, quam laudem, quam dignitatem, quam decus;" which, he tells you, are all names for the same * Our author, in his preface to the fourth edition, taking notice how apt men have been to mistake him, added what here follows: Of this the ingenious author of the discourse concerning the nature of man has given me a late instance, to mention no other. For the civility of his expressions, and the candour that belongs to his order, forbid me to think that he would have closed his preface with an insinuation, as if in what I had said, book ii. chap. 28, concerning the third rule which men refer their actions to, I went about to make virtue vice, and vice virtue, unless he had mistaken my meaning: which he could not have done, if he had but given himself the trouble to consider what the argument was I was then upon, and what was the chief design of that chapter, plainly enough set down in the fourth section, and those following. For I was there not laying down moral rules, but showing the original and nature of moral ideas, and enumerating the rules men make use of in moral relations, whether those rules were true or false; and, pursuant thereunto, I tell what has every where that denomination, which in the language of that place answers to virtue and vice in ours; which alters not the nature of things, though men do generally judge of and denominate their actions according to the esteem and fashion of the place or sect they are of. If he had been at the pains to reflect on what I had said, b. i. c. 3. § 18, and in this present chapter, § 13, 14, 15, and 20, he would have known what I think of the eternal and unalterable nature of right and wrong, and what I call virtue and vice: and if he had observed that, in the place he quotes, I only report as matter of fact what others call virtue and vice, he would not have found it liable to any great exception. For, I think, I am not much out in saying, that one of the rules made use of in the world for a ground or measure of a moral relation is that esteem and reputation which several sorts of actions find variously in the several societies of men, according to which they are there called virtues or vices; and whatever thing. Tusc. lib. ii. This is the language of the heathen philosophers, who well understood wherein their notions of virtue and vice consisted, and though perhaps by the different temper, education, fashion, maxims, or interests of different sorts of men, it fell out that what was thought praiseworthy in one place escaped not censure in another; and so in different authority the learned Mr. Lowde places in his old English dictionary, I dare say it nowhere tells him (if I should appeal to it) that the same action is not in credit called and counted a virtue in one place, which being in disrepute, passes for and under the name of vice in another. The taking notice that men bestow the names of virtue and vice according to this rule of reputation is all I have done, or can be laid to my charge to have done, towards the making vice virtue, and virtue vice. But the good man does well, and as becomes his calling, to be watchful in such points, and to take the alarm even at expressions which, standing alone by themselves, might sound ill, and be suspected. It is to this zeal, allowable in his function, that I forgive his citing, as he does, these words of mine in § 11. of this chapter: "The exhortations of inspired teachers have not feared to appeal to common repute : 'Whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there by any praise,' &c. Phil. iv. 8." without taking notice of those immediately preceding, which introduce them, and run thus: "Whereby in the corruption of manners, the true boundaries of the law of nature, which ought to be the rule of virtue and vice, were pretty well preserved; so that even the exhortations of inspired teachers," &c. by which words, and the rest of that section, it is plain that I brought that passage of St. Paul, not to prove that the general measure of what men call virtue and vice, throughout the world, was the reputation and fashion of each particular society within itself; but to show, that though it were so, yet, for reasons I there give, men, in that way of denominating their actions, did not for the most part much vary from the law of nature: which is that standing and unalterable rule by which they ought to judge of the moral rectitude and pravity of their actions, and accordingly denominate them virtues or vices. Had Mr. Lowde considered this, he would have found it little to his purpose to have quoted that passage in a sense I used it not; and would, I imagine, have spared the explication he subjoins to it, as not very necessary. But I hope this second edition will give him satisfaction in the point, and that this matter is now so expressed as to show him there was no cause of scruple. Though I am forced to differ from him in those apprehensions he has expressed in the latter end of his preface, concerning what I had said about virtue and vice; yet we are better agreed than he thinks, societies, virtues and vices were changed; yet, as to the main, they for the most part kept the same every where. For since nothing can be more natural than to encourage with esteem and reputation that wherein every one finds his advantage, and to blame and discountenance the contrary, it is no wonder that esteem and discredit, virtue and vice, should in a great mea in what he says in his third chapter, p. 78, concerning natural inscription and innate notions. I shall not deny him the privilege he claims, p. 52, to state the question as he pleases, especially when he states it so as to leave nothing in it contrary to what I have said: for, according to him, innate notions being conditional things, depending upon the concurrence of several other circumstances, in order to the soul's exerting them; all that he says for innate, imprinted, impressed, notions (for of innate ideas he says nothing at all) amounts at last only to this, that there are certain propositions, which though the soul from the beginning, or when a man is born, does not know, yet by assistance from the outward senses, and the help of some previous cultivation, it may afterwards come certainly to know the truth of; which is no more than what I have affirmed in my first book. For I suppose by the soul's exerting them he means its beginning to know them, or else the soul's exerting of notions will be to me a very unintelligible expression; and I think at best is a very unfit one in this case, it misleading men's thoughts by an insinuation, as if these notions were in the mind before the soul exerts them, i. e. before they are known: whereas truly before they are known, there is nothing of them in the mind but a capacity to know them, when the concurrence of those circumstances, which this ingenious author thinks necessary in order to the soul's exerting them, brings them into our knowledge. P. 52. I find him express it thus: "These natural notions are not so imprinted upon the soul as that they naturally and necessarily exert themselves (even in children and idiots) without any assistance from the outward senses, or without the help of some previous cultivation." Here he says they exert themselves, as page 78, that the soul exerts them. When he has explained to himself or others what he means by the soul's exerting inrate notions, or their exerting themselves, and what that previous cultivation and circumstances, in order to their being exerted, are, he will, I suppose, find there is so little of controversy between him and me in the point, bating that he calls that exerting of notions, which I in a more vulgar style call knowing, that I have reason to think he brought in my name upon this occasion only out of the pleasure he has to speak civilly of me; which I must gratefully acknowledge he has done wherever he mentions me, not without conferring on me, as some others have done, a title I have no right to. |