JB/015/336/001

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When moral teachers wander beyond the limits of experience when
they call inguided by other considerations than those of happiness & misery, they
adventure upon a trackless waste leading no man however can say whither.

"How can we reason but from what we know?"

And the intrusion of the Divine being – not as he is known to us but as
he is feigned or fancied, by those who would make his attributes subservient
to their theories – only makes their dogmatism more offensive. The happiness
of mankind is too precious a possession to be sacrificed to any system.
The happiness felicity of a future state as a recompense for virtue, can
never have been intended by the divine a beneficent being to be employed for
introducing false standards of virtue. In truth if moralists are
to dispose of a state of things unknown to them they may as well
advocate one system as another – if they are to have a licence for
coining suppositions – what is to prevent any extravagance? If the
benevolence of God is to be cramped, – or bent, – or tortured to
become the instrument servant of their malevolence, what fastings, whippings,
macerations – what deplorable caprices of a western monk or
an eastern fakir – may not be proved to be a merit or a duty.

Sad must be the fate of religion – if it be placed
in hostile array against morality, for no religion can be reconciled
to reason but on evidence that it is calculated to strengthen & not to
dissolve the moral ties. And to what can be so extensive an appeal ma as that which is made but
to every man's bosom? How could God declare himself in a manner less liable to be
misunderstood than by those infallible, – inextinguishable universal sentiments
that he has implanted within us? What words could speak so strongly as
the omnipresent fact that to will our own present happiness is the essence of
our nature – & who made our nature what it is? Our present happiness
because it is only by being linked with the present that ideas of
futurity can reach us at all. And on this basis, that man endeavors to procure
his own felicity shall we build our edifice without fear of its falling.
For

Identifier: | JB/015/336/001 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 15.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	015	Main Headings	deontology
Folio number	336	Info in main headings field
Image	001	Titles
Category	linking material	Number of Pages	1
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	f11
Penner	sir john bowring	Watermarks	hall
Marginals		Paper Producer	louis francois joseph le dieu
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year
Notes public		ID Number	5552
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