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can it be composed but of pleasures? Be the pleasure what it may, to
demand its abandonment without the substitution of a greater
pleasure, or to supersede it by a more than equivalent pain,
cannot be an act of benevolence. To speak of a being as benevolent
and to represent him as producing, intending to produce — a balance
of misery is a contradiction in terms. And by the use of no
phraseology can the character of things be altered. Neither actions nor
persons change their nature, because their nature is falsely
designated by words. If a stab be called a kiss, it does not
therefore become an act of kindness.
To draw as distinction between the attributes of God and the
attributes of man — to say that God's benevolence, tho' different
from man's benevolence, is still benevolent, is mere mockery.
Except as applied to human conduct and to human feelings how
did the word benevolence acquire its meaning? Be it what it
may an effect is still the same — it is still itself whatsoever be
its author or its cause. To ascribe to God, under the name of
benevolence, that which, ascribed to man, would not be benevolence,
is on the part of him whom terror or prejudice
has not blinded an act of fraud: under the name of a
fish it is to sell a serpent. By being called a silk worm
would a scorpion become harmless?
And what is true of any one attribute cannot but be
true of any other. Any other than as man is just, can any
other being be just? And so of knowledge and veracity, and
power. From what but from the observation of human conduct or
human feelings, can the idea of justice — the idea for which the
word justice has been found — from what can it have been derived?
That portion of the field of thought which religion, as unconnected
with Ethics occupies, it is no part of our
present purpose to explore. Ethics not religion is the
subject of this work. Religion, discussion would be
here superfluous and irrelevant.
Y. Definition of Virtue.
Virtue is the head of a numerous family. The virtues are the
members of it. The scene offered to the imagination is that of a parent
followed by numerous offspring. Latin being the source whence
the word is derived, and the word being of the feminine gender,
the image presented is that of a mother, surrounded by her
daughters. An appellative gives an idea of existence — but virtue
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