LECTURE XVI.

Moral Relations.

4. MORAL relations arise from considering the conformity or disagreement of our actions to a rule to which they are referred, and by which they are judged. Good and evil are two-fold, natural and moral. Natural good and evil are nothing but pleasure and pain, or that which produces or increases pleasure and pain. In like manner moral good and evil is the conformity or disagreement of our actions to some law whereby good or evil is drawn on us by the will and power of the legislator, which good or evil is called the sanction of the law, or the reward and punishment. There are two requisites to render a law efficacious. 1°. It must be published or promulged to those whose actions it is designed to govern. 2°. It must be attended with a sufficient sanction, that is, a reward or punishment independently of any good or evil which is the natural consequence of the law itself. By the natural consequence is here meant any good or evil which would have attended the action had the law not been made; for evidently such a good or evil would have operated upon the agent equally forcibly without any law. Thus it would be absurd in the civil legislature to pass a law against intemperance and debauchery, and to declare that the punishment should be a shattered constitution, broken fortune, and danger of punishment in a future life.

5. The laws by which men's actions are or should be regulated are threefold:

1. The Divine Law.

2. The Civil Law.

3. The Law of Opinion.

In the divine law God is the legislator. It is promulged partly by that light of nature, that is to say, we obtain a knowledge of it by the use of our natural faculties, and partly by revelation. The Deity possesses the right to legislate because we are his creatures; he has, 1o. Infinite wisdom to direct us to what is right. 2. Infinite power to reward the conformity with, and to punish the breach of his laws. 3°. Infinite goodness to temper the severity of justice. This law is the only infallible touchstone of moral rectitude; actions relatively to it are denominated sins and duties.

6. The civil law is the rule set by the commonwealth to the actions of those that belong to it. Relatively to this law actions are denominated criminal or innocent. The right of the commonwealth to legislate is ultimately derived from the power which every individual has over his own actions, and the absolute freedom which he possesses in a state of nature. This power over himself, and this absolute liberty, he surrenders to those who are delegated by the public to frame laws, and receives in exchange civil liberty, which in society is found more valuable. As the Commonwealth is bound to protect the lives, liberties, and properties of those who live according to its laws, so it has power to take away the life, liberty, and property of him who disobeys them.

7. The law of opinion is the general judgment of the community in which we live, approving some actions and condemning others. Relatively to this law actions are denominated virtuous or vicious. That this is the proper sense of virtue and vice, will appear to any one who considers that although that passes for vice in one country,

which is counted a virtue, or at least not a vice in another; yet every where virtue and praise, vice and blame, go together. The following passages show this.

Sunt sua præmia laudi. Virgil.

Nihil habet natura præstantius, quam honestatem, quam laudem quam dignitatem quam decus; Cic:

"Whatsoever is lovely, whatsoever is of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise," &c. St.Paul. Philip. iv. 8.

8. The law of opinion for the most part coincides with the divine law. This is not surprising when we consider how natural it is to encourage with esteem and reputation that wherein every one finds his advantage, and to blame and discountenance the contrary; and nothing can be more certain than that the law which God has established tends to the general good of mankind, even here, without any reference to a future state. Even those men whose practice is otherwise in this respect, give their approbation right, and for their own sakes discourage in others the faults and crimes which they commit themselves.

9. The enforcements or sanction of the law of opinion are commendation and discredit. There is no law so rigidly observed as this. The divine law is frequently violated, because its penalties are remote, and not very obvious, and therefore few men seriously reflect on them, and of those that do, many, while they break the law, entertain hopes of future repentance and reconciliation. The civil law is violated because men flatter themselves that they shall escape with impunity; but no man escapes the punishment of their censure and dislike who offends against the fashion and opinion of the company he keeps.

10. To conceive rightly of moral actions we must take notice of them under this two-fold consideration: 1°.Without any reference beyond themselves, and merely as combinations of simple ideas, under which point of view they are mixed modes. 2°. The same complex idea, when re

ferred to a moral law becomes a relation. Thus duelling, considered as a mixed mode, is a particular sort of action distinguished from others by particular ideas. When this action is referred to the law of God it is called a sin; to the civil law, a capital crime; and to the law of opinion, valour and virtue. When the mixed mode and moral relation have the same name, a confusion is frequently produced in reasoning. Thus the taking from another what is his without his knowledge or allowance, is properly called stealing; but that name being commonly understood to signify also the moral pravity of the action and to denote its contrariety to law, men are apt to condemn whatever they hear called stealing as an ill action; and yet the privately taking away his sword from a madman is properly denominated stealing, although when compared with the law of God, it is no sin or transgression, but the contrary.

LECTURE XVII.

Ideas, clear or obscure. Distinct or confused. Real or fantastical.

1. IN the preceding Lectures the original of our ideas has been analysed and traced back to the two great fountains of all notions, sensation and reflection. We have also followed these simple elements through the various combinations into which they are formed by the powers of combining and comparing, and examined generally into the results of these operations, scil. mixed modes, substances and relations. There are, however, some other qualities of ideas, which not coming immediately within this arrangement, the discussion may form a supplement to the preceding Lectures.

I.

Clear and obscure Ideas.

1. The clearness and obscurity of ideas may be illustrated objects illuminated with different degrees of light. A simple idea is said to be clear when it is such as the object itself from whence it was taken did or might, in a