CHAP. VII.

VIRTU E.

VIR

IRTUE is," the doing good to mankind, "in obedience to the will of God, and for the fake of everlasting happiness.”

According to which definition, "the good of "mankind" is the fubject, the "will of God". the rule, and "everlasting happiness" the motive of human virtue.

Virtue has been divided by fome moralists into benevolence, prudence, fortitude, and temperance. Benevolence propofes good ends; prudence fuggefts the best means of attaining them; fortitude enables us to encounter the difficulties, dangers, and discouragements, which stand in our way in the pursuit of these ends; temperance repels and overcomes the paffions that obftruct it. Benevolence, for inftance, prompts us to undertake the cause of an oppreffed orphan; prudence suggests the best means of going about it; fortitude enables us to confront the danger, and bear up against

the

the lofs, difgrace, or repulfe, that may attend our undertaking; and temperance keeps under the love of money, of eafe, or amusement, which might divert us from it.

Virtue is distinguished by others into two branches only, prudence and benevolence; prudence attentive to our own intereft; benevolence to that of our fellow creatures: both directed to the fame end, the increase of happiness in nature; and taking equal concern in the future as in the present.

The four CARDINAL virtues are prudence, fortitude, temperance, and juftice.

But the divifion of Virtue, to which we are now-a-days most accustomed, is into duties, Towards God; as piety, reverence, refignation, gratitude, &c.

Towards other men (or relative duties); as justice, charity, fidelity, loyalty, &c.

Towards ourselves; as chastity, fobriety, temperance, preservation of life, care of health, &c. More of thefe diftinctions have been propofed, which it is not worth while to fet down.

I fhall proceed to ftate a few obfervations, which relate to the general regulation of human conduct;

conduct; unconnected indeed with each other, but very worthy of attention; and which fall as properly under the title of this chapter as of any other.

I. Mankind act more from habit than reflection.

It is on few only and great occafions that men deliberate at all; on fewer ftill, that they inftitute any thing like a regular inquiry into the moral rectitude or depravity of what they are about to do; or wait for the refult of it. We are for the most part determined at once; and by an impulfe, which is the effect and energy of pre-established habits. And this constitution feems well adapted to the exigencies of human life, and to the imbecility of our moral principle. In the current occafions and rapid opportunities of life, there is ofttimes little leisure for reflection; and were there more, a man, who has to reason about his duty, when the temptation to tranfgrefs it is upon him, is almost fure to reason himself into an error.

If we are in fo great a degree paffive under our habits, where, it is afked, is the exercife of virtue, the guilt of vice, or any use of moral and religious knowledge? I answer, in the forming and contracting of these habits.

And

And from hence refults a rule of life of confiderable importance, viz. that many things are to be done, and abftained from, folely for the fake of habit. We will explain ourselves by an example or two. A beggar, with the appearance of extreme diftrefs, afks our charity. If we come to argue the matter, whether the distress be real, whether it be not brought upon himself, whether it be of public advantage to admit fuch applications, whether it be not to encourage idlenefs and vagrancy, whether it may not invite impoftors to our doors, whether the money can be well spared, or might not be better applied; when these confiderations are put together, it may appear very doubtful, whether we ought or ought not to give any thing. But when we reflect, that the mifery before our eyes excites our pity, whether we will or not; that it is of the utmoft confequence to us to cultivate this tendernefs of mind; that it is a quality, cherished by indulgence, and foon ftifled by oppofition: when this, I fay, is confidered, a wife man will do that for his own fake, which he would have hefitated to do for the petitioner's; he will give way to his compaffion, rather than offer vio lence to a habit of fo much general use.

A man

A man of confirmed good habits will act in the same manner without any confideration at all.

This may ferve for one inftance: another is the following. A man has been brought up from his infancy with a dread of lying. An occafion prefents itself, where, at the expence of a little veracity, he may divert his company, fet off his own wit with advantage, attract the notice and engage the partiality of all about him. This is not a small temptation. And when he looks at the other fide of the question, he fees no mischief that can enfue from this liberty, no flander of any man's reputation, no prejudice likely to arise to any man's interest. Were there nothing farther to be confidered, it would be difficult to show why a man under fuch circumstances might not indulge his humour. But when he reflects that his fcruples about lying have hitherto preserved him free from this vice; that occafions like the prefent will return, where the inducement may be equally strong, but the indulgence much lefs innocent; that his scruples will wear away by a few tranfgreffions, and leave him fubject to one of the meaneft and moft pernicious of all bad habits, a habit of lying whenever it will ferve his turn: when all this, I fay, is confidered, a wife man will forego