the love of being. This includes the three elements, and, if taken literally, much more. In the same way we include the three elements when we say, as above, 1st. That the end of man is to increase the sum of blessedness, and, 2d. That virtue consists in a supreme purpose to promote blessedness impartially, and in the highest possible degree. 3d. This being the end for which God made man, he is glorified just in proportion as man seeks that end. Having thus placed moral good in its rightful supremacy as the highest good, and having found in it the point of coalescence for individual and general good, to complete the subject we need to see its relations to natural good. The two are not immediately and necessarily connected. As we have seen, moral goodness is the choosing by a free being of his true end, together with all subordinate acts and choices involved in that. Moral good is the enjoyment inseparably connected with such choice. It holds the same relation to the activity of the moral powers that natural good does to that of the other powers, and is in no proper sense a reward of moral goodness. There is in it that which is meant when it is said that virtue is its own reward. But, properly speaking, reward is natural good conferred by the will of another on account of moral goodness. On the other hand, moral badness, or wickedness, is the choice by a free being of any other than his true end, and the acts under such choice. Moral evil, or suffering (for it is here used for that), is the suffering inseparably connected with such choice; and punishment is natural evil inflicted on account of such badness or wickedness. These, that is, moral good and evil, follow MORAL AND NATURAL GOOD. 199 moral goodness and wickedness as the shadow the substance. Between moral goodness and a certain joy and approbation and hope the connection is as immediate and inseparable as any under the laws of nature, and more so;" between wickedness, the lie, the fraud, and a moral deterioration, a stain, a foreboding of evil, the connection is as immediate and close as between putting the finger in the fire and being burned, and more so. This effect of wickedness upon his innermost being no man can escape, and therefore no wicked man can be, in the highest sense, prosperous. But this effect is invisible, and in this life incomplete. It is possible for a man to conceal it in a measure from himself, and wholly from others; especially if there be in the mind, as there commonly is, such a perversion that moral good is comparatively disregarded, and the possession of natural good is made the standard of happi ness. There is here then no antinomy, to adopt the phraseology of Kant, between virtue and happiness. If that exist anywhere, it is between moral goodness and natural good. Here there is, if not an opposition, yet a want of harmony that has always given to this world the aspect of a moral enigma. External advantages, natural good, are often possessed by the wicked and not by the good, and the distribution of them is so far promiscuous as to jar upon our moral sentiments, and perhaps to lead us to question the existence of any moral government. In the oldest book extant the inquiry is made, "Wherefore do the wicked prosper, become old, yea, mighty in power?" More than a thousand years afterwards the complaint was, "They overpass the deeds of the wicked; they judge not the cause, the cause of the fatherless; yet they prosper." And the same is the complaint of to-day. Says Coleridge, "How seldom, friend, a good great man inherits It seems a story from the world of spirits, When any man obtains that which he merits, Or any merits that which he obtains." Such passages show what the mind naturally regards as moral order. It is that natural good should follow in the train of moral goodness and wait upon it everywhere as the satellite upon its primary. But this it does not. It is often the reverse. Often natural good becomes the tempter of man to lure him from virtue, and often he is compelled, if he would be virtuous, not only to renounce natural good, but to suffer the extremest natural evils, even the loss of life itself. Not only does moral goodness fail to produce natural good, it often becomes incompatible with it. To relieve the jar thus made upon our moral sentiments philosophy points us to the fact that each natural as well as moral law is independent, and that obedience to each gives its own separate and specific good. Be benevolent, it is said, and you shall have the rewards of benevolence; but if you violate the laws of temperance, your benevolence will not and ought not to prevent your paying the penalty. The view is that men get what they earn, and that if they do not choose to pay for a good, they should not complain if they do not get it. Says Mrs. Barbauld, in an essay upon Inconsistency in our Expectations, "We should consider this world as a great mart of commerce, where fortune exposes to our view various commodities, — riches, ease, tranquillity, fame, integrity, knowledge. Everything is marked at a settled price. Our time, our labor, our in INCONSISTENT EXPECTATIONS. 201 genuity, are so much ready money, which we are to lay out to the best advantage. Examine, compare, choose, reject; but stand to your own judgment; and do not, like children, when you have purchased one thing, repine that you do not possess another which you did not purchase. Such is the force of well-regulated industry that a steady and vigorous exertion of our faculties, directed to one end, will generally insure success. Would you, for instance, be rich? Do you think that single point worth the sacrificing everything else to? You may then be rich. Thousands have become so from the lowest beginnings, by toil and patient diligence, and attention to the minutest article of expense and profit. But you must give up the pleasures of leisure, of a vacant mind, of a free, unsuspicious temper. If you preserve your integrity, it must be a coarse-spun and vulgar honesty. Those high and lofty notions of morals which you brought with you from the schools must be considerably lowered, and mixed with the baser alloy of a jealous and worldly-minded prudence. You must learn to do hard, if not unjust things; and for the nice embarrassments of a delicate and ingenuous spirit, it is necessary for you to get rid of them as fast as possible. You must shut your heart against the muses, and be content to feed your understanding with plain household truths. In short, you must not attempt to enlarge your ideas, or polish your taste, or refine your sentiments; but must keep on in one beaten track, without turning aside either to the right hand or to the left. But I cannot submit to drudgery like this; I feel a spirit above it.' 'Tis well; be above it, then; only do not repine that you are not rich." "The man whose tender sensibility of conscience and strict regard to the rules of morality make him scrupulous and fearful of offending, is often heard to complain of the disadvantages he lies under in every path of honor and profit. Could I but get over some nice points, and conform to the practice and opinion of those about me, I might stand as fair a chance as others for dignities and preferment.' And why can you not? What hinders you from discarding this troublesome scrupulosity of yours which stands so grievously in your way? If it be a small thing to enjoy a healthful mind sound at the very core, that does not shrink from the keenest inspection; inward freedom from remorse and perturbation; unsullied whiteness and simplicity of manners; a genuine integrity Pure in the last recesses of the mind; if you think these advantages an inadequate recompense for what you resign, dismiss your scruples this instant, and be a slave-merchant, a parasite, or what you please." -- There is good sense in this. Perhaps it is the best view that philosophy can take; it is substantially the view of Combe, in his Constitution of Man. But then there is in it no vindication of a state of things in which vice so often and so greatly gains outward advantage, and in which virtue and piety are not merely left destitute of what they may not choose to bargain for, to which there would not be so much objection, but are compelled, if they would remain virtue and piety, to submit to the loss of all things, and to suffer whatever the physical nature may be capable of suffering. Of such cases the world has been full, and for these philosophy has no solution. They point to the future. The constitution and course of nature, with the moral phenomena which it envelops and enshrines, does not furnish data for its own explanation. As the solution is not from itself, it can neither know of it, nor have organs |