est reasoas,) it will then appear a new favour from the divine munificence; and a man must be as absurd to repine at dying, as a traveller would be, who proposed to himself a delightful tour through various unknown countries, to lament that he cannot take up his residence at the first dirty inn which he baits at on the road. inconceivable means contribute to the felicity of the inhabitants of the remotest planet. How the Origin of Evil is brought nearer to human conception by any inconceivable means, I am not able to discover. We believed that the present system of creation was right, though we could not explain the adaptation of one part to the other, or for the whole succession of causes and consequences. Where has this inquirer added to the little knowledge that we had before? He has told us of the benefits of Evil, which no man feels, and relations between distant parts of the universe, which he cannot himself conceive. There was enough in this question inconceivable before, and we have little advantage from a new inconceivable solution. I do not mean to reproach this author for not knowing what is equally hidden from learning and from ignorance. The shame is to impose words for ideas upon ourselves or others. To imagine that we are going forward when we are only turning round. To think that there is any difference between him that gives no reason, and him that gives a reason, which by his own confession cannot be conceived. "The instability of human life, or of the changes of its successive periods, of which we so frequently complain, are no more than the necessary progress of it to this necessary conclusion; and are so far from being Evils deserving these complaints, that they are the source of our greatest pleasures, as they are the source of all novelty, from which our greatest pleasures are ever derived. The continual succession of seasons in the human life, by daily presenting to us new scenes, render it agreeable, and like those of the year, afford us delights by their change, which the choicest of them could not give us by their continuance. In the spring of life, the gilding of the sunshine, the verdure of the fields, and the variegated paintings of the sky, are so exquisite in the eyes of infants at their first looking abroad into a new world, as nothing perhaps afterwards can equal. The heat and vigour of But that he may not be thought to conceive the succeeding summer of youth ripens for us nothing but things inconceivable, he has at last new pleasures, the blooming maid, the nightly thought on a way by which human sufferings revel, and the jovial chase; the serene autumn may produce good effects. He imagines that as of complete manhood feasts us with the golden we have not only animals for food, but choose harvests of our worldly pursuits: nor is the some for our diversion, the same privilege may hoary winter of old age destitute of its peculiar be allowed to some beings above us, who may decomforts and enjoyments, of which the recollec-ceive, torment, or destroy us for the ends only of tion and relation of those past are perhaps none of the least; and at last death opens to us a new prospect, from whence we shall probably look back upon the diversions and occupations of this world with the same contempt we do now on our tops and hobbyhorses, and with the same surprise that they could ever so much entertain or engage us." their own pleasure or utility. This he again finds impossible to be conceived, but that impossibility lessens not the probability of the conjecture, which by analogy is so strongly confirmed. I cannot resist the temptation of contempla ting this analogy, which, I think, he might have carried further, very much to the advantage of his argument. He might have shown that these I would not willingly detract from the beauty hunters, whose game is man, have many sports of this paragraph; and in gratitude to him who analogous to our own. As we drown whelps has so well inculcated such important truths, I and kittens, they amuse themselves now and will venture to admonish him, since the chief then with sinking a ship, and stand round the comfort of the old is the recollection of the past, fields of Blenheim or the walls of Prague, as we so to employ his time and his thoughts, that encircle a cockpit. As we shoot a bird flying, when the imbecility of age shall come upon him, they take a man in the midst of his business or he may be able to recreate its languors by the pleasure, and knock him down with an aporemembrance of hours spent, not in presumptu-plexy. Some of them, perhaps, are virtuosi, and ous decisions, but modest inquiries, not in dog-delight in the operations of an asthma, as a matical limitations of Omnipotence, but in hum- human philosopher in the effects of the airble acquiescence and fervent adoration. Old pump. To swell a man with a tympany is as age will show him that much of the book now before us has no other use than to perplex the scrupulous, and to shake the weak, to encourage impious presumption or stimulate idle curiosity. good sport as to blow a frog. Many a merry bout have these frolic beings at the vicissitudes of an ague, and good sport it is to see a man tumble with an epilepsy, and revive and tumble again, and all this he knows not why. As they Having thus despatched the consideration of are wiser and more powerful than we, they have particular evils, he comes at last to a general more exquisite diversions, for we have no way reason for which Evil may be said to be our of procuring any sport so brisk and so lasting, as Good. He is of opinion that there is some in- the paroxysms of the gout and stone, which unconceivable benefit in pain abstractedly consi-doubtedly must make high mirth, especially if the dered; that pain, however inflicted, or wherever felt, communicates some good to the general system of being, and that every animal is some way or other the better for the pain of every other animal. This opinion he carries so far as to suppose that there passes some principle of union through all animal life, as attraction is communicated to all corporeal nature; and that the Evils suffered on this globe, may by some play be a little diversified with the blunders and puzzles of the blind and deaf. We know not how far their sphere of observation may extend. Perhaps now and then a merry being may place himself in such a situation as to enjoy at once all the varieties of an epidemical disease, or amuse his leisure with the tossings and contur tions of every possible pain exhibited together. One sport the merry malice of these being the meanest capacity. Some indeed have denied that there is any such thing, because diffe rent ages and nations have entertained different sentiments concerning it but this is just as reasonable as to assert, that there are neither sun, moon, nor stars, because astronomers have supported different systems of the motions and magnitudes of these celestial bodies. Some have placed it in conformity to truth, some to the fitness of things, and others to the will of God. But all this is merely superficial: they resolve us not why truth, or the fitness of things, are either eligible or obligatory, or why God should require us to act in one manner rather than another. The true reason of which can has found means of enjoying, to which we have | must otherwise have been clear and manifest to nothing equal or similar. They now and then catch a mortal proud of his parts, and flattered either by the submission of those who court his kindness, or the notice of those who suffer him to court theirs head thus prepared for the reception of fa... opis, and the projection of vain designs, they easu fill with idle notions, till in tie they make their plaything an author: their first diversion commonly begins with an ode or an epistle, then rises perhaps to a political irony, and is at last brought to its height, by a treatise of philosophy. Then begins the poor animal to entangle himself in sophisms, and flounder in absurdity, to talk confidently of the scale of being, and to give solutions which himself confesses impossible to be understood. Some-possibly be no other than this, because some times, however, it happens that their pleasure is without much mischief. The author feels no pain, but while they are wondering at the extravagance of his opinion, and pointing him out to one another as a new example of human folly, he is enjoying his own applause, and that of his companions, and perhaps is elevated with the hope of standing at the head of a new sect. Many of the books which now crowd the world, may be justly suspected to be written for the sake of some invisible order of beings, for surely they are of no use to any of the corporeal inhabitants of the world. Of the productions of the last bounteous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure? The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it: and how will either of those be put more in our power by him who tells us that we are puppets, of which some creature not much wiser than ourselves manages the wires? That sect of beings unseen and unheard, are hovering about us, trying experiments upon our sensibility, putting us in agonies to see our limbs quiver, torturing us to madness, that they may laugh at our vagaries, sometimes obstructing the bile, that they may see how a man looks when he is yellow; sometimes breaking a traveller's bones, to try how he will get home; sometimes wasting a man to a skeleton, and sometimes killing him fat for the greater elegance of his hide. This is an account of natural Evil, which though, like the rest, not quite new, is very entertaining, though I know not how much it may contribute to patience. The only reason why we should contemplate Evil, is that we may bear it better; and I am afraid nothing is much more placidly endured, for the sake of making athers sport. The first pages of the fourth Letter are such as incline me both to hope and wish that I shall find nothing to blame in the succeeding part. He offers a criterion of action, on account of virtue and vice, for which I have often contended, and which must be embraced by all who are willing to know why they act, or why they forbear to give any reason of their conduct to themselves or others. "In order to find out the true Origin of moral Evil, it will be necessary, in the first place, to inquire into its nature and essence; or what it is that constitutes one action evil, and another good. Various have been the opinions of various authors on this criterion of virtue; and this variety has rendered that doubtful, which actions produce happiness, and others misery: others; which injures mankind in general for the sake of a particular country, is but a more extended selfishness, and really criminal; and all human glory but a mean and ridiculous delusion. The whole affair then of religion and morality, the subject of so many thousand volumes, is, in short, no more than this: the Supreme Being, infinitely good, as well as powerful, desirous to diffuse happiness by all possible means, has created innumerable ranks and orders of beings, all subservient to each other by proper subordination. One of these is occupied by man, a creature endued with such a certain degree of knowledge, reason, and free-will, as is suitable to his situation, and placed for a time on this globe as in a school of probation and education. Here he has an opportunity given him of im proving or debasing his nature, in such a man ner as to render himself fit for a rank of higher perfection and happiness, or to degrade himself to a state of greater imperfection and misery; necessary indeed towards carrying on the business of the universe, but very grievous and burdensome to those individuals who, by their own misconduct, are obliged to submit to it. The test of this his behaviour, is doing good, that is, co-operating with his Creator, as far as his narrow sphere of action will permit, in the production of happiness. And thus the happiness and misery of a future state will be the just reward or punishment of promoting or preventing hap piness in this. So artificially by this means is the nature of all human virtue and vice contrived, that their rewards and punishments are woven, as it were, in their very essence; their immediate effects give us a foretaste of their future, and their fruits in the present life are the proper samples of what they must unavoidably produce in another. We have reason given us to distinguish these consequences, and regulate our conduct; and lest that should neglect its post, conscience also is appointed as an instinctive kind of monitor, perpetually to remind us both of our interest and our duty." solid foundation on which any true system of in universal benevolence, or, in their language, ethics can be built, the only plain, simple and charity to all men; the other, in the probation uniform rule by which we can pass any judg- of man, and his obedience to his Creator. Subment on our actions; but by this we may be lime and magnificent as was the philosophy enabled, not only to determine which are Good, of the ancients, all their moral systems were de and which are Evil, but almost mathematically ficient in these two important articles. They to demonstrate the proportion of virtue or vice were all built on the sandy foundations of the which belongs to each, by comparing them with innate beauty of virtue, or enthusiastic patriotthe degrees of happiness or misery which they ism; and their great point in view was the conccasion. But though the production of hap-temptible reward of human glory; foundations piness is the essence of virtue, it is by no means which were by no means able to support the the end; the great end is the probation of man-magnificent structures which they erected upon kind, or the giving them an opportunity of exalt-them; for the beauty of virtue, independent of ing or degrading themselves in another state by its effects, is unmeaning nonsense; patriotism, their behaviour in the present. And thus indeed it answers two most important purposes; those are the conservation of our happiness, and the test of our obedience; for had not such a test seemed necessary to God's infinite wisdom, and productive of universal good, he would never have permitted the happiness of men, even in this life, to have depended on so precarious a tenure, as their mutual good behaviour to each other. For it is observable, that he who best knows our formation, has trusted no one thing of importance to our reason or virtue; he trusts only to our appetites for the support of the individual, and the continuance of our species; to our vanity or compassion, for our bounty to and to our fears, for the preservation of ourselves; often to our vices for the support of government, and sometimes to our follies for the preservation of our religion. But since some test of our obedience was necessary, nothing sure could have been commanded for that end so fit and proper, and at the same time so useful, as the practice of virtue: nothing could have been so justly rewarded with happiness, as the production of happiness in conformity to the will of God. It is this conformity alone which adds merit to virtue, and constitutes the essential difference between morality and religion. Morality obliges men to live honestly and soberly, because such behaviour is most conducive to public happiness, and consequently to their own; religion, to pursue the same course, because conformable to the will of their Creator. Morality induces them to embrace virtue from prudential considerations; religion, from those of gratitude and obedience. Morality, therefore, entirely abstracted from religion, can have nothing meritorious in it; it being but wisdom, prudence, or good economy, which, like health, beauty, or riches, are rather obligations conferred upon us by God, than merits in us towards him; for though we may be justly punished for injuring ourselves, we can claim no reward for self-preservation; as suicide deserves punishment and infamy, but a man deserves no reward or honours for not being guilty of it. This I take to be the meaning of all those passages in our Scriptures, in which works are represented to have no merit without faith; that is, not without believing in historical facts, in creeds, and articles; but without being done in pursuance of our belief in God, and in obedience to his commands. And now, having mentioned Scripture, I cannot omit observing that the christian is the only religious or moral institution in the world that ever set in a right light these two material points, the essence and the end of virtue, that ever founded the one in reproduction of happiness, that is, Si sic omnia dixisset! To this account of the essence of vice and virtue, it is only necessary to add, that the consequences of human actions being sometimes uncertain, and sometimes remote, it is not possible in many cases for most men, nor in all cases for any man, to determine what actions will ultimately produce happiness, and therefore it was proper that revelation should lay down a rule to be followed invariably in opposition to appearances, and in every change of circumstances, by which we may be certain to promote the general felicity, and be set free from the dangerous temptation of doing Evil that Good may come. Because it may easily happen, and in effect | thinks it necessary that man should be debarred, wil happen very frequently, that our own pri- because pain is necessary to the good of the univate happiness may be promoted by an act inju-verse; and the pain of one order of beings exrious to others, when yet no man can be obliged tending its salutary influence to innumerable by nature to prefer ultimately the happiness orders above and below, it was necessary that of others to his own; therefore, to the instruc-man should suffer; but because it is not suitable tions of infinite wisdom it was necessary that to justice that pain should be inflicted on innoinfinite power should add penal sanctions. That cence, it was necessary that man should be every man to whom those instructions shall be criminal. imparted may know, that he can never ultimately injure himself by benefiting others, or ultimately by injuring others benefit himself; but that however the lot of the good and bad may be huddled together in the seeming confusion of our present state, the time shall undoubtedly come, when the most virtuous will be most happy. I am sorry that the remaining part of this Letter is not equal to the first. The author has indeed engaged in a disquisition in which we need not wonder if he fails, in the solution of questions on which philosophers have employed their abilities from the earliest times, And found no end, in wandering mazes lost. He denies that man was created perfect, because the system requires subordination, and because the power of losing his perfection, of "rendering himself wicked and miserable, is the highest imperfection imaginable." Besides, the regular gradations of the scale of being required somewhere "such a creature as man with all his infirmities about him, and the total removal of those would be altering his nature, and when he became perfect he must cease to be man." I have already spent some considerations on the scale of being, of which yet I am obliged to renew the mention whenever a new argument is made to rest upon it; and I must therefore again remark, that consequences cannot have greater certainty than the postulate from which they are drawn, and that no system can be more hypothetical than this, and perhaps no hypothesis more absurd. This is given as a satisfactory account of the Original of moral Evil, which amounts only to this, that God created beings, whose guilt he foreknew, in order that he might have proper objects of pain, because the pain of part is, no man knows how or why, necessary to the felicity of the whole. Man The perfection which man once had, may be so easily conceived, that without any unusual strain of imagination we can figure its revival. All the duties to God or man that are neglected, we may fancy performed; all the crimes that are committed, we may conceive forborne. will then be restored to his moral perfections: and into what head can it enter, that by this change the universal system would be shaken, or the condition of any order of beings altered for the worse? He comes in the fifth Letter to political, and in the sixth to religious Evils. Of political Evil, if we suppose the Origin of moral Evil discovered, the account is by no means difficult: polity being only the conduct of immoral men in public affairs. The evils of each particular kind of government are very clearly and elegantly displayed, and from their secondary causes very rationally deduced; but the first cause lies still in its ancient obscurity. There is in this Letter nothing new, nor any thing eminently instructive; one of his practical deductions, that "from government Evils cannot be eradicated, and their excess only can be prevented," has been always allowed; the question upon which all dissension arises is, when that excess begins, at what point men shall cease to bear, and attempt to remedy. Another of his precepts, though not new, well deserves to be transcribed, because it cannot be too frequently impressed. He again deceives himself with respect to the perfection with which man is held to be originally vested. "That man came perfect, that is, endued with all possible perfection, out of the hands of his Creator, is a false notion, derived from the philosophers.-The universal system "What has here been said of their imperfecrequired subordination, and consequently com- tions and abuses, is by no means intended as a parative imperfection." That man was ever en-defence of them; every wise man ought to redued with all possible perfection, that is, with all perfection of which the idea is not contradictory, or destructive of itself, is undoubtedly false. But it can hardly be called a false notion, because no man ever thought it, nor can it be derived from the philosophers; for without pretending to guess what philosophers he may mean, it is very safe to affirm, that no philosopher ever said it. Of those who now maintain that man was once perfect, who may very easily be found, let the author inquire whether man was ever omniscient, whether he was ever omnipotent, whether he ever had even the lower power of archangels or angels. Their answers will soon inform him, that the supposed perfection of man was not absolute but respective, that he was perfect in a sense consistent enough with subordination, perfect, not as compared with different beings, but with himself in his present degeneracy; not perfect as an angel, but perfect as man. dress them to the utmost of his power; which can be effected by one method only; that is, by a reformation of manners: for as all political Evils derive their original from moral, these can never be removed until those are first amended. He, therefore, who strictly adheres to virtue and sobriety in his conduct, and enforces them by his example, does more real service to a state, than he who displaces a minister, or dethrones a tyrant; this gives but a temporary relief, but that exterminates the cause of the disease. No immoral man then can possibly be a true patriot: and all those who profess outrageous zeal for the liberty and prosperity of their country, and at the same time infringe her laws, affront her religion, and debauch her people, are but despicable quacks, by fraud or ignorance increasing the disorders they pretend to remedy." Of religion he has said nothing but what ho has learned, or might have learned from the dr From this perfection, whatever it was, hel vines; that it is not universal, because it must be received upon conviction, and successively re- | admit copiousness than to affect brevity. Many ceived by those whom conviction reached; that informations will be afforded by this book to the its evidences and sanctions are not irresistible, biographer. I know not where else it can be because it was intended to induce, not to compel; found, but here and in Ward, that Cowley was and that it is obscure, because we want faculties doctor in physic. And whenever any other instito comprehend it. What he means by his asser-tution of the same kind shall be attempted, the tion, that it wants policy, I do not well under- exact relation of the progress of the Royal Sostand; he does not mean to deny that a good ciety may furnish precedents. christian will be a good governor, or a good subect; and he has before justly observed, that the good man only is a patriot. Religion has been, he says, corrupted by the wickedness of those to whom it was communicated, and has lost part of its efficacy by its connexion with temporal interest and human pas sion. He justly observes, that from all this, no conclusion can be drawn against the divine original of christianity, since the objections arise not from the nature of the revelation, but of him to whom it is communicated. These volumes consist of an exact journal of the Society; of some papers delivered to them, which, though registered and preserved, had been never printed; and of short memoirs of the more eminent members, inserted at the end of the year in which each died. The original of the Society is placed earlier in this history than in that of Dr. Sprat. Theodore Haak, a German of the Palatinate, in 1645, proposed to some inquisitive and learned men a weekly meeting for the cultivation of natural knowledge. The first Associates, whose names ought surely to be preserved, were Dr. Wilkins, Dr. Wallis, Dr. Goddard, Dr. Ent, Dr. Glisson, Dr. Merret, Mr. Foster of Gresham, and Mr. Haak. Sometime afterwards Wilkins, Wallis, and Goddard being removed to Oxford, carried on the same design there by stated meetings, and adopted into their society Dr. Ward, Dr. Bathurst, Dr. Petty, and Dr. Willis. All this is known, and all this is true; but why, we have not yet discovered. Our author, if I understand him right, pursues the argument thus: the religion of man produces evils, because the morality of man is imperfect; his morality is imperfect, that he may be justly a subject of punishment; he is made subject to punishment, because the pain of part is necessary to the hap- The Oxford Society coming to London in 1659, piness of the whole; pain is necessary to happi-joined their friends, and augmented their numhess, no mortal can tell why or how. ber, and for some time met in Gresham-College. Thus, after having clambered with great labour After the restoration their number was again from one step of argumentation to another, in- increased, and on the 28th of November, 1660, stead of rising into the light of knowledge, we a select party happening to retire for conversaare devolved back into dark ignorance; and all tion to Mr. Rooke's apartment in Greshamour effort ends in belief, that for the Evils of life College, formed the first plan of a regular socithere is some good reason, and in confession, ety. Here Dr. Sprat's history begins, and therethat the reason cannot be found. This is all fore from this period the proceedings are well that has been produced by the revival of Chry-known.* sippus's untractableness of matter, and the Arabian scale of existence. A system has been raised, which is so ready to fall to pieces of itself, that no great praise can be derived from its destruction. To object is always easy, and it has been well observed by a late writer, that the IN FIVE BOOKS, Translated from THE GREEK, hand which cannot build a hovel, may demolish a temple.* REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF THE ROYAL REVIEW OF THE GENERAL HISTORY OF POLYBIUS, BY MR. HAMPTON. THIS appears to be one of the books which will long do honour to the present age. It has been by some remarker observed, that no man ever grew immortal by a translation: and undoubtedly translations into the prose of a living language must be laid aside whenever the lan FOR IMPROVING OF NATURAL KNOWLEDGE, FROM ITSguage changes, because the matter being always FIRST RISE. IN WHICH THE MOST CONSIDERABLE to be found in the original, contributes nothing to the preservation of the form superinduced by HAVE HITHERTO NOT BEEN PUBLISHED, ARE INSERTED the translator. But such versions may last long, IN THEIR PROPER ORDER, AS A SUPPLEMENT TO THE THIS book might more properly have been entitled by the author a diary than a history, as it proceeds regularly from day to day so minutely as to number over the members present at each committee, and so slowly, that two large volumes contain only the transactions of the eleven first years from the institution of the Society. though they can scarcely last always; and there is reason to believe that this will grow in reputation while the English tongue continues in its present state. The great difficulty of a translator is to preserve the native form of his language, and the unconstrained manner of an original writer. This Mr. Hampton seems to have attained in a degree of which there are few examples. His book has the dignity of antiquity, and the easy I am yet far from intending to represent this flow of a modern composition. work as useless. Many particularities are of It were, perhaps, to be desired that he had importance to one man, though they appear tri-illustrated with notes an author which must have fling to another, and it is always more safe to many difficulties to an English reader, and par * New Practice of Physic. * From the Literary Magazine, 1756. |