alist, an Eclectic, or a Syncretist. The names may sound strange, and, at first, unintelligible; but the principles implied by them are very widely spread ; and you cannot study ethics without becoming acquainted with them. Read German works, and you will be tempted to Rationalism; French works, and they encourage Eclecticism; English works, or rather (for we have few works in this country on the subject, except our new scheme of legislation and education) look at the daily acts of our government, and you will see the workings of Syncretism. What they severally are, I now propose to shew.

First, then; you may resolve on forming a new theory of your own. On this I have touched already. You say to yourself, "I have reason. Reason was given me to be exerted. What is the use of it, if I am not to search out truth? I will become an independent inquirer, an original thinker. Truth, not the opinion of others, is to be my object and rule." So said Locke; so said Rousseau; so says Mr. Owen; so says every leader of error that ever founded a pernicious system, either in morals or religion. They are all ardent admirers of Truth. And, be assured, the moment a man professes this earnest enthusiasm for truth, you have reason to distrust him. There can scarcely be a surer sign that his theory will prove a lie. It is a strange paradox, is it not? And yet let us see if it is false. Truth-and here lies the fallacy-has two distinct meanings. In one sense truth is the great object of life, the basis of morals, the end of study, the law supreme over thought, and action, and affection, the fountain of all good things lying deep under the throne of God, and flowing thence into the heart of man. In the other sense, it is a fancy, a dream, an ignis fatuus, a mere earthly shadow, tempting us at every step to folly, and always to be

suspected of evil. The Author of all Evil never invented a more ingenious device for snaring man and leading him blindfold into ruin, and sowing discord and violence in the world, and overturning its foundations, than this double sense of the word Truth.

In the one sense, then, Truth means the eternal, unchangeable, infinite, self-existing, unconditioned nature of Almighty God, from whom all created things proceeded, to whom they are all to be referred, by whom they are all to be judged; whose perfections of goodness are the law of His will, and His will the wielder of all power, and His power the Lord of all things. What seems right to Him is right, absolutely and eternally; what seems good is good; what seems evil is evil. It is all true; that is, it accords with his law, and it can never be changed. And to know this truth is to know God

-to know his commands, his promises, his threatenings,—what he loves, what he hates, what he proposes to do, what he has done.

But truth also means accordance with the fancies of individual men. Each man carries within him certain, as he imagines, standard principles. He forms a theory, or rather nature forms one for him, as soon as he opens his eyes; he takes it untried and unqualified upon a single experience. Does the fire burn him to day? Instantly, by the process of association, which he does not make himself, he is prepared the next time he sees fire to anticipate burning. As a horse frightened at a particular spot, the next time he passes by it he starts again. Is a man amiable in one point? we believe him an angel in all. Is he unkind or vicious? he is called a demon. And of these hasty generalisations, whether or not they have been subjected, as God intended they should be, to subsequent experiment, we make the

rule of our belief. All facts we try by them; what agrees with them, we pronounce true; what disagrees, we say is false. And as we cannot help per

ceiving the agreement or disagreement when the two things—that is, our own general principle and the particular fact-are brought together; or, in the logical language, as the conclusion follows necessarily when the premises are assumed,—hence men have been found to argue that our opinions are no more in our power, no more subject to moral responsibility or righteous punishment, than our sensations of heat when fire is near, or the perception that white is not black, if both colours are brought before the eye. And our opinions in this sense are not in our own power. We cannot help perceiving similarity between things similar, and discrepancy between things discrepant. And if we believe our principles to be true, we cannot help believing all things contained in them to be true likewise; and all things which contradict them to be false. But there are three things which we can help; and it is for the neglect of these that we are morally culpable, and shall be morally punished.

We can help trusting implicitly to those hasty generalisations which we make from partial careless experiences, and which nature herself compels us to distrust, by compelling us to modify or abridge them every moment. Look at any science-the science of geology, for instance; see how it began, like every other human science, with a general theory rapidly evolved from some narrow observation. A most distinguished geologist was once laying down his theory of the science to a hearer who, unhappily, had a good memory." The earth is formed in this way." "Sir, you did not think so in 1821," was the suggestion. "The sea originally lay here." "This was not your theory in 1824," was the hint. "Animals

were created in this order." "I think you mentioned another in a work of 1830." "Coal is a deposit from such and such causes." "Yes; but you said otherwise in 1834." And scarcely a principle was laid down which had not been differently expressed at some former period. And no blame was to be attached to the person who thus held different views at different times. For we must form theories of general principles, even on a single experience, as soon as we begin to think; and we must vary and qualify them subsequently by further experiment. But if, without such experiments, we will hold them positively, and lay them down dogmatically, and declare every thing false which does not coincide with them, then we are morally guilty, and we shall morally be punished. It is at least imprudence; more than this, it is arrogance and folly.

But add another consideration. Let us thus bigotedly adhere to our own crude generalisations, in the face of, and in direct opposition to, other general principles, put before us by parents, by friends, by the State, by antiquity, by learning, by goodness, by piety, in books, and buildings, and solemn rites, and vast institutions, and methodised systems-principles covered, as Plato says, with the hoar of 1800 years, let them be uttered in a voice of serious, affectionate warning, at stated times, by appointed persons, when our heart is yet tender, and our ears unstupified by the din of the world,-let the truth stand before us in the form of an old and venerable prophet, παλαίφατος ἐν βροτοῖς γέρων λόγος,*—and then let us cast it off in contempt, and follow the thought of our own heart;-and beside the intellectual folly, there is added the clear moral guilt of irreverence, ingratitude, insensibility to shame, of

* Eschyl. Agam. 727.

stubbornness, and disobedience, not only to man, but to God, by whom human authority was placed

over us.

Or take two other points of view in which error is obviously criminal. A man holds a general principle for instance, the duty of benevolence-holds it perhaps rightly on authority; and there comes another principle, the principle of severe justice, which hastily he rejects as incompatible with the former, and pronounces it to be false. Now is he sure that it is incompatible? It seems contradictory. Is it really contradictory? Has he tried to hold them both; to act upon them both, as mutual checks upon each other? Is he willing to carry out his principle of faith so far as to trust legitimate authority, when it puts before him gravely and obviously things which to him seem inconsistencies? Or, will he trust it only when it tells him what he can understand; that is, will he trust himself, and himself only? Remember (and you cannot receive a more important axiom of reason,) that nearly all--we might say all (for where are the exceptions?)-that nearly all true systems rest upon at least two principles and these two seemingly opposed to each other-not upon one. The moment a writer or a teacher professes to reduce every thing to one principle, be assured he is on the point of leading you astray. He cannot understand the human mind, which is constructed on opposite tendencies; nor the plans which only can harmonise them. And the moment you detect in a system, bearing on it in other respects a trustworthy character, an appearance of inconsistencies, held, nevertheless, decidedly, and put forward prominently, the presumption is in favour of its truth. Let the axiom be suggested now. It will be for us, in another place, to illustrate it with more particular reference to the history