denied that it is difficult to imagine a perfectly innocent world, which would be human, and would not be very stupid. The difficulty, however, lies in seeing how men could be prosperous without being tempted into vice. There is no difficulty in seeing how superhuman strength and prudence might conduce at once to a maximum of happiness and an absence of vice.

On Mandeville's principles, the worse men are, the wiser and happier they ought to be in their collective capacity. What is the solution of this difficulty? How can we reconcile self-sacrifice and self-denial with the doctrine that happiness is the object of morals? Yet, if happiness is not the object of morals, how can we form any scheme of morality, or, having formed one, affirm that in fact any such thing as morality exists?

We will try to throw into a connected form some propositions which collectively furnish a sort of answer to these questions. Their full development, defence, and illustration would require a volume.

Morality is a system of rules affecting human conduct. Some are negative (Do not lie), some positive (Be industrious).

The object which these rules are intended to promote is general happiness.

Acts which conform to them are virtuous, and those which break them are vicious acts.

Men are impelled to act by their passions, which are neither good nor bad in themselves, but which

cause both good and bad actions according to circum

stances. actions.

All passions cause both good and bad Some (e.g. benevolence-the pleasure of pleasing) generally cause good actions; and others (malevolence—the pleasure of hurting) generally cause bad actions; hence they are often called good and bad passions respectively, but this is incorrect.

Men whose passions are so regulated and proportioned, as habitually to cause them to observe or break the rules of morality, are virtuous or vicious men respectively.

The habitual practice of the positive and negative rules of morality tends to produce a cast of character which is called, emphatically, virtue or goodness. A man who made the attainment of this cast of character the object of his whole life, would be an ideally virtuous man when it was attained.

The necessity for self-control and self-sacrifice arises from the fact that human passions are so arranged that, in order to gratify some, others must be disappointed. Those which are popularly, but incorrectly, called bad passions, give more frequent occasion for the exercise of self-control and selfsacrifice, than those which are popularly called good passions (e.g. the love of sensual pleasure, as compared with benevolence). As all acts are caused by some passion or other, acts are not bad because they gratify passion, or good because they disappoint passion. Almost all acts gratify some passions and

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disappoint others; (giving charity gratifies benevolence and disappoints love of money).

The question why moral rules should be observed, and why virtue should be sought, is independent of these principles.

So is the question, How we may know in what virtue and morality consist.

So is the question, How we do, in fact, think and feel towards virtuous and vicious men or acts, and how we ought to think and feel towards them-i.e. what way of thinking and feeling towards them would contribute to the general advantage.

It is obvious that, if these principles are at all like the truth, the whole of Mandeville's views are onesided, incoherent, and altogether false and partial.

XIII

VOLTAIRE AS A THEOLOGIAN, MORALIST,

AND METAPHYSICIAN 1

1. VOLTAIRE'S THEOLOGY

VOLTAIRE has perhaps earned a greater amount of fame amongst those who have never read a line of his works, than any other author of modern times, yet the number of his readers is probably diminishing, and it is hardly likely that they should ever increase. His poetry was never likely to be pleasing to foreigners. His history has been superseded by later and more elaborate investigations, though we do not think that either the Essai sur les Mœurs or the Siècle de Louis Quatorze has been replaced by works of equal merit. His contributions to physical philosophy were rather those of a propagandist than those of a discoverer, and though historically important, were intrinsically of little value. His personal con

1 Euvres Complètes de Voltaire. 12 vols. Vols. 6, 7, 8. Paris, 1817.

will?

nection with an infinite variety of remarkable men in every class of life gives much interest to his correspondence, but it requires great collateral knowledge of a subject of which very little is known, even to the majority of educated men-the detailed history of the eighteenth century-to appreciate their value.

If he had written nothing besides all this, if he had been nothing more than an historian, a poet, a reformer in physical science, and the correspondent of a variety of remarkable people, he would never have acquired the immense and questionable reputation which surrounds his name. The thing by which Voltaire is distinguished from other men, the performance which has marked him out from all the rest of the world, and has invested his name with a celebrity altogether peculiar to itself, is no doubt his bitter, enduring, and systematic attack upon Christianity.

Of the intellectual enemies with whom Christianity had to deal in its infancy we know little or nothing. We know of the writings of Celsus and Julian just as much as Origen and Cyril have chosen to tell us, and no more. The rest of their works have altogether perished. No man ever has heard, or ever will hear, what the Pharisees and Pontius Pilate had to say for themselves. The victory of Christianity over its antagonists was only too complete; for in order to be sure that a controversy has reached its proper termination, it is essentially necessary to know what was said on both sides. So long as one side