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THE SECOND PART OF PSYCONOMY.

VOLITION OR THE WILL.

The will and the understanding, are marked by distinct phenomena:

The understanding is a modification of sensation relative to the existence or knowledge of things.

The will is a modification of the same faculty, sensation, relative to the love and hatred of all existent things.

Upon the economy or discipline of these two passions of love and hatred is founded the art of happiness, called vir. tue, which consists in multiplying the sensations of love sy. nonymous with pleasure, and diminishing those of hatred sy. nonymous with pain.

To establish this discipline of virtue in the moral temperament, we must first exhibit some general laws, or standard of the human constitution, to become a measure or criterion of the best modifications of the will.

If a person convalescent in bodily health, from a comparative view of his own sensations at different periods, should call himself well or healthy, we would not believe him to be so on the general standard of true health.

It is the same with the health of the mind. The prodigal, the miser, the fanatic, all think themselves happy in their dif ferent habits of expense, avarice, and superstition; but as these propensities are far removed from the standard of moral health, they are all invalids in the eye of reason.

Again, in the particular habitudes of taste, or personal choice of pleasure, one prefers the braying of an ass (that is, of himself,) to the singing of a nightingale; another prefers the ordure of an animal to its flesh, for aliment; and a third prefers the despotism of Turkey to the liberty of Eng. land.

If a controversy were to be held between the parties, that is, between the lover of the nightingale and the lover of the ass, it would not be easy for one to presuade the other that his taste was the best; that is, that the pleasure of one sen. sation was greater than that of the other. But the general standard of human sensation, would determine that the ad.

mirer of the nightingale must have the organ of hearing more sensible, both to enjoy and multiply its pleasures, than the ear of the admirer of the ass, who mistakes the pleasure of his own disordered organ for the standard of Nature. The Turk, who prefers the despotism of his own country to the freedom of England, reasons from depraved habi. tudes of education and custom, which give to his sensations a certain degree of pleasure which he might not receive from a change to English laws; but the great majority of enlight ened men would determine, that the sensations of the Eng. lishman had a much higher capacity of enjoyment upon the general and true standard of the human constitution.

I shall now endeavor to establish the standard of moral and physical health, which, according to the ancients, constituted happiness; mens sana in corpore sano, a sound mind in a sound body. This standard is formed by four distinct modifications of sensation, in the moral temperament, viz. Sympathy, Probity, Fortitude, and Wisdom.

By Simpathy we are enabled to harmonize and coöperate with surrounding existence in the great worship of self and Nature, the augmentation of good and diminution of evil in the mundane system.

By Probity we multiply human energy by intellectual in. tercourse of truth with the whole species, and obtain the internal peace of self, with the external peace of mankind expanding over the whole sensitive system.

By Fortitude we triumph over evil by patient endurance. By Wisdom we control the actions of the will, to regu. late our sensations in the art of happiness.

SYMPATHY.

Sympathy is the paramount law of the moral world, which promotes system, and opposes contingency in the same man. ner as gravitation or attraction tends to organize or harmonize the physical world. Sympathy harmonizes and concentrates the powers of animal life, by giving notice or know. ledge to every individual being, of the distant and harmoni. ous relations which form the well-being of the whole sensitive system.

The operations of sympathy would be hostile to human happiness, if they were not under the control of a well dis

ciplined intellect, which teaches us to relieve the pains of others, without adopting or appropriating their sufferance as ours, in sensibility and reflection.

The subscriber or benefactor of an hospital receives a complacent and joyful sympathy in relieving the sufferings of his fellow-creatures, without the anguish of their disease, by devoting a small proportion of his opulence to the relief of public misery, through the notice and not the anguish of his sympathy.

In the beautiful simile of Pope, comparing the undulations of a lake to the peaceful emotions of self-love extended, we discover the importance and utility of that modification of the will, called sympathy, which gives to man a knowledge of all the relations of self and Nature.

That self or individual man who wishes for family happiness must make all the members of that family happy; that is, he must sympathize with their pain and pleasure. Again, that family that would be happy in itself must sympathize with its neighborhood; for it would be impossible for famine, or civil war, or epidemic disease, to rage in a district without threatening the safety of every family. The neighborhood must, in its turn, sympathize with the nation in per. forming the duties of patriotism. The nation again must sympathize with surrounding nations, and not disturb them with invasion and wars, to destroy the laws and customs on which their prosperity is founded, because their misery and poverty must recoil on surrounding nations in the present com. mercial and civic intercourse of the whole world.

Nations, or the whole species of mankind, must ultimately sympathize with their fellow-beings the brute species; for while cruelty and violence of any kind is inflicted in this wide relation of self, there can be no peace or repose for human nature: this corrupts the source of all virtue and happiness-education; and the man who, from his infant years, is accustomed to violence, cruelty, and injustice, no matter where, how, or on what subject inflicted, such a man will be a moral monster.

Who dares with ill on Nature's chain to strike,
Link tenth or thousandth, jars the chain alike.

In the present undisciplined and feeble state of intellectual power, sympathy is regarded as repugnant to happiness, be

cause reflection, over which man seems to have little command, makes it the cause of anxiety, anguish, and melan. choly. This is sometimes the case with the morbid sensi. bility of females, who nurse themselves to death at the bed of a sick darling, while they make orphans of the rest of their children.

Men, of animal and not mental sensibility, meditate them. selves into misanthropy and melancholy, by reflecting on the sufferings of the whole sensitive system; and by this misconduct of sympathy the first principle of morality is dreaded and abandoned.

How many persons of both sexes have reason to complain of that undisciplined and morbid sympathy which exposes them perpetually to be the dupes of every kind of imposture in friendship, mendicity, and pity; and that morbid habit of undisciplined reflection upon the evils of life, which makes them wretched in the midst of every present and personal enjoyment, by anticipating the ills of futurity.

When evil of any kind presents itself to sympathy, we should apply our attention to its notice, to procure such a remedy as is suitable to our own relations thereto.

PROBITY, OR SINCERITY.

The mental capacity of human nature could never develop itself into energy, if speech were to be restricted or falsified by hope and fear.

It is through the manly and ingenuous converse of the whole human species that moral truth, or the various relations of man to his species and universal Nature, is to be discovered.

"For thought in converse, whose push alternate,

Like wave with wave conflicting, breaks the learned scum,
And defecates the student's standing pool."

The affection or temperament of probity gives that condi tion of internal serenity of peace with self, and all surrounding nature, so essential to the consciousness of true happi

ness.

The liar and deceiver not only checks the progress of energy in the human species, but lives in perpetual warfare with self and all surrounding Nature. His sinister tricks,

deceptions, and falsehoods engage him in perpetual contest with others, through constant apprehension of detection; and he avoids the means of intellectual life, the art of invert. ing the mind upon itself, lest, in the exposition of his own conscience, he should loathe and detest himself.

Probity, like sympathy, must be put under discipline, we must speak truth only as the means of good, otherwise be silent. Let us suppose a man travelling in a country, where the most absurd systems of intellectual idolatry were in prac tice, and the most severe laws against their censure. His probity must be exercised with great caution to accommo date it to the criterion of virtue, or art of happiness; that is, the production of good to self, and in its relation with its species, and all surrounding beings in time and futurity.

In such a country, probity would conceal its own senti. ments of censure, without uttering false ones of approbation, and content itself with the recommendation of instruction, and the improvement of education.

The principle of every virtue must direct its practice ac cording to circumstances; but the integrity of the principle itself must ever remain inviolate.

FORTITUDE.

[May not Fortitude be considered the most active form of probity?]

This modification of the will renders man his own master; it is thus distinguished from animal courage:

Fortitude is a mental courage operating through reflection, to calculate the remote consequences of evil, and to encoun ter, with undaunted firmness, the means to oppose, diminish or endure it.

Animal courage is the result of the want of sensibility and reflection, which enters into danger with levity, indifference, and not foresight, and is apt to be consternated when evil appears unexpected in continuation and horror.

Fortitude is more useful in a constant exercise in the mi. nor, than in a sudden effort in the greater actions of human life. A man of fortitude finds no difficulty to draw his sword and contend in obstinate battle to defend his country or his person but the contest with love, anger, avarice, ambition, pleasure, and every other modification of the will, called

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