John Wesley was born on June 17 (28 NS), 1703
and his brother Charles on December 18 (OS), 1707.
They were the 15th and 18th children of their father Samuel,
who was a rector at the Anglican church
in the small town of Epworth.
John got a bachelor degree from Christ Church at Oxford
in 1724 and began keeping a private diary in April 1725.
He was ordained a deacon in September, earned his master
of arts in 1727, and was ordained a priest in 1728.
He won a fellowship which gave him an income that
averaged £30 a year until he forfeited it by marrying in 1751.
He studied The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis,
Jeremy Taylor’s Holy Living and Dying, and Fénelon.
In 1729 John read William Law’s Christian Perfection
and Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,
and he began to study the Bible more seriously.
He returned to Oxford where in November he and Charles
started a religious study group known as the Holy Club,
and others called them “Methodists.”
They fasted twice a week and visited
and helped prisoners, workhouses, and the poor.
Their father Samuel died in 1735,
and they left the Holy Club which then broke up.
John persuaded Charles to be ordained, and on
October 14, 1735 John began his public journal
on the day they left to go to Georgia with 700 colonists.
They were influenced by peaceful Moravian emigrants
and reached Savannah in February 1736.
John ministered mostly to the settlers and in the spring formed
a society to “reprove, instruct, and exhort one another”
every Sunday afternoon.
Charles suffered illness and emotional turmoil
and left for England in July.
John was attracted to Sophia Hopkey; but she married
William Williamson, and John was criticized
for rejecting her from communion.
John Wesley returned to England on February 1, 1738,
the day after Whitefield left to preach in Georgia.
On the 7th John met in London the Moravian Peter Böhler
who warmed his heart and converted him to the belief that
“true living faith in Christ is inseparable from a sense of pardon
for all past and freedom from all present sins.”
On May 24 John at Aldersgate Street was listening to
Martin Luther’s preface to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans
when his heart opened to trusting Christ.
He decided to dedicate his life to preaching salvation by faith,
but English churches often rejected him
because of his emotional enthusiasm.
He formed religious bands like the Moravians,
and in December he devised Rules of the Band-Societies.
John had met George Whitefield in the Holy Club
and in Georgia, and he convinced John to preach outside
at Bristol to 3,000 people on Sunday April 1, 1739.
In London later that year John organized the first
United Society of Methodists with the General Rules
to avoid evil, do good, and employ the means of grace.
In 1740 John started Kingswood School
for the children of coal miners.
Charles Wesley went to Wales in November,
followed by John in October 1741.
They covered the Midlands in 1741 and moved north
to Newcastle by May 1742 and Cornwall in 1743.
For more than a half century John Wesley would travel
and preach, often several times a day, to large groups.
In the British Isles he rode 250,000 miles
and preached more than 40,000 sermons.
John would beg for money, clothes,
and food for the poor and gave away £30,000.
He encouraged laymen to be itinerant preachers also,
and in 1743 he published Rules for Methodist societies
which by then had 2,200 members in London,
800 in Newcastle, and 700 in Bristol.
Wesley went to Dublin in August 1747,
the first of his 42 trips to Ireland.
He published his Plain Account of the People
Called Methodists in 1748.
John Wesley and the widow Grace Murray became engaged
in 1749, but Charles persuaded Grace to marry
the preacher John Bennet in October.
In February 1751 John Wesley married the widow Mary Vazeille;
but she became jealous of young women
in the Methodist
societies, and John spent most of his time traveling.
He visited Scotland in 1751 and made 22 journeys there.
He usually slept six hours each night from ten to four.
He warned against desiring anything but God.
From 1749 to 1755 he edited and abridged the English works
of others to publish A Christian Library in fifty volumes.
In his Plain Account of Genuine Christianity
in 1753 he wrote,
Above all, remembering that God is love,
he is conformed to the same likeness.
He is full of love to his neighbor:
of universal love, not confined to one sect or party,
not restrained to those who agree with him in opinions,
or in outward modes of worship,
or to those who are allied to him by blood
or recommended by nearness of place.
Neither does he love those only that love him,
or that are endeared to him by intimacy of acquaintance.
But his love resembles that of him
whose mercy is over all his works.
It soars above all these scanty bounds,
embracing neighbors and strangers, friends, and enemies;
yes, not only the good and gentle
but also the froward, the evil and unthankful.
For he loves every soul that God has made,
every child of man, of whatever place or nation.
And yet this universal benevolence does in nowise
interfere with a peculiar regard for his relations,
friends and benefactors; a fervent love for his country:
and the most endeared affection to all men of integrity,
of clear and generous virtue.1
At conferences in 1758 and 1759 the Methodists discussed
Wesley’s concept of Christian perfection which
he emphasized is “pure love to God and neighbor.”
In 1763 a Preachers’ Fund was established
to provide for retired preachers and their families.
They had called 200 preachers by 1765
when 80 were still working.
Although criticized for his enthusiasm, Wesley agreed with
Samuel Johnson who defined enthusiasm as “a vain belief of
private revelation; a warm confidence
of divine favour or communication.”
John thought enthusiasts were
“those who think themselves inspired by God and are not.”2
Wesley’s A Plain Account of Christian Perfection was
published in 1767 and warned against pride, enthusiasm,
Antinomianism (lawlessness), sins of omission, desiring
anything but God, and schism.
He noted that humility unites patience with love to draw
profit from suffering, and he wrote, “In souls filled with love,
the desire to please God is a continual prayer.”3
On sins of omission he wrote,
Lose no opportunity of doing good in any kind.
Be zealous of good works,
willingly omit no work, neither of piety or mercy.
Do all the good you possibly can
to the bodies and souls of men.4
By 1767 the Methodists had 22,410 converts in England,
232 in Wales, 468 in Scotland, and 2,801 in Ireland.
In 1769 he sent the first Methodist missionaries to America.
Occasionally mobs attacked the Methodists, often because
they felt the moral preaching threatened
their alehouses and entertainment.
In his later years John Wesley expanded
his writing to aid public education.
In 1773 to help the poor he wrote Thoughts on the Present
Scarcity of Provisions which he blamed on the greed
and waste of the rich and on diverting grain into alcohol.
In 1774 he condemned the slave trade in his
Thoughts on Slavery, and he also opposed war, saying
“Whenever war breaks out, God is forgotten.”
In 1775 he included natural philosophy in his
Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation in five volumes.
In 1776 he wrote Some Observations on Liberty to criticize
the views of Richard Price on the American revolution
because he believed that scripture obliged him to obey the
powers-that-be, and he agreed with Dr. Johnson that
the British Parliament had the right to tax the colonies
without representation.
To counter the Calvinist belief in predestination of the elect
in their magazines, in 1778 he began
publishing the Arminian Magazine.
In 1779 his Thoughts on Salvation by Faith warned that
no one would be saved without good works.
He noted that the religious revival in England had been going
for more than fifty years even though Luther had observed
that revivals seldom lasted more than thirty years.
In 1781 Wesley abridged the work of Johann Lorenz Mosheim
in his 4-volume Concise Ecclesiastical History.
In 1783 Wesley published his
Thoughts on the Manner of Educating Children
because he objected to strict discipline
and forcing religion on children.
He urged mildness or “kind severity” if necessary.
He hoped the poor would be educated, and he supported
the charity school movement as well as Sunday schools.
He asked preachers to distribute his Instructions for Children.
He criticized schools for being too near the corrupting influence
of large towns, for having masters who knew little about religion,
for letting Latin and Greek dominate, and for not using
a rational development from easier to more difficult works.
He did not think children should play at school.
Wesley had been publishing his Primitive Physic,
Or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases
since 1747, borrowing many remedies from George Cheyne’s
Essay of Health and Long Life
and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases.
The 23rd edition completed by Wesley in 1791
included 288 diseases and 824 remedies.
He advised regulating diet, sleep, exercise, air quality,
bowel movements, and the passions to use preventive
strategies for good health more than the medicines
prescribed by contemporary physicians.
He especially advised avoiding extremes
in food, drink, and the passions.
John visited Holland in 1783 and 1786.
The Bishop of London would not ordain all his preachers,
and the Methodist societies were
independent of the Anglican Church.
In 1785 Wesley began consecrating ministers for Scotland,
and finally in 1788 he approved
the ordination of ministers in England.
He left behind nearly 75,000 Methodists in the British Isles.
John Wesley wrote most of his estimated 17,650 letters
after 1770, and more than 3,530 are extant.
Charles Wesley found peace on May 21, 1738 and began
preaching, but he is best known for writing the lyrics to
popular hymns such as “Love divine, all loves excelling,”
“Hark, the herald angels sing,” “Christ the Lord is risen today,”
“Soldiers of Christ, arise,” “Rejoice, the Lord is king,”
and “Jesu, lover of my soul.”
A collection of Methodist hymns was published in 1780.
Both brothers became well respected in their later years.
Charles married in 1749 and died in 1788.
John’s last entry in his Journal was on October 24, 1790.
He always gave away all but what he needed
for expenses and left behind only four silver spoons
when he passed on March 2, 1791.
On his deathbed he said, “The best of all is, God is with us,”
and his last words were repeating, “I’ll praise.”
William Law (1686-1761) earned his degree
at Emmanuel College, Cambridge in 1705.
That year he formulated his “Rules for My Future Conduct”
to dedicate his abilities to the “Judge of the whole world,”
to avoid idleness and excess in eating and drinking,
to pray and examine himself, and to follow
the pattern of the life of Christ.
In 1711 the college elected him a fellow,
and he was ordained an Anglican priest.
In 1714 he refused to take the oath of allegiance
to George I and lost his fellowship.
He published his Practical Treatise Upon Christian
Perfection in 1726 and in 1728
A Serious Call to a Devout
and Holy Life: Adapted to the State and Condition of All
Orders of Christians which had six editions in his lifetime.
Law believed in devoting one’s life to God and aligning
one’s will to the will of God to serve God in everything.
He contrasted the passions of the character
Flavia to the devoted Miranda.
A woman who loves clothes and spares no expense to adorn
her person goes on to other follies that shape her life, business,
conversation, hopes, fears, tastes, pleasures, and diversions.
Virtuous Miranda shares her fortune with poor people
and does not indulge in needless and vain expenses.
Her clothes are kept clean and are the cheapest,
and her work is devoted to
what is necessary for herself and others.
Law also wrote The Spirit of Prayer and
The Way to Divine Knowledge, and he translated
Jakob Boehme’s The Way to Christ into English.
Law published The Spirit of Love in 1752 and 1754,
and in the first part he wrote,
There is no peace, nor ever can be for the soul
of man but in the purity and perfection of its first
created nature; nor can it have its purity and
perfection in any other way
than in and by the spirit of love.
For as love is the God that created all things,
so love is the purity, the perfection, and blessing
of all created things; and nothing can live
in God but as it lives in love.
Look at every vice, pain, and disorder in human
nature; it is in itself nothing else but the spirit of
the creature turned from the universality of love
to some self-seeking or own will in created things.
So that love alone is, and only can be,
the cure of every evil, and he that lives in the
purity of love is risen out of the power of evil
into the freedom of the one spirit of heaven.5
Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) was born in Ulster,
where his father was a Scottish Presbyterian minister.
Francis went to school at Killyleagh and studied philosophy,
classics, and theology for six years at the University of Glasgow.
In 1719 he was licensed to preach by Irish Presbyterians
and founded a private academy in Dublin.
He taught there for ten years before returning in 1730
to Glasgow where he was a professor
of moral philosophy for the rest of his life.
He was an exemplar of moral virtue as well as a scholar,
had a positive influence on his students,
and was one of the first to lecture in English.
Hutcheson opposed the more selfish philosophies expressed
by Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville who published
The Fable of the Bees, or Private Vices, Public Benefits
in 1714 and as revised in 1723.
Mandeville had reacted to Puritan ethics by arguing that
usually people pursuing private interests are also contributing
to civilization and the economy and that
therefore not all selfishness is vicious.
Mandeville warned that a society with too many virtues
would be stagnant while luxurious living helps circulate capital.
He believed that exalting virtues too much allowed people
to feel superior to other animals
as politicians appealed to their pride with flattery.
Bishop George Berkeley also criticized the ideas of Mandeville
and other free-thinkers as he defended Christian ethics
in his Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher in 1732.
In that work he noted that in drawing rooms, coffee houses,
chocolate houses, and taverns it became fashionable
and customary for “polite persons to speak freely
on all subjects, religious, moral, and political.”
Hutcheson translated the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.
He was influenced by the ethics of Shaftesbury and published
An Inquiry concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony and Design,
and An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil, in 1725.
In the second Inquiry he began by defining “moral goodness”
as “our idea of some quality apprehended in actions, which
procures approbation, attended
with desire of the agent’s happiness.”6
Hutcheson called this perception the “moral sense”
and argued that it is the motive of virtuous actions.
This feeling of benevolence may join with self-love
to impel a person to an action.
A person of strong benevolence will treat oneself with
equal merit as one would another person.
Benevolence combined with ability produces public good
while selfishness with ability achieves a private good.
He believed that universal benevolence is like gravity
because it affects everyone.
Compassion also motivates one to study the interests of others.
From a sense of obligation we develop our ideas of rights.
In his Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions
and Affections with Illustrations upon the Moral Sense
in 1728 Hutcheson described six internal senses
beyond the five physical senses.
These are a sense of self-consciousness, a sense of beauty
and imagination, a public sense as to what pleases others,
a moral sense which perceives virtue and vice,
a sense of honor which praises and blames,
and a sense of humor.
Hutcheson’s longest work, A System of Moral Philosophy
was published after his death by his son in 1755.
Here he defined the moral sense as the kind affections
of the will that approve of a particular action.
He did not consider self-love bad
unless actions motivated by it injure others.
He was perhaps the first to devise the utilitarian principle
that considers the best action that which produces the
greatest happiness for the most people
and the worst action as what causes the most misery.
In response to the rational approach to religion of the Deists,
in 1736 Joseph Butler published The Analogy of Religion,
Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution
and Course of Nature.
He argued that the government of God is shown in nature
by analogy because acts have consequences
which may be foreseen.
Virtuous actions bring happy results, and bad actions
that cause harm expose the need for moral discipline.
The example and teachings of Jesus offer
Christians guidance in making moral decisions.
Appended to his Analogy Butler included the short essay
“Of the Nature of Virtue” in which he asserted that reason
and conscience enable humans to discern the difference
between morally good and evil actions.
He held that people can see beyond their own self-interest
to consider what is good or harmful to others
and that conscience is what enables us to do this.
Butler considered veracity and justice
the essential rules of life.
Deism continued to be popular, and John Leland
published in four volumes his
View of the Principal Deistical Writers 1754-56.
Richard Price was born on February 23, 1723
in Glamorgan, Wales.
His father was a dissenting minister and rector,
and Richard studied at a dissenting academy
in London until 1744 when he became a chaplain.
In 1758 he published his Review of the Principal
Questions and Difficulties in Morals.
He criticized the limitations of the empiricism of Locke,
Hutcheson, and Hume and was influenced by the
rational intuition of Plato and Ralph Cudworth.
Price believed that people have six duties to God,
self, goodness, gratitude, truth, and justice,
and he considered liberty, intelligence,
and rectitude necessary to virtue.
He was primarily concerned with the perception
of right and wrong, beauty and ugliness,
and what actions deserve.
Instead of using the term “moral sense” he suggested
that the power which perceives and distinguishes
right and wrong is the understanding.
This faculty discerns truth, reasons, judges,
and creates new ideas.
A sense only receives impressions and relates only to
particulars, but the understanding is concerned with
universal principles and expresses the soul’s ability
to examine and judge all things in order to intuit the truth.
He recognized that instincts influence
our desires and affections, and these
may limit our desire to our own happiness.
Virtue gives one merit or moral worth
and makes one esteemed, loved, and happy.
This is how virtue is its own reward.
Price analyzed belief as combining
feeling, intuition, and deduction or reasoning.
Moral obligation is based on virtue and what is right
and becomes a rule or a law that directs behavior.
Some argue that self-love obligates us to act morally,
others that God or divine will so directs us.
The branches of virtue he considered to be duty to God,
ourselves, and others, gratitude, veracity, and justice.
The practice of virtue presupposes that
we are free to choose how we act
using intelligence to determine what is right.
Price also worked on probability and was
elected to the Royal Society in 1765.
In 1769 his research into population and life expectancy
showed that insurance and benefit societies
made inadequate calculations.
He developed a scientific system for determining
life insurance and old-age pensions.
In 1771 he published his Observations on Reversionary
Payments and the next year An Appeal to the Public on
the Subject of the National Debt which persuaded
the elder William Pitt to establish a sinking fund
to pay down Britain’s national debt.
Price corresponded with Benjamin Franklin,
and they became friends.
On February 8, 1776 Price published his Observations on the
Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government
and the Justice and Policy of the War with America.
He argued that the war against America was unjust,
dishonorable, impolitic, a violation of the British constitution,
and that it was likely to fail.
This pamphlet sold more than a thousand copies in two days
and more than 60,000 in six months.
It was printed in Philadelphia, New York, Boston,
and Charleston and was translated into
German, French, and Dutch.
Price explained the value of physical liberty, moral liberty,
religious liberty, and civil liberty, and all of them
involve self-direction or self-government.
Civil government that is free originates from the people
and is conducted for their happiness.
They direct their own affairs to secure and enjoy their rights.
Thus he wrote,
All taxes are free gifts for public services.
All laws are particular provisions or
regulations established by common consent
for gaining protection and safety.
And all magistrates are trustees or deputies
for carrying these regulations into execution.7
He argued that one nation can govern another country only
by using military force, and that will lack weight and efficiency.
The British Parliament claimed the right to make laws to bind
the colonies of America in all cases,
and Price considered that slavery.
He wrote that the Quebec Act made the British king a despot
there and that the same thing was being attempted
in the Massachusetts Bay colony.
David Hume was born on May 7 (NS), 1711 in Edinburgh.
His father died during his infancy, and he was brought up
and educated by his mother.
David attended the University of Edinburgh
from 1723 for about three years.
His family tried to get him to study law,
but he was only interested in philosophy and general learning.
Hoping that he could apply a more rigorous analysis to
Frances Hutcheson’s theory of moral sense
as Galileo and Newton had for natural science,
he had a mental breakdown for about nine months in 1729.
He took herbs, pills to reduce hysteria, drank wine,
and in 1731 gained weight from eating more.
In 1734 he worked in a merchant’s office in Bristol briefly
before going to France for three years.
There he worked on his Treatise of Human Nature.
He returned to London in 1737
and had it published in three books in 1739-40.
He said it “fell dead-born from the press,”
and he considered his later works more mature.
In that precocious work Hume argued that reason is
and should be the tool of the passions (emotions),
serving and obeying them.
In 1741-42 his Essays, Moral and Political were successful.
Yet in 1744 he failed to obtain the chair of moral philosophy
at Edinburgh, probably because he was accused of atheism.
After failing in an attempt to tutor the insane Marquis of
Annandale, Hume got a job working for General St. Clair
in the war against France and with
his military embassy at Vienna and Turin.
By 1748 he had saved £1,000 and returned to Scotland.
Hume published his famous Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding in 1748 and as revised in 1758.
In 1751 he took a position as a librarian that
enabled him to continue his literary work.
The publication of his Political Discourses
in 1752 improved his reputation.
From 1753 to 1761 Hume wrote a History of England
in six volumes that covers up to 1688.
In 1763 he went to France with the British ambassador,
the Earl of Hertford, and served as secretary in the embassy.
In 1765 Hume brought back Rousseau with him,
but they soon parted.
Hume worked as an undersecretary in the Foreign Office
1767-68 before settling down in Scotland
for the rest of his life that ended on August 25, 1776.
Before his death he expressed the view that they should
part as friends of the Americans and put aside anger
except against themselves for their past folly.
Hume believed that An Enquiry Concerning the
Principles of Morals published in 1751 was his best work,
but he admitted it was unnoticed by the world.
His Natural History of Religion published in 1757 and 1772
was also neglected, and he later arranged for its revision
as Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
to be published after his death.
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
was also revised, and the final edition was printed in 1772.
In that work Hume noted that a current controversy debated
whether morals are based on reason or sentiment.
He acknowledged that moral distinctions are discernible by
pure reason but also that what every person feels
within oneself is the “standard of sentiment.”
Proofs can appeal to authorities and use analogies,
detect fallacies, and draw inferences.
Truth he found to be more disputable than taste by which
Hume meant the judgment of moral beauty, virtue and vice.
He wrote that the purpose of moral speculation is to teach us
our duty and to differentiate between the deformity of vice
and the beauty of virtue in order to develop good habits.
Usually both reason and sentiment concur in moral conclusions.
As a skeptical empiricist Hume believed that people learn
from experience, and any system of ethics not based
on fact and observation must be rejected.
He described his first principle of benevolence as
“sociable, good-natured, humane, merciful, grateful, friendly,
generous, beneficent,” and they lead to
the happiness and satisfaction of society.
What is useful to people is another moral principle.
Hume wrote, “That public utility is the sole origin of justice.”7
He hoped that the entire human race would form one family
where all would be used freely with regard to
the necessities of each individual.
Yet he noted,
The community of goods has frequently been attempted;
and nothing but experience of its inconveniences,
from the returning or disguised selfishness of men,
could make the imprudent fanatics adopt anew
the ideas of justice and of separate property.8
Thus virtue and the rules of justice depend
on the social condition of humanity.
He observed that people are born in a family-society
and are trained by their parents with rules of conduct.
History, experience, reason sufficiently instruct
us in this natural progress of human sentiments,
and in the gradual enlargement of our regards to
justice, in proportion as we become acquainted
with the extensive utility of that virtue.9
The purpose of laws and regulations
are for the good of mankind.
Hume believed that the virtue of justice should have
“the strongest energy and most entire command over
our sentiments along with fidelity, veracity, integrity,
and other useful principles.
Hume, like James Madison, believed that if people
always acted wisely, government may not be needed.
Yet because they do not, he found that the duty of allegiance is
advantageous in helping to preserve peace and order in society.
He noted that nations are finding it useful to follow certain laws
even during wars such as the sacredness of ambassadors
and abstaining from use of poisons.
Unlike individuals, nations can survive without other nations.
Yet they sometimes ignore the rules of justice and break treaties.
He noted that the confederated commonwealths of the
Swiss Cantons and the United Provinces of the Netherlands
have found it useful to maintain their unions.
Hume exposed the current sexism when he assumed that
infidelity is “much more pernicious in women than in men.”
The social virtues recognize that the public interest may
outweigh self-interest and gain approval and good-will.
No one can be completely indifferent to the happiness
and misery of others as can be seen
in how audiences respond in a theater.
Communication helps people become aware of the interests
of society as does the study of history.
Caring about humanity awakens moral distinctions as one
resents injuries done to people
while approving what is for their welfare.
Thus the principles of humanity gain authority over our feelings,
approving what is useful to society and blaming what is harmful.
These things are learned and taught wherever people gather
as well as in churches, theaters, and schools.
Hume’s social virtues include justice, fidelity, honor, allegiance,
chastity, humanity, generosity, bravery, charity, affability,
kindness, mercy, and moderation.
He believed the influence of these is more universal
and extensive than self-interest.
What promotes the interests of society gives people pleasure,
and the opposite makes them uneasy.
Hume considered useful to ourselves the virtues of discretion,
industry, frugality, chastity, magnanimity, caution, enterprise,
economy, good-sense, discernment, temperance, sobriety,
patience, constancy, perseverance, forethought, consideration,
presence of mind, quickness of conception,
and facility of expression.
The qualities of honesty, fidelity, and truth
he considered valuable for ourselves and others.
He noted that some passions such as fear, anger, dejection,
grief, melancholy, and anxiety are disagreeable.
The qualities he found agreeable to ourselves include
cheerfulness, dignity, courage, tranquility, and the serenity
exemplified by Socrates and Epictetus.
The qualities Hume found agreeable to others are politeness,
wit, ingenuity, being good-natured and companionable,
sensibility, modesty, decency, cleanliness, and gentility.
Hume rejected the monkish “virtues” of celibacy, fasting,
penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, and solitude
as doing nothing to advance one’s fortune nor to benefit society.
The skeptical Hume may be considered one of the main
founders of secular ethics that used no theological arguments.
He also castigated excesses of self-love such as avarice,
ambition, vanity, and naming people enemies or odious.
Hume concluded that to express the universal sentiments
of censure or approval morals are recognized with virtues
and vices in order to frame general rules of behavior
with universal principles that can control and limit selfishness
for the sake of social sentiments.
Every honest person who understands and cultivates these
principles which guide one’s conduct may find the
peace of mind and integrity that produce happiness.
In “Concerning Moral Sentiment” in the Appendix to
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
Hume emphasized the importance of reason as the only
faculty that can instruct us on the beneficial consequences
of the qualities and actions to society and the person.
Sentiment prefers the useful and is “a feeling for the
happiness of mankind and a resentment of their misery,”10
the ends which virtue and vice promote.
Reason instructs on the tendencies of actions,
and humanity distinguishes which are useful and beneficial.
He defined virtue as “whatever mental action or quality
gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation.”11
In deliberating on personal conduct one must consider
personal relations, circumstances, and situations to
determine one’s duty and obligation.
He emphasized the great difference between
a mistake of fact and one of right or judgment.
The ultimate ends of human action are never determined
by reason but by values or what Hume called “taste.”
In the section “Of Self-Love” Hume responded
to the cynical theory that all moral sentiments
can be reduced to private interests.
From this viewpoint benevolence is mere hypocrisy,
friendship a cheat, public spirit a farce, fidelity a snare
to procure trust and confidence,”12
but he dismisses this as “a malignant philosophy.”
In further commenting on justice he noted that the sentences
of judges should be “equal to every member of society.”
Samuel Johnson was born at Lichfield in Staffordshire
on September 18, 1709 (NS).
His father Michael was a sheriff and bookseller
but had difficulties with money.
His mother Sarah was forty when she gave birth to Samuel
and sent him to a wet nurse whose tubercular milk
gave the infant scrofula (swollen glands in the neck).
The belief that a royal touch could cure this condition
was still applied until the end of Queen Anne’s reign.
In March 1712 she touched Samuel and put a ribbon with
a gold amulet around his neck that he wore most of his life.
Surgery left scars on his neck and lower face.
He had poor vision and was deaf in one ear,
and he had smallpox as a child.
He admitted he was usually in pain and often said that
it is difficult for the sick not to be scoundrels.
By the age of four he was in a class for infants.
Sarah was a devout Calvinist and raised him with the
Book of Common Prayer and
promises of heaven and threats of hell.
Shortly before his death Johnson tore out 38 pages
from the “Annals” of his childhood that
may have had critical views of religion.
His father went into debt to buy a library of over 2,900 books.
Samuel was a precocious child but tried to avoid
his father’s efforts to show off his talent.
He liked to read fairy tales and believed that
children prefer them to insipid stories often chosen by parents.
At the age of six he was sent to be taught by Thomas Browne
who had dedicated a spelling-book to the universe.
In January 1717 Samuel began studying Latin at the grammar
school and soon showed his skill by
memorizing 119 lines of Latin on the rules of nouns.
They read Aesop’s Fables in Latin as well as Cicero, Ovid,
Virgil, Horace, Pliny, Juvenal, Plautus, and Livy.
He claimed he read Hamlet at the age of nine at home.
In May 1719 he was promoted to the upper school.
Later he recalled that whipping by the headmaster helped him
learn Latin, but his friend Edmund Hector said that
he was punished for distracting other students.
Hector also noted that Johnson learned by intuition and could
remember whatever he read or heard.
He learned Greek by reading the New Testament,
then Xenophon, and Hesiod.
On Sundays he often skipped church to read in the fields.
In September 1725 he visited his 31-year-old cousin
Cornelius Ford, whom he called “Neely,”
who enhanced his intellectual development.
Samuel would often take the wrong side of a debate
so that he could make new arguments.
Returning to Lichfield in June 1726 he was not allowed back
in school, but Cornelius arranged for him to live and study
at Stourbridge with the Oxford graduate John Wentworth.
After six months he returned to Lichfield and worked in his
father’s bookshop which gave him access to books.
Samuel was influenced by the lawyer Gilbert Walmseley
who was skilled in argument, knew much about books,
and could tell him where to find things.
In November 1728 Samuel entered Pembroke College
at Oxford but could only afford to stay for thirteen months.
As a Christmas exercise he translated in one day
Alexander Pope’s poem “Messiah” into 119 lines of Latin verse.
He read William Law’s A Serious Call to a Devout
and Holy Life and was surprised to find it
awakened an interest in religion.
After his father died in 1731, Samuel taught grammar school
briefly before getting a job translating from French into English
A Voyage to Abyssinia by the Jesuit missionary Jerónimo Lobo.
In his preface he wrote that a diligent
and impartial inquirer will always discover
that wherever human nature is to be found,
there is a mixture of Vice and Virtue,
a contest of Passion and Reason;
and that the Creator doth not appear
partial in his distributions,
but has balanced in most countries their
particular inconveniences by particular favors.
In 1735 Johnson married the 45-year-old widow
Elizabeth Porter who found him to be the “most sensible man.”
She had three children and gave him a dowry of £700
that he used to set up a boarding school
to teach Latin and Greek.
The school had few students and failed after two years,
but the pupil David Garrick became his friend
and a famous actor.
In March 1737 the two men went to London.
Later that year Johnson returned to Lichfield and completed his
tragedy Irene, based on The General History of the Turks
by Richard Knowlles, about a beautiful Christian who
becomes the mistress of Sultan Mehmed II
after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453.
In May 1738 Johnson published anonymously his satirical
poem “London,” describing his own plight when he wrote,
This mournful truth is ev’ry where confess’d,
Slow rises worth, by poverty depress’d.
In November he published a life of Paolo Sarpi,
and he earned £50 for translating into English
The History of the Council of Trent by Sarpi in two volumes.
Samuel Johnson was a Tory; but at this time the Tories were
mostly small landowners and country clergy
while Whigs were
dominated by great landowners and wealthy merchants.
In 1739 he satirized Whig policies of the first Prime Minister
Robert Walpole in the ironic pamphlets Marmor Norfolciense
(Norfolk Marble) and A Compleat Vindication of the
Licensers of the Stage which defended
Henry Brooke’s banned play Gustavus Vasa.
In 1740 Johnson wrote biographies of the British admirals
Robert Blake and Francis Drake.
Although publishing the proceedings of the House of Commons
was prohibited, without being able to witness them directly
Johnson wrote accounts of the debates
for the Gentleman’s Magazine from 1740 to 1743.
Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, had been Prime Minister
under Queen Anne, and he collected a library of
about 50,000 books, 350,000 pamphlets,
and more than 7,000 volumes of manuscripts.
Harley’s son Edward died in 1741, and Johnson wrote
a “General Account” of this library in December 1742.
The library was sold to Parliament in 1753
and four years later was put in the British Museum.
After his friend Richard Savage was put in debtors’ prison
and died in 1743, Johnson wrote his Account of the Life of
Mr Richard Savage and published it
anonymously the next year.
Praise for this by Henry Fielding and others
brought Johnson his first public recognition.
In October 1741 Garrick began performing Shakespeare’s
Richard III, and the next year his salary was 500 guineas.
Johnson was still struggling with his finances.
In September 1747 he wrote a prologue for the celebration
of Garrick’s becoming the manager of the Drury Lane Theatre.
Garrick produced Johnson’s Irene in February 1749,
and Johnson received nearly £200
from the profits of nine performances.
In the fall of 1748 he wrote his most famous poem,
“The Vanity of Human Wishes,” and in January 1749
it was the first work published under his name.
The poem begins,
Let Observation with extensive View,
Survey Mankind, from China to Peru;
Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife,
And watch the busy Scenes of crowded Life;
Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate,
O’er spread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate,
Where wav’ring Man, betray’d by vent’rous Pride,
To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;
As treach’rous Phantoms in the Mist delude,
Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good.
How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice,
Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice,
How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppres’d,
When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request.
Fate wings with ev’ry Wish th’ afflictive Dart,
Each Gift of Nature, and each Grace of Art,
With fatal Heat impetuous Courage glows,
With fatal Sweetness Elocution flows,
Impeachment stops the Speaker's pow’rful Breath,
And restless Fire precipitates on Death.
He described the British thus:But will not Britain hear the last Appeal,
Sign her Foes Doom, or guard her Fav’rites Zeal;
Through Freedom’s Sons no more Remonstrance rings,
Degrading Nobles and controlling Kings;
Our supple Tribes repress their Patriot Throats,
And ask no Questions but the Price of Votes;
With Weekly Libels and Septennial Ale,
Their Wish is full to riot and to rail.
“The Vanity of Human Wishes” concludes,
Where then shall Hope and Fear their Objects find?
Must dull Suspence corrupt the stagnant Mind?
Must helpless Man, in Ignorance sedate,
Swim darkling down the Current of his Fate?
Must no Dislike alarm, no Wishes rise,
No Cries attempt the Mercies of the Skies?
Enquirer, cease, Petitions yet remain,
Which Heav’n may hear, nor deem Religion vain.
Still raise for Good the supplicating Voice,
But leave to Heav’n the Measure and the Choice.
Safe in his Pow’r, whose Eyes discern afar
The secret Ambush of a specious Pray’r.
Implore his Aid, in his Decisions rest,
Secure whate’er he gives, he gives the best.
Yet with the Sense of sacred Presence prest,
When strong Devotion fills thy glowing Breast,
Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind,
Obedient Passions, and a Will resign’d;
For Love, which scarce collective Man can fill;
For Patience sov’reign o’er transmuted Ill;
For Faith, that panting for a happier Seat,
Thinks Death kind Nature’s Signal of Retreat:
These Goods for Man the Laws of Heav’n ordain,
These Goods he grants, who grants the Pow’r to gain;
With these celestial Wisdom calms the Mind,
And makes the Happiness she does not find.
Johnson wrote didactically to convey moral lessons.
From 1750 to 1752 he wrote all but four of the 208 articles
which appeared twice a week for The Rambler.
They were published all together in twelve editions
during Johnson’s lifetime.
Here are some highlights:
It is therefore to be steadily inculcated,
that virtue is the highest proof of understanding,
and the only solid basis of greatness;
and that vice is the natural consequence of narrow thoughts;
that it begins in mistake, and ends in ignominy. (4)The great art therefore of piety, and the end for which
all the rites of religion seem to be instituted,
is the perpetual renovation of the motives to virtue,
by a voluntary employment of our mind
in the contemplation of its excellence, its importance,
and its necessity, which, in proportion as they are
more frequently and more willingly revolved,
gain a more forcible and permanent influence,
till in time they become the reigning ideas,
the standing principles of action,
and the test by which everything proposed
to the judgment is rejected or approved. (7)Pride is undoubtedly the original of anger; but pride,
like every other passion, if it once breaks loose
from reason, counteracts its own purposes.
A passionate man, upon the review of his day,
will have very few gratifications to offer to his pride,
when he has considered how his outrages
were caused, why they were borne,
and in what they are likely to end at last. (11)All envy is proportionate to desire. (17)
The great remedy which heaven has put in our hands
is patience, by which,
though we cannot lessen the torments of the body,
we can in a great measure preserve the peace of the mind,
and shall suffer only the natural and genuine force of an evil,
without heightening its acrimony, or prolonging its effects….
Patience and submission are very carefully
to be distinguished from cowardice and indolence.
We are not to repine, but we may lawfully struggle;
for the calamities of life, like the necessities of nature,
are calls to labour and exercises of diligence. (32)Sorrow is a kind of rust of the soul,
which every new idea contributes
in its passage to scour away.
It is the putrefaction of stagnant life
and is remedied by exercise and motion. (47)As the love of money has been, in all ages,
one of the passions that have given great disturbance
to the tranquility of the world,
there is no topic more copiously treated
by the ancient moralists than the folly
of devoting the heart to the accumulation of riches….
When therefore the desire of wealth
is taking hold of the heart,
let us look round and see how it operates upon
those whose industry or fortune has obtained it.
When we find them oppressed
with their own abundance,
luxurious without pleasure, idle without ease,
impatient and querulous in themselves,
and despised or hated by the rest of mankind,
we shall soon be convinced,
that if the real wants of our condition are satisfied,
there remains little to be sought with solicitude,
or desired with eagerness. (58)Men seldom give pleasure,
where they are not pleased themselves;
it is necessary, therefore, to cultivate
an habitual alacrity and cheerfulness,
that in whatever state
we may be placed by Providence,
whether we are appointed to confer
or receive benefits,
to implore or to afford protection,
we may secure the love of those
with whom we transact. (74)The frequency of capital punishments,
therefore, rarely hinders the commission of a crime,
but naturally and commonly prevents its detection,
and is, if we proceed only upon prudential principles,
chiefly for that reason to be avoided. (114)To raise esteem we must benefit others.
To procure love we must please them. (160)
Johnson’s wife struggled with alcohol and drugs
and died in March 1752.
In his grief he wrote an eloquent prayer.
He worked on his Dictionary of the English Language
for nine years before publishing it in two huge volumes on
April 15, 1755, defining 42,773 words and including about
116,000 quotes after examining some 240,000.
The words often have several definitions, and for the word
“take” he found 134 different meanings.
The Dictionary was used as a basis
for Noah Webster’s Dictionary in 1828.
Work on a New English Dictionary began in 1858 and was
compiled by 2,300 scholars before it was completed
as the Oxford English Dictionary in 1928.
In the Literary Magazine No. 1 in April-May 1756
Johnson published An Introduction to the Political State
of Great Britain in which he reviewed English foreign policy
from the reign of Elizabeth up to the war that began in America
between France and Britain with Indians fighting on both sides.
He noted that their agents and traders used European
counting-houses to defraud the hunters of their furs.
He observed that the British farmers quarreled with their
governors whom they trusted less than the French while the
traders alienated the Indians with their tricks and oppression.
His essay continued in No. 4 in July-August as
Observations on the Present State of Affairs.
The French and English were fighting over the boundaries
of their settlements which both usurped dispossessing
the original inhabitants who wanted to be free of both sides.
Johnson wrote many prefaces such as to Thomas Browne’s
Christian Morals (1756) and a review of Soame Jenyns’
Free Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil (1757).
In Payne’s Universal Chronicle he did more journalistic
work and was perhaps the first to write so concisely about
those challenges and responsibilities as he did
in “Of the Duty of a Journalist” in 1758.
A Journalist is an Historian, not indeed of the
highest Class, nor of the number of those whose
works bestow immortality upon others or themselves;
yet, like other Historians, he distributes for a time
Reputation or Infamy, regulates the opinion of the
weak, raises hopes and terrors,
inflames or allays the violence of the people.
He ought therefore to consider himself as subject at least
to the first law of History, the Obligation to tell Truth.
The Journalist, indeed, however honest, will frequently
deceive, because he will frequently be deceived himself.
He is obliged to transmit the earliest intelligence
before he knows how far it may be credited;
he relates transactions yet fluctuating in uncertainty;
he delivers reports of which he knows not the Authors.
It cannot be expected that
he should know more than he is told,
or that he should not sometimes
be hurried down the current of a popular clamour.
All that he can do is to consider attentively,
and determine impartially, to admit no falsehoods by design,
and to retract those which he shall have adopted by mistake.
His essays appeared weekly in that Chronicle as “The Idler”
from April 1758 to April 1760, and he wrote 92 of 104.
In Number 38 “Debtors’ Prisons” he estimated that more than
20,000 people were imprisoned for debt, and because of
bad conditions about 5,000 die each year.
The article concludes with the following comment on the
creditors who insist these people be sent to prison until they pay:
Surely, he whose debtor has perished in prison,
although he may acquit himself of deliberate murder,
must at least have his mind clouded with discontent,
when he considers how much another
has suffered from him;
when he thinks on the wife bewailing her husband,
or the children begging the bread
which their father would have earned.
If there are any made so obdurate by avarice or cruelty,
as to revolve these consequences without dread or pity,
I must leave them to be awakened by some other power,
for I write only to human beings.
In Number 81 “European Oppression in America”
a native chief speaks the following to his people:
Others pretend to have purchased
a right of residence and tyranny;
but surely the insolence of such bargains is more
offensive than the avowed and open dominion of force.
What reward can induce the possessor of a country
to admit a stranger more powerful than himself?
Fraud or terror must operate in such contracts;
either they promised protection
which they never have afforded,
or instruction which they never imparted.
We hoped to be secured by their favour
from some other evil, or to learn the arts of Europe,
by which we might be able to secure ourselves.
Their power they never have exerted in our defence,
and their arts they have studiously concealed from us.
Their treaties are only to deceive,
and their traffic only to defraud us.
They have a written law among them,
of which they boast,
as derived from Him who made the earth and sea,
and by which they profess to believe
that man will be made happy
when life shall forsake him.
Why is not this law communicated to us?
It is concealed because it is violated.
For how can they preach it to an Indian nation,
when I am told that one of its first precepts
forbids them to do to others
what they would not that others should do to them?
In April 1759 Johnson published his most popular work,
The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia,
and it was translated into French and Dutch in 1760,
into German in 1762, into Italian in 1764, and later into
Spanish, Hungarian, Polish, Greek, Danish, Armenian,
Bengali, Japanese, and Arabic.
Voltaire wrote the comparable Candide the same year
and praised Rasselas.
Prince Rasselas of Abyssinia, his sister Nekayah, and her maid
Pekuah are confined in a “happy valley” waiting to see
when they might be called to court to rule.
After a while the prince has too much of this happiness
and desires to see the misery of the outer world,
but his attempt to escape by flying with wings fails.
He meets the poet Imlac who tells them
about his experiences in the world.
His father gave him money and sent him off to make his way.
He went to Mughal India but found the Persians more social.
Arabians were pastoral but violent.
Everywhere ancient poetry was respected.
In Europe he found more knowledge and power which
enables them to govern as humans do over other creatures;
but he found that Europeans are not happy.
Imlac decided that he would not injure anyone; but he would
relieve distress and enjoy gratitude, choosing his friends
from the best and a wife from the virtuous.
He opened a school but was banned from teaching and could
not marry because her father rejected him for being a merchant.
Imlac says diligence and skill will help them
escape by using perseverance.
Nekayah appears and is allowed to join them with Pekuah.
They take jewels for trading.
After crossing the mountains they go to Cairo where Imlac
says they will see all humanity.
In two years they learn the language.
Rasselas is wisely seeking a life with the least evil
but finds everyone envying their neighbors.
He becomes disgusted with the pleasures of the young
and finds that such a life ends in ignorance and intemperance.
He suggests they should live knowing they will grow old.
Others laugh at him, but he keeps searching.
He finds a sage lecturing that reason is like the sun
and advising how to conquer passions with patience.
Rasselas gives him gold, but Imlac warns that
such teachers speak like angels but live like men.
The sage is devastated by the death of his daughter,
and Rasselas cannot comfort him.
They find a wealthy man, but he is afraid of the Bassa of Egypt.
They meet a hermit who removes evil by staying away
from people, but he lacks the counsel of the good.
A philosopher says that happiness comes from living
according to nature, which he says is
cooperating with the present system.
Rasselas sets out to observe the courts while
Nekayah visits the poor; but neither finds contentment.
She sees discord in families as children rival their parents.
Elders get angry at the audacity of youth
while the young feel contempt for the old.
Marriage has much pain, and celibacy lacks pleasure.
Even those who appear to be virtuous are not happy.
They debate the happiness of marriage, and Nekayah
argues that many disputes cannot be solved by reason.
Imlac comes in and says that
example works better than precepts.
They visit the pyramids, and Arabs abduct Pekuah,
but Nekayah eventually ransoms her.
They meet an astronomer who realizes he spent his time
studying without experience something
that is too remote to help mankind.
They discuss a monastic life; but Imlac believes that
living in the world is better, though the weak and timid
may feel secure and happy sheltered.
Finally he discusses whether the consciousness
of the soul is immortal after it separates
from imperishable and unconscious matter.
Nekayah decides that knowledge is best and plans to
study science and found a college for women.
In this novella Johnson portrayed
the quest for the things he valued.
In his Journal on October 15, 1759 John Wesley wrote how
he preached to 1,100 French prisoners he observed confined
in miserable conditions where “they died like rotten sheep.”
On December 18 some Londoners formed a committee
to gather and disperse charitable contributions to relieve
those prisoners, and on June 4 1760 they published a report
and asked Johnson to write the introduction which
they published with the Proceedings of the Committee
on French Prisoners in August.
He noted that the only argument used against such activity
was that many Englishmen may remain unrelieved
while charity went to their enemies.
His Introduction was translated into French and was
published by the International Red Cross in its
Revue Internationale in 1751.
Here are his last two paragraphs:
That charity is best of which
the consequences are most extensive:
the relief of enemies has a tendency
to unite mankind in fraternal affection;
to soften the acrimony of adverse nations,
and dispose them to peace and amity:
in the meantime, it alleviates captivity,
and takes away something from the miseries of war.
The rage of war, however mitigated,
will always fill the world with calamity and horror:
let it not then be unnecessarily extended;
let animosity and hostility cease together;
and no man be longer deemed an enemy
than while his sword is drawn against us.
The effects of these contributions
may, perhaps, reach still further.
Truth is best supported by virtue:
we may hope from those who feel or who see
our charity that they shall no longer detest
as heresy that religion which makes its professors
the followers of Him who has commanded us
to do good to them that hate us.13
In 1762 young George III granted Johnson
a pension of £300 a year.
His Dictionary had defined pension as
“pay given to a state hireling for treason to his country;”
but he accepted after Reynolds assured him
it was for his past work, not for what he might do.
In his home Johnson provided a refuge
for the blind Anna Williams,
and he hired the former African slave Francis Barber
and left him a legacy in his will.
On May 16, 1763 in a bookshop Johnson met 22-year-old
James Boswell and soon urged him to keep a diary that
would help him write and publish the most
famous literary biography in history.
Johnson enjoyed company, and in 1764 they formed the
dining Club that included the painter Joshua Reynolds,
Edmund Burke, and Oliver Goldsmith.
After studying Shakespeare for many years Johnson in 1765
finally published in eight volumes The Plays of Shakespeare
with his textual corrections, obscure words explained,
and the sources examined.
Johnson collaborated with George Steevens in revised
editions in ten volumes that were published in 1773 and 1778.
In 1771 Johnson wrote Transactions respecting
Falkland’s Islands, and Adam Smith commended his
forceful writing against “the madness of modern wars.”
From August to November 1773 Johnson accompanied
Boswell on a visit to the western islands of Scotland.
In 1774 “The Patriot” was
“Addressed to the Electors of Great Britain.”
In 1775 he published Taxation no Tyranny
against the American rebels and an account of his
Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland.
He wrote biographical and critical prefaces to the works
of 52 English poets which were published as
Lives of the English Poets in 1779 and 1781.
In his later years Johnson experienced asthma and edema,
and he gradually recovered from a stroke
he had on June 17, 1783.
In his last days he declined to take opiates so that
he could deliver his soul lucidly to God;
he died on December 18, 1784.
Boswell published his Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides
with Samuel Johnson in 1785
and in 1791 his Life of Samuel Johnson in six volumes.
Adam Smith was baptized on June 5, 1723.
His father had been a Judge Advocate and a controller
of customs but died five months before Adam was born.
His mother devoted herself to her son for the next 61 years.
Adam was kidnapped by gypsies when he was three
and was rescued by his uncle.
He went to grammar school in Kirkcaldy near Edinburgh
and in 1737 entered the University of Glasgow where
he was strongly influenced by the
moral philosophy of Francis Hutcheson.
He went to Balliol College in Oxford in 1740
but left in 1746 before completing his fellowship.
The University had confiscated his copy
of Hume’s Treatise on Human Nature.
In 1748 Smith began giving lectures on civil law for the
Philosophical Society in Edinburgh,
including the ideas of Grotius and Pufendorf.
Based on surviving lecture notes we find that Smith taught
that justice is the basis of civil government
which can provide security from injury.
Government requires revenue which it collects from taxes
and duties, and it uses this to provide police, militia, and armies.
Government is based on the principles of authority and utility.
In a warlike society authority comes from superior strength
and in a more sophisticated one from mental ability.
Age has authority because of experience and wisdom,
and wealth also brings power and authority.
People cooperate with civil magistrates
because it is useful to do so.
In primitive cultures of hunting and gathering they live
by the laws of nature without organized government.
Acquiring herds brought unequal fortune by this property,
and government developed to secure wealth
and protect the rich from the poor.
As societies became organized, labor could be divided,
increasing the countries’ wealth.
Much of the surplus was acquired
by merchants and the owners of property.
Using animals such as horses improved work,
and then machines were invented to make work more efficient.
Trade and bartering were used to make the division of labor
more effective, and gold and silver were used
as money and a medium of exchange.
Prices of commodities varied according to circumstances.
The natural price of labor was what was needed to maintain
the worker, and market prices depended on demand for
the commodity, its abundance or scarcity,
and the money of the buyers.
Smith noted that in violent societies
private property is less secure, and wealth is diminished.
In 1751 the University of Glasgow hired Smith to teach logic,
and a few months later he was promoted
to Professor of Moral Philosophy.
He lectured eight times a week on natural theology, ethics,
jurisprudence, and political economy,
and he influenced the historian William Robertson.
Andrew Cochrane founded the Political Economy Club,
and Smith spoke there on economic liberty in 1755.
That year he also wrote articles for the Edinburgh Review
on the Encyclopédie, Rousseau, and Johnson’s Dictionary.
In 1759 Adam Smith published his Theory of Moral
Sentiments, or An Essay towards an Analysis of the
Principles by which Men naturally judge concerning
the Conduct and Character, first of their Neighbours,
and afterwards of themselves.
The sixth edition in 1790 is most complete, and it was also
translated into French and German.
To explain his main ethical concept of propriety Smith began by
discussing the sympathy people feel for the fortunes of others.
He found that everyone to some extent
feels sorrow for the sorrow of others.
We use imagination to place ourselves in the situation of others
and through compassion experience how we would react.
Grief and joy inspire similar emotions in others.
Sympathy intensifies joy and alleviates sorrow.
Love springs from agreement with others,
and resentment results from disagreement.
From these come the moral judgments
of approval and disapproval.
Everyone judges others by their own faculties.
The emotions of the spectator are less intense
than those of the one suffering.
By feeling for others and restraining our selfish instincts
we may become benevolent,
which Smith called “the perfection of human nature.”
The virtue of humanity requires sensibility,
and magnanimity depends on self-command.
Humans sympathize with decent passions but disapprove
of what Smith called “unsocial passions.”
People feel strongly about the injuries done to another.
Social passions are based on the sentiment of love.
Joys and sorrows based on one’s
own fortunes are the selfish passions.
Ambition is often rooted in a desire
for more money or success.
Smith believed that moral sentiments are corrupted
by the disposition to admire the rich
and to despise and neglect the poor.
Whatever awakens a feeling of gratitude merits a reward,
and what provokes resentment deserves punishment.
Smith compared the virtues of justice and benevolence.
Acts of benevolence are approved and appear to merit
a reward, and harmful actions are disapproved
and seem to deserve punishment.
Kindness and benevolence cannot be
extorted by force but are given freely.
Smith argued there is no proper motive for hurting one’s
neighbor, and unjust actions
should bring about a feeling of remorse.
He added more about conscience in the sixth edition.
He found that rules of general conduct help correct the
misrepresentations of self-love, and he believed that
they are correctly regarded as the laws of God.
A sense of duty is helpful to guide conduct,
but in most cases other motives concur.
He warned that the virtues of prudence, charity, generosity,
gratitude, and friendship may require modifications,
but justice is the most basic rule.
Smith wrote that utility is beautiful in all human actions
and that it awakens the sentiment of approval.
He wrote that humanity is the virtue of women,
and generosity is characteristic of men.
Yet in his time few women had control over resources
that would enable them to be generous, and men’s
domination of those resources may be one reason
why they were less humane.
Smith noted that custom and fashion influence
the sentiments of approval and disapproval.
In the last part of his Theory of Moral Sentiments
he discussed stoicism and other systems of moral philosophy.
He observed that casuists were most concerned about
breaches of moral duty in regard to rules of justice,
rules of chastity, and rules of veracity.
Charles Townshend hired Smith to tutor his step-son
Henry Scott, Duke of Buccleuch,
and gave him a lifetime pension of £300 a year.
From 1764 to 1766 they toured France, and Smith met Voltaire
in Geneva before attending salons of the physiocrats in Paris.
In Toulouse he met Pierre Rousseau who published
the Journal encyclopédique which reviewed
the Theory of Moral Sentiments (TMS) and works
banned by the French and would help produce
the Encyclopédie économique in 16 volumes starting in 1778.
Hume informed Smith that Baron d’Holbach
was supervising the French translation of his TMS.
Smith was also influenced by the
physiocratic economist François Quesnay.
After the Duke’s younger brother was assassinated
in the streets, Smith returned to London where
he worked with Chancellor of the Exchequer Townshend.
Smith returned to Kirkcaldy for seven years
and worked on his Wealth of Nations.
In 1773 Smith went back to London to see his friend
David Hume and was elected to the Royal Society.
He associated with Edward Gibbon, Edmund Burke,
Samuel Johnson, and Joshua Reynolds for five years.
To Benjamin Franklin he suggested a plan
for imperial federation to solve colonial problems.
On March 9, 1776 Smith published An Inquiry into the
Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations
which sold out in six months and had five editions by 1789.
This work influenced the British government through
such Prime Ministers as the elder Pitt and North.
In 1778 Smith became commissioner of customs
and of salt duties in Scotland, giving him
£600 a year in addition to his pension.
That year he wrote a letter to the Solicitor-General
advising a separation from the colonies.
He gave away money to help others
secretly,
and he never married.
He lived with his mother and a cousin in Edinburgh
until his mother’s death in 1784.
After that his health declined, and he died on July 17, 1790.
Adam Smith began the introduction to his
Wealth of Nations by emphasizing the value of human labor:
The annual labour of every nation is the fund
which originally supplies it with all the necessaries
and conveniences of life which it annually consumes,
and which consist always either
in the immediate produce of that labour,
or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.
According therefore, as this produce,
or what is purchased with it, bears a greater or smaller
proportion to the number of those who are to consume it,
the nation will be better or worse supplied with all
the necessaries and conveniences for which it has occasion.
But this proportion must in every nation
be regulated by two different circumstances;
first by the skill, dexterity, and judgment
with which its labour is generally applied;
and, secondly, by the proportion between the number
of those who are employed in useful labour,
and that of those who are not so employed.
He goes on to write that the number of laborers is proportional
to the quantity of capital stock which is used to employ them.
He noted that in recent centuries Europe has been more
favorable to arts, manufactures, commerce, and industry
in towns than to agriculture and industry in the country.
In Book 1 he explained how the division of labor has
brought about the greatest improvement in production
and the skill and judgment of work.
He found that whereas one person could only make
a few pins in a day working alone, ten employees
working together could produce 48,000.
By using specialized labor the textile industry
improved production immensely.
Each worker has better dexterity and saves time
not having to move from one task to another.
Workers and others have invented machines
to make the work even more efficient.
Humans have adopted these methods because they are
in their self-interest, and they learned first how to barter
and then to purchase what they need with money.
How much labor can be divided depends on the extent
of the market, and Smith noted that water-carriage by sea
and rivers enabled produce to be more widely distributed.
Money was invented in ancient times by using iron,
copper, silver, and gold, and the trouble of
weighing was eliminated by minting coins.
Smith considered labor the real measure of the exchangeable
value of all commodities, and labor also has a real price.
He considered the natural price of commodities wages, profit,
and rent, and the market price is determined by the quantity
brought to the market and the demand by the buyers.
A monopoly has the same effect as a secret in trade or
manufacturing and enables the selling of products above
the natural price because of greater demand.
Free competition, however, brings the lowest natural price.
Wages are the natural recompense for labor.
Landowners get a share of the produce by collecting rent.
Smith noted that Britain had no laws against combining to
lower wages but many to keep them from being raised.
In disputes masters could hold out much longer than workers.
A man must have wages that enable him
to maintain himself and his family.
Wages can be raised if the national wealth is increasing.
In his century he found that compensation for labor had
increased while the price of grain and potatoes decreased.
He believed that no society can flourish or be happy
if the majority of the people are poor and miserable.
He realized that poverty does not prevent the generation
of children, and the wealthy usually had fewer children.
The liberal reward of labor provides better for families
and increases the wealth of the people.
Employment is affected by its agreeableness, cost of training,
constancy of work, trust, and probable success.
Increasing stock raises wages but lowers profit.
Smith noted that in the great countries most of the land
is cultivated to produce food for people and cattle.
He pointed out that the desire for food is limited
by the size of the stomach but that the desire
for material things has no limit.
At the end of Book 1 he issued this warning:
To widen the market and to narrow the competition,
is always the interest of the dealers.
To widen the market may frequently be
agreeable enough to the interest of the public;
but to narrow the competition must always be against it,
and can serve only to enable the dealers,
by raising their profits above what they naturally would be,
to levy, for their own benefit,
an absurd tax upon the rest of their fellow-citizens.
The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce
which comes from this order,
ought always to be listened to with great precaution,
and ought never to be adopted
till after having been long and carefully examined,
not only with the most scrupulous,
but with the most suspicious attention.
It comes from an order of men, whose interest is
never exactly the same with that of the public,
who have generally an interest
to deceive and even oppress the public,
and who accordingly have, upon many occasions,
both deceived and oppressed it.
In Book 2 Smith discussed the division of stock.
Capital can be used to raise, manufacture, or purchase
goods or to improve land, purchase machines
and means of trade, and for distribution.
He defined productive labor as what creates valuable
products and brings profit to the master, and he cited
a menial servant as an example of unproductive labor.
Government officials and the army and navy are also
unproductive, though they serve the public.
Book 3 compares the wealth of different nations.
The rise and progress of cities and towns after
the fall of the Roman Empire coincided with the
development of industry and commerce, and they
provided more wealth which benefited the country also.
In Book 4 of Wealth of Nations he described
systems of political economy.
In the commercial or mercantile system money is used
as an instrument of trade and measure of value.
European nations tried to accumulate gold and silver,
and Spain and Portugal were supplied
by their American colonies.
Britain and France made laws to prohibit the taking of
gold or silver out of their kingdoms; but Smith argued that
exporting these metals to purchase foreign goods that could
then be re-exported to other countries
would bring in more to the treasury.
A nation that exports more than it imports
creates a favorable balance of trade and more wealth.
The abundance of gold and silver coming from
American mines made those metals cheaper.
He noted that the recent war against France cost Britain
upwards of £90 million and increased
the national debt by £76 million.
Smith criticized unreasonable restraints
on the commercial system.
Cheap wines from France and linens from Germany
could be re-exported for British profit.
He believed that unconstrained trade naturally and regularly
exchanged between two places is always advantageous,
though not equally to both.
Merchants and manufacturers desire to sell their goods
to foreigners and ask that exports be encouraged by
drawbacks such as remittances on excise
or import duties on goods that are re-exported.
They also petition for bounties to facilitate
and increase exports.
Nations make commercial treaties that advantage
merchants and manufacturers who are favored.
Smith found that colonies in lands where natives easily give
way to settlers provide more wealth than any other societies.
Surplus produce imported from America provided Europeans
with many commodities they could not otherwise get.
England gets cheap tobacco from Maryland and Virginia
and makes a profit selling it to the French.
Britain imposed the Navigation Act to gain a monopoly
on the colonial trade and thereby greatly increased its wealth.
He observed that the leading men of America, like others,
want to preserve their own importance.
Smith believed that the discovery of America and the passage
to the East Indies were the two greatest events in human history.
Mercantilism discourages the export of manufacturing materials
with high duties in order to give their workers an advantage
so they can undersell other nations in foreign markets,
and the export of trading instruments is prohibited.
Agriculture is the main source of wealth in every country.
Smith argued that a landed nation, which uses high duties
to limit foreign trade and gives local manufacturers a monopoly,
hurts their own people by raising the price of foreign goods.
He favored a system of natural liberty whereby every person
who does not violate just laws is free to pursue their own
interests and may bring industry and capital
to compete with others.
The sovereign government has the three duties of protecting
people from violence and invasion, administering justice
from oppression, and maintaining public works
and institutions that benefit society.
Book 5 explains how governments can gain the
revenues needed to fulfill the duties of defense,
justice, and public services.
National defense requires military force.
Justice needs a civil government, but this is usually
designed by the wealthy to protect their property.
In regard to justice he warned that wherever
there is great wealth there is great inequality.
Smith suggested that superior power comes from ability, age,
fortune, and family or birth, and he considered
the latter two most important in his time.
Public works include roads, bridges, canals, and harbors.
As educational institutions he discussed schools
for youths and churches for adults.
In his era public schools did not include universities,
and thus wealth and family tradition greatly aided the latter.
He described the changes in Christianity in the past few
centuries and noticed that in his time Dissenters
and Methodists cultivated learning the most.
Governments can rent public land.
Some republics have gained revenue from the profit
of mercantilism, and the post office is such a project.
Government can also collect taxes on rented land
and its produce, houses, livestock, and other profits.
The wages of workers can be taxed directly,
and he recommended that capitation taxes be proportioned
according to fortune rather than to rank.
Commodities can be taxed, but those on necessities
are as bad as taxing wages.
Taxing luxuries, such as tobacco, tea, sugar, chocolate,
alcohol, and meat, has several advantages,
but they are more oppressive.
Smith found that excise taxes disrupt smugglers
more than customs duties.
He observed that most public debt is caused
by the financing of wars, and he concluded
his master work with the following words:
If any of the provinces of the British empire cannot be
made to contribute towards the support of the whole empire,
it is surely time that Great Britain should free herself
from the expense of defending those provinces
in time of war, and of supporting any part of their
civil or military establishments in time of peace,
and endeavour to accommodate her future view and
designs to the real mediocrity of her circumstances.
Born into a Catholic family on May 22, 1688 Alexander Pope’s
father retired that year from being a linen merchant.
At age eight he went to school for a while
until he was whipped for satirizing his master.
His Aunt Elizabeth taught the boy to read, and about the time
they moved to Windsor Forest in 1700 Alexander was
trampled by a cow and was seriously deformed;
he also began learning Latin and Greek.
Three years later he went to London to learn French and Italian.
His pastoral poems were published in 1709, and his
Essay on Criticism appeared in 1711 in rhymed couplets.
He wrote how people look for their own values in others:
Some valuing those of their own, Side or Mind,
Still make themselves the measure of Mankind;
Fondly we think we honor Merit then,
When we but praise Ourselves in Other Men.
Parties in Wit attend on those of State,
And public Faction doubles private Hate. (451-7)
He gave this advice to critics:
Learn then what Morals Critics ought to show,
For ‘tis but half a Judge’s Task, to Know.
‘Tis not enough, Taste, Judgment, Learning, join;
In all you speak, let Truth and Candor shine:
That not alone what to your Sense is due,
All may allow; but seek your Friendship too. (560-5)
His friend John Caryll told how two Catholic families
were feuding because Robert Petre clipped
some of Arabella Fermor’s hair.
Pope wrote the mock-epic, The Rape of the Lock,
hoping to resolve the conflict with laughter.
The poem was published in two cantos in 1712
and expanded to five in 1714.
Here is a passage from Canto V:
But since, alas! frail beauty must decay,
Curled or uncurled, since Locks will turn to grey;
Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade,
And she who scorns a man, must die a maid;
What then remains but well our pow’r to use,
And keep good-humor still whate'er we lose?
And trust me, dear! good-humor can prevail,
When airs, and flights, and screams, and scolding fail.
Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll;
Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul. (25-34)
As a persecuted Catholic, Pope became friends with Tories
such as Jonathan Swift, Queen Anne’s physician John Arbuthnot,
chief minister Robert Harley, Secretary of State Bolingbroke,
and the poets John Gay and Thomas Parnell who,
thrown out of power, decided to use satire.
Pope made a fortune translating Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey,
though it took him about ten years.
Pope’s poem Eloisa and Abelard was published in 1717.
Abelard (1079-1142) and Héloise loved each other passionately
and were secretly married; but her uncle had ruffians castrate him.
They were separated by religious lives
but stayed connected by their letters.
This poem represents her response
to his first letter and includes these lines:
When love is liberty, and nature, law:
All then is full, possessing, and possessed,
No craving Void left aching in the breast:
Ev’n thought meets thought ere from the lips it part,
And each warm wish springs mutual from the heart.
This sure is bliss (if bliss on earth there be)
And once the lot of Abelard and me. (92-98)
Full in my view set all the bright abode,
And make my soul quit Abelard for God. (127-8)
Pope wrote about human life and nature in his
often-quoted Essay on Man in four epistles.
In August 1731 Viscount Bolingbroke wrote to Swift
that Pope had written the first three epistles
and was working on the fourth.
They were published anonymously and individually in February,
March, and May of 1733 and in January 1734
before being printed together in April.
An Essay on Man was revised as late as February 1744
three months before his death.
Pope’s authorship became known by 1735,
and the poem was greatly admired by Voltaire.
In 1762 the poem was published at Strasburg in English,
French, German, Italian, and Latin, and versions also existed
in Danish, Dutch, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Swedish,
and other languages.
I recommend especially these passages:
Laugh where we must, be candid where we can;
But vindicate the ways of God to Man.
Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man, what see we but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Through worlds unnumbered though the God be known,
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
He, who through vast immensity can pierce,
See worlds on worlds compose one universe,
Observe how system into system runs,
What other planets circle other suns,
What varied Being peoples every star,
May tell why Heav’n has made us as we are. (I:15-28)
So Man, who here seems principal alone,
Perhaps acts second to some sphere unknown,
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal;
‘Tis but a part we see, and not a whole. (57-60)
Hope springs eternal in the human breast:
Man never Is, but always To be blest:
The soul, uneasy and confined from home,
Rests and expatiates in a life to come. (95-8)
The pow’rs of all subdued by thee alone,
Is not thy Reason all these pow’rs in one? (231-2)
All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul. (267-8)
All Nature is but Art, unknown to thee;
All Chance, Direction, which thou canst not see;
All Discord, Harmony not understood;
All partial Evil, universal Good:
And, spite of Pride, in erring Reason’s spite,
One truth is clear, Whatever Is, Is Right. (289-94)
Know then thyself, presume not God to scan;
The proper study of Mankind is Man. (II:1-2)
Sole judge of Truth, in endless Error hurled:
The glory, jest, and riddle of the world! (17-8)
Alas, what wonder! Man’s superior part
Unchecked may rise, and climb from art to art;
But when his own great work is but begun,
What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone. (39-42)
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the soul;
Reason’s comparing balance rules the whole. (59-60)
Attention, habit and experience gains;
Each strengthens Reason, and Self-love restrains. (79-80)
Love, Hope, and Joy, fair pleasure’s smiling train,
Hate, Fear, and Grief, the family of pain,
These mixed with art, and to due bounds confined,
Make and maintain the balance of the mind;
The lights and shades, whose well-accorded strife
Gives all the strength and color of our life. (117-22)
This light and darkness in our chaos joined,
What shall divide? The God within the mind. (203-4)
’Tis but by parts we follow good or ill;
For, Vice or Virtue, Self directs it still;
Each individual seeks a several goal;
But Heaven’s great view is One, and that the Whole. (235-8)
Even mean Self-love becomes, by force divine,
The scale to measure others’ wants by thine.
See! and confess, one comfort still must rise,
’Tis this, though Man’s a fool, yet God is wise. (291-4)
And just as short of Reason he must fall,
Who thinks all made for one, not one for all. (III:47-8)
See then the acting and comparing powers
One in their nature, which are two in ours;
And Reason raise o’er Instinct as you can,
In this ’tis God directs, in that ’tis Man. (95-8)
God in the nature of each being founds
Its proper bliss, and sets its proper bounds:
But as He framed a Whole, the Whole to bless,
On mutual Wants built mutual Happiness:
So from the first, eternal Order ran,
And creature linked to creature, man to man. (109-14)
Nor think, in Nature’s state they blindly trod;
The state of nature was the reign of God:
Self-love and Social at her birth began,
Union the bond of all things, and of Man. (147-50)
Heaven’s attribute was Universal Care,
And man’s prerogative to rule, but spare. (159-60)
Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state,
Laws wise as Nature, and as fixed as Fate.
In vain thy Reason finer webs shall draw,
Entangle Justice in her net of Law,
And right, too rigid, harden into wrong;
Still for the strong too weak, the weak too strong.
Yet go! and thus o’er all the creatures sway,
Thus let the wiser make the rest obey. (189-96)
His safety must his liberty restrain:
All join to guard what each desires to gain.
Forced into virtue thus by Self-defence,
Ev’n Kings learned justice and benevolence:
Self-love forsook the path it first pursued,
And found the private in the public good. (277-82)
In Faith and Hope the world will disagree,
But all Mankind’s concern is Charity:
All must be false that thwart this One great End;
And all of God, that bless Mankind or mend. (307-10)
Thus God and Nature linked the general frame,
And bade Self-love and Social be the same. (317-8)
Remember, Man, “the Universal Cause
Acts not by partial, but by general laws;”
And makes what Happiness we justly call
Subsist not in the good of one, but all. (IV:35-8)
Know, all the good that Individuals find,
Or God and Nature meant to mere mankind,
Reason’s whole pleasure, all the joys of Sense,
Lie in three words, Health, Peace, and Competence. (77-80)
To whom can Riches give Repute or Trust,
Content, or Pleasure, but the Good and Just?
Judges and Senates have been bought for gold,
Esteem and Love were never to be sold. (185-8)
Who noble ends by noble means obtains,
Or failing, smiles in exile or in chains,
Like good Aurelius let him reign, or bleed
Like Socrates, that Man is great indeed. (233-6)
A Wit’s a feather, and a Chief a rod;
An honest Man’s the noblest work of God. (247-8)
Know, then, this truth (enough for Man to know)
“Virtue alone is Happiness below.”
The only point where human bliss stands still,
And tastes the good without the fall to ill;
Where only merit constant pay receives,
Is blest in what it takes, and what it gives. (309-14)
Good, from each object, from each place acquired
For ever exercised, yet never tired;
Never elated, while one man’s oppressed;
Never dejected while another’s blessed;
And where no wants, no wishes can remain,
Since but to wish more Virtue, is to gain.
See the sole bliss Heav’n could on all bestow!
Which who but feels can taste, but thinks can know:
Yet poor with fortune, and with learning blind,
The bad must miss; the good, untaught, will find;
Slave to no sect, who takes no private road,
But looks through Nature up to Nature’s God;
Pursues that Chain which links the immense design,
Joins heav’n and earth, and mortal and divine;
Sees, that no being any bliss can know,
But touches some above, and some below;
Learns, from this union of the rising Whole,
The first, last purpose of the human soul;
And knows, where Faith, Law, Morals, all began,
All end, in Love of God, and Love of Man. (321-40)
Self-love thus pushed to social, to divine,
Gives thee to make thy neighbor’s blessing thine.
Is this too little for the boundless heart?
Extend it, let thy enemies have part:
Grasp the whole worlds of Reason, Life, and Sense,
In one close system of Benevolence:
Happier as kinder, in whate’er degree,
And height of Bliss but height of Charity.
God loves from Whole to Parts: but human soul
Must rise from Individual to the Whole.
Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake!
The center moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbor, first it will embrace;
His country next; and next all human race;
Wide and more wide, the o’erflowings of the mind
Take every creature in, of every kind;
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest,
And Heaven beholds its image in his breast. (353-72)
From Wit’s false mirror held up Nature’s light;
Showed erring Pride, whatever is, is right;
That Reason, Passion, answer one great aim;
That true Self-love and Social are the same;
That Virtue only makes our Bliss below;
And all our Knowledge is, ourselves to know. (393-8)
Pope wrote “The Universal Prayer” in 1715,
and in 1738 William Warburton added it to
his edition of An Essay on Man.
Here it is:
Father of all! in every age,
In every clime adored,
By saint, by savage, and by sage,
Jehovah, Jove, or Lord!
Thou Great First Cause, least understood:
Who all my sense confined
To know but this—that thou art good,
And that myself am blind:
Yet gave me, in this dark estate,
To see the good from ill;
And binding Nature fast in fate,
Left free the human will.
What conscience dictates to be done,
Or warns me not to do,
This, teach me more than Hell to shun,
That, more than Heaven pursue.
What blessings thy free bounty gives,
Let me not cast away;
For God is paid when man receives,
To enjoy is to obey.
Yet not to earth’s contracted span,
Thy goodness let me bound,
Or think thee Lord alone of man,
When thousand worlds are round:
Let not this weak, unknowing hand
Presume thy bolts to throw,
And deal damnation round the land,
On each I judge thy foe.
If I am right, thy grace impart,
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, oh teach my heart
To find a better way.
Save me alike from foolish pride,
Or impious discontent,
At aught thy wisdom has denied,
Or aught thy goodness lent.
Teach me to feel another’s woe,
To hide the fault I see;
That mercy I to others show,
That mercy show to me.
Mean though I am, not wholly so
Since quickened by thy breath;
Oh lead me wheresoe’er I go,
Through this day’s life or death.
This day, be bread and peace my lot:
All else beneath the sun,
Thou know’st if best bestowed or not,
And let thy will be done.
To thee, whose temple is all space,
Whose altar, earth, sea, skies!
One chorus let all being raise!
All Nature’s incense rise!
1. John and Charles Wesley: Selected Prayers, Hymns, Journal Notes, Sermons, Letters and Treatises
ed. Frank Whaling, p. 122.
2. Quoted in Reasonable Enthusiast: John Wesley and the Rise of Methodism by Henry D. Rack, p. 276.
3. John and Charles Wesley ed. Frank Whaling, p. 370.
4. Ibid., p. 364.
5. The Spirit of Love by William Law ed. Paul G. Stanwood, p. 360.
6. An Inquiry concerning Moral Good and Evil by Francis Hutcheson
in British Moralists 1650-1800, Volume 1, p. 262.
7. Observations on the Nature of Civil Liberty, the Principles of Government
and the Justice and Policy of the War with America Part I, Section II by
Richard Price in Richard Price and the Ethical Foundation
of the American Revolution ed. Bernard Peach, p. 69.
8. An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals by David Hume
ed. Tom L. Beauchamp, p. 13.
9. Ibid., p. 15.
10. Ibid., p. 84.
11. Ibid., p. 85.
12. Ibid., p. 90.
13. Political Writings by Samuel Johnson
ed. Donald J. Greene, p. 288-289.