me, that Edwards' views were not the standard of truth and falsehood; that he would prove the absurdity of denying a self-determining power to the will as plainly as Edwards had endeavored to prove the absurdity of affirming it; that Mr. Tappan had proved President Edwards a mere novice in the science of the mind, and the art of reasoning. He requests me to postpone my curiosity till he comes to treat on the will. In the mean time he promises to devote an interview to the discussion of the nature of volition. Here he promises to take up the nature of holiness and sin, and to place this great subject in its true light. I confess that I feel no small curiosity on this head. I am aware that there must be something very peculiar in the nature of volitions, to make it possible that an act of the mind, performed by a person with only the power of choice, should have no moral character, and that the very same act, performed by a being possessed of the power of contrary choice, should be free and worthy of God's approbation, or deserving of his eternal wrath. Adieu.

NATURE OF VIRTUE AND CHARACTER OF VOLITIONS.

LETTER VI.

At our next interview the worthy clergyman informed me of his intention to introduce a spectator to our meeting, who possibly might take some share in the debate. You must know, says he, that I have a nephew who has been pursuing a theological course at our most orthodox school of new theology, who unhappily has imbibed some share of error with the great doctrines of Christianity there taught. In short, says he, he has drawn some conclusions from our premises which must impair his usefulness in the ministry, and even bring discredit on our system, unless they can be removed. On asking what the inferences were which he had made from their great fundamental principles, he continued as follows: "There are some minds which on first gaining a knowledge of our system, resemble persons brought

from a dark cellar into the dazzling noon-day sun; they cannot see, sir, so well as before; and not only so, the organs of vision themselves are endangered. When he first heard our grand principle announced, that all virtue consists in a purpose to gratify self-love, and all vice in the same, he instantly denied the existence of any distinction between right and wrong; he declared that he had always been imposed upon; that virtue was a mere delusion; that man is capable of nothing but prudence; that rewards and punishments are unnecessary and improper, as a man will of course form resolutions to seek happiness from the desire of happiness, the only one of which he is capable; and that any failure to seek his happiness must spring from mistake and not from any indifference to the great object of all virtuous pursuit; that his mistakes need to be corrected by enlightening his judgment, but can deserve no punishment. On learning that we make right and expediency synonymous, he has been enthusiastic in his zeal to discard the old fashioned terms, right and wrong, and to adopt their synonymes expedient and inexpedient; he declaims against the cruelty of keeping the vulgar in the severe bondage under which they have always groaned, from the influence of these magical words, to which they affix such erroneous and disquieting ideas; he insists that knaves, whores, and sots, should be taught at once, and in plain terms, that right and wrong differ not at all from expedient and inexpedient; and that those who have advanced the opposite doctrine should be opposed as disturbers of the public peace.

These deductions have been considered by his instructors as incorrectly drawn, and of a tendency positively bad, if not dangerous: they have feared that they might spread among the students, and bring suspicion on the orthodoxy of the seminary in the minds of a certain class, on which account they have recommended him a short absence, and have requested me to endeavor to convince him of the fallacy and danger of his conclusions. For this reason, I have desired for him the privilege of being present at this interview and of proposing his difficulties, if he see any, for solution. Just before the entrance of his nephew, the good man seemed to fall into a reverie, as he sat resting his head on his elbow. Suddenly he rose up and began to walk the room with rapid steps and considerable agitation. At last he broke out into incoherent expressions: "Oh charming,

lovely, beautiful! beauty itself!-She is an angel! Oh what charms!-who can help loving her! he must be a stock who is insensible to her graces." As the good clergyman was many years beyond the age when so many charms are perceived in the other sex, I began to fear that his intellect was affected, and was about to interrupt his reverie, when he continued, Oh virtue, could the rudest savage, the most hardened devil, or the very rocks, see thee as our writers paint thee, he must be charmed, ravished, filled with pleasing ecstacy. Here his nephew entered, and his meditations were interrupted. On resuming the conversation I could not help telling the worthy old gentleman that he had almost frightened me; that if he had been many years younger, I should have supposed that he had been poring over a miniature likeness of the mistress of his affections till he had forgotten where he was. The old man replied jocosely that he had been poring over the miniature likeness of his mistress as she was painted in the Christian Spectator, (the book had been open before him,) and begged pardon for forgetting himself. I observed to him that I should be glad of an opportunity myself of seeing a picture drawn by these great masters, which was capable of producing such overpowering emotions. That, said he, is to be the business of the present interview. I am going to show you how our great masters in art, have delineated virtue and vice; I am going, by their assistance, to describe the nature and character of volitions. I am going to show you the distinction between right and wrong, and prove that it is real and heaven-wide."

Here the nephew interposed and took up the conversation. "Uncle," said he, "I can never see the propriety of using words to express our ideas which have always been employed in a different sense. It seems to me, that there is danger that we shall impose upon ourselves in the course of our reasonings, by employing ambiguous terms, and we must certainly deceive others unless we put them on their guard. You are aware that the great body of those who yet hold the dogma of physical depravity, believe that there is a peculiar meaning to right and wrong distinct from the tendency of actions, while we hold that there is no distinction between what is right and what is expedient, or for the general good, or what is the same thing, the good of the agent. They believe that it is right that a person do this or that, and that

we ought to do it; we believe that it may be expedient or for the general good that he should do it, but for any right or any ought distinct from this, we do not know what it means."

"But," says I, "my good Eugenio, (for this is the name of the young man) can it be that your instructors have taught you that the moral character of an action is to be determined by its tendency and not by its nature ?"

"They have taught us," said he, "that an action has no nature distinct from its tendency; that they are one and the same thing. For example: they say "it seems to be implied that right and wrong, and productiveness of happiness or otherwise, must be derived one from the other; and therefore are two distinct ideas. Now this is by no means conceded it is incorrect, and so too is the whole argument which is so plausibly based upon it. These ideas are identical, or rather one is explanatory of the other. When we say a thing is right because it is productive of the greatest amount of happiness, all we mean is, that its tendency to produce the greatest amount of happiness is what makes or constitutes it right."-Ch. Spec. Vol. 7. p. 604. On page 616 of the same volume, the writer utterly denies that God can be pleased with the "moral piety of moral agents in and for itself, as well as on account of its being essentially conducive to the happiness of his creation." On this he remarks: "Is this peculiar piety a mere abstraction with no tendencies, with no tendencies at all....? Of what posssible use can it be if it does good to no one, if it has no tendency to make any one happier?" He well knew that the writer, whom he quoted, taught the beneficial tendency of virtue, but asserted an excellency distinct from this, inherent in its own nature. This, the writer, you see, utterly denies. You see, then, that we make virtue to be nothing more than a tendency in the voluntary actions of moral agents to produce the greatest amount of good. But still, the agent himself purposes nothing in his virtue but the gratification of self-love, or the desire of happiness. As this writer well observes, p. 611, 'We feel assured that no one can reason upon this question without implying, however he may blind himself by the use of terms, the existence of such a subjective state or habit of mind-a CONTROlling purpose in every thing to seek happiness, and that the idea of RIGHT AND WRONG is indissolubly VOL. VI.

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connected with THE SAME.' You see, then, that if his act is overruled for the greatest good, it is no fault of the agent; happiness and not the general good is the object of his desire; and this writer would not know how to form a conception of an act where the agent should desire the general good instead of his own happiness. Hear him on p. 608, of same vol. A desire to do right without thinking of enjoyment, seems to us very much like contradiction.' This Reviewer opposes the views of a writer who maintained, that the love of righteousness, the desire to be righteous, may sustain the same relation to acts of choice, which Paley and others ascribe to self-love,' and demonstrates that a desire to be righteous is, in its more analytic form, a desire of happiness which results from being righteous.' The writer has fully proved, that virtue and an action tending to the general good are the same thing; and, also, that both these, and a purpose to gratify self-love, which has this tendency, are identically the same. He shows that right and wrong are nothing but a controlling purpose in every thing to seek happiness,' and that they are distinguished from each other only by the tendency of this purpose when carried into action. Now, I have been urging my friends to drop the old terms right and wrong, which keep up error in the minds of the unthinking, and to use their acknowledged synonymes fit or unfit, expedient or inexpedient, good or bad tendency. Nine tenths of the community will understand the terms right and wrong in the old sense, whereas the others are less ambiguous. The term expedient seems exactly calculated to express the tendency of an action to the welfare of the individual and the public. Our writers agree in defining selflove and desire of happiness to be identically the same, and that they are neither good or bad. Since, then, both right and wrong agree in definition as being "a controlling purpose to seek happiness in every thing," or to gratify self-love, I hold that they differ not in nature but in tendency; and though an individual may see that an action will prove beneficial, yet, as he purposes nothing in it but the gratification of self-love, just as he does in acts of a different tendency, it seems to me proper to characterise the actions solely by their tendency, and not to use terms which will convey to the minds of the unthinking the impression that there exists some other distinction in actions which respects there nature sole