not arise from acting according to an erroneous judgment, but from our previous misemployment of the means we possessed, for correcting the errors to which our judgment is liable. 458. From these principles it follows, That actions, although materially right, are not meritorious with respect to the agent, unless performed from a sense of duty. This sense necessarily accompanies every action which is an object of moral approbation. SECTION VII.—OF THE OFFICE AND USE OF REASON IN THE PRACTICE OF MORALITY. 459. It was observed (§ 457) that a strong sense of duty, while it leads us to cultivate with care our good dispositions, will induce us to avail ourselves of all the means in our power for the wise regulation of our external conduct. The occasions on which it is necessary for us to employ our reason in this way, are chiefly the three following: (1.) When we have ground for suspecting that our moral judgments and feelings may have been warped and perverted by the prejudices of education. (2.) When there appears to be an interference between different duties, so as to render it doubtful in what the exact propriety of conduct consists. To this head may be referred those cases in which the rights of different parties are concerned. (3.) When the ends at which our duty prompts us to aim, are to be accomplished by means which require choice and deliberation. 460. It is owing to the last of these considerations, that the study of happiness, both private and public, becomes an important part of the science of Ethics. Indeed, without this study, the best dispositions of the heart, whether relating to ourselves or to others, may be in a great measure useless. 461. The subject of happiness, so far as relates to the Individual, has been already considered.-The great extent and difficulty of those inquiries which have for their object to ascertain what constitutes the happiness of a Community, and by what means it may be most effectually promoted, make it necessary to separate them from the other questions of Ethics, and to form them into a distinct branch of the science. 462. It is not, however, in this respect alone, that politics is connected with the other branches of Moral Philosophy. The provisions which nature has made for the intellectual and moral progress of the species, all suppose the existence of the political union: And the particular form which this union happens, in the case of any Community, to assume, determines many of the most important circumstances in the character of the people, and many of those opinions and habits which affect the happiness of private life. [PART THIRD," Of Man considered as the Member of a Political body," will be found at the commencement of Vol. VIII.-Ed.] PREFACE. BEFORE proceeding to my proper subject, I may be permitted to say something in explanation of the large, and perhaps disproportionate space which I have allotted in these volumes to the Doctrines of Natural Religion. To account for this I have to observe, that this part of my Work contains the substance of Lectures given in the University of Edinburgh, in the year 1792-93, and for almost twenty years afterwards, and that my hearers comprised many individuals, not only from England and the United States of America, but not a few from France, Switzerland, the north of Germany, and other parts of Europe. To those who reflect on the state of the world at that period, and who consider the miscellaneous circumstances and characters of my audience, any farther explanation on this head is, I trust, unnecessary. The danger with which I conceived the youth of this country to be threatened, by that inundation of sceptical or rather atheistical publications which were then imported from the Continent, was immensely increased by the enthusiasm which, at the dawn of the French Revolution, was naturally excited in young and generous minds. A supposed connexion between an enlightened zeal for Political Liberty and the reckless boldness of the uncompromising free-thinker, operated |