N° 67. SATURDAY, AUGUST 24. Ψευδος δε μισει πας σοφος και χρησιμος. THE night before last, as I was sitting in the great chair at the meeting of our society, the following extraordinary letter was brought to me from the postoffice, which being of an official nature, I read it out to the gentlemen present, who are pleased to take a more than common interest in the concerns of this paper. "Sir, "To the Rev. Simon Olive-branch. "I am one of those enlightened reasoners of the present day, that have raised themselves above the prejudices of their forefathers, and have framed a philosophy of the most comfortable, accommodating, and practicable sort, and which requires none of those unreasonable and painful sacrifices by which Nature is traversed and outraged in her plainest institutes and designs. Although the fundamental points of this amiable philosophy are simple and few, yet I have only time to present you with the leading principle on which its excellence is founded. I set out with concluding, that in studying to make ourselves happy we fulfil one of the most evident indications which Providence has given us of his will, and the principal end of our creation. In the prosecution of this end, nothing is unwarrantable but what encroaches upon the general plan; for as the happiness of all mankind is equally the concern of our Maker, his great scheme must not be interrupted for any private advantage to an individual. Thus where I destroy more happiness than I procure to myself, I make, or attempt to make, a subtraction from the sum of happiness conceded to mankind; but where I render one person only a victim to my own felicity, the account with Providence is exactly balanced, provided indeed the gain and loss are in equal proportion. 66 Nothing can be more simple, intelligible, and just, than this system of philosophy, in which one mystery only is contained, involving indeed something like a contradiction; though I have no doubt but that in the plan of reconcilement we are pursuing, we shall find some compromise between reason and nature in this particular. It seems, I say, something like a contradiction, that since the promotion of his private happiness is so entirely the duty of every individual, there should be so much in the general system to disappoint this purpose, and that the interests of all mankind should not coalesce to this one great object of our being. Abating this little difficulty, nothing can be more satisfactory than the proposition on which our reasonings are grounded; and the simplicity which accompanies its further developement recommends it powerfully to the judgements of those who, with a resolute independence of thinking, are determined to believe nothing they do not exactly comprehend, or cannot with ease reduce to the standard of their feelings. "Nature has given us passions—and these passions were given us, no doubt, to be indulged. It is our duty therefore to indulge them as far as we can, with out opposing the like duty enjoined to the rest of our species. Between man and man there is a tacit convention, within the limits of which our passions and appetites may sport at large; and the only barrier to pleasure is pleasure. Thus, in this elegant and liberal philosophy, virtue and vice have none but merely relative distinctions, and indeed are not cognisable as virtue and vice till they begin to promote or interrupt the happiness of society. It seems as if there were a certain measure of felicity distributed among mankind; and if we have robbed an individual of his due proportion, we have only to make it out to Providence by taking upon ourselves what remains on the balance. What a delicious atonement is this! and out of what a plain principle of equity it arises ! What encouragement and certainty it lends to repentance! while it renders our duty our delight, and our religion a regale. Adieu, under such a system, to the secret torments of conscience, and that inward sense of depravation which in ordinary and unphilosophical minds are attached to the free indulgence of those appetites which nature has given us. Adieu to those shallow prejudices which, by supposing absurd distinctions where none exist, overwhelm the mind with unreasonable terrors, and make our very thoughts susceptible of stain and criminality. "I have observed, sir, with great regret, that you have adopted, in their full extent, these unhappy prejudices, and have applied them to almost all the pursuits and actions of our lives. There is one very important subject, however, which has as yet escaped your pen, and which I would fain rescue from that illiberal partiality with which the rest have been treat ed. You are to know, sir, that from earliest youth I have ever detested partiality and persecution of every kind; and I see no reason why what you are pleased to call vice should not have as fair play as what you choose to denominate virtue. "To avoid the charge of egotism, I will say no more of myself, though I must own I was on the point of presenting you with a very astonishing history, but will proceed to the consideration of the subject alluded to above, which is that of the practice of acting and speaking with an intention to deceive, or what is vulgarly called a habit of lying. I. maintain that the idea of sin will only then properly attach to this universal practice, when it destroys more pleasure than it procures, or tends actually to diminish the quantity of solid happiness permitted to mankind. To talk of any intrinsic turpitude in a lie, or any inward sense of corruption or reproach of conscience in the fabrication of an imposture, is an absurdity which every true philosopher must heartily despise, and which tends to rob life of all its spirit and pleasantry. "Were the influence of truth, by the exertions of its advocates, to be very much increased upon earth, I should fear it would become a very sombre world, and lose all its merriment, almost all its amusement, and much of its good-humour. We should no longer see ignorance and deformity with smiling faces; and folly would want that confidence in itself which makes life so rich in ridicule and burlesque. Moreover, what a topsy-turvy disposition of things would result from such an arrangement in favour of truth! We should have physicians refusing fees for consciencesake, and apothecaries throwing away their gallipots and phials; officers declining promotion; bishops begging absolution; 'squires pulling off their hats to their coachmen; lords over-awed by chimneysweepers, and countesses confused in the presence of their dairy-maids. What is there like fiction that sweetens and adorns life? It gives, as it were, a varnish to nature's work, a sort of polish to our exist ence, and blends into one shining mass of gay confusion those mortifying differences and inequalities which are planted in the real constitution of things. No shape so crooked, no face so forbidding, no faculties so obtuse, no manners so coarse, but what may be kept in countenance by this lying system, which happily prevails more and more in the world. "A sober inquiry into the nature of civilization and refinement will prove to us that these are only modifications of this great and ruling plan of impo ́sition; and that in proportion as men advance in the art of lying, they advance in all the delicacies and elegancies of behaviour. Life itself is but one lengthened lie, with those who aspire to the praise of polished manners, or, in other words, who undertake to keep mankind in good-humour with themselves. But not only in the lighter concerns of life does the happy operation of this system of imposture appear, but in its graver duties and employments it is of equal use and importance. So necessary an accomplishment is it thought to the most sanctified situations, that the whole bench of bishops receive their dignities with a manifest lie in their mouths, and declare themselves adverse to their exaltation, at the same time that all the world knows to what they have submitted to obtain it. The solemnity of aspect, and formality of deportment, assumed in certain professions, are nothing but grave lies and a more studied kind of imposture. This is the garnish of life, and without which, existence would hardly be swallowed. "It is the same principle that governs us all. The bishop refuses his dignity, the physician his fee, and the lady her lover's kiss, in conformity with this |