The Nature of True Virtue
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nature of true virtue Along with “Miscellanies” no. 1208, this section in the “Controversies” notebook on True Virtue provided essential materials for the dissertation The Nature of True Virtue. The section appears on pages 180–89 of the notebook. All of the entries, with the exception of the last four paragraphs, are written in a gray ink that matches that which Edwards used to write “Miscellanies” no. 1208, which dates from late 1753 or early 1754.1 The concluding paragraphs are in the same dark brown ink as the later entries in the section on “Justification” dating from the period after 1754.
After some preliminary notes and references (to other writings by himself, and to works by Joseph Butler and George Turnbull), Edwards enters into a short sequence of entries dealing with moral taste. Moral taste as found in natural men, he argues, is not true virtue. He then incorporates his views on moral taste into a longer excursus on two sorts of beauty. The first is spiritual; the second, subsuming moral taste, external. Spiritual beauty he further divides according to two objects of benevolence. The first object is “Being, simply considered,” the second benevolence itself. Edwards concludes with five corollaries on this secondary ground of benevolence that assert that natural conscience is not true virtue; that God’s “infinite virtue” is thereby proved; that the infinitely holy God “must have an infinitely greater regard to himself than to all other beings, because he has infinitely more being than others”; that it is fitting that God “make himself his supreme end”; and that the true virtue of created beings consists in making God their “highest end.”
After entries on anger and pity, Edwards appends a short piece refuting “the opinion that places the excellency of virtue in its tendency to happiness.” If virtue consists in happiness, Edwards responds, then “natural good must be a higher good than moral good,” and “happiness or plea- sure must be a good superior to virtue.” For Edwards, this is a circular argument that leads to the conclusion that “virtue is only a subordinate good, and pleasure the ultimate good.” Finally, the last four paragraphs take up, at least in part, the distinction between love of benevolence and love of complacence.
Under this head, show who may be called truly virtuous men, viz. those who are universally virtuous; that such only are under the government of virtue and can be denominated from it, etc.
No true virtue without supreme love to god and making God our supreme end, see “Miscellanies” [no.] 1208.2
Observe how what our modern philosophers call natural moral taste is a different thing from virtue or the love of virtue. Treat of this either here or in the discourse on original sin, according as which is published first. See on Original Sin, p. 97a.3
How natural men perceive beauty. Men may be delighted with a sensation that is the result of the similitude or resemblance of love, and yet not be delighted with love itself simply considered; as the ear may be delighted with music, which is a sensation that is the result of the proportions and mutual respects of vibrations of the air, that are as it were a resemblance of love between the different notes or the different vibrations. They together resemble a society composed of different persons of various orders, degrees and capacities and stations, sweetly united by love. But men are delighted with the idea that is the result of this proportion of the vibrations, that know nothing what the proportion [is], or that there is any proportion at all. The reason is, God has been pleased so to frame and constitute our nature. The same account is to be given of men’s perceiving pleasure from the colors of the rainbow, where is a sensation which arises from a proportion like that which is in the notes of music. The same account is also to be given of men’s perceiving any beauty by the eye—the
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nature of true virtue beauty of the shape of a flower, the beauty of the features of a face. They perceive beauty that don’t perceive nor know the proportion and the mutual respect of the different features, any more than a man that hears music knows the proportion of the vibrations of the air.
That moral good is essentially and entirely different from interest or natural good, see Bp. Butler’s Analogyand in various parts of Turnbull’s Moral and Christian Philosophy; to find the places, look over the contents at the end of each volume.4
Concerning the unreasonableness of supposing that we should not be obliged to be virtuous were it not for the promise of a reward, see Turnbull, Christian Philosophy, p. 289, etc.5
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4. Butler, The analogy of religion, esp. ch. IV, “Of a State of Probation, as intended for moral Discipline and Improvement,” pp. 79–103, and “Of the Nature of Virtue,” pp. 309–20; Turnbull, Principles of Moral Philosophy: An Enquiry Into the wise and good Government of the Moral World (London, 1740), Pt. I, ch. 5, “[Laws] relative to interest, or private and publick good” (see following note); and Christian Philosophy, Sec. III, Prop. II (pp. 258–77): “According to revelation, we are made and placed in our present state chiefly to endeavour to attain to the love of the pleasures arising from rational, virtuous exercise; and to the contempt of mere sensual pleasure, in comparison of them: And this reason itself plainly proves to be the chief end of our being, from the very nature of our frame, and from our present situation, which are admirably well adapted one to another.” According to the description in the table of contents, on p. 263 Turnbull argues that “The natural happiness of a being must be similar to, of a kind with, and result from its frame and composition. We are therefore made for rational exercises, and virtuous happiness”; and on p. 269, that “acting agreeably to reason is always our best interest, or greatest happiness . . . This is the language of reason, as well as of revelation, That virtue by its sufferings shall be fitted for a peculiarly glorious share of after-happiness.”
5. Turnbull, Christian Philosophy, pp. 289–91: And therefore it is, that virtue is justly said to be its own reward, or in other words, that the glory prepared for the virtuous, in a future state, is called grace, or virtue made perfect, and placed in circumstances for exercises adequate to its perfection. . . . And those who assert, that there is no obligation to virtue independently of the consideration of future rewards and punishments, do absurdly assert (in whatever sense they take obligation) that there is a happiness hereafter for the virtuous, not of the virtuous or rational kind, which makes the only good reason for the study of virtue here: or, in other words, that it is wise and prudent to be virtuous here, merely because in another life the virtuous may be as unvirtuous as they please; because they shall then be released from their obligations to troublesome, virtuous exercises, and shall have their belly full of other delights far superior to all that virtue can by its noblest exercises afford to a rational mind. . . . There is indeed none, nor can there, in the nature of things, be any argument to prove a future state, which does not suppose rational exercises to be the best, the noblest, and pleasantest exercises of reasonable beings, and which for that reason does not suppose, that, if there be a state of rewards for virtue, it must be a state in which virtue shall reap happiness, proportioned to its perfection from exercises and objects suited to it.
Spiritual taste and natural men’s moral taste. See additions to my book,6 pp. 11–13, vol. 1.
Method. See under the head of Original Sin, p. 102.7
That moral taste that is naturally in men is not of the nature of true virtue and essentially differs from [it],8
1. Because therein lies a capacity of being wicked. Without natural conscience men could not be moral agents, could neither be virtuous nor vicious, could not be the subjects of judicial proceeding; but ’tis unreasonable to call that by the name of virtue which is only a capacity of wickedness.
2. That which is consistent with the highest possible degrees of wickedness, and may be in a great height and in lively exercise at a time when wickedness will be in the height of its exercise, is not of the nature of true virtue. But this seems evidently to be the case with natural conscience, as in the wicked and devils at the day of judgment and in hell.
3. All taste of beauty is not virtuous. Though all beauty be in some respects of the same kind or of a similar nature—even external beauty is similar to moral beauty; that proportion and harmony there is, is the image of it—but yet a taste of external beauty may be without virtue, for the very beasts, at least many of them, have a degree of this, as the birds have a taste of music and some serpents will be charmed by music. God has implanted in mankind, and in some of the brutes in some degree, that in-
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6. JE wrote “to my book” in shorthand, possibly to keep secret its existence from any students of his who may have been reading his manuscripts. The reference may be to a now-missing draft of this treatise, or to a former one that JE retained, or to a set of notes. It was JE’s habit, when writing a lengthy work, to construct a temporary series of small books in which he wrote notes, reminders, and references (see, for example, “Sacrament Bk.1” and “Religious Affections, Bk. 7”). He would then use these, along with entries from his regular notebooks, to write a full draft in bound volumes (as in the two quarto volumes in which he wrote the draft of Misrepresentations Corrected).
7. The entry in “Controversies,” MS p. 102, entitled “Method” (also cited in the section on Efficacious Grace), reads: “Perhaps in more volumes than one, a treatise, the first part concerning the nature of true virtue, and in this treat of God’s end in creating the world; and in the next part concerning original sin, an inquiry into the truth of the doctrine, both as to corruption of nature and imputation, and in the next place concerning the manner in which man’s nature came to be corrupt and its total corruption; and then concerning infused habits, and concerning saving grace’s differing from common grace in nature and kind, and concerning that moral taste that natural men [have], to show that there is nothing of true virtue in it.” Quoted in Works, 8, 10.
stinct that they shall be delighted with those external things which have the appearance and image of moral beauty: and yet this is no virtue. And if so, why may there not be an instinct in man that may extend further, even to some kind of relish of moral beauty, and yet it be only the same kind of instinct, not of the nature of true virtue?
4. As there appears in brute creatures some taste of that external beauty that is an image of moral beauty, so there appears some degree even of that natural sense itself which our new philosophers call moral taste in men and assert to be a virtuous principle. These philosophers insist that the natural principles of anger (see p. 323) and gratitude, which are in all mankind, are evidences of a moral taste; they say they can’t arise merely from self-love, but suppose a moral sense or sense of desert that in the exercise of those affections is prior to self-love. For instance, when a man is angry at another because he injures him, before anger is excited there is not only this consideration, that he suffers or is hurt by means of another, or he may suffer from a [being] perfectly distracted, void of all reason and judgment; but there is the consideration of the nature of the act by which he suffers, that is immoral. ’Tis voluntary, designed and deliberate, without provocations, etc., and so hateful and deserving revenge. But allowing this, such a moral sense, if it be proper to call it by that name, is in some degree in many of the beasts, as they have such a thing as anger. They are much otherwise moved when they suffer from an agent that has will, than when they suffer by the wind or water or hail. And nothing appears but that the same instinct, joined with that reason and that vastly more extensive knowledge that is in man, may cause all the anger that appears in natural men, and without anything nearer akin to virtue. So there are appearances of gratitude in some of the brute creatures.
5. The approbation of conscience is a different thing from the approbation of the heart, or relish, or love. If there were no difference, it would be so, that whatever the conscience fully justified and approved of, the heart would fully relish and love. But it is not so, as appears in the devils: their consciences fully approve of the act of God in their punishment, yet their hearts don’t fully relish that act as lovely; if it did, God would be more lovely in their eyes for it. But it would be unreasonable to think any such thing. And so if the approbation of the conscience were the same as the like or love of the heart, then also the condemnation of conscience would be the same as the disrelish, dislike and hatred of the heart. But this is not [so]. The devils know their hatred of God is unreasonable: they have a full condemnation of it in their conscience; but yet their hearts don’t disrelish it and loath it: if they did, it would have no place in their hearts.
6. If the approbation of conscience was the same thing as the heart’s relish of, love to and delight in virtue, then the bringing the conviction of conscience to perfection would be the same thing as bringing the heart to a perfect holiness: for a perfect relish of holiness, and love to and delight in it, is the same thing as a perfect holiness of heart, for by heart we mean nothing else but inclination, relish, love, etc. But it is not [so] at the day of judgment. Conviction of conscience will be brought to perfection in the wicked, but they will not be brought to perfect holiness of heart, nor nearer to it; on the contrary, their wickedness will be perfected. It would be unreasonable to suppose any other than that it is God’s design to punish sinners in such a manner as to make ’em know that he does it, and what he does it for, and his justice in it; otherwise he might make ’em miserable and at the same time blot out the memory of their sins, and not let ’em know what it is done for.
’Tis said, “I will reward him, and he shall know it.”9 But if conviction is the same thing as raising the love of virtue in his heart, then he must bring him to repentance in order to punish him. “I will reprove thee,” says God, “and set thy sins in order before thee” [Ps. 50:21]. That implies great conviction of conscience.1 The Arminians generally hold that the greatness and fullness of the conviction and condemnation of conscience will be a great part of future punishment. See another argument, Corol. 1.2
There are two sorts of beauty that minds are delighted with. There is, 1. a spiritual beauty, which consists wholly in benevolence most strictly socalled, or, in other words, absolute benevolence, and the various exercises and expressions of it in all the various kinds of the exercise of the faculties of the mind. 2. There is another inferior sort, which is but the shadow of this, which may be called harmony, consisting in the mutual agreement of different things in the manner of their existence. This is that wherein all external beauty that is perceived by men in general consists, unless it be that which arises from self-love and an association of ideas. This is that wherein consists the beauty of visible objects, as to their shape, proportions, situations, etc. This is that wherein the harmony of sounds consists. And probably the beauty of colors arises from an harmonious motion excited in the fluids of the nerves, or brain, or animal spirits, and all the pleasures of the sense of the taste, and smell, and feeling. And this beauty also is discernible among spiritual things. There is in this what we call justice, which is what the minds of men in general approve of; but what they perceive is only this lower kind of beauty. Natural men’s moral taste, so far as it is disinterested and not founded in an association of ideas, is to be referred to this.3 To this is to be referred their sense of desert. Men naturally, through the instinct implanted in all created minds, relish harmony and mutual agreement; there is a peculiar agreement between willing ill to another and doing him hurt from his will and receiving ill in his will. There is an agreement between the thing sought and the thing received, for both in [it are] evil;4 and therein agreement in the seeking and suffering as to the seat of each. For ’tis the will that seeks, and the will suffers: for the will is truly that faculty which suffers pleasure and pain. Men naturally see this agreement and approve of it; they see the beauty of it. But a relishing or approving this because of the proportion and agreement that is seen [in] it, and delighting in it from pure benevolence, are different things.
The first object of absolute benevolence is being simply considered: not being related to one particular part of the whole of existence, not being that has done me good, or that I expect something from, or that does good to another part of the universality of existence, but being simply considered. And if being simply considered be its object, then all being must be its object—unless some being is conceived of as standing in the way of other being that is more, and so of greater importance, or it be looked upon as opposite to other being, then an adherence to being simply considered will naturally call him that has absolute benevolence to forsake that and5 oppose it.6 And if being simply considered be the first object of absolute benevolence, then it will follow that that which shares most of being or existence, other things being equal, so far as such a being is perceived or known, must have proportionably the greatest share of benevolence. I7 say “other things being equal,” because there is a secondary object of pure benevolence, which I shall mention presently, that is one thing which must be considered as the ground or motive to pure
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3. See Works, 8, 596, and n. 5, for a parallel between this sentence and the final version of The Nature of True Virtue.
4. MS: “both in [illeg. deletion] Evil.” 5. MS: “& in oppose.” 6. See Works, 8, 545, and n. 8, for parallel between the foregoing part of this paragraph and the final version of The Nature of True Virtue.
benevolence. Pure benevolence in its first exercise is nothing else but being’s consent to being, appearing to be true and pure, that it extends to being in general and that in proportion as the degree of existence is perceived, other things being equal.
The second, and a secondary, object of benevolence, is benevolence, or rather is a secondary ground of benevolence; and a being that has benevolence is a secondary object of benevolence. When a benevolent being sees another being having benevolence, this draws forth the greater benevolence towards him than merely his having existence; because so far as he has benevolence to other being, he does as it were comprehend other being. So far as benevolence to being in general prevails in him, so far his being extends to and as it were comprehends being in general; and he that loves being in general must therefore of necessity have a greater love to him.
Several things may be noted concerning this secondary ground of benevolence:
(1) That a loving a being on this ground necessarily arises from loving being as having being, or having pure benevolence to being in general, and comes to the same thing. For he that has disinterested love and good will to being in general must necessarily love benevolence to being in general. Benevolence must love that which agrees and conspires with itself. A spirit of consent to being must consent to consent to being. That which seeks the good of another must like that which joins with him in seeking the good of another.
(2) This that has been now mentioned as a secondary ground of benevolence, viz. benevolence itself, is not only a ground of love of benevolence but of a love of complacence, or delight, and it is the primary ground of the latter. That is, when the complacence is a virtuous complacence, love to us and kindness received may be a secondary ground, but this is the primary ground.
(3) This which has now been mentioned as the secondary ground of absolute benevolence, and the primary ground of a virtuous complacence, is the thing wherein spiritual beauty primarily consists. And spiritual beauty consists wholly in this benevolence and the various qualities and exercises of the mind which proceed from it, and the external actions which proceed from these internal qualities and exercises.
(4) It must be noted that the degree of the loveliness or valuableness of a spirit of benevolence in the eyes of one that is influenced by such a spirit, is not in the precise proportion of the degree of benevolence seen, but in a proportion compounded of the degree of the being or degree of existence that the being has that is benevolent, and the degree of benevolence that he has. A benevolent being will necessarily value benevolence, or good will to being in general, wherever he sees; but if he sees the same benevolence in two beings, he will value that more than in one, because ’tis a greater thing, more favorable to being in general, to have two beings to favor it than to have one, because there is more of being that favors being. Both together have more of being than one alone. So if one being be as great as both, or has as much existence as both together, and has the same degree of benevolence, ’tis more favorable to being in general to have so much existence favor it, and therefore will be so much the more valued by a benevolent being. As a large quantity of gold, with the same degree of preciousness, with the same qualities (without any increase in those qualities) that a small quantity of gold has, is more precious and will be more valued than a small quantity.
(5) ’Tis impossible anybody should truly relish this beauty which consists in mere benevolence that has not such a spirit himself. I have observed how, if any being has such a spirit, he will unavoidably delight in such a spirit. That appears very plain. And it may in like manner be demonstrated that ’tis such a spirit and nothing else that will relish such a spirit. For if a being without benevolence had loved benevolence to being in general, it would seek what it did not seek, for to love an inclination to the good of being in general would imply a prizing the good of being in general: for how should [we] love that which tends to promote that which we don’t prize, or don’t desire to have promoted, and love it also for that very reason, because it tends to promote it? How should we love and value that which values and favors a thing, and for that very reason, because it favors that8 which at the same time we don’t favor?
(6) Men may have some kind of love to some virtues from other grounds than from a relish of and delight in the pure benevolence there [is] in them, or that they arise from. There is a harmonious proportion in many virtues, whereby they have the same sort of beauty as that wherein the beauty of external things consists; and this, to one that relishes this sort of beauty which all mankind do, may appear more important in intelligent beings because they are of greater importance, for the same reason as proportion in the parts of the body and features of the face of an human being affects the heart more and is valued more than the beauty of a flower or the beauty of a picture or statue. Thus it is with commutative and distributive justice, and gratitude, which is but a kind of justice, and with all other virtues so far as they partake of the nature of justice; which is the case with most, if not all, [of] the virtues that are required of us. And many virtues may be valued as they have a natural tendency to the good of mankind, in such a manner that this tendency may be visible and sensible to all mankind, as sensible and as directly suggested to our minds as the tendency of water or other liquor to quench thirst, or of bread and other kinds of food that we know of to satisfy hunger; and therefore may be approved of on this account, though we never expect to receive any good from it ourselves. Or there9 may be a kind of love from the association of ideas, persons having been led by their education, or prevailing fashion, or the common voice which they have heard all their days, to compare such virtues to such and such things which they naturally love, and so brought habitually to connect them with lovely ideas.
Corol. 1. Hence natural conscience, or that moral sense that all intelligent creatures, good and bad, [possess,] is not the same with a love of true virtue as such: for if it were, it would be a love to true and pure benevolence to being in general, for therein consists true virtue; and this love to benevolence must, as I have just now observed, be no other than benevolence itself. Therefore, if the moral sense natural to all men, or natural conscience, were the same with relish of virtue, then it would be the same with a principle of benevolence, or pure love and good will to being in general. But that it is not; for if it were, so then men would have the exercise of a spirit of universal love and kindness, and particularly love to God and love to all good and virtuous men, in proportion as their consciences are awakened and convinced. But who will assert this? How evident is the contrary from the state of many awakened persons in this world, and from the state of the damned.1
Corol. 2. How easy and plain is the proof of God’s moral, perfect and in- finite virtue on these principles. For if that be the nature of true virtue, or the thing wherein the essence of it primarily lies, that it is benevolence to being in general, how evident it is that God must have such a benevolence. For he possesses being in general; he is an all-comprehending Being. His name is “Jehovah,” “I Am,” or existence itself, absolute, universal, infinite existence. And all other existence is but a communication from him. Therefore, as he has benevolence to himself, he has benevolence to being in general; and as the creatures are rays of existence from the infinite fountain of light, they must partake of his benevolence.
Corol. 3. Hence we learn that it must follow from God’s infinite holiness that he must have an infinitely greater regard to himself than to all other beings, because he has infinitely more being than all others. And therefore a principle of love to being simply considered, and love to being in general, must necessarily extend to being in proportion to the degree of being and the degree of virtue jointly considered, as has been shown. But being infinitely the greatest and best of beings, comprehending within himself infinitely the most being and the most virtue, it would appear that he had not that principle of absolute benevolence to being in general and love to true virtue if he did not love himself infinitely more than all other beings.
Corol. 4. Hence it appears how it becomes God to have a supreme regard to himself in things which he does, or in the great scheme he is prosecuting, taken in the whole of it, or in the general course and series of his actions and operations. It becomes him, as an infinitely holy God, to make himself his supreme end.
Corol. 5. Hence it appears how essential it is to the true virtue of created beings that they should herein2 act from a supreme respect to God and make him their highest end. Seeing true virtue essentially consists in love, primarily in a love of benevolence to being in general, and that in proportion to its degree of being and excellency, and secondarily in a love of complacency in virtue; such a principle must necessarily go forth firstly, and in every respect supremely and ultimately to that Being that has infinitely more being and more virtue than all other beings, and is indeed the sum and comprehension of all being and virtue, and the fountain and end of all being and virtues.
(See p. 317.) There is something else still in that desire of revenge that there is in anger, besides a natural sense of the evil and deformity of injustice, or their injuriousness to us, and a natural sense of a kind of beauty in that agreement there is between their suffering ill and their doing ill. There is a desire of self-vindication, of aggrandizing self, after another has sought to depress us and thrust us low. Thus it would [not] answer the desire of anger if we should know that the injurer suffered very greatly, but at the same time the suffering was not brought upon him by our power or for our sakes, and we supposed that the sufferer did not know that we knew of his suffering, nor any others that knew of his injury to us that might compare them and refer them one to another. ’Tis one of the simple laws of our nature, that we delight in being loved and valued by other beings, and hate their dislike, hatred, opposition and contempt; and a desire to remove contempt is one thing sought by revenge.3
Again, there is also this in anger and gratitude: as ’tis an original law of our nature to desire that others should love and esteem us, and to abhor others’ hatred and contempt, so it seems also to be original law to cleave to and favor those that love and esteem us, if we consider only their hatred and contempt of us, and there ben’t other considerations to countervail this disposition; and also to hate and oppose those that contemn and hate us, if there be no other considerations to be an overbalance for this. But these are quite different grounds of love and hatred from benevolence to being simply considered, or to being in general.
That that natural pity that is [in] the hearts of mankind is a different thing from a love of benevolence, appears from this: that such is the nature of true benevolence, that it desires and rejoices in the prosperity and pleasure of the object of it, and that in the same proportion as it prevails. But persons may greatly pity those that are in great pain and distress, whose positive pleasure they are very indifferent about, are not any way considerably moved by an apprehension that he enjoys great pleasure. Thus a man that sees a brute in extreme distress may have a very sensible and painful pity, but if he apprehends the same to enjoy great pleasure, he is in no wise answerably affected with joy, yea, if he supposes the pleasure to be as great. If it were properly benevolence, the delight or joy in its pleasure, if the pleasure be equal, would be proportioned to the pain felt on occasion of its misery.4
According to the opinion that places the excellency of virtue in its tendency to happiness, it will follow that the highest good or happiness lies in sensitive good, or at least those pleasures which don’t consist in the exercise or enjoyment of virtue, unless we go round in a circle. For the nature of virtue, they suppose, is to seek or tend or incline to happiness. The nature of moral good is to seek happiness. “Nothing” (says Mr. Grove in his discourse on Wisdom the First Spring of Action in the Deity, p. 3) “whatsoever is of value but happiness, either the agent’s own, or the happiness of other beings; or that which hath some relation to happiness.”5 Therefore happiness or natural good must be the highest good, for that good alone which is valuable itself, and which gives other goods all their value, or [in relation to] which other goods have no value at all but what is derived from it, or arises from its relation to it, that surely is the highest good. So that natural good must be a higher good than moral good. Happiness or pleasure must be a good superior to virtue. For virtue is nothing but such a disposition and behavior as has a tendency to happiness. Happiness therefore is its highest end, and therein, by the supposition, lies all its good or value, viz. its relation and tendency to this end. Therefore this happiness which virtue seeks, and is its highest and ultimate aim, must be something distinct from that virtue itself arising out of it and consisting most essentially in it: for that would be absurd. They say the nature of virtue is to love or delight in the general happiness or pleasure; and when they come to explain wherein chiefly lies this general happiness or pleasure, they say it lies chiefly in delight in virtue, that this only is true happiness, that sensitive enjoyments are vastly inferior. So that it comes to this: that virtue consists in loving and seeking that pleasure which consists in virtue; or, in other words, that virtue consists in seeking and delighting in that general pleasure that arises from or consists in seeking and delighting in the general pleasure: and is not this absurdly going in a circle, building a castle in the air, or making the superstructure the foundation of the superstructure? Let us suppose that there were but two sensible beings in the world, and they be both sensible and intelligent: then, according to the scheme of these gentlemen, the highest good, and that wherein all that is valuable on its own account, would be the sum of pleasure that these two should enjoy; and then the essence of their virtue would consist in the inclination of their hearts to this their common stock of pleasure, and their virtue would be valuable or excellent no other way, and on no other account, but only on account of its tendency to their pleasure. Here, it is evident, virtue is only a subordinate good, and pleasure the ultimate good. But now it is inquired what that pleasure is that their virtue desires, wherein it most essentially lies. The answer must be that it lies in the pleasure which there is in their virtue, and their virtue being nothing but their desiring their common pleasure. Therefore the answer must be that the pleasure in the desire of which their virtue consists, lies in the pleasure there is in desiring their pleasure. Now is not this very absurd, as it is making a thing the foundation of itself! If all virtue consists in a love and desire of happiness, and in a desire of that happiness that consists in virtue, then it must be so in the very first act of true virtue: which is impossible. ’Tis impossible that the first virtuous desire of happiness should be of that happiness which consists in desiring happiness. For a person can have no notion of that pleasure that there is [in] virtue till he has exercised it, and so had experience of it, and therefore can’t desire [it]. So that the exercise and experience of virtue, and the happiness that consists in it, must go before any such thing as desiring that happiness which consists in virtue for myself or others; which shows plainly that the essence of virtue don’t lie most essentially in desiring the virtuous pleasure of the system, because there must be true virtue before there can be any conception of any such thing.
Method. First show the falseness and absurdity of all the late fashionable schemes, and then proceed to lay down and establish the true scheme.6
That all love don’t come from self-love, or from love to our own happiness or pleasure, appears from this, that we love some things for their beauty: and that is not the same thing as loving them for the pleasure they give us, because things which appear beautiful to us, and that we love as beautiful, tend to give us pleasure. Although it be so that things which appear beautiful to us, and that we love as such, tend to give us pleasure; yet that tendency to give us pleasure is not the ground and reason why they appear and are loved as beautiful, but on the contrary, their appearing and being loved as beautiful is the ground and reason why they tend to give us pleasure.
For a created being to love himself with that love which is merely having a faculty of will is no virtue, because such self-love is no argument or evidence of a principle of love to being in general. Men that are enemies to God may have it as well as those that have a supreme love to him.
That disposition wherein true virtue originally consists is not exactly and fully expressed by the word benevolence, which signifies a desire of the good welfare or happiness of others. It is better ex[pressed] by the words “love” or “charity,” or the Greek word agaph. ’Tis a being’s being dear to us, which includes a desire of union with the object as well [as] a desire of the welfare of the object. Or rather, it is an union with the object; it is in the creature a kind of enlargement of the heart, whereby self takes in existence in general. And these desires of sensible union and intercourse with the object, and desires of its good, may be considered as consequences and fruits of it.
As to love of complacence, it is twofold. There is a complacence only in this enlargement and union. One that is united has a kind of delight in the object, which is a more primary exercise of virtue; but complacence in it as beautiful or virtuous is more secondary.
Moral sense. sense of justice. conscience. That the sense men naturally have of justice, in repairing and punishing injuries, etc., is from a consciousness of what we should expect if [we] were in another’s place, may be the more easily admitted if we consider that this consciousness is naturally and necessarily suggested, and does habitually and instantaneously, though insensibly and without a purposed set reflection, arise in the mind, for this reason, viz. that we have not, nor ever had from our infancy, any other way to conceive of anything that other persons act or suffer, or anything about intelligent and moral agents, but by recalling or exciting the ideas of what we ourselves have been conscious of in the acts, passions, sensations, volitions, etc. which we have found in our own minds, and by putting the ideas we obtain by this means in the place of another; which is a kind of substituting ourselves in their place. Thus we have no conception, in any degree, what understanding, perception, love, pleasure, pain or desire are in others, in any other way than this, but by joining the ideas we have obtained of such things by consciousness in our minds, in another’s place. So in all moral things we conceive of concerning others, which are all mental and not corporeal things; all that we conceive of belonging to others, more than the shape, complexion and motion of their bodies.
Notes
1. Works, 8, 8, n. 8. We know that JE had completed the first of the two dissertations, The End for Which God Created the World, by Feb. 1755, because he read it to Samuel Hopkins and Joseph Bellamy at that time (Works, 16, 656).
2. See “Miscellanies” no. 1208, “End of the Creation, Glory of God, Nature of Redemption . . . ,” in Works, “Miscellanies,” 1153–1360.
3. A cross-reference to an earlier entry in the “Controversies” notebook, which reads: “Perhaps under the head of Original Sin treat of MORAL TASTE.” JE then refers ahead to this entry in the section on True Virtue, MS p. 180b.
8. See Works, 8, 598, and n. 2, for a parallel between the following series of subpoints and the final version.
9. Apparently not a direct scriptural quote, though JE intended it as such; possibly an allusion to Eccles. 9:5.
1. JE drew a short dash in the MS. 2. See below, p. 322.
7. See Works, 8, 546, and n. 6, and p. 547, n. 5, for parallels between the remainder of this paragraph, the entirety of the next and the subsequent set of six subpoints, and the final version of the dissertation.
8. MS: “it.”
9. MS: “they.” 1. See Works, 8, 596, and n. 8, for the parallel between the foregoing paragraph and the final version of the dissertation.
2. MS: “here on.”
3. See Works, 8, 606–07, and n. 7, for parallel between the foregoing paragraph and the final version of the dissertation.
4. See Works, 8, 606, and n. 6, for parallel between the foregoing paragraph and the final version of the dissertation.
5. Henry Grove, Wisdom the First Spring of Action in the Deity (London, 1734), 3.
6. JE deletes the following entry: “METHOD. Show how all the virtues are derived from pure benevolence.”