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'Remarks on the Fable of the Bees.'

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Law is ready to join issue with him. 'I believe man,' said Mandeville, 'besides skin, flesh, bones, &c., that are obvious to the eye, to be a compound of various passions; that all of them, as they are provoked and come uppermost, govern him by turns, whether he will or no.' 'The definition,' replied Law, with crushing force, is too general, because it seems to suit a Wolf or a Bear as exactly as yourself or a Grecian philosopher.' But, according to his definition, how could Mandeville say that he believed anything, unless believing could be said to be a passion, or some faculty of the skin or bones? If,' proceeds Law, with a severity which, under the circumstances, was not undeserved,' you would prove yourself to be no more than a brute or an animal, how much of your life you need alter I cannot tell; but at least you must forbear writing against virtue, for no mere animal ever hated it.' The province,' he says, 'which you have chosen for yourself is to deliver man from the encroachments of virtue and to replace him in the rights and privileges of Brutality; to recall him from the giddy heights of rational dignity and angelic likeness to go to grass or wallow in the mire.' As a contrast to this grovelling view of human nature, Law quotes with fine effect, And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,' and dwells in an elevated strain, which no one knew better than he how to sustain, on the 'declaration of the dignity of man's nature, made long before any of your sagacious moralists had a meeting.'1

1 This allusion to the 'sagacious moralists' refers to a passage in the Fable of the Bees in which the author says, 'Sagacious moralists draw men like angels in hopes that the pride, at least of some, will put them upon copying after the beautiful originals, which they are represented to be;' upon which Law remarks, I am loth to charge you with sagacity, because I would not accuse you falsely; but if this remark is well made, I can help you to another full as just : viz. 'That sagacious advocates for immorality draw men like brutes in hopes that the depravity at least of some will put them upon copying after the base originals, which they are represented to be.'

D

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The Origin of Moral Virtue.

Mandeville had given a sort of apologetic explanation, saying that in his inquiry into the origin of moral virtue, he was not speaking of Jews or Christians, but of man in a state of nature. But this is a distinction which Law will not for a moment allow. He maintains-and with perfect truth-that the origin of morality was the same to Jew, Christian, or heathen, that man in a state of nature was not savage and brutal, and that making the training of such supposed savage creatures a true account of the origin of morality was like making the history of curing people in Bedlam a true account of the origin of reason. Besides, Mandeville's own conduct was utterly inconsistent with his explanation. All the observations which he made upon human nature, on which his origin of moral virtue was founded, were only so many observations upon the manners of all orders of Christians. And yet he, good man, is not talking about Christians! He applies his definition of man as a vile animal to 'himself and his courteous reader.' Are he and his courteous readers, then, all savages in a state of nature ?

After having shown with admirable irony that Mandeville's account of the origin of virtue might be applied with equal force to the origin of the erect posture of man, Law proceeds to unfold in grave and dignified language the true origin of virtue. In one sense it had no origin—that is, there never was a time when it began to be-but it was as much without beginning as truth and goodness, which are in their natures as eternal as God. But moral virtue, if considered as the object of man's knowledge, began with the first man, and was as natural to him as it was natural to man to think and perceive or feel the difference between pleasure and pain. The reasonableness and fitness of actions themselves is a law to rational beings; nay, it is a law to which even the Divine Nature is subject, for God is

John Sterling's Admiration of the 'Remarks.' 35

necessarily good and just, from the excellence of justice and goodness; and it is the will of God that makes moral virtue our law, and obliges us to act reasonably. Here, Sir, is the noble and divine origin of moral virtue; it is founded in the immutable relations of things, in the perfections and attributes of God, not in the pride of man or the craft of cunning politicians. Away, then, with your idle and prophane fancies about the origin of moral virtue! For once, turn your eyes towards Heaven, and dare but own a just and good God, and then you have owned the true origin of religion and moral virtue.'

The transition from the sarcasms with which the section commences to the grave and elevated tone in which it closes is very striking. One can quite understand the enthusiasm with which John Sterling speaks of the first section of Law's remarks as one of the most remarkable philosophical essays he had ever seen in English. Now this section,' he adds, 'has all the highest beauty of his (Law's) polemical compositions, and a weight of pithy right reason, such as fills one's heart with joy. I have never seen, in our language, the elementary grounds of a rational ideal philosophy, as opposed to empiricism, stated with nearly the same clearness, simplicity, and force.'

In the second section Law answers with convincing force the objection to the reality of virtue on the ground that what has the appearance of virtue proceeds from some blind impulse; in the third he returns to his satirical tone and cuts up in his most slashing style Mandeville's assertion that there was no greater certainty in morals than in matters of taste. The next two sections deal with the immortality of the soul and the nature of hope; the sixth and last comments on a defence which Mandeville had put forth and in

1 Letter from John Sterling to F. D. Maurice, quoted in Maurice's 'Introduction' to the Remarks on the Fable of the Bees.

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Design of the Fable of the Bees.

which he had the audacity to affirm that the 'Fable of the Bees' was 'designed for the entertainment of people of probity and virtue, and was a book of severe and exalted morality!' 'I should,' exclaims Law, with pardonable indignation, ‘have thought him in as sober a way if he had said that the author was a seraphim, and that he was never any nearer the earth than the fixed stars! He now talks of diverting persons of probity and virtue, having in his book declared that he had never been able to find such a person in existence; he now talks of morality, having then declared the moral virtues were all a cheat; he now talks of recommending goodness, having then made the difference between good and evil as fanciful as the difference between a tulip and an auricula !'

Attached to the 'Remarks' is a postscript attacking Mr. Bayle's assertion that religious opinions and beliefs had no influence at all upon men's actions.

Law on Stage Entertainments.

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CHAPTER V.

'THE UNLAWFULNESS OF STAGE ENTERTAINMENTS,' AND CHRISTIAN PERFECTION.'

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LAW wrote two more works before he emerged from his obscurity. The first is a tract entitled The Absolute Unlawfulness of Stage Entertainments fully Demonstrated.' It is decidedly the weakest of all his writings, and most of his admirers will regret that he ever published it. Regarded merely as a composition, it is very inferior to his usual standard. Unlike himself, he gives way to passion and seems quite to lose all self-control; unlike himself, he indulges in the most violent abuse; and unlike himself he lays himself open to the most crushing retorts. He makes no distinction whatever between the use and abuse of such entertainments. The stage is not here condemned, as some other diversions, because they are dangerous, and likely to be occasions of sin, but it is condemned as drunkenness, and lewdness, as lying and profaneness are to be condemned, not as things that may only be the occasion of sin, but such as are in their own nature grossly sinful. You go to hear a play: I tell you that you go to hear ribaldry and profaneness; that you entertain your mind with extravagant thoughts, wild rants, blasphemous speeches, wanton amours, profane jests, and impure passions.' 1

It has been said that Law was never worsted in argument, and, as a rule, the statement is true; but every rule

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