Church of England -- Sermons; Ethics; Sermons, English
It may be thought more easy to answer one of these questions than the
other, but the answer to both is really the same: that mankind have
ungoverned passions which they will gratify at any rate, as well to the
injury of others as in contradiction to known private interest: but that
as there is no such thing as self-hatred, so neither is there any such
thing as ill-will in one man towards another, emulation and resentment
being away; whereas there is plainly benevolence or good-will: there is
no such thing as love of injustice, oppression, treachery, ingratitude,
but only eager desires after such and such external goods; which,
according to a very ancient observation, the most abandoned would choose
to obtain by innocent means, if they were as easy and as effectual to
their end: that even emulation and resentment, by any one who will
consider what these passions really are in nature, {5} will be found
nothing to the purpose of this objection; and that the principles and
passions in the mind of man, which are distinct both from self-love and
benevolence, primarily and most directly lead to right behaviour with
regard to others as well as himself, and only secondarily and
accidentally to what is evil. Thus, though men, to avoid the shame of
one villainy, are sometimes guilty of a greater, yet it is easy to see
that the original tendency of shame is to prevent the doing of shameful
actions; and its leading men to conceal such actions when done is only in
consequence of their being done; _i.e._, of the passion's not having
answered its first end.
If it be said that there are persons in the world who are in great
measure without the natural affections towards their fellow-creatures,
there are likewise instances of persons without the common natural
affections to themselves. But the nature of man is not to be judged of
by either of these, but by what appears in the common world, in the bulk
of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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