ESTINATE OF THE PLEASURES OF S PATH Y.
61. We have now proceeded through and examined all those sources of happi ness which do not coincide with what we established as the standard of comparison, the greatest ultimate happiness. We have seen, that if any of them be made the primary object of pursuit, happiness can not be obtained ; and that the greatest degrees of these pleasures are to be ob tained, not by making them our primary object, but submitting ourselves to the guidance of benevolence and piety. We might hence alone he inclined to consi der the inference a just one, that the af fections of benevolence and piety, and those actions to which they prompt, should be made by us our primary ob ject. We shall feel our ground more sure when we enter into the positive ar gument for these premises ; and we now proceed to ascertain what rank the bene volent affections should have in our rule of life.—And here it is to be laid down as a principle, that the cultivation of these affections should be made a pri mary object of the pursuit for the follow ing reasons.
62. Benevolence improves the inferior pleasures, by limiting and regulating them, as we have already seen in the course of our fernier investigations.— Again, the pleasures of benevolence unite and coincide with those of piety and the moral sense. That benevolence unites with piety is obvious; for by the love of the good we are led to love the source of goodness ; and back again from the love of God to the love of all that he has made. The pleasures of be nevolence are one principal source of the moral sense, and the moral sense in its turn improves and enforces them entirely.
63. The pleasures of benevolence are unlimited in their extent—In order to skew that the pleasures of sensation did not deserve our primary attention, an ex treme case was taken of a person who actually made them his primary object: in the same way suppose a person to take all opportunities of gratifying his benevo lent desires, making it his study, plea sure, and constant employment, either to promote happiness, or to lessen misery. Now it is very obvious, that he would have a very large field for exercise, no less than the whole round of domestic and social relations. And if hiS benevolence were pure, and regulated by the dictates of piety and the conscience, he might, in general, expect success' And from the experience of those who have made the trial, it does not appear that the relish for its pleasures languishes, as in other cases, but gains strength by gratification ; and they continue to please in reflection.
The reason of this is obvious from the law of association ; for since they are in general attended with success, and are Consistent with and productive of the se veral inferior pleasures in their due de gree, and are also further increased by the moral and religious pleasures, they receive fresh addition upon every grati fication, and therefore increase perpe tually, when the affections are cultivated as they ought to be.
64. The pleasures of benevolence are self-consistent. —All may share them with out diminishing their mutual happiness. Harmony and mutual co-operation pre vail among the benevolent ; and benevo lent actions have a tendency to excite correspondent actions indefinitely.—By degrees, when benevolence has arrived at its due height, all the sensibilities of the individual fur himself will be more or less transferred upon others, by his be nevolence and compassion for them. And in like manner, when our moral sense is sufficiently established and improved, and we are capable of being influenced to perform what is fit and right, by the con sideration that it is so, our imperfect sen sibility for others tends to diminish, by being compared with it, our exorbitant attachment to ourselves ; at the same time that compassion takes off our thoughts from ourselves. And thus be nevolence to a single person may ulti mately become equal to self-interest, by this tendency of self-interest to increase benevolence, and reciprocally of bene volence to lessen self-interest, though originally self-interest • was indefinitely greater than benevolence ; and thus we may learn to be as much concerned for others as for ourselves, and as little con cerned for ourselves as for others.—It is not often that benevolence is thus height ened : perhaps in the strictest sense it can never reach this height in the pre sent state ; but take the case where there is a decided preponderance of benevo knee over every feeling which bears the character of malevolent. It is not per haps capable of proof; but certainly has decided probability, that in the circle in which each moves, and in the circle of the race at large, happiness decidedly preponderates. If the benevolent indi vidual, though he do not see this balance of happiness clehrly, vet has some com fortable general knowledge if it, he must be a greater gainer in the whole by his benevolence, because thus he has a source of constant gratification in the perception of such a preponderance of happiness among those in whose happiness he has learned to rejoice in some measure as in his own.