are obliged to be oppressive and tyrannical."* Various other passages of a similar import might be quoted, both from his Wealth of Nations, and from his Theory of Moral Sentiments.

This doctrine of Smith and Quesnay, which tends to simplify the theory of legislation, by exploding the policy of those complicated checks and restraints which swell the municipal codes of most nations, has now, I believe, become the prevailing creed of thinking men all over Europe; and, as commonly happens to prevailing creeds, has been pushed by many of its partizans far beyond the views and intentions of its original authors. Such too is the effect of fashion, on the one hand, and of obnoxious phrases on the other, that it has found some of its most zealous abettors and propagators among writers who would, without a moment's hesitation, have rejected, as puerile and superstitious, any reference to final causes in a philosophical discussion.

* Biographical Memoirs of Smith, Robertson, and Reid, p. 100.

II.

Danger of confounding Final with Physical Causes in the Philosophy of the Human Mind.

Having said so much upon the research of Final Causes in Physics properly so called, I shall subjoin a few remarks on its application to the philosophy of the human mind; -a science in which the just rules of investigation are as yet far from being generally understood. Of this no stronger proof can be produced, than the confusion between final and efficient causes, which perpetually recurs in the writings of our latest and most eminent moralists. The same confusion, as I have already observed, prevailed in the physical reasonings of the Aristotelians; but, since the time of Bacon, has been so completely corrected, that, in the wildest theories of modern naturalists, hardly a vestige of it is to be traced.

To the logical error just mentioned it is owing, that so many false accounts have been given of the principles of human conduct or of the motives by which men are stimulated to action. When the general laws of our internal frame are attentively examined, they will be found to have for their object the happiness and improvement both of the individual and of society. This is their Final Cause, or the end for which we may presume they were destined by our Maker. But, in such cases, it seldom happens, that while Man is obeying the active impulses of his nature,

he has any idea of the ultimate ends which he is promoting; or is able to calculate the remote effects of the movements which he impresses on the little wheels around him. These active impulses, therefore, may, in one sense, be considered as the efficient causes of his conduct; inasmuch as they are the means employed to determine him to particular pursuits and habits; and as they operate (in the first instance, at least,) without any reflection on his part on the purposes to which they are subservient. Philosophers, however, have in every age been extremely apt to conclude, when they had discovered the salutary tendency of any active principle, that it was from a sense or foreknowledge of this tendency that the principle derived its origin. Hence have arisen the theories which attempt to account for all our actions from self-love; and also those which would resolve the whole of morality, either into political views of general expediency, or inte an enlightened regard to our own best interests.

I do not know of any author who has been so completely aware of this common error as Mr. Smith. In examining the principles connected with our moral constitution, he always treats separately of their final causes, and of the mechanism (as he calls it) by which nature accomplishes the effect; and he has even been at pains to point out to his successors the great importance of attending to the distinction between these two speculations

"In every part of the universe, we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species. But

in these, and in all such objects, we still distinguish the efficient from the final cause of their several motions and organizations. The digestion of the food, the circulation of the blood, and the secretion of the several juices which are drawn from it, are operations all of them necessary for the great purposes of animal life; yet we never endeavour to account for them from those purposes as from their efficient causes, nor imagine that the blood circulates, or the food digests of its own accord, and with a view or intention to the purposes of circulation or digestion. The wheels of the watch are all admirably adapted to the end for which it was made, the pointing of the hour. All their various motions conspire in the nicest manner to produce this effect. If they were endowed with a desire and intention to produce it, they could not do it better. Yet we never ascribe any such intention or desire to them, but to the watch-maker, and we know that they are put into motion by a spring, which intends the effect it produ ces as little as they do. But though, in accounting for the operations of bodies, we never fail to distinguish, in this manner, the efficient from the final cause, in accounting for those of the mind, we are apt to confound these two different things with one another. When, by natural principles, we are led to advance those ends which a refined and enlightened reason would recommend to us, we are very apt to impute to that reason, as to their efficient cause, the sentiments and actions by which we advance those ends, and to imagine that to be the wisdom of Man, which, in reality, is the wisdom of God. Upon a superficial view, this cause seems sufficient to produce the effects which are ascribed to it; and the system of Human Nature seems to be more simple and agreeable, when all its different

operations are, in this manner, deduced from a single principle."*

These remarks apply with peculiar force to a theory of morals which has made much noise in our own times; -a theory which resolves the obligation of all the different virtues into a sense of their utility. At the time when Mr. Smith wrote, it had been recently brought into fashion by the ingenious and refined disquisitions of Mr. Hume; and there can be little doubt, that the foregoing strictures were meant by the author as an indirect refutation of his friend's doctrines.

The same theory (which is of a very ancient date†) has been since revived by Mr. Godwin, and by the excellent Dr. Paley. Widely as these two writers differ in the source whence they derive their rule of conduct, and the sanctions by which they enforce its observance, they are perfectly agreed about its paramount authority over every other principle of action. Whatever is expedient (says Dr. Paley) is right. It is the utility of any moral rule alone which constitutes the obligation of it. But then, it must be expedient on the whole, at the long run, in all its effects collateral and remote, as well as those which are immediate and direct; as it is obvious, that in computing consequences, it makes no difference in what way, or at what distance they ensue."-Mr. Godwin has

* Theory of Moral Sentiments, Vol. I. p. 216, et seq. 6th Edit. +"Ipsa utilitas, justi prope mater et æqui." HORAT. Sat. Lib. I. 3. Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy, Vol. I. p. 70. (5th Edit) § Ibid. p. 78.

In another part of his work, Dr. Paley explicitly asserts, that every