6.2.3. Chap. III
Of universal Benevolence
Though our effectual good offices can very seldom be extended
to any wider society than that of our own country; our good-will
is circumscribed by no boundary, but may embrace the immensity of
the universe. We cannot form the idea of any innocent and
sensible being, whose happiness we should not desire, or to whose
misery, when distinctly brought home to the imagination, we
should not have some degree of aversion. The idea of a
mischievous, though sensible, being, indeed, naturally provokes
our hatred: but the ill-will which, in this case, we bear to it,
is really the effect of our universal benevolence. It is the
effect of the sympathy which we feel with the misery and
resentment of those other innocent and sensible beings, whose
happiness is disturbed by its malice.
This universal benevolence, how noble and generous soever,
can be the source of no solid happiness to any man who is not
thoroughly convinced that all the inhabitants of the universe,
the meanest as well as the greatest, are under the immediate care
and protection of that great, benevolent, and all-wise Being, who
directs all the movements of nature; and who is determined, by
his own unalterable perfections, to maintain in it, at all times,
the greatest possible quantity of happiness. To this universal
benevolence, on the contrary, the very suspicion of a fatherless
world, must be the most melancholy of all reflections; from the
thought that all the unknown regions of infinite and
incomprehensible space may be filled with nothing but endless
misery and wretchedness. All the splendour of the highest
prosperity can never enlighten the gloom with which so dreadful
an idea must necessarily over-shadow the imagination; nor, in a
wise and virtuous man, can all the sorrow of the most afflicting
adversity ever dry up the joy which necessarily springs from the
habitual and thorough conviction of the truth of the contrary
system.
The wise and virtuous man is at all times willing that his
own private interest should be sacrificed to the public interest
of his own particular order or society. He is at all times
willing, too, that the interest of this order or society should
be sacrificed to the greater interest of the state or
sovereignty, of which it is only a subordinate part. He should,
therefore, be equally willing that all those inferior interests
should be sacrificed to the greater interest of the universe, to
the interest of that great society of all sensible and
intelligent beings, of which God himself is the immediate
administrator and director. If he is deeply impressed with the
habitual and thorough conviction that this benevolent and
all-wise Being can admit into the system of his government, no
partial evil which is not necessary for the universal good, he
must consider all the misfortunes which may befal himself, his
friends, his society, or his country, as necessary for the
prosperity of the universe, and therefore as what he ought, not
only to submit to with resignation, but as what he himself, if he
had known all the connexions and dependencies of things, ought
sincerely and devoutly to have wished for.
Nor does this magnanimous resignation to the will of the
great Director of the universe, seem in any respect beyond the
reach of human nature. Good soldiers, who both love and trust
their general, frequently march with more gaiety and alacrity to
the forlorn station, from which they never expect to return, than
they would to one where there was neither difficulty nor danger.
In marching to the latter, they could feel no other sentiment
than that of the dulness of ordinary duty: in marching to the
former, they feel that they are making the noblest exertion which
it is possible for man to make. They know that their general
would not have ordered them upon this station, had it not been
necessary for the safety of the army, for the success of the war.
They cheerfully sacrifice their own little systems to the
prosperity of a greater system. They take an affectionate leave
of their comrades, to whom they wish all happiness and success;
and march out, not only with submissive obedience, but often with
shouts of the most joyful exultation, to that fatal, but splendid
and honourable station to which they are appointed. No conductor
of an army can deserve more unlimited trust, more ardent and
zealous affection, than the great Conductor of the universe. In
the greatest public as well as private disasters, a wise man
ought to consider that he himself, his friends and countrymen,
have only been ordered upon the forlorn station of the universe;
that had it not been necessary for the good of the whole, they
would not have been so ordered; and that it is their duty, not
only with humble resignation to submit to this allotment, but to
endeavour to embrace it with alacrity and joy. A wise man should
surely be capable of doing what a good soldier holds himself at
all times in readiness to do.
The idea of that divine Being, whose benevolence and wisdom
have, from all eternity, contrived and conducted the immense
machine of the universe, so as at all times to produce the
greatest possible quantity of happiness, is certainly of all the
objects of human contemplation by far the most sublime. Every
other thought necessarily appears mean in the comparison. The man
whom we believe to be principally occupied in this sublime
contemplation, seldom fails to be the object of our highest
veneration; and though his life should be altogether
contemplative, we often regard him with a sort of religious
respect much superior to that with which we look upon the most
active and useful servant of the commonwealth. The Meditations of
Marcus Antoninus, which turn principally upon this subject, have
contributed more, perhaps, to the general admiration of his
character, than all the different transactions of his just,
merciful, and beneficent reign.
The administration of the great system of the universe,
however, the care of the universal happiness of all rational and
sensible beings, is the business of God and not of man. To man is
allotted a much humbler department, but one much more suitable to
the weakness of his powers, and to the narrowness of his
comprehension; the care of his own happiness, of that of his
family, his friends, his country: that he is occupied in
contemplating the more sublime, can never be an excuse for his
neglecting the more humble department; and he must not expose
himself to the charge which Avidius Cassius is said to have
brought, perhaps unjustly, against Marcus Antoninus; that while
he employed himself in philosophical speculations, and
contemplated the prosperity of the universe, he neglected that of
the Roman empire. The most sublime speculation of the
contemplative philosopher can scarce compensate the neglect of
the smallest active duty.