The Principles of Moral and Christian Philosophy. George Turnbull
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MDCCXL.
TO THE
RIGHT HONOURABLE
PHILIP,
Earl of STANHOPE, &c.
This TREATISE is most humbly Dedicated
By His LORDSHIP’s
Most devoted
Humble Servant,
GEORGE TURNBULL.
THE EPISTLE DEDICATORY
MY LORD,
I am very sure, that to one of Your truly liberal and virtuous cast of mind, the scope of this Treatise will be very agreeable: Which, to give the shortest view of it I can, is, by endeavouring to account for MORAL, as the great Newton has taught us to explain NATURAL Appearances, (that is, by reducing them to good general laws) to shew, that from what we see of perfectly wise and good administration at present with regard to man, as well as all other things constituting the same system, there is sufficient reason to conclude, that the same admirable order shall prevail for ever, and consequently that due care will be taken of virtue, in all its different stages, to all eternity.<ii>
No man, by having the highest opinion of virtue, and of the happiness accruing from rational exercises, and virtuous consciousness, was ever the less inclined to believe a future existence. On the contrary, it will ever be found, that as they who are entirely immersed in gross voluptuousness, and quite strangers to the pure joys virtue alone can give, are the least willing to think of a succeeding life; so they who having a strong sense of the supreme excellence of virtue, highly prefer to what is vulgarly called pleasure, the solid, unchanging bliss, with which they feel a well-regulated mind and conformable conduct, so unspeakably to exhilirate the soul even in severe outward distress, are the readiest to embrace and indulge that comfortable opinion and hope, which renders the cause of virtue completely triumphant. The ineffable satisfaction redounding from the exercises of virtuous affections, and the conscience of merit, is a truly divine reward: it comes from our Maker: it is of his appointment: and he who hath so constituted things, must love virtue; and that which he delights in, he will certainly promote to perfect happiness by the properest steps and methods.
We are well authorised to say, that a virtuous man is the Image of God; that he partakes of the divine nature. And the substantial, unfading<iii> happiness, which virtue creates, and that augments as it advances and improves, is to us a faint shadow of the divine all-perfect felicity resulting from no other source, but his absolute moral perfection, being of a kind with it: and it is a sure prognostick of that fulness of bliss, which must arise from virtue, when being by due culture brought to great perfection, it shall be placed in circumstances for exerting all its power and excellence suited to such an improved state of it.
Now, MY LORD, being convinced of the acceptableness of this Design to Your Lordship, when I offer the work to You, with a heart full of esteem, love and gratitude, as the best pledge of my sincere attachment I can present You with, suffer me but to say one truth: which is, that I never had the pleasure of conversing with Your Lordship, without not only being instructed, but, which is better, without feeling an accession of fresh vigor to that love of truth, liberty, mankind, virtue and religion; Your opinion of my sincere regard to which, procured and preserves me that place in Your friendship, which all who know You, proclaim merit: a friendship which is one of the greatest joys, as well as honours of my life; and to which I am deeply indebted on<iv> many accounts, which I am not at liberty to declare.
Tho’ no good man can despise merited praise, yet You shun it even from those whom You know to be incapable of flattering, through a jealousy and watchfulness almost peculiar to Yourself; lest Your mind, whose supreme delight is in doing good, should ever stand in need, in the smallest degree, of any other motive to act the best, the worthiest, the most generous part, besides a thorough-feeling of the excellence of so doing.
I am, My LORD, Your Lordship’s Most obedient Humble Servant, December, 19. 1739. GEORGE TURNBULL
PREFACE<i>
Tho’ not a few who are really lovers of, and great proficients in Natural Philosophy, be not ashamed of the deepest ignorance of the parts and proportions of the human mind, and their mutual relation, connexion and dependency; but reject all such enquiries with an opprobrious sneer as metaphysick, meaning by that term of contempt, something quite remote from true philosophy, and all useful or polite learning, to be abandoned by men of genius and taste to Pedants and Sophists.—Yet it is certain, that the order and symmetry of this inward part is in itself no less real and exact than that of the body. And that this moral anatomy is not only a part, but the most useful part of Natural Philosophy, rightly understood, is too evident to need any proof to those who will but take the trouble to consider what Natural Philosophy, in its full extent, must mean.
For, in the first place, it is an enquiry into a real part of nature, which must be carried on in the same way with our researches into our own bodily contexture, or into any other, whether vegetable or animal fabrick. Secondly, ’Tis only by an acurate inspection of this whole, and its constituent parts, that we can come at the knowledge of the means and causes, by which our inward constitution may be rendered or preserved sound and entire; or contrariwise, maimed, distorted, impaired and injured. And yet, in the third place, That it is upon our inward state or temper, our<ii> well-being and happiness, or our uneasiness and misery chiefly depend, must be immediately acknowledged by all who can think; or are in the least acquainted with themselves. To deny it is indeed to assert, that our perceiving or conscious part is not principal in us. Moral Philosophy, or an enquiry into the frame and connexion of those various powers, appetites and affections, which, by their coalescence and joint-operation, constitute the soul, and its temper, or disposition, may indeed degenerate into a very idle, sophistical, quibling, contentious logomachy: It hath too often had that miserable fate, thro’ the fault of those to whom unhappily people of a more liberal and polite, as well as more useful and solid turn, have principally left it to handle these subjects. But hath not Phisiology likewise suffered no less cruelly in the same manner? And what other remedy is there in either case, but to treat them both as they ought to be: i.e. as questions of fact or natural history, in which hypotheses assumed at random, and by caprice, or not sufficiently confirmed by experience, are never to be built upon; and in which no words ought to be admitted, till they have had a clear and determinate meaning affixed to them; and withal, in that free, elegant and pleasing way, which we may know from some few examples among the moderns, and from very many among the ancients, not to be incompatible with the profoundest subjects in Philosophy: instead of handling them in that insipid, tedious ungainful manner, which having of late more generally prevailed in the schools, far from doing service to Philosophy, hath indeed brought it into contempt, and as it were quite banished it from amongst the polite and fashionable part of the world, whose studies are by that means become very trifling, superficial and unmanly—Mere virtuosoship.<iii>
The great Master, to whose truly marvellous (I had almost said more than human) sagacity and acuracy, we are indebted for all the greater improvements that have been made in Natural Philosophy, after pointing out in the clearest manner, the only way by which we can acquire real knowledge of any part of nature, corporeal or moral, plainly declares, that he looked upon the enlargement Moral Philosophy must needs receive, so soon as Natural Philosophy, in its full extent, being pursued in that only proper method of advancing it, should be brought to any considerable degree of perfection, to be the principal advantage mankind and human society would then reap from such science.
It was by this important, comprehensive hint, I was led long ago to apply myself to the study of the human mind in the same way as to that of the human body, or any other part of Natural Philosophy: that is, to try whether due enquiry into moral nature would not soon enable us to account for moral, as the best of Philosophers teaches us to explain natural phenomena.
Now, no sooner had I conceived this idea of moral researches, than I began to look carefully into the better ancients, (into Plato’s works in particular) to know