II--MORAL SCIENCE CONSISTS IN CONSIDERING THE DIFFERENCE, NOT THE
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he internal influence, derived from the constitution of the mindfrom which they flow, produces that peculiar modification of actions,which makes them intrinsically good or evil. To attain an apprehension of the importance of this distinction,let us visit, in imagination, the proceedings of some metropolis.Consider the multitude of human beings who inhabit it, and survey,in thought, the actions of the several classes into which they aredivided. Their obvious actions are apparently uniform: the stabilityof human society seems to be maintained sufficiently by the uniformityof the conduct of its members, both with regard to themselves,and with regard to others. The labourer arises at a certain hour,and applies himself to the task enjoined him. The functionariesof government and law are regularly employed in their offices andcourts. The trader holds a train of conduct from which he neverdeviates. The ministers of religion employ an accustomed language,and maintain a decent and equable regard. The army is drawn forth,the motions of every soldier are such as they were expected to be;the general commands, and his words are echoed from troop to troop.The domestic actions of men are, for the most part, undistinguishableone from the other, at a superficial glance. The actions whichare classed under the general appellation of marriage, education,friendship, &c., are perpetually going on, and to a superficialglance, are similar one to the other. But, if we would see the truth of things, they must be stripped ofthis fallacious appearance of uniformity. In truth, no one actionhas, when considered in its whole extent, any essential resemblancewith any other. Each individual, who composes the vast multitudewhich we have been contemplating, has a peculiar frame of mind,which, whilst the features of the great mass of his actions remainuniform, impresses the minuter lineaments with its peculiar hues.Thus, whilst his life, as a whole, is like the lives of other men,in detail, it is most unlike; and the more subdivided the actionsbecome; that is, the more they enter into that class which havea vital influence on the happiness of others and his own, so muchthe more are they distinct from those of other men. Those little, nameless, unremembered actsOf kindness and of love, as well as those deadly outrages which are inflicted by a look,a word--or less--the very refraining from some faint and mostevanescent expression of countenance; these flow from a profoundersource than the series of our habitual conduct, which, it hasbeen already said, derives its origin from without. These are theactions, and such as these, which make human life what it is, andare the fountains of all the good and evil with which its entiresurface is so widely and impartially overspread; and though they arecalled minute, they are called so in compliance with the blindnessof those who cannot estimate their importance. It is in the dueappreciating the general effects of their peculiarities, and incultivating the habit of acquiring decisive knowledge respectingthe tendencies arising out of them in particular cases, that themost important part of moral science consists. The deepest abyssof these vast and multitudinous caverns, it is necessary that weshould visit. This is the difference between social and individual man. Not thatthis distinction is to be considered definite, or characteristicof one human being as compared with another; it denotes rather twoclasses of agency, common in a degree to every human being. Noneis exempt, indeed, from that species of influence which affects, asit were, the surface of his being, and gives the specific outlineto his conduct. Almost all that is ostensible submits to thatlegislature created by the general representation of the pastfeelings of mankind--imperfect as it is from a variety of causes,as it exists in the government, the religion, and domestic habits.Those who do not nominally, yet actually, submit to the same power.The external features of their conduct, indeed, can no more escapeit, than the clouds can escape from the stream of the wind; andhis opinion, which he often hopes he has dispassionately securedfrom all contagion of prejudice and vulgarity, would be found, onexamination, to be the inevitable excrescence of the very usagesfrom which he vehemently dissents. Internally all is conductedotherwise; the efficiency, the essence, the vitality of actions,derives its colour from what is no ways contributed to from anyexternal source. Like the plant which while it derives the accidentof its size and shape from the soil in which it springs, and iscankered, or distorted, or inflated, yet retains those qualitieswhich essentially divide it from all others; so that hemlockcontinues to be poison, and the violet does not cease to emit itsodour in whatever soil it may grow. We consider our own nature too superficially. We look on all thatin ourselves with which we can discover a resemblance in others;and consider those resemblances as the materials of moral knowledge.It is in the differences that it actually consists. [1815; publ. 1840]
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