The Religion of Nature Delineated by William Wollaston (mystery books to read .txt) 📕

themselves whose they are, or according to the thoughts and sense which they have of them: not according to the estimate put upon them by other people, who have no authority to judge of them nor can know what they are, may compute by different rules, have less sense, be in different circumstances,102 or such as guilt has rendered partial to themselves. If that prince who, having plenty and flocks many, yet ravished the poor man’s single ewe-lamb out of his bosom, reckoned the poor man’s loss to be not greater than the loss of one of his lambs would have been to him, he must be very defective in moral arithmetic, and little understood the doctrine of proportion. Every man’s happiness is his happiness, what it is to him; and the loss of it is answerable to the degrees of his perception, to his manner of taking things, to his wants and circumstances.103

Observation 5: How judicious and wary ought princes, lawgivers, judges, juries, and even masters to be! They ought not to consider so much what a stout, resolute, obstinate, hardened criminal may bear, as what the weaker sort, or at least (if that can be known) the persons immediately concerned can bear: that is, what any punishment would be to them. For it is certain: all criminals are not of the former kind, and therefore should not be used as if they were. Some are drawn into crimes which may render them obnoxious to public justice, they scarce know how themselves; some fall into them through necessity, strength of temptation, despair, elasticity of spirits and a sudden eruption of passion, ignorance of laws, want of good education, or some natural infirmity or propension; and some who are really innocent are oppressed by the iniquity or mistakes of judges, witnesses, juries, or perhaps by the power and zeal of a faction with which their sense or their honesty has not permitted them to join. What a difference must there be between the sufferings of a poor wretch⁠—sensible of his crime or misfortune, who would give a world for his deliverance if he had it⁠—and those of a sturdy veteran in roguery; between the apprehensions, tears, faintings of the one, and the brandy and oaths of the other; in short, between a tender nature and a brickbat!

Observation 6: In general, all persons ought to be very careful and tender where any other is concerned. Otherwise they may do they know not what. For no man can tell, by himself, or any other way, how another may be affected.

Observation 7: There cannot be an equal distribution of rewards and punishments by any stated human laws.104 Because (among other reasons) the same thing is rarely either the same gratification or the same punishment to different persons.

Observation 8: The sufferings of brutes are not like the sufferings of men.105 They perceive by moments, without reflection upon past or future, upon causes, circumstances, etc.

Time and life without thinking are next neighbors to nothing: to no-time and no-life.106 And therefore, to kill a brute is to deprive him of a life, or a remainder of time, that is equal to little more than nothing: though this may perhaps be more applicable to some animals than to others. That which is chiefly to be taken care of, in this matter, is that the brute may not be killed unnecessarily; when it is killed, that it may have as few moments of pain as may be;107 and that no young be left to languish. So much by the way here.

II. Pain considered in itself is a real evil, pleasure a real good. I take this as a postulatum that will, without difficulty, be granted. Therefore,

III. By the general idea of good and evil the one (pleasure) is in itself desirable, the other (pain) to be avoided. What is here said, respects mere pleasure and pain, abstracted from all circumstances, consequences, etc. But, because there are some of these generally adhering to them, and such as enter so deep into their nature that, unless these be taken in, the full and true character of the other cannot be had, nor can it therefore be known what happiness is, I must proceed to some other propositions relating to this subject.

IV. Pleasure compared with pain may either be equal, or more, or less: also pleasures may be compared with other pleasures,108 and pains with pains. Because all the moments of the pleasure must bear some respect, or be in some ratio, to all the moments of pain⁠—as also all the degrees of one to all the degrees of the other⁠—and so must those of one pleasure, or one pain, be to those of another. And if the degrees of intenseness be multiplied by the moments of duration, there must still be some ratio of the one product to the other.

That this proposition is true, appears from the general conduct of mankind; though in some particulars they may err and wrong themselves, some more, some less. For what does all this hurry of business, what do all the labors and travels of men tend to, but to gain such advantages as they think do exceed all their trouble? What are all their abstinences and self-denials for, if they do not think some pleasures less than the pain that would succeed them? Do not the various methods of life show that men prefer one sort of pleasure to another, and submit to one sort of pain rather than to have another? And within ourselves we cannot but find an indifference as to many things, not caring whether we have the pain with the pleasure obtained by it, or miss the pleasure, being excused from the pain.

V. When pleasures and pains are equal, they mutually destroy each other; when the one