There may be acts
of a beneficent tendency that cost the performer nothing, or that even
may chance to be agreeable; but these examples must not be given as the
rule, or the type. It is the essence of virtuous acts, the prevailing
character of the class, to tax the agent, to deprive him of some
satisfaction to himself; this is what we must start from; we are then in
a position to explain how and when, and under what circumstances, and
with what limitations, the virtuous man, whether his virtue be justice
or benevolence, is from that cause a happy man.
* * * * *
It is a fallacy of the suppressed relative to describe virtue as
determined by the _moral nature_ of God, as opposed to his arbitrary
will. The essence of Morality is obedience to a superior, to a Law;
where there is no superior there is nothing either moral or immoral. The
supreme power is incapable of an immoral act. Parliament may do what is
injurious, it cannot do what is illegal. So the Deity may be beneficent
or maleficent, he cannot be moral or immoral.
* * * * *
Among the various ways, proposed in the seventeenth century, of solving
the difficulty of the mutual action of the heterogeneous agencies--matter
and mind--one was a mode of Divine interference, called the "Theory of
Occasional Causes".
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