BOOK II PRINCIPALS OF SOCIETY CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION In the preceding book we have cleared the foundations for the remaining branches of inquiry, and shown what are the prospects it is reasonable to entertain as to future political improvement. The effects which are produced by positive institutions have there been delineated, as well as the extent of the powers of man, considered in his social capacity. It is time that we proceed to those disquisitions which are more immediately the object of the present work. Political inquiry may be distributed under two heads: first, what are the regulations which will conduce to the well being of man in society; and, secondly, what is the authority which is competent to prescribe regulations. The regulations to which the conduct of men living in society ought to be con...
Definitions. -- Principle of the Stoics examined. -- Pleasure delineated. -- Scale of happiness -- the peasant and artisan -- the man of wealth -- the man of taste -- the man of benevolence. -- Inference. -- System of optimism. -- Errors of this system. -- Mixture of truth. -- Limitations. -- Condition of the universe displayed. -- Ill effects of optimism. -- It is destructive of any consistent theory of virtue -- blunts the delicacy of moral discrimination -- reconciles us to the spectacle of perverseness in others. -- Of persecution. There is no disquisition more essential either in morality or politics than that which shall tend to give us clear and distinct ideas of good and evil, what it is we should desire, and what we should deprecate. We will therefore close the present volume with a few considerations upon this...