``Letters on the Spaniards'' Letter VII 22 December 1809, The Courier

It is difficult to conceive a more unhappy and perplexed creature
than man would be, if he possessed no other guide for his actions
than his own previous calculation of their consequences.  Unhappy
he must needs be from the limited sphere and uncertainty of his
foresight even when it exists in its utmost perfection, and still more
so through the obliquities caused in it by his passions.  The intervention
of accidents ``between the cup and the lip'' is the subject of
an hundred proverbs in all languages, and our incapability of praying
wisely for any particular object of our desire among the primary
articles of all rational religions.  Nor, would his unhappyiness be
greater than his perplexity, and the inevitable result of both would
be the abandonment of the faculty itself, as far as this was possible,
or the exertion of it for the exclusive purposes of an immediate and
brutal selfishness.  For in such calculation of consequences, how far
are we to proceed?  Where are we to stop?  Is it to our children
and our particular friends?  Is it to be confined to these?  or, is it to
embrace the interests of our country and mankind?  If the latter, the
result of our calculations must depend altogether on the nature of
our convictions concerning the final causes of the world.  For if our
actions deserve their sole value from the sum total of their consequences
to the _optimist_, all actions must be equally good; while to
him, who thinks the world controlled by a malignant destiny, or by
chance, all actions would be evil in the one case, and in the other
indifferent, that is, as likely to be bad as good; and vice versa; or
would we confine the calculations to our own persons and times, the
same difficulties will present themselves -- whether, for instance, we
are to calculate for the whole number of years, which it is _possible_
we may live, or for some shorter period; till, the circle of selfishness
narrowing at every round, our forethought would at length fall in to
the present hour as to its natural centre; and we should sink into the
condition of brutes with the same sentence in our mouths, which,
when we start form the true principle of human action, gives us
spirit and cheerfulness to persevere in our highest duties -- ``Enough
for the day is the evil thereof.''  So strangely do extremes meet and
yet preserve the contrariety of their natures undiminished!  If the
reader would wish to see a spirited and exact portrait of a thorough-paced
moral Calculator, I advise him the next time he feels his
moments hang heavy on him ``in -- a church_,'' to turn to the second
chapter of the Wisdom of Solomon in the Apocrypha; there he will
find the Calculator's Progress from self-confiding philosophy
(or rather psilosophy) which refuses the aid of all moral
instincts, and laughs at ``the voice within'' as a superstition -- his progress,
first, to sensuality, that infallible heart-hardener; and thence
to oppression and remorseless cruelty.

What other result indeed can we expect, when a creature valuing
its own understanding beyond the wisdom if its creator, deranges
and inverts the natural order of its faculties, and substitutes for the
dictates of its conscience the conjunctures of that _prudence_, which
deserves its name then only, when it is employed as the agend and
organ of a nobler faculty?  It may be objected, that prudence itself,
enlightened by experience, and proceeding on the injurious _general_
consequences of regulating our conduct, universally and exclusively,
by a previous calculation of _particular_ consequences, does itself
command an _implicit_ faith in the clear and positive determinations
of the conscience; nay, justifies even an occasional surrender of the
soul to that high enthusiasm, which acknowledges no other necessity
than that of acting justly and generously, be the consequences what
they may.  For these persons blind themselves to the fact,
that without this enthusiasm nothing pre-eminently great or advantageous
has been obtained for mankind, either as members of a
particular State, or as Citizens of the World.  But surely, Sir, these
reasoners are not aware of the contradition involved in making _that_
the principle and _primate_ of all marality, the first dictate of which is,
that itself should be sometimes suspended, and always obeyed in
_subordination_ to some other principle.  It is no doubt more true, Sir,
that the actions of an adequately enlightened self-love will in general,
(perhaps, always) coincide with the precepts of the moral law.  Where
then lies the difference?  In that, Sir, which is worth all the rest told
ten times over; in the worth and essential character of the _Agents_!