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Untitled Article
f deficiency of virtue in man , deceit is of use fay breaking off the rough edges of human intercourse , therefore the maxim that truth should be diffused promiscuously and without reserve * cannot be acted upon without
injury to the interest of virtue . To bring the principle to a just test , it is not enough to take a single acknowledged truth and imagine it to be put in circulation , insulated and broken off from the great chain of truths of
which it makes but a single link . Such mutilated and partial evidence is not admitted in any court whose proceedings are guided by equity : no more can it be permitted to the adversary of truth to suppose any single error detached from the clan of errors
with which it must be accompanied , and to demand , whether the prevalence of such an erroneous belief would not be productive of much benefit to mankind ? Yet such is the mode of trial adopted by this moralist ; 4 C if / ' says he , «* it were a superstition of everv mind , that the murderer ,
imynediately on the perpetration of his guilt , must himself expire by sympathy , a hew motive would be added to the side of virtue . " Again , ** if superstition could exist and be modified at the will of an enlightened legislator , so as to be deprived of its terrors to the innocent and turned
wholly against the guilty , we know no principle of our nature on which it would be so much for the interest of fnaukind to operate /* What is this but saying , if strong poisons could be administered so as to act solely on the disease , and not at all upon the
constitution of the patient , what a salutary application might be made of them by a skilful physician ! It will hardly , however , be admitted for no better reason than a supposition of what is so impracticable , that a good plain nutritive diet is not of greater benefit to man thau all the mineral
and vegetable poisons in the world . The same is the relation which truth Has always been supposed to bear to error ; and which , a » long as politicians and , we may now add , philosophers , shall allow her the privilege of speech ( for the right is denied ) , will still be acknowledged by men of unsophisticated minds .
The conclusion drawn |> y the writer from such premises is , " that we may assume as established and undeniable *
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that there is nothing in the nature o truth which makes it necessarily good that in the greater number of instances truth is beneficial , but that of the whole number of truths and falsehoods , a certain number are
productive of good and others of evil . " This is to separate what is in its nature inseparable . No truth , certainly no truth of any practical value , stands alone . It is sufficient praise , that in its natural and necessary connexion it forms a part of what is , as a whole , beneficial to mankind and favourable
to moral virtue ; and that it does so , is reason enough for throwing it into the general stock which forms the proper riches of intellectual man , Local and temporary mischief may result from tlie disclosure and belief
of certain facts ami opinions , which have , notwithstanding , the warrant of truth . This , however , is not their proper , for it is not their ultimate operation . That is to be deduced from their effects , when acting in union with other truths to which they are
naturally , allied , and extending their influence , together with them , through a long duration , and over a great diversity of condition . What will be the issue of such an experiment , cannot be doubted even by the present eulogist of error , since he confesses that , in the greater number of instances , truth is beneficial ; and since
truth is not a rope of sand that may be picked and sorted grain by grain , of which one is to be rejected and another preserved , but is , indeed , of a texture more stubborn and cohesive than any physical product , let us be content to take the incidental and
lesser evil together with the cert * "J ' perpetual and preponderating good , and let it still be acknowledged as the chief of philosophical and moral maxims , that truth is the minister of utility , and that her voice , even when it might be thought most discordant , still harmonizes with the morality and
happines ^^ jian . Whew * , #$ fre told " that innnmen ; ble cases inay be imagined in wmen errors of belief would be of moral aavantage , " imagination is substituw ? for experience ; and it would be dim cult to frame a proposition wmt might not be established in a » vm way . To such a declaration , Torn * no argument , nor part of an * J > meat , it 19 sufficient tooppo **** .
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340 Dr . Morell , on tjie Connexion between Truth and Morality .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1815, page 340, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1761/page/12/
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