By William Withington. 1851. Contents....

Life Defined. Intellectual Culture and Intellectual Life, Distinguished. Human Life, a Problem. The Evil to be Managed. Self-Love Considered under a Three-fold Aspect. Three Agencies for meliorating the Human Condition. The Growth of Thought, Slow; and oft most in unexpected quarter. Welfare as dependent on the Social Institutions. Limited Aim of the Received Political Economy. An Enlightened Policy but the Effective Aim at managing Self-Love, directed towards Present Goods, vulgarly understood.

Introductory. The meditation on human life—on the contrast between what is , and what might be , on supposing a general concurrence to make the best of things-yields emotions both painful and pleasing;—painful for the demonstrations every where presented, of a love of darkness, rather than light; pleasing, that the worst evils are seen to be so remediable; and so clear the proofs of a gradual, but sure progress towards the remedy. The writer is not very familiar with those authors, who have so m

Welfare as Dependent on Policy. As generally at all points, so the materialism of the age particularly appears, in that the political economists take wealth , defining their science in the vulgar acceptation, rather than in the good old English sense, welfare , well-being . If they occasionally venture a remark of a more liberal bearing on the general subject of public welfare; such is the exception to the general rule. Money, with its equivalents and exchangeables, is their usual theme in treat

Welfare as Dependent on Philosophy. But the whole office of Policy, in arranging the social relations, supposes the prevalence of an ill-informed and misdirected self-love. And, accordingly, the second way of attempting the promotion of general welfare is, to convey and impress just estimates of its constituents. Such is the office of Philosophy: the study of the truly wise man-wise for the present life—still leaving out man's hold on a future, and his relations to his Maker. What would such an

Welfare as Dependent on Religion. But in all our attempts to educate self-love into harmony with Universal benevolence, we contend with the enemy, somewhat as Hercules wrestled with Antaeus:—       Und erstickst du ihn nicht in den Luften frei,       Stets wachst ihm die Kraft anf der Erde neu.*       [If thou strangle him not high lifted in air,       Fresh strength from the earth he continues to share.] Thus we come to speak of present welfare, as dependent on the cultivation of the whole man—