We had an amiable friend
who suffered under the infirmity of cowardice; an awful coward he was
when sober; but, when very drunk, he had courage enough for the Seven
Champions of Christendom, Therefore, in an emergency, where he knew
himself suddenly loaded with the responsibility of defending a family,
we approved highly of his getting drunk. But to violate a trust could
never become right under any change of circumstances. Coleridge,
however, altogether overlooked this distinction: which, on the other
hand, stirring in Paley's mind, but never brought out to distinct
consciousness, nor ever investigated, nor limited, has undermined his
system. Perhaps it is not very important how a man _theorizes_
upon morality; happily for us all, God has left no man in such
questions practically to the guidance of his understanding; but still,
considering that academic bodies _are_ partly instituted for the
support of speculative truth as well as truth practical, we must think
it a blot upon the splendor of Oxford and Cambridge that both of them,
in a Christian land, make Paley the foundation of their ethics; the
alternative being Aristotle. And, in our mind, though far inferior as a
moralist to the Stoics, Aristotle is often less of a pagan than Paley.
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