virtues, the virtues of self-government and self-command; fortitude, magnanimity, independency upon fortune, the contempt of all outward accidents, of pain, poverty, exile and death. It is in these great exertions that the noblest propriety of conduct is displayed. The soft, the amiable, the gentle virtues, all the virtues of indulgent humanity are in comparison but little insisted upon, and seem on the contrary, by the Stoics in particular, to have been often regarded as meer weaknesses which it behoved a wise man not to harbour in his breast.
The benevolent system, on the other hand, while it fosters and encourages all those mil|der virtues in the highest degree, seems en|tirely to neglect the more awful and respect|able qualities of the mind. It even denies them the appellation of virtues. It calls them moral abilities and treats them as qualities which do not deserve the same sort of esteem and approbation which is due to what is pro|perly denominated virtue. All those prin|ciples of action which aim only at our own interest, it treats, if that be possible, still worse. So far from having any merit of their own, they diminish, it pretends, the merit of benevolence, when they co|operate
