Universal Benevolence

⁴⁴ Our effective good offices can very seldom be extended beyond our own country.

But our goodwill has no boundary. It may embrace the immensity of the universe.

We cannot conceive of any being:

• whose happiness we should not desire, or
• whose misery we should not be averse to

We naturally hate a mischievous being.

• But the ill-will we bear to it is really the effect of our universal benevolence.
• It is the effect of the sympathy that we feel for the misery and resentment of those beings harmed by that mischievous being.

⁴⁵ All of the universe’s inhabitants are under the immediate care of that great, benevolent, and all-wise Being.

• He directs all the movements of nature.
• He is determined to always maintain in it the greatest possible quantity of happiness, by his own unalterable perfections.

On the contrary, the very suspicion of a fatherless world would be the saddest idea. It will lead to the idea that all of space is filled with nothing but endless misery and wretchedness.

⁴⁶ The wise and virtuous man is always willing:

• to sacrifice his own private interest for the interest of his class or society.
• that the interest of his class or society be sacrificed to the greater interest of its state or sovereignty.

• to sacrifice all those inferior interests to the greater interest of the universe.

This greater interest of the universe is the interest of all sensible and intelligent beings, which God is the immediate administrator and director of.

The wise and virtuous man believes:

• that God only admits partial evils necessary for the universal good into his government.
• that all the misfortunes of himself, his friends, society, or country, as necessary for the universe’s prosperity
• that he should submit to these because he would himself sincerely wished for them, if he had known all the connections of things.

⁴⁷ This magnanimous resignation to the universe’s great Director is not beyond the reach of human nature.

Good soldiers love and trust their general. They frequently march proudly and happily to the forlorn station withuot expecting to return.

• In marching to the easy station, they could only feel that dullness of ordinary duty.
• In marching to the forlorn station, they feel that they are making the noblest exertion.

They know that their general would not have ordered them on this station if it were unnecessary for:

• the army’s safety, and
• the war’s success.

They cheerfully sacrifice their own little systems to the prosperity of a greater system.

They take an affectionate leave of their comrades, to whom they wish all happiness and success. They march out with submissive obedience and often with shouts of the most joyful exultation, to that fatal, but splendid and honourable station appointed to them.

No conductor of an army can deserve more unlimited trust, ardent and zealous affection, than the great Conductor of the universe.

In the greatest public and private disasters, a wise man should consider:

• that he himself, his friends and countrymen, have only been ordered on the forlorn station of the universe,
• that had it been unnecessary for the good of the whole, they would not have been so ordered, and
• that it is their duty to:
  • submit to this allotment with humble resignation, and
  • to try to embrace it with alacrity and joy.

A wise man should surely be capable of doing what a good soldier holds himself ready to do at all times.

⁴⁸ The idea of that divine Being is certainly by far the most sublime of all the objects of human contemplation.

That Being’s benevolence and wisdom have contrived and conducted the immense machine of the universe from all eternity, to produce the greatest possible quantity of happiness at all times.

Every other thought necessarily appears mean in the comparison.

The man whom we believe to be principally occupied in this sublime contemplation, seldom fails to be the object of our highest veneration.

Even if his life were altogether contemplative, we often regard him with a religious respect superior to our respect for the commonwealth’s most active and useful servant.

The Meditations of Marcus Antoninus turn principally on this subject.

It has contributed more, perhaps, to the general admiration of his character, than all the transactions of his just, merciful, and beneficent reign.

⁴⁹ However, the administration of the universe and the care of the universal happiness of all rational and sensible beings is the business of God and not of man.

A much humbler department is allotted to man. It is one much more suitable to:

• the weakness of his powers
• the narrowness of his comprehension

This department is the care of the happiness of:

• himself,
• his family,
• his friends, and
• his country.

Being occupied in contemplating the more sublime department can never be an excuse for his neglecting the humbler department. He must not expose himself to the charge which Avidius Cassius is said to have brought, perhaps unjustly, against Marcus Antoninus.

The charge was that while he employed himself in philosophical speculations and contemplated the prosperity of the universe, he neglected that of the Roman empire. The most sublime speculation of the contemplative philosopher can scarce compensate the neglect of the smallest active duty.