date

1817 Dec 12 Not Paul III. Doctrine
1817 Dec 12

Not Paul

III. Doctrine

Ch. Asceticism

Physical abhorrence ends in abstention

/ abstinence/: moral goes on to

intolerance and prosecution.

So far from persecuting those who are disposed to take up with gratifications of an

inferior order, government ought to regard itself as obliged to them. Punish them: as

reasonably might you punish a man who in a time of scarcity in a blockaded town were

seen like a Chinese taking up with carrion for food, or searching for it on a

dunghill or in a common sewer.

Were the several distinguishable senses, and other faculties and the modes of

gratification, physical and psychological, of which they are respectively the

instruments, ever so much more numerous than they are, the same rules of limitation

might with equal and incontestable propriety serve for all of them: 1. the rule of

self-regarding prudence—2. the rule of probity including legal justice—and 3. the

rule of benevolence, which in so far as it is carried into

effect and practice is the rule of beneficence.

Of these rules a sample /sort of rudiment/ though not /howsoever scarcely/

sufficiency extensive /neither correct nor compleat/ may be seen in the rule of Roman

law— Sic utere tuo ut alienam non lædere: so use that which

belongs to thyself, that nothing which belongs to another may be hurt.

 Define these rules—then proceed to say

By /In/ these rules the gratifications of that appetite on which the preservation of

the individual depends finds its proper limit: in these same rules so does that on

which the preservation of the species depends: in these same rules so does that on

which that desire which is produced by itching, and gratified by scratching where it

itches. No rational /tenable/ reason can be assigned why in any one of these cases

the desire of pleasure and immunity from pain should have any other limits /be

confined /[...?]// than those by which as above it is restrained /circumscribed/

/bounded/ in the two others.
Similar Items
  • Title: [1818 Jan y 4 Not Paul 60]
    Description: 1818 Jan y 4

    Not Paul

    60

    III Doctrine

    Ch Asceticism

    11

    § Inconsistency

    By the eulogy / pretious […?] of eulogy / bestowed / lavished / in the one case, by

    the vituperation poured forth in so flaming a torrent in the other can the nature of

    the thing itself be changed? And what if to the feeder on bran oil or carrion the

    turtle or the venison would be as bran oil or carrion to him by whom these costly

    viands are employed as / afford / food? to whom the matter of nourishment is afforded

    / administered / by these costly viands?

    In This paragraph perhaps marked as a note in

    pencil. the connubial union when in either party the capacity of

    contributing to procreation either never came into existence or is extinct, in what

    respect does the sexual intercourse in this case differ in its consequence from the

    like intercourse with a being of a different species or the same sex? it is not

    indeed in every case that the incapacity is matter of certainty: it is however in one

    case viz. where the female is past the age. Yet without objection even on the part of

    the most rigid ascetic, under this circumstance the union is not only continued but

    even commenced.
  • Title: [27 Jan 1809 . View P 2 Paley? Reason]
    Description: 27 Jan 1809 . View P 2

    Paley? Reason for English practice cases meet for capital punishment depend on circumstances impossible to be defined till after the offence has been committed

    "The better of which two methods (continues the Reverend

    Doctor) "has been long adopted in this country, where, of those

    "who receive sentence of death scarcely one in ten is executed

    Such is the statement germ of the practice:

    and worse, under the notice of an indication of the

    by which the conduct of the authors creators and preservers of this state of

    things may have been determined, comes a justification of

    it

    "And the preference of this to the former method (as if there

    "were no other) seems to be founded on the consideration, that

    "the selection of proper subjects for capital punishment principally

    "depends upon circumstances, about, however easy to perceive

    "in each particular case after the crime is committed, it

    "is impossible to enumerate or define beforehand; in to

    "ascertain however with that exactness which is requisite

    in legal description."

    "The propriety of inflicting mode of punishment he depends depending depends principally

    to upon circumstances which it is impossible to

    "enumerate or define beforehand! or at any rate at least to ascertain

    "with that exactness which is requisite in legal descriptions!

    This is as much as to say that it is impossible for the business

    of punishment to be carried or had by powers compleatly arbitrary.

    The circumstances in which the propriety of a lot of punishment which has

    been inflicted depends — impossible to enumerate or define

    beforehand! and yet there some circumstance easy to

    perceive after the crime has been is committed! A Nero or

    a Caligula, if it were an object with them to find a justification

    for their barbarities, would it be possible for them to dwell

    as

    or wish for a theory that should set them more compleatly at their ease?

    3 By the help of this doctrine, which supposes that In the administration of penal law, it is necessary Judges should be invested with arbitrary power the atrocities of Nero & Caligula or any other atrocities may find their justification
  • Title: [1818 Jan y 4 Not Paul 59]
    Description: 1818 Jan y 4

    Not Paul

    59

    III Doctrine

    Ch Asceticism

    10

    § Inconsistency

    In and in relation to the connubial union in compliance with those rules of good

    breeding which the laws of decency and delicacy combine in prescribing / dictating /,

    and from which pleasure itself in its most exquisite form has so much to gain / is so

    great a degree to gain / when the motives which with reference to the […?] have acted

    as instruments / commencement of the union / and with reference to the continuance of

    it continue to act as cement[?] are in the course of common conversation[?] brought

    upon the carpet / become / constitute / the subject of consideration / contemplation

    //, the only one of which express mention is made are that sympathy which with purely

    social affection of the mind which with little difference is capable without any

    admixture of sensual appetite of having place between two persons of the same sex;

    this purely mental pleasure heightened perhaps by more or less of that perception[?]

    of ideal beauty which is not less capable of being afforded by a picture or a statue,

    together with a desire of the means of affording gratification to that sympathy of

    which the fruit / issue / of the body are the object, and the parental relation the

    cause.

    But when all these ostensible adjuncts / accidents / are respectively abstracted,

    adjuncts / accidents / to each of which it may alike happen to be in existence are

    abstracted, what remains but that appetite of which alone in the whole groupe of

    motives the existence is certain? and when thus gratified in the ordinary mode in

    what does it differ from itself when gratified in any eccentric mode? Marginal note at this point: ‘What difference,

    any more than between the appetite for nourishment when gratified / satisfied / by

    turtle or venison and the same appetite when bran oil or carrion and nothing

    better is employed in satisfying it.’ what difference is there between this

    appetite when gratified in the above ordinary mode and the same appetite when

    gratified in any eccentric mode?