an, flying the dirt and smoke and toil of his former
profession of a potter; and if proceeding from such slender beginnings,
he became master, in a little time, of all Sicily; brought the
Carthaginian state into the utmost danger; and at last died in old age,
and in possession of sovereign dignity: must he not be allowed something
prodigious and extraordinary, and to have possessed great talents and
capacity for business and action? His historian, therefore, ought not to
have alone related what tended to his reproach and infamy; but also what
might redound to his Praise and Honour.

In general, we may observe, that the distinction of voluntary or
involuntary was little regarded by the ancients in their moral
reasonings; where they frequently treated the question as very doubtful,
WHETHER VIRTUE COULD BE TAUGHT OR NOT [Vid. Plato in Menone, Seneca de
otio sap. cap. 31. So also Horace, Virtutem doctrina paret, naturane
donet, Epist. lib. I. ep. 18. Aeschines Socraticus, Dial. I.]? They
justly considered that cowardice, meanness, levity, anxiety, impatience,
folly, and many other qualities of the mind, might appear ridiculous and
deformed, contemptible and odious, though independent of the will. Nor
could it be supposed, at all times, in every man's power to attain every
kind of mental more than of exterior beauty.

And here there occurs the FOURTH reflection which I purposed to make,
in suggesting the reason why modern philosophers have often followed a
course in their moral enquiries so different from that of the ancients.
In later times, philosophy of all kinds, especially ethics, have been
more closely united with theology than ever they were observed to be
among the heathens; and as this latter science admits of no terms of
composition, but bends every branch of knowledge to its own purpose,
without much regard to the phenomena of nature, or to the unbiassed
sentiments of the mind, hence reasoning, and even language, have been
warped from their natural course, and distinctions have been endeavoured
to be established where the difference of the objects was, in a manner,
imperceptible. Philosophers, or rather divines under that disguise,
treating all morals as on a like footing with civil laws, guarded by the
sanctions of reward and punishment, were necessarily led to render this
circumstance, of VOLUNTARY or INVOLUNTARY, the foundation of their whole
theory. Every one may employ TERMS in what sense he pleases: but
thi