furnishing the whole people with instruction in their
rights, interests, and duties; as well as that thorough cultivation of
the whole man, which the full success of republicanism requires.

Part III.

Welfare as Dependent on Philosophy.

But the whole office of Policy, in arranging the social relations,
supposes the prevalence of an ill-informed and misdirected self-love.
And, accordingly, the second way of attempting the promotion of general
welfare is, to convey and impress just estimates of its constituents.
Such is the office of Philosophy: the study of the truly wise man-wise
for the present life--still leaving out man's hold on a future, and his
relations to his Maker. What would such an one pursue; as life's chief
ends--covet, as life's best goods?

We still suppose self-love to be as really as ever the main-spring
to human conduct; but that self-love enlightened, regulated, refine--
choosing first the goods which satisfy the nobler parts of man's
nature, and on a liberal estimate of the ties which bind society
together; in virtue of which, if one member suffer, all the members
suffer with it.

The items, claiming to constitute life's happiness, may be divided into
two classes, distinguished by this important difference: one class
essentially such, that only a limited number of mankind can obtain
them;--if some succeed in the pursuit, their success involves the
failure of others: The other class are such, as to involve no
contradiction in the supposition of their becoming the common property
of all. The success of a part, far from obstructing, rather
facilitates the success of others; they constitute a store of wealth,
from which each may take his fill; and the more he takes, the more he
leaves, to satisfy the desires of all who come after.

Now, in view of the case, Philosophy inquiring for life's chief goods,
cannot make them to be fortune's prizes, scattered to tempt the
cupidity of all; but which a few only can catch, while their luck
proves the disappointment and vexation of the many. The supposition
were monstrous. We so instinctively recoil from supposing such to be
the appointment of nature's Author, and so consciously grasp it for a
truth clear by its own light--the conviction of a provision fully made
in nature for all, whenever nature's wants are truly consulted--that we
may safely reject, by this test, every notion of temporal good, which
makes it consist preeminently in whatever,