$B MM 
 
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 
 DR. JOSEPH LECONTE. 
 
 GIFT OF MRS. LECONTE. 
 
 No. 
 
7B ' 
 
 
faj-0u4GL &3<il{ 
 
MANUAL 
 
 OF 
 
 SUPPLEMENTARY REFERENCES 
 
 TO THE 
 
 COURSE OF LECTURES 
 
 UPON 
 
 MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 DELIYERb BEFORE THE JUNIOR CLASS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 SOUTH CAEOLINA COLLEGE. 
 
 n, ^ 
 
 Generosa res est conari alta, tentare et mente majora concipere, quam qua 
 etiam ingenti animo adornatis effici possiut. Seneca, de Vita beat a, c zx. 
 
 COLUMBIA, S. C.: 
 
 SOUTHERN aUARDIAN STEAM PBESS. 
 
 1859. 
 
The object of this unpretending brochure is two fold ; to dispense with long, 
 but valuable quotations in a Course of oral instruction, and to furnish the student 
 of Morals with a text book for private study and class-room exercise. But beyond 
 the attainment of these objects the compiler indulges the further hope, that the 
 extracts here furnished, may excite such interest and desire for knowledge in the 
 mind of the student that he will not be satisfied until he has himself gone to the 
 fountain heads of Wisdom and Truth, and there quenched his thirst. 
 COLLKGB CAMPUS, Sept. 1st., 1859. 
 
PLAN 
 
 OF THE 
 
 COURSE OF LECTURES 
 
 UPOX 
 
 MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 (I.) Introductory Lecture. 
 
 (II.) History of Moral Philosophy. 
 
 (in.) Criticism of Theories of Morals. 
 
 (IV.) Moral Philosophy Proper Theoretical Part. 
 
 (V.) Practical Morals. 
 
 (I.) Introductory Lecture 
 
 (Jpon the design, scope and dignity of Moral Philosophy the difficulties of 
 instruction in a Collegiate Course Text Books and Books of Reference to be used 
 and some useful hints for prosecuting the study advantageously. 
 
 (LI.) The History of Moral Philosophy, 
 
 Chronologically and Biographicatty, presented with a view to familiarize the 
 mind with the terms and controversies of the science. 
 
 (CL) 
 ol of 
 
 School of Megara Cyrenaics Cynics Plato Aristotle Academics Stoics Epi- 
 cureans Roman Moralists Cicero Seneca Plutarch's Morals. 
 
 (Z>.) Christian Ethics or Moral Thtology. Christ and the Apostles the Patris- 
 tic notions and method Asceticism Mysticism Casuistry Characteristics of the 
 Moral Theology of the Middle Ages. 
 
 (c.) Scholastic Ethics, A. D. 874. Scotus ErigenaAnselm Hildebert Abe- 
 
4: MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 lard Peter of Lombardy Alexander of Hales Albertus Magnus Thos. Aquinas- 
 Duns Scotus William of Ockham Laurentius Valla Vives Erasmus Melanc- 
 thon Corn. Agrippa. 
 
 Sporadic Works and ^w^ors. Soto Suarez Sepulveda Montague Char- 
 ron Piccolomini Campanella Giordano Bruno Petrarch Perkins Ames 
 Hall Sanderson Taylor. 
 
 (d.) Modern Systems of Morals. Netherland Moralists Grotius, Geulincx, 
 Spinoza. 
 
 British Moralists. Hobbes, More, Cumberland, Cudworth, Locke, Shaftesbury, 
 Clarke, Wollaston, Mandeville. Hutcheson, Butler, Balguy, Warburton, Gay, Hart- 
 ley, Tucker, Hume, Price, Smith, Paley, Gisborne, Stewart, Reid, Brown, Ferguson, 
 Bentbam. 
 
 French Moralists. De la Motte le Yayer, Bossuet, Fenelon, Bayle, Euet, Roche- 
 foucauld, Malebranche, Diderot, de la Mettrie, Helvetius, Rousseau, Dalembert, 
 Mablay. 
 
 German Moralists. Leibnitz, Canz, Wolf, Baumgarten Crusius, Meier, Kant, 
 Mendelsohn, Garve, Schmid, Schleirnaacher, Marheineke de Wette, Platner, Jacobi. 
 
 (e.) JJursory glance at the Sympathetic developement of the science at the pre- 
 sent time, in England, France and America. McCosh, Whewell, Cousin, Jonffroy, 
 Tbornwell, Wayland. 
 
 (III.) Criticism of Theories of Morals : 
 
 History of the Systems of Moral Philosophy, presented according to the leading 
 idea, developed and criticised. 
 
 Classification of Systems. Theories of Dependent Morality Theories of Inde- 
 pendent Morality Theories in reference to the Nature and Origin of our Moral 
 Perceptions Theories in reference to the Criterion of Morals. 
 
 (a) Theories which make morality dependent : 
 
 (1) Upon consequences beneficial to self Selfish Theory. 
 
 (2) " " to others Disinterested Theory. 
 
 (3) " " to mankind generally Utilitarian Theory. 
 
 (4) Upon the Will of God. 
 
 (5) Upon Law, Education and Custom. 
 
 (b) Theories which make Morals independent of any artificial or extraneous prin- 
 ciple, but directly referable to Cl) Reason Rationalistic Theory. 
 
 (2.) Sympathy or Sense Sentimental Theory. 
 (3.) Conscience Conscience Theory. 
 
 (IT.) Speculative Morality (W Virtue, Duty, Right, and the contrary.) 
 Definitions of the Science. 
 Basis of System. 
 Is there a Conscience ? 
 
MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. O 
 
 What is its Nature and Constitution ? 
 
 The Laws and operations of Conscience. 
 
 Of Bappiness of Obligation of Merit and of Demerit of Right and Wrong 
 of Virtue and the Virtues of Temperance, Truth, Benevolence, Justice, Piety, 
 Humanity, 
 
 (Y.) Practical Morality (Qt Virtues, Duties, Rights, and their contraries.) 
 
 ( as an animal ) . 
 
 (A.) self J [ being, 
 
 / as a moral \ 
 
 I Family 
 
 Fellowmen { 
 
 Duties to * . 
 
 Ecclesiastic 
 
 (G.) Superior Being God. 
 
 t T-> \ r J! n i.- \ B)'Ute8. 
 
 (D.) Interior Creation ( r . . 
 
 ^ ' J I Inanimate nature. 
 
 (^4.) (1.) Duties to one's self, considered as possessed of an animal organization. 
 (a.) Self preservation of Self Defence, of Suicide. 
 (.) Self conservation of Frugality, of Drunkenness, of Gluttony. 
 (c.) Self purification of Chastity, of Fornication, of Seduction, of 
 
 Gentility. 
 
 (2.) Duties to one's self considered as a Moral being. 
 Of Truth of Lies. 
 Of Honor of Duelling. 
 
 Of Self command of Anger of Resentment of Revenge. 
 (B.) Duties to Fellow men. 
 (1.) Family Relations. 
 
 (a) Of Husband and Wife, of Adultery, of Polygamy, of Divorce. 
 (5) Of Parent and Child. 
 
 (c) Of Brethren. 
 
 (d) Of Master and Servant. 
 
 (e) Of Friendship. 
 
 (/.) Charity in deed of Philanthropy, of Alms, of Hospitality, of 
 
 Gratitude. 
 Charity in word of Liberality of Judgment, of Detraction, of 
 
 Sneering. 
 
 Charity in thought of Sympathy, of Envy, of Malice. 
 (2.) Business Relations (a) Of Buyer and Seller. 
 
 (b) Of Promiser and Promisee. 
 
 (c) Of Borrower and Lender. 
 
 (d) Of Employer and Employee. 
 
 (e) Of Principal and Agent. 
 (/) Of Partners. 
 
MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Morals of Trade. Of Gaming, of Speculation. 
 
 Of Wills of Insurances. 
 
 (3.) Political Relations. Of Property, of Gorernment, of Laws, of Crimes, 
 of Patriotism, of Slavery, of Elections. 
 
 (4.) Of Ecclesiastical relations generally. 
 
 (C.) Duty to God. Of Love, of Worship, of Prayer, of Oaths, of Vows, of 
 Sabbatical Institutions. 
 
 (D.) Duties to JBrute and Inanimate Creation. 
 To Brutes. Of Humanity of Cruelty. 
 
 To Inanimate Creation. Use and not Waste of cultivation of the Arts 
 and Sciences of ^Esthetic tastes and their connection with Morals. 
 
LIST OF EMINENT MEN 
 
 WHO. HAVE 
 
 CONTRIBUTED TO MORAL SCIENCE. 
 
 ARRANGED IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. 
 
 B. C. 
 
 A. D. 
 
 
 584-504 Pythagoras, 
 
 1224-1274 
 
 Thomas Aquinas, 
 
 500 Heraclitus, flo. 
 
 1245 
 
 Alexander of Hales, 
 
 467-398 Socrates, 
 
 1274 
 
 Bonaventura, 
 
 426-347 Plato, 
 
 1309 
 
 Duns Scotus, 
 
 384-321 Aristotle & Pyrrho, 
 
 1457 
 
 Laurentius Valla, 
 
 342-270 Epicurus, 
 
 1499 
 
 Marcus Ficinus, 
 
 324 x Diogenes, 
 
 1518 
 
 Melancthon, 
 
 314-261 Zeno, 
 
 1525 
 
 Pomponatius, 
 
 213-130 Carneades, 
 
 1535 
 
 Hem. Corn. Agrippa, 
 
 122 ''Pancetius, flourished 
 
 1541 
 
 Vives, 
 
 108-44 Cicero, 
 
 1494-1560 
 
 Soto, 
 
 i. 
 
 1580 
 
 Giordano Bruno. 
 
 A. D. L. 
 
 x 
 
 Montague, 
 
 1-65 Seneca, 
 
 1582 
 
 Perkins, flourished , 
 
 82 Epictetus, lived. 
 
 1603 
 
 Charron, 
 
 99 Plutarch, 
 
 1604 
 
 Piccolomini, 
 
 162 Marc. Atonnius, 
 
 1538-1617 
 
 Suarez, 
 
 170 Sextus Empiricus, 
 250 Plotinus, 
 
 1639 
 1585-1645 
 
 Campanella, 
 Grotius, 
 
 270 /Porphyrus, 
 
 1650 
 
 Ames, flourished, 
 
 331 Jamblichus, 
 
 1660 
 
 Bp. Sanderson, flo. 
 
 485 Proclus., 
 
 tt 
 
 Jeremy Taylor, flo. 
 
 496 ' Stobosus., 
 
 1667 
 
 Geulincx, 
 
 550 Simplicius, 
 
 1672 
 
 De la Motte le Vayer, 
 
 874 Scotus Eugena, 
 
 1677 
 
 Spinoza, 
 
 1034-1100 Anselm, 
 
 
 
 1079-1143 >Abelard, Hildebert, 
 1150 / Peter Lombard, 
 
 1588-1684 
 1685 
 
 x Hobbes, 
 -' Henry More, 
 
 1173 Richard of St. Victor, 
 
 1617-1688 
 
 Cudworth, 
 
 1180 John of Salisbury, 
 
 1691 
 
 Horneius, 
 
 1193-1280 Albertus Magnus, 
 
 1704 
 
 ^ Locke, 
 
8 
 
 CONTKIBUTOKS TO MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 A. D. 
 
 1627-1704 Bossuet, 
 1706 Bayle, 
 
 1671-1713 Shaftesbury, 
 1651-1715 Fenelon, 
 1638-1715 Malebranche, 
 1646-1716 /Leibnitz, 
 1632-1Z1&/ Cumberland, 
 1724 Huet and Gay, 
 
 1721 Wollaston, 
 
 1728 Thomasius, 
 
 1733 Mandeville, 
 
 1661-1737 Buffier, 
 1694-1747 Hutcheson, 
 1692-1752 Butler, 
 
 1753 Canz, 
 
 1754 Christ'n. Wolf, 
 1757 ^Hartley & la Mettrie, 
 1703-1758/ Jon. Edwards, 
 1762 / Baumgarten, 
 
 1771 Helvetius, 
 
 A. D. 
 
 1772 Crusius, 
 
 1705-1774 Tucker, 
 1711-1776 Hume, 
 
 1778 /Meier, 
 
 1779 Rosseau. 
 1783 ' Dalembert, 
 
 1785 Mably, 
 
 1786 Mendelsohn, 
 1723-1790 Smith, 
 1723-1791 Price, 
 1796 Reid, 
 
 1798 /""Carve, 
 
 1804 .Kant, 
 
 1812 /Schmid, 
 
 1814 /yFichte, 
 
 1 743-18 fy'Paley and Gisborne, 
 
 1816 / Ferguson, 
 
 1818 Plainer, 
 
 1819 Jacobi, 
 1778-1820 Brown. 
 
PART I. 
 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY, 
 
 It is impossible for a science to rest in ignorance of its own history; it is impossible 
 for the human mind to permit it. However clearly it may be demonstrated in its own 
 eyes, a science cannot have perfect confidence in itself, unless it has obtained the secret 
 of its errors; it cannot be sure that it has arrived at the True, except when it has ex- 
 plained to itself how it has passed through, and how it must have needs passed through 
 the False. Jouffroy. 
 
 (1.) ETHICAL VIEWS OF PYTHAGORAS. 
 
 The Pythagoreans were the first, we are told by Aristotle, 
 who attempted to determine any points in moral philosophy. 
 All, however, on this subject that they carried out scientifi- 
 cally, and without dependence on their general view of things, 
 was of little value apparently. Whether they established any 
 doctrine of the supreme good, or the ultimate object of all 
 rational action, is very doubtful ; so very discrepant are the 
 statements of later writers on this point : that, however, they 
 investigated the notion of virtue, would result from Philolaus 
 having denoted virtue to be the property of the moral life. 
 They are said to have called virtue a harmony ; which defini- 
 tion, however, requires to be further limited, by shewing in 
 what they supposed the harmony of virtue to consist. It is 
 not improbable that they held it to be the coincidence of the 
 rational and the irrational throughout the whole course of 
 life. For, on the one hand, they employed music both to 
 soothe the passions, and to excite the active energies. On the 
 other, they strove to attain to a consistency and agreement in 
 their whole life, as is expressed in their precept : Man ought 
 
10 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to consider both the past and the future with a moral aim. 
 "What, it is said, they taught of particular virtues, is for the 
 most part questionable or worthless ; in the case of justice 
 alone are we credibly informed that they said it was a " simi- 
 larly similar number ;" by which they meant to convey the 
 maxim, that it is just that every one should receive according 
 to his deserts. No one will wonder to find so rude a notion 
 in the infancy of ethics. Hitters History of Ancient Phi- 
 losophy ', vol. 1., p. 414. 
 
 (2.) CHARACTER AND METHOD OF SOCRATES' PHILOSOPHIZING. 
 
 The philosophizing of Socrates was limited and restricted 
 by his opposition, partly to the preceding, and partly to the 
 Sophistic philosophy. 
 
 Philosophy before th^ Socrates ,had been in its essential 
 character, investigation of nature. But in Socrates, the hu- 
 man mind, for the first time, turned itself in upon itself, upon 
 its own being, and that too in the most immediate manner, 
 by conceiving itself as active, moral spirit. The positive phi- 
 losophizing of Socrates, is exclusively of an ethical character, 
 exclusively an inquiry into the nature of virtue, so exclusively, 
 and so one-sidedly, that, as is wont to be the case upon the ap- 
 pearance of a new principle, it even expressed a contempt 
 for the striving of the entire previous period, with its natural 
 philosophy, and its mathematics. Setting everything under 
 the stand point of immediate moral law, Socrates was so far 
 from finding any object in "irrational" nature worthy of 
 study, that he rather, in a kind of general teleological manner, 
 conceived it simply in the light of external means for the at- 
 tainment of external ends ; yea, he would not even go out to 
 walk, as he says in the Phrsedrus of Plato, since one can learn 
 nothing from trees and districts of country. Self-knowledge 
 the Delphic (yvs&i tfeau<rov) appeared to him the only object 
 worthy of a man, as the starting point of all philosophy. 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 11 
 
 Knowledge of every other kind, he pronounced so insignifi- 
 cant and worthless, that he was wont to boast of ignorance, 
 and to declare that he excelled other men in wisdom only in 
 this, that he was conscious of his own ignorance. (Plat. Ap. 
 S. 21, 23.) 
 
 The other side of the Socratic philosophizing, is its opposi- 
 tion to the philosophy of the time. His object, as is well 
 understood, could have been only this, to place himself upon 
 the same position as that occupied by the philosophy of the 
 Sophists, and overcome it on its own ground, and by its own 
 principles. That Socrates shared in the general position of 
 the Sophists, and even had many features of external resem- 
 blance to them the Socratic irony, for instance has been 
 remarked above. Many of his assertions, particularly these 
 propositions, that no man knowingly does wrong, and if a man 
 were knowingly to lie, or to do some other wrong act, still he 
 would be better than he who should do the same unconscious- 
 ly, at first sight bear a purely Sophistic stamp. The great fun- 
 damental thought of the Sophistic philosophy, that all moral 
 acting must be a conscious act, was also his. But whilst the 
 Sophists made it their object, through subjective reflection to 
 confuse and to break up all stable convictions, to make 
 all rules relating to outward conduct impossible, Socrates 
 had recognized thinking as^ the activity of the universal 
 principle, free, objective thought as the measure of all things, 
 and, therefore, instead of referring moral duties, and all mor- 
 al action to the fancy and caprice of the individual, had rath- 
 er referred all to true knowledge, to the essence of spirit. It 
 was this idea of knowledge that led him to seek, by the process 
 of thought, to gain a conceivable objective ground, something 
 real, abiding, absolute, independent of the arbitrary volitions 
 of the subject, and to hold fast to unconditioned moral laws. 
 
 The Socratic method has a twofold side, a negative and a 
 positive one. The negative side is the well known Socratic 
 
12 HISTORY OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 irony. The philosopher takes the attitude of ignorance, and 
 would apparently let himself be instructed by those with 
 whom he converses, but through the questions which he puts, 
 the unexpected consequences which he deduces, and the con- 
 tradictions in which he involves the opposite party, he soon 
 leads them to see that their supposed knowledge would only 
 entangle and confuse them. In the embarrassment in which 
 they now find themselves placed, and seeing that they do not 
 know what they supposed, this supposed knowledge com- 
 pletes its own destruction, and the subject who had pretended 
 to wisdom learns to distrust his previous opinions and firmly 
 held notions. " What we knew, has contradicted itself," is 
 the refrain of the most of these conversations. 
 
 This result of the Socratic method was only to lead the sub- 
 ject to know that he knew nothing, and a great part of the 
 dialogues of Xenophon and Plato go no further than to repre- 
 sent ostensibly this negative result. But there is yet another 
 element in his method in which the irony loses its negative 
 appearance. 
 
 The positive side of the Socratic method is the so-called 
 obsterics or art of intellectual midwifery. Socrates compares 
 himself with his mother Phsenarete, a midwife, because his 
 position was rather to help others bring forth thoughts than 
 to produce them himself, and because he took upon himself 
 to distinguish the birth of an empty thought from one rich in 
 its content. (Plato Theatcetus, p. 149.) Through this art of 
 midwifery the philosopher, by his assiduous questioning, by 
 his interrogatory dissection of the notions of him with whom 
 he might be conversing, knew how to elicit from him a 
 thought of which he had previously been unconscious, and 
 how to help him to the birth of a new thought. A chief 
 means in this operation was the method of induction, or the 
 leading of the representation to a conception. The philosopher, 
 thus, starting from some individual, concrete case, and seiz- 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 13 
 
 \ 
 
 ing hold of the most common notions concerning it, and find- 
 ing illustrations in the most ordinary and trivial occurrences, 
 knew how to remove by his comparisons that which was 
 individual, and by thus separating the accidental and 
 contingent from the essential, could bring up to conscious, 
 ness a universal truth and a universal determination in 
 other words, could form conceptions. In order e. g. to 
 find the conception of justice or valor, he would start 
 from individual examples of them, and from these deduce 
 the universal character or conception of these virtues. From 
 this we see that the direction of the Socratic induction was to 
 gain logical definitions. I define a conception when I devel- 
 ope what it is, its essence, its content. I define the concep- 
 tion of justice when I set up the common property and logi- 
 cal unity of all its different modes of manifestation. Socrates 
 sought to go no farther than this. " To seek for the essence of 
 virtue," says an Aristotelian writing (Eth. 1. 5,) " Socrates 
 regarded as the problem of philosophy, and hence, since he 
 regarded all virtue as a knowing, he sought to determine in 
 respect of justice or valor what they might really be, i. e. he 
 investigated their essence or conception." From this it is 
 very easy to see the connection which his practical strivings. 
 He went back to the conception of every individual virtue, e. 
 g. justice, only because he was convinced that the knowledge 
 of this conception, the knowledge of it for every individual 
 case, was the surest guide for every moral relation. Every 
 moral action, he believed, should start as a conscious action 
 from the conception. Schwegler's History of Philos, Ameri- 
 can edition, p. 62. 
 
 (3.) PLATO'S OPINION OF VIRTUE. 
 
 It consists according to men in that state of mind in which 
 every faculty, confines itself within its proper sphere without 
 encroaching upon that of any other, and performed its proper 
 
14 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 office with that precise degree of strength and vigor which 
 belongs to it. Adam Smith's Moral Sent., p. 479. 
 
 Virtue he represented as the harmony of the whole soul ; 
 as a peace between all its principles and desires, assigning to 
 each as much space as they can occupy without encroaching 
 on each other ; as a state of perfect health, in which every 
 function was performed with ease, pleasure, and vigor ; as a 
 well-ordered commonwealth, where the obedient passions 
 executed with energy the laws and commands of reason. The 
 vicious mind presented the odious character, sometimes of 
 discord, of war ; sometimes of disease ; always of passions 
 warring with each other in eternal anarchy. Consistent with 
 himself, and at peace with his fellows, the good man felt in 
 the quiet of his conscience a foretaste of the approbation of 
 God. Mackintoshes Ethical Diss., p. 1%. 
 
 (4.) OPINIONS OF ARISTOTLE UPON VIRTUE. 
 
 Virtue, according to Aristotle, consists in the habit of 
 mediocrity according to right reason. Every particular vir- 
 tue, according to him, lies in a kind of middle, between two 
 opposite vices, of which the one offends from being too much, 
 the other from being too little affected by a particular species 
 of objects. Thus the virtue of fortitude or courage lies in the 
 middle between the opposite vices of cowardice and of pre- 
 sumptuous rashness, of which the one offends from being too 
 much, and the other from being too little affected by the ob- 
 ^. jects of fear. 
 
 According to Aristotle, indeed, virtue did not so much 
 consist in those moderate and right affections, as in the habit 
 of this moderation. In order to understand this, it is to be 
 observed, that virtue may be considered either as the quality 
 of an action, or as the quality of a person. Considered as the 
 quality of an action, it consists, even according to Aristotle, 
 in the reasonable moderation of the affection from which the 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 15 
 
 action proceeds, whether this disposition be habitual to the 
 person or not. Considered as the quality of a person, it con- 
 sists in the habit of this reasonable moderation, in its having 
 become the customary and usual disposition of the mind. 
 Adam Smith's Moral Sentiments, p. 479. 
 
 ARISTOTLE'S VIEW OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 His fundamental notion is, that happiness consists in virtu- 
 ous energies that it is not mere pleasure from the possession 
 of an object congruous to our desires. That is good only in a 
 very subordinate sense, which simply ministers to enjoyment. 
 The chief good must be something pursued exclusively for its 
 own sake, and never for the sake of anything else ; it can 
 never be used as an instrument ; it must be perfect and self- 
 sufficient. What, thon, is the highest good of man ? To an- 
 swer this question, says Aristotle, we must understand the 
 proper business of man, as man. As there is a work which 
 pertains to the musician, the statuary, the artist, which 
 constitutes the good or end of his profession, so there must be 
 some work which belongs to man, not as an individual, not 
 as found in such and such circumstances and relations, but 
 belongs to him absolutely as man. Now, what is this ? It 
 must be something which springs from the peculiarities of his 
 nature, and which he cannot share with the lower orders of 
 being. It cannot, therefore, be life, for plants have that; 
 neither can it be the pleasures of sensitive existence, for brutes 
 have them. It must be sought in the life of a being possessed 
 of reason ; and as that can be contemplated in a two-fold as- 
 pect, either as a state, or as an exercise ; as the possession of 
 faculties, or the putting forth of their activities ; we must 
 pitch upon the most important, which is activity or energy, 
 or as he also styles it, obedience to reason. Energy, there- 
 fore, according to reason, is characteristic of man. This is 
 his business, and he who pursues it best, is the best man, 
 
16 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 Human good, or the good of man as man, is consequently 
 energy according to the best and most perfect virtue. Thorn- 
 weWs Discourses upon Truth, p. 27. 
 
 (5.) SYSTEM OF THE EPICUREANS. 
 
 The fundamental principle of the Epicurean system was, 
 that bodily pleasure and pain were the sole ultimate objects of 
 desire and aversion. These were desired and shunned on their 
 own account ; everything else from its tendency to procure 
 the one of these or to save us from the other. Power, (for 
 example,) riches, reputation, even the virtues themselves, 
 were not desirable for their own sake, but were valuable 
 merely as being instrumental to procure us the objects of our 
 natural desires. " They who place the sovereign good in vir- 
 tue alone, and who, dazzled by words, overlook the intentions 
 of nature, will be delivered from this greatest of all errors if 
 they will only listen to Epicurus. As to these rare and excel- 
 lent qualities on which you set so high a value, who is there 
 that would consider them as objects either of praise or of 
 imitation, unless from a belief that they are instrumental in 
 adding to the sum of our pleasures ? For as we prize the 
 medical art, not on its own account, but as subservient to the 
 preservation of health, and the art of the pilot, not for the 
 skill he displays, but as it diminishes the dangers of naviga- 
 tion, so also wisdom, which is the art of living, would be 
 coveted by none if it were altogether unprofitable, whereas, 
 now, it is an object of general pursuit, from a persuasion that 
 it both guides us to our best enjoyments, and points out to us 
 the most effectual means for their attainment." Cic. defini- 
 lus,p. 13. 
 
 All the pleasures and pains of the mind (according to Epi- 
 curus) are derived from the recollection and anticipation of 
 bodily pleasures and pains ; but this recollection and antici- 
 pation he considered as contributing much more to our hap- 
 
HISTORY OF HORAT, PHILOSOPHY. 17 
 
 piness or misery on the whole, than the pleasures and pains 
 themselves. His philosophy was indeed directed chiefly to 
 inculcate this truth, and to withdraw our solicitude from the 
 pleasures and pains themselves which are not in our power, 
 to the regulation of our recollections and anticipations, which 
 depend upon ourselves. He placed happiness, therefore, in 
 ease of body and tranquility of mind, but much more in 
 the latter than in the former, insomuch that he affirmed a 
 wise man might be happy in the midst of bodily torments. 
 The system of Epicurus, however, (although it places 
 morality on a wrong foundation, and employs a language 
 with respect to happiness very liable to abuse, a language 
 which, (as Cicero remarks "savours of nothing magnifi- 
 cent, "nothing generous,") bears at least very honorable 
 testimony to the tendency of the virtues to promote hap- 
 piness even in this life, since he imagined it was from this 
 tendency they derived all their value. And accordingly, Mr. 
 Smith remarks, that Cicero, the great enemy of the Epicurean 
 system, borrows from it his most agreeable proofs, that virtue 
 alone is sufficient to secure happiness. And Seneca, though 
 a Stoic, the sect most opposite to that of Epicurus, yet quotes 
 this philosopher more frequently than any other." Stewards 
 Active and Moral Powers. 
 
 (6.) SYSTEM OF THE STOICS. 
 
 In opposition to the Epicurean doctrines already stated on 
 the subject of happiness, the stoics placed the supreme good 
 in rectitude of conduct, without any regard to the event. 
 They did not, however, as has been often supposed, recom- 
 mend an indifference to external objects, or a life of inactivity 
 and apathy. On the contrary, they taught that nature pointed 
 out to us certain objects of choice and of rejection, and 
 amongst these some to be more chosen and avoided than 
 others ; and that virtue consisted in choosing and rejecting 
 
 3 
 
18 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 objects according to their intrinsic value. They admitted 
 that health was to be preferred to sickness, riches to poverty ; 
 the prosperity of our family, of our friends, of our country, 
 to their adversity ; and they allowed, nay, they recommended, 
 the most strenuous exertions to accomplish these desirable 
 ends. They only contended these objects should be pursued 
 not as the constituents of our happiness, but because we be- 
 lieve it to be agreeable to nature that we should pursue them ; 
 and that, therefore, when we have done our utmost, we should 
 regard the event as indifferent. 
 
 We may observe farther, in favor of this noble system, that 
 the scale of desirable objects which it exhibited was pecu- 
 liarly calculated to encourage the social virtues. It repre- 
 sented indeed (in common with the theory of Epicurus) self- 
 love as the great spring of human actions ; but in the appli- 
 cation of this erroneous principle to practice, its doctrines 
 were favorable to the most enlarged, nay, to the most disin- 
 terested benevolence. It taught that the prosperity of two 
 was preferable to that of one ; that of a city to that of a 
 family ; and that of our country to all partial considerations. 
 It was upon this very principle, added to a sublime sentiment 
 of piety, that it founded its chief argument for an entire resig- 
 nation to the dispensations of Providence. As all events are 
 ordered by perfect wisdom and goodness, the stoics conclu- 
 ded, that whatever happens is calculated to produce the 
 greatest good possible to the universe in general. As it is 
 agreeable to nature, therefore, that we should prefer the hap- 
 piness of many to a few, and of all to that of many, they 
 concluded that every event which happens is precisely that 
 which we ourselves would have desired, if we had been ac- 
 quainted with the whole scheme of the Divine administra- 
 tion. Stewart's Active and Moral Powers. 
 
U& " 
 
 . 
 
 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 19 
 
 (7.) CONTESTS OF THE VARIOUS SCHOOLS OF PHILOSOPHY IN 
 
 ROME. 
 
 There is no scene in history so memorable as that in which 
 Csesar mastered a nobility of which Lucullus and Horten- 
 sius, Sulpicius and Catulus, Pompey and Cicero, Brutus and 
 Cato, were members. This renowned body had, from the 
 time of Scipio, sought the Greek philosophy as an amuse- 
 ment or an ornament. Some few, " in thought more elevate," 
 caught the love of truth, and were ambitious of discovering a 
 solid foundation for the Rule of Life. The influence of the 
 Grecian systems was tried by their effect on a body of men 
 of the utmost originality, energy, and variety of character, 
 during the five centuries between Carneades and Constantine, 
 in their successive positions of rulers of the world, and of 
 slaves under the best and under the worst of uncontrolled 
 masters. If we had found this influence perfectly uniform, 
 we should have justly suspected our own love of system of 
 having in part bestowed that appearance on it. Had there 
 been no trace of such an influence discoverable in so great an 
 experiment, we must have acquiesced in the paradox, that 
 opinion does not at all affect conduct. The result is the more 
 satisfactory, because- it appears to illustrate general tendency 
 without excluding very remarkable exceptions. Though Cas- 
 sius was an Epicurean, the true representative of that school 
 was the accomplished, prudent, friendly, good-natured time- 
 server Atticus, the pliant slave of every tyrant, who could 
 kiss the hand of Antony, imbrued as it was in the blood of 
 Cicero. The pure school of Plato sent forth Marcus Brutus, 
 the signal oi^humanity of whose life was both necessary and 
 sufficient to prove that his daring breach of venerable rules 
 flowed only from that dire necessity which left no other means 
 of upholding the most sacred principles. The Roman orator, 
 though in speculative questions he embraced that mitigated 
 doubt which allowed most ease and freedom to his genius, yet 
 
vvQw , 
 
 ^ ^ ^ r/Vvv 
 
 20 HISTORY OF MOKAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 in those moral writings where his heart was most deeply in- 
 terested, followed the severest sect of philosophy, and became 
 almost a Stoic. If any conclusion may be hazarded from this 
 trial of systems, the greatest which history has recorded, we 
 must not refuse our decided, though not undistinguishing pref- 
 erence to that noble school which preserved great souls un- 
 tainted at the court of dissolute and ferocious tyrants ; which 
 exalted the slave of one of Nero's courtiers to be a moral 
 teacher of aftertimes ; which, for the first, and hitherto for 
 the only time, breathed philosophy and justice into those rules 
 of law which govern the ordinary concerns of every man ; 
 and which, above all, has contributed, by the examples of 
 Marcus Porcius Cato, and of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, to 
 raise the dignity of our species, to keep alive a more ancient 
 love of virtue, and a more lawful sense of duty, throughout all 
 generations. Mackintoshes Ethical Diss. 
 
 (8.) OPINIONS OF ANSELM. 
 
 ( The highest good objectively considered, was, according to 
 Anselm, God / the highest subjectively belonging to man was 
 the knowledge and love of God.) (The ground of this doctrine 
 he found in Human Reason, by means of which we learned to 
 distinguish and to love the good above the evil, the higher 
 above the lower, and the highest above all other good what- 
 soever.. This love to God was infinite and eternal, because God 
 is infinite and eternal, and on account of this love he concluded 
 that the soul was eternal} In this love he found all the springs 
 of happiness. This rational view of virtue he afterwards con- 
 nects with notions of free-will. {Rectitude of will, or that con- 
 dition of will by virtue of which man wills what he ought, 
 is identical with virtue, a mere rectitude of knowledge will not 
 do, nor a rectitude of action^ the one is presupposed and the 
 other accompanies, but the essence of both consist in willing 
 what we ought, and only because we ought. Staundlin's 
 Geschichte der. M. Ph. 
 
^ 
 
 ** 
 
 HISTORY OF MOEAL PHILOSOPHY. 21 
 
 ^ 
 
 (9.) OCKHAMV OPINION OF THE FOUNDATION OF MORALITY. 
 
 "William of Ockham, the most justly celebrated of English. 
 schoolmen, went so far beyond this inclination of his master, 
 (Duns ScotuSj) as to affirm, that, " if God had commanded 
 his creatures to hate himself, the hatred of God would ever 
 be the duty of man ;" a monstrous hyperbole, into which he 
 was perhaps betrayed by his denial of the doctrine of general 
 ideas, the pre-existence of which in the Eternal intellect was 
 commonly regarded as the foundation of the immutable na- 
 ture of morality. The doctrine of Ockham, which by neces- 
 sary implication refuses moral attributes to the Deity, and 
 contradicts the existence of a moral government, is practically 
 equivalent to Atheism. Mackintoshes Ethical Diss. 
 
 (10.) NOMINALISM AND REALISM. 
 
 Hand in hand with the whole development of Scholastic- 
 ism, there was developed the opposition between Nominalism 
 and Realism, an opposition whose origin is to be found in the 
 relation of Scholasticism to the Platonic and Aristotelian 
 philosophy. The Nominalists were those who held that the 
 conceptions of the universal (the universalia) were simple 
 names, flatus wm/representations without content and with- 
 out reality. According to them there are no universal con- 
 ceptions, no species, no class ; everything which, exists only 
 as separate in its pure individuality ; there is, therefore, no 
 pure thinking, but only a representation and sensuous percep- 
 tion. The Realists, on the other hand, taking pattern from 
 Plato, held fast to the objective reality of the universals 
 (universalia ante rem.) These opposite directions appeared 
 first between Roscellinus, who took the side of Nominalism, 
 and Anselm, who advocated the Realistic theory, and it is 
 seen from this time through the whole period of Scholasticism, 
 though from the age of Abelard (born 1079) a middle view, 
 which was both Nominalistic and Realistic, held with some 
 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 slight modifications the prominent place (universalia in re.*) 
 According to this view the universal is only something thought 
 and represented, though as such it is not simply a product of 
 the representing consciousness, but has also its objective reali- 
 ty in objects themselves, from which it was argued we could 
 not abstract it if it were not essentially contained in them. 
 This identity of thought and being, is the fundamental pre- 
 mise on which the whole dialectic course of the Scholastics 
 rests. All their arguments are founded on the claim, that 
 that which has been syllogistically proved is in reality the 
 same as in logical thinking. If this premise is overthrown, 
 so falls with it the whole basis of Scholasticism ; and there 
 remains nothing more for the thinker to do, who has gone 
 astray in his objectivity, but to fall back upon himself. This 
 self-dissolution of Scholasticism actually appears with William 
 of OcJcham (died 1347,) the most influential reviver of that 
 Nominalism, but which had been so mighty in the beginning 
 of Scholasticism, but which now, more victorious against a 
 decaying than then against a rising form of culture, plucked 
 away its foundation from the framework of Scholastic dogma- 
 tism, and brought the whole structure into inevitable ruin. 
 Schwegler's History of Philosophy. 
 
 (11.) ETHICAL DOCTRINES OF HUGO GROTIUS. 
 
 That he may lay down the fundamental principles of Ethics, 
 he introduces Carneades on the stage as denying altogether 
 the reality of moral distinctions ; teaching that law and mor- 
 ality are contrived by powerful men for their own interest ; 
 that they vary in different countries, and change in succes- 
 sive ages ; that there can be no natural law, since nature 
 leads men as well as other animals to prefer their own inter- 
 est to every other object; that therefore there is either no 
 justice, or if there be, it is another name for the height of 
 folly, inasmuch as it is a fond attempt to persuade a human 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 23 
 
 being to injure himself for the unnatural purpose of benefit- 
 ting his fellowmen. 
 
 To this Grotius answered, that even inferior animals under 
 the powerful, though transient impulse of parental love, pre- 
 fer their young to their own safety or life ; that gleams of com- 
 passion, and, he might have added, of gratitude and indigna- 
 tion, appear in the human infant long before the age of moral 
 discipline : that man at the period of maturity is a social ani- 
 mal, who delights in the society of his fellow-creatures for its 
 own sake, independently of the help and accommodation which 
 it yields ; that he is a reasonable being, capable of framing 
 and pursuing general rules of conduct, of which he discerns 
 that the observance contributes to a regular, quiet, and happy 
 intercourse between all the members of the community ; and 
 that from these considerations all the precepts of morality, and 
 all the commands and prohibitions of just law, may be de- 
 rived by impartial reason. "And these principles," says the 
 pious philosopher, " would have their weight, even if it were 
 to be granted (which could not be conceded without the high- 
 est impiety) that there is no God, or that he exercises no 
 moral government over human affairs." " Natural law is the 
 dictate of right reason, pronouncing that there is in some ac- 
 tions a moral obligation, and in other actions a moral defor- 
 mity, arising from their respective suitableness or repugnance 
 to the reasonable and social nature ; and that consequently 
 such acts are either forbidden or enjoined by God, the author 
 of nature. Actions which are the subject of this execution 
 of reason, are in themselves lawful or unlawful, and are 
 therefore as such necessarily commanded or prohibited by 
 God." Mackintosh's Ethical Diss.^ p. 102. 
 
24 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 (12.) JEREMY TAYLOR'S VIEW OF CONSCIENCE. 
 
 that it was well said of St. Bernard, Conscientia candor 
 est lucis ceternce, et speculum sine macula Dei Majestatis, et 
 imago bonitatis illius : 'Conscience is the brightness and 
 spleifdour of the eternal light, a spotless mirror of the Divine 
 Majesty, and the image of the goodness of God.' It is higher 
 which Tatianus said of conscience, M6vov sTvau tfwsiSytftv dsov 
 " Conscience is God unto us, which saying he had from Me- 
 nander :" 
 
 and it had in it this truth, that God, who is everywhere in 
 several manners, hath the appellative of his own attributes 
 and effects in the several manners of his presence. 
 
 ' ' Jupiter est quodcunque vides, quodcanque moveris." 
 
 " That Providence " he adds, " which governs all the world, 
 is nothing else but God present by his providence, and God 
 is in our hearts by his laws ; he rules us by his substitute, 
 our conscience." He then proceeds to illustrate this in his 
 own way : " God sits there, and gives us laws ; and, as God 
 said to Moses, I have made thee a God to Pharoah, that is to 
 give him laws, and to minister in the execution of these laws, 
 and to inflict angry sentences upon him, so hath God done to 
 us, to give us laws, and to exact obedience to those laws ; to 
 punish them that prevaricate, and to reward the obedient. 
 And therefore conscience is called o/Wo *u\af ? &VQI/MS QBQS 
 sViVotfos flaffwdv, the household guardian, the domestic God, 
 the spirit or angel of the place." Rule of Conscience. 
 
 (13.) HOBBES' YlEW OF YlRTUE AND YlCE. 
 
 Every man by natural passion, calleth that good which 
 pleaseth him for the present, or so far forth as he can foresee ; 
 and in like manner, that which displeaseth him, evil. And 
 therefore he that foreseeth the whole way to his preservation, 
 which is the end that every one by nature aimeth at, must 
 
HISTOEY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 25 
 
 also call it good, and the contrary evil. And this is that good 
 and evil, which not every man in passion calleth so, but all 
 men by reason. And therefore the fulfilling of all these laws 
 is good in reason, and the breaking of them evil. And so 
 also the habit, or disposition, or intention tofulal them good ; 
 and the neglect of them evil. And from hence cometh that 
 distinction of malum pcence, and malum culpcs : for malum 
 pc&rw is any pain or molestation of the mind whatsoever, but 
 malum culpce is that action which is contrary to reason and 
 the law of nature; as also the habit of doing according to 
 these and other laws of nature, that tend to our preservation, 
 is that we call virtue / and the habit of doing the contrary, 
 vice. As for example, justice is that habit by which we stand 
 to covenants, injustice the contrary vice ; equity that habit 
 by which we allow equality of nature, arrogancy the contrary 
 vice ; gratitude the habit whereby we requite the benefit and 
 trust of others, ingratitude the contrary vice ; temperance 
 the habit by which we abstain from all things that tend to 
 our destruction, intemperance the contrary vice ; prudence, 
 the same with virtue in general. As for the common opinion, 
 that virtue consisteth in mediocrity, and vice in extremes, I 
 see no ground for it, nor can find any such mediocrity. Cour- 
 age may be virtue, when the daring is extreme, if the cause 
 be good, and extreme fear no vice when the danger is extreme. 
 To give a man more than his due, is no injustice, though it be 
 to give him less : and in gifts it is not the sum that maketh 
 liberality, but the reason. And so in all other virtues and 
 vices. I know that this doctrine of mediocrity is Aristotle's, 
 but his opinions concern ing- virtue and vice, are no other than 
 those, which were received then, and are still by the gener- 
 ality of men unstudied, and therefore not very likely to be 
 accurate. 
 
 The sum of virtue is to be sociable with them that will be 
 sociable, and formidable to them that will not. And the 
 
25 HISTORY OP MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 same is the sum of the law of nature : for in being sociable, the 
 law of nature taketh place bj way of peace and society ; and 
 to be formidable, is the law of nature in war, where to be 
 feared is a protection a man hath from his own power : and 
 as the former consisteth in actions of equity and justice, the 
 latter consisteth in actions of honor. And equity, justice, 
 and honor, contain all virtues whatsoever. Holfoes* 4 vol. ?u 
 man Nature. 
 
 (14.) MORE'S ETHICAL OPINIONS. 
 
 Ethics is, he begins by asserting, the art of living well and 
 happily, Ars bene bealeque vivendi. And he forthwith pro- 
 ceeds to treat of this happiness, de Beatitudine. He soon de- 
 termines that this beatitude is to be placed in a Boniform Facul- 
 ty. Of this boniform faculty, the fruit is a happiness or divine 
 love, than which no greater happiness can exist, he ven- 
 tures to declare, either in the present life or in the future. 
 And this happiness must arise, not from the mere knowledge, 
 but from the sense of virtue, ex sensu virtutis. 
 
 It becomes obvious, in such expressions, how easy the tran- 
 sition is, from the consideration of virtue as the source of 
 happiness, to virtue as perceived by a peculiar faculty ; since, 
 in this view, the happiness, as well as the perception, requires 
 a peculiar faculty for its realization. " If any one," More 
 says, " estimates the fruit of virtue by that imaginary knowl- 
 edge of virtue which is acquired by definitions alone, it is all 
 one as if he should try to estimate the knowledge of fire from 
 a fire painted on the wall, which has no power whatever to 
 keep off the winter's cold." " Every vital good," he adds, 
 " is perceived and judged of by a life and a sense. Virtue is 
 an intimate life, not an eternal form, nor a thing visible to 
 outward eyes." And he quotes from one of his favorites, the 
 Neoplatonists, "If thou art this, thou hast seen this." 
 WheweWs History of Moral Philosophy. 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 27 
 
 MAA ch 
 
 (15.) CLARK'S MORAL DOCTRINE. 
 
 The sum of his moral doctrine may be stated as follows. 
 Man can conceive nothing without at the same time con- 
 ceiving its relations to other things. He must ascribe the 
 same law of perception to every being to whom he ascribes 
 thought. He cannot therefore doubt that all the relations of 
 all things to all must have always been present to the Eternal 
 Mind. The relations in this sense are eternal, however recent 
 the things may be between which they subsist. The whole 
 of these relations constitute truth. The knowledge of them 
 is omniscience. These eternal different relations of things 
 involve a consequent eternal fitness or unfitness in the appli- 
 cation of things one to another ; with a regard to which, the 
 will of God always chooses, and which ought likewise to de- 
 termine the wills of all subordinate rational beings. These 
 eternal differences make it fit and reasonable for the 
 creatures so to act ; they cause it to be their duty, or lay an 
 obligation on them so to do, separate from the will of God, 
 and antecedent to any prospect of advantage or reward. Nay, 
 wilful wickedness is the same absurdity and insolence in 
 morals, as it would be in natural things to pretend to alter the 
 relations of numbers, or to take away the properties of mathe- 
 matical figures. "Morality," says one of his most ingenious 
 scholars, " is the practice of reason." Mackintoshes EiJi. Diss. 
 
 (16.) THEORY OF MANDEVTLLK 
 
 The great object of Mandeville's inquiry into the origin of 
 moral virtue, is to show that all our moral sentiments are 
 derived from education, and are the workmanship of politi- 
 cians and lawgivers. N, 
 
 It appears from the passage formerly quoted, that the 
 engine which Mandeville supposes politicians to employ for 
 the purpose of creating the artificial distinction between virtue 
 and vice is vanity or pride, which two words he uses as 
 
28 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 synonymous. He employs them likewise in a much more 
 extensive sense than their common acceptation authorizes ; 
 to denote, not only an overweening conceit of our own char- 
 acter and attainments, or a weak and childish passion for the 
 admiration of others, but that reasonable desire for the esteem 
 of our fellow-creatures which, so far from being a weakness, 
 is a laudable and respectable principle. 
 
 From the principle of vanity, Mandeville endeavours to 
 account for all the instances of self-denial that have occurred 
 in the world. But he is not satisfied with explaining away 
 in this manner the reality of moral distinctions. He endeav- 
 ours to show that human life is nothing but a scene of hypoc- 
 risy, and that there is really little or none of that self-denial 
 to be found that some men lay claim to. In his theory of 
 moral virtue be seems to allow that education may not only 
 teach a man to check his appetites in order to procure the 
 esteem of others, but that it may teach him to consider such 
 a conquest over the lower principles of his nature as noble in 
 itself, and as elevating him still further than nature had done 
 above the level of the brutes. , " Those men" (says he) "who 
 have laboured to establish societies endeavoured, in the first 
 place, to insinuate themselves into the hearts of men by flat- 
 tery, extolling the excellencies of our nature above other 
 animals. They next began to instruct them in the notions of 
 honour and shame, representing the one as the worst of all 
 evils, and the other as the highest good to which mortals could 
 aspire; which being done, they laid before them how unbe- 
 coming it was the dignity of such sublime creatures to be 
 solicitous about gratifying those appetites which they had in 
 common with the brutes, and at the same time unmindful of 
 those higher qualities that gave them the pre eminence over 
 all the visible beings. They, indeed, confessed that these im- 
 pulses of nature were very pressing ; that it was troublesome 
 to resist, and very difficult wholly to subdue them. But this 
 
HISTOEY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 they only used as an argument to demonstrate how glorious 
 the conquest of them was on the one hand, and how scandal- 
 ous on the other, not to attempt it." Stewart? 8 Act. and 
 Moral Powers. 
 
 (17.) SUMMARY OF MALEBEANCHE'S SYSTEM. ' ^ ^ -A 
 
 " There is," says he, " one parent virtu re, the universal vir- 
 tue, the virtue which renders us just and perfect, the virtue 
 which will one day render us happy. It is the only virtue. It 
 is the love of the universal order, as it eternally existed in the 
 Divine reason, where every created reason contemplates it. 
 This order is composed of practical as well as speculative 
 truth. Keason perceives the moral superiority of one being 
 over another, as immediately as the equality of the radii of 
 the same circle. The relative perfection of beings is that 
 part of the immovable order to which men must conform 
 their minds and their conduct. The love of order is the whole 
 of virtue, and conformity to order constitutes the morality of 
 actions." It is not difficult to discover, that in spite of the sin- 
 gular skill employed in weaving this web, it answers no other 
 purpose than that of hiding the whole difficulty. The love of 
 universal order, says Malebranche. requires that we should 
 value an animal more than a stone, because it is more valua- 
 ble ; and love God infinitely more than man, because he is 
 infinitely better. But without presupposing the reality of 
 moral distinctions, and the power of moral feelings, the two 
 points to be proved, how can either of these propositions be 
 evident, or even intelligible? To say that a love of the eter- 
 nal order will produce the love and practice of every virtue, 
 is an assertion untenable unless we take morality for granted, 
 and useless if we do. 
 
 In his work on Morals, all the incidental and secondary re- 
 marks are equally well considered and well expressed. The 
 manner in which he applied his principle to the particulars 
 
30 HISTOEY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 of human duty, is excellent. He is, perhaps, the first philoso- 
 pher who has precisely laid down and rigidly adhered to the 
 great principle, that virtue consists in pure intentions and dis- 
 positions of mind, without which, actions, however conform- 
 able to rules, are not truly moral ; a truth of the highest im- 
 portance, which, in the theological form, may be said to have 
 been the main principle of the first Protestant Reformers. 
 Mackintoshes Eth. Diss., p. 179. 
 
 (18.) HUTCHESON'S VIEWS OF A MOKAL SENSE. 
 
 A late very distinguished writer, Dr. Hutcheson, deduces 
 our moral, ideas from a moral sense : meaning by this sense, 
 a power within us, different from reason, which renders cer- 
 tain actions pleasing and others displeasing to us. As we are 
 so made, that certain impressions on our bodily organs shall 
 excite certain ideas in our minds, and that certain outward 
 forms, when presented to us, shall be the necessary occasions 
 of pleasure or pain. In like manner, according to Dr Hutch- 
 eson, we are so made, that certain affections and actions of 
 moral agents shall be the necessary occasions of agreeable or 
 disagreeable sensations in us, and procure our love or dislike 
 of them. He has indeed well shewn, that we have a faculty 
 determining us immediately to approve or disapprove actions, 
 abstracted from all views of private advantage ; and that the 
 highest pleasures of life depend upon this faculty. Had he 
 proceeded no farther, and intended nothing more by the moral 
 sense, than our moral faculty in general, little room would 
 have been left for any objections : But then he would have 
 meant by it nothing new, and he could not have been consid- 
 ered as the discoverer of it. From the term sense, which he 
 applies to it, from his rejection of all the arguments that have 
 been used to prove it to be an intellectual power, and from 
 the whole of his language on this subject ; it is evident, he 
 considered it as the effect of a positive constitution of our 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 3 
 
 minds, or as an implanted and arbitrary principle by which 
 a relish is given us for certain moral objects and forms and 
 aversions to others, similar to the relishes and aversions crea- 
 ted by any of our other senses. In other words, our ideas 
 of morality, if this account is right, have the same origin with 
 our ideas of the sensible qualities of bodies, the harmony of 
 sounds, of the beauties of painting or sculpture ; that is, 
 the mere good pleasure of our Maker adapting the mind and 
 its organs in a particular manner to certain objects. Virtue 
 (as those who embrace this scheme say) is an affair of taste. 
 Moral right and wrong, signify nothing in the obj* -is themr 
 selves to which they are applied, any more than agreeable 
 and harsh, sweet and bitter ; pleasant and painful ; but only 
 certain effects in us. Our perception of right, or moral good, 
 in actions, is that agreeable emotion, or feeling, which certain 
 actions produce in us ; and of wrong, or moral evil, the con- 
 trary. They are particular modifications of our minds, or 
 impressions which they are made to receive from the contem- 
 plation of certain actions, which the contrary actions might 
 have occasioned, had the Author of nature so pleased ; and 
 which to suppose to belong to these actions themselves, is as 
 absurd as to ascribe the pleasure or uneasiness, which the ob- 
 servation of a particular form gives us, to the form itself. Tis 
 therefore, by this account, improper to say of an action, that 
 it is right, in much the same sense that it is improper to say 
 of an object of taste, that it is sweet / or of pain, that it is in 
 fire. Price on Morals, p. 8. 
 
 (19.) HUME'S REFERENCE OF MORAL INSTRUCTIONS TO A SENSE. 
 
 Thus the course of the argument leads us to conclude, that 
 since vice and virtue are not discoverable merely by reason, 
 or the comparison of ideas, it must be by means of some im- 
 pression or sentiment they occasion, that we are able to mark 
 the difference betwixt them. Our decisions concerning moral 
 
32 HISTOKY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 rectitude and depravity are evidently perceptions; and as all 
 perceptions are either impressions or ideas, the exclusion of 
 the one is a convincing argument for the other. Morality, 
 therefore, is more properly felt than judged of; though this 
 feeling or sentiment is commonly so sort and gentle that we 
 are apt to confound it with an idea, according to our common, 
 custom of taking all things for the same which have any near 
 resemblance to each other. 
 
 Now, since the distinguishing impressions by which moral 
 good or evil is known, are nothing but particular pains or 
 pleasures, it follows, that in all inquiries concerning these moral 
 distinctions, it will be sufficient to show the principles which 
 make us feel a satisfaction or uneasiness from the survey of 
 any character, in order to satisfy us why the character is lau- 
 dable or blameable. An action, or sentiment, or character, 
 is virtuous or vicious ; why ? because its view causes a pleas- 
 ure or uneasiness of a particular kind. In giving a reason, 
 therefore, for the pleasure or uneasiness, we sufficiently ex- 
 plain the vice or virtue. To have the sense of virtue, is noth- 
 ing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the 
 contemplation of a character. The very feeling constitutes 
 our praise or admiration. We go no farther ; nor do we in- 
 quire into the cause of the satisfaction. We do not infer a 
 character to be virtuous, because it pleases ; but in feeling 
 that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect 
 feel that it is virtuous. The case is the same as in our judg- 
 ments concerning all kinds of beauty, and tastes, and sensa- 
 tions. Our approbation is implied in the immediate pleasure 
 they convey to us. Hume's Works, vol. 2,^>. 236. 
 
 (20.) SKETCH OF ADAM SMITH'S MOKAL SYSTEM. 
 
 That mankind are so constituted as to sympathize with each 
 other's feelings, and to feel pleasure in the accordance of these 
 feelings, are the only facts required by Dr. Smith, and they 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 33 
 
 certainly must be granted to him. To adopt the feelings of 
 another, is to approve them. When the sentiments of another 
 are sHich as would be excited in us by the same objects, we 
 approve them as morally proper. To obtain this accord, it 
 becomes necessary for him who enjoys or suffers, to lower his 
 expression of feeling to the point to which the bystanders can 
 raise his fellow-feelings ; on which are founded all the high 
 virtues of self-denial and self-command ; and it is equally 
 necessary for the bystander to raise his sympathy as near as be 
 can to the level of the original feeling. In all unsocial pas- 
 sions, such as anger, we have a divided sympathy between 
 him who feels them and those who are the objects of them. 
 Hence the propriety of extremely moderating them. Pure 
 malice is always to be concealed or disguised, because all 
 sympathy 'is arrayed against it. In the private passions, where 
 there is only a simple sympathy that with the original pas- 
 sion the expression has more liberty. The benevolent af- 
 fections, where there is a double sympathy with those who 
 feel them, and those who are their objects are the most 
 agreeable, and may be indulged with the least apprehensions 
 of finding no echo in other breasts. Sympathy with the grat- 
 itude of those who are benefited by good actions, prompts us 
 to consider them as deserving of reward, and forms the sense 
 of merit / as fellow-feeling with the resentment of those who 
 are injured by crimes leads us to look on them as worthy of 
 punishment, and constitutes the sense of demerit. These sen- 
 timents require not only beneficial actions, but benevolent 
 motives for them ; being compounded, in the case of merit, 
 of a direct sympathy with the good disposition of the bene- 
 factor, and an indirect sympathy with the persons benefited ; 
 in the opposite case, with precisely opposite sympathies. He 
 who does an act of wrong to another to gratify his own pas- 
 sions, must not expect that the spectators, who have none of 
 his undue partially to his own interest, will enter into his 
 
34 mSTOEY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 feelings. In such a case, he knows that they will pity the 
 person wronged, and be full of indignation against him. 
 "When he is cooled, he adopts the sentiments of others on his 
 own crime, feels shame at the impropriety of his former pas" 
 sion, pity for those who have suffered by him, and a dread of 
 punishment from general and just resentment. Such are the 
 constituent parts of remorse. 
 
 Our moral sentiments respecting ourselves arise from those 
 which others feel concerning us. We feel a self-approbation 
 whenever we believe that the general feeling of mankind co- 
 incides with that state of mind in which we ourselves were at a 
 given time. " We suppose ourselves the spectators of our own 
 behaviour, and endeavor to imagine what effect it would in this 
 light produce in us." We must view our own conduct with 
 the eyes of others before we can judge it. The sense of duty 
 arises from putting ourselves in the place of others, and 
 adopting their sentiments respecting our own conduct. In 
 utter solitude there could have been no self-approbation. The 
 rules of morality are a summary of those sentiments ; and 
 often beneficially stand in their stead when the self-delusions 
 of passion would otherwise hide from us the non-conformity 
 of our state of mind with that which, in the circumstances, 
 can be entered into and approved by impartial bystanders. 
 It is hence that we learn to raise our mind above local or tem- 
 porary clamor, and to fix our eyes on the surest indications of 
 the general and lasting sentiments of human nature. "When 
 we approve of any character or action, our sentiments are deriv- 
 ed from four sources ; first, we sympathize with the motives 
 of the agent ; secondly, we enter into the gratitude of those 
 who have been benefitted by his actions; thirdly, we observe 
 that his conduct has been agreeable to the general rules by 
 which those two sympathies generally act ; and, last of all, 
 when we consider such actions as forming part of a system 
 of behavior which tends to promote the happiness either of 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 35 
 
 the individual or of society, they appear to derive a beauty 
 from this utility, not unlike that which we ascribe to any 
 well-contrived machine." Mackintosh's Eth. Diss., p. 234:. 
 
 (21.) GAY UPON THE CONNECTION OF HAPPINESS WITH THE 
 LOVE OF GOD. 
 
 He says : " Now it is evident from the Nature of God, viz. 
 his being infinitely happy in himself from all eternity, and 
 from his goodnes manifested in his works, that he could have 
 no other design in creating mankind than their happiness ; and 
 therefore, the means of their happiness : therefore, that my 
 behavior, as far as it may be a means of the happiness of 
 mankind, should be such. Here then we get one step 
 further, or to a new criterion : not to a new criterion of Vir- 
 tue immediately, but to a criterion of the Will of God. For 
 it is an answer to the enquiry, How shall I know what the 
 Will of God in this particular is? Thus the Will of God is 
 the immediate criterion of Virtue, and the happiness of man- 
 kind the criterion of the Will of God ; and therefore the hap- 
 piness of mankind may be said to be the criterion of Virtue, 
 but once removed." 
 
 " As therefore happiness is the general end of all actions, so 
 each particular action may be said to have its proper and pe- 
 culiar end. Thus the end of a beau is to please by his dress ; 
 the end of study, knowledge. But neither pleasing by dress, 
 nor knowledge, are ultimate ends ; they still tend, or ought to 
 tend, to something farther, as is evident from hence, viz. that 
 a man may ask and expect a reason why either of them are 
 pursued. Now to ask the reason of any action or pursuit, is 
 only to enquire into the end of it : but expect a reason, i. e. 
 an end, to be assigned for an ultimate end, is absurd. To ask 
 why I pursue happiness, will admit of no other answer than 
 an explanation of the terms." 
 
 Gay's definition of Virtue is wider than Paley's : " Virtue 
 
36 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 is the conformity to a rule of life, directing the actions of all 
 rational creatures with respect to each other's happiness ; to 
 which conformity every one in all cases is obliged : and every 
 one that does so conform, is, or ought to be approved of, es- 
 teemed, -and loved for so doing. 5 ' 
 
 /*/ 
 
 (22.) (1.) PALEY'S OPINIONS OF HAPPINESS. 
 
 In strictness, any condition may be denominated happy, 
 in which the amount or aggregate of pleasure exceeds that of 
 pain; and the degree of happiness depends upon the quan- 
 tity of this excess. 
 
 And the greatest quantity of it ordinarily attainable in hu- 
 man life is what we mean by happiness, when we inquire or 
 pronounce what human happiness consists in. 
 
 In which inquiry I will omit much usual declamation on the 
 dignity and capacity of our nature ; the superiority of the 
 soul to the body, of the rational to the animal part of our 
 constitution ; upon the worthiness, refinement, and delicacy 
 of some satisfactions, or the meanness, grossness, and sensu- 
 ality of others ; because I hold that pleasures differ in noth- 
 ing but in continuance and intensity : from a just computation 
 of which, confirmed by what we observe of the apparent cheer- 
 fulness, tranquility, and contentment, of men of different 
 tastes, tempers, stations, and pursuits, every question con- 
 cerning human happiness must receive its decision. 
 
 (2.) PALEY'S OPINION OF VIRTUE. 
 
 Virtue is " the doing good to mankind, in obedience to 
 the will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness" 
 
 According to which definition, " the good of mankind," is 
 the subject ; the " will of God," the rule ; and " everlasting 
 happiness," the motive, of human virtue. 
 
 Virtue has been divided by some moralists into benevolence, 
 prudence, fortitude, and temperance. Benevolence proposes 
 
HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 37 
 
 good ends ; prudence suggests the best means of attaining 
 them ; fortitude enables us to encounter the difficulties, dan- 
 gers, and discouragements, which stand in our way in pursuit 
 of these ends ; temperance repels and overcomes the passions 
 that obstruct it. Benevolence, for instance, prompts us to un- 
 dertake the cause of an oppressed orphan ; prudence suggests 
 the best means of going about it ; fortitude enables us to con- 
 front the danger, and bear up against the loss, disgrace, or 
 repulse, that may attend our undertaking ; and temperance 
 keeps under the love of money, of ease, or amusement, which 
 might divert us from it. 
 
 Yirtue is distinguished by others into two branches only, 
 prudence and 'benevolence / prudence, attentive to our own 
 interest ; 'benevolence, to that of our fellow creatures ; both 
 directed to the same end, the increase of happiness in nature ; 
 and taking equal concern in the future as in the present. 
 
 The four Cardinal virtues are prudence, fortitude, temper- 
 ance, and justice. 
 
 But the division of virtue, to which we are in modern times 
 most accustomed, is into duties : 
 
 Toward God ; as piety, reverence, resignation, gratitude, &c. 
 
 Toward other men, (or relative duties ;) as justice, charity, 
 fidelity, loyalty, &c. 
 
 Toward ourselves ; as chastity, sobriety, temperance, pre- 
 servation of life, care of health, &c. 
 
 More of these distinctions have been proposed, which it is 
 not worth while to set down. 
 
 (3.) PALEY'S OPINION OF UTILITY. 
 
 So then actions are to be estimated by their tendency. 
 Whatever is expedient is right. It is the utility of any moral 
 rule alone, which constitutes the obligation of it. 
 
 But to all this there seems a plain objection, viz. that many 
 actions are useful, which no man in his senses will allow 
 
38 HISTORY OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 to be right. There are occasions in which the hand of 
 the assassin would be very useful. The present possessor of 
 some great estate employs his influence and fortune, to annoy, 
 corrupt, or oppress all about him. His estate would devolve, 
 by his death, to a successor of an opposite character. It is 
 useful, therefore, to dispatch such a one as soon as possible 
 out of the way; as the neighborhood will exchange thereby 
 a pernicious tyrant for a wise and generous benefactor. It 
 might be useful to rob a miser, and give the money to the 
 poor, as the mone} 7 , no doubt, would produce more happiness 
 by being laid out in food and clothing for half a dozen dis- 
 tressed families, than by continuing locked up in a miser's 
 chest. It may be useful to get possession of a place, a piece 
 of preferment, or of a seat in Parliament, by bribery or false 
 swearing : as by means of them we may serve the public 
 more effectually than in our private station. What then shall 
 we say ? Must we admit these actions to be right, which would 
 be to justify assassination, plunder, and perjury; or must 
 we give up our principle, that the criterion of right is utility? 
 
 It is not necessary to do either. 
 
 The true answer is this ; that these actions, after all, are 
 not useful, and for that reason, and that alone, are not right. 
 
 To see this point perfectly, it must be observed, that the 
 bad consequences of actions are Ivf of old, particular and general. 
 
 The particular bad consequence of an action is the mischief 
 which that simple action directly and immediately occasions. 
 
 The general bad consequence is the violation of some ne- 
 cessary or useful general rule. 
 
 Thus, the particular bad consequence of the assassination 
 above described is the fright and pain which the deceased 
 underwent ; the loss he suffered of life, which is as valuable 
 to a bad man as to a good one, or more so ; the prejudice and 
 affliction of which his death was the occasion, to his family, 
 friends, and dependents. 
 
PART II. 
 CRITICISM OF THEORIES OF MORALS. 
 
 [This portion of the subject being fully discussed in the course of lectures, for the most 
 part without the aid of authoritative quotations, the compiler refers the Student to the 
 the following extracts only.] 
 
 (23.) BISHOP BUTLER'S PROOF OF THE EXISTENCE OF A PRIN- 
 CIPLE OF BENEVOLENCE, BESIDES THAT OF SELF-LOVE. 
 
 First, There is a natural principle of 'benevolence in man 
 which is in some degree to society, what self -love is to the indi- 
 vidual. And if there be in mankind any disposition to 
 friendship ; if there be any such thing as compassion, for 
 compassion is momentary love; if there be any such thing 
 as the paternal or filial affections ; if there be any affection 
 in human nature, the object and end of which is the good of 
 another ; this is itself benevolence, or the love of another. 
 Be it ever so short, be it ever so low a degree, or ever so un- 
 happily confined ; it proves the assertion, and points out what 
 we were designed for, as really as though it were in a higher 
 degree and more extensive. I must, however, remind you, 
 that though benevolence and self-love are different ; though 
 the former tends most directly to public good, and the latter 
 to private ; yet they are so perfectly coincident, that the great- 
 est satisfactions to ourselves depend upon our having benevo- 
 lence in a due degree ; and that self-love is one chief security of 
 our right behavior towards society. It may be added that 
 their mutual coinciding, so that we can scarce promote one 
 without the other, is equally a proof that we were made for 
 both. 1st /Sermon upon Human Nature, p. 3. 
 
40 CRITICISM OF THEOEIE8 OF MORALS. 
 
 Second, Self-love and interestedness was stated to consist 
 in or be an affection to ourselves, a regard to our own private 
 good : it is, therefore, distinct from benevolence, which is an 
 affection to the good of our fellow-creatures. But that benevo- 
 lence is distinct from, that is, not the same thing with self-love, 
 is no reason for its being looked upon with any peculiar suspi- 
 cion, because every principle whatever, by means of which 
 self-love is gratified, is distinct from it. And all things, which 
 are distinct from each other, are equally so. A man has an 
 affection or aversion to another : that one of these tends to, 
 and is gratified by doing good, that the other tends to, and 
 is gratified by doing harm, does not in the least alter the 
 respect which either one or the other of these inward feelings 
 has to self-love. We use the word property so as to exclude 
 any other persons having an interest in that, of which we say 
 a particular man has the property : and we often use the word 
 selfish so as to exclude in the same manner all regards to the 
 good of others. But the cases are not parallel : for though 
 that exclusion is really part of the idea of property, yet such 
 positive exclusion, or bringing this peculiar disregard to the 
 good of others into the idea of self-love, is in reality adding 
 to the idea, or changing it from what it was before stated, to 
 consist in, namely, in an affection to ourselves. This being 
 the whole idea of self-love, it can no otherwise exclude good- 
 will or love of others, than merely by not including it, no 
 otherwise than it excludes love of arts, or reputation, or of 
 anything else. Neither, on the other hand, does benevolence, 
 any more than love of arts or of reputation, exclude self-love. 
 Love of our neighbor, then, has just the same respect to, is no 
 more distant from self-love, than hatred of our neighbor, or 
 than love and hatred of anything else. Thus the principles, 
 from which men rush upon certain ruin for the destruction of 
 an enemy, and for the preservation of a friend, have the same 
 respect to the private affection, are equally interested, or 
 
CRITICISM OF THEORIES OF MORALS. 41 
 
 equally disinterested ; and it is of no avail, whether they are 
 said to be one or the other. Therefore, to those who are 
 shocked to bear virtue spoken of as disinterested, it may be 
 allowed, tbat it is indeed absurd to speak thus of it ; unless 
 hatred, several particular instances of vice, and all tbe com- 
 mon affections and aversions in mankind, are acknowledged 
 to be disinterested too. Is there any less inconsistence be- 
 tween the love of inanimate things, or of creatures merely 
 sensitive, and self-love, than between self-love, and t the love 
 of our neighbor? Is desire of, and delight in the happiness 
 of another any more a diminution of self-love, than 
 desire of and delight in the esteem of another? They ^ 
 are both equally desire of and delight in somew4^t ex- ' 
 ternal to ourselves : either both or neither are so. The 
 object of self-love is expressed in the term self: and every 
 appetite of sense, and every particular affection of the heart, 
 are equally interested or disinterested, because the objects of 
 them all are equally self or somewliat <else. Whatever ridi- 
 cule, therefore, the mention of a disinterested principle or 
 action may be supposed to lie open to, must, upon the matter 
 being thus stated, relate to ambition, and every appetite and 
 particular affection, as much as to benevolence. And indeed 
 all the ridicule, and all the grave perplexity, of which this 
 subject hath had its full share, is merely from words. The 
 most intelligible way of speaking of it seems to be this : that 
 self-love, and the actions done in consequence of it, (for these 
 will presently appear to be the same as to this question,) are 
 interested ; that particular affections towards external objects, 
 and the actions done in consequence of those affections, are 
 not so. But every one is at liberty to use words as he pleases. 
 All that is here insisted upon is, that ambition, revenge, be- 
 nevolence, all particular passions whatever, and the actions 
 they produce, are equally interested or disinterested. 
 
 Thus it appears, that there is no peculiar contrariety between 
 
42 CRITICISM OF THEORIES OF MORALS. 
 
 self-love and benevolence ; no greater competition between 
 these, than between any other particular affections and self- 
 love. This relates to the affections themselves. Let us now 
 see whether there be any peculiar contrariety between the 
 respective courses of life which these affections lead to ; 
 whether there be any greater competition between the pursuit 
 of private and of public good, than between any other partic- 
 ular pursuits and that of private good. Sermon 11, p. 119 
 to 121. 
 
 (24.) EXTRACTS FROM DR. THORNWELL'S CRITICISM OF PA- 
 LEY'S SYSTEM OF MORALS. 
 
 1. Dr. Thornwell thus condenses the theory : 
 
 " From this brief analysis, Dr. Paley's whole theory of morals 
 may be compendiously compressed in a single syllogism. 
 Whatever God commands is right or obligatory. "Whatever 
 is expedient God commands. Therefore, whatever is ex- 
 pedient is right. The major proposition rests upon his 
 analysis of moral obligation the minor upon the proof 
 of the Divine benevolence, and the substance of all is given 
 in his remarkable definition of virtue, which, logically, 
 should have followed the exposition of expediency. "Yir- 
 tue is the doing good to mankind, in obedience to the 
 will of God, and for the sake of everlasting happiness." 
 The matter of virtue is expediency, which becomes right or 
 obligatory, because it is commanded by God, and supported 
 by the awful sanctions of the future world. 
 
 2. He thus points out the logical fallacy : 
 
 " It is in the solution of this inquiry that we encounter the 
 central principle of Dr. Paley's theory. If his reasoning here 
 be conclusive, however we may object to his analysis of obli- 
 gation, we are shut up to the adoption of his favorite maxim 
 that whatever is expedient is right. The only argument 
 which he pretends to allege in vindication of this sweeping 
 dogma, is drawu from the benevolence of God ; and yet that 
 argument though I do not know that the blunder has ever 
 been particularly exposed is a logical fallacy, an illicit pro- 
 cess of the minor term. What he had proved in his chapter 
 on Divine benevolence is, that God wills the happiness of His 
 creatures. What he has collected from his analysis of obli- 
 
CKITICISM OF THEORIES OF MOEALS. 43 
 
 gallon is, that whatever God wills is right. Put these premi- 
 ses together, and they j'ield a syllogism in the third figure, 
 from which Dr. Paley 's conclusion can by no means be drawn. 
 
 Whatever God wills is expedient. 
 
 "Whatever God wills is right. 
 
 Therefore, says Dr. Paley, whatever is expedient is right 
 an illicit process of the minor term. Therefore, is the true 
 conclusion, some things that are expedient are right the 
 third figure always concluding particularly. 
 
 3. He thus shows how this School falsifies the phenomena 
 of our moral nature : 
 
 1. If the principles which it postulates are all that are neces- 
 sary to a moral agent, brutes would be as truly moral agents 
 as men. They are susceptible of pleasure and pain, of hope 
 and fear. They can foresee, to some extent, the consequences 
 of their actions. They can be trained and disciplined to par- 
 ticular qualities and habits. The government which man 
 exercises over them is conducted upon the same principles 
 with which, according to the selfish philosophers, the govern- 
 ment of God is administered over man. It exactly answers to 
 Dr. Paley 's definition of a moral government except that he 
 restricts it to reasonable creatures, without any necessity from 
 the nature of the case " any dispensation whose object is to 
 influence the conduct of reasonable creatures." A system of 
 intimidation, coaxing and persuasion a discipline exclusively 
 relying upon hope and fear this the horse can be subject to 
 that fears the spur the dog that cringes from a kick any 
 beast that can be trained by the whip. These animals obey 
 their master from the same motive from which Dr. Paley 
 would have a good man obey his God. Now, is there no pe- 
 culiarity in our moral emotions but that which arises from 
 hope and fear ? Is there nothing that man feels, when he 
 acknowledges the authority of law, which the brute does not 
 also feel when he shrinks from the lash or is allured by ca- 
 resses ? Is there not something which the desire of pleasure 
 and the reluctation against pain, as mere physical conditions, 
 are utterly inadequate to explain ? "We all feel that the brute 
 differs from the man, and differs pre-eminently in this very 
 circumstance, that though capable of being influenced by mo- 
 tives addressed to his hopes and fears, he is incapable of the 
 notion of duty, of crime, or of moral obligation. He is a 
 physical, but not a moral agent. 
 
 2. This theory, in the next place, contradicts the moral con- 
 
44: CRITICISM OF THEORIES OF MORALS. 
 
 victions of mankind, in making no distinction betwixt inter- 
 est an'd duty, betwixt authority and might. Nothing can be 
 obligatory, according to the articulate confession of Dr. 
 Paley, but what we are to gain or lose by ; and the only ques- 
 tion I am to ask, in order to determine whether I am 
 bound by the command of another, is whether he can hurt or 
 bless me. His right depends upon his power, and my duty 
 turns upon my weakness and dependence. 
 
 If interest is duty, and power is right, natural ties, whether 
 of blood or affection, considerations of justice and humanity, 
 relations, original or adventitious, are all to be discarded, and 
 every moral problem becomes only a frigid calculation of loss 
 and gain. No elements are to be permitted to enter into its 
 solution, which shall disturb the coolness of the mathematical 
 computation. All moral reasoning is reduced to arithmetic, 
 and a man's duty is determined by the sum at the foot of the 
 account. 
 
 Now, if there be any two things about which the conscous- 
 ness of mankind is clear and distinct, it is that there is a marked 
 and radical difference betwixt interest and duty, right and 
 might. 
 
 The distinction betwixt right and might, betwixt unjust 
 usurpation and lawful authority, is manifestly something far 
 deeper than the distinction betwixt a lower and a higher in- 
 terest. It is not the sword which justifies the magistrate it 
 is the magistrate which justifies the sword. 
 
 All men feel that the right to command is one thing, the 
 power to hurt another that there can be no obligation to 
 obey, although it may be the dictate of policy, where force is 
 is the only basis of authority. The language of all men 
 marks the difference betwixt the usurper and the lawful ruler, 
 the tyrant and the just magistrate ; and any system which ig- 
 nores or explains away this natural and necessary distinction, 
 contradicts the moral phenomena of our nature. 
 
 3. The theory of Paley is liable to still further exception, as 
 taking no account of the conviction of good and ill desert and 
 the peculiar emotions which constitute and spring from the 
 consciousness of guilt or accompany the consciousness of right. 
 The slightest attention to the operations of his own mind must 
 satisfy every one that the approbation of virtue and the dis- 
 approbation of vice include much more than a simple sensa- 
 tion of pleasure, analogous to that which arises from the con- 
 gruity of an object to an appetite, affection or desire. It is 
 more than the pleasure which springs from the perception of 
 
CRITICISM OF THEORIES OF MORALS. 45 
 
 utility or of the fitness of means to accomplish an end It is 
 a peculiar emotion an emotion which we are not likely to 
 confound with any other phenomenon of our nature. It is a 
 feeling that the agent, in a virtuous action, deserves to be re- 
 warded, accompanied with the dfsife to see him rewarded, and 
 the expectation that he will be rewarded. The agent in a 
 vicious action, on the contrary, we feel is deserving of pun- 
 ishment, and we confidently expect that, sooner or later, he 
 will receive his due. 
 
 A theory which annihilates the distinction between rewards 
 and favors, between punishment and misfortune, is at war 
 with the fundamental dictates of our nature. It sweeps away 
 that very characteristic by which we are rendered capable of 
 government, as distinct from discipline. It confounds remorse 
 with simple regret, and the approbation of conscious recti- 
 tude with the pleasure which springs from the gratification 
 of any other feeling or desire. It denies, in other words, that 
 in any just and proper sense of the terms we can be denomi- 
 nated moral agents. The very element in the phenomenon, 
 which makes a judgment to be moral, is left out or overlooked. 
 
 4. But it deserves further to be remarked, that the theory in 
 question, especially as expounded by Dr. Paley, makes no 
 manner of difference, as to their general nature, betwixt the 
 obligation to virtue and a temptation to vice. There is noth- 
 ing in either case but a strong inducement, derived from ap- 
 pearances of good. A. violent motive, we are told, is the ge- 
 nus and the command of a superior, the specific difference of 
 obligation. The violent motive, the genus, is found in temp- 
 tation ; the specific difference is wanting. Hence temptation 
 is clearly a species co-ordinate with duty. The bad man is 
 enticed by his lusts, and yields to those passions which prom- 
 ise him enjoyment his end is pleasure. The good man is 
 allured by computations which put this same pleasure at the 
 foot of the account. They are consequently governed by the 
 same general motive, and the only difference betwixt them is 
 that the one has a sounder judgment than the other. They 
 have equally obeyed the same law of pleasure, but have form- 
 ed a different estimate of the pursuits and objects that shall 
 yield the largest amount of gratification. Temptation, accor- 
 dingly, may be called an obligation to vice, and duty a temp- 
 tation to virtue. Who does not feel that the difference is 
 more than accidental betwixt these states of the mind ; that 
 the motives to virtue and the seductions of sin operate upon 
 principles entirely distinct, and have nothing in common but 
 the circumstance of their appeal to our active nature. They 
 
4:6 CRITICISM OF THEORIES OF MORALS. 
 
 are essentially different states of mind, and the theory which 
 co-ordinates them under the same genus prevaricates with 
 consciousness in its clearest manifestations. 
 
 5. The last general objection which I shall notice to Dr. Pa- 
 ley's system, is its impracticability. His fundamental principle 
 cannot be employed as the criterion of duty, from the obvious 
 impossibility of estimating the collected consequences of any 
 given action. The theory is that morality depends upon re- 
 sults ; the circumstance which determines an action to be 
 right is its being upon the whole productive of more happi- 
 ness than misery. It must, consequently, be traced in its 
 entire history, through time and eternity, before any moral 
 judgment can be confidently affirmed in regard to it. "What 
 human faculties are competent for such calculations ? "What 
 mind but that of God can declare the end from the beginning, 
 and from ancient times the things that are not yet done ? The 
 government of God, both natural and moral, is one vast com- 
 plicated system ; the relations of its parts are so multifarious 
 and minute the connections of events so numerous and hid- 
 den that only the mind which planned the scheme can ade- 
 quately compass it. He knows nothing of it, as Bishop But- 
 ler has remarked, " who is not sensible of his ignorance in it." 
 To be able to estimate all the consequences of any given action 
 is to be master of the entire system of the universe, not 
 merely in the general principles which govern it, but in all 
 the details of every single event. It is to have the knowledge 
 of the Almighty. Thornwells JZeview of Paley^s Moral 
 Philosophy. 
 
PART m. 
 SPECULATIYE MORALS. 
 
 "Going over the theory of Virtue in one's thoughts; talking well and drawing fine pic- 
 tures of it, this is so far from necessarily or certainly conducing to form a habit of it in 
 him, who thus employs himself, that it miy harden the mind in a contrary course, and 
 render it gradually more insensible, t. e., form a habit of insensibility to all moral consid 
 orations." .Buffer's Analogy. 
 
 (25.) DEFINITION OF NATURAL LAW. 
 
 Natural law, in its widest sense, (lex naturce,) is applied to 
 those rules of duty which spring from the nature and consti- 
 tution of man. There are those who maintain that the dis- 
 tinctions of right and wrong are the arbitrary creatures of 
 positive institutions " that things honorable, and things just 
 admit of such vast difference and uncertainty, that they seem 
 to exist by statute only, and not in the nature of things." In 
 opposition to this theory, it is maintained that the moral differ- 
 ences of things, are eternal and indestructible, and that the 
 knowledge of them, in their great primordial principles, is an 
 essential part of the original furniture of the mind. Man is a 
 law to himself; from his very make and structure, he is a 
 moral and responsible being, and those rules, which, in the 
 progress and development of his moral faculties, he is led to 
 apprehend as data of conscience, together with the conclusions 
 which legitimately flow from them, are denominated laws of 
 nature. They belong to inherent, essential morality, in con - 
 tradistinction to what is positive and instituted. The comple- 
 
48 SPECULATIVE MOKALS. 
 
 ment of these rules is called right reason, practical reason, 
 and by Jeremy Taylor, legislative reason. Hence that of Cic- 
 ero : " Est quidem vera lex recta ratio" Noble as this pas- 
 sage is, a much greater than Cicero has declared that man is 
 a law unto himself, and that those who are destitute of an 
 external communication from heaven, have yet an internal 
 teacher to instruct them in the will of God. The dictates of 
 conscience are denominated laws, from the authority with 
 which they are felt to speak ; they are manifested in conscious- 
 ness as commands, and not as speculative perceptions ; they 
 are laws, of nature, because they are founded in the nature 
 of things/and are enounced through the nature of the mind. 
 
 In a narrower sense, natural law (jus naturce) denotes the 
 body of rights which belong to man as man, which spring 
 from his constitution as a social and responsible being, and 
 which consequently attach to all men in the same relations 
 and circumstances. In this it coincides with natural juris- 
 prudence, as distinguished from the municipal regulations of 
 States and nations. 
 
 In a still narrower sense, natural law is restricted to those 
 principles or rules which should determine the duties of men 
 in times of revolution, or under oppressive and tyrannical 
 governments, or regulate the intercourse of independent 
 States and nations. In none of these senses does natural law 
 coincide precisely with moral philosophy. In the first sense, 
 it may be said that the conclusions of moral philosophy are 
 natural laws ; they are the results of its investigations, the end 
 of its inquiries. In the second sense, the view of human na- 
 ture is too limited for a complete philosophy of the moral con- 
 stitution. " Right and duty," as Dr. Reid has remarked, 
 "are things different, and have even a kind of opposition ; 
 yet they are so related that one cannot even be conceived 
 without the other ; and he that understands the one must un- 
 derstand the other." Hence it happens, that although the in- 
 
SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 49 
 
 quiries of natural jurisprudence begin at a different point 
 from those of the moral philosopher,- they eventually traverse 
 the same ground, and meet in the same practical conclusions. 
 Still, natural jurisprudence is only one branch of moral inves- 
 tigations ; and it has only been by an unwarrantable extension 
 of its terms, that it has been made to cover almost the entire 
 domain of duties to our fellow men." ThornweWs Review 
 of Paley^s Moral Philosophy. 
 
 (26.) Two METHODS OF TREATING THE SUBJECT OF MORALS. 
 
 There are two ways in which the subject of morals may be 
 treated. One begins from inquiring into the abstract relations 
 of things ; the other, from a matter of fact, namely, what the 
 particular nature of man is, its several parts, their economy 
 or constitution; from whence it proceeds to determine what 
 course of life it is, which is correspondent to this whole na- 
 ture. In the former method the conclusion is expressed thus, 
 that vice is contrary to the nature and reasons of things ; in 
 the latter, that it is a violation or breaking in upon our 
 own nature. Thus they both lead us to the same thing, our 
 obligations to the practice of virture ; and thus they exceed- 
 ingly strengthen and enforce each other. The first seems the 
 most direct and formal proof, and in some respects the least 
 liable to cavil and dispute : the latter is in a peculiar man- 
 ner adapted to satisfy a fair mind, and is more easily appli- 
 cable to the several particular relations and circumstances in 
 life. Butlers Preface to Sermons. 
 
 (27.) THERE is A PRINCIPLE IN MAN WHICH WE CALL CON- 
 SCIENCE. 
 
 There is a principle of reflection in men, by which they 
 distinguish between, approve, and disapprove their own 
 actions. We are plainly constituted such sort of creatures as 
 to reflect upon our own nature. The mind can take a view 
 
 7 
 
50 SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 
 
 of what passes within itself, its propensions, aversions, pas- 
 sions, affections, as respecting such objects, and in such de- 
 grees, and of the several actions consequent thereupon. In 
 this survey it approves of one, disapproves of another, and 
 towards a third is affected in neither of these ways, but is 
 quite indifferent. This principle in man, by which he ap- 
 proves or disapproves Ids heart, temper, and actions, is con- 
 science ; for this is the strict sense of the word, though 
 sometimes it is used so as to take in more. And that this 
 faculty tends to restrain men from doing mischief to each 
 other, and leaves them to do good, is too manifest to need 
 being insisted upon. Thus, a parent has the affection of love 
 to his children : this .leads him to take care of, to educate, to 
 make due provision for them. The natural affection leads to 
 this ; but the reflection that it is his proper business, what 
 belongs to him, that it is right and commendable so to 
 do : this, added to the affection becomes a much more set- 
 tled principle, and carries him on through more labor and 
 difficulties for the sake of his children, than he would undergo 
 for that affection alone, if he thought it, and the course of 
 action it led to, either indifferent or criminal. This, indeed, 
 is impossible, to do that which is good, and not to approve 
 of it ; for which reason they are frequently not considered as 
 distinct, though they really are : for men often approve of 
 the actions of others, which they will not imitate, and like- 
 wise do that which they approve not. It cannot possibly be 
 denied, that there is this principle of reflection or conscience 
 in human nature. Suppose a man to relieve an innocent per- 
 son in great distress ; suppose the same man afterwards, in 
 the fury of anger, to do the greatest mischief to a person who 
 had given no just cause of offence; to aggravate the injury, 
 add the circumstances of former friendship, and obligation, 
 from the injured person : let the man who is supposed to have 
 done those two different actions cooly reflect upon them after- 
 
SPECULATIVE MORALS. 51 
 
 wards, without regard to their consequences to himself; to 
 assert that any common man would be affected in the same 
 way towards these different actions, that he would maks no 
 distinction between them, but approve or disapprove them 
 equally, is too glaring a falsity to need being confuted. 
 There is therefore this principle of reflection or conscience in 
 mankind. It is needless to compare the respect it has to pri- 
 vate good, with the respect it has to public ; since it plainly 
 tends as much to the latter as to the former, and is commonly 
 thought to tend chiefly to the latter. This faculty is now 
 mentioned merely as another part of the inward frame of 
 man, pointing out to us in some degree what we are intended 
 for, and as what will naturally and of course have some in- 
 fluence. The particular place assigned to it by nature, what 
 authority it has, and how great influence it ought to have, 
 shall be hereafter considered. Butlers Sermon on Human 
 Nature. 
 
 (28.) M'Cosn's ANALYSIS OF CONSCIENCE CONSCIENCE AS A 
 
 LAW. 
 
 1. Conscience may ~be considered as a law. We believe 
 it to be an original, a divinely implanted, and a fundamental 
 law. Still, though persons could succeed in analysing it, it 
 would not the less be a law. Take even the views of Brown 
 and Mackintosh, meagre though fhey appear to us to be, and 
 suppose that there is nothing else in the mind when contem- 
 plating moral actions, but the springing up of emotions, still 
 there must be a heaven-appointed law, otherwise the emo- 
 tions would not be so invariable. Those who resolve con- 
 science into a mere class of emotions cannot thereby free 
 themselves from assuming the existence of a law, the law 
 according to which the emotions are produced. Those again, 
 who regard it as a faculty must assume a rule, as the basis of 
 its operations. "Upon whatever," says Adam Smith, "we 
 suppose that our moral faculties are founded, whether upon a 
 certain modification of reason, upon an original instinct called 
 a moral sense, or on some other principle of our nature, it 
 cannot be doubted that they are given us for the direction of 
 
52 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 our conduct in this life." " The rules, therefore, which they 
 
 S 'escribe are to be regarded as the command and laws of the 
 eitj, promulgated by those vicegerents which he has set up 
 within us." 
 
 It was under tin's aspect that the ancients delighted to con- 
 template the moral faculty, as in the well-known passage of 
 Cicero, " right reason is itself a law, congenial to 'the feel- 
 ings of nature diffused among all other men, uniform, eternal, 
 calling us imperiously to our duty, and peremptorily prohibi- 
 ting every violation of it." "Xor does it speak one lan- 
 guage at Rome, and another at Athens, varying from place to 
 place, or from time to time ; but it addresses itself to all na- 
 tions and to all ages, deriving its authority from the common 
 sovereign of the universe, and carrying home its sanctions to 
 every breast by the inevitable punishment which it inflicts on 
 transgressors." It is under this same view that it is presented 
 to us by a still higher authority, "They who have no law 
 (no written law) are a law unto themselves, which shows the 
 law written ir? their hearts." It is under this same aspect that 
 the profound German metaphysician represents it when he 
 talks of categorical imperative. It is to be regretted that 
 some later ethical writers have very much lost sight of this 
 view of conscience, though perhaps the most important that 
 can be taken. 
 
 We have but to pause and seriously reflect for an instant, to 
 discover that great advantages must arise from morality assu- 
 ming the form of a law. if. is in this character that it acquires 
 a clearly defined, a solid and consistent shape, and an authori- 
 tative power. As a law, it has its clear precepts its binding 
 obligations, and its solemn sanctions. When it is presented 
 merely as a sentiment, we have an impression as if it might 
 vary with change of circumstances, or with man's varied feel- 
 ings, and we might be tempted, with Rousseau, to recommend 
 as right whatever our feelings impelled us to. But in ac- 
 knowledging it as a law, we placed it above everything that is 
 fleeting and variable, and give it an independent, an un- 
 changeable, and eternal authority. 
 
 The moral law serves the same purpose, but in an infinitely 
 higher degree in the government of intelligent and responsi- 
 ble beings, as physical law does in regard to inanimate objects 
 and the brute creation, i All the Works of God seem to be 
 under law of some kind. The heavens and the earth obey 
 the ordinances of God's appointment, and the lower animals 
 are led by the instincts, with which the Creator has endowed 
 
SPECULATIVE MORALS. 53 
 
 them. When we ascend the scale of creation, we find that 
 Gud's intelligent and responsible creatures are still under law, 
 but that law of a higher kind, a moral law summed up in 
 love. This law is the golden chain by which the governor of 
 the universe binds his intelligent creatures to himself and to 
 one another. It is the royal law of love, worthy of God, who 
 is love, and fitted to make those who obey it supremely happy 
 in themselves and in the enjoyment of God. In the obser- 
 vance of that law, God is glorified, and the creature is un- 
 speakably blessed. In the breaking of that law, the God 
 who appointed it is dishonored, and the transgressor lands 
 himself in guilt and misery. 
 
 As it is advantageous to put morality on the footing of a 
 law, it is no less beneficial that this law should be written 
 upon the heart. It is difficult to see how it could have any 
 power over any given individual, except by its having a place 
 in the inner man. But does some one suggest that it might 
 be communicated orally, or in writing, to the creature by the 
 Creator? Xo one, who has seriously reflected on the subject, 
 will deny that much benefit may be derived from the posses- 
 sions of such a law, spoken or written. But such an outward 
 law does not render an inward principle unnecessary. For 
 the question presses itself upon us, why are we bound to obey 
 this law ? It is answered, because it is good ? the farther 
 question is now raised, how do we know it to be good? Or 
 is it answered, that we are bound to obey it, because of the 
 very relation in which we stand to God, we have thereby 
 moved the difficulty but a step back, for the question sug- 
 gests itself, why are we bound to obey God ? We are bound 
 to obey God, solely because of a moral relation ; and there 
 must be an internal law to inform us of that relation. It thus 
 appears, that every outward law conducts us to an inward 
 principle, from which it receives its sanction. 
 
 Such an internal principle or law written in the heart, if 
 only in healthy exercise, must possess many advantages over 
 a mere written or verbal law. It is quick, ready, and instant. 
 It acts as a constant monitor. It lies at the seat of the will 
 and the affections ; and is ready to operate upon both. But 
 while it is in its very nature anterior and superior to an out- 
 ward law, it may yet be greatly aided by such a law. Those 
 who possess the inward principle, will find consistency and " 
 stability imparted to their conduct, by their embodying the 
 dictates of that principle in a code of precepts. It is con- 
 ceivable, therefore, that the possession of the internal monitor 
 
54 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 may not supersede the development of positive command- 
 ments, even among holy intelligences. And when the con- 
 science is perverted, or when it is not in a lively state, it is 
 absolutely necessary, in order to its rectification, that there be 
 an outward law embodying, clearly and correctly, the will of 
 God, and acting the same part as the dial, when it rectifies 
 the disordered time-piece. 
 
 Not only is conscience a law, it is, as Butler has shown, 
 the supreme law. Subject only to God, it reviews all the 
 actions of the responsible agent, and is itself reviewed by 
 none. It is the highest judicatory in the human mind, judg- 
 ing all, and being judged of none ; admitting of appeal from 
 all, and admitting ot no appeal from itself to any other hu- 
 man tribunal. The conscience is a universal arbiter, for all 
 dispositions and voluntary acts pass under its notice. It is 
 immutable, for it pronounces its judgments upon an unchange- 
 able law. It is supreme, for while it submits to none other, 
 it judges of the exercises of all the other faculties and affec- 
 tions of the mind. 
 
 2. The conscience may ~be considered- as a faculty. In 
 doing so, we are not viewing it under an aspect inconsist- 
 ent with that under which we have just been contemplating 
 it. For every quality and every faculty has a rule of opera- 
 tion, which may be described as its law. The conscience, 
 from its nature may be held as embracing within it, in a 
 peculiar manner, a law as the rule of its exercise ; and this, 
 as we have seen, a^law of a very authoritative character. 
 But while we view it as a law, we are not the less to view it 
 as a faculty, of which this law is but the function or the ex- 
 ponent. 
 
 Some later ethical and metaphysical writers, we are aware, 
 have maintained that there is no judgment passed by the mind 
 on moral relations being presented to it. The whole mental 
 process is represented as being one of the emotions, and not 
 of the judgment or reason. And it is at once to be acknowl- 
 edged, that if we define the reason or understanding as the 
 power or powers which distinguish between the true and the 
 false, or which judge of relations, as of the resemblances and 
 differences of objects, we must place morality altogether be- 
 yond its jurisdiction. Perceptions of this kind are in their 
 whole nature different from the perceptions of the difference 
 between right and wrong between duty and sin. But if it 
 be meant to affirm, that when the voluntary acts of responsi- 
 ble beings pass in review before the mind, it does not pro- 
 
SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 55 
 
 nounce a judgment or decision, then we cannot but hold the 
 view to be inconsistent with our consciousness, and as far 
 from being well-fitted to furnish a foundation to a proper 
 ethical theory. Just as the mind, on certain purely intellec- 
 tual propositions being presented to it, says, " this is' true," 
 or " this is false ;" so we find it on the voluntary actions of in- 
 telligent beings being presented to it, declaring, " this is 
 right," or " this is wrong." 
 
 The parties who are most inclined to remove morality from 
 the region of the understanding, such as Brown and Mack- 
 intosh, are often constrained to speak of the moral faculty, 
 and to talk of its decisions and judgements. The very lan- 
 guage which they use, in speaking of the emotions which are 
 supposed by them to constitute the whole mental process the 
 emotions, as they call them, of moral approbation and disap- 
 probations seems to imply that there mast be a judgment of 
 the mind. If approbation and disapprobation are not judg- 
 ments, we know riot what can constitute a judgment of the 
 mind. " We cannot," says Butler, " form a notion of this 
 faculty, without taking in judgment." Nor is it possible to 
 find language expressive of the mental phenomena which 
 does not imply, that along with the emotion, there is a judg- 
 ment come to, and a decision pronounced ; and it would be 
 confounding the different departments of the human mind 
 altogether, to refer such a judgment to our emotional nature, 
 or mere sensibility. 
 
 We apprehend a mathematical proposition, and we declare 
 it to be true ; here there is acknowledged on all hands to be 
 judgment. We apprehend next instant a cruel, ungenerous 
 action ; and we declare it to be wrong. Now, in the one case, 
 as in the other, there is a judgment of the mind. It is true, 
 that in the two cases, the judgments are pronounced accord- 
 ing to very different principles or laws so very different as 
 to justify us in speaking of the conscience as different from 
 the reason. It is quite conceivable that the mind might pos- 
 sess reason, and distinguish between the true and the false, 
 and yet be incapable of distinguishing between virtue and 
 vice. We are entitled therefore to hold, that the drawing of 
 moral distinctions is not comprehended in the simple exercise 
 of the reason. The conscience, in short, is a different faculty 
 of the rnind from the mere understanding. We must hold it 
 to be simple and un resolvable, till we fall in with a successful 
 decomposition of it into its elements. In the absence of any 
 such decomposition, we hold that there are no simpler ele- 
 
56 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 ments in the human mind which will yield us the ideas ot 
 the morally good and evil, of moral obligation and guilt, of 
 merit and demerit. Compound and decompound all other 
 ideas as you please associate them together as you may 
 they will never give us the ideas referred to, so peculiar and 
 full of meaning, without a faculty implanted in the mind for 
 this very purpose. 
 
 3. Conscience may ~be considered as possessing a class of 
 emotions, or as a sentiment. We have endeavored, indeed, 
 to show that it is not a mere emotion, or class of emotions. 
 But while it is something more than a "class of feelings," 
 it is so described by Mackintosh it does most assuredly con- 
 tain and imply feelings. The mind is as conscious of the 
 emotions as it is of the judgment. 
 
 In opposition to those who insist that there is nothing but 
 emotion, it might be urged, in a general way, that emotions 
 never exist independently of certain conceptions or ideas. 
 Let a man stop himself at the time when emotion is the high- 
 est and passion the strongest, and he will find as the substra- 
 tum of the whole, a certain apprehension or conception formed 
 by the faculties of the mind. There is an idea acting as the 
 basis of every feeling, and so far determining the "feeling: 
 and the feeling rises or falls according as the conception takes 
 in more or less of that which raises the emotions. The ideas 
 which raise emotions have been called (by Alison in his 
 Essay on Taste) " ideas of emotions/' 
 
 The conception of certain objects is no way fitted to raise 
 emotions. The conception, for instance, of an angle, or of a 
 stone, or a house, will not excite any emotions whatever. 
 Other conceptions do as certainly raise emotions, as the con- 
 ception of an object as about to communicate pleasure or pain. 
 Such feelings arise whether we contemplate this pleasure or 
 pain as about to visit ourselves or others. 
 
 Emotion rises not only on the contemplation of pleasure 
 and pain to ourselves or others, it rises also on the contem- 
 plation of virtue and vice. When the conscience declares an 
 action presented to the mind to be good or bad, certain emo- 
 tions instantly present themselves. Man is so constituted 
 that the contemplation of virtuous and vicious action declared 
 so to be by the conscience like the contemplation of pleasure 
 and pain, awakens the sensibility. 
 
 While thus the conception determines the emotions does 
 not constitute them, however it is not to be forgotten that 
 emotions have a most powerful influence upon the current of 
 
SPECULATIVE MOKALS. 57 
 
 the thoughts and ideas. The emotions may be compared to 
 fluids which press equally in all directions, and need, there- 
 fore, a vessel to contain them, or a channel formed in which 
 they may flow ; but like these fluids, they yield the strongest 
 of all pressure, and serve most important purposes in the 
 economy ot life. 
 
 Upon these general grounds, then, we would be inclined to 
 assert that there must be the decision of a faculty before there 
 can be a feeling in regard to moral actions. " At the same 
 time," says Cousin, " that we do such and such an act, it raises 
 in our mind a judgment which declares its character, and it is 
 on the back of this judgment that our sensibility is moved. 
 The sentiment is not this primitive and immediate judgment, 
 but is its powerful echo. So far from being the foundation of 
 the idea of the good, it supposes it." On the other hand, we 
 acknowledge that the existence of the feeling has a most pow- 
 erful reflex influence in quickening the faculty. It breathes 
 life into, and lends wings to what would otherwise be so inert 
 and inanimate. But we must quit these general grounds. 
 The connection between the emotions and their relative con- 
 ceptions has not received that attention which it deserves from 
 mental analysts. It is a tropic lying open to the first voyager 
 who may have sufficient courage and skill to explore, without 
 making shipwreck of himself, the capes and bays by which 
 this land and water indent each other. 
 
 The moral faculty, then, can never be employed without 
 emotion. It is the master power of the human soul, and it is 
 befitting that it should never move without a retinue of at- 
 tendants. These feelings, which are its necessary train or 
 accompaniment in all its exercises, impart to them all their 
 liveMness and fervor. They communicate to the soul that 
 noble elevation which it feels on the contemplation of benev- 
 olence, of devotedness in a good cause, and patriotism and 
 piety under all their forms. These attendants of this monarch 
 faculty, while they gladden and manifest its presence when 
 the will is obedient to its master, are at the same time ready 
 to become the avenging spirits which follow up the commis- 
 sion of crime with more fearful lashings than the serpent- 
 covered furies were ever supposed to have inflicted. In short, 
 the conscience travels like a court of justice, with a certain 
 air of dignity, and with its attendant ministers to execute its 
 decisions. All this is as it should be. If it is desirable, as 
 we have seen, that morality should be presented under the 
 character of a law, and that it should have its appropriate facul- 
 
58 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 ty, it is equally needful that it should have its train of feelings, 
 to give a practical interest and impetus to all the authori- 
 tative decisions which this judge pronounces. " The design of 
 the sentiment," it is finely remarked by Cousin, " is to 
 render sensible to the soul tide connection of virtue and hap- 
 piness." 
 
 It is always to be borne in mind however, that the simple 
 possession of conscience, with its accompanying emotions, 
 does not render any individual virtuous. We are made virtu- 
 ous, not by the possession of the faculty which judges of vir- 
 tuous actions, or of the emotions which echo its decisions, 
 but by the possession of the virtuous actions themselves. 
 This may seem an obvious truth when it is stated ; but it has 
 been strangely overlooked by many persons, who conclude 
 that man is virtuous, because he is possessed of such a power 
 and of its responsive feelings. These persons do not reflect 
 that the faculty and its accompanying sentiment are ready to 
 condemn the possessor of them, when he is without the affec- 
 tions and actions, in which virture truly consists. We believe 
 that there is no responsible agent so fallen and corrupted 
 that he does not possess this conscience and these feelings ; 
 both, it may be, are sadly perverted in their exercise yet 
 still he possesses them in their essential form, and t hat by the 
 appointment of God, in order that they may so far punish 
 him, and enable him to measure the depth of his degardation. 
 
 The view now offered of conscience, from the way in which 
 A we have been obliged to state it, may seem a very complex 
 one. In reality, it is very simple. It is to be regretted, that 
 in giving a description of any mental state, we are constrain- 
 ed to use language which sounds so abstract and metaphysi- 
 cal. The conscience is the mind acting according to a moral 
 law, and its judgments giving rise to emotions. We do not 
 see how anything could be simpler. 
 
 The writer who is generally acknowledged to have written 
 in the most masterly way on the conscience, seems to have 
 viewed in it the light now presented. He was not required, 
 for the object which he had in view, to give a psychological 
 analysis of it ; but it is evident, that he views it under the 
 threefold aspect in which it is presented. Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh blames him for not steadily presenting conscience under 
 one aspect that is, for not representing it as merely a " class 
 of feelings." That which Mackintosh represents as a defect, 
 we hold to be an excellence. He calls it again and again a 
 " principle," and a " law," the " principle of reflection and 
 
' SPECULATIVE MORALS. 59 
 
 conscience," and the " law of his creation," and " a determi- 
 nate rule," and " the guide of life, and that by which men 
 are a law unto themselves ;" and affirms, that " every man 
 may find within himself the rule of right and obligations to 
 follow it." That he regarded the conscience as "partaking 
 both of the nature of a faculty and a feeling, is evident from 
 his callmg it a u faculty in the heart," and more particularly 
 from the following passage : " It is manifest, that great part 
 of common language, and of common behavior over the 
 world, is formed on the supposition of such a moral faculty, 
 whether calfed conscience, moral reason, moral sense, or Di- 
 vine reason, whether considered as a sentiment of the under- 
 standing, or a perception of the heart, or, which seems the 
 truth, as including loth" 
 
 We have a complete view of the conscience only when we 
 look at it under this three-fold aspect, in this its triune nature. 
 In each of these characters it serves a seperate purpose. As 
 a law fundamental in the human mind, it reveals authorita- 
 tively the will of God. As a faculty, it is a master ever 
 ready to issue commands, and an arbiterever ready to decide. 
 As a sentiment, it furnishes pleasure, stirs up desire, and leads 
 to activity. Nor is it unworthy of being remarked, that it is 
 in its very nature connected, both with the understanding 
 and the feelings, partaking of the strength and stability of 
 the one, and the life and facility of the other. It is the "fac- 
 ulty of the heart," and the " sentiment of the understanding." 
 While thus linking itself with all parts of our nature, it speaks 
 as one having authority to every other power and principle 
 of the human mind. If this " faculty of the heart " were al- 
 lowed its proper power, it would, in the name of the supreme 
 Governor, preserve for him that is, for God the place which 
 he ought to have in every human head and heart. M^Cosh, 
 p. 302. 
 
 (29.) LAWS OF THE OPERATION OF CONSCIENCE, ACCORDING 
 
 TO M'CosH. 
 
 It may be useful to observe a little more minutely some of 
 the laws of the working of the conscience. 
 
 1st. It is of mental, and of mental acts exclusively, that the 
 conscience judges. It has no judgment whatever to pro- 
 nounce on a mere bodily act. We look out at the window, 
 and we see two individuals in different places chastising 
 
60 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 two different children. The conscience pronounces no judg- 
 ment in the one case or the other, whatever the feelings may 
 do, until we have learned the motives which have led to the 
 performance of the acts. If upon inquiry we find the motive 
 in the one case to be the extreme care which the parent takes 
 of the moral well-being of his child, and the motive in the 
 other case to be blind passion, we now approve of the one 
 individual and disapprove of the other; butletit be observed, 
 that the conscience pronounces its judgment not on the out- 
 ward actions, but on the internal motives and feelings. 
 
 %d. It is of acts of the will, and of acts of the will exclu- 
 sively, that the conscience judges. In saying so we use will 
 in a large sense, as large as that department which has been 
 allotted to it, we believe, by God in the human mind. We 
 use it as including all wishes, desires, intentions, and resolu- 
 tions, all that is properly active and personal in man. Now, 
 we think that the principle needs only to be announced to 
 command conviction, namely, that it is of acts of the will, and 
 acts of the will only, that the conscience judges, declaring 
 them to be either virtuous or vicious. Ot mere sensations, 
 of mere intellectual acts, of mere sensibility, it takes no di- 
 rect cognizance ; in themselves these have no moral qualities. 
 No doubt these sensations, these intellectual ideas or emotions, 
 may be fitted to lead to what is evil, and so far the conscience 
 will be led to pronounce a judgment in which they are em- 
 braced ; but the actual judgment pronounced is, that the will 
 is doing wrong in not instantly taking steps to banish them 
 from the mind. We read an obscene book, and impure imagi- 
 nations rise up in our minds ; but here let it be remarked, that 
 what the conscience condemns is not so much the mere natu- 
 ral feelings as the voluntary reading of a work which is fitted 
 to call them forth. 
 
 3d. The conscience approves and disapproves not of isola- 
 ted acts merely* but also of the mind or agent manifested in 
 
'SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 61 
 
 these acts. The conscience judges according to truth, and re- 
 gards all mental acts as the mind acting, and pronounces its 
 verdict, not so much on the mere acts as on the mind volunta- 
 rily acting in them. This may seem an unnecessarily meta- 
 physical method of expressing an obvious truth, but, in the 
 sequel, it will*be found of no little consequence to be able 
 precisely to determine what is the object at which the con- 
 science looks, and on which it pronounces its judgments. 
 
 4th. The concience pronounces its decision on the state of 
 mind of the responsible agent as the same is presented to it. 
 It is not the business, or at least the direct office of the con- 
 science, to determine what is the precise mental state what 
 is the wish, desire, intention, or resolution of any responsible 
 agent. This must be ascertained by the usual rules and laws 
 of evidence, and by the use of the ordinary intellectual fac- 
 ulties. It is upon the view of the voluntary acts of the mind, 
 as they are represented to it, that the conscience utters its sen- 
 tence. Thus, in the case which we have put of the two pa- 
 rents chastising their children, the one act presented to the 
 conscience is that of a parent seeking, by proper punishment 
 to correct vice, and the other act, is that of an individual 
 cherishing passion, and acting upon it. It is upon this repre- 
 sentation that the conscience proceeds, and provided the rep- 
 resentation be correct, the decision will be infallible. But let 
 it be observed that the representation may be an erroneous 
 one. Under the influence of hasty feeling or prejudice, we 
 may have formed very incorrect judgements as to the real state 
 of mind of the individuals whose conduct we have been ob- 
 serving. While the conscience has pronounced verdicts which 
 are righteous in themselves, these verdicts may be mistaken 
 in regard to the given individual ; for the one parent may not 
 have been under the influence of such high-minded virtue, 
 nor the other the slave of passion, as has been supposed. The 
 conscience is in the position of a barrister, whose opinion is 
 
62 SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 
 
 asked in matters of legal difficulty. In both cases the judg- 
 ment given proceeds on the supposed accurcay of a represen- 
 tation submitted, but which may be very partial, or very per- 
 verted. 
 
 It followed 5tL That there may le much uncertainty, or 
 confusion, or positive error, in the judgments of the con- 
 science, because given upon false representations. All the 
 actions of man are of a concrete character. By far the greater 
 number of the voluntary acts of mankind are of a very com- 
 plex nature. It is difficult for the individual himself, and still 
 more difficult for a neighbor, to determine what are the precise 
 motives by which he is influenced in any given act. The 
 springs of human action are often as difficult to be discovered 
 as the true fountains of the great African rivers, which rise so 
 far in the unapproachable interior ; and there is room for end- 
 less disputes as to what is the originating and original motive, 
 without which the act would not have been proposed or per- 
 formed ; and when we have fixed on any one source, we are 
 not sure that they may not be others that dispute with it the 
 pre-eminence. M' 'Cosh, p. 336. 
 
 (30.) PALEY'S CHAPTER ON HAPPINESS WHAT IT DOES NOT 
 CONSIST IN. 
 
 1. Then Happiness does not consist in the pleasures of 
 sense, in whatever profusion or variety they be enjoyed. 
 By the pleasures of sense, I mean, as well the animal gratifi- 
 cations of eating, drinking, and that by which tbe species is 
 continued, as the more refined pleasure of music, painting, 
 architecture, gardening, splendid shows, theatric exhibitions ; 
 and the pleasures, lastly, of active sports, as of hunting, 
 shooting, fishing, &c. For, 
 
 1st, These pleasures continue but a little while at a time. 
 This is true of them all, especially of the grosser sort of them. 
 Laying aside the preparation and the expectation, and com- 
 
' SPECULATIVE MORALS. 3 
 
 pnting strictly the actual sensation, we shall be surprised to 
 find how inconsiderable a portion of our time they occupy, 
 how few hours in the four and twenty they are able to fill up. 
 
 2d, These pleasures, by repetition, lose their relish. It is 
 a property of the machine, for which we know no remedy, 
 that the organs by which we perceive pleasure are blunted 
 and benumbed by being frequently exercised in the same 
 way. There is hardly any one who has not found the differ- 
 ence between a gratification, when new, and when familiar ; 
 or any pleasure which does not become indifferent as it grows 
 habitual. 
 
 3d, The eagerness for high and intense delights takes away 
 the relish from all others ; and as such delights fall rarely in 
 our way, the greater part of our time becomes, from this 
 cause, empty and uneasy. 
 
 There is hardly any delusion by which men are greater 
 sufferers in their happiness than by their expecting too much 
 from what is called pleasure ; that is, from those intense de- 
 lights which vulgarily engross the name of pleasure. The 
 very expectation spoils them. When they do come, we are 
 often engaged in taking pains to persuade ourselves how much 
 we are pleased, rather than enjoying any pleasure which 
 springs naturally out of the object. And whenever we de- 
 pend upon being vastly delighted, we always go home secretly 
 grieved at missing our aim. Likewise, as has been observed 
 just now, when this humor of being prodigiously delighted 
 has once taken hold of the imagination, . it hinders us from 
 providing for, or acquiescing in, those gentle soothing engage- 
 ments, the due variety and succession of which are the only 
 things that supply a vein or continued stream of happiness. 
 
 What I have been able to observe of that part of mankind, 
 whose professed pursuit is pleasure, and who are withheld in 
 the pursuit by no restraints of fortune, or scruples of conscience 
 corresponds sufficiently with this account. I have commonly 
 
64: SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 remarked in such men a restless and inextinguishable passion 
 for variety ; a great part of their time to be vacant, and so 
 much of it irksome ; and that, with whatever eagerness and 
 expectation they set out, they become, by degrees, fastidious 
 in their choice of pleasures, languid in the enjoyment, yet 
 miserable under the want of it. 
 
 The tr.uth seems to be, that there is a limit at which these 
 pleasures soon arrive, and from which they ever afterwards 
 decline. They are by necessity of short duration, as the 
 organs cannot hold on their'emotions beyond a certain length 
 of time ; and if you endeavour to compensate for this imper- 
 fection in their nature by the frequency with which you repeat 
 them, you suffer more than ypu gain, by the fatigue of the 
 faculties, and the diminution of sensibility. 
 
 "We have said nothing in this account, of the loss of oppor- 
 tunities or the decay of faculties, which, whenever they hap- 
 pen, leave the voluptuary destitute and desperate ; teased by 
 desires that can never be gratified, and the memory of pleas- 
 ures which must return no more. 
 
 It will also be allowed by those who have experienced it, 
 and perhaps by those alone, that pleasure, which is purchased 
 by the encumbrance of our fortune, is purchased too dear ; 
 the pleasure never compensating for the perpetual irritation 
 of embarrassed circumstances. 
 
 These pleasures, after all, have their value ; and as the 
 young are always too eager in their pursuit of them, the old 
 are sometimes too remiss, that is, too studious in their ease, 
 to be at the pains for them which they really deserve. 
 
 2. Neither does happiness consist in an exemption from 
 pain, labor, care, business, suspense, molestation, and " those 
 evils which are without;" such a state being usually attended, 
 not with ease, but with depression of spirits, a tastelessness 
 in all our ideas, imaginary anxieties, and the whole train of 
 hypochondriacal affections. 
 
SPECULATIVE MORALS. 65 
 
 For which reason, the expectations of those who retire from 
 their shops and counting-houses, to enjoy the remainder of 
 their days in leisure and tranquility, are seldom answered by 
 the effect ; much less of such as, in a fit of chagrin, shut 
 themselves up in cloisters and hermitages, or quit the world, 
 and their stations in it, for solitude and repose. 
 
 Where there exists a known external cause-of uneasiness 
 the cause may be removed, and the uneasiness will cease. 
 Bat those imaginary distresses which men feel for want 
 of real ones, (and which- are equally tormenting, and so 
 far equally painful,) as they depend upon no single or as- 
 signable subject of uneasiness, admit oftentimes of no appli- 
 cation of relief. 
 
 Hence a moderate pain, upon which the attention may fas- 
 ten and spend itself, is to many a refreshment : as a fit of the 
 gout will sometimes cure the spleen. And the same of any less 
 violent agatition of the mind, as a literary controversy, a law- 
 suit, a contested election, and, above all, gaming ; the passion 
 for which, in men of fortune and liberal minds, is only to be 
 accounted for on this principle. 
 
 3. Neither does happiness consist in greatness, rank, or 
 elevated station. 
 
 Were it true that all superiority offorded pleasure, it would 
 follow, that by how much we were the greater, that is, the 
 more persons we were superior to, in the same proportion, so 
 far as depended upon this cause, we should be the happier ; 
 but so it is, that no superiority yields any satisfaction, save 
 that which we possess or obtain over those with whom we 
 immediately compare ourselves. The shepherd perceives no 
 pleasure in his superiority over his dog ; the farmer, in his 
 superiority over the shepherd ; thevlord, in his superiority 
 over the farmer; nor the king, lastly, in his superiority over 
 the lord. Superiority, where there is no competition, is sel- 
 dom contemplated ; what most men are quite unconscious of- 
 
66 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 But if the same shephard can run, fight or wrestle, better 
 than the peasants of his village ; if the farmer can show bet- 
 ter cattle, if he keep a better, horse, or be supposed to have a 
 longer purse, than any farmer in the hundred ; if the lord 
 have more interest in an election, greater favor at court, a 
 better house, or larger estate than any nobleman in the 
 conn try ; if the king possess a more extensive territory, a more 
 powerful fleet or army, a more splendid establishment, more 
 loyal subjects, or more weight and authority in adjusting 
 the affairs of nations, than any prince in Europe ; in all 
 these cases, the parties feel an actual satisfaction in their 
 superiority. 
 
 Now the conclusion that follows from hence is this ; that 
 the pleasures of ambition, which are supposed to be pecular 
 to high stations, are in reality common to all conditions. The 
 farrier, who shoes a horse better, and who is in greater request 
 for his skill than any man within ten miles of him, possesses, 
 for all that I can see, the delight of distinction and of excell- 
 ing, as truly and substantially as the statesman, the soldier, 
 and the scholar, who have filled Europe with the reputation 
 of their wisdom, their valor, or their 'knowledge. 
 
 No superiority appears to be of any account, but superiori- 
 ty over a rival. This, it is manifest, may exist wherever 
 rivalships do ; and rivalships fall out among men of all ranks 
 and degrees. The object of emulation, the dignity or mag- 
 nitude of this object, makes no difference ; as it is not what 
 either possesses that constitutes the pleasures, but what one 
 possesses more than the other. 
 
 Philosophy smiles at the contempt with which the rich and 
 great speak of the petty strifes and competitions of the poor ; 
 not reflecting that these strifes and competitions are just as 
 reasonable as their own, and the pleasure which success af- 
 fords, the same. 
 
 Our position is, that happiness does not consist in greatness. 
 
* SPECULATIVE MOEAL8. 67 
 
 And this position we make out by showing, that even what 
 are supposed to be the peculiar advantages of greatness, the 
 pleasures of ambition and superiority, are in reality common 
 to all conditions. But whether the pursuits of ambition be 
 ever wise, whether they contribute more to the happiness or 
 misery of the pursuers, is a different question ; and a question 
 concerning which we may be allowed to entertain great doubt. 
 The pleasure of success is exquisite ; so also is the anxiety of 
 the pursuit, and the pain of disappointment ; and what is 
 the worst part of the account, the pleasure is short lived. 
 We soon cease to look back upon those whom we have left 
 behind ; new contests are engaged in, new prospects' unfold 
 themselves ; a succession of struggles are kept up, while there 
 is a rival left inside the compass of our views and profes- 
 sions ; and when there is none, the pleasure with the pursuit 
 is at an end. Paley^s Moral Philosophy, p. 25. 
 
 (31.) PALEY'S ACCOUNT OF THE INFLUENCE OF HABITS ON HAP- 
 PINESS. 
 i 
 
 Happiness depends upon the prudent constitution of the hab- 
 its. The art in which the secret of human happiness in a great 
 measure consists, is to set the habits in such a manner, that 
 every change may be a change for the better. The habits 
 themselves are much the same ; for whatever is made habitual 
 becomes smooth, and easy, and nearly indifferent. The re- 
 turn to an old habit is likewise easy, what ever the habit be. 
 Therefore the advantage is with those habits which allow of 
 an indulgence in the deviation from them. The luxurious 
 receive nogreater pleasure from their dainties than the peasant 
 does from his bread and cheese ; but the peasant, whenever 
 he goes abroad, finds a feast ; whereas the epicure must be 
 well entertained to escape disgust. Those who spend every 
 day at cards, and those who go every day to plough, pass 
 their time much alike; intent upon what they are about, 
 
68 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 wanting nothing, regreting nothing, they are both for the 
 time in a state of ease; but then, whatever suspends the oc- 
 cupation of the card player distresses him ; whereas to the 
 laborer every interruption is a refreshment ; and this appears 
 in the different effects that Sunday produces upon the two, 
 which proves a day of recreation to the one, but a lamentable 
 burden to the other. The man who has learned to live alone 
 feels his spirits enlivened whenever he enters into company, 
 and takes his leave without regret : another, who has long 
 been accustomed to a crowd, or continual succession of com- 
 pany experiences in company no elevation of spirits, 
 nor any greater satisfaction than what the man of a 
 retired life finds in his chimney corner. So far their 
 conditions are equal; but let a change of place, for- 
 tune or situation separate the companion from his circle, 
 his visitors, his club, common room, or coffee-house, and the 
 difference and ^advantage in the choice and constitution of the 
 two habits will show itself. Solitude comes to the one clothed 
 with melancholy; to the other it brings liberty 'and quiet. 
 You will see the one fretful and restless, at a loss how to dis- 
 pose of his time till the hour come round when he may forget 
 himself in bed ; the other, easy and satisfied, taking up his 
 book or his pipe as soon as he finds himself alone ; ready to 
 admit any little amusement that casts up, or to turn his hands 
 and attention to the first business that presents itself; or con- 
 tent, without either, to sit still, and let his train of thought 
 glide indolently through his brain, without much use, perhaps, 
 or pleasure, but without hankering after anything better, or 
 without irritation. A reader, who has inured himself to books 
 of science and argumentation, if a novel, a well written 
 pamphlet, and article of news, a narrative of a curious voyage, 
 or a journal of a traveller fall in his way, sits down to the 
 repast with relish ; enjoys his entertainment while it lasts, 
 and can return, when it is over, to his graver reading without 
 
' SPECULATIVE MORALS. 69 
 
 distaste. Another, with whom nothing will go down but 
 works of humor and pleasantry, or whose curiosity must be 
 interested by perpetual novelty, will consume a bookseller's 
 window in half a forenoon ; during which time he is rather in 
 search of diversion than diverted ; and as books to his taste 
 are few and short, and rapidly read over, the stock is soon 
 exhausted, when he is left without resource from this princi- 
 pal supply of harmless amusement. Paiey's Moral Phil- 
 losophy,p. 31. 
 
 (32.) STEWART'S EXPOSITION OF MORAL OBLIGATION. 
 
 According to some systems, moral obligation is founded 
 entirely on our belief that virtue is enjoined by the command 
 of God. But how, it may be asked, does this belief impose 
 an obligation ? Only one of two answers can be given. 
 Either that there is a moral fitness that we should conform 
 our will to that of the Author and the Governor of the uni- 
 verse ; or that a rational self-love should induce us, from mo- 
 tives of prudence, to study every means of rendering our- 
 selves acceptable to the Almighty Arbiter of happiness and 
 misery. On the first supposition we reason in a circle. "We 
 resolve our sense of moral obligation into our sense of reli- 
 gion, and the sense of religion into that of moral obligation. 
 
 The other system, which makes virtue a mere matter of 
 prudence, although not so obviously unsatisfactory, leads to 
 consequences which sufficiently invalidate every argument in 
 its favor. Among others it leads us to conclude, 1. That the 
 disbelief of a future state absolves from all moral obligation 
 excepting in so far as we find virtue to be conducive to our 
 present interest : 2. That a being independently and com- 
 pletely happy cannot have any moral perceptions or any moral 
 attributes. 
 
 But farther, the notions of reward and punishment presup- 
 pose the notions of right and wrong. They are sanctions of 
 
70 SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 
 
 virtue, or additional motives to the practice of it, but they 
 suppose the existence of some previous obligation. 
 
 In the last place, if moral obligation be constituted by a 
 regard to our situation in another life, how shall the existence 
 of a future state be proved, or even rendered probable by the 
 light of nature ? or how shall we discover what conduct is 
 acceptable to the Deity ? The truth is, that the strongest pre- 
 sumption for such a state is deduced from our natural notions 
 of right and wrong ; of merit and demerit ; and from a com- 
 parison between these and the general course of human 
 affairs. 
 
 It ds absurd, therefore, to ask why we are bound to prac- 
 tice virtue. The very notion of virtue implies the notion of 
 obligation. Every being who is conscious of the distinction 
 between right and wrong carries about with him a law which 
 he is bound to observe, notwithstanding he may be in total 
 ignorance of a future state. " What renders obnoxious to 
 punishment," (as Dr. Butler has well remarked,) " is not the 
 foreknowledge of it, but merely the violating a known obli- 
 gation." Or (as Plato has expressed the same idea,) TO pev 
 
 From what has been stated, it follows that the moral faculty, 
 considered as an active power of the mind, differs essentially 
 from all the others hitherto enumerated. The least violation 
 of its authority fills us with remorse. On the contrary, the 
 greater the sacrifices we make in obedience to its suggestions, 
 the greater are our satisfaction and triumph. 
 
 The supreme authority of conscience, although beautifully 
 described by many of the ancient moralists, w-as not suffi- 
 ciently attended to by modern writers as a fundamental prin- 
 ciple in the science of ethics till the time of Dr. Butler. Too 
 little stress 'is laid on it by Lord Shaftesbury ; and the omis- 
 sion is the chief defect in his system of morals. Shaftesbury's 
 opinion, however, although he does not state it explicitly in 
 
* SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 71 
 
 his inquiry, seems to have been precisely the same at bottom 
 with that of Butler. 
 
 One of the clearest and most concise statements of this 
 doctrine that I have met with is in a sermon on the Nature 
 and Obligations of Yirtue, by Dr. Adams of Oxford ; the 
 justness of whose ideas on this subject make it the more sur- 
 prising that his pupil and friend, Dr. Samuel Johnson, should 
 have erred so very widely from the truth. " Right" (says 
 he,) " implies duty in its idea. To perceive an action to be 
 right is to see a reason for doing it in the action itself, abstract- 
 ed from all other considerations whatever ; and this percep- 
 tion, this acknowledged rectitude in the action, is the very 
 essence of obligation, that which commands the approbation 
 and choice, and binds the conscience of every rational human 
 being." "Nothing can bring us under an obligation to 
 do what appears to our moral judgment wrong. It may 
 be supposed our interest to do this, but it cannot be supposed 
 our duty. For, I ask, if some power, which we are unable 
 to resist, should assume the command over us, and give us 
 laws which are unrighteous and unjust, should we be under 
 an obligation to obey him ? Should we not rather be obliged 
 to shake off the yoke, and to resist such usurpation, if it were 
 in our power ? However, then, we might be swayed by hope 
 or fear, it is plain that we are under an obligation to right, 
 which is antecedent, and in order and nature superior to all 
 other. Power may compel, interest may bribe, pleasure may 
 persuade, but reason only can oblige. This is the only au- 
 thority which rational beings can own, and to which they 
 owe obedience." 
 
 Dr. Clark has expressed himself nearly to the same pur- 
 pose. "The judgment and conscience of a man's own mind 
 concerning the reasonableness and fitness of the thing is the 
 truest and formalest obligation ; for whoever acts contrary to 
 this sense and conscience of his own mind is necessarily self- 
 
72 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 condemned ; and the greatest and strongest of all obligations 
 is that which a man cannot break through without condemn- 
 ing himself. So far, therefore, as men are conscious of what 
 is right and wrong, so far they are under an obligation to act 
 accordingly." 
 
 The fact, however, is, that as this view of human nature is 
 the most simple, so it is the most ancient which occurs in the 
 history of moral science. It was the doctrine of the Pytha- 
 gorean school, as appears from a fragment of Theages, a Py- 
 thagorean writer, published in Gale's Opuscula Mythologica. 
 It is also explained by Plato in some of his dialogues, in which 
 he compares the soul to a commonwealth, and reason to the 
 council of state, which governs and directs the whole. 
 
 Cicero has expressed the same system very clearly and 
 concisely. " Duplex enim est vis animorum atque naturae. 
 Una pars in appetitu posita est, quae hominem hue et illuc 
 rapit, quae est 6^ Greece, altera in ratione, quae docet et ex- 
 planat, quid faciendum fugiendumve sit. Ita fit ut ratio 
 praesit, appetitus obtemporet." In the following passage this 
 doctrine is enforced in a manner peculiarly sublime and ex- 
 pressive. 
 
 " Est quidem vera Lex, recta ratio, naturae congruens, dif- 
 fusa in ornnes, constans, sempiterna, quae vocet ad officium 
 jubendo, vetando a fraude deterreat. Nee erit alia Lex Romae, 
 alia Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac ; sed et omnes gentes, et 
 omni tempore una lex et sempiterna et immortalis continebit ; 
 unusque erit communis quasi magister et irnperator omnium 
 Deus. Ille hujus legis inventor, disceptator, lator. Cui qui 
 non parebit, ipse se fugiet, ac naturam hominis aspernabitur; 
 hoc ipso luet maximas poenas, etiarnsi caetera supplicia, quae 
 putantur, effngerit." 
 
 It is very justly observed by Mr. Smith, (and I consider the 
 remark as of the highest importance,) that "if the distinction 
 pointed out in the foregoing quotations between the moral 
 
* SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 37 
 
 faculty and our other active powers be acknowledged, ijk is of 
 the less consequence what particular theory we adopt con- 
 cerning the origin of our moral ideas." And accordingly, 
 though he resolves moral approbation ultimately into a, feeling 
 of the mind, he nevertheless represents the supremacy of con- 
 science as a principle which is equally essential to all the 
 different systems that have been proposed on the subject. 
 " Upon whatever we suppose our moral faculties to be found- 
 ed," (I quote his own words,) whether upon a certain modifi- 
 cation of reason, upon an original instinct called a moral sense, 
 or upon some other principle of our nature, it cannot be 
 doubted that they are given us for the direction of our con- 
 duct in this life. They carry along with them the most evi- 
 dent badges of their authority, which denote that they were 
 set up within us to be the supreme arbiters of all our actions ; 
 to superintend all our senses, passions, and appetites ; and to 
 judge how far each of them was to be either indulged or re- 
 strained. Our moral faculties are by no means, as some have 
 pretended, upon a level in this respect with the other faculties 
 and appetites of our nature, endowed with no more right to 
 restrain these last, than these last are to restrain them. ISTo 
 other faculty or principle of action judges of any other. Love 
 does not judge of resentment, nor resentment of love. Those 
 two passions may be opposite to one another, but cannot, with 
 any propriety, be said to approve or disapprove of one an- 
 other. But it is the peculiar office of those faculties now 
 under consideration to judge, to bestow censure or applause 
 upon all the other principles of our nature." 
 
 "Since these, therefore," (continues Mr. Smith,) u were plain- 
 ly intended to be the governing principles of human nature, 
 the rules which they prescribe are to be regarded as the com- 
 mands and laws of the Deity promulgated by those vicege- 
 rents which he has thus set up within us. By acting accord- 
 ing to their dictates we may be said, in some sense, to co-op- 
 
 10 
 
74: SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 erate with the Deity, and to advance, as far as in our power, 
 the plan of Providence. By acting otherwise, on the con- 
 trary, we seem to obstruct in some measure, the scheme which 
 the Author ol Nature has established for the happiness and 
 perfection of the world, and to declare ourselves in some 
 measure the enemies of God. Hence we are naturally en- 
 couraged to hope for His extraordinary favor and reward in 
 the one case, and to dread his vengeance and punishment in 
 the other." Stewards Active <& Moral Powers, vol. 1 p. 293. 
 
 (33.) CHAPTER ON MERIT AND DEMERIT FROM COUSIN. 
 
 We arrive, then, at the last element of the moral phenome- 
 non, the judgment of merit and demerit. 
 
 At the same time that we judge that a man has done a 
 good or bad action, we bear' this other judgment quite as 
 necessary as the former, to wit, that if this man has acted 
 well he has merited a reward, and if he has acted ill, he has 
 merited a punishment. It is exactly the same with this judg- 
 ment as with that of the good. It may be outwardly express- 
 ed in a more or less lively manner, according as it is mingled 
 with more or less energetic feelings. Sometimes it will be 
 only a benevolent disposition towards the virtuous agent, 
 and an unfavourable disposition towards the culpable agent ; 
 sometimes it will be enthusiasm or indignation. In some 
 cases one will make himself the executor of the judgment 
 that he bears, he will crown the hero and load the criminal 
 with chains. But when all your feelings are calmed, when 
 enthusiasm has cooled as well as indignation, when time and 
 separation have rendered an action almost indifferent to you, 
 you none the less persist in judging that the author of this 
 action merits a reward or a punishment, according to the 
 quality of the action. You decide that you were right in. the 
 sentiments that you felt, and, although they are extinguished, 
 you declare them legitimate. 
 
SPECULATIVE MORALS. 75 
 
 The judgment of merit and demerit is essentially tied to 
 the judgment of good and evil. In fact, he who does an 
 action without knowing whether it is good or bad, has neither 
 merit nor demerit in doing it. It is with him the same as 
 with those physical agents that accomplish the most benefi- 
 cent or the most destructive works, to which we never think 
 of attributing knowledge and will, consequently accountabili- 
 ty. Why are there no penalties attached to involuntary 
 crimes ? Because for that very reason they are not regarded 
 as crimes. Hence it comes that the question of premedita- 
 tion is so grave in all criminal processes. "Why is the child, 
 up to a certain age, subject to none but light punishments ? 
 Because where the idea of the good and liberty are wanting, 
 merit and demerit are also wanting, which alone authorize 
 reward and punishment. The author of an injurious but, 
 involuntary action is condemned to an indemnity correspond- 
 ing to the damage done ; he is not condemned to a punish- 
 ment properly so called. 
 
 Such are the conditions of merit and demerit. "When these 
 conditions are fulfilled, merit and demerit manifest them- 
 selves, and involve reward and punishment. 
 
 Merit is the natural right we have to be rewarded ; demerit 
 the natural ri^ht that others have to punish us, and, if, we 
 may thus speak, the right that we have to be punished. This 
 expression may seem paradoxical, nevertheless it is true. A 
 culpable man, who, opening his eyes to the light of the good, 
 should comprehend the necessity of expiation, not only by 
 internal repentance, without which all the rest is in vain, but 
 also by a real and effective suffering, such a culpable man 
 would have the right to claim the punishment that alone can 
 reconcile him with order. And such reclamations are not so 
 rare. Do we not every day see criminals denouncing them- 
 selves and offering themselves up to avenge the public ? 
 Others prefer to satisfy justice, and do not have recourse to 
 
76 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 the pardon that law places in the hands of the monarch in 
 order to represent in the state charity and mercy, as tribunals 
 represent in it justice. This is a manifest proof of the 
 natural and profound roots of the idea of punishment and 
 reward. 
 
 Merit and demerit imperatively claim, like a lawful debt, 
 punishment and reward ; but reward must not be confounded 
 with merit, nor punisment with demerit; this would be 
 confounding cause and effect, principle and consequence. 
 Even were reward and punishment not to take place, merit 
 aud demerit would subsist. Punishment and reward satisfy 
 merit and demerit, but do not constitute them. Suppress all 
 reward and all punishment, and you do not thereby suppress 
 merit and demerit; on the contrary, suppress merit and 
 demerit, and there are no longer true punishments and true 
 rewards. Unmerited good and honors are only material ad- 
 vantages ; reward is essentially moral, and its value is inde- 
 pendent of its form. One of those crowns of oak that the 
 early Romans decreed to heroism is worth more than all the 
 riches in the world, when it is the sign of the recognition and 
 the admiration of a people. To reward is to give in return. 
 He who is rewarded must have first given something in order 
 to deserve to be rewarded. Reward accorded to merit is a 
 debt ; reward without merit is a charity or a theft. It is the 
 same with punishment. It is the relation of pain to a fault, 
 in this relation, and not in the pain alone, is the truth as well 
 as the shame of chastisement. 
 
 'Tis crime and not the scaffold makes the shame. 
 
 Cousin's Essay upon the True, Good and Beautiful, p. 289. 
 (34.) STEWART UPON THE NATURE AND ESSENCE OF YIRTUE. 
 
 It was before remarked, that the different theories of Vir- 
 tue which have prevailed in modern times have arisen chiefly 
 from attempts to trace all the branches of our duty to one 
 
SPECULATIVE MORALS. 77 
 
 principle of action ; such as a rational self-love, benevolence, 
 justice, or a disposition to obey the will of God. 
 
 That none of these theories is agreeable to fact may be 
 collected from the reasonings which have been already stated. 
 The harmony, however, which exists among our various good 
 dispositions, and their general coincidence in determining us 
 to the same course of life, bestows on all of them, when skil- 
 fully proposed, a certain degree of plausibility. 
 
 The systematical spirit from which they have taken their 
 rise, although a fertile source of error, has not been without 
 its use; inasmuch as it has roused the attention of ingenious 
 men to the most important of all studies, that of the end and 
 destination of human life. The facility, at the same time, 
 with which so great a variety of consequences may all be 
 traced from distinct principles, affords a demonstration of 
 that unity and consistency of design, which is still more con- 
 spicuous in the moral than in the material world. 
 
 Of the General Definition of Virtue. Having taken 
 a cursory survey of the chief branches of our Duty, we 
 are prepared to enter on the general question concern- 
 ing the Nature and Essence of Virtue. In fixing on 
 the arrangement of this part of my subject, it appeared to 
 me more agreeable to the established rules of philosophising, 
 to consider, first, our duties in detail ; and after having thus 
 laid a solid foundation in the way of analysis, to attempt to 
 raise to the general idea in which all our duties concur, than 
 to circumscribe our inquiries, at our first outset, ^within the 
 limits of an arbitrary and partial definition. "What I have 
 now to offer, therefore, will consist of little more than some 
 obvious and necessary consequences from principles which 
 have been already stated. 
 
 The various duties which have been considered all agree 
 with each other in one common quality, that of being obli- 
 
78 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 gatory on rational and voluntary agents ; and they are all 
 enjoined by the same authority, the antJwrity of conscience. 
 These duties, therefore, are but different articles of one law, 
 which is properly expressed by the word Virtue. 
 
 An observation to the same purpose is put into the mouth 
 of Socrates by Plato. "So likewise concerning the virtues ; 
 though they are many and various, there is one common idea 
 belonging to them all, by which they are virtuous.'' Owrw ^ 
 xa ifsgi <rwv acTwv ? xav si tfoXXou xai tfavTo&XTr'aj eufiv^ sv yz <n si8o$ 
 raurov OMratfcu "X?<fi 51 o sitfiv agsrcu. 
 
 As all the virtues are enjoined by the same authority (the 
 authority of conscience.) the man whose ruling principle of 
 action is a sense of duty, will observe all the different virtues 
 with the same reverence and the same zeal. He who lives in 
 the habitual neglect of any one of them shows plainly, that 
 where his conduct happens to coincide with what the rules 
 of morality prescribe, it is owing merely to an accidental 
 agreement between his duty and his inclination, and that he 
 is not actuated by that motive which can alone render our 
 conduct meritorious. It is justly said, therefore, that to live 
 in the habitual practice of any one vice, is to throw off our 
 allegiance to conscience and to our Maker, as decidedly as if 
 we had violated all the rules which duty prescribes ; and it is 
 in this sense, I presume, that we ought to interpret that pas- 
 sage of the Sacred Writings, in which it is said, " Tie who 
 keepeth the whole law, and offendeth in one point, is guilty 
 of all. 
 
 The word virtue, however, (as I shall have occasion to re- 
 mark more particularly in the next section) is applied not 
 only to express a particular course of external conduct, but 
 to express a particular species or discription of human char- 
 acter. When so applied, it seems properly to denote a habit 
 of mind, as distinguished from occasional acts of duty. It 
 was formerly said that the characters of men receive their 
 
* SPECULATIVE MORALS. 79 
 
 denominations of covetous, voluptuous, ambitions, &c. from 
 the particular active principle which prevailingly influences the 
 conduct. A man, accordingly, whose ruling or habitual princi- 
 ple of action is a sense of duty, or a regard to what is right, may 
 be properly denominated virtuous. Agreeably to this view 
 of the subject, the ancient Pythagoreans defined virtue to be 
 ' Efi rou deovros, the oldest definition of virtue of which we 
 have any account, and one of the most unexceptionable .which, 
 is yet to be found in any system of philosophy. 
 
 This account of virtue coincides very nearly with what I 
 conceive to be Dr. Reid's, from some passages in his Essays 
 on the Active Powers of Man. Virtue he seems to consider 
 as consisting " in a fixed purpose or resolution to act accord- 
 ing to our sense of duty." 
 
 " Suppose a man" (says he) " to have exercised his intellec- 
 tual and moral faculties so far as to have distinct notions of 
 justice and injustice, and of the consequences of both, and 
 after due deliberation to have formed a fixed purpose to ad- 
 here inflexibly to justice, and never to handle the wages of 
 iniquity : 
 
 " Is not this the man whom we should call a just man ? 
 "We consider the moral virtues as inherent in the mind of a 
 good man, even where there is no opportunity of exercising 
 them. And what is it in the mind which we can call the vir- 
 tue of justice when it is not exercised? It can be nothing 
 but a fixed purpose or determination to act according to the 
 rules of justice when there is opportunity." 
 
 "With all this I perfectly agree. It is the filed purpose to 
 do what is right ^ >which evidently constitutes what we call a 
 virtuous disposition. But it appears to me that virtue, con- 
 sidered as an attribute of character, is more properly defined 
 by the habit which the fixed purpose gradually forms, than 
 by the fixed purpose itself. It is from the eternal habit alone 
 that other men can judge of the purpose ; and it is from the 
 
80 SPECULATIVE MOBALS. 
 
 uniformity and spontaneity of his habit that the individual 
 himself must judge how far his purposes are sincere and 
 steady. 
 
 I have said that this account of virtue coincides with the 
 definition of it given by the ancient Pythagoreans ; and it 
 also coincides with the opinion of Aristotle, by whom the 
 ethical doctrine of the Pythagoreans was rendered much more 
 complete and satisfactory. According to this philosopher the 
 different virtues are "practical habits, voluntary in their 
 origin, and agreeable to right reason." This last philosopher 
 seems indeed to have considered the subject of habits in 
 general more attentively than any other writer of antiquity ; 
 and he has suggested some important hints with respect to 
 them, which well deserve the attention of those who may turn 
 their thoughts to this very interesting class of facts in the 
 human constitution. 
 
 In referring to these doctrines of the ancient schools, I am 
 far from proceeding on the supposition, that questions of 
 science are to be decided by authority. But I own it always 
 appears to me to afford a strong presumption in favor of any 
 conclusion concerning the principles of human nature, when 
 we find it sanctioned by the judgment of those who have 
 been led to it by separate and independent processes of 
 reasoning. For the same reason I think it of consequence to 
 remark the coincidence between the account now given of 
 Virtue and that of Mr. Hobbes, one of the most sceptical, 
 but, at the same time, one of the most acute and original of 
 our English metaphysicians. " Virtue" (says he) " is the habit 
 of doing according to those laws of Nature that tend to our pres- 
 ervation; and vice is the habit of doing the contrary." The 
 definition indeed is faulty, in so far as it involves the author's 
 selfish theory of morals; but in considering the word virtue 
 as expressive of a habit of action, it approaches nearer to the 
 
O 
 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 81 
 
 truth tban the greater part of the definitions of virtne to be 
 found in the writings of the moderns. 
 
 These observations lead to an explanation of what has at 
 first sight the appearance of paradox in the ethical doctrines 
 of Aristotle, that where there is self-denial there is no virtue. 
 That the merit of particular actions is increased by the self- 
 denial with which they are accompanied cannot be disputed ; 
 but it is only when we are learning the practice of our duties 
 that this self-denial is exercised, (for the practice of morality, 
 as well as of everything else, is facilitated by repeated acts ;) 
 and therefore, if the word virtue be.employed to express that 
 habit of mind which it is the great object of a good man to 
 confirm, it will follow, that, in proportion as he approaches to 
 it, his efforts of self-denial must diminish, and that all occa- 
 sion for them would cease if his end were completely attained. 
 The definition of virtue given by Aristotle, as consisting in 
 " right practical habits voluntary in " their origin" is well 
 illustrated by what Plutarch has told us of the means by 
 which he acquired the mastery over his irascible passions. "I 
 have always approved" (says he) " of the engagements and 
 vows imposed on themselves from motives of religion, by cer- 
 tain philosophers, to abstain from wine, or from some other 
 favorite indulgence, for the space of a year. I have also ap- 
 proved of the determination taken by others not to deviate 
 from the truth, even in the lightest conversation, during a par- 
 ticular period. Comparing my own mind with theirs, and 
 conscious that I yielded to none of them in reverence for 
 God, I tasked myself, in the first instance, not to give way to 
 anger upon any occasion for several days. I afterwards ex- 
 tended this resolution to a month or longer ; and having thus 
 made a trial of what i could do, I have learned at length 
 never to speak but with gentleness, and so carefully to watch 
 over my temper as never to purchase the short and unprofita- 
 
 11 
 
82 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 ble gratification of venting my resentment at the expense of 
 a lasting and humiliating remorse." 
 
 I must not dismiss this topic without recommending, not 
 merely to the perusal, bat to the diligent study of all who 
 have a taste for moral inquiries, Aristotle's Nicomachean 
 Ethics, in which he has examined, with far greater accuracy 
 than any other author of antiquity, the nature of habits con- 
 sidered in their relation to our moral constitution. The whole 
 treatise is indeed of great value, and, with the exception of a 
 few passages, almost justifies the very warm and unqualified 
 eulogium pronounced upon it by a learned divine (Dr. Ken- 
 nel) before the University of Cambridge, an eulogium in 
 which he goes so very far as to assert of this work, " that it 
 affords not only the most perfect specimen of scientific mor- 
 ality, but exhibits also the powers of the most compact and 
 best constructed system which the human intellect ever pro- 
 duce^ upon any subject ; enlivening occasionally great se- 
 verity of method, and strict precision of terms, by the sub- 
 limest though soberest splendor of diction." 
 
 For the use of English readers an excellent translation of 
 Aristotle's Ethics and also of his Politics has been published 
 by Dr. Gillies ; and indeed I do not know of any treatises, 
 among the many remains of antiquity, which could have been 
 selected as a more important accession to the stock of our na- 
 tional literature. 
 
 On an Ambiguity in the words Right and Wrong, Virtue 
 and Vice. The epithets Eight and Wrong, Virtuous and 
 Vicious, are applied sometimes to external actions, and som- 
 times to the intentions of the agent. A similar ambiguity 
 may be remarked in the corresponding words in other lan- 
 guages. 
 
 This ambiguity is owing to various causes, which it is not 
 necessary at present to trace. Among other circumstances, 
 
SPECULATIVE MORALS. b& 
 
 it is owing to the association of ideas, which, as it leads us 
 to connect notions of elegance or of meanness with many ar- 
 bitrary expressions in language, so it often leads ns to con- 
 nect notions of right and wrong with external actions, consid- 
 ered abstractly from the motives which produced them. It 
 is owing (at least in part) to this, that a man who has been 
 involuntarily the author of any calamity to another, can hardly 
 by any reasoning banish his feelings of remorse ; and, on 
 the other hand, however wicked our purposes may have 
 been,. if by any accident we have been prevented from carry- 
 ing them into execution, we are apt to consider ourselves as 
 far less culpable than if we had perpetrated the crimes that 
 we had intended. It is much in the same manner that we 
 think it less criminal to mislead others by hints, or looks, or 
 actions, than by a verbal lie ; and in general, that we think 
 our guilt diminished if we can only contrive to accomplish 
 our ends without employing those external signs, or those ex- 
 ternal means, with which we have been accustomed to asso- 
 ciate the notions of guilt and infamy. Shakespeare has pain- 
 ted with philosophical accuracy this natural subterfuge of a 
 vicious mind, in which the sense of duty still retains some 
 authority, in one of the exquisite scenes between King John 
 and Hubert : 
 
 ' ' Hadat thou but shook thy head, and made a pause 
 When I spake dark y what I purposed ; 
 Or turned an eye of doubt upon my face ; 
 Or bade me tell my tale in express words; 
 Deep shame had struck me dumb, made me break off, 
 And those thy fears might have wrought fears iu me. 
 But thou didst understand me by my signs, 
 And Didst in signs again parley with sin. n 
 
 As the twofold application of the words Right and Wrong 
 to the intentions of the mind, and to external actions, has a 
 tendency, in the common business of life, to affect our opin- 
 ions concerning the merits of individuals, so it has misled the 
 
84 SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 
 
 theoretical speculations of some very eminent philosophers 
 in their inquiries concerning the principles of morals. It was 
 to obviate the confusion of ideas arising from this ambiguity 
 of language that the distinction between absolute and relative 
 rectitude was introduced into ethics ; and as the distinction is 
 equally just and important, it will be proper to explain it par- 
 ticularly, and to point out its application to one or two of the 
 questions which have been perplexed by that vagueness of 
 expression which it is our object at present to correct. 
 
 An action may be said to be absolutely right, when it is in 
 every respect suitable to the circumstances in which the 
 agent is placed ; or, in other words, when it is such as, with 
 perfectly good intentions, under the guidance of an enlight- 
 ened and well-formed understanding, he would have per- 
 formed. 
 
 An action may be said to be relatively right, when the 
 intentions of the agent are sincerely good, whether his con- 
 duct be suitable to his circumstances or not. 
 
 According to these definitions, an action may be right in 
 one sense and wrong in another ; an ambiguity in language, 
 which, how obvious soever, has not always been attended to 
 by the writers on morals. 
 
 It is the relative rectitude of an action which determines 
 the moral desert of the agent ; but it is its absolute rectitude 
 which determines its utility to his wordly interests, and to the 
 welfare of society. And it is only so far as absolute and rela- 
 tive rectitude coincide, that utility can be affirmed to be a 
 quality of virtue. 
 
 A strong sense of duty will indeed induce us to avail our- 
 selves of all the talents we possess, and of all the information 
 within our reach, to act agreeably to the rules of absolute 
 rectitude. And if we fail in doing so, our negligence is crimi- 
 nal. " Crimes committed through ignorance," (as Aristotle 
 has very judiciously observed,) " are only excusable when the 
 
SPECULATIVE MOKALS. 85 
 
 ignorance is involuntary ; for when the cause of it lies in our- 
 selves, it is then justly punishable. The ignorance of those 
 laws which all may know if they will, does not excuse the , 
 breach of them ; and neglect is not pardonable where atten- 
 tion ought to be bestowed. But perhaps we are incapable of 
 attention. This, however, is our own fault : since the inca- 
 pacity has been contracted by our continual carelessness ; as 
 the evils of injustice and intemperance are contracted by the 
 daily commission of iniquity, and the daily indulgence in vo- 
 luptuousness. For such as our actions are, such must our 
 habits become." 
 
 Notwithstanding, however, the truth and the importance of 
 this doctrine, the general principle already stated remains in- 
 controvertible, that in every particular instance our duty con- 
 sists in doing what appears to us to be right at the time ; and 
 if, while we follow this rule, we should incur any blame, our 
 demerit does not arise from acting according to an erroneous 
 judgment, but from our previous misemployment of the means 
 we possessed for correcting the errors to which our judgment 
 is liable. 
 
 From these principles it follows, that actions, although ma- 
 terially right, are not meritorious with respect to the 
 agent, unless performed from a sense of duty. This con- 
 clusion, indeed, has been disputed by Mr. Hume, upon 
 grounds which I cannot stop to examine; but its truth is ne- 
 cessarily implied in the foregoing reasonings, and it is perfectly 
 consonant to the sentiments of the soundest moralists, both 
 ancient and modern. Aristotle inculcates this doctrine in 
 many parts of his Ethics. In one passage he represents it as 
 essential to virtuous actions, that the actions are done ivsxa <rx 
 and in another place he says, stfn y^ au<ryj ^ su^a^/a 
 
 To the same purpose, also, Lord Shaftesbury. " In this case 
 alone it is we call any creature worthy or virtuous, when it 
 
86 SPECULATIVE MOBALS. 
 
 can attain to the speculation or sense of what is morally good 
 or ill, admirable or blameable, right or wrong. For though 
 we may vulgarly call an ill horse vicious, yet we never say of 
 a good one, nor of any mere changeling or idiot, though never 
 so good-natured, that he is worthy or virtuous. So that if a 
 creature be generous, kind, constant, and compassionate, yet, 
 if he cannot reflect on what he himself does or sees others do, 
 so as to take notice of what is worthy and honest, and make 
 that notice or conception of worth and honesty to be an ob- 
 ject of his affection, he has not the character of being virtu- 
 ous, for thus, and no otherwise, he is capable of having a sense 
 of right or wrong," And elsewhere he observes, " that if 
 that which restrains a person and holds him to a virtuous-like 
 behavior, be no affection towards virtue or good ness itself, but 
 towards private good merel} 7 , he is not in reality the more 
 virtuous." Stewards Active and Moral Powers, p. 443 
 
 (35.) CHAPTER ON THE NATURE OF VIRTUE FROM BISHOP 
 
 BUTLER. 
 
 That which renders beings capable of moral government, 
 is their having a moral nature, and moral faculties of percep- 
 tion and of action. Brute creatures are impressed and actu- 
 ated by various instincts and propensions: so also are we. 
 But, additional to this, we have a capacity of reflecting upon, 
 actions and characters, and making them an object to our 
 thought: and on our doing this, we naturally and unavoid- 
 ably approve some actions, under the peculiar view of their 
 being virtuous and of good desert ; and disapprove others, as 
 vicious and of ill desert. That we have this moral approving 
 and disapproving faculty, is certain from our experiencing it 
 in ourselves, and recognizing it in each other. It appears 
 from our exercising it unavoidably, in the approbation and 
 disapprobation even of feigned characters : from the words, 
 right and wrong, odious and amiable, base and worthy, with 
 
1 SPECULATIVE MOEALS. 87 
 
 many others of like signification in all languages, applied to 
 actions and characters : from the many written systems of 
 morals which suppose it ; since it cannot be imagined, that all 
 these authors, throughout all these treatises, had abosomtely 
 no meaning at all to their words, or a meaning merely chimeri- 
 cal : from our natural sense of gratitude, which implies a dis- 
 tinction between merely being the instrument of good, and 
 intending it : from the like distinction, every one makes, be" 
 tween injury and mere harm, which, Hobbes says, is peculiar 
 to mankind ; and between injury and just punishment a 
 distinction plainly natural prior to the consideration of human 
 laws. It is manifest, great part of common language, and of 
 common behaviour, over the world, is formed upon supposi- 
 tion of such a moral faculty ; whether called conscience, 
 moral reason, moral sense, or divine reason ; whether con- 
 sidered as a sentiment of the understanding, or as a percep- 
 tion of the heart, or, which seems the truth, as including 
 both. Nor is it at all doubtful, in the general, what course 
 of action this faculty, or practical discerning power within us 
 approves, and what it disapproves. For, as much as it has 
 been disputed wherein virtue consists, or whatever ground for 
 doubt there may be about particulars, yet, in general, there 
 is in reality an universally acknowledged standard of it. It 
 is that which all ages and all countries have made profession 
 of in public ; it is that which every man you meet puts on 
 the show of; it is that which the primary and fundamental 
 laws of all civil constitutions, over the face of the earth make 
 it their business and endeavour to enforce the practice of 
 upon mankind ; namely, justice, veracity, and regard to com- 
 mon good. It being manifest then, in general, that we have 
 such a faculty or discernment as this, it may be of use to 
 remark some things, more distinctly, concerning it. 
 
 1st. It ought to be observed, that the object of this faculty 
 is actions, comprehending under that name, active or practical 
 
88 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 principles ; those principles from which men would act, if 
 occasions and circumstances gave them power ; and which? 
 when fixed and habitual in any person, we call his character. 
 It does not appear that brutes have the least reflex sense of 
 actions as distinguished from events ; or that will and design, 
 which constitute the very nature of actions as such, are at all 
 an object to their perception. But to ours they are ; and 
 they are the object, and the only one, of the approving and 
 disapproving faculty. Acting, conduct, behaviour, abstract 
 ed from all regard to what is, in fact and event, the conse- 
 quence of it, is itself the natural object of the moral discern- 
 ment, as speculative truth and falsehood is of speculative 
 reason. Intention of such and such consequences, indeed, is 
 always included ; for it is part of the action itself; but though 
 the intended good or bad consequences do not follow, we have 
 exactly the same sense of the action as if they did. In like 
 manner, we think well or ill of characters, abstracted from 
 all consideration ot the good or evil, which persons of such 
 characters have it actually in their power to do. "We never, 
 in the moral way, applaud or blame either ourselves or others, 
 for what we enjoy or what we suffer, or for having impres- 
 sions made upon us which we consider as altogether out of 
 my power ; but only for what we do or would have done, 
 had it been in our power ; or for what we leave undone which 
 we might have done, or would have left undone though we 
 could have done it. 
 
 y2d. Our sense or discernment of actions, as morally good 
 or evil, implies in it a sense or discernment of them as of 
 good or ill desert. It may be difficult to explain this percep- 
 tion, so as to answer all the questions which may be asked 
 concerning it ; but every one speaks of such and such actions 
 as deserving punishment ; and it is not, I suppose, pretended, 
 that they have absolutely no meaning at all to the expression. 
 Now, the meaning plainly is not, that we conceive it for the 
 
SPECULATIVE MORALS. 89 
 
 good of society that the doer of such actions should be made 
 to suffer : for if unhappily it were resolved, that a man who, 
 by some innocent action, was infected with the plague, should 
 be left to perish, lest, by other people coming near him, the in- 
 fection should spread ; no one would say he deserved this treat- 
 ment. Innocence and ill desert are inconsistent ideas. Ill de- 
 sert always supposes guilt ; and if one be not part of the 
 other, yet they are evidently and naturally connected in our 
 mind. The sight of a man in misery raises our compassion 
 towards him ; and, if this misery be inflicted on him by 
 another, our iudgination against the author of it. But when 
 we are informed that the sufferer is a villain, and is punished 
 only for his treachery or cruelty, our compassion exceedingly 
 lessens, and, in many instances, our indignation wholly sub- 
 sides. Now, what produces this effect is the conception of 
 that in the sufferer which we call ill desert. Upon consider- 
 ing, then, or viewing together, our notion of vice and that of 
 misery, there results a third, that of ill desert. And thus 
 there is in human creatures an association of the two ideas, 
 natural and moral evil, wickedness and punishment. If this 
 association were merely artificial or accidental, it were noth- 
 ing ; but being most unquestionably natural, it greatly con- 
 cerns us to attend to it, instead of endeavoring- to explain it 
 away. 
 
 3d. "Without inquiring how far, and in what sense, virtue 
 is resolvable into benevolence, and vice into the want of it ; 
 it may be proper to observe, that benevolence, and the want 
 of it, singly considered, are in no sort the whole of virtue and 
 vice. For if this were the case, in the review of one's own 
 character, or that of others, our moral understanding and 
 moral sense would be indifferent to everything, but the de- 
 grees in which benevolence permitted, and the degress 
 in which it was wanting. That is, we should neither 
 approve of benevolence to some persons rather than to others, 
 
 12 
 
90 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 nor disapprove injustice and falsehood, upon any other ac- 
 count, than merely as an overbalance of happiness was fore- 
 seen likely to be produced by the first, and of misery by the 
 second. But now, on the contrary, suppose two men com- 
 petitors for anything whatever, which would be of equal ad- 
 vantage to each of them ; though nothing, indeed, would be 
 more impertinent than for a stranger to busy himself to get 
 one of them preferred to the other, yet such endeavor would 
 be virtue, in behalf of a friend or benefactor, abstracted from 
 all consideration of distant consequences ; as that examples 
 of gratitude, and the cultivation of friendship, would be of 
 general good to the world. Again, suppose one man should 
 by fraud or violence, take from another the fruit of his labor, 
 with intent to give it to a third, who, he thought, would have 
 as much pleasure from it as would balance the pleasure which 
 the first possessor would have had in the enjoyment, and his 
 vexation in the loss of it ; suppose also, that no bad conse- 
 quences would follow ; yet such an action would surely be 
 vicious. Nay, farther, were treachery, violence, and injus- 
 tice, no otherwise vicious than as foreseen likely to produce 
 an overbalance of misery to society ; then, if in any case a 
 man could procure to himself so great advantage by an act of 
 injustice, as the whole foreseen inconvenience likely to be 
 brought upon others by it would amount to, such a piece of 
 injustice would not be faulty or vicious at all, because it would 
 be no more than, in any other case, for a man to prefer his 
 own satisfaction to another's in equal degrees. The fact, then, 
 appears to be, that we are constituted so as to condemn false- 
 hood, unprovoked violence, injustice, and to approve of be- 
 nevolence to some, preferably to others, abstracted from all 
 consideration which conduct is likeliest to produce an over- 
 balance of happiness or misery. And therefore, were the 
 Author of nature to propose nothing to himself as an end 
 but the production of happiness were his moral character 
 
SPECULATIVE MORALS. 91 
 
 merely that of benevolence ; yet ours is not so. Upon that 
 supposition, indeed, the only reason of his giving us the 
 above-mentioned approbation of benevolence to some persons 
 rather than others, and disapprobation of falsehood, unpro- 
 voked violence, and injustice, must be, that he foresaw this 
 constitution of our nature would produce more happiness than 
 forming us with a temper of mere general benevolence. But 
 still, since this is our constitution, falsehood, violence, injus- 
 tice, must be vice in us, and benevolence to some preferably 
 to others, virtue, abstracted from all consideration of the over- 
 balance of evil or good which they may appear likely to pro- 
 duce. 
 
 ISTow, if human creatures are endued with such a moral 
 nature as we have been explaining, or with a moral faculty, 
 the natural object of which is actions ; moral government 
 must consist in rendering them happy and unhappy, in reward- 
 ing and punishing them, as they follow, neglect, or depart 
 from the moral rule of action interwoven in their nature, or 
 suggested and enforced by this moral faculty ; in rewarding 
 and punishing them upon account of their so doing. 
 
 I am not sensible that I have, in this fifth observation, con- 
 tradicted what any author designed to assert. But some of 
 great and distinguished merit have, I think, expressed them- 
 selves in a manner which may occasion some danger to care- 
 less readers, of imagining the whole of virtue to consist in 
 singly aiming, according to the best of their judgment, at 
 promoting the happiness of mankind in the present state ; 
 and the whole of vice, in doing what they foresee, or might 
 foresee, is likely to produce an overbalance of unhappiness 
 in it ; than which mistakes none can be conceived more ter- 
 rible. For it is certain, that some of the most shocking in- 
 stances of injustice, adultery, murder, perjury, and even of 
 persecution, may, in many supposable cases, not have the 
 appearance of being likely to produce an overbalance of mis- 
 
92 SPECULATIVE MORALS. 
 
 ery in the present state ; perhaps sometimes may have the 
 contrary appearance. For this reflection might easily be car- 
 ried on ; but I forbear The happiness of the world is the 
 
 concern of him who is the Lord and the Proprietor of it ; 
 nor do we know what we are about, when we endeavor to pro- 
 mote the good of mankind in any ways but those which he 
 has directed ; that is, indeed, in all ways not contrary to ve- 
 racity and justice. I speak thus upon supposition of persons 
 really endeavoring, in some sort, to do good without regard 
 to these. But the truth seems to be, that such supposed en- 
 deavors proceed almost always from ambition, the spirit of 
 party, or some indirect principle, concealed perhaps in great 
 measure from persons themselves. And. though it is our 
 business and our duty to endeavor, within the bounds of ve- 
 racity and justice, to contribute to the ease, convenience, and 
 even cheerfulness and diversion of our fellow-creatures ; yet, 
 from our short views, it is greatly uncertain whether this en- 
 deavor will, in particular instances, produce an overbalance 
 of happiness upon the whole ; since so many and distant 
 things must come into the account. And that which makes 
 it our duty is, that there is some appearance that it will, and 
 no positive appearance sufficient to balance this on the con- 
 trary side ; and also, that such benevolent endeavor is a cul- 
 tivation of that most excellent of all virtuous principles, the 
 active principle of benevolence* Butler's Works, p. 270. 
 
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