INTRODUCTION.

1. Moral Philosophy is the science of what ought to be in human character and conduct. In this lies its fundamental idea, and by this is described the object with which it is versant. Whilst other sciences relating to man aim at the scientific theory of what is, Moral Philosophy has for its special province and aim the scientific theory of what ought to be. "The quid est," says Dr Chalmers, "is not to be confounded with the quid oparet; and moral truth is in every way as distinct from the facts or principles which make up the actual constitution of the human mind, as mathematical truth is distinct from the laws and properties of the material world. The question, What are the affections or purposes of the mind? is wholly distinct and dissimilar from the question which relates to the rightness and wrongness of those affections and purposes. My knowledge that such a purpose or passion exists is one thing; my judgment of its character is another. In the one case it is viewed historically as a fact; in the other case it is viewed morally as a vice or a virtue. In the one case it belongs to mental, in the other to moral science." Generally, moral science proposes to determine the grounds on which moral distinctions rest; the criterion or standard of rightness and wrongness in actions; the nature, conditions, and principles of virtue; the place and operations of conscience in the human economy; the laws and divisions of duty; and, in short, all that goes to the determination of what man has to be and to do in order to acquit himself of the obligations under which he has been laid by God.

2. The proper object of this science is actions,—meaning by that term all that results from the energy of volition. Whilst Psychology contemplates what is given in consciousness simply as phenomenal, and aims at discovering the laws under which the facts so obtained may be reduced, Moral Philosophy goes out upon the field of man's active life, and by a standard previously fixed, determines what actions are good and what bad; and thus dictates what course of conduct it behoves man to follow.

3. All human actions, however, do not fall within the province of this science. The Greeks distinguished between ἐποίησις and ἔργον, doing and making; though all do not agree as to the limits of the distinction. Without entering here on these differences, we may content ourselves with what Aristotle says on the subject:—"The end of making (or production) is different (i.e., from the making itself); but of doing it is not so, for the well-doing itself is the end." "Making and doing differ specifically from each other. . . . Now life is a doing, not a making." Prudence has to do with practice,—that is, with things which are the object of choice or aversion, and which it rests with ourselves to do or not to do. Nor is the faculty for doing and the faculty for making the same; for the latter has an end distinct from the making, as in the building art, where, since there is the making of houses, an end distinct from the building itself—namely, the house—is proposed; and it is the same with the joiner's art and others that have to do with making. In respect, however, of the practical, there is no other end besides the doing itself; but the very energy and action is the end. Hence prudence has to do with practice and practical things, but not with making and things made."

These passages seem sufficient to establish that the distinction between these two, in the mind of Aristotle, was determined by the fact, that the one class of actions is prompted by the emotive principles of our nature, and terminates in the satisfaction of the particular desire or passion by which the action is prompted; whilst the other class is more under intellectual control, and finds its terminus in the production of something distinct from itself. This is the distinction between moral conduct and productive activity; and it serves to define still more closely the boundaries of our science. Moral Philosophy has to do with those actions which are directed to the gratification of the emotive principles of our nature; it has nothing to do immediately with those actions the end of which is production, though mediately and indirectly it may have to do with these, inasmuch as they are sometimes the instruments by which the gratification of the desires is secured or sought. With the building of a house it has no concern; but it may have much to say in reference to the proposal to build it, the end for which it is built, and the relations to each other of those engaged in building it.

4. Of those actions which fall within its sphere Moral Philosophy has to determine the rightness or the wrongness, and consequently to indicate what practices are to be followed and what shunned. This, however, presupposes some standard of rectitude by which the moral character of actions may be determined; and this again presupposes a ground or basis of moral distinctions on which this standard rests. Before proceeding, therefore, to delineate a scheme of practical rectitude, it is necessary to institute an inquiry into the nature of rectitude itself, and to ask what is its true basis or primal reason, and what its just and fittest standard.

5. An action implies an agent; a moral action a moral agent. The consideration of moral actions, therefore, naturally leads to the consideration of moral agents; and here the question which arises is, In what relation do moral agents stand to rectitude? The solution of this question involves an inquiry into man's moral constitution, into the position he occupies as the subject of a moral government, and into what constitutes the virtue or moral excellence of one so placed.

6. Having determined these points, we may proceed to consider the practical course which the principles thus ascertained indicate as that which man ought to pursue. This is tantamount to an inquiry into the duties which devolve upon us as under moral government; for the sum of human duties comprises the whole of what, as an intelligent and accountable agent, man has to attend to.

7. "Every art and every method," says Aristotle, "likewise deed and choice, seems to aim at some good; wherefore the good is well defined to be that which all things aim at." But if all the actions of men aim at some good, it becomes necessary to inquire what is the sovereign good or supreme end of human activity. This will be found to be happiness,—our being's end and aim. But if all men's actions are aimed at happiness, and at the same time must be in accordance with virtue, it becomes necessary to inquire in what relation happiness and virtue stand to each other,—whether they are identical, correlate, or subordinate the one to the other.

8. The science of Moral Philosophy thus branches off into four principal parts:—I. The theory of rectitude in actions; II. The theory of virtue in individuals; III. The scheme of practical duties; IV. The doctrine of happiness.

Obs. 1. Were the usage familiar in moral science which has been so extensively and with so much advantage followed in physical science, of naming separate branches by words compounded from the Greek, with λόγος, discourse or science, we might conveniently designate these four divisions of our science thus: I. Orthoetology, from ὀρθός, rectitude; II. Arctology, from ἀρκτός, virtue; III. Deontology, from τὸ δίκαιον, that which is binding or due; and IV. Eudaimonism, from εὐδαιμονία, happiness. Of these terms, some have been actually employed, and the others might with equal right be introduced.

Obs. 2. To some it has appeared that there is no valid distinction to be taken between rectitude as a quality of action, and virtue as an attribute of individuals. Thus Dr Thomas Brown affirms, that "to say that any action which we are considering is right or wrong, and to say that the person who performed it has moral merit or demerit, are to say precisely the same thing;" and again, "the action, if it be anything more than a mere insignificant word, is a certain agent in certain circumstances, willing and producing a certain effect." Many passages of similar import might be cited from his lectures, for he insists upon this point with an almost wearisome iteration. Now it may be admitted that to say "that action is right" and to say of the man who performed it, "he has acted virtuously," may often mean substantially the same thing; but it by no means follows from this that in both cases the mind is contemplating exactly the same object. Two forms of speech may convey the same general sense, and yet the things spoken of may not be identical. In the case before us the action is viewed in relation to a certain objective standard—that of rectitude; whilst the agent is viewed in relation to a certain subjective law—that of conscience. Moreover, though the rectitude of the action and the virtue of the agent may be inseparable, they are capable of existing separately. There may be virtue in the agent where the action itself is wrong; and there may be rectitude in an action where there is no virtue in the agent. This is so familiar a fact, that Dr Brown could not overlook it; but the way in which he endeavours to obviate the objection thence arising to his own doctrine is anything but satisfactory. Thus, in order to account for our approving an action as right, whilst we cannot approve of the individual who performs it, he supposes that we imagine the action as proceeding from a totally different individual, and as performed under totally different circumstances. Thus, it seems, we do distinguish between the action and the agent as respects moral worth, commending the one whilst we condemn the other. But we accomplish this by interpolating a second agent, an imaginary person, to whom we ascribe the action. The simple answer to this over-argute philosophy is, in the first place, that it is false in fact; for we do nothing of the sort affirmed; and in the second place, that it is unsound in principle; for how could an imaginary person confer a character on a real act? If the act have no moral character apart from the agent, then an imaginary agent can confer only an imaginary character. Dr Brown was betrayed into this fallacy by his peculiar theory of morals, of which more afterwards.

9. Moral Philosophy has often been extended so as to embrace other sciences, which, though closely allied to it, are yet capable of being investigated apart from it, and are most advantageously so investigated. Aristotle, who regarded morals as a branch of politics, describes the science as ἡ περὶ τὰ ἀνθρώπων φιλοσοφία, "the philosophy pertaining to human affairs." This is sufficiently comprehensive, and would bring under one science not only Morals, Politics, and Economics, but also Psychology, Logic, Rhetoric, and Ästhetics. This general statement, however, must be qualified by what the author elsewhere insists on respecting the distinction between πράξεις and ποιήματα. It will then appear that Aristotle regarded as the proper province of moral science those actions which arise from passion, desire, or affection, with all the social arrangements and relations to which they lead. He thus classes under one general science,—Ethics, or the science of personal conduct; Politics, or the science of the relations of citizenship; and Economics, or the science of domestic relations. To this arrangement no objection can be urged, so far as the matter of the science is concerned, provided it be understood that the relations of citizenship and of the household are considered only under their moral aspect, and apart from legal, fiscal, or prudential considerations; but it seems better to confine the term Politics to the science of social and civil relations, in so far forth as these are determined by positive enactments or customs; and the term Economics to the management of households or communities, in respect of their physical and financial interests.

A recent writer on Moral Philosophy has claimed for it a province nearly as wide as the words of Aristotle, in all their unqualified breadth, would assert. "The laws," says he, "of which Moral Philosophy is in quest are the laws of human activity; the theory of that unceasing spirit of pursuit which every human action displays; the systematic view of all those various phenomena by which the instinctive restlessness of our nature is evidenced." But if all human activity is to be included within the sphere of Moral Philosophy, this science will absorb the entire range of speculation and of art, leaving only the mathematical and physical sciences to be prosecuted as separate branches. That the author is prepared to assert this wide claim appears evident from his ranking not only Politics and Natural Theology under Moral Philosophy, but also Rhetoric, Poetry, and Logic, all of which "have their foundation in the active nature of man." It is difficult to see, however, what is gained by this clubbing of sciences, the materials and methods of which are different. It is no doubt true that all sciences which investigate the laws of human performance "have their foundation in the active nature of man;" but this is no more a reason for all these being reduced under one head, than the fact that all knowledges have their foundation in the intellect, is a reason for every science whatever being treated as a branch of Psychology. There is surely a wide and essential difference between performances which terminate on an intellectual composi-

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1 Nicom. Eth., at the beginning. 2 Thus there is a work entitled Aristologie, oder Philosophische Tugendlehre, by Wilh. Trang, Krag; another, entitled Arctologia, by Dr Innes; and Bowring has designated the book in which he unfolds the ethical system of Bentham by the title of Deontology, or the Science of Morality. 3 Lectures, vol. iii., p. 568. 4 Aristotle distinctly recognises the distinction between rectitude in actions and virtue in the agent. Compare, e.g., his reasonings in chapter iii. (iv.), book ii., of his Nicom. Ethics, where he argues that a man cannot become a good man simply by doing what is good, as he may become a musician simply by playing tunes; "for," says he, "it is not with virtues as with arts; in the latter the doing of the thing is what is required,—it is enough if anyhow it be done; but in the former it is not enough that the thing be done,—it is also required that the door of it be rightly affected," &c. 5 Nicom. Eth., b. x., c. iii., p. 350 of Lancaster's edit. 6 Hampden, Course of Lectures introductory to the study of Moral Philosophy, p. 76.

The teaching of Moral Philosophy, as comprehending the science of Mind as well as of Morals, has been complained of by Dr Chalmers as an evil connected with the scheme of instruction pursued in the Scottish universities, where, says he, Moral Philosophy has been made to embrace, along with its proper object, "the whole physiology of the mind, with all its feelings and all its faculties;" and also "the laws and methods of the human understanding." The published writings of Reid, Stewart, and Brown go to corroborate this statement; for all of these philosophers, though occupants of the Moral Philosophy chair, deemed it their province to devote a large portion of their lectures to mental science, including Psychology, Aesthetics, and Logic. Practically the only disadvantage resulting from this arrangement has been, that too heavy a burden has been laid upon one solitary professorship; for by none of these eminent men, nor by any of their colleagues or successors, has the mistake been committed of in any degree confounding the two great branches of knowledge which their course of lectures was made to embrace. Nor has the union of the two in the prelections of one teacher been without its advantages. Important as it is to keep the branches distinct, it is yet possible to make the separation between them too precise and too broad. Mental Philosophy is not the science of morals, nor Moral Philosophy the science of mind; but nevertheless there can be no doubt that the two are closely related, and that it is not desirable that he who would accurately apprehend the one should wholly pretermit, or only carelessly scan the other. Part of the field is common to the two, in so far at least as the objects of study are concerned; for the whole of the emotional or conative part of our nature belongs alike to Psychology and to Moral Philosophy. Still, the two provinces are distinct; and whether cultivated by the same parties or not, they are best treated of as separate knowledges.

Moral Philosophy has also been sometimes extended so as to embrace Casuistry, Jurisprudence, and Political Philosophy. With these it undoubtedly stands closely associated; still they are not to be confounded with it. Paley says that Moral Philosophy and Casuistry "mean the same thing;" but it is not so. The two differ as Mechanical Philosophy differs from the art of the mechanician; the former having for its end the establishing of the principles of morals, the latter having for its end the application of these principles to difficult cases, such as actually or potentially lie within the sphere of individual experience, especially such as seem to involve an apparent collision of duties. Moral Philosophy has this in common with Jurisprudence, that both have to consider man in relation to jus; but in the former it is jus as determined by the unwritten law of nature, that comes into consideration; in the latter it is jus as expressed in statutes and conventions, that forms the subject of inquiry. Moral Philosophy has to expound the duties of man as a member of civil society, and therefore comes very close upon the province of Political Philosophy; but it belongs to the latter exclusively to examine the structure of governments, and to determine their comparative advantages in relation to the main end of government,—a subject sufficient in extent, variety, and importance, to entitle it to become the topic of a special science.

10. The ancient Greeks gave to the science of Morals the title of Ethics, ἠθικά, from ἠθος, mos; and this term has been much used by modern writers. It has been objected to, on the ground of being not sufficiently comprehensive, by some writers, who would confine it to that part of moral science which has to do with the intercourse of individuals in private life. Thus Bishop Hampden objects to it on the ground that, by adopting it we exclude Natural Theology and Politics from the domain of Moral Philosophy. To this conclusion he and others have been led by unduly attending to the mere etymological force of the word. It seems, however, to have escaped them, that, on the same ground, we ought to discard the term moral; for "moral" is the synonyme of "ethical," with this difference, according to Quintilian, that ἠθος involves more the idea of rectitude than mos, and is consequently the fitter root of the two from which to form a designation of the science of right conduct. But in all cases of this sort etymology can be allowed very little weight in determining the sense and compass of the terms. Here usage, "quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi," must be allowed its full rights; and the same authority which extended "moral," so as to make it embrace all questions relating to man's duty and obligations, can give the same extension to the term "ethical." If, then, it shall be found convenient to employ the term Ethics instead of Moral Philosophy, it only needs usage to sanction the change to justify its being adopted. To us it appears that this necessary and authoritative sanction has been given, and we regard it as desirable that the change of terminology thus justified should be followed. The convenience of the change is the least of its advantages. In addition to this, by using the term Ethics we not only follow the analogy of cognate sciences,—such as Metaphysics, Dialectics, Aesthetics,—but we set free the term Moral to be used, in its antithesis to mathematical and material, as comprehensive of all the sciences resting upon probable evidence; and more than this, we obtain for our own science a more just and exact appellation than that we would supplant. On this last point the following observations from the pen of one of the ablest living thinkers of Germany are worthy of consideration:—"The best name for this science is Ethic, or doctrine of morals (Sittenlehre), as is clear from the relation of this word to the three fundamental concepts of morals,—Law or Duty, Virtue, and Chief Good. Mos or mores (whence Disciplina Moralis) respects rather the outward phenomenon than the inner source, and is not commensurate with the Greek ἠθος. Mores denotes, indeed, the character, but not the comprehensive source; whilst, on the other hand, ἠθος, originally the Ionic form of ἠθος, includes the habit, the appertaining conduct; and that not merely as an empirical manner (mos), which may be evil, but as what is sanctioned, what is according to order and rule. As the word, however, denotes that in which one is at home, in his element (ἠθος is allied to ἐστι and ἐστιν, as sitte, custom, is to sitzen, to sit, so that the ethos denotes the inner ground-tone), it

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1 Moral Philosophy, Works, vol. v., p. 17. 2 Moral Philosophy, b. i., ch. i., at the beginning. 3 Die Casuistik ist kein besonderer wesentlicher theil eines systems der Moral, noch auch eine besondere wissenschaft, sondern nur eine anwendung der moralischen maximen auf einzelne schwierigere fälle, oder eine nähere bestimmung der allgemeinen vorschriften und formeln in beziehung auf solche fälle. (Staudlin, Lehrbuch der Moral, 2d ed., p. 17.) See also Kant's Tugendlehre, § 18, in his Collected Works, edited by Roseneranz and Schubert, vol. ix., p. 261; Edinb. Rev., vol. xxvii., p. 231; Hallam's Hist. of Literature, vol. ii., p. 493, 2d ed.; Whewell's Elements of Morality, vol. i., p. 243. 4 Lectures, pp. 36, 37. 5 Ἠθος, ejus nomine, ut quoque sentio, caret sermo Romanus, mores appellantur, atque inde pars quoque illa philosophiae ἠθική moralis est dicta. Sed ipsam rel naturam spectanti mihi non tam mores significari videtur quam morum quaedam proprietates. (Inst. Orat., vi. 2.) 6 Vol. XV. follows that it embraces, along with the objective law, still more definitely the subjective living conditionality, which, as good, is virtue,—consequently what we term morality (sittlichkeit) whilst good-breeding, decent behaviour (sittigkeit, sittsamkeit) express only the scrupulous conformity to social customs presumed to be good. But not only is there an ethos of individual persons, but also of communities,—for instance, in the family spirit; nay, the moral which specifies itself in moral communities has in the ethos of these its subsistence, its subjective-objective being, so that also the concept of good is incorporated with the words ethos and ethic, and so there lies therein also the transition to the forms in which the highest good is presented.

11. By some Moral Philosophy has been regarded as a branch of Theology; while others have proposed to treat Natural Ethics and Christian Ethics as distinct subjects. Instead of adopting either view, it would be probably better to restrict Theology to the investigation of what has been revealed to us concerning God and his methods of dealing with his creatures; whilst Ethics would be versant with man's moral relations to God, and to those creatures of God, with which he is in any way connected. And in exploring this field, it seems wise neither to overlook what the Scriptures inculcate respecting man's moral relations and duties on the one hand, nor on the other to count it sufficient simply exegetically to explicate from the sacred page a list of moral truths, without referring them to their philosophical basis, or assigning them their proper place in a scientific system. There is one department, however, of scriptural Ethics which must be suffered to fall under the head of Theology,—viz., that which embraces the special duties arising to the Christian, as such, out of the new relations into which the extraordinary scheme of human redemption brings all those who enjoy its benefits. This, in the strictest acceptation of the term, is Christian Ethics, because setting forth duties binding, not on man as man, but on such men only as are partakers of the redemption which is in Christ.

12. Moral Philosophy is not to be ranked among the inductive sciences. From observing the moral constitution of man we may indeed draw the conclusion, that the final cause of such a constitution is, that man should be under moral government; but we cannot by this process discover what constitutes morality, what lies at its basis, or what expresses its principles. As little could we construct a system of Ethics from merely observing the conduct of men, or collecting their opinions on moral questions: at the utmost this would only enable us to declare empirically what they for the most part may have agreed to regard as morally right or wrong; it would give us no criterion by which to determine scientifically whether the judgment so reached was the just one. The question, "Quid oportet?" is one "to the solution of which," as Dr Chalmers observes, "we are guided by another light than that of experience. This question lies without the domain of the inductive philosophy, and the science to whose cognisance it belongs shines upon us by the light of its own immediate evidence."3 "By induction," says another writer, "from particular observation of what transpires in our own minds, we may indeed ascertain that we are accountable; that we possess those powers or faculties which are presupposed in a system of moral agency; and that, according to the kind of conduct pursued by us is our happiness or the contrary, or at least the approbation or disapproba-

1 Dormer, art. "Ethik" in Herzog's Real-Encyclopädie für Prot. Theol. und Kirche. Compare also Harless, Christliche Ethik, p. 5, 4th ed. 2 See Hagenbach, Encyclopaedie und Methodologie der Theol. Wissenschaften, p. 291. 3 Gilbert, Life of Dr Edward Williams, p. 589. 4 Plato, Republic, p. 314, A.; in Stallbaum's edit. of his works, vol. ii., 33, 34. 5 Nicom. Eth., b. vii., c. vii., § 3 (ch. ix., near the beginning, by the Paclam division).

tion of our own conduct. But from observation of what transpires within us merely, we can never by any process of induction arrive at a knowledge of the true nature of virtue and vice, or of their respective sources. We cannot in that way discover the standard by which good and evil are measured, the grounds of obligation to pursue the one and avoid the other, the causes on which success or failure in that pursuit depend, or the means to be adopted in order to the practice of virtue and the attainment of happiness. The very supposition that such a method of constructing a true moral philosophy can possibly succeed, must assume that the inquirer is in fact a perfect being—that what ought to be, and what is, are in him the same thing. How else, by any observation of his thoughts, feelings, volitions, and actions, can he ascertain the rule of requirement—the general law of rectitude?"

13. For the successful pursuit of moral science it is important that the mind should be well disciplined in the analysis of moral phenomena; habituated to the weighing of probable evidence; accustomed at once to comprehensive views of things and to minute discrimination of differences; familiar with human nature, with men and their ways; and calm, deliberative, and sagacious in its processes of decision. Hence the inexpediency of including this science among the studies to be pursued by very young men. On this point the most eminent teachers of the science are agreed. "Beware, my dear," says the Platonic Socrates to a youthful friend, "lest you risk what is most precious to you; for there is much more hazard in the purchase of instructions than in the purchase of food. When one has bought eatables or drinkables, he may carry them from the shop and market in other vessels, and before, by eating or drinking them, he receives them into his body he may, having deposited them at home, and having called in some skilful person, take counsel whether anything is to be eaten or drunk, and how much and when; so that in such a purchase there is no great risk. But there is no carrying of instructions in another vessel; he who receives them must pay the fee and carry them in his soul itself; and having learned, must depart either injured or profited. Let us then consider these things [moral questions] with our seniors, for we are still too young to adjudicate so great a matter." Aristotle repeatedly forbids the young to occupy this territory. He bids them study mathematics, but exhorts them to leave politics and morals till they have gathered experience. "Youths may become geometricians and mathematicians, and skilled in such [knowledges]; but it does not appear that a youth becomes wise [i.e., morally wise, σοφός]. The reason is, that wisdom has to do with particulars which become known from experience; whence a youth is not experienced, since it is number of years that gives experience." And in the earlier part of the same work he says,—“A youth is not a fit auditor of political science; for he is without experience of those actions which have to do with life; whilst the discourses [he would have to hear] are out of these and concerning these. Moreover, being disposed to follow his passions, he would hear in vain and without profit, since the end is not knowledge but action. It matters not, however, whether he be a youth in years or youthful in habit; for the defect is not in respect of time, but from his living and pursuing everything by passion, inasmuch as to such the knowledge becomes useless no less than to the incontinent. To those, however, who regulate their appetites, and who act according to rea-

It is most useful to know about these things. To the same effect Burgersdijk writes, "Actiones civiles versantur circa singulae, de quibus non secundum praecipita sed secundum occasionem judicandum est. Quod certe fieri non potest, nisi ab eo qui longo rerum usu atque experientia prudentiam sibi comparavit; quae in juvenibus admodum rara est." To these testimonies may be added those of Stewart, and Hume as quoted by Stewart.

14. In attempting to discuss a subject of so much importance, of such compass, and of such difficulty within such limits as this article must necessarily be confined to, we feel that we have imposed on us no easy task. Our aim chiefly shall be to present such a view of the subject as shall meet the wants of the learner and the general reader.

15. No attempt is here made to trace the History of Moral Philosophy, partly because the space allotted to this article renders it impossible to do anything like justice to such a theme; partly because the Preliminary Dissertations of Mr Stewart and Sir James Mackintosh to a great extent supersede the necessity of making the attempt. In lieu of this we shall content ourselves with laying before our readers a survey of the literature of the subject:

Plato. All the treatises of Plato are more or less ethical in their character and drift; of those specially devoted to this science the most important are—the Phaedo, the Crito, the Gorgias, the Philobous, the Meno, the De Republica, the Politicus, and the De Legibus. The most useful edition of his works is that of Stallbaum, of which only nine volumes have yet appeared. Gotha, 1837-1841. Other editions, with critical apparatus and notes, are those of Ast, 10 vols. Svo, Leipzig, 1819-29; and of Bekker, 10 vols. Svo, Berol. 1816-23. The Latin translation by Marsilius Ficinus (edited by Gryneus, Basil, 1534, fol.), the German by Schleiermacher, and the French by Victor Cousin, are worthy of careful consultation. The standard English translation is that of Sydenham.

Aristotle. Ethica Nicomachea, Ethica Eudemica Magna Moralia, Politica, et Economico, and a [spurious] treatise, De Virtutibus et Vitis. Of the Nicomachean Ethics, the best separate editions are those of Zell (Heidelberg, 1820, 2 vols. Svo), Cardwell (Oxon. 1828-30, 2 vols. Svo), and Michelet (Berol. 1819-35, 2 vols. Svo). Very useful editions are those of Lancaster (Oxf. 1834), and Brewer (Oxf. 1836); the latter has English notes. Of the Politica, the editions of Schneider (Francl. 1809, 2 vols. Svo), and Goettling (Jena, 1824), are reputed the best. The editions of his whole works most in repute are those of Pacius, 2 vols. Svo, Genov. 1597; of Da Val, 2 vols. fol., Par. 1619; 4 vols., 1654; of Bekker and Brandis, 4 vols. 4to, Berol. 1831-36. Bekker's text was reprinted at Oxford, in 11 vols. Svo, in 1837.

Xenophon. Memorabilia Socratis, ed. Schneller. Svo. Oxf. 1826.—Ed. Greenwood. Svo. Lond. 1823.

Theophrastus. Characters Ethici, ed. Ast. Svo. Lips. 1816.

Plutarch. Moralia, Gr. et Lat., ed. D. Wytenbach. 15 vols. Svo. Oxf. 1795-1830. 6 vols. 18mo. Lips. 1820.

Epicurus. Encheiridion et Fragmenta, Gr. et Lat., ed. Uptonus. 2 vols. 4to. 1741. Opera Omnia et Simpliciti Comment., Gr. et Lat., ed. Schweighauser. 5 vols. 8vo. 1799.

Antoninus (Marcus Aurel.), De Rebus Suis, Libri xii., Gr. et Lat., ed. Gataker. 4to. 1632, 1697.

Maximus (the Tyrian), Dissertationes xxxi., Gr. et Lat., ed. J. Davis. Best edit., Lond. 1740. 4to.

Diogenes (of Laërtio), De Vitis, Dogmatibus et Apophthegma-Introduc- tibus Clarorum Philosophorum, Libri xi., ed. Melibonius, 2 vols. 4to. 1692. Very convenient editions are those of Kraus, Svo, 1759, and Hueber, 2 vols. Svo, 1828-31.

Sextus (Empiricus), Opera Omnia, Gr. et Lat., ed. Stephanus. Fol. 1621.—Ed. Fabricius. Fol. 1718.

Cicero, Opera Omnia, ed. Ernesti. 8 vols. Svo. Hal. Sax. 1774-77.—Ed. Oliveti. 11 vols. 4to. Oxon. 1783.—Ed. Schütz. 20 vols. 8vo. Lips. 1814-23. Opera Philosophica, ed. Davis et Rath. 6 vols. 8vo. Hal. Sax. 1804-19.

Seneca, Opera Omnia; a Justo Lipsio Schollis Illustrata. Fol. Antv. 1605.—Ed. Ruhkoff. 5 vols. 8vo. Lips. 1797-1811.

Boethius, De Consolatione Philosophiae, ed. Bernart. Svo. Lugd. Bat. 1671.

Basilus (Simp.), Ethica et Ascetica. Works, best ed., 3 vols. fol. Paris, 1721-30.

Ambrosius (Simp.), De Officiis, Libri iii. Works, best ed., 2 vols. fol. Paris, 1689-90.

Augustinus (Simp.) Best edition of his works, 12 vols. fol. Antv. 1670-3, a reprint of the Benedictine of 1679.

Hildebert (of Tours), Philosophia Moralis de Honesto et Utili, in his collected works, by Boangendre, pp. 961-995. fol. Paris, 1708.

Araeard (P.), Ethica sine Liber dictus Nosce te ipsum, in vol. iii., pt. ii., from p. 627 of the Thes. Anecdot. Nov. of Pez. 7 vols. fol., 1721-9.

Thomas (of Aquino), Summa Theologica; Prima Secundae Partis, De Virtutibus et Vitiis, &c. Fol. Many editions.

William (of Ockham), Questiones et Decisiones in iv. Libb. Sententiarum. Fol. Lugd. 1495.

Petrachia (Fr.), De remedii utriusque fortunae; De vera sapientia; De Contemptu Mundi, &c., in his collected Latin works. Fol. 1554.

Valla (L.), De Voluptate et vero bono. Bas. 1519. De Libero arbitrio. Bas. 1518.

Melanchton (Phil.), Ethica Doct. Elementa, &c. Vitae. 1550.

Piccolomini (Phil.), Universa Phil. de Moribus, &c. Venet. 1583.

Montaigne (M. de), Essais. Bordeaux, 1580.

Charbon (P.), De la Sagesse. Bord. 1601.

Horneius, Ethica sine civilis Doctrina de Moribus, Libb. iv. Francof. 1625.

Grotius (H.), De Jure Belli ac Pacis, Libb. iii. Paris, 1625.

The annotated edition published at Amsterdam in 1712 is the most useful.

Hobbes (Th.), Elementa Philosophica de Cive. Par. 1647. Leviathan; or, the Matter, Form, and Authority of Government. Fol. Lond. 1651. Collected works edited by Sir W. Molesworth. 16 vols. Lond. 1839-46.

Cumberland (R.), De Legibus naturalibus disquisitio Philosophica, &c., 1671. Translated into English by John Maxwell, M.A. Lond. 1726.

Gulinx (A.), Tractatus, sine Ethica. Amst. 1665.

Puffendorf (S.), De officio hominis et civis juxta legem naturalem, Libb. ii. Francof. 1673. Edited, with notes and additions, by Gershom Carmichael. Edinb. 1724, sec. ed.

Spinoza (B.), Ethica; in his Opera Posthuma. Amst. 1716.

More (H.), Enchiridion Ethicum, praecipua Phil. Mor. Rudimenta complectens, &c. Lond. 1679.

Cudworth (R.), The True Intellectual System of the Universe. Lond. 1678. Translated into Latin by Mosheim, 2 vols. 4to. Jenae, 1733. Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. Lond. 1731. Appended to the 2d ed. of Mosheim's translation of the former work is a translation of this.

Cælius (J.), Ethica Aristotelica ad Sacr. Litt. noram emendata. Cosm. 1631.

Poets are not the best judges of the merits of writers on Logic and Metaphysics; and in these lines Pope has thrown an air of ridicule over two men who, as Hallam says (Hist. of Lit., ii., 372), were famous in their generation, and may yet be listened to with advantage. Gibbon has owned his obligations to Crousaz (Life, p. 93 of Millman's ed.); and of Burgersdijk we may say, that in the departments of Logic and Ethics the incipient polemic or logician may spur many a less willing and useful steed.

Active and Moral Powers, Introduction, vol. i., p. 8. MORAL PHILOSOPHY.

THOMASUS (Chr.), Instit. Jurisprudentiae Div., Libb. iii. Lips. 1688. Introductio in Phil. Mor. Hal. 1706.

MALEBRANCHE (Nic.), Traité de Morale. 2 vols. Lyons, 1697.

ROCHFOUCAULT (Fr. de la), Reflexions sur Sentences Maximes Morales. Par. 1690.

WOLF (Chr.), Philosophia Practica Universalis. Lips. 1703. A greatly enlarged edition and more perfect work appeared in 2 vols. at Leipzig in 1738.

MANDEVILLE (Ber.), &c., The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices Public Benefits. Lond. 1714. Part II. Lond. 1729.

LAW (Wm.), Remarks on the Fable of the Bees. Lond. 1726.

CLARKE (Sam.), Discourse concerning the Unchangeable Obligations of Natural Religion, &c. Lond. 1708.

WHITE (Dan.), Ethicus Compendium, in usu Academ. Juventutis. 3d ed. Lond. 1713.

WOLLASTON (Wm.), The Religion of Nature Delineated. Lond. 1723.

INNES (Alex.), Arctologia; or, An Enquiry into the Original of Moral Virtue. Lond. 1728.

SHATTESBURY (Earl of), An Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit. Lond. 1699. Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times. 3 vols. Lond. 1710.

FIDDES (R.), A General Treatise of Morality formed on the Principles of Natural Reason only. Lond. 1724.

BUTLER (Jos.), Sermons. Lond. 1729. Analogy of Religion, &c. 1736. Best edit. by Fitzgerald. Dub. 1849.

BERKELEY (G.), Alciphron; or the Minute Philosopher. 2 vols. Lond. 1732.

HUTCHISON (Fr.), An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue. Lond. 1725. An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense. Lond. 1728. Phil. Mor. Instit. Compend., in libris iii. Ethices et Jurispr. Nat. principia continens. Glasg. 1745. Translated into English. Glasg. 1747. System of Mor. Phil., in three books, &c. Edited, with Life of the Author, by W. Leechman. 2 vols. 4to. Lond. 1755.

BALOY (J.), Collection of Tracts Moral and Theological. Lond. 1731.

MURATORI (L. A.), La Filosofia Morale. 2d ed. Verona, 1737.

GEORGE (Hen.), A System of Moral Philosophy. 2 vols. Lond. 1747.

BURRILLAMQUI (J. J.), Juris Naturalis Elementa. Geneva, 1754.

PRICE (R.), A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, &c. Lond. 1758.

SMITH (Adam), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, &c. Lond. 1759.

TUCKER (Abr.), Light of Nature Pursued. 9 vols. 8vo. 1768-77.

BASEDOW (J. B.), Praktische Philos. für alle Stände, 2 vols. Dessau, 1777.

HUME (D.), Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. Lond. 1751. Afterwards included in his Essays and Treatises on several Subjects (Lond. 1784), and of which there have been many editions. Philosophical Works. 4 vols. Edinb. 1826.

REID (Th.), Essays on the Active Powers of Man. Edinb. 1788.

EDWARDS (Jon.), Dissert. concerning the Nature of Virtue. Boston, U.S., 1788.

BENTHAM (Jr.), Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Politics. Lond. 1789. Deontology, or the Science of Morality, &c. Compiled from his MSS. by J. Bowring. 2 vols. Lond. 1834.

KANT (Im.), Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. Riga, 1785. Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft. Riga, 1788. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre. Königsberg, 1797. Mel. Anf. der Tugendlehre. Kön. 1797. These treatises occupy vols. viii. and ix. of Kant's Sämtliche Werke herausgegeben von Rosenkranz und Schubert.

FICHTE (J. G.), Das System der Sittenlehre nach den Principien der Wissenschaftslehre. Jena, 1798. Das System der Rechtslehre, und der Sittenlehre in his Nachgelassen Werke, edited by his son, vols. ii. and iii.

FERGUSON (Ad.), Institutes of Mor. Phil. Lond. 1769. Introduct. Principles of Mor. and Pol. Science. 2 vols. 4to. Edinb. 1792.

BEATTIE (J.), Elements of Moral Science. Vol. i., Ed. 1790; vol. ii., 1793.

PALEY (Wm.), Principles of Morality and Politics. Lond. 1785. In the 2d ed. the title was altered to Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy.

SCHLEMMERMACHER (Fr.), Grundlinien einer Kritik der bisherigen Sittenlehre. Berl. 1803. Entwurf einer Syst. der Sittenlehre, forming vol. v. of div. iii. of his Sämtliche Werke. Berl. 1834-48.

SALAT (J.), Die Moral Philosophie. Landshut, 1810. 3d ed. München, 1821.

WYNPERSE (S. J. van de), Instit. Philos. Mor. Ludg. Bat. 1808.

HERBERT (J. F.), Allgemeine Prakt. Philosophie. Gött. 1808.

STAEBULIN (C. T.), Neues Lehrbuch der Moral. Gött. 1817. 2d ed.

KRUG (W. Tr.), System d. Prakt. Philosophie. Königs. 1818.

FRIES (J. Fr.), Ethik oder die Lehren der Lebensweisheit. Heidelb. 1810.

DE WETTE (W. M. L.), Vorlesungen über die Sittenlehre. 4 vols. Berl. 1823-4.

BROWN (Th.), Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind. 4 vols. 1820. The ethical portion of these lectures was published separately in 1846, 8vo, with a preface by Dr Chalmers.

MICHELET (C. L.), Das System der Philos. Moral. Berl. 1828.

STEWART (D.), The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man. 2 vols. Edinb. 1828.

PAYNE (G.), Elements of Mental and Moral Science, &c. Lond. 1828. 4th ed. 1857.

WARBLAND (R.), Christian Ethics; or Moral Philosophy on the Principles of Divine Revelation. Lond. 1833. 5th ed. 1852.

CHALMERS (Th.), Sketches of Mental and Moral Philosophy, forming vol. v. of his Collected Works. Glasg. 1836, &c.

SMITH (Alex.), Philosophy of Morals. 2 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1835.

COUSIN (V.), Œuvres Philosophiques. 20 vols. Par. 1840-50.

DAMION (Ph.), Cours de Philosophie; tom. iii. and iv. Morale. 2d ed. Par. 1842.

TISSOT (J.), Ethique ou Science des Moeurs. Par. 1840.

BAUTAIN (Abbé), Philosophie Morale. 2 vols. Par. 1842.

HARLES (G. C. A.), Christliche Ethik. Stuttgart, 1842. 4th ed. 1849.

ROTH (R.), Theologische Ethik, 1st and 2d vol. Wittemberg, 1845.

WHEWELL (W.), Elements of Morality, including Policy. 2 vols. Lond. 1845. Lectures on Systematic Morality. Lond. 1846.

WAYLAND (Fr.), Elements of Moral Science. Edinb. (reprinted from American ed.) 1847.

McCOY (Jam.), The Method of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral. Edinb. 1850. 6th edit. 1857.

MÜLLER (Jul.), Die Christliche Lehre von d. Sünde. 2 vols. Breslau, 1849. Translated by W. Pulsford. 2 vols. Edinb. 1852-53.

CHALYBEEUS (H. M.), System der Speculativen Ethik. 2 vols. 1850.

ALEXANDER (Ar.), Outlines of Moral Science. New York, 1852.

For the history of Moral Philosophy, besides the general histories of Brucker, Ruhle, Tennemann, Rixner, Ritter, Erdmann, Chalybeus, Morell, Lewes, and Schwegler, the following special histories may be named:—MEINERS (Chr.), Allgemeine Kritische Gesch. der älteren und neueren Ethik, 2 vols. Gött. 1800-1. STAEBULIN (C. F.), Gesch. der Moral Philosophie, Hanover, 1823. BLAREY (R.), History of Moral Science, 2 vols. 8vo, Lond. 1848. Wheewell's History of Moral Philosophy in England. 8vo, Lond. 1852.) PART I.—OF RECTITUDE.

RECTITUDE DEFINED.

Rectitude is the conformity of actions to an acknowledged standard of right.

In all ages, and among all nations, a distinction has been recognised between right and wrong; and these qualities have been discriminated from other qualities with which they may frequently be closely associated, such as pleasant and painful, agreeable and repulsive, beneficial and noxious, &c. The proposition, "This is right," and the proposition, "This is agreeable," may be translated into all languages under the sun by appropriate synonyms; and by no people would they be accepted as conveying exactly the same concept. When Horace says of Homer,

"Qui quid sit pulchrum quid terpe, quid utile, quid non, Plinius ac melius Chrysippo et Crantor diceit,"

it would be but a blundering translation which should confound the distinction expressed by the author between the pulchrum and the utile,—the morally fair or right (τὸ καλόν), and the useful (τὸ χρήσιμον). So also when Aristotle says of speech, that it ἐστὶ τῷ δηλοῦν τῷ συνεργοῦν καὶ τῷ βλα- βεῖν ὑπὲρ τοῦ ἐκλαίναι καὶ τοῦ ἀδικεῖν, no person who understands his words will fail to make a clear distinction between the qualities contrasted in the first clause, and the qualities contrasted in the second,—between the profitable as opposed to the hurtful, and the just as opposed to the unjust.

In the words immediately following those just quoted Aristotle goes on to say, that man is the only animal to whom the perception of the distinction between good and bad, just and unjust, has been given. What man thus alone of all animals perceives, it has always been thought important by mankind prominently to enunciate; and hence among all nations we find this distinction expressed in the form of rules or maxims more or less precise and comprehensive; the sum of which constitutes for any community or body of persons the standard of right by which they measure the rectitude of actions. Hence rectitude is virtually what some of the ancients called it, νόμον ποιέσαι, what the law prescribes, meaning by "the law" not any particular enactment, either by the state or by any corporate portion of it, but what the community at large regards as the standard of right and wrong; and what Mr Horne Tooke has said, with questionable correctness of right as an abstract quality, that the word "is no other than ἐκτείνων (rectum), the past participle of the Latin verb regere," and that the thing means simply "that which is ordered," as may be accepted as not an inapt description of rectitude as a quality of actions. We may detect an analogous conviction in the use of the same words to designate the concept of straightness and the concept of moral rectitude,—a usage which is found to pervade all languages. When, in fine, we find the Hebrews denoting sin by such a word as חָטָא, and the Greeks by such a word as ἁμαρτάνειν, both derived from roots which signify primarily to miss a mark, and both used to denote the physical act of missing or swerving, we see a further evidence of how generally mankind have identified the idea of rectitude with that of conformity to some acknowledged norm or standard of right.

RECTITUDE A REAL QUALITY.

Rectitude in actions presupposes and depends on a distinction between right and wrong per se; and the question, whether the quality so predicated of actions is to be regarded as a real quality will be determined by the answer given to Rectitude, the question, whether this distinction is an essential and permanent, or only an accidental and variable distinction. That it is the former and not the latter, the following considerations render probable in limine:

(i.) The recognition of the distinction by all peoples and in all times, as the appropriation of words to express it in all languages sufficiently indicates. A universal belief like this can be traced only to some common source of authority, the lessons of which the whole race has preserved from its cradle, or to convictions arising out of the nature of the case, and addressing themselves to every man's judgment. In the case before us the former hypothesis must be excluded as irrelevant (for however authority may attest a fact or establish a principle, it never can originate a subjective conviction); so that there remains only the latter hypothesis. But if the recognition of a distinction between right and wrong is to be traced to convictions springing into the minds of all men out of the nature of the case, this distinction must be one founded in nature, and therefore essential and permanent.

(ii.) The early period at which this distinction is recognised by children accords with the belief that it is a real and essential distinction. Anterior to education and experience a child will indicate, in the most unmistakable manner, its perception of the difference between what it thinks right and what it thinks wrong. This shows that the moral judgment is coeval with intelligence,—a fact which could not exist were the distinction on which that judgment proceeds one of an artificial or accidental kind.

(iii.) We find it impossible to conceive of right and wrong changing places, so that what is now right should become wrong, and vice versa. There is in this respect a rigidity which is peculiar to moral distinctions; for not only is it metaphysically impossible that rightness should become wrongness, just as it is metaphysically impossible that blackness should become whiteness, or crookedness straightness, but it is also physically impossible that the same object should become successively possessed of these opposite qualities. An object now black may become white, an object now crooked may become straight; but we cannot conceive of even omnipotence making that which is now right to become wrong. This, then, must be regarded as a distinction lying in nature, and immutable,—φύσει ἀξιώναι καὶ παντραχῶς τὴν ἀληθῶς ἔχειν διάφορον, as Aristotle expresses it.

An ancient and favourite objection to this conclusion is drawn from the diversities that have obtained, at different times and among different nations, as to what is right and what is wrong. "Now to some," says Aristotle, "it appears that all are such (i.e., made binding by arbitrary enactment); because what is by nature is immovable, and has everywhere the same power, just as fire burns as well here as in Persia; whereas they see that just things vary." "In the state of nature," says Hobbes, "nothing can be unjust; the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place;" and again, "The nature of good and evil varies according to the will of individuals in a state of nature, and of princes in every state." Locke has written to the same effect. "He that will carefully peruse," says he, "the history of mankind, and look abroad into the several tribes of men, and with indifferency survey their actions, will be able to satisfy himself that there is scarce that principle of morality to be named, or rule of virtue to be thought on (those only excepted that are absolutely necessary to hold society together, which commonly, too,

Rectitude, are neglected betwixt distinct societies) which is not somewhere or other slighted and condemned by the general fashion of scholastic societies of men, governed by practical opinions and rules of living quite opposite to others."

On these statements it may be observed—

(i.) That whilst there is undoubtedly ground for the fact alleged, the extent to which such variety of moral judgment prevails is apt to be greatly exaggerated by those who use it as an argument against the reality of the distinction between right and wrong. It may be questioned whether, if the whole human race were assembled, the variations of their judgments on questions of ordinary morality would exceed the ratio of one in a hundred; and as for Locke's assertion, that there is scarcely a single principle of morality or rule of virtue that is not slighted or condemned by whole communities somewhere, it can only be set down to the author's excessive zeal for the cause he had set himself to maintain.

"But what nation," we may ask with Cicero, "loves not courteousness, benignity, a grateful mind, and one that remembers a benefit? What nation does not hate and spurn the proud, the malevolent, the cruel, the ungrateful?" But if the mass of mankind agree in their moral judgments,—if the agreement be anything like that above suggested, in the ratio of one to a hundred,—it follows, that if the common consent of mankind proves anything in a case of this sort, it must be held as proving the reality and fixedness of moral distinctions. Surely a few exceptional cases are not to be allowed to nullify the general testimony of the race; nor are those minds to be envied that, from contemplating this, "can turn away to seek, in some savage island, a few indistinct murmurs that may seem to be discordant with the whole great harmony of mankind."

(ii.) Even admitting the fact to the full extent alleged, it would by no means prove what it is adduced to prove. A principle may be universally recognised, though variably applied, and men may agree in holding a distinction to be real, though they may differ as to the objects by which that distinction is exemplified. In affirming the universal consent of the race to moral distinctions, it is not intended to maintain that all men apply these with infallible and unvarying accuracy. It is simply affirmed, that to the unbiased judgment of men right appears right, and wrong appears wrong, and that this obtains always and everywhere. The variations which occur may be accounted for by accidental or partial influences. 1. Excessive emotion often tends to pervert the moral judgment. Under the irritation of violent passion acts frequently appear lawful and proper which, in more quiet moments, the party who is hurried into them cannot but condemn. Smarting from the sting of mortified vanity or disappointed ambition, even a good man may think he "does well to be angry." Blinded by prejudice and infuriated by hatred, the persecutor who hales innocent men and women to prison or to the stake, "thinks he does God service," and may even piously give thanks to God for the doom inflicted on those whom he deems in error; as Laud did when he "pulled off his cap, and, holding up his hands, gave thanks to God" when the barbarous sentence endured by Leighton was pronounced.

In these and similar cases there is no perversion of the moral judgment properly speaking; there is simply a momentary suspension of the moral faculty, owing to the influence of something analogous to disease in the physical frame. 2. Some actions, in themselves indifferent, acquire a moral character only when they are performed under certain conditions; and consequently, in estimating the moral sentiments of the people by whom such acts are performed, we must be careful to see that the requisite conditions exist. For example, to appropriate any article is an act which comes to possess a moral character only on the supposition that it is property; so long as it belongs to no one, to take it implies no wrong. In a country, therefore, where the distinctions of property do not exist, the natives may be found attaching no sense of impropriety to what, in the estimation of more civilized nations, would be regarded as stealing. But this does not prove that by these people dishonesty is not considered wrong; it only proves that they did not consider the act of helping themselves to what they did not regard as property to be dishonesty. Establish in their minds the conviction that the article they have appropriated belonged rightfully as property to another, and they will at once see the moral impropriety of depriving him of it.

3. It is seldom that acts can be contemplated under one simple aspect. Their aspects are generally numerous; and as under some of these aspects they may possess a different moral character from what belongs to them under others, it often happens that different persons or communities, from fixing their attention exclusively on different aspects of the same act, come to pronounce different moral judgments upon it. An act which under a certain aspect is wrong, may under another aspect be right, and vice versa; and hence may be tolerated, or even commended, by some, whilst denounced and condemned by others. Thus the slaughtering of innocent animals, if viewed under the aspect of an amusement, must be pronounced wrong; whereas, if viewed as necessary for the providing of food for man, it may be regarded as permitted; and if viewed as a sacrificial act, it may be commended as praiseworthy; so that three persons, viewing this one act from these three different points of view, might pronounce on its moral character three different judgments. This, however, would no more prove that the moral constitution or principles of these persons differed in each case than, in the famous shield case, the judgment of the one knight that it was black, and the judgment of the other that it was white, proved that their eyes were differently constituted, or that their notions of blackness and whiteness were not the same. This may serve to account for the fact, that many actions, in themselves of doubtful propriety, and many undoubtedly wrong, come to be regarded with approbation or indifference by individuals and communities: the actions have an aspect that is really or apparently harmless, and the parties fixing their attention only on that, and entirely overlooking the essential and primary aspect of the action, come to pronounce upon it an erroneous or defective moral judgment. It is upon this ground that Dr Chalmers so eloquently and forcibly accounts for the various cruelties which are practised, even in civilized society, upon the lower animals, whilst he denies that "even in the lowest walks of blackguardism," there is "such a thing as delight in suffering for its own sake." On this ground, also, may we account for the unnatural practices of infanticide and parricide, on which Locke lays so much stress in the context of the passage above cited from his Essay. No man, no people, but would condemn the slaying of a helpless babe, viewed simply in itself; but the slaughter of that babe may come to be regarded as a necessity imposed by the scarcity of provisions, or as the fittest means of averting some terrible calamity, or as upon the whole a kinder thing to the babe than to suffer it to grow up amidst pain, shame, or slavery; and in such cases the act, which in itself all would abhor, may come to be by some regarded as not only permissible, but even to a certain extent praiseworthy. It is the same where

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1 Essay, b. i., c. iii., § 16, Works, vol. i., p. 16, fol. ed. 2 De Legibus, l. ii. 3 Brown, Lectures, vol. iii., p. 592. 4 See Price's Hist. of Protestant Nonconformity, vol. ii., p. 69. 5 See the instances given by Mr Stewart, Attic and Moral Powers, vol. i., p. 178. 6 Sermon on Cruelty to Animals, Works, vol. xi., p. 249 ff. parricide is tolerated; the attention is withdrawn from the act in itself to certain concomitant or consequent effects which are desirable or commendable; and thus what no man would fail to pronounce wrong, if done apart from these effects, may come to be regarded as right when done for the sake of these. In all such cases there is no doubt perversion of moral judgment. But whence arises this perversion? Not from men regarding right and wrong as transferable qualities, but simply from their not viewing the act under that aspect under which alone its true moral character could be estimated. 4. The effect of education and custom must not be overlooked in reference to the variety of men's judgments as to the rectitude of actions. As the organs of taste may be taught to relish what to the uneducated palate is utterly nauseous, so may the moral faculty be educated to regard as lawful or good what the natural conscience would recoil from as sinful. Fashion, which can reconcile the aesthetic taste to the most inelegant costumes or the most grotesque combinations, is also sufficiently potent to reconcile the moral taste to practices altogether inconsistent with propriety and decency. "Who would believe," exclaims Charron, "how great and imperious is the authority of custom?" To say that it is a second nature does not express all the truth; for it does more than nature—it conquers nature. . . . It dominates over our souls and our judgments with a very unjust and tyrannical authority. It does and undoes, authorizes and forbids, what it pleases, without rhyme or reason,—nay, oftentimes contrary to all reason; it makes valid and establishes throughout the world, against reason and judgment, the most fantastic and barbarous opinions, religions, beliefs, observances, manners, and modes of living; and, on the other hand, it injuriously degrades and vilifies things truly great and admirable, robs them of their worth and estimation, and renders them contemptible."1 To the influence of this tyrannical power many of the differences which prevail among men, and which might at first sight seem to indicate a diversity of moral principle and judgment, may be traced. A practice is held innocent by some which all others hold wrong, simply because the tyranny of custom has in this one instance obscured their perception of right and wrong.2 The influence, however, thus exerted by education and custom on the moral perceptions of men, though imperious, is partial and transient; were it otherwise, society could not be held together.3

**SECT. III.—FOUNDATION OF RECTITUDE.**

The considerations adduced render it probable that the distinction between right and wrong is a real and permanent distinction. But to determine this more precisely, it will be necessary to inquire into the foundation of this distinction.

On this point the conclusions at which inquirers have arrived are very different. These conclusions may be arranged under two distinct classifications; the former of which is determined by their relation to the question whether the distinction between right and wrong be a real one, the latter by their relation to the question whether this distinction is perceived by a judgment of the intellect or felt by an emotion,—in other words, whether the foundation of this distinction lies without us or within us. Compounding these two classifications, we may present the following scheme of opinion on the point at issue:

I.—EMOTIONAL OR SUBJECTIVE THEORIES.

A.—Affirming the Mutability of Moral Distinctions. 1. That right is what accords with desire; wrong what thwarts it. 2. That right is determined by a special principle implanted in the elect.

B.—Affirming the Reality and Permanency of Moral Distinctions. 1. The theory of a Moral Sense. 2. The theory of Conscience. 3. The theory of Sympathy. 4. The theory of Approbation.

II.—INTELLECTUAL OR OBJECTIVE THEORIES.

C.—Affirming Moral Distinctions to be Accidental and Mutable. 1. That they are created by human law. 2. That they are determined by the Divine will. 3. That they are determined by the consequences of actions.

D.—Affirming Moral Distinctions to be Essential and Immutable. 1. That they arise out of the fitnesses of things. 2. That they are determined by the truth of things. 3. That they are determined by the nature of things. 4. That they lie in the essential nature of God.

Analysis may resolve some of these theories into a common principle; but as they have all been advocated by different writers, it may be proper, in the first instance, to consider them apart.

I.—Emotional or Subjective Theories.

A.1 and A.2.—On the first two theories in this scheme it is not necessary that we should dwell. They are, properly speaking, not so much attempts to account for the distinction between right and wrong, as attempts to set aside that distinction entirely. The former (A.1) proceeds on the assumption that man is the slave of circumstances—that his desires are excited by extraneous objects, and that he must act as his desires prompt. The only good for man, then, is to have these desires gratified, and the only evil is to have them thwarted. What men call right and wrong is really tantamount to gratification and disappointment; or it is a distinction existing only in words, and meaning nothing in reality. The latter theory (A.2), is that of the Antinomians, who maintain that the elect are endowed with a principle of action far beyond any law, and that as this principle always operates necessarily according to the Divine predestination, it invariably conduces to what is right, even though it may prompt to what, on the lower ground of legal morality, would be pronounced sinful or vicious. Such doctrines are chiefly worth noticing because they show the extremes to which men will go in devising theories when they wish to sustain some "foregone conclusion;" and also because, as compared with each other, these theories illustrate the tendency of extremes to meet, and show how the ultraism of theological speculation and the ultraism of infidelity may meet together and erect a common trophy on the ruins of morality.4 It is needless to linger on the refutation of either theory. The former is sufficiently refuted by the common consciousness and experience of the race, which loudly attest that man is not the slave of circumstances, that desire is not irresistible, that we have a conception of goodness and rectitude wholly distinct from that of desirableness, and that it is according as the one or the other of these

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1 De la Sagesser, b. ii., c. viii., § 6. 2 "Tanta est erroris malis consuetudinis," exclaims Cicero, "ut ab ea tanquam Igniculi extinguantur a natura dati, exorianturque et confirmantur vitia contraria." (De Legi, i. 12.) 3 See Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments, part v.; Stewart's Phil. of the Active and Moral Powers, vol. i., p. 152, ff.; Brown's Lectures, vol. iii., p. 592, ff. 4 "If our Antinomians could pay a visit to the heathens of Hindustan, they would find millions on millions of their way of thinking. Nor need they go so far from home; among the apostles of modern infidelity the same thing may be found in substance. The doctrine of necessity, as embraced by them, reduces man to a machine, destroys his accountability, and casts the blame of sin on the Creator. The body of these systems may be diverse, but the spirit that animates them is the same." (A. Fuller, Works, vol. ii., p. 599.) To this question it must be confessed the only a negative answer can be returned. Allowing to sympathy all the influence and force which Dr Smith ascribes to it, it must nevertheless be pronounced wholly inadequate to sustain the superstructure which he has sought to erect upon it. His theory stands exposed to the following among other objections:—1. It assumes a fact as given in consciousness which consciousness refuses to own. The process of transferring ourselves into the position of another, in order to judge of the rectitude of his affections by supposing them our own, or of placing ourselves in the position of a spectator, in order to judge of the rectitude of the affections we ourselves indulge, is one which could not go on without our being conscious of it. But in the multitudinous instances in which we pronounce moral judgment on others or on ourselves, how seldom is it that we are conscious of any approximation to such a process of reaction! The man who sees an unjust blow given, or who recoils from the suggestion of a tempter, passes instantaneously from the perception of the object to the moral judgment upon it; and no process of after reflection awakes in him the slightest consciousness that his reason for this judgment was furnished by such a transference of attitudes as Dr Smith supposes. Such utter unconsciousness of a process, upon which the entire validity of the judgment is assumed to rest, seems irreconcilable with the hypothesis of its existence. 2. Supposing the alleged process to take place, it affords no ground for the judgment pronounced. The conviction in the mind of A, that, if placed in the circumstances of B, he would have acted as B has acted, simply proves a similarity in his moral constitution with that of B; it proves nothing as to the rightness or the wrongness of the action itself. In order to reach this we must suppose A to approve the conduct of B as what in his own case he would have held to be right. But this presupposes a previous knowledge of the distinction between right and wrong; and, consequently, a foundation for this distinction different from, and prior to, our sympathy with the agent. In point of fact Dr Smith tacitly assumes this; and thereby lands himself in the same vicious circle as we have seen to be fatal to the theories already examined. "I cannot but regard the very celebrated theory of Dr Smith," says Dr T. Brown, "as involving, in morals, the same error that would be involved in a theory of the source of light, if an optician, after showing us many ingenious contrivances by which an image of some beautiful form may be made to pass from one visible place to another, were to contend that all the magnificent radiation of that more than ethereal splendour which does not merely adorn the day, but constitutes the day, had their primary origin in reflection, when reflection itself implies, and cannot be understood but as implying, the previous incidence, and therefore the previous existence, of the last which is reflected."3

Dr Smith's theory, in its primitive form, offers no account of the imperativeness which we invariably associate with the conception of right. That we approve the act of another as what we, if in his place, would have done, leaves altogether unaccounted for the conviction with which that approval is accompanied, that to act is such as ought to have been done. Dr Smith is far from overlooking this conviction; he repeatedly and emphatically asserts the imperativeness of moral rectitude. But in order to reconcile this with his theory of sympathy, he resorts to an expedient which virtually sets aside that theory. He says there is "a tribunal established in our own breasts which is the supreme arbiter of all our actions;" and this he ingeniously describes as the exception "of a person quite candid and equitable, of one who has no particular relation either to ourselves or to those whose interests are affected by our conduct, who is neither father nor brother nor friend to them or to us, but is merely a man in general, an impartial spectator, who considers our conduct with the same indifference with which we regard that of other people." From this it appears that it is not our sympathy with any of our fellow-men who may be supposed to witness our conduct, but our sympathy with this imaginary man, this "abstract man, the representative of mankind and substitute of the Deity," that determines the rectitude of our sentiments and actions. But what is this "man within" but some recognised standard of right and wrong existing independent of us, and recognised by us as the supreme arbiter of our actions—in reality something without us, but appearing to be within us, because realized as a conception of our mind? By this theory, then, of Dr Smith, as completed by himself, we are ultimately taken off the ground of emotionalism and conveyed to that of intellectualism for a basis of moral distinctions; so that its only advantage is, that it conducts us by a flowery and pleasant path, through a needless detour, to a conclusion more solid and sound than it promised. It is not without reason that the elaborate device of the author to save his peculiar theory, without renouncing the certainty or permanency of moral distinctions, has been compared to the expedients of the Ptolemaic astronomers who, "to save appearances," proposed to

"Gird the sphere With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."

B. 4. This theory will be found most ably developed in the Lectures of Dr Thomas Brown. According to him the basis of moral distinctions lies in the emotional constitution of the human mind,—in the feeling of approbation which a virtuous action awakens in us towards the agent. He denies that right and wrong are qualities of actions, and contends that they simply express a relation to the emotional part of our nature; that which we pronounce right being that which excites in us approbation, that which we pronounce wrong being that which excites in us censure or blame. "Right and wrong," says he, "signify nothing in the objects themselves. They are words expressive only of relation, and relations are not existing parts of objects, or taken from them. There is no right nor wrong, virtue nor vice, merit nor demerit, existing independently of the agents who are virtuous or vicious; and, in like manner, if there had been no moral emotions to arise on the contemplation of certain actions, there would have been no virtue or vice, merit or demerit, which express only relations to these emotions."4 "If," says he in another lecture, "a particular action be meditated by us, and we feel, on considering it, that it is one of those which, if performed by us, will be followed in our own mind by the powerful feeling of self-reproach, and in the minds of others by similar disapprobation; if a different action be meditated by us, and we feel that our performance of it would be followed in our own mind and the minds of others by an opposite emotion of approbation, this view of the moral emotions that are consequences of the actions is that which I consider as forming what is termed moral obligation,—the moral inducement which we feel to the performance of certain actions, or to abstinence from certain other actions. . . . Our action in the one case we term morally right, in the other case morally wrong; right and wrong, like virtue and vice, being only words that express briefly the actions which are attended with the feeling of moral approbation in the one case, of moral disapprobation in the other case."5 On this

1 Lectures, vol. iv., p. 129. 2 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. viii. 3 Lect. lixxiii., vol. iv., p. 175, 1st ed. 4 Lect. lixxi., vol. iv., p. 148. Compare also Lect. lixiii., vol. iii., p. 567, ff. Rectitude, theory of moral distinctions the following strictures may be offered—

(i.) This theory is incompatible with the doctrine of the reality and permanency of moral distinctions. Of this doctrine Dr Brown is himself a zealous and eloquent advocate; but he appears to have forgotten it when constructing his own theory of the foundation of such distinctions. For if right and wrong be terms expressive of a mere relation of certain actions to the human mind, it follows that, the constitution of the human mind being altered, the relation would be disturbed, might even be reversed, so that what is now wrong might become right, and vice versa. That which is based on what is arbitrary and mutable can never be itself essential and permanent.

Dr Brown does not shrink from the avowal that, as the constitution of the mind might be altered, our moral judgments might be the reverse of what they now are; but he endeavours to defend his doctrine from the charge that it makes rectitude precarious and changeable, by affirming that the relations of morality are not more exposed to this objection than the relations of mathematics. "It is not to moral distinctions only that this objection, if it had any force, would be applicable. Equality, proportion, it might be said, in like manner, signify nothing in the objects themselves to which they are applied more than vice or virtue. They are as truly mere relations as the relations of morality." Now, in arguing thus, Dr Brown has either argued irrelevantly, or he has argued against himself. It is granted that equality is the concept of a relation; but the question arises, A relation of what, and to what? Is it of a certain object to the mind? Certainly not; but of the object to some other object. Either, then, the relations of morality are of the same kind as the relations of equality, or they are not. If they are not, Dr Brown's illustration, drawn from the latter to the former, is irrelevant; if they are, their rectitude is not the relation of an action to the mind, but the relation of the action to something else out of the mind, viz., to some standard of rectitude existing independently of the mind and its feelings. The confusion into which Dr Brown has been betrayed in this attempt to defend his theory from a fatal objection becomes still more manifest as he proceeds. "Though the three sides of a right-angled triangle," he continues, "exist in the triangle itself, and constitute it what it is, what we term the properties of such a triangle do not exist in it, but are results of a peculiar capacity of the comparing mind. It is man, or some thinking being like man, whose comparison gives birth to the very feeling that is termed by us a discovery of the equality of the square of one of the sides to the squares of the other two; that is to say,—for the discovery of this truth is nothing more,—it is man who, contemplating such a triangle, is impressed with this relation, and who feels afterwards that it would be impossible for him to contemplate it without such an impression. If this feeling of the relation had never arisen, and never were to arise, in any mind, though the squares themselves might still exist as separate figures, their equality would be nothing, exactly as justice and injustice would be nothing, where no relation of moral emotion had ever been felt."

This passage is full of errors, and one can account for its being found where it is only by remembering with what haste Dr Brown's lectures were composed, and how they were sent forth to the public without the benefit of his superintending and correcting hand. Had he ever carefully reviewed this passage he would not, we believe, have allowed himself to appear before the public as affirming that it is the three sides of a right-angled triangle that constitute it what it is,—that the mind may discover what has no existence,—that a discovery is a feeling,—that the mind, by comparing, may find out properties which do not exist,—and that two objects may be equal to each other, and yet their equality be "nothing" apart from a perceiving mind. But not to dwell on these incoherences, is it not evident that Dr Brown's illustration is altogether against his own theory? As the equality of the square of the hypotenuse to the sum of the squares of the sides of a right-angled triangle does not arise from their relation to the mind, as little does the rectitude of one action and the wrongness of another arise from the relation of such to the mind; and as the perception of the equality of objects is the result of the mind's comparing these objects with each other, so the perception of the rectitude of actions is the result of the mind's comparing these with some standard of right and wrong. From this it follows conclusively that the basis of this distinction cannot be in the mind itself.

(ii.) On Dr Brown's theory it is impossible to account for the existence in the mind of the judgment of right or wrong in reference to my action. By the hypothesis there is nothing in the action itself to originate such judgments; they arise simply and solely from the mind's feeling approbation or disapprobation on perceiving the action. But what originates this feeling in the mind? It cannot be self-caused; and if not self-caused, what is there to cause it but something in the action itself? Dr Brown's system thus leads to a contradiction. Had his position been, that rectitude is a quality of actions which the mind is adapted to approve, and that on the perception of that quality in any action a feeling of approbation arises within us in reference to the agent, all would have been clear and intelligible; but when we are told that rectitude is only a relation between a certain action and a emotion of the mind, which emotion must exist before the rectitude can be perceived, all is thrown into inevitable confusion. We have the mind approving where there is nothing to approve; an emotion arising which there is nothing to excite; and a conception formed, as the result of an emotion, which can only exist where that conception is presupposed.

(iii.) Dr Brown's theory obliterates the distinction between Ethics and Psychology, by identifying what is with what ought to be. No writer has more distinctly than he enunciated the necessity of keeping these two questions separate. "What we know," says he, "that man has certain affections and passions, there still remains the great inquiry as to the propriety or impropriety of those passions, and of the conduct to which they lead. We have to consider not only how he is capable of acting, but also whether, acting in the manner supposed, he would be fulfilling a duty or perpetrating a crime." In pursuance of this distinction, Dr Brown has considered the emotions of moral approbation and disapprobation, viewed as affections of the mind, as falling within the psychological (or, as he chooses to designate it, the physiological) department of his course. Here he analyzes these emotions as they are, and this is all with which Psychology has to do. But when he comes to Ethics he has further to inquire into the moral propriety or impropriety of these emotions. This inquiry, however, he very inconsistently waives in reference to these emotions, and set out with the assumption that these are what they ought to be simply because they are,—nay, are themselves the source and criterion of the propriety or impropriety of actions. If any other emotion arise in the mind, we may ask concerning it, Is it right or wrong? and to answer this we must appeal to our emotion of moral approbation or disapprobation: but when this emotion itself arises we cannot ask such a question concerning it; the mere existence of it determines that it is as it ought to be. Now, why this departure in this one instance from a principle recognized and pleaded for in every other? Why

1 Lect. lxxiii., vol. i., p. 177. 2 Lect. I., vol. i., p. 9. To this question it must be confessed that only a negative answer can be returned. Allowing to sympathy all the influence and force which Dr Smith ascribes to it, it must nevertheless be pronounced wholly inadequate to sustain the superstructure which he has sought to erect upon it. His theory stands exposed to the following among other objections:—1. It assumes a fact as given in consciousness which consciousness refuses to own. The process of transferring ourselves into the position of another, in order to judge of the rectitude of his affections by supposing them our own, or of placing ourselves in the position of a spectator, in order to judge of the rectitude of the affections we ourselves indulge, is one which could not go on without our being conscious of it. But in the multifarious instances in which we pronounce moral judgment on others or on ourselves, how seldom is it that we are conscious of any approximation to such a process of reflection! The man who sees an unjust blow given, or who recoils from the suggestion of a tempter, passes instantaneously from the perception of the object to the moral judgment upon it; and no process of after reflection awakens in him the slightest consciousness that his reason for this judgment was furnished by such a transference of parties as Dr Smith supposes. Such utter unconsciousness of a process, upon which the entire validity of the judgment is assumed to rest, seems irreconcilable with the hypothesis of its existence. 2. Supposing the alleged process to take place, it affords no ground for the judgment pronounced. The conviction in the mind of A, that, if placed in the circumstances of B, he would have acted as B has acted, simply proves a similarity in his moral constitution with that of B; it proves nothing as to the rightness or the wrongness of the action itself. In order to reach this we must suppose A to approve the conduct of B as what in his own case he would have held to be right. But this presupposes a previous knowledge of the distinction between right and wrong; and, consequently, a foundation for this distinction different from, and prior to, our sympathy with the agent. In point of fact Dr Smith tacitly assumes this; and thereby lands himself in the same vicious circle as we have seen to be fatal to the theories already examined. "I cannot but regard the very celebrated theory of Dr Smith," says Dr T. Brown, "as involving, in morals, the same error that would be involved in a theory of the source of light, if an optician, after showing us many ingenious contrivances by which an image of some beautiful form may be made to pass from one visible place to another, were to contend that all the magnificent radiations of that more than ethereal splendour which does not merely adorn the day, but constitutes the day, had their primary origin in reflection, when reflection itself implies, and cannot be understood but as implying, the previous incidence, and therefore the previous existence, of the light which is reflected."3

3. Dr Smith's theory, in its primitive form, offers no account of the imperativeness which we invariably associate with the conception of right. That we approve the act of another as what we, if in his place, would have done, leaves altogether unaccounted for the conviction with which that approval is accompanied, that the act is such as ought to have been done. Dr Smith is far from overlooking this conviction; he repeatedly and emphatically asserts the imperativeness of moral rectitude. But in order to reconcile this with his theory of sympathy, he resorts to an expedient which virtually sets aside that theory. He says there is "a tribunal established in our own breasts which is the supreme arbiter of all our actions;" and this he ingeniously describes as the conception "of a person quite candid and equitable, of one who has no particular relation either to ourselves or to those whose interests are affected by our conduct, who is neither father nor brother nor friend to them or to us, but is merely a man in general, an impartial spectator, who considers our conduct with the same indifference with which we regard that of other people." From this it appears that it is not our sympathy with any of our fellow-men who may be supposed to witness our conduct, but our sympathy with this imaginary man, this "abstract man, the representative of mankind and substitute of the Deity," that determines the rectitude of our sentiments and actions. But what is this "man within" but some recognised standard of right and wrong existing independent of us, and recognised by us as the supreme arbiter of our actions—in reality something without us, but appearing to be within us, because realized as a conception of our mind? By this theory, then, of Dr Smith, as completed by himself, we are ultimately taken off the ground of emotionalism and conveyed to that of intellectualism for a basis of moral distinctions; so that its only advantage is, that it conducts us by a flowery and pleasant path, through a needless detour, to a conclusion more solid and sound than it promised. It is not without reason that the elaborate device of the author to save his peculiar theory, without renouncing the certainty or permanency of moral distinctions, has been compared to the expedients of the Ptolemaic astronomers who, "to save appearances," proposed to

"Gird the sphere With centric and eccentric scribbled o'er Cycle and epicycle, orb in orb."

B. 4. This theory will be found most ably developed in the Lectures of Dr Thomas Brown. According to him the basis of moral distinctions lies in the emotional constitution of the human mind,—in the feeling of approbation which a virtuous action awakens in us towards the agent. He denies that right and wrong are qualities of actions, and contends that they simply express a relation to the emotional part of our nature; that which we pronounce right being that which excites in us approbation, that which we pronounce wrong being that which excites in us censure or blame. "Right and wrong," says he, "signify nothing in the objects themselves. They are words expressive only of relation, and relations are not existing parts of objects, or taken from them. There is no right nor wrong, virtue nor vice, merit nor demerit, existing independently of the agents who are virtuous or vicious; and, in like manner, if there had been no moral emotions to arise on the contemplation of certain actions, there would have been no virtue or vice, merit or demerit, which express only relations to these emotions."4 "If," says he in another lecture, "a particular action be meditated by us, and we feel, on considering it, that it is one of those which, if performed by us, will be followed in our own mind by the powerful feeling of self-reproach, and in the minds of others by similar disapprobation; if a different action be meditated by us, and we feel that our performance of it would be followed in our own mind and the minds of others by an opposite emotion of approbation, this view of the moral emotions that are consequences of the actions is that which I consider as forming what is termed moral obligation,—the moral inducement which we feel to the performance of certain actions, or to absence from certain other actions. . . . Our action in the one case we term morally right, in the other case morally wrong; right and wrong, like virtue and vice, being only words that express briefly the actions which are attended with the feeling of moral approbation in the one case, of moral disapprobation in the other case."5 On this

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1 Lectures, vol. iv., p. 139. 2 Milton, Paradise Lost, b. viii. 3 Lect. lxxii., vol. iv., p. 175, 1st ed. 4 Lect. lxxxii., vol. iv., p. 148. Compare also Lect. lxxiii., vol. iii., p. 567, ff.

Recede, theory of moral distinctions the following strictures may be offered:

(i.) This theory is incompatible with the doctrine of the reality and permanency of moral distinctions. Of this doctrine Dr Brown is himself a zealous and eloquent advocate; but he appears to have forgotten it when constructing his own theory of the foundation of such distinctions. For if right and wrong be terms expressive of a mere relation of certain actions to the human mind, it follows that, the constitution of the human mind being altered, the relation would be disturbed, might even be reversed, so that what is now wrong might become right, and vice versa. That which is based on what is arbitrary and mutable can never be itself essential and permanent.

Dr Brown does not shrink from the avowal that, as the constitution of the mind might be altered, our moral judgments might be the reverse of what they now are; but he endeavours to defend his doctrine from the charge that it makes rectitude precarious and changeable, by affirming that the relations of morality are not more exposed to this objection than the relations of mathematics. "It is not to moral distinctions only that this objection, if it had any force, would be applicable. Equality, proportion, it might be said, in like manner, signify nothing in the objects themselves to which they are applied more than vice or virtue. They are as truly mere relations as the relations of morality." Now, in arguing thus, Dr Brown has either argued irrelevantly, or he has argued against himself. It is granted that equality is the concept of a relation; but the question arises, A relation of what, and to what? Is it of a certain object to the mind? Certainly not; but of the object to some other object. Either, then, the relations of morality are of the same kind as the relations of equality, or they are not. If they are not, Dr Brown's illustration drawn from the latter to the former, is irrelevant; if they are, their rectitude is not the relation of an action to the mind, but the relation of the action to something else out of the mind, viz., to some standard of rectitude existing independently of the mind and its feelings. The confusion into which Dr Brown has been betrayed in this attempt to defend his theory from a fatal objection becomes still more manifest as he proceeds. "Though the three sides of a right-angled triangle," he continues, "exist in the triangle itself, and constitute it what it is, what we term the properties of such a triangle do not exist in it, but are results of a peculiar capacity of the comparing mind. It is man, or some thinking being like man, whose comparison gives birth to the very feeling that is termed by us a discovery of the equality of the square of one of the sides to the squares of the other two; that is to say,—for the discovery of this truth is nothing more,—it is man who, contemplating such a triangle, is impressed with this relation, and who feels afterwards that it would be impossible for him to contemplate it without such an impression. If this feeling of the relation had never arisen, and never were to arise, in any mind, though the squares themselves might still exist as separate figures, their equality would be nothing, exactly as justice and injustice would be nothing, where no relation of moral emotion had ever been felt."1 This passage is full of errors, and one can account for its being found where it is only by remembering with what haste Dr Brown's lectures were composed, and how they were sent forth to the public without the benefit of his superintending and correcting hand. Had he ever carefully reviewed this passage he would not, we believe, have allowed himself to appear before the public as affirming that it is the three sides of a right-angled triangle that constitute it what it is,—that the mind may discover what has no existence,—that a discovery is a feeling,—that the mind, by comparing, may find out properties which do not exist,—and that two objects Rectitude may be equal to each other, and yet their equality be "nothing" apart from a perceiving mind. But not to dwell on these incoherences, is it not evident that Dr Brown's illustration is altogether against his own theory? As the equality of the square of the hypotenuse to the sum of the squares of the sides of a right-angled triangle does not arise from their relation to the mind, as little does the rectitude of one action and the wrongness of another arise from the relation of such to the mind; and as the perception of the equality of objects is the result of the mind's comparing these objects with each other, so the perception of the rectitude of actions is the result of the mind's comparing these with some standard of right and wrong. From this it follows conclusively that the basis of this distinction cannot be in the mind itself.

(ii.) On Dr Brown's theory it is impossible to account for the existence in the mind of the judgment of right or wrong in reference to any action. By the hypothesis there is nothing in the action itself to originate such judgments; they arise simply and solely from the mind's feeling approbation or disapprobation on perceiving the action. But what originates this feeling in the mind? It cannot be self-caused; and if not self-caused, what is there to cause it but something in the action itself? Dr Brown's system thus leads to a contradiction. Had his position been, that rectitude is a quality of actions which the mind is adapted to approve, and that on the perception of that quality in any action a feeling of approbation arises within us in reference to the agent, all would have been clear and intelligible; but when we are told that rectitude is only a relation between a certain action and an emotion of the mind, which emotion must exist before the rectitude can be perceived, all is thrown into inextricable confusion. We have the mind approving where there is nothing to approve; an emotion arising which there is nothing to excite; and a conception formed, as the result of an emotion, which can only exist where that conception is presupposed.

(iii.) Dr Brown's theory obliterates the distinction between Ethics and Psychology, by identifying what is with what ought to be. No writer has more distinctly than he enunciated the necessity of keeping these two questions separate. "When we know," says he, "that man has certain affections and passions, there still remains the great inquiry as to the propriety or impropriety of these passions, and of the conduct to which they lead. We have to consider not only how he is capable of acting, but also whether, acting in the manner supposed, he would be fulfilling a duty or perpetrating a crime."2 In pursuance of this distinction, Dr Brown has considered the emotions of moral approbation and disapprobation, viewed as affections of the mind, as falling within the psychological (or, as he chooses to designate it, the physiological) department of his course. Here he analyzes these emotions as they are, and this is all with which Psychology has to do. But when he comes to Ethics he has further to inquire into the moral propriety or impropriety of these emotions. This inquiry, however, he very inconsistently waives in reference to these emotions, and sets out with the assumption that these are what they ought to be simply because they are,—nay, are themselves the source and criterion of the propriety or impropriety of actions. If any other emotion arise in the mind, we may ask concerning it, Is it right or wrong? and to answer this we must appeal to our emotion of moral approbation or disapprobation; but when this emotion itself arises we may not ask such a question concerning it; the mere existence of it determines that it is as it ought to be. Now, why this departure in this one instance from a principle recognised and pleaded for in every other? Why

1 Lect. lxxxii., vol. ii., p. 177. 2 Lect. i., vol. i., p. 9. Rectitude is one affection of the mind to be assumed to be always right simply because it exists, while other affections of the mind must depend upon it for their moral character? Why, above all things, should that by which other affections are to be proved right or wrong, be assumed to be itself certainly right without any proof? "It is obvious," as has been justly observed, "that Dr Brown takes for granted the propriety of the feelings of approbation; and indeed he must do so. And taking this for granted, the system supplies us with no certain measure of the rectitude of any action, or of any affection of mind whatever. The correctness of the rule not being verified, we can have no confidence in relation to the correctness of anything that is measured by it. The whole system of morals is thus involved in doubt and uncertainty; and it is impossible, on this scheme, for any man to know whether he deserves the vengeance or the love of his fellow-man."

(iv.) It is impossible to understand, on Dr Brown's theory, in what sense rectitude can be ascribed to God. That God is right in all his ways is a dictate of all religions, as well of nature as of Scripture. But if rectitude be a mere relation of actions to the mind, in what sense can the actions of God be pronounced right? Whose mind is it, by their relation to which the rectitude of these actions is determined? Not, of course, that of any of God's creatures; for this were to make the character of God and his ways dependent on the feelings of a finite and perhaps erring being. Not his own mind; for we cannot without absurdity say that God's actions are right because, when He has done them, they are approved by Him, or were so when he foresaw that he would do them. Dr Brown's system seems here wholly at fault. Reason and piety alike constrain us to say that God's actions are right, because they are all perfectly conformed to an absolutely perfect standard of rectitude.

(v.) Experience teaches us that men may very sincerely and conscientiously approve actions which other men see to be wrong, and which they themselves afterwards as sincerely and conscientiously pronounce blameworthy. In such a case, according to Dr Brown's theory, the same action would be both right and wrong at the same time to different persons, and at different times to the same person. Does not such a conclusion go entirely to unsettle the foundations of morality? What confidence can one have in moral distinctions, if the mere fact that our contemplating a certain action with approbation makes it right for us to do it, and that when we change our feeling with regard to it, we become bound not to do it? Besides, does not the fact that we may change our moral estimate of actions in consequence of greater knowledge or greater mental purity, show of itself that the rectitude of actions depends upon something out of ourselves,—something appertaining to the action which we require justly to apprehend before we can feel approbation of it or of the doer of it?

On these grounds the theory of Dr Brown, ingeniously as he has illustrated it, appears altogether untenable.

Before leaving the emotional theories of rectitude, there are one or two observations of a general nature which may be hazarded in reference to certain particulars which affect them in common.

(i.) They all agree in founding moral distinctions on the existing constitution of the human mind. Dr Brown expressly avows this with reference to his theory; and it is no less true with reference to the others. Whether we resolve rectitude into a dictate of conscience, a result of sympathy, or a perception of the moral sense, we alike base it upon something in man's existing mental constitution.

(ii.) Though the authors of these theories all agree in repudiating the doctrine which finds the basis of rectitude in the will of God, the ground they have assumed in common is one which conduces ultimately to this doctrine. For as man is God's creature, his constitution, bodily and mental, is simply that which God willed him to have; and thus, as his constitution depends entirely on the Divine will, whatever depends upon his constitution must be resolved ultimately into that will. We may, indeed, ask why God willed man to possess such a moral constitution as He has given him; and we may find an answer to this in the position, that God ever does that which is right and best; but from such an inquiry and such an answer those who place the foundation of rectitude and goodness in certain emotions of the human soul, preclude themselves by the ground they have assumed.

(iii.) All these theories proceed upon the assumption, that the moral constitution of man remains in its normal state. This is essential to the validity of their appeal; for if man's moral constitution be in a state of disorder or disease, we can no more trust to its decisions in matters of right and wrong, as an independent and original source of moral distinctions, than we could to the reflections of an ill-polished mirror or to the sensations of a jaundiced eye. In making this assumption, however, they have overlooked a fact to which all experience, no less than Divine revelation, gives testimony, that man's moral constitution, so far from being in the state in which it ought to be, is in a condition wholly abnormal and disordered. It is true that this state does not amount to a destruction of man's moral constitution; he is still susceptible of moral impressions, still capable of moral judgments; and enough remains to enable us to determine what the order of his moral nature originally was. But with all this there is so much of perversion, confusion, and disorder, that we can have no security that what his moral tastes or affections may approve shall be on that account right and proper.

II.—Intellectual or Objective Theories.

We proceed to the consideration of these with a presumption that, in this department of speculation, we shall find the object of which we are in search. This presumption is founded not only on the fact that we have failed to find it in the emotional part of our nature, but also because of the intellectual character of our moral cognitions. When we say, "This is right," we do not give expression to an emotion; nor do we utter a wish; nor do we express a resolution: we pronounce a judgment. Now, as a judgment is an intellectual act, the presumption is, that the basis on which this judgment rests will be some datum or discovery of the intellect.

C. 1. This theory, according to which rectitude depends on civil enactment, is generally cited as owning for its principal exponent and advocate "the philosopher of Malmesbury," Thomas Hobbes. To this dubious honour Hobbes has contributed to raise himself by the manner in which he has repeatedly expressed his views; but it is more than doubtful whether such a doctrine can be justly fixed upon him. Mr Stewart has remarked, that "the ethical principles of Hobbes are completely interwoven with his political system;" and this must ever be borne in mind in estimating his views. The great problem which he has set himself to solve is apparently this:—Given a community, composed of men such as men usually are, how may peace and order be best secured in the administration of its affairs? And of the solution which he offers part is this, that men in such a community must not be allowed to judge each one for himself what is good and what is bad, what is melus and what is tuum, what is just and what is unjust; but all this must be determined by the enactment of the ruling power. Hence his writings contain such startling assertions as the

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1 Payne, Elements of Mental and Moral Science, p. 485, 1st ed. 2 See Lecture Ixxiv., vol. iii., p. 596. 3 Diss., p. 42, col. 1. laws are immutable and eternal; that they bind man in fero conscientia; that they are nothing else than certain conclusions understood by reason concerning things to be done and things to be omitted; that they are identical with the moral law; and that they may justly be called divine, "not only because reason, which is itself the law of nature, has been given immediately by God to each man as the rule of his actions, but also because the precepts of living thence derived are the same as those which have been promulgated by the Divine Majesty as laws of the heavenly kingdom, through our Lord Jesus Christ and the holy prophets and apostles." These sentiments appear altogether incompatible with the theory of moral distinctions usually imputed to Hobbes. It belongs to another department to examine the soundness of Hobbes's doctrine concerning the relation of subjects to their governors.

The opinion which has been thus injuriously imputed to Hobbes was certainly, however, held by some ancient philosophers, as Cudworth has showed in his learned way by numerous citations. Unfortunately, these are for the most part given in such a way, that we have been unable to verify them all; and of those we have succeeded in tracing, all do not appear apposite to the purpose for which they are cited. When every deduction, however, has been made on these accounts, there still remains enough to prove that there were philosophers in ancient times who not only affirmed what Hobbes has affirmed as to justice and injustice, good and evil, being determined by law, but who affirmed also what Hobbes has denied, viz., that such distinctions are not also by nature." Now to all such doctrines the answer is sufficiently obvious. A law, as law, is the mere expression of the supreme will in a community, and can never confer a moral character on any act to which it relates. The utmost law can do is to indicate that a given course will be followed by a given punishment, and so to affix a character of imprudence or folly to the pursuing of that course. It can never per se make that which was before right to become wrong, nor that which was before wrong to become right. "A sovereign," as has been truly said, "may enact and rescind laws, but he cannot create or rescind a single virtue;" nor can any mere expression of his will, or any penalty he may attach to the violation of it, awaken one feeling of remorse or self-condemnation in the bosom of the man who transgresses the law under a clear and firm conviction that it enjoins what a regard to a higher law—the law of rectitude or of God—forbids. The mere utterance of will can never of itself add moral qualities to an act, or bring one under an obligation to perform it; and it matters not whether this will be that of an individual or of a community, for mere numbers in a case of this sort go for nothing: where $x = 0$, $100x$ or $10,000,000x$ amount to no more. As Dr Brown puts it (though he erroneously ascribes this argument to Cudworth), "it must either be right to obey the law, and wrong to disobey it, or indifferent whether we obey it or not. If it be morally indifferent whether we obey it or not, the law which may or may not be obeyed with equal virtue cannot be a source of virtue; and if it be right to obey it, the very supposition that it is right to obey it implies a notion of right and wrong that is antecedent to the law, and gives it its moral efficacy." It is not easy to conceive what could be said in reply to this.

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1. De Cive, cap. xlii., § 1. 2. Same book, cap. xlv., § 17. 3. Leviathan, p. 63. 4. Same book, p. 182. 5. Same book, cap. iii., §§ 27, 28, 31, 33; cap. iv., § 1. 6. De Cive, cap. xlv., § 17. 7. Same book, cap. xlii., § 1. 8. See Plato's Theaetetus, p. 172, b.; Opp. ed. Stallbaum, vol. vii., sect. 1, p. 149; De Legibus, b. x., near the beginning; Aristotle, Nicom. Ethic., b. v., c. vii., §§ 4, 5, Lancaster's ed.; Archelaus, in Diogenes Laertius, De Vitae, &c., Philotheorum, says, καὶ τὸ ἀκολουθεῖν εἰς τὸ ἀκολουθεῖν ἐπὶ τῷ ἀκολουθεῖν, b. ii., cap. iv., § 3; Aristippus, πρὸς ἑαυτοῦ ὁμοίως ἡ μάθησις ἢ ἡ μάθησις ἢ ἡ μάθησις ἢ ἡ μάθησις, b. ii., c. viii., § 8; Tyrrho, b. ix., c. xli., § 3; Carneades as reported by Lactantius, Div. Instit., b. v., c. 16, ed. Sparke. 9. Lectures, vol. iii., p. 632. It is worthy of notice that Stewart as well as Brown imputes this dilemmatical reasoning to Cudworth. 10. See Active and Moral Powers, vol. i., p. 240. Both were led into the mistake by Dr Adam Smith; see his Theory of Moral Sentiments, part vi., § 3, c. 2. Rectitude. In the minds of many, however, there is a confused impression, that because it is morally right for subjects to obey their rulers; therefore whatever the ruler may prescribe becomes *ipsa facto* right, and consequently, that it is into the will of the ruler that rectitude is ultimately to be resolved. Now a very little reflection will suffice to show, that even assuming this reasoning to be well founded, it will apply to only a very small part of what concerns man as a moral agent; by far the greater part of his moral obligations relating to a sphere within which no legislation of his fellow-men can penetrate. It will occur also to the inquirer to ask,—If the will of the ruler determine the moral obligations of his subjects, what is it that determines the moral obligations of the ruler? He is not free from these; for this would be to deny to him the attributes of an intelligent creature; and if these have come upon him from some source superior to his own will, and anterior to the exercise of it, then moral distinctions cannot be created by him, and consequently conduct cannot become right simply because he commands it. Further, the question will arise,—On what rests the obligation incumbent on subjects to obey their rulers? Not surely on law; for mere law can never create an obligation: it can only prescribe how a previously existing obligation is to be followed. But if not on law, then on something anterior to law and above it; so that we are again brought to the conclusion, from the very relation of governor and subject, that there is a foundation for rectitude wholly independent of any legislation or utterance of rectoral will. "It was never heard of," says Cudworth, "that one founded all his authority of commanding others, and others' obligation or duty to obey his commands, in a law of his own making, that men should be required, obliged, or bound to obey him. Wherefore, since the thing willed in all laws is not that men should be bound or obliged to obey, this thing cannot be the product of the mere will of the commander; but it must proceed from something else, namely, the right or authority of the commander, which is founded in natural justice and equity, and an antecedent obligation to obedience in the subject which things are not made by laws, but presupposed before all laws to make them valid. And if it should be imagined that any one should make a positive law to require that others should be obliged or bound to obey him, every one would think such a law ridiculous and absurd; for if they were obliged before, then this law would be vain and to no purpose; and if they were not before obliged, then they could not be obliged by any positive law, because they were not previously bound to obey such a person's commands; so that obligation to obey all positive laws is older than all laws, and previous or antecedent to them."1 In fine, it will occur to the thoughtful inquirer, that as the obligations lying on subjects to obey their rulers is thus imposed by an authority above and anterior to that of any ruler, so the limits of this obedience must be determined by a regard to this higher authority. His authority can never ascend beyond its own source; and if, consequently, he shall command what the source of his own authority forbids, the obligation resting on his subjects to obey him necessarily terminates *quoad hoc*. This leads to the conclusion, on the one hand, that a ruler is to be obeyed only so far as he enjoins what is morally right; and, on the other, that so far from his law creating the rectitude of actions, it is by the standard of rectitude that the moral validity of his own law is to be tried.

C. 2. Closely connected in principle with the doctrine just examined, though proceeding from very different parties, and urged with very different views, is the opinion that rectitude is to be resolved into the sovereign will of God. Cudworth traces this opinion to Ockham, from whom he quotes the statement, "That there is no act evil but as it is prohibited by God, and which cannot be made good if it be commanded by God; and conversely."2 But it is certain that, in holding this opinion, Ockham only followed his master, Duns Scotus, as did many others of the Scotists.3 The opinion has found many advocates in more recent times, some of whom have not shrunk from following it to the extreme consequence, that God may enjoin on us what we now regard as the greatest crimes, but which would then become as great virtues. Descartes, as Cudworth shows, throws himself so energetically into the defence of this opinion, that he does not hesitate to affirm "that God did not will the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right angles because he knew it could not be otherwise, but because he willed the three angles of a triangle to be necessarily equal to two right angles,—therefore this is true, and cannot be otherwise;" thus resolving all truth, necessary as well as contingent, into the mere sovereign will of God. A leaning to this view may also be found in Bishop Taylor, and in several of the casuistical and mystical theologians. In judging of opinions on this subject, however, we have ever carefully to keep in view the distinction between the will of God as a rule and directory of conscience, and the will of God as a source of moral distinctions. The former opinion may be held where the latter is repudiated, as it is, for instance, by Suarez, who says, "Hoc Dei voluntas, probabilio aut praecipio, non est tota ratio bonitatis et malitiae quae est in observatione vel transgressione legis naturalis, sed supponit in ipsis actibus necessariam quamdam honestatem vel turpitudinem, et illis adjungit specialem legis divine obligationem."4

There can be no doubt that many who have given in to the opinion now under consideration, have done so from a pious desire to uphold the majesty and authority of God as the moral governor of the universe. Such motives are to be respected; but this must not prevent our pronouncing the opinion to which they have given currency not only unsound in principle, but most pernicious in tendency. It is at once, indeed, admitted that God can never enjoin anything but what is right and good; that whatever He enjoins, it is the duty of his creatures on whom it is enjoined to obey; that His law is the safest and surest rule by which any man can direct his conduct; and that, in actual practice, no man needs any other or higher reason for doing what God enjoins than is furnished by the simple fact that He has enjoined it. But, after all this has been conceded, the question arises: Does the mere utterance of the Divine will, pronouncing any course of conduct to be right, create and constitute the absolute rectitude of that conduct? In other words—would that which we now feel and believe to be right cease to be so, could it be shown that God has never commanded it? Or, in other words still,—would the Divine command (supposing it possible for such a thing to occur) be sufficient of itself to alter all our present moral convictions and relations, so as to make that which it is now right for us to do, wrong, and conversely? These questions the theory now under consideration would answer in the affirmative; and such answer we hold to be unsound and mischievous. In proof of this, the following observations may be adduced:—

(i.) This theory asserts that the distinction between vice and virtue is purely arbitrary; and that, consequently, there is no intrinsic excellence in virtue, no intrinsic turpitude in vice. All this is purely matter of appointment, and the Rectitude, emotions of approbation with which we regard the former, and of disapprobation with which we regard the latter, stand connected with a constitution which might have been so framed as to admire vice and abhor and condemn virtue. Had God so willed it, then, we might have been found contemplating such a character as that of Jesus Christ with aversion, and such a character as that of Judas Iscariot with admiration and rapture, as the noblest development of human excellence—a conclusion against which our entire moral nature revolts, and which is as impious as it is immoral. It may, indeed, be said that it is impossible for God to will what is evil, and that consequently it is incompetent for us to reason on the supposition that he could. But if good and evil have no existence anterior to, or independent of, the expressed will of God, where is the impossibility of His reversing the distinctions between these which now exist? By the hypothesis, there is nothing right and nothing wrong apart from God's will; it is His command which imparts a moral character to what, apart from this, is neither good nor bad; what, then, is to render it impossible that He should will the one and not the other? If it be replied, that He must always will what is good, this gives up the theory, because in that case it is admitted that it is not because God wills it that any course is right, but because it is right that God wills it.

(ii.) This theory, whilst proffering homage to God, really dishonours Him. For it assumes that, in settling the most momentous relations of His intelligent creatures, He proceeded without reason, and left these to be determined by mere accident or caprice. If this be denied by the advocates of this theory, the question they will have to meet is, For what reason did God will His creatures to be virtuous? To this the only reply that can be given is, that He willed this because He saw it to be good and right. But this reply supposes that virtue, as seen by the eye of God, is good anterior to His willing it for His intelligent creatures; and consequently virtually renounces the theory now under consideration. If the theory be retained, the answer is precluded, and the alleged objection stands firm. It may be added, that this theory is dishonouring to God, further, by denying that there is any inherent excellence in the Divine character independent of God's will. For if the character of God be affirmed to be excellent in itself, it will follow that there is a foundation for rectitude and moral excellence independent of any act of the Divine will; and if, on the other hand, it be affirmed that the character of God is excellent simply because it is what He willed to have it, it follows that in that character there is no inherent, essential excellence, and that if God had so willed it, His character might have been marked by the very opposite qualities to those by which it is adorned. "According to this scheme, therefore," as has been justly remarked, "there is no original moral difference between the characters of an infinitely malevolent being and an infinitely benevolent one; because this difference depends on a mere arbitrary act of will, and not at all on the respective natures of the things themselves."

(iii.) This theory confounds the distinction between moral duties and positive duties. Every person will admit that it is right to do what God enjoins; but every person must feel that there is an essential difference between the command to abstain from murder, falsehood, or theft, and the command to circumcise every male child when he is eight days old, or the prohibition to eat flesh with the blood in it. The former are moral laws, which carry their reason in themselves, and are enjoined because they are right; the latter are positive laws, which derive their reason from the authority which enacts them, and are right because they are enjoined. But if it be the Divine command which gives its moral character to any injunction, this distinction is baseless and fantastical. The only reason for any duty in that case is, that so it has been enjoined; and murder, falsehood, or theft, which would have been quite innocent had God not forbidden them, are not crimes to us in any other sense than a neglect to circumcise his child, or the eating of blood, would have been a crime to an Israelite. It is true that in the former case the law has existed since ever man existed, and is in force wherever man is found, while in the latter it was local and for a season; but if the rectitude of the acts in both cases be derived from the mere fact that they are enjoined by God, this difference does not seem to be of any moment.

C. 3. The general theory which derives the rectitude of actions from their consequences, divides itself into two sub-theories, according as these consequences are viewed either relatively to the agent himself alone, or relatively to other beings, or to being in general. In the former case rectitude is identified with what is advantageous or agreeable to the individual; in the latter it is identified with what is advantageous to the community or the race. In both cases it is assumed that there is no inherent, essential quality of rectitude in actions,—that happiness or advantage is the ultimate good, and that actions become right as they tend to promote this, and are wrong as they tend to hinder it. It may be of advantage to examine separately these modifications of the Utilitarian, or (to use the word suggested by Kant as more correct) Eudaimonistic theory of morals:

(i.) The system which refers the rectitude of actions to their tendency to promote the advantage of the agent is commonly known as the Selfish System. It has found supporters both in ancient and more recent times; but it has never drawn to it any large amount of respectable support, and it may be questioned whether any one pretending to the name of philosopher would, in the present day, be found willing to appear as its formal defender. Still it exerts a sort of unacknowledged authority over the minds of very many; it is the form into which much of the popular and vague speculation at present afloat on morals among the masses would be reducible; and hence some remarks are required to show its unsoundness.

It is not to be denied, that with all right acts there is associated a certain amount of pleasure, and that the surest course to spend life happily is to spend it virtuously. The only question is, Does this gratification constitute the source of the rectitude? in other words, Is the tendency of certain actions to communicate pleasure to us the quality which confers on them the character of rectitude?

Now, in answer to this question, it is obvious to remark, that if it be the tendency of actions to convey pleasure to us which constitutes them right, the rectitude of actions will vary in proportion to the degree of this tendency, or the amount of pleasure which they are capable of yielding to us. Those actions, therefore, which afford us most gratification will, on that account, be most deserving of our moral approbation; and we shall be able at any time to increase the rectitude of an action by increasing its capacity of pleasing us, just as a cook may increase the excellence of a dish by augmenting its power of gratifying the palate. Nor is this all: it follows, further, from this doctrine, that what is right to one person may be wrong to another; nay, that what is now wrong to any one, because it makes him unhappy, may become right to him through some change of circumstances on his part, or by some modification of its qualities in relation to him. But are such conclusions in accordance with fact? Are they borne out by the moral sentiments of mankind? Do they find assent in the sincere convictions of any human being? On the contrary, Rectitude does not every one feel that, if conclusions like these were true, such words as right and wrong, virtuous and vicious, would be utterly superfluous, and calculated only to confuse and mislead.

We may apply another test to this doctrine. Were it true, it would follow that, in judging of the actions of others, we should approve those which conduce most to the advantage of the agent; for as we approve the actions of others in proportion as they are right, if rectitude depend on advantage, our approbation will necessarily be determined by our perception of such advantage as accruing to the individual. It would thus become proper for us to think well of the successful adventurer who had surrounded himself with the comforts of life by the violation of justice, and by trampling mercy under foot,—whose coffers were filled with gains collected by fraud and extortion, and who revelled in the fruits of deeds which had desolated many homes, broken many hearts, and sent many prematurely to the grave. There is, in fact, no sort of successful crime which, on this principle, we should not commend, our censure being reserved only for the unfortunate or the imprudent, who had failed to secure their own interest. On such a supposition, is it not idle to talk of moral distinctions, or to dignify man with the title of a moral agent?

Every person who reflects on the moral phenomena of his own nature must be aware that such perverted judgments are utterly impossible. Men, it is true, "will praise those that do well to themselves;"¹ for there is a certain feeling of admiration excited by all successful adventure, even when its end is purely selfish; but such praise is always limited by the condition, that in doing well to themselves men have not done ill to others; and it is excited, besides, not so much by the view of the advantage the individual has secured, as by the conviction that man owes a duty to himself in reference to the promotion of his own welfare, as well as to others. When it is evident that it is by the path of crime that men have passed to wealth, honour, or pleasure, there is in every human breast a sentiment of condemnation excited by their conduct, which no consideration of its successful result can mitigate. Nay, so certain and so strong is this sentiment, that even when we ourselves are made to reap the benefits of another's crime, we cannot but perceive and feel the evil of his conduct. The favourite of a despot who is enriched by his master's extortions, and whose passions are regaled by means of the license which his master's tyranny secures, has nevertheless within his bosom a sentiment condemnatory of his master's proceedings, which no sense of gratitude to his master can wholly obliterate, and which the degrading influences of a vile dependence can hardly blunt. "We can constrain our tongue to be false, our features to bend themselves to the resemblance of that passionate adoration which we wish to express, our knees to fall prostrate; but our heart we cannot constrain. There virtue must still have a voice, which is not to be drowned by hymns and acclamations; there the crimes which we laud as virtues are crimes still, and he whom we have made a god is the most contemptible of mankind, if indeed we do not feel, perhaps, that we are ourselves still more contemptible."²

This description, though perhaps somewhat exaggerated, is substantially true; but if virtue lie in the tendency of any act to promote our individual benefit, why should it be so impossible for us to commend acts which directly minister to our advantage, or to approve of the character of one to whose agency we owe so much?

In reply to these strictures, it may be said that, in estimating the consequences of actions to ourselves, we must take into account the whole of our being, and that in this case it will be found that, as no vicious course is ultimately beneficial, and no virtuous course ultimately injurious, true wisdom would dictate to all men to avoid a vicious and pursue a virtuous career. This is the form in which the Eudaimonistic theory was advocated by Epicurus, who maintained that "virtues are to be preferred for the sake of pleasure, not for their own sake, just as medicine for the sake of health;" but at the same time contended "that virtue alone is inseparable from pleasure," and that "no man can live pleasantly unless he live prudently, honourably, and justly;"³ and hence he consistently taught that prudence (φρονησις) is the prime virtue.⁴ In this last assertion Epicurus avows what is sufficient to prove the inadequacy of the Eudaimonistic theory, even in this its improved form, to account for moral distinctions, or distinct moral judgments. After all, even on his own showing, the choice between right and wrong is a mere matter of prudence; there is nothing morally wrong in vice or right in virtue: the former is to be shunned simply because it leads to unpleasant consequences, and the latter to be followed simply because upon the whole it conduces to our happiness. On this theory it still remains inexplicable why men should censure vice and should commend virtue. If a man chooses to be vicious or selfish on the ground that that is the pleasanter course for him, we may pity him for the mistake he has made, but we have no right, on this theory, to blame him as having done wrong.

Besides, how on this theory are we to adjust the competing merits of a life of simple selfishness and a life of generous beneficence? Are these equally good? and, if not, why not? Let us take a case. Some person, writing in the name of Swift, says to the people of Ireland, "I have been bred in a careful way of life, and never ventured upon any project without consulting my pillow first how much I should be a gainer in the upshot."⁵ These are not Swift's own words, for at the time they were written he was hastening to the grave in a state of hopeless imbecility; but they paint a character such as may sometimes be found, and therefore are sufficient for our present purpose. Now, some twenty years before the date of this production, Swift wrote to Lord Carteret as follows, of his illustrious friend and countryman Berkeley:—"He is an absolute philosopher with regard to money, titles, and power; and for three years past hath been struck with a notion of founding a university at Bermudas by a charter from the crown. . . . He showed me a little tract which he designs to publish; and there your excellency will see his whole scheme of a life academico-philosophical—of a college founded for Indian missionaries, where he most exorbitantly proposeth a whole hundred a year for himself, forty pounds for a fellow, and ten for a student. His heart will break if his deanery be not taken from him and left to your excellency's disposal."⁶ In these characteristic sentences the sarcastic Dean of St Patrick's seeks to assist his friend in the "romantic design," as he calls it,—but which he could not help feeling to be also "very noble and generous"—of resigning wealthy preferment, great prospects, refined society, scholarly resources and associations, to go to a distant and semi-barbarous colony as a pioneer of civilization and a preacher of religion, amid poverty and privation of every kind. Here, again, we have a character painted to us—happily this time a real character, though one not so frequently encountered in actual life as the former. What shall we say of the two characters on the Eudaimonistic theory? On that theory the motive in both cases was the same—personal advantage and pleasure.

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¹ Ps. xlii. 18. ² Brown, Lectures, vol. iv., p. 72. ³ Diog. Laert., l. x., §§ 138, 140, &c. ⁴ The Drapier's Letters to the Good People of Ireland, 1745, in Swift's Works, vol. xxvii., p. 160, ed. 1779. ⁵ Works, vol. xvii., p. 153. Were both, then, alike good? Is the pseudo-Swift, cautiously consulting his pillow before he committed himself to any project, that he might avoid all possible sources of personal loss and discomfort, to be equally commended and admired with the large-hearted and generous Berkeley, who, casting all personal considerations to the winds, is willing to endure penury, and toil, and trial, for a scheme which is to profit him nothing, even should it prove successful, but from which he hopes his fellow-men may reap benefit? Or if the latter is to be pronounced the better of the two, is his superiority to be determined by nothing else than a nicely-adjusted estimate of the superior amount of happiness which, in the upshot, the course he has selected is calculated to confer upon him?

But supposing we arrive at this conclusion, it may occur to one to ask, How did Dr Berkeley know, or how can any one know, anterior to experience, that the path of generous self-denial is productive of a larger amount of happiness than that of self-indulgence? Here the Eudaimonistic theory of human actions seems wholly at fault. For either the happiness which virtue confers is cognised by the mind previous to the virtuous action, or it is not. If it is not, then all acts of virtuous self-denial are performed either without any motive at all,—a position which the mind refuses to admit,—or they are performed for some other reason than the pleasure attendant on virtuous conduct. If, on the other hand, there is an attendant acquaintance with this pleasure, for the sake of which alone good deeds, it is supposed, are done, this can arise only from the generous desire being felt previous to the pleasure which the anticipated gratification of it yields. In either case, it is certain that it is not from selfish motives that the virtuous deed is done.

In fine, as Dr Brown has observed, "even if virtue were as selfish as it is most strangely said to be, it would be necessary to form two divisions of selfish actions: one, of those selfish actions of which self was the direct object; and another, of those very different selfish actions in which the selfish gratification was sought in the good of others. He who submitted to poverty, to ignominy, to death, for the sake of one who had been his friend and benefactor, would be still a very different being, and ought surely, therefore, to be classed still differently from him who robbed his friend of the scanty relics of a fortune which his credulous benevolence had before divided with him, and, not content with this additional plunder, calumniated, perhaps, the very kindness which had snatched him from ruin. By what perversion of language," he justly asks, "is the same term to be given to affections so different?"

(ii) The theory which refers the rectitude of actions to their tendency to promote the general good is commonly known as, by way of eminence, the Utilitarian theory. Though not unknown to the ancients, it is in more recent times that this theory has found its principal expounders and advocates. The first formally to develop it was Bishop Cumberland, in his elaborate treatise, De Legibus Naturae, written in reply to Hobbes. It was subsequently embraced by Pufendorf, and has more recently been advocated by Hume, Paley, and Bentham. In substance it is the theory which lies at the basis of the ethical system of Edwards; and it has been avowed and defended by one of Edwards's ablest followers, Dr Timothy Dwight. To these writers must be added Mandeville; for though he teaches that virtue and vice are determined by enactment, and the sense of them acquired by education, yet he asserts that rulers, in fixing what shall be called virtue and what vice, have been guided solely by a regard to utility, making those actions virtuous which benefit the community, and those vicious which injure it. All these writers agree in maintaining that the utility of actions (that is, their fitness to promote the welfare of being in general, of society at large, or to the greatest possible extent of the greatest possible number) constitutes their rectitude, and that the feeling of benevolence, or the desire so to act as to promote this utility, is the principle of virtue in an agent.

Now, it may be conceded that, in a sense, utility is inseparable from virtue and rectitude. By the gracious arrangement of the Almighty, all right actions are really useful; and it is not to be denied that to will the good of others, and to labour for that, is in itself good and right. But after all this is conceded, it still remains to be asked, Is the utility of an action that which, per se and solely, constitutes that action right? Those who would answer this question in the affirmative urge the consideration that, in a comparative view of human actions, our preference is always given to those which are most advantageous to the race, and that, apart from the tendency of virtue to make men happy, there seems no reason why it should be preferred to vice. Now, it may be granted that, in estimating the worth of virtuous actions, men usually prefer those which are most advantageous; but in order to judge of the bearing of this fact on our present inquiry, it will be needful to view it under two conditions: first, that the criterion of preference shall be moral rectitude, and not expediency; and, second, that the criterion being moral rectitude, it shall be ascertained that it is the utility of actions on which the mind fixes as the ground of its preference. If these conditions be enforced, we believe it will be found, not that the actions are preferred because they are most useful, but that those preferred, as morally best, are also found to be most useful because of the established connection between rectitude and utility; so that this fact determines nothing conclusively in favour of the Utilitarian theory. With regard to the other argument adduced, though it is one on which Dwight lays great stress,—asserting that "were sin, in its own proper tendency, to produce invariably the same good which it is the tendency of virtue to produce, . . . no reason is apparent to me why it should not become excellent, commendable, and rewardable, the same as virtue now is?"—we cannot but regard it as a mere petitio principii. Of course, if virtue have no quality of its own to distinguish it essentially from vice, and if the only difference between the two lie in their tendencies, it is clear enough that the foundation of the former is to be sought in its tendency to utility; but all that is here assumed happens to involve the very point in dispute, and to be just what is required to be proved.

The fundamental objection to the theory of utility lies, we think, in this, that it proposes to find the basis of moral distinctions in what is not directly a moral quality at all. Utility is a physical and not a moral excellence. The test of this is furnished by the fact, that utility is not a quality which awakens in us moral approbation. It may excite admiration, delight, gratitude; but of itself it never awakens moral approbation. When a benefactor confers on us a favour, it is not the value of the favour that excites our Rectitude, moral approval; that is reserved for some quality in the benefactor, with which the utility to us of his donation has nothing to do; were it otherwise, we should regard the benevolent act which relieves a starving family with exactly the same emotion with which we regard the coins given by the benefactor for the purpose of his benevolence. But if utility be not a quality that excites in us moral approbation, then it must be fallacious to make it the basis of moral excellence; for this would be to affirm an entire discordance between moral truth and man's moral nature,—in other words, to deny the possibility of morality altogether. Then, moreover, utility is a quality which belongs to many objects which are irrational, and many which are inanimate, to none of which we ever think of ascribing moral excellence. A horse is useful, a cow is useful, a chair is useful, food is useful, and so of a multitude of other things; yet who ever thinks of ascribing to these objects the quality of rectitude or moral worth because of their utility? But if more utility were the basis of rectitude, why should it be so? why should we refuse to ascribe moral excellence to an object which possesses in a high degree the quality which is the differential and constitutive element of moral excellence? If utility and virtue be equivalent terms, why should it seem preposterous to speak of a virtuous horse, or ridiculous to commend the moral excellence of a mahogany table? This objection, though urged by Dr Adam Smith, Dr Thomas Brown, and other eminent philosophers, is treated with great contempt by Dr Dwight. "This objection," says he, "it is hardly necessary to answer. Voluntary usefulness is the only virtue. A smatterer in philosophy knows that understanding and will are necessary to the existence of virtue. He who informs us that if virtue is founded on utility, animals, vegetables, and minerals, the sun, the moon, and the stars, must be virtuous, so far as they are useful, is either disposed to trifle with mankind for their amusement, or supposes them to be triflers." This is sufficiently strong; but is it just? An action is pronounced morally good, and the question is asked, Why? To this the utilitarian answers, "Simply because its tendency is useful." "No," replies the objector, "for there are many things useful which we cannot call morally good." "Oh," says Dr Dwight, "that is a trifling objection, because when I speak of virtue I speak of what belongs only to voluntary agents." But is not this a giving up of the whole question? From this it appears that what constitutes virtue is not mere utility, but utility plus a voluntary and intelligent choice; and as the former element in this equation must, for the reasons above assigned, be eliminated, the latter remains as the only substantial basis of virtue. But virtue cannot be placed in mere choice; it can be found only in the reasons which have guided that choice. It follows, that in these reasons, whatever they may be, and not in the mere utility of the act, the element of its virtuousness must be sought.

We conclude, then, that it is not in the tendency of actions to promote either our own happiness or the welfare of others that the basis of virtue is to be sought. It is true that virtuous actions will promote both, and it is true that no higher or nobler end can be proposed by any man to himself, as an active being, than the promoting of the happiness and honour of universal being as far as he can. But still, as has been justly remarked, "it remains a question how far conduciveness even to these is what properly constitutes virtue or moral rectitude. Instead of its conduciveness to good constituting its essential nature, from its essential nature may arise its conduciveness to good... The inquiry will remain, whether virtue is good because it conduces to these ends, or whether it does not necessarily conduce to these ends because it is good; in other words, whether the system, even in the loftiest and most enlarged view of it, goes far enough back; whether there be not ultimate principles of moral rectitude necessary and eternal, existing previously to all possible trial and manifestation of their tendencies; and whether the actual evolution of the goodness of these tendencies, commencing of course with the earliest date of creation, instead of being what essentially constitutes moral rectitude itself, ought not rather to be regarded as the native and appropriate result of the principles of rectitude."

We may conclude this discussion by citing the words of Cicero:—“Sive honestum solum bonum est, ut Stoici placent, sive quod honestum est id ita summum bonum est, quemadmodum Peripateticos nostris videtur, ut omnia ex altera parte collocata, vix minimi momenti instar habeant: dubitandum non est quin nunguam possit utilitas cum honestate contendere. Itaque accepimus Socratem exsecrari solitum eos qui primum hanc, natura coherentia, opinione distraxissent. Cui quidem ita sunt Stoici assensi ut quidquid honestum esset id utile esse consentent, nec utile quidquam quod non honestum.”

D.1. This theory is identified with the name of Dr Samuel Clarke. It is stated by him as follows:—“That there are different relations of things one towards another is as certain as that there are different things in the world. That from these different relations of different things there necessarily arises an agreement or disagreement of some things to others, or a fitness or unfitness of the application of different things or different relations one to another, is likewise as certain as that there is any difference in the nature of things, or that differences do exist. Further, that there is a fitness or suitability of certain circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitability of others founded in the nature of things, and in the qualifications of persons antecedent to will, and to all arbitrary or positive appointment whatsoever, must unavoidably be acknowledged by every one who will not affirm that it is equally fit and suitable, in the nature and reason of things, that an innocent being should be extremely and eternally miserable, as that it should be free from such misery. There is therefore such a thing as fitness and unfitness, eternally, necessarily, and unchangeably, in the nature and reason of things. Now, what these relations absolutely and necessarily are in themselves, that also they appear to be to the understanding of all intelligent beings, except those who understand things to be what they are not,—that is, whose understandings are either very imperfect or very much depraved. And by this understanding or knowledge of the natural and necessary relations of things, the actions likewise of all intelligent beings are constantly directed (which, by the way, is the true ground and foundation of all morality), unless their will be corrupted by particular interest or affection, or awayed by some unreasonable and prevailing lust.” Again, he says, “The true ground and foundation of all eternal moral obligations is this, that the same reasons (viz., the forementioned necessary and eternal different relations which different things bear to each other, and the consequent fitness or unfitness of the application of different things or different relations one to another, unavoidably arising from that difference of the things themselves),—these very same reasons, I say, which always and necessarily do determine the will of God, ought also constantly to determine the will of all subordinate intelligent beings.” According to these statements, it appears that Dr Clarke placed the basis of rectitude ultimately in “the reason and nature of things,” out of which have arisen certain essential differences in objects and their relations, which again have given birth to certain fitnesses or unfit-

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1 Serm. xcix. 2 Wardlaw, Christian Ethics, p. 107, &c., 3d ed. 3 De Officiis, b. iii., § 3. 4 Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, vol. i., p. 106, 10th ed. 5 Same book, p. 115. In judging of this theory it is important to bear in mind what sense the author speaks of "the fitnesses of things." The word "fitness" is ambiguous; it may express the adaptation of one thing to another, or it may express the accordance of things with some standard by which they are judged. If we say "this is fitted to produce such or such an effect," we convey a very different conception by the word "fitted" from what is conveyed by the word "fit," when we say "it is fit that such or such an effect should be produced." Now, it is in the latter of these senses that Dr Clarke uses the term "fitness" when he speaks of the "fitnesses of things;" he intends by this phrase, not the adaptation of things in general to each other, but the accordance of things with the standard produced by their essential differences of nature and relation; in other words, congruity, or accordance with their relations. Had Dr Brown and Sir James Mackintosh sufficiently adverted to this, they would have spared some of the severest strictures they have offered on this theory.

It is further to be borne in mind, in justice to Dr Clarke, that in making morality consist in conformity to relations, he had not in view all relations, but only such as belong to the sphere of moral agency. It might be presumed that this was his reference from the nature of the subject he is discussing in the part of his book where this theory is developed—the Moral Perfection of God; and the well-known acuteness of the author might have preserved him from being supposed to maintain a theory which would have placed the constructing of a machine on strictly mathematical principles on a par, in point of moral rectitude, with the performance of an act of eminent piety or benevolence; nay, which would make the murdering of a man by a scientific regard to the relations of poison to the human system, as virtuous an act as the saving of a starving man's life by a due regard to the relations of food to the body. Dr Samuel Clarke was not quite the man to fall into a gross mistake of this sort; and had due attention been paid to his own words in the passage we have quoted, such a mistake would not have been imputed to him. The fitnesses of which he speaks, as lying at the basis of morality, are the congruities of the actions of moral agents with the relations in which they have been placed by God—relations which he holds to be not accidental or arbitrary, but flowing out of the nature and reason of things. Here again his critics have done him grievous wrong.

When fairly viewed, the doctrine of Clarke is rather to be pronounced defective than condemned as erroneous. That it is true so far as it goes it seems impossible to deny. There can be no doubt that in the sphere of moral agency there are essential differences, out of which arise fixed and unalterable relations, and that there is a fitness or propriety of actions, and the contrary, thence resulting. The only questions which we think can be fairly mooted in reference to the validity of Clarke's theory are, first, whether it does not leave us with too vague and indefinite an answer to the inquiry, "On what is rectitude founded?" and second, whether the author has not stopped short of a thorough exploration of the subject? It must be admitted that the phrases "fitnesses of things," "eternal and immutable relations," and even the phrase "nature and reason of things," are somewhat deficient in precision and clearness; but even were these phrases more distinctly intelligible than they are, it would still remain to inquire, Why is it that moral distinctions arise out of the nature and reason of things? We may say, morality is conformity to the fitnesses of things, and the fitnesses of things arise out of the fixed and unalterable relations of things; and these relations result from the essential differences of things; but still the question comes up, To what are these essential differences due? By "things" we are of course to understand here all beings with which moral agents have to do. Now of these "things," all, excepting God himself, are the creatures of His will, and have received their nature from Him. Shall we say, then, that in giving them each its peculiar nature He acted arbitrarily? No, replies Clarke; God was under no necessity to create; but having resolved to create, He must make things "so that they shall be disposed according to the exactest and most unchangeable laws of eternal justice, goodness, and truth." But is not this virtually to admit that the laws of justice, goodness, and truth—in short, moral laws generally—exist antecedently to the constitution of things, and regulate and determine that? and if so, must not a basis of moral truth be sought deeper down than in these relations or the fitnesses to which they give rise?

D. 2. This theory is advanced by Wollaston in his Religion of Nature. "Those propositions," says he, "are true which express things as they are; or truth is the conformity of those words or signs by which things are expressed to the things themselves." "A true proposition may be denied, or things may be denied to be what they are, by deeds as well as by express words, or another proposition. Every act of such a being as is before described (a being capable of distinguishing, choosing, and acting for himself), and all those omissions which interfere with truth (i.e., deny any proposition to be true which is true, or suppose anything not to be what it is in any regard), are morally evil in some degree or other; the forbearing of such acts, and the acting in opposition to such omissions, are morally good; and when anything may be either done or not done, equally without the violation of truth, that thing is indifferent." This theory is substantially identical with that of Clarke; indeed, it is offered by the author as an improvement on that of Clarke, inasmuch as it affords a more precise and intelligible statement of the truth. What Clarke calls the fixed relations of things Wollaston calls the truth of things; and when Wollaston pronounces immorality to consist in acting so as to suppose anything not to be what it really is, he only reiterates Clarke's statement, that blame-

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1 See the acute and able reply of Dr Wardlaw to these strictures in his Christian Ethics, note E, 3d ed. 2 To this may be added the following—"That there is a fitness or suitableness of certain circumstances to certain persons, and an unsuitableness of others, founded on the nature of things, and the qualifications [qualities] of persons antecedent to all positive appointment whatever; also, that from the different relations of different persons one to another, there necessarily arises a fitness or unfitness of certain manners of behaviour of some persons towards others, is as manifest as that the properties which flow from the essences of different mathematical figures have different congruities or incongruities between themselves. . . . For instance, that God is infinitely superior to man is as clear as infinity is larger than a point, or eternity longer than a moment. And 'tis as certainly fit that men should honour and worship, obey and imitate God, rather than, on the contrary, in all their actions endeavour to dishonour and disobey Him, as 'tis certainly true that they have an entire dependence on Him," &c. (Vol. ii., p. 30.) These sentences leave no doubt that it was only in respect of the relations of moral agents that Clarke meant to predicate moral fitnesses. This passage is so worded also, that it ought to have preserved him from the charge of confounding moral and mathematical relations. It is evident he does not confound them, but simply states an analogy between them in their respective provinces. This charge is the more unjust, in that Clarke himself guards against it by artfully stating, that he did not, in making such comparisons, overlook the difference, "that ascent to a plain speculative truth is not in a man's power to withhold; but to act according to the plain right and reason of things, this he may, by the natural liberty of his will, forbear." (Vol. ii., p. 40.) 3 The Religion of Nature Delineated, 7th ed., 8vo, pp. 6, 6, 29. Rectitude, worthiness consists in acting as if "the proportions of things in morality were what they are not." There is little ground, however, for Wollaston's boast that his modification of the theory is the superior of the two. His phraseology is even more vague and loose than that of Clarke. Taking his own definition of truth, and comparing that with his emphatic declaration, that he "would have it to be minded well" that when he speaks of acts inconsistent with truth, he means "any truth, any true proposition whatsoever, whether containing matter of speculation or plain fact," we may venture to say that no simply immoral act has ever been committed, or ever can be committed, inasmuch as any act is prompted by regard to some fact or other. It is only when couched in Clarke's more cautious phraseology that the doctrine ceases to be absurd.

D. 3. That virtue consists in living according to nature, was the doctrine of the ancient Stoics, and in maintaining this doctrine they, by implication, placed the basis of morality in nature. In what sense this term is to be understood Cicero has explained: "When," says he, "we say that the world stands together and is administered by Nature, we mean thereby not such a thing as a clod or lump of stone, or anything of that sort, with no nature of cohering (i.e., no force uniting the parts into one organic whole), but such a thing as a tree or an animal, in which there is no hazardous, but order is apparent, and a certain resemblance of art." From this it appears that to live according to nature does not mean to live according to this or that special nature, but to live according to the organized and orderly system of the universe. And with this agrees what Diogenes Laertius says in his exposition of the stoical scheme of Ethics: "To live according to virtue," says he, "is equivalent to living according to the experience of those things that come to pass by nature, as Chrysippus says in his first book concerning ends (ἐπιτελέσεως); for our natures are parts of universal nature. Wherefore the end comes to be to live consequent to nature, that is, according to man's own and that of the universe, doing nothing which the common law is wont to prohibit, that is the right reason (δόξα λόγος) which pervades all, the same being in Jove, the ruler of all things that are." And again, "Chrysippus understands by that nature, consequent to which we are to live, both the common nature and that peculiar to man. But Cleanthes accepts only the common nature as that which ought to be followed, not also that which is partial."

Thus explained, the Stoical system is not essentially different from that of Clarke, who places the basis of rectitude in the nature of things; and the objection which applies to the one system applies with equal force to the other. Define nature as generally as we please, it still remains to inquire, Whence came this nature, and what determined its essence? *Natura* from *nascor*, *φύσις* from *φύεσθαι*, imply *birth*, *generation*, *production*; and consequently we can never rest in mere nature as an ultimate basis. And even if nature be taken in the sense of essence, we shall not much forward the research; for the essence of a creature must be just as much derived as its form. These speculations, therefore, though true so far as they go, are chiefly useful in pointing out to us the direction in which we must travel if we would find the solution they fail to supply.

D. 4. Butler, who adopts the Stoical phraseology, and who in one place distinctly states that "moral duties arise out of the nature of the case," and in another says that "vice is contrary to the nature and reason of things," protects himself against the objection above adduced against the system of Clarke and that of the Stoics, by the explanation he gives of the sense in which he understands "nature" in such phraseology. "The general course of nature," says he, "that is, not surely the words or ideas course of nature, but Him who appointed it, and put things into it; or a course of operation, from its uniformity or constancy, called natural, and which necessarily implies an operating agent." This latter statement may be elucidated by a previous statement in the same treatise. "The only distinct meaning of that word [natural] is stated, fixed, or settled; since what is natural as much presupposes an intelligent agent to render it so, i.e., to effect it continually or at stated times, as what is supernatural or miraculous does to effect it for once." According to Butler, then, conformity to nature is conformity to God, from whom nature derived its constitution and order.

We are thus conducted to the theory which places the basis of rectitude in the nature of God. This theory must not be confounded with that which founds rectitude on the will of God. The will of God is His purpose, appointment, or edict; and although this must ever be in full accordance with His nature, it is no more to be identified with it than the purposes or commands of a man are to be identified with his nature. "We ought," says Price, "to distinguish between the will of God and His nature." It by no means follows, because certain things are independent of His will, that they are properly distinct from Him and independent of His nature." And he goes on to say, that to conceive that moral distinctions, being necessarily immutable and eternal, are independent of the Divine nature, "would involve us in the greatest absurdities and inconsistencies." "Wherever," he adds, "or in whatever objects necessity or infinity occur to our thoughts, the Divine eternal nature and perfections are to be acknowledged, to which nothing of this kind can be unallied."

This theory contemplates the moral universe as constructed upon a plan; as not a happy accident, or a congeries of powers working now in convenience and now in contrariety, but as a *cosmos*, or well-ordered and beautifully composed system, in which each part and power is adjusted to the rest, and the whole is fitted to a great and worthy end. Now, such a plan involves principles, and these must have a basis. But where shall we search for the basis of principles that themselves lie at the foundations of the whole world? Where but in the eternal nature of Him by whom that whole has been conceived and constituted? It is so in the physical world. The outer universe is what it is because God is what He is. On the awful and eternal "I AM THAT I AM" the whole scheme and order of existence repose. The universe is the work of His hands; the plan of the universe is the utterance of His will; and the archaic principles which regulate that plan are resolvable only into the necessary perfections of His being. Now, as it is in the material, so is it in the moral world. There, too, all things are arranged in order and on plan. The relations sustained by intelligent beings to the sentient and intelligent universe, and the duties flowing out of these, are all fixed parts of the scheme under which such find themselves existing. To fulfil these relations, and to perform these duties, is the order of the moral world, and accordant with the plan on which it has been framed. But this plan

Rectitude rests upon certain great moral principles or laws, and these again find their basis in the Divine nature. It is because God is such as He is that moral law is what it is, and that the moral world is constituted as it is. In the Divine essence, then, unchangeable and eternal, lies the foundation of rectitude—a foundation which, as it is perpetual and immutable, gives to moral distinctions that character of fixedness and perpetuity which all sound moralists have asserted as belonging to them.

This doctrine coalesces in the main with Plato's sublime speculations regarding ideas—the eternal, uncreated exemplars in the Divine mind, according to which all creature existence has been formed and all creature excellence determined. In one passage, indeed, he expressly calls God the idea or exemplar of the good—“This, then, which furnishes truth by means of those things which are understood, and communicates to those who understand the power of doing so, say thou to be the idea of the good, and the cause of knowledge and truth as understood by the mind.” Cicero also, in one of the passages in which he refers to the unwritten law which is above all law, says, “Orta autem simul est cum mente divina, quamobrem lex vera aquae principis, apta ad jubendum et vetandum ratio est recta summi Jovis?” and still more tersely he says, a few lines further on, “Illa divina mens, summa lex est.” When writing these words he had probably before his mind the memorable dogma of Chrysippus the Stoic:—“No other beginning, no other genesis of righteousness, is to be found than that from Zeus and the common nature; for thence must everything of this sort have its beginning, if we propose to say aught about things good and bad.”

SECT. IV.—CRITERION OF RECTITUDE.

Having arrived at a conclusion as to the basis of moral truth, we have now to investigate the standard or criterion of rectitude; for, in the nature of the case, the basis lies hid from human view, and can no more become a guide to practice than the foundation of a house can become a fitting place of abode.

Now at first sight it may appear as if a simple and sufficient answer to this demand were furnished by that acknowledged quality of all right actions—their utility. If, it may be said, it be granted that all right actions are useful, it follows that we have only to inquire what courses are most for the well-being of ourselves and others, or of society, or of being at large, to be furnished with a safe and simple rule of moral conduct. But, though it may be conceded that in many cases this rule will suffice, and that in the ordinary business of life it is sometimes the only one we are able to apply, we must nevertheless demur to accepting it as adequate to the full exigencies of the case. For though it be true that all virtuous actions are useful, it unhappily does not follow that all actions which appear to us useful are virtuous; and as it is only by the appearance that man can judge in such matters, it is possible that a spurious utility may often betray him into grievous wrong and lasting mischief. It were ill for us were there no surer and more perfect standard of rectitude than one subject to such accidents as this.

We must go somewhat deeper into the subject in order to find such a solution of the problem now before us as will abide the test. Happily the conclusion to which our previous speculations have conducted us, opens the way for such a solution.

If the ground and basis of rectitude be found in the Divine essence, it will follow that the character of God,—that is, the combined perfections of Deity as a manifested personality,—must form an absolutely perfect expression of moral excellence. God exists in the universe as He is in Himself; the outer manifestation is the efflux and interpreter of the inner glory. What we call His attributes are not qualities assumed by Him, or capable of being severed from Him or modified in Him; they are simply partial representations to our minds of that infinite and unchanging essence which we can never fully comprehend. In the revealed character of God, then, must be found the highest standard of moral truth for all His intelligent creatures; and the supreme aim of all of them, who would excel in goodness, must be to imitate God, to act so as that their characters shall resemble His. Hence we are commanded in Scripture to be “imitators of God” (μυηραι τον Θεον), and to be holy according to the pattern or example of God; and the consummation of our regenerated being is set forth as consisting in our being made perfect in His likeness, changed into His image. Even Plato assures us that the only escape from the present evil state is by assimilating ourselves to God as much as may be—to God, who is absolutely and ever righteous, and whom none so much resembles as the man who becomes most righteous; and he points us to heaven as the place where alone the perfect paradigm of a State can be sought by him who would see it, and seeing it would inhabit it.

But the character of God can be apprehended by us only as it is manifested to us. No man can by searching out God. To be known by His creatures, the Infinite and Eternal must reveal Himself to them. Now, God has so revealed Himself to us. All that He does within the sphere of the sensible universe is a revelation of Him; on all that comes from Him he stamps the impress of His name. Hence creation in all its parts,—the constitution and order of nature, and the course of events, as controlled and regulated by His providence,—all, so far as they lie within our ken, supply us with information respecting the character of God. But in addition to these the world possesses a revelation of God in which He has clothed the truth concerning Himself in written words; and this He has placed before us as the fullest, clearest, and most instructive source of intelligence we can resort to on this sublime and all-important theme. From these sources may be gathered that supreme law, conformity to which is practical rectitude.

SECT. V.—HOW A KNOWLEDGE OF RECTITUDE IS ACQUIRED.

It may be asked, however, By what process does man, in point of fact, come to be acquainted with the intimations of these standards of moral decision? In reply to this, it may be said that it is by listening to the lessons of experience... and correcting and enlarging these by regard to the teachings of tradition and Holy Scripture, that a thorough moral discipline may be best pursued. Each man's own experience will teach him that he lives in a world of which rectitude is the law; for he cannot but perceive that whatever departures men may make from this, every such departure is contrary to the primary order of things, is felt to be blameworthy even by those who make it, and is usually followed by such consequences as show that it cannot be done with impunity. What personal experience thus teaches, intercourse with other men, whose experience is found to be the same, confirms; and the concurrent testimony of past ages embodied in tradition, at once strengthens his own convictions, and corrects the mistakes into which a too partial induction may have betrayed him. And, in fine, when he is privileged to have the Holy Scriptures, he finds in them a law written which is the counterpart of the law written in the order of nature and on his own heart, and which at the same time completes and corrects the virtues, moral beliefs which nature, conscience, and testimony, have already instilled into him.

**PART II.—OF VIRTUE.**

**SECT. I.—VIRTUE DEFINED.**

Virtue in individuals may be viewed under a subjective and an objective aspect.

1. Virtue, viewed subjectively, may be described in the general as the harmony of the active with the moral nature of man. Virtue presupposes an agent of whom alone it can be properly predicated; for though we sometimes ascribe virtue to actions, this is only by an impropriety of speech akin to such metonomies as "a spirited action," "a manly career," &c.; virtue properly belongs to an agent—"apellata est enim ex viro virtus," says Cicero;¹ and it is conditioned by this that the emotional or conative energies of the agent shall be in accordance with his moral nature. Viewed as a mental state, virtue is this internal harmony in itself; viewed as an attribute of character, virtue is the habit of living to which this harmony leads, and by which it is exemplified.

One Aristotle lays emphasis on the position that virtue is exclusively a ἐπίστημα or ἀρετή, and cannot be ranked as either one of the capabilities (δυνάμεις) or one of the passions (ἐπιθυμίαι) of our nature. By the former of these Aristotle means that part of our natural constitution by which we are capable of certain emotions; and by the latter, he means the emotions themselves. Now, for neither of these do themselves, he argues, are we pronounced virtuous, but only for the due and proper exercise of them. But this presumed deliberative choice, by which we regulate the indulgence of our desires and emotions, and by consequence our actions. Virtue, therefore, he defines to be ἐπίστημα τῆς ἀρετῆς, a habit predetermined or fore-chosen, the object of which is our affections and actions. When, consequently, man chooses as he ought, i.e., in accordance with his moral nature, virtue is the result.²

Plutarch teaches the same doctrine.³ "Moral character (ἀρετή) is the quality of the impulsive part of our nature;⁴ and it is so called because this quality, and the difference (=this differential quality), the impulsive part of our nature receives by custom (ἔθος); being moulded by the reason, which does not seek wholly to obliterate the passion (a thing neither possible nor desirable), but prescribes a certain limit and order to it, and effects the ethical virtues; those being not passionate, but the dues measured and means (ποικιλία) of the passions. Now it effects them by constituting, through prudence, the susceptibility of the pathetic (or emotional) in our nature into a gracious habit (ἐπίστημα): for they say there are three things appertaining to the soul—capability, passion, habit; of which capability is the beginning and material of passion—as, for instance, capability of anger, of shame, or of bravery; passion is the moving of the capability,—as anger, shame, bravery; and habit is the strength and structure of the impulsive capability, produced by custom, and which is vice or virtue according as the passion is ill or well tutored by reason."⁵ To the same effect, in another of his writings, he speaks of virtue as "that best and most divine habit in us which we cognise as the rectitude of reason, the summit of the rational nature, and the acknowledged congruity of the soul."⁶

¹ *Tusc. Quest.*, b. ii., c. 18. The Greek word ἀρετή, from ἀρεῖν, has a wider signification; it expresses the idea of fitness, ability, and hence is used of inanimate objects as well as of men. The German tugend, from tugend, ingen, exactly corresponds to the Greek; tugend = tugendlichkeit, = fitness, ability. The Latin virtus has its etymological cognate in the Gothic weirða, the German wehr, and the English worth.

² See Nicom. Eth., b. ii., c. iv. and vi.

³ *Moralia*, c. 36.

⁴ *Tusc. Quest.*, b. iv., c. xv.

⁵ *De Virtute Morali*, c. iv., p. 211, of vol. iii. of the Tauchnitz ed. of his Moral Works.

⁶ *De Legibus*, b. i., c. vii.

There is still another question which may be asked at this stage: Assuming that the basis of rectitude is discovered by a process of reasoning, and that the decisions of the standard of rectitude are ascertained by the same process, to what do we owe the original concept of right? Is this a simple or a complex notion? and do we arrive at it by a process of reasoning, or is it given to us by an inner revelation? These questions belong rather to Psychology than to Ethics. We shall therefore content ourselves with simply saying, that we incline to the opinion of those who regard this as a simple concept, incapable of analysis, and found in the mind as inseparable from its constitution. (i.) A sense of the difference between right and wrong. Whence this arises it does not fall upon us here to inquire. It is sufficient that we signalize the fact that such a sense is common to men.

(ii.) A feeling of approval for what is right, and disapproval for what is wrong. This is a natural emotion implanted in us as part of our psychical constitution; and, like all our natural emotions, it is called into action immediately and directly on the presentation of its proper object. We commend what appears to us right, and we turn with censure from what appears to us wrong; just as we are drawn towards a beautiful object, or are repelled by one that is ugly; or as an object that pleases our palate is desired by us, while one that creates nausea is avoided. It is not implied in this that an action is right because it excites in those who witness it a feeling of approbation,—a doctrine which we have already sought to confute; on the contrary, we maintain that the existence of this feeling in the mind presupposes a perception or sense of the rectitude of the action, and thus implicitly assumes a standard and basis of rectitude distinct from and anterior to the emotion. Of the reality and speciality of the emotion itself every one may judge who will consider for a moment the difference between the feelings with which he regards the successful prosecution of a piece of reasoning, and the feelings that spring up within him when he contemplates a generous or righteous course of conduct: the former are those of admiration and assent yielded to the intellectual vigour or logical exactness of the reasoning; the latter are those of moral approbation called forth by the moral excellence—the rectitude and goodness of the action. It is this which the older writers had in view when they spoke of "the beauty of virtue," of "the symmetry of virtue," of "moral beauty," and such like expressions; they intended thereby to convey the idea that virtuous actions are such as excite in the mind feelings of complacency and commendation analogous to those which objects of physical beauty awaken. "Of those things," says Cicero, "which are perceived by sight, no other animal [but man] perceives the beauty, the grace, the accordance of parts; and nature and reason transferring this analogy from the eyes to the mind, judge that much more are beauty, harmony, and order to be preserved in counsels and deeds, and guard against aught being done unbecoming or feebly; moreover, in all opinions and acts, against aught being done or thought lustfully. Whence is collected and formed that which we seek, the proper (honestum); which, even though it be not celebrated, is still the proper, and of which we may truly say that even though landed by no one it is laudable by nature."1 "The mind," says Shaftesbury, "which is spectator or auditor of other minds, cannot be without its eye and ear; so far as to discern proportion, distinguish sound, and scan each sentiment or thought which comes before it. It can let nothing escape its censure. It feels the soft and harsh, the agreeable and disagreeable, in the affections; and finds a foul and fair, a harmonious and a dissonant, as really and truly here as in any musical numbers, or in the outward forms and representations of sensible things. Nor can it withhold its admiration and ecstasy, its aversion and scorn, any more in what relates to one than to the other of these subjects; so that to deny the common and natural sense of a sublime and beautiful in things will appear an affectation merely to any one who considers duly of this affair."2 To these quotations may be added the following from one of the least fanciful of thinkers—Edwards:—"Virtue is the beauty of those qualities and acts of the mind that are of a moral nature, i.e., such as are attended with desert, or worthiness of praise or blame. Things of this sort, it is generally agreed, so far as I know, do not belong merely to speculation, but to the disposition and will; or (to use a general word, I suppose commonly well understood) to the heart. Therefore I suppose I shall not depart from the common opinion when I say that virtue is the beauty of the qualities and exercises of the heart, or those actions that proceed from them."3

(iii.) By this adaptation of our nature to be affected with complacency on the recognition of virtue, and with the opposite on the perception of vice, we are led to approve or blame ourselves according as we act virtuously or viciously, or rather according as we believe ourselves so to act, for it is our judgment of the moral qualities of actions, and not these moral qualities themselves, by which our feelings are determined. In this commendation or censure, however, does not consist the whole of what we feel in such cases. Besides the perception of the moral character of the act, there is also a sense of responsibility attaching to man as a moral agent; and besides the moral approbation or disapprobation which actions excite, there is an ascription of merit or demerit to the agent according as his actions appear to us good or bad. Responsibility or answerableness has respect to our being under government; it implies that we are subject to laws, and that if we transgress these laws a certain penalty shall be incurred by us; and as connected with moral conduct, it has respect to our being under the moral government of God, and amenable to his justice for the manner in which we act. Under the influence of this conviction we come to regard ourselves not only as objects of moral approval, or the opposite, but as having attached to us the quality of good or of ill desert. When we review our conduct, we feel constrained to believe either that we are able to meet the scrutiny of our moral governor, or that we are deserving of punishment because of our transgressions of his law. In the latter case, the painful emotions we experience may be so violent as to constitute that sense of remorse which is itself one of the severest punishments of guilt.

In the operations of conscience this last element is the one which comes most distinctly into consciousness. The sense of responsibility, and of consequent good or ill desert, is inseparable from the human mind; and though means may be used by the guilty to blunt or quiet it, these avail only for the time, and the painful consciousness seeks its opportunity of returning with augmented pungency. The lessons which are constantly read to us by the phenomena of event around us, as to the retribution which, even in this world, treads upon the heels of sin, are of themselves sufficient to quicken and sustain this sense within us. As in the physical world we cannot violate or neglect law without suffering for it, so we find in the moral world that an analogous arrangement obtains. There is perhaps no man who has not had many painful illustrations of this in his own experience, as well as in what he has observed of the history of others. Hence a universal conviction pervades the race that a man's sin "will find him out"—that however he may conceal it from his fellow-men so as to escape their censure or punishment, there is an Intelligence he cannot evade, a retributory Power he cannot escape; and that of all sin, however pleasant it may seem in the commission, it may be said that at the last "it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder."4 The impassioned utterance which the tragic poet has put into the mouth of one of his characters, expresses what the deepest convictions of the race respond to:—

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1 De Officiis, b. i., c. iv. 2 Dissert. concerning the Nature of True Virtue, c. i. 3 Characteristicks, vol. ii., p. 29. 4 Prov. xxiii. 32. In consequence of the predominance of this element in the operations of conscience, some writers have contended that this is conscience, and so have identified the latter with the emotion of remorse. On the other hand, some, arguing that this emotion is a mere consequent on the judgment pronounced by man on the rectitude or wrongness of his own conduct, have resolved the act of conscience wholly into the judgment so pronounced, thereby identifying conscience with the purely intellectual faculty of judging. The truth, however, seems to be, that neither by itself completes the analysis of this complex state of mind. The emotion presupposes the judgment, and the judgment is followed or attended by the emotion; and both together constitute the main elements of conscience. With this accords the common popular usage of the term. We speak of a man's having a good conscience or a bad conscience, meaning thereby that, on looking back over his past conduct, he finds occasion either for self-condemnation or self-blame, and either hopes for reward or dreads punishment, according as his conduct has been in conformity with, or opposed to, the standard of rectitude.

5. Now, according to the constitution of our nature, this moral faculty or conscience is the supremely-regulative power within us, and ought to control all the conative energies of our nature. When this takes place there is harmony between these two departments, and the consequence is a state of subjective virtue within the man; the entire system acknowledges and obeys its master-power, a just equipoise is preserved in all parts, and the whole moves easily and in order. On the contrary, when the appetites, emotions, and passions escape from their proper control, there is a schism in the soul, order and propriety are disturbed, and vicious courses and habits usurp predominance in the life. It is possible, indeed, for the conflict between conscience and passion to become imperceptible, conscience being gradually suppressed and benumbed until it shall ultimately become wholly dormant, or, in the striking language of Scripture, "seared as with a red-hot iron;" but until this terrible consummation of depravity is reached, the conflict between the lower and higher powers of man's nature continues, and the schism within is perpetuated. Berkeley has graphically delineated the course of such an one in describing the English rake. "He is (as Aristotle expresses it) at variance with himself. He is neither brute enough to enjoy his appetites, nor man enough to govern them. He knows and feels that what he pursues is not his true good; his reflection serving only to show him that misery which his habitual sloth and indolence will not suffer him to remedy. At length, being grown odious to himself, and abhorring his own company, he runs into every idle assembly, not from hopes of pleasure, but merely to respite the pain of his own mind. Listless and uneasy at the present, he hath no delight in reflecting on what is past, or in the prospect of anything to come. This man of pleasure, when, after a wretched scene of vanity and woe, his animal nature is worn to the stumps, wishes and dreads death by turns, and is sick of living without having ever tried or known the true life of man."

6. Virtue, viewed objectively, is the accordance of the moral nature with the standard of rectitude. It has been already observed that we approve our conduct according as we believe ourselves to act rightly. But this belief may be founded on an erroneous estimate of what is right; and therefore, though there may be a state of subjective harmony in consequence of this belief, the man nevertheless cannot be pronounced virtuous in the full sense of the term. A truly virtuous man is one who not only walks according to conscience, but whose conscience is guided in its decisions and impulses by the dictates of the "perfect law."

SECT. II.—CONDITIONS OF VIRTUE.

Aristotle has, with his usual pregnant brevity, set forth the conditions of virtue thus: "In reference to virtues, it is not enough that a thing be anyhow done so as to be justly or wisely done,—it is necessary also that the agent be in a certain way affected; first, he must have knowledge; second, he must choose, and choose for the thing's own sake; and third, he must act with firm and inflexible purpose." In this passage lie specifies as the conditions of virtue,—1. Knowledge; 2. Freedom of choice; 3. Choice determined by regard to virtue itself; and, 4. Steadfastness and firmness of resolution. Of these the last may be discounted as being accidental rather than essential. There remain,—1. Knowledge.—This includes both the capacity of moral judging and acquaintance with the standard of rectitude. Both are essential conditions of all virtuous action. A man might stumble into the path of rectitude without either; but without the former he would be incapable of understanding what rectitude is; and without the latter he would have no sure means of ascertaining whether the path he was in was that of rectitude or not. Virtue is reached only when the agent is capable of apprehending moral distinctions, and determining the rectitude of actions by a just standard.

2. Liberty of Choice.—This implies that the agent is free to choose such paths as seem best to him, and that he exercises this freedom. It is no part of our present object to attempt to solve the metaphysical difficulties which surround the question of the freedom of the human will; all that it concerns us here to do is to assert the fact that man is a free agent; and to maintain that without the exercise of this freedom there is no such thing as virtue or its opposite. Let a man do the best deeds in the world or the worst, by accident or under physical constraint, and all will feel that neither praise in the one case, nor blame in the other, can be justly attached to him. It is the choosing to do the one or the other which constitutes the conditio sine qua non of virtue or vice.

Obs.—Now, since the end is the object of will, and since things having respect to the end are willed and chosen, it follows, that actions relating to these must be by choice, and voluntary; but the energies of the virtues are relating to these; hence virtue is in our power to do or not to do. For in the case of these it is in our power to act; it is also in our power not to act. Some say "no man is willingly bad or unwillingly happy." The former position is false, the latter true. No one is unwillingly happy, but wickedness is with the will. Else all we have above said must be repudiated; and it must be denied that man is a source (ἀγέννης) and parent of actions as he is of children. If, however, this be ad-

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1 Esch. Choeph., 963-6. 2 O Jove, O Jove, that sendest from below The retribution slow, Against the stout heart and bold hand That dared defy thy high command." (Blackle's Translation.) 3 Compare Aristot. Nic. Eth., b. ii., c. iii. [vi.] 4 ἢ ἐὰν ἀπὸ τῶν ἀγαθῶν ἀπολύσῃς, ὁμοίως ἂν ἦν ἡ ἀρετή; ἢ ἂν ἠρώτησες, ἂν ἤξει τοῦτο πράξαι; 5 See Chalmers's Moral Philos., p. 166, Works, vol. v.

mitted, and we have not to refer to other sources than those in our power; it follows that the things of which the sources are in us are also in our power, and objects of volition. To this both the private conduct of individuals and the conduct of legislators bear witness, for they punish and chastise those who do evil, provided they have not done it by force or through ignorance, of which they were not themselves the cause; whilst they reward those who do good. This they do with a view to stimulate the latter, and to deter the former; but no one is stimulated to what is not in our own power, or an object of volition. Thus, nothing would be more absurd than to persuade men not to be warm, or to grieve, or to be hungry, or such like, for not the less should we endure these." (Aristotle, Nic. Eth., b. iii., c. iv. [vii.])

"Voluntas igitur nostra nec voluntas esset, nisi esset in nostra potestate. Porro quia est in potestate, libera est nobis. Non enim est nobis liberum quod in potestate non habemus, aut potest non esse quod habemus, nec voluntas esset potentia si potentia non esset." (Augustine, De Libero Arbitrio, b. ii., c. 3.) "Semper est in nobis voluntas libera, sed non semper est bona." (The same, De Gratia et Lib. Arb., c. 15.)

3. Choice of the right for its own sake.—The choice is determined by motives—a motive being, as the Greeks called it, τὸ ἕξικον—on account of which anything is chosen. Now one may choose the right from various motives. It may be chosen because it is the more convenient, or because it is the more agreeable, or because it is the more profitable course; or simply because it is the right course. It is only in the last of these cases that virtue can be predicated of the individual. It is not what is done that measures the virtue of the doer, but the intention with which it is done; "non quid fiat, aut quid detur, refert, sed qua mente?" Good actions done, therefore, without a distinct purpose to do good, are destitute of the quality by which alone they could reflect merit on the agent, or entitle him to be called virtuous.

SECT. III.—PRINCIPLE OF VIRTUE.

But if men can be virtuous only by acting with an intention to be so, they must live under the constant influence of an active principle of virtue operating within them. We have therefore to inquire what this principle is.

We may pass over such answers to this inquiry as those which make the love of pleasure, the desire of praise, or the sense of honour, the principle of virtuous action. We shall notice—

1. That which places the principle of virtue in benevolence or love to being in general. This opinion has been ably advocated by the eminent American theologian and metaphysician Jonathan Edwards. According to him, "true virtue most essentially consists in benevolence to being in general; or, perhaps, to speak more accurately, it is that consent, propensity, and union of heart to being in general that is immediately exercised in a general good-will;" and in another place, he says, "That temper or disposition of heart, that consent, union, or propensity of mind to being in general, is virtue truly so called; or, in other words, true grace or real holiness. And no other disposition or affection but this is of the nature of true virtue." This benevolence to being in general—which the author distinctly and consistently states to be irrespective of moral character, for it "does not necessarily presuppose beauty in its object," and so has nothing of the nature of complacency in it—does not exclude particular affections; on the contrary, whilst it inclines to the highest general good, it inclines also "to each being whose welfare is consistent with the highest general good, in proportion to the degree of existence, other things being equal." The degree of existence,—that is, as defined by the author, "the having every faculty and every positive quality in a higher [or lower] degree,"

furnishes the primary ground of benevolence; a secondary virtue is supplied by the existence of "virtuous benevolence itself in its object," and in this case esteem, complacency, and good-will arise in the mind towards the being. It follows from this, that virtuous benevolence being determined in its degree, primarily, by the degree of existence in its object, and, secondarily, by the moral excellence of its object, virtue must consist in supreme love to God—who, on both grounds, infinitely surpasses all other beings—and in love to his creatures, according to the degree of existence and the moral excellence of each.

Of the most serious objections to which this theory is exposed, a condensed statement has been presented in such clear and felicitous language by the Rev. Robert Hall, that we cannot do better than extract the passage:—

1. Virtue, on these principles, is an utter impossibility: for the system of being, comprehending the great Supreme, is infinite; and, therefore, to maintain the proper proportion, the force of particular attachment must be infinitely less than the passion for the general good; but the limits of the human mind are not capable of any emotion so infinitely different in degree. 2. Since our views of the extent of the universe are capable of perpetual enlargement, admitting the sum of existence is ever the same, we must return back at each step, to diminish the strength of particular affections, or they will become disproportionate; and consequently, on these principles, vicious; so that the balance must be continually fluctuating, by the weights being taken out of one scale and put into the other. 3. If virtue consist exclusively in love to being in general, or attachment to the general good, the particular affections are, to every purpose of virtue, useless, and even pernicious; for their immediate, nay, their necessary tendency is to attract to their objects a proportion of attention which far exceeds their comparative value in the general scale. To allege that the general good is promoted by them, will be of no advantage to the defence of this system, but the contrary, by confessing that a greater sum of happiness is attained by a deviation from than by an adherence to its principles; unless its advocates mean by the love of being in general the same thing as the private affections, which is to confound all the distinctions of language, as well as all the operations of mind. Let it be remembered, we have no dispute respecting what is the ultimate end of virtue, which is allowed on both sides to be the greatest sum of happiness in the universe. The question is merely, What is virtue itself? or, in other words, What are the means appointed for the attainment of that end?"

It may be added to these admirable strictures that the system of Edwards virtually abrogates the moral sentiments in man, by leaving no place for complacency in what is morally good and lovely. For what is his secondary ground of virtuous benevolence, on which alone he professes to find space for a love of complacency? It is the perception of "virtuous benevolence itself in its object." This, according to him, is "the beauty of the being in whom it is," and it is the seeing of this alone which awakens esteem or complacency towards that being. But wherein does this essentially differ from benevolence to being in general, which, according to Edwards, has no respect to character? If the only thing which awakens complacency be the perception in another of benevolence to being in general, what is the object of that complacency but this benevolence? Edwards himself admits that it is. "Loving a being on this ground," he says, "necessarily arises from pure benevolence to being in general, and comes to the same thing." But if so, the only thing in which we have complacency,

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1 Seneca, De Beneficiis, b. i., c. vi. 2 See the strictures on these opinions in Berkeley's Miscellanea Philosophica, dial. 1–3. 3 Dissertation, c. i. 4 Diss., c. vii., note. 5 Modern Infidelity Considered, Works, vol. i., p. 58, Svo ed. 6 Modern Infidelity Considered, Works, vol. i., p. 58, Svo ed. Virtue, morally speaking, is a thing totally irrespective of moral character. In this case what place is left for the moral sentiments? or what is approbation of goodness but merely a modified form of a feeling which has nothing to do with goodness?

2. Closely allied with Edwards's theory is that which resolves all virtue into love to God. This theory is as old as Augustine, who has in many parts of his writings dwelt upon this theme. From some scores of passages which might be cited we select the following, because of its fulness:—"Now, if virtue lead us to the blessed life, I would affirm that virtue is nothing else than supreme love of God. For, so far as I perceive, that which is called the four-fold virtue is named from the varying affection of love. Hence I should not hesitate to define those four virtues—of which I would that the power were as much in the minds as the names are in the mouths of men—in such a way as that temperance should be love proffering itself entire to the object loved; fortitude, love easily enduring all things for the sake of the object loved; justice, love serving only the object loved, and therefore rightly ruling; prudence, love selecting wisely those things by which it may be aided from those by which it may be hindered. But this love we have said is not of any one, but only of God; that is, the chief good, the chief wisdom, the chief concord." There is no great difference between this and what Edwards states when he says, "He that has true virtue . . . must necessarily have a supreme love to God both of benevolence and complacence. And all true virtue must radically and essentially, and as it were summarily, consist in this. Because God is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other beings, but He is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty; from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; and of whom and through whom and to whom is all being and all perfection; and whose being and beauty are, as it were, the sun and comprehension of all existence and excellence, much more than the sun is the fountain and summary comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day."

In proceeding to remark upon this theory it may be necessary to premise, that no question is here raised as to the supreme moral excellence of love to God, as to the obligation resting on all his intelligent creatures to love Him supremely, or as to the nullity of all virtue which does not include love to God as its crowning and controlling element. Our only question is, Does this constitute all virtue? Is there no moral excellence but what is immediately resolvable into love to God?

And here it occurs first of all to ask, What, on this theory, constitutes the moral excellence of God himself? There are some who would not scruple to answer, "His love of Himself;" and, rightly understood, the answer is unimpeachable; for the highest conception we can form of God is that of a being who finds in his own perfections the object of his eternal and unmixed delight, and all whose manifestations and workings are for his own glory. But it may be questioned whether this is properly called love to God. Is it not rather God's delight in moral goodness, which has its fountain-spring in his own eternal essence, and is stamped on everything that He calls into being?

Descending to man, it is obvious to remark that, as used of him, "Love to God" is a phrase of ambiguous meaning. It may mean one of three things—delight in God's holy character,—gratitude to God for his goodness,—and a desire for the Divine honour, or a rejoicing in the Divine felicity. Now, in which of these senses is the phrase used when it is said that all human virtue consists in love to God? If we take it in the last of the three, the theory coincides with that of Edwards, for love to God in this case is just benevolence directed towards Him as the greatest of beings, without respect to his goodness; if we take it in the second of the three, the theory resolves itself into the assertion, that all virtue consists in gratitude to God for blessings received; and if we take it in the first of the three, the theory is equivalent to that which affirms virtue to consist in the love of goodness for its own sake. Of these theories the first two must be rejected as inadequate, for there are surely many virtues which cannot be resolved into either a desire for the Divine felicity and glory or a feeling of gratitude to God for his goodness; indeed, to go no farther, neither of these will resolve into the other, and yet both are virtues demanded of man. The last of these theories we hold to be the true one; but we object to designating it by the phraseology now under consideration.

3. There is a theory which, borrowing from Edwards the latter part of his doctrine, resolves all virtue into general benevolence, or benevolence to the race at large. Of this theory it is part to depreciate the domestic affections, or particular affections of any kind, and to teach that the truly virtuous man is one who cultivates a cosmopolitan benevolence, and merges all claims upon his love in one common sentiment of universal philanthropy. On this theory it may suffice to observe, briefly—(1.) That it is essentially atheistical, insomuch as in the scheme of moral duties to which a virtuous man is bound, it finds no place for those he owes to God; the existence of God is ignored, and a phantom god, in the shape of humanity or the race, put in his stead. (2.) This theory is opposed by the testimony of consciousness, which tells that we have particular affections, that these are called into constant action within us, and that in no case do they arise from any consideration of the general weal, but are awakened each by its own special object in consequence of certain relations existing between us and it. (3.) This theory impeaches the wisdom of that part of our constitution which provides for our affections being strongest when they are confined within the narrowest limits, whilst they become weak in proportion as we widen the circle and attempt to embrace within our regards the millions of the race. (4.) This theory reverses the order in which all experience teaches us that the benevolent affections are cultivated within our bosoms; for it is not by a descending process from the position of general philanthropy to the several spheres of patriotic, social, amical, and domestic affection, that we learn to love our fellow-men, but by a process the reverse of this—a process begun in the

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1 See some additional strictures on this theory in Dr Wardlaw's Christian Ethics, Lect. ix., and in Sir James Mackintosh's Dissertation. To the following remarks of the latter of these writers, however, we must demur:—"The justness of the compound proportion on which human virtue is made to depend is capable of being tried by an easy test. If we suppose the greatest of evil spirits to have a hundred times the bad passions of Marcus Aurelius, and at the same time a hundred times his faculties, as in Edwards' language, a hundred times his quantity of being, it follows from this moral theory that we ought to abominate and love the devil exactly in the same degree as we esteem and love Marcus Aurelius. Now, to this an Edwardsian might reply, that it is doubly wrong,—1st, by not observing that mere quantity of being is not the criterion of being, extended forth only by benevolent being; and 2dly, by overlooking Edwards' qualifying clause, when speaking of degrees of existence, he includes among the objects of pure benevolence only those "whose welfare is consistent with the highest general good." As the devil's wickedness excludes him from the secondary ground of benevolence, this qualifying condition excludes him from the primary. Let the "quantity of his being" be what it may, he can never be the object of benevolent love, any more than of complacent love, on Edwards' principles.

2 De Moribus Ecclesiae, b. i., c. xv.; compare also c. xxii., c. xxiv., and c. xxv. See also his Epist. 52 ad Macedoniam.

3 Diss., c. li. cradle, when the infant first responds to the tenderness of maternal endearment, and carried on through the successive stages of domestic and social life, until in favourable natures it at last reaches a universal philanthropy, which loves man as man, and yet reserves its fullest and tenderest affections for those to whom God and Nature have given the earliest and strongest claim. In fine, this theory is suicidal; for, by placing all virtue in universal benevolence, it secures that there shall be no benevolence at all. "When this savage philosophy," says Hall, "has completed its work,—when it has taught its disciple to look with perfect indifference on the offspring of his body and the wife of his bosom, to estrange himself from his friends, insult his benefactors, and silence the pleadings of gratitude and pity,—will he, by thus divesting himself of all that is human, be better prepared for the disinterested love of his species? Will he become a philanthropist only because he has ceased to be a man? Rather in this total exemption from all the feelings which humanize and soften,—in this chilling frost of universal indifference,—may we not be certain that selfishness, unmingled and uncontrolled, will assume the empire of his heart; and that under pretence of advancing the general good, an object to which the fancy may give innumerable shapes, he will be prepared for the violation of every duty and the perpetration of every crime?"1

4. We have already indicated the theory to which we incline in reference to the present object of inquiry. The principle of virtue we take to be love of rectitude and moral goodness for its own sake—a love which partakes of the nature of reverence, and which acts upon the mind with a force that constrains to virtue. This love of goodness is, in the Divine Being, the moral perfection of his person,—the ἐξαιρετικόν τοῦ θεοῦ,—the perfect becomingness of God, whereby "He conforms Himself to his essence, and carries Himself so fitly to Himself, that no spot, no darkness, no shadow of turning, no indecency or irregularity can possibly happen to Him."2 In man this love of goodness is a serene and profound complacency in that moral excellence which has its source in the Divine nature, and is embodied in the moral law—

"The justice Of the unbribed, everlasting law."

And insomuch as it is embodied in such a law, this justice or moral goodness cannot be loved without being also reverenced. As the mind contemplates it with delight, there is also suffused over the soul a sense of awe that forbids us to rest in mere contemplation, and prompts us to obey the law lest we incur its penalties. The principle of virtue thus coalesces with that of conscience, as above described.

SECT. IV.—OF MORAL OBLIGATION.

The conclusions at which we have arrived enable us to give a definite answer to the question, What is moral obligation? This is not a mere conviction of the reason; for though reason may guide, it never by itself constrains or obliges. Nor is it a mere feeling of admiration for, and delight in, what is morally good; for however pleasing this feeling may be, it of itself exerts no motive force upon us. Nor is it a mere sense that we ought to do what is right and good; for though this may act in the way of urging us to the paths of virtue, it falls short of the idea of obligation, insomuch as it is popish to conceive the existence of a sense of owning where there is no feeling of being under any obligation to render what is due. "Obligation," says War-

1 Modern Infidelity, Works, vol. i., p. 54. To the advocates of this theory we may recommend the Terentian Chremes as an exquisite realization of their sublime morality. "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto," exclaims the universal philanthropist; and presently we find him scolding his wife because she had not, according to his orders, moved away with their infant daughter.

2 Polhill, View of some Divine Truths, c. iii.

3 Mor. Philos., c. iii.

4 A maxim, in the Kantian phraseology, is, as defined by Kant himself, "the subjective principle of willing" (Met. d. Sitten, c. i.); or

burton, "necessarily implies an obliger, [who] must be different from, and not one and the same with, the obliged;"3 and to the same effect Paley says, "Obligation is nothing more than an inducement of sufficient strength, and resulting in some way from the command of another."4 What obliges us to virtue is the sense of being under moral law; it is reverence for moral law involving a dread of the consequences of transgressing it; it is the voice of conscience commanding rectitude, and whispering retribution to those who neglect or contravene it.

We are not disposed to go the length to which Warburton and some others (Paley, by implication, among them) have gone in denying the possibility of a sense of moral obligation, apart from the distinct dogmatic recognition of the Divine existence and government. Assuming the possibility of a man's being a sincere atheist, we could still conceive of such an one as having a deep reverence for what Fichte calls "the idea of moral order"5 in the universe, and a salutary dread of the consequences which he sees to flow from violations of that order. At the same time, it is the realization of the existence and rule of God as a moral governor which gives to the sense of obligation its greatest force, pungency, and constancy; nor, if it be true that the foundation of rectitude is to be sought in the essential nature of God, can we forbear to conclude that those who deny the existence of God have placed themselves where logical consistency would extort from them a denial also of moral distinctions. In accordance with this, it has ever been found that religion is the surest promoter of morals, and that it is only as men fear the Supreme Lawgiver that they are inclined steadily and conscientiously to act the part of good men and good citizens. "We have reason to believe," says Hooker, "that all true virtues are to honour true religion as their parent, and all well-ordered commonwealths to love her as their chiefest stay."6

Obs. 1. Some have distinguished between an external and an internal obligation; designating by the former that force of reason by which we are constrained to actions as in themselves good, and by the latter that constraint which issues from feeling that we are under the authority and law of God. (See Buriasmaquii, Juris Nat. Elementa, p. i., c. vii.; p. ii., c. vii., sec. 13.) This distinction has its foundation in truth; for it is very certain that before we feel any serious moral constraint, we must not only know that a particular course is commanded, but feel that it is in itself good. On the other hand, however, it is quite possible to feel convinced that a course is good, and yet not feel any obligation to follow it. It seems better, therefore, to say that both form elements of the one complex conception of moral obligation. "Though sin and punishment are closely connected, yet the obligation of non licet (it may not be done), is distinct from the obligation of non impune (not with impunity), as sin and punishment are of distinct consideration. But a man is bound both when he cannot do a thing without sin, and when he cannot do a thing without punishment; and both these obligations are in every [divine] law, and both concur to make the obligation of it." (Appendix to Maxwell's translation of Cumberland De Legibus Naturae, by the translator, p. 55.) The reader may compare the statements of the following writers on this subject—Clark, Discourse, p. 43; Warburton, Dis. Leg. of Moses, vol. i., p. 93, 5th edition; Price, System, &c., c. 8; Horne, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 189; Stewart, Active and Moral Powers, vol. i., p. 293; Wardlaw, Christian Ethics, loc. 6.

Obs. 2. "The Autonomy of the will is the alone principle of all moral laws, and of their relative duties; all Heteronomy of the arbitrary will, on the other hand, not only founds no obligation, but is rather opposed to the principle thereof, and to the morality of the will. It is in the independence of all material of the law (that is, any desired object), and along with this the determination of the will by the simple general legislative form of which a maxim must be capable, that the alone principle of morality consists. That independence, however, is liberty in the negative, this self-legislat-

Virtue.

ing of the pure and as such practical reason, is liberty in the positive acception. Hence the moral law expresses nothing else than the autonomy of the pure practical reason, i.e., of liberty, and this is itself the formal condition of all maxims under which they can alone coalesce with the superior practical reason." (Kant, Kr. d. Pr. Fer., c. 1, sect. 8.) If by the making more or less of them than an act to be binding, or whether it is determined by an outward law or not, be recognised by the mind as morally right, the doctrine of this passage would not differ from that above laid down. But by "the autonomy of the will" Kant meant that the will is its own law, and finds the reason of action, the categorical imperative, in itself. To this we confess we have always found it exceedingly difficult to attach any clear idea. It is easy to see how the reason, or the conscience, may be a law to the will; but how the will can be a law to itself we find it hard to conceive. Is not autonomy, in any strict sense of the term, a universal impossibility? How can one and the same power be at once above itself as lawgiver, and under itself as subject to law?

SECT. V.—PRINCIPLES CONCURRENT WITH THE PRINCIPLE OF VIRTUE.

In excluding all principles but the one specified, it is not intended to affirm that others besides it do not concur to animate and confirm virtuous activity. On the contrary, while we hold reverence for rectitude to be the alone principle of virtue, as such, we would carefully recognise others which concur with it, and aid it in directing the conduct of men. Of these, Mr Stewart has specified Decency, or a regard to character; Sympathy; a sense of the Ridiculous; and Taste, considered in its relation to morals. Of these, the first and the last are the only ones that can pass unquestioned: a regard to character and a refined moral taste—a taste that cleaves instinctively to "the first good, first perfect, and first fair," in preference to all other objects, and which revolts from the grossness of vice, however outwardly adorned—are unquestionably principles that operate as auxiliaries to virtue; though even with regard to them it is necessary to give great prominence to Mr Stewart's qualifying condition, that "they maintain their due place in subordination to the moral faculty," and are not suffered to "prevail in the character as the leading motive to action." Of the other two he has specified, the claims to be reckoned among the auxiliaries of virtue are, we think, very doubtful. If the sense of the ridiculous was invariably, or even by a primary affection, excited by what is immoral, it might be regarded as intended to help us in the paths of virtue; but we suspect no analysis will show any natural relation between the two, and in point of fact we know that it is rather virtue than vice that is made the object of this sensibility. As for sympathy, it depends wholly on our previous moral character whether it shall aid or impede the course of virtue; for a bad man will sympathize with the bad just as readily as a good man will with the good, and perhaps with greater force. If instead of these we substitute such feelings as gratitude to God for his goodness, benevolence towards men, a love of what is useful for its own sake, we shall have principles, the operation of which no one can doubt to be eminently serviceable in strengthening the virtuous principle within us, and aiding to confirm us in all virtuous courses.

PART III.—OF DUTIES.

1. Our previous inquiries have possessed chiefly a speculative interest; we now turn to investigations of a practical kind. When we have determined wherein rectitude consists and what constitutes virtue, we are prepared for, and urged upon, the question, What practical courses are right, and such as a virtuous man will pursue?

2. This question may be answered generally by affirming that a virtuous man will do his duty; or, what comes to the

As in Physics a motive force may be measured by the quantity of resistance it is competent to overcome, so in Morals the measure of virtue is found in the amount of resistance which the virtuous principle in an individual is able to surmount. A man who does right because he is never tempted to do wrong, shows less virtue, so far as this particular case is concerned, than the man who, though strongly tempted to turn aside from the path of rectitude, firmly adheres to it from sheer love of rectitude. And so, generally, in proportion as the inducements to evil are many and strong, is the degree of virtue which enables a man to resist them, to conquer them, and to pursue the good.

SECT. VII.—PRACTICAL RULE OF VIRTUE.

In the ordinary business of life it is impossible for men to stop to adjust every action by the absolute standard of rectitude, even when that is within their reach in an easily consultable form. The desirableness, consequently, of some compendious rule, which, if not scientifically exact, shall yet be sound so far as it goes, and shall supply readily a practical test by which actions may be tried, has been felt by all men, and various attempts have been made to supply it. Of these, none approaches in value to that which has received the sanction of the Author of Christianity, and which He thus enunciates: "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them." This rule is not peculiar to our Lord's teaching; heathen as well as Jewish moralists have before Him inculcated the same principle; but He has not only enunciated it more distinctly than any other; He has, by enunciating it, given it an authority which it would not otherwise have had. Than this rule no better could be suggested. It is alike simple and comprehensive; a rule for men in all circumstances, capable of being instantly and easily applied, and such as cannot be followed honestly and intelligently without exercising a most wholesome influence on the whole of a man's conduct. Of morality as embodied in this rule it may be justly said, "It is not hidden from thee, neither is it far off... It is very nigh unto thee; in thy mouth and in thy heart, that thou mayest do it."

Obs. Kant's rule, "Act so as if the maxims of thine acting should, through thy will, come to be general laws of nature" (Mit. d. Sitten, c. 2, and in many other places of that treatise, and the Kr. d. Pr. Fern.), has been sometimes cited as if it were identical with the rule of Christ, only presented in a somewhat more scientific form. But the identity is in appearance only. Kant's rule is really the old Stoic rule, "Live conformably to nature;" for, if we are to act only so as that our subjective grounds of acting might become general laws of nature, it seems very plain that the general laws of nature must be standards to which our subjective principles of acting must be conformed.

Eichler's rule, "Act always according to the best conviction of thy duty; or act according to thy conscience" (Sittengespr., p. 195), is unimpeachably sound; but before it can be acted on, one must possess all that knowledge to compensate for the want of which, in whole or in part, a short practical rule is desiderated. same thing substantially, will exemplify the practical virtues.

This, however, leaves still open the question, What are the practical virtues? what are men's duties?

3. In answering this question we shall follow the method and classification most commonly adopted in this country,—that, viz., which arranges our duties according to our relations. This we prefer as the one which most naturally falls in with the tenor of our previous speculations, and at the same time affords the best scope for a clear and satisfactory discussion of the subject.

One of other methods we may notice the following:

1. Some have taken the leading or cardinal virtues, and showed what is peculiar to each of them, and to what practical courses each of them tends. This was the course followed by most of the ancient philosophers, though declined by Aristotle.

2. Some have inquired whether all the virtues may not be generalized into one, of which the rest are the forms or manifestations; and having ascertained this, as they believe, have proceeded to show how all the practical duties of life flow out of this one magistral and reginal virtue. So Plato.

3. Some have arranged duties according to their relation to each other. With this view, some have distinguished between duties of perfect and duties of imperfect obligation,—a distinction recognized by the Stoics (see Cic. De Fin. iii. 7, 9, 17, 18; De Off. i. 3), and adopted by some modern writers; while others prefer distinguishing between determinate duties and indeterminate, or duties of primary and duties of secondary obligation. This latter distinction may be admitted as valid; but it comes to be of use chiefly as a guide in Casuistry, and cannot form an adequate basis of general classification.

4. Kant has adopted a somewhat complicated classification. He first divides duties into Duties of Right (officia juris), i.e., such as are capable of being prescribed by law; and Duties of Virtue (officia virtutis et ethici), for which no such prescription is possible, and this because they are directed to an end, to attain which is equally a duty, and the contemplation of which is an inner act of the mind, so that it cannot be effected by any outward legislation. He then distinguishes between man viewed simply under the peculiarity of his faculty of freedom,—simply in his manhood, as a personality independent of physical conditions,—man as a nonmemon, and man as a phenomenon, or as subject to these conditions, and affected by them; and in relation to this he distinguishes duty as it respects—(1.) The right of manhood in our own person, from (2.) The right of men; and (3.) The end of manhood in our own person, viz., our own perfection, from (4.) The end of men, viz., their happiness. Of these, 1 and 3 are duty to ourselves, 2 and 4 are duty towards others; and 1 and 2 are perfect duty, 3 and 4 imperfect. He distinguishes also according to the subjective relation of the binding to the bound, and concludes that there is no distinction of right between man and a thing, nor has neither rights nor duties, nor between man and a being that has simply duties and no rights, nor between man and a being that has simply rights and no duties. The only relation that can be subjected to formal law is that of man to a being who has both rights and duties.

5. Fichte has adopted a simpler classification. He distinguishes (1.) Mediate and conditioned duties, from immediate and unconditional or absolute; meaning by the former, duties which terminate upon ourselves, and by the latter, duties which we owe to the universe; and (2.) General from special duties, denoting by the former, those which arise out of positions which cannot be conferred on men, and by the latter, those which arise out of positions that can. Combining these two distinctions, he divides his subject into general and special conditioned duties, and general and special absolute duties; and the latter more particularly into duties determined by one's nature, condition, and duties determined by one's special situation. This classification has the merit of simplicity, but some of the distinctions on which it is based are of very questionable soundness. Why, for instance, should the one class be pronounced conditioned and the other absolute? The former, says Fichte, are conditioned because "they can be derived only through this position, that if the moral law wills the conditioned,—the realization of the mastery of Reason over me through me,—it will also be the condition that I be a fitting and adapted means to this end." But is not the duty I owe to others, in so far as it is due by me, conditioned by the same requirement, viz., that I am fitted and adapted to render it?

4. The relations which man sustains have been determined for him by God; and man enters upon them as part of the constitution of things under which he has to exist. In a sense, therefore, these relations are arbitrary; they are the result of the Divine volition and appointment. But in another sense they are not arbitrary; for God, in constituting things as they are, had reference to the inherent and essential attributes of his own nature, so that all the relations in which man finds himself placed are such as fall in with perfect rectitude, and such as could not but be if God was to create man at all. In like manner, the duties which flow out of these relations are fixed and necessary: having established the relations, God could not but make such and such duties to flow out of them.

5. Duty is a debt (debitum), something which we owe to some being. But we do not owe this to all being, nor even to all being of the existence of which we are aware; we do not owe anything, for instance, to angels, though we are assured of the fact of their existence: our duty begins where our relations begin; and it grows in extent and urgency as our relations become more numerous and close.

6. The correlative of Duty is Right. Wherever one person owes a duty to another, that other possesses a corresponding claim of right over the former. His claim is called a right, because wherever a duty is owing, rectitude dictates that it should be paid. It may be needful to remark in passing, that we are discoursing at present only of natural moral duties and rights, not such as may be created artificially by human legislation or arrangements.

7. The relations which man sustains are distributable into three classes: 1. Those which he sustains to himself; 2. Those which he sustains to his fellow-creatures; 3. Those which he sustains to God. Corresponding with these three classes of relations are the three classes of duties to which man is bound. These we now proceed to specify, though our limits forbid our entering into this part of our subject with any fulness.

SECT. I.—DUTIES WHICH MAN OWES TO HIMSELF.

At first sight it may appear as if something of a contradiction were involved in the assertion that a man owes duties to himself; for how, it may be asked, can a man be both giver and recipient in respect of one and the same object? or how can he be the holder of a right which binds, and the subject of a duty by which he is bound, in reference to one and the same thing? We may meet this difficulty by remarking, that man may be viewed under a two-fold aspect: either simply as a phenomenon—a concrete being existing in the world; or as a nonmemon—a conceived personality endowed with freedom of will. In the latter capacity he is capable of being bound to duties; and it is this inner personality which is contemplated as so bound to the concrete phenomenal man, when we speak of man's owing duties to himself.

Viewed in his aggregate existence, man may be regarded as 1. A being having life; 2. An intellectual being; and 3. A moral and religious being. In all these respects he owes duties to himself.

1. As a being having life, man owes it to himself to preserve and nourish the life he has received. For this purpose he must supply himself with necessary food, and clothing, and shelter; he must avoid whatever would injure his health, impair his strength, or shorten his life; and he must use means when his health has been injuriously affected to have it restored. This duty involves that of self-defence against the assault of another, even to the extent of taking the assailant's life should that be necessary for the preservation of our own. It also forbids self-murder; and all those practices, such as intemperance, debauchery, or excessive labour, which tend to shorten life. 2. As an intellectual being, man owes it to himself to cultivate his mental faculties, to store his mind with useful knowledge, and to endeavour constantly to regulate his opinions and conduct by the free and impartial exercise of his intellectual powers. The gift of intellect should be prized for its own sake as well as for the uses to which it may be put; and means should be wisely and steadfastly employed to effect a catholic development of all the mental faculties and susceptibilities. Hence the duty of being educated—a duty which is incumbent not only on children and young persons, but which should be felt as a constant duty, to be attended to by all through life, so long at least as mental vigour is continued.

3. As a moral and religious being, man owes it to himself to cultivate his moral susceptibilities, to accustom himself to attend promptly and faithfully to the dictates of conscience, and to seek so to educate conscience as that its dictates shall be in accordance with what is right and good. Without culture the moral powers become feeble, and are irregular in their action; whereas, by due cultivation they are strengthened and directed, and may be brought to control with a supreme but not offensive sway the whole conduct. As a moral being, further, man owes it to himself to abstain from the indulgence of all polluting, degrading, or demoralizing passions and pursuits. He owes it to himself to be chaste, not in act only, but in imagination and purpose; to be truthful even when no other person is to be injured by his indulging in falsehood; to be moderate in his desires, not giving way to covetousness, to ambition, or to a vain love of display; to be humble, not merely in relation to others, but within his own soul; and to avoid all indolence, sloth, and apathy. As a religious being, man owes it to himself to cultivate piety, to habituate himself to a constant acknowledgment of God, to be assiduous in all religious duties, and to make the attainment of God's favour and preparation for heaven the supreme objects of his life.

II. The duties which man owes to his fellow-men are also either general or special; the former being such as he owes to all men indifferently, the latter such as he owes to those in peculiar circumstances, and those to whom he himself sustains special relations.

1. Duties owing to our fellow-men generally.—"God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth." This fact, for the knowledge of which we are indebted to the Bible, establishes a bond of relationship between all the members of the human race simply as such. Hence we owe to all men certain duties. These are—

(i.) Goodwill.—This implies not only the absence of all malevolent feelings towards others, such as envy, vindictiveness, malice, &c., and abstinence from all the acts to which such feelings lead, but also a propensity to be interested in the well-being of our fellow-men, and a readiness to do them good by the promotion of their bodily, their intellectual, their moral, and their eternal welfare. This is that φιλανθρωπία which the sacred writers ascribe to God (Tit. iii. 4), and which by various precepts they inculcate upon us.²

(ii.) Respect.—We are to "honour all men." This does not mean that we are to render to all an equal tribute of approbation, for some men we are bound to condemn, and in general the degree of approbation which we bestow on men ought to be measured by the degree of their moral worth. The precept means that we are to recognise the worthiness that is in man as man, and to render him corresponding respect; not despising any because of adventitious circumstances, not treating any with discourtesy however lowly, and not regarding as outcasts or unworthy of our notice even the most abandoned and base. In man as man there is a worth and a dignity that make it the duty of every man to honour all men.

(iii.) Truthfulness.—We owe it to all men, in conveying to them knowledge concerning any person or thing, to communicate to them exactly such a conception of the fact as we ourselves have. That conception may not be physically true, i.e., the thing as conceived by us may not answer exactly to the thing as it is; but if we convey to another our own conception of it, neither more nor less, all the requirements of moral truthfulness are satisfied thereby. This implies that neither by word, nor look, nor hint, nor act, do we lead another to think of the matter of communication otherwise than it really is as contemplated by our minds. This forbids—(1.) All intentional falsehood, i.e., all communications by word or deed designed to convey to another a conviction which we know to be false in fact; (2.) All uttering as true what we do not know to be true, or as false what we do not know to be false; (3.) All prevarication and shuffling by which we may seek to evade the truth, and, without directly telling a lie, may virtually do so by leaving a false impression on the mind of another; (4.) All equivocation and mental reservation, i.e., the use of words which have an ambiguous meaning, for the purpose of leading the party to whom we speak to understand them in the sense which we know not to be the one consistent with the fact, and the use of words which only express part of the truth, the rest being kept back so as to mislead those to whom we speak; and (5.) All exaggeration or extenuation, so as to convey to the mind of another a stronger or a weaker impression of the fact than we ourselves entertain. In all these respects the command, "Speak every man truth with his neighbour," is binding upon us. It must, however, be kept in mind here, that it is the intention to deceive that constitutes a lie or gives guilt to falsehood; if the speaker is himself mistaken, or if he uses forms of speech which, though not corresponding exactly to the fact, are yet so understood as not to con-

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¹ Acts xvii. 26. ² Comp. Matt. v. 33, 47, Lev. xix. 18, Jam. v. 9, Tit. iii. 3, Eph. iv. 31, Gal. vi. 10.

(iv.) Fidelity.—This has respect to promises and contracts. A promise is a declaration that we will do something to or for another. It may be made either conditionally or unconditionally. In an unconditional promise we bind ourselves by what we give the recipient of the promise to understand is our intention in reference to the thing promised. We are not bound by whatever our words may be made to mean, or by whatever the promisee may imagine them to mean; we are bound in *foro conscientiae* by what our words, fairly interpreted, express as to our intention at the time of making the promise, or what we meant them to convey to the mind of the promisee. A conditional promise is one, the fulfilment of which both parties agree to suspend on the happening of something doubtful. Thus, if A promises to give a sum of money to B, provided something B has told him shall turn out to be true, the promise is conditional, and no breach of promise ensues if, on its being found that what B said was not true, A should refuse to pay the stipulated sum. It may be added, that there is a sense in which all promises are conditional, inasmuch as all are suspended on the presumption that it is possible and lawful to do the thing promised; but in ordinary language, it is only when the possibility or lawfulness of the act is doubtful, that this is understood to impose a condition on the promise.

A contract is a species of conditional promise in which one party binds himself to another in consideration of something which that party has done or binds himself to do in return. Such a contract to be valid must be made voluntarily and intelligently; if either force has been used to compel to the contract, or one of the contracting parties is not of sound mind, or incapable of forming a just estimate of the obligation he is incurring, the contract is void. Abstracting from such cases, all contracts are to be faithfully kept according to the understanding which it was the intention of the contracting parties to convey to each other. If, however, the party who accepts the contract fail to fulfil his part of the engagement, the other party is *ipso facto* absolved from the obligation resting on him, and may even be entitled to compensation at the hands of the other for loss or injury he may have sustained. Under the head of contracts are included buying and selling, borrowing and lending, hiring and service, partnership in business, and such like.

Obs. The Roman jurists, who have studied all questions affecting what may be called commercial Ethics with the utmost minuteness, have been specially successful in describing the nature and law of contract. The following extract presents in a condensed form their teaching on this subject:—“Contractus est convenio utriusque consensu pluriem in una placetum, quod est, ut civile liquid negotium dandi aut faciendi. Contractus vero nominis venit non tantum ex obligatione quam synallagma habet, i.e., que utro citatis obligat eummodi, est emtio, venditio, locatio, condictio; verum et cum qua ex altera tantaem parte, velut mutuo, stipulato; sive illam in duo stat nominis sine transact in proprium nomen contractus. Quibus verbis insinuat nova contractum dividio in Nominatos et Innominatos. Nominati dicuntur quibus certum et proprimum a legibus nomen est attributum ut emtio, locatio, societas ex quibus certa nominatae actio datur veluti actio emtio, &c. Innominati vero qui certum et legitimum nomen non habent quique non ita juris vinculo continantur, cum in loco sit punientia, re integra, seu quamdiu aliter aut tradendo non implevis a sua parte; suntque contractuum ejusmodi quatuor genera Do ut Des; Do ut Facias; Facio ut Facias; Facio ut Des; ex quibus certa et proprimum nominis actio non datur sed praesertim verbis, ita dicta quod ex prescripto conveniuntur datior.” (Peregrin, Institutiones Imperatoriae distinctae, lib. iii, tit. 14, p. 325, 8th edit. Comp. the more copious comment of Vitriarius, Universum Jur Civile, p. 439, ff.)

(v.) Justice.—Justice, as an attribute of a voluntary agent, is the habit of mind which disposes such an one to leave all other men in the undisturbed enjoyment of whatever possessions, advantages, and privileges they may rightfully have. Self-love naturally prompts us to seek for ourselves whatever we see to be desirable; but justice teaches us sacredly to refrain from depriving our neighbour of ought that belongs to him (unless it be something which he has the power to give, and which we take with his free consent), however much the possession of it might benefit or delight us. It teaches us also not to take from our neighbour (or, what is in principle the same thing, to injure or diminish in value) anything that he prizes, even though we do not or cannot transfer it to ourselves. More specifically, justice requires us—

(1.) To abstain from injuring another man’s person. This may be done in various ways. It may be done by inflicting wounds or blows upon him to the dismemberment of his limbs or to the interruption of the healthy action of his organs. It may be done by withholding from him necessary food, or by giving him unwholesome food, or by exposing him unnecessarily to pestilential vapours, or by preventing him from needful exercise, or by exacting from him undue and exhausting labour. It may be done also by exerting painful or depressing influences over his spirits, by which his general health is affected. When such treatment is not the result of pure accident, or of causes not subject to our will, but is to be traced to evil intention against another, or to careless indifference about another’s welfare, it is to be condemned as a breach of what justice to our fellow-men demands.

(2.) To abstain from taking away the life of another. When this is done with deliberate and malicious intention, from revenge or for some sinister end, it is murder, by whatever means perpetrated, whether by blows, or by poison, or by some subtle agency the operation of which cannot be made obvious to the senses, and whether directly by our own agency or indirectly by that of others. A mitigated form of this offence is when life is sacrificed through our carelessness or thoughtlessness, without evil design on our part. This the law discriminates as culpable homicide. Where pure accident has caused the death of others, the instruments of this calamity are to be exempted from blame. In cases also where life has been taken in self-defence, the party must be held guiltless; for where an assailant has forced on us the alternative of either taking his life or allowing him to take ours, a duty higher than any we owe to him requires us to adopt the former of these courses. This plea, however, will not cover the practice of duelling; for we have no right voluntarily to place ourselves in such an alternative; and if it be said that the usage of society forces this alternative upon us as the only course by which, when we have been insulted, we can retain our place in society, the question then comes to be, whether the retaining of our place in society be of equal obligation with the duty of refraining from imperilling our own life or that of another—a question which the moralist can answer in but one way, in the negative. It may be added, that the law which holds of the taking away of life holds equally of the preventing of life. If that be done by violent means, a crime of a very flagrant nature is perpetrated. Hence the Roman law enacted, “Si mulierem visceribus suis viv intulisse, quo partum abigerit, constititerit; in exiliun praeses provinciae exiget.”

(3.) To abstain from injuring another’s property. A man’s property is that which, by his own labour or by gift from others, has so become his own that an abstract right belongs to him to do with it as he chooses. Hence, if he chooses to give it to others, they violate no duty in accepting it, according to the maxim of the civil law, “Volenti

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1 See a full and able discussion of duelling in Wardlaw’s Systematic Theology, iii. 517. Duties. non fit injuria." But so long as he chooses to retain it, others have no right to appropriate it, in whole or in part. To do so is to be guilty of robbery, which may either be perpetrated by violence, as in highway robbery and house-breaking, or by cunning and artifice, as in pocket-picking, pilfering, and swindling. Justice to our neighbour also requires that we shall not take advantage of his ignorance to over-reach him in business or defraud him of gains which ought to be his; and also that in all transactions where we profess to transfer a portion of his property to ourselves, on the ground of giving him an equivalent for it, there shall be no deception practised with a view to make him regard as an equivalent what is not such, no fraudulent abstraction of any part of the offered equivalent after it has been accepted, and no substitution of something else in the place the very thing agreed on.

(4.) To abstain from injuring the reputation of others. This may be done either by saying of them what is false, or by saying of them what is true. In the former case the offence is forbidden alike by the law of veracity and the law of justice; in the latter case the law of justice prescribes that we are not to propagate what would injure our neighbour's reputation, unless some higher obligation than what we owe to him in this respect compel us to do so. Thus, if we have reason to suspect or believe that a person is dishonest, it may become our duty to give information of this, that others may be protected from his attempts; or if we know a party to have committed an offence, and are called to bear witness against him in a court of law, it will be our duty to do so; but all gratuitous and malicious tale-bearing, vituperation, or slander, whether openly uttered or conveyed by means of hint and innuendo, are direct violations of what justice to others demands.

(5.) To abstain from injuring the virtue of others. We may injure their virtue by misleading their judgment as to what is right and what is wrong; by tempting them to think lightly of what is immoral; by recommending vice to them through means of seductive stories or attractive representations; by appealing to their passions, or placing them in circumstances where these are appealed to; by provoking them to evil by our own example, or by using force or ridicule to constrain them to do what is wrong. Such conduct is highly criminal. It robs our neighbour of his most precious possession, a good conscience; it destroys his self-respect and mental tranquillity; it may lead to courses which end in ruin and suicide; and it endangers the safety of his immortal soul. Surely, if those who maim the body or destroy life are held guilty, much deeper is the guilt of those who do their endeavour to pollute, degrade, and utterly and for ever ruin the soul.

2. Duties owing specially to Particular Classes and Individuals.—These may be enumerated thus:

(i.) Duties arising out of the Difference of Sex.—The great duty binding on the sexes in their relation to each other is that of chastity. The law of chastity forbids not only all promiscuous and licentious intercourse between persons of different sex, but also all carnal connection between parties nearly related by blood to each other, whether under the tie of marriage or not; all polygamy, concubinage, and marriage dissolvable at the pleasure of either or both parties. It forbids also all practices tending to licentiousness; the indulgence of impure thoughts or feelings; the publication or use of obscene songs, descriptions, jests, or pictures; indecent conversations, looks, or gestures; and, in short, whatever tends to inflame the sexual passion and loosen the restraint which should be imposed upon it.

(ii.) Duties arising out of the Domestic Relation.

(1.) Of Husband and Wife.—Marriage is the perpetual union of one man with one woman for their mutual solacement and benefit, and with a special view to the procreation and education of children. This union is to be based on the mutual affection and free choice of the parties; all marriages formed without mutual affection, for purposes of mere convenience, for the sake of gain, or through the adulation of force or fraud, are immoral in their nature, and seldom, if ever, are productive of happiness to the parties.

This primary law of marriage is violated where polygamy is tolerated. By such a practice all the advantages which marriage is designed to promote are precluded; woman is degraded from the companion and helpmate of man into a mere slave of his lusts; the happiness arising from the consociation of hearts, united by affection, is prevented; all the benefits of sympathy and united counsel are superseded; constant jealousies and quarrels invade the domestic circle; and the children, deprived of proper care and discipline, often perish in infancy, or grow up with untamed passions, jealous and hateful of each other, and without any just sense of the duties or responsibilities of life.

The law of marriage is also violated when the union of the parties is treated as dissoluble, or when it is actually dissolved, without sufficient cause. By "sufficient cause" is meant such conduct on either side as virtually destroys the consociation implied in marriage. Such is adultery, and such also, as it appears to us, is cruelty used by the one party towards the other to such an extent as renders cohabitation impossible. In such cases the marriage is really at an end, and consequently the formal separation of the parties may legitimately follow. But to dissolve a marriage for any inferior reason is immoral and mischievous.

Of the parties united in marriage the common duties are—

(1.) The cultivation of mutual affection; (2.) Fidelity to their conjugal engagements, not in deed only but in thought and word; (3.) Care for each other's health, honour, and comfort; (4.) Mutual helpfulness, both as respects duties and sorrows, both as respects this life and that which is to come; and (5.) Mutual confidence, leading to an entire community of knowledge and interest. The special duties of the parties arise out of the modifications which that love which is the basis of their union receives from their respective constitutional and social differences. The husband is to give scope to his love for his wife by protecting her; providing for her maintenance and comfort; acting as her head and guide with all wisdom, patience, and gentleness; giving her honour, not only before others, but when alone, and that not in word only, but in deed; and nourishing and cherishing her as his own flesh. On the part of the wife, love is to show itself not only in the caresses of a womanly tenderness, but still more in consulting for her husband's comfort at home and for his reputation abroad; in revering him and submitting to him as her head; in taking care of his property; and in saving him from all household cares that do not properly fall to his lot.

(2.) Of Parent and Child.—The duties which parents owe to their children are those of nurture and education; including under the former all that is required for the physical welfare, and under the latter all that is required for the intellectual, moral, and religious up-bringing of their offspring. In their intercourse with their children, also, it

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1 Aristophanes makes Æschylus charge on Euripides the guilt of having brought many ladies, the wives of honourable men, to drink hemlock, in consequence of being brought to shame through the effect of his immoral representations. (See The Frogs, l. 1016.) This is but one of many instances in which the drama has had to answer for domestic misery and disgrace, ruin and suicide.

2 "Non autem," says Cicero, "naturam sequanum, et ab omni quod abhorret ab oceano auriumque approbatione fugiamus. Status, necessas, sessio, accubitio, vulpes, ocelli, manum motus, tenent illud decorum." (De Off., i. 35.)

3 Animus multitudine distrahitur, nullam pro socia obtinet, omnes vires sunt. (Ballist., De Bello Jugo, c. 80.) is requisite that the law of kindness should ever be on their lips, and that their own example should be such as to command and enforce the precepts they inculcate. In the matter of discipline, the extremes to be avoided are undue laxity and indulgence on the one hand, and undue severity on the other. "A child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame;" but when fathers correct in a passionate or tyrannical spirit, they are apt to increase the very evil they desire to allay; they "provoke their children to wrath," and discourage them from the path of obedience and love.

The duties of children to their parents are those of gratitude, reverence, and obedience. They are to honour their father and mother, to listen to their instructions, to avoid wounding their feelings, to be careful of their reputation, and to obey promptly and cheerfully all their commands. It is their duty also to solace the declining years of their parents by every means in their power, and, if necessary, to repay the care which nourished them in early life by supporting their parents in as much comfort as their means will allow.

(3.) Of Brothers and Sisters.—The duties of the fraternal relation are chiefly those of mutual goodwill; and they differ from those of the same kind which we owe to men in general only in the priority of their claim and the intensity of the affection. Goodwill to the race must be learnt in the nursery and around the domestic hearth by the exercise of goodwill and kindness between the children of the family. And all through life this, which was the first lesson to be learnt, ought to remain the strongest in its influence upon us. Other things being equal, a brother or a sister has a prior and a stronger claim on our sympathy, our kindness, and our aid, to any one standing without the family circle. "Quis amicior quam frater fratri? aut quem alienum fidum inviens si tuis hostis fueris."

(4.) Of Master and Servant.—The relation of master and servant arises, except where slavery prevails, out of a contract formally or virtually made between the parties, and the duties devolving on each must be, to a considerable extent, determined by the terms of their contract. Besides these, however, there are duties of a purely moral kind which no contract can determine, and which no human legislation can enforce. It is the duty of servants not only to do what they have contracted to do, but to do it cheerfully, and with scrupulous integrity, so as to give their masters the full benefit of their time and powers. It is their duty also to show all respect to their masters, to be courteous in their manners and speech towards them, and to be always ready to vindicate their reputation as well as to protect their property. The master, on the other hand, must take care not to be unreasonable in his demands on his servants' energies, nor to treat them otherwise than with that kindness and respect which is due to his fellow-men, avoiding all overbearing deportment, all harsh and hurtful speeches, all contemptuous treatment, and all passionate threatening, in his intercourse with them. The master who not only gives his servants "that which is just and equal," but treats them respectfully and kindly, will find his own interest greatly promoted thereby; whereas "he that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

(iii.) Duties arising out of Difference of Condition and Circumstances.—Of these the most important are those created by differences of rank and of property. In most states some persons are raised to an artificial dignity, which is symbolized by a title or by some personal decoration; in all states where order prevails some are invested with official rank; and everywhere the distinctions of rich and poor, prosperous and suffering, obtains. Out of these arise certain moral obligations, resting on one or both parties. The duty of the great and wealthy is to show kindness to their inferiors in society, and especially to employ their influence and resources to alleviate the sufferings of the unhappy, and to provide for the support of the destitute. Institutions for the cure of disease, for the education of the ignorant, for the reclaiming of the profligate, and for the comfort of the aged and the indigent, are entitled to look for support to those whom Providence has blessed with plenty; and the duty of charity to the poor is one of constant obligation on all who have anything to spare. On the other hand, those who are in possession of rank and dignity are entitled to expect from their inferiors in society that respect and homage which belong to their station; honour is to be given to whom honour is due. The poor also owe to their benefactors the duty of gratitude for benefits received, and the duty also of scrupulously abstaining from unnecessarily taxing their generosity, or laying a burden on their resources.

(iv.) Duties of Teacher and Taught.—The duty of the teacher is to use every endeavour to make himself thoroughly master of the subject which he has to teach, to divest himself of all prejudices and interests that would preclude his seeking after and embracing truth, to aim at clearness and precision in all his communications with his learners, and to use the influence he possesses under a constant sense of responsibility, and with a sacred regard to the cause of morality and religion. This applies not only to the professed teacher, but to all who by tongue or pen seek to influence the opinions or conduct of others. To his teacher the learner owes respect, docility, deference, and gratitude, but not abject submission to his dogmas, nor an acceptance of his ipse dixit in lieu of all reason or argument.

3. Duties connected with the Relations of Civil Society.—Civil society is the ordinance of God,—not that He has in any code enacted that men shall live in such society, or anywhere prescribed any particular form of civil polity as alone accordant with His will; but that He has so constituted man that to live in society is not only natural to man, but necessary for the full development of his capacities and for his well-being. "Man by nature," says Aristotle, "is a political animal (διά το ἀνθρώπου τῶν), and if any one lives out of society by choice and not by misfortune, he is either a bad man or better than man;" and again he says, "If any man is incapable of associating, or through self-sufficiency needs it not, he is no part of a state,—such an one is either a beast or a god." "By nature," he adds, "there is a propensity in all to such association; and he who first instituted it became the author of the greatest benefits." It should consequently be esteemed a privilege to be a member of a state; for even in the worst ordered states the condition of the people is better than it would have been had there been no civil society at all; and in proportion as the constitution under which we live is wisely and righteously ordered, in that proportion does it demand the reverence, the support, and the love of the citizens. The body of the citizens, indeed, constitutes the state, and it is for their benefit, and theoretically by their will, that it exists; but the state, as an organic whole, may be thought apart from the individuals that compose it, and thus two parties may be represented to the mind as owing civil duties to each other,—the πόλις or state, and its citizens (πολίται). Practically this distinction resolves itself almost wholly into that of rulers and ruled.

(i.) Duties of States to each other.—These are analogous to those of individuals to each other. States, in their dealings with each other, are bound not merely by artificial compacts and accidental treaties, but by the dictates of that great moral law which, as Cicero sublimely says, "is not one at Rome and another at Athens,—one now and Duties. another afterwards; but it is one and the same eternal and immortal law which holds together all nations through all times; and one God, the common master, as it were, and commander of all, who is the discoverer, the umpire, the enacter of this law; and the man who obeys Him not is untrue to himself, and contemns the nature of man, and on this very account shall endure severest punishment, even although he may escape other penalties, as they are considered." Hence nations are morally precluded from making aggressions on each other's territory, or doing ought gratuitously, avariciously, or vindictively, to damage the prosperity of each other. Instead of this, there ought to be a firm alliance among the nations, binding them to respect each other's rights, to refrain from in any way seeking each other's injury, and to refer all disputes that may arise between any to the arbitration of some common tribunal. In the present state of the world, however, especially where states in very different stages of civilization are placed in close contact with each other, such a state of things can at the best be only approximately reached, and in many cases not at all. Hence aggressions will be made by the stronger on the weaker, by the more restless and needy on the more civilized, industrious, and wealthy; and constantly cases will be arising of misunderstanding and conflict between even those states which are most devoted to the arts of peace. In such cases the resort will in all probability be to arms, as the only arbitrement to which the dispute can be referred; and however horrible in many of its aspects such an expedient may be, there does not appear to be any ground on which the moralist can condemn it, apart from circumstances. Nations as well as individuals possess the right of self-defence; and if either their liberties or their possessions are forcibly invaded, they not only are morally at liberty to resist force by force for the protection of these, but they are bound, by a duty higher than any they owe to the invading power, to do their utmost to repel its assault. It is only an extension of the same principle when nations are justified in going to war for the purpose of restraining the ambition or repressing the advances of some warlike power, which, though it may not have directly attacked them, is pursuing a course such as cannot but bring it into collision with them, and that under circumstances less favourable to them than if the collision took place now; for if it be right to repel an attack when made, it is on the same ground right to prevent, if possible, the attack from being made when it might be impossible to repel it. It is less clear whether nations are justified in going to war for causes which do not touch upon either their liberties or their possessions,—such as questions of commercial prerogative, national honour, theoretical policy, or dynastic alliance. On a calm survey of such cases, the balance seems to decline in favour of the negative side of the question, and it can only be in very urgent cases that so frightful an expedient as war can be justified for any such cause.

(ii.) Duties of States to their Subjects.—The prime duty of a state to its subjects is that of affording protection to their lives, liberties, persons, and properties; for which ends laws must be enacted, courts of justice instituted, and an efficient executive force maintained. In the enacting of laws, sacred regard is to be had to the interests of the community as a whole, as the end for which the law is made; and in the judicial administration of them impartiality is scrupulously to be maintained, without any respect of persons, either through fear or favour. The supreme duty of the executive consists in fidelity to the trust reposed in them, to be shown by vigilance in the detection of offenders, and the unflinching performance of what the law enacts, and the judge has determined, as due to the offence; but with this should be united the utmost possible avoidance of all personal feeling against the culprit, and the exhibition of as much of gentleness and forbearance as may be compatible with the faithful discharge of official duty. But though protection be the principal duty of a state towards its subjects, it may legitimately extend its operations beyond that, and make provision for the advancement of the commercial prosperity of the community, for the prevention of influences prejudicial to public health or morals, for the education of the people, for the relief of the poor, and for the cure of disease.

(iii.) Duties of Subjects to the State.—These are,—(1.) Subjection to the constituted authorities—"the powers that be." It is not implied in this that subjects are bound to approve of every law or act of their rulers, nor that they may not use means to obtain the repeal of oppressive or unwise laws; but simply that, in their capacity as citizens, they are not to set themselves against their rulers, nor to refuse obedience to the laws which are in operation. To this obedience there is but one limit, and that is, when the law requires what it would be plainly a sin against God to perform. In this case a higher law demands that the law of the human legislator should be disobeyed; only this must be done as quietly and as respectfully to the authorities as possible. (2.) The rendering of homage and respect to the magistrate as such, to be shown in the avoidance of all importunate familiarity, all uncourtaneous language or deportment, and all severe and railing censure. (3.) The prompt as well as honest payment of all the taxes appointed to be levied by the proper authorities, regarding this as a debt due to government for the benefits it secures to society, and esteeming it a privilege that the amount we have to pay for this is fixed, so that it neither depends on the caprice of individuals, nor is left to the dubious and perplexing settlement of our own conscience. (4.) The being ready to make sacrifice of personal ease, property, and, if need be, safety, for the defence of our country, and the being forward to promote, as we have the means, the intellectual, moral, social, and political improvement of the community.

SECT. III.—DUTIES WHICH MAN OWES TO GOD.

Some German philosophers and theologians have advanced the opinion, that it is incompetent for philosophy to attempt to determine the duties we owe to God; and some have even gone so far as to assert that man owes no duties to God distinct from those which he owes to himself and his fellow-creatures. With those who hold pantheistic views, such conclusions are unavoidable; for if God be not personally distinct from the universe, it becomes absurd to speak of our owing anything to Him as a being with whom we have special relations. But the opinion is not confined to the pantheistic school; it is advanced also by some who strenuously uphold the belief in an extra-mundane Deity. Of these we may take Kant as instar omnium; and it may suffice here to notice what he has said on the subject. After asserting that, "in respect of an essence which lies entirely beyond the sphere of our experience, and yet is, as respects its possibility, found in our ideas,—namely, the Deity,—we have indeed a duty, which is called duty of religion, and this consists in the recognition of all our duties as divine commands," he goes on to say,—"But this is not the consciousness of a duty towards God; for since this idea proceeds entirely from our own reason, and is made by us with a theoretical view only to illustrate the conformity to purpose of the universe, or to serve as a motive

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1 Fragment of the 3d book of the treatise De Republica, preserved by Lactantius, Inst. vi. 8. 2 See also Garve's Philosophische Abhandlungen, appended to his translation of Cicero, De Officiis, vol. II., p. 55, ff., 6th ed.; Tieftrunk, Grundriss d. Sittenlehre, vol. I., p. 272, ff.; Niemeyer, Handbuch für Christliche Religionslehre, p. 66, ff. affecting our behaviour, it follows that we have here before us no given being towards which our obligation binds us. In order to this, his actuality must be first proved by experience (or revelation); but it is a duty of man to himself to apply this idea, which inevitably presents itself to the reason, to the moral law in us, where it is of the greatest moral fruitfulness. Now, without adverting here to other questionable doctrines taught in these sentences, let us confine ourselves to the argument they contain against the possibility of our realizing duties towards God. This, it will be seen, rests solely on the assumption that we can be under moral obligation only towards beings whose actual existence we know by experience. But is this assumption tenable? Is experience the only medium through which we may arrive at a conviction of the actual existence of any being? And provided we know a being actually to exist, and to exist in relation to us, is it of the least moment how we acquire that knowledge, in respect of the duties which our ascertained relation to this being imposes on us? In the case before us, if we have sufficient assurance that God exists, and that He is a being with whom we have to do, we surely know enough to enable us to go some length at least in determining the duties we owe to Him. But it may be said, as Kant has, in the passage quoted, distinctly affirmed, that our knowledge of God does not amount to such assurance of His existence and of our relation to Him, but exists merely in the form of an idea or unavoidable conclusion of reason. Now, if the whole amount of what reason constrains us to conclude on this subject were, that something is conceived by us as theoretically possible, and is assumed by us to exist in order to complete our theory of the universe, it must be granted that towards such a being we could have no duties to perform. But we may appeal with confidence to the consciousness of the race, whether this be the only idea of God instilled into us by natural reason. At the very least, the something which is conceived of as accounting for the evidences of design and purpose in the arrangement of the universe is conceived of as a causal something, as a being who has brought into actual manifestation what previously existed potentially in himself, and must have been contemplated as the object of purpose in his mind. Kant himself admits this in another part of his writings. "The existing world," says he, "presents to us so immense a scene of variety, order, adaptation, and beauty, . . . that the universal All must sink into the abyss of nonentity, unless we assume something that, outside of this boundless realm of the contingent, and existing primarily and independently for itself, upholds it, and, as the cause of its origin, secures to it also its continuance." But if men know this much, they know enough to enable them to perceive a relation between themselves and this being, and enough consequently to enable them to determine that they owe some duties to Him. It is granted that the knowledge thus acquired is limited and imperfect, but it is sufficient to lay the basis of duty on the part of man towards God.

There is a sense in which all our duties are duties to God, inasmuch as all are comprehended in obedience to His will. But there are some duties of which He is directly the object, and it is to these we have now to attend.

(i.) It is our duty to seek earnestly to have just views of the being and perfections of God. Such views lie at the basis of all true piety: we are pious just in proportion as we think worthily of God; all religious emotion which does not spring out of just conceptions of God is mere superstition, and is only offensive to Him. "Primus est Deorum cultus Deos credere," says a heathen philosopher, "deinde reddere illis majestatem suam." Hence the duty binding on all to follow up the convictions which nature may have impressed on them respecting the existence of God, by inquiring diligently whether He have given any more precise and complete revelation of Himself, and the duty of candidly examining the evidence of that book which professes to contain such a revelation.

(ii.) It is our duty to cherish proper affections towards God. It behoves us to regard Him with reverence and holy fear, and to speak of Him with awe; to exercise constant dependence on Him, trust in Him, and submission to Him; to cultivate entire and cheerful resignation to His will; to delight in Him as the All-Perfect and All-Holy; and to gratefully love Him as our bountiful Father, from whose favour a continual stream of benefits descends upon us.

(iii.) It is our duty to exemplify our devout feelings towards God by appropriate acts. We are bound to receive with implicit belief whatever He makes known to us, assured that He neither can deceive nor be deceived; and on the same ground we are bound to have faith in that constitution and order which He has established in nature, including those natural sources of knowledge which He has opened in our own souls. We are bound to offer Him formal worship as an expression of internal love and reverence,—celebrating His praises, commemorating His goodness, and "speaking of the glorious honour of His majesty." We are bound to pray to Him for what we need, with confession of our sins and acknowledgment of His constant care and kindness. We are bound to swear only by His name; but we are not to take that name upon any trivial matter, on any matter of less than urgent importance; and having sworn by Him, we must dread, as a sin of enormous magnitude, the violating in the minutest particular of our oath. We are bound to practice the most steadfast obedience to all His commandments, and to use all our energies, and capacities, and opportunities, so as to serve Him and manifest His glory.

(iv.) It is our duty to imitate God's character and methods of acting, so far as may be competent to us. Infinitely as we are beneath Him in knowledge and power and goodness, we yet find in Him not only the source of all moral excellence, but the perfect model to which we, as moral agents, have to conform. All our studies, therefore, of his character and ways should be directed towards an assimilation of our characters to His, and our conduct to His. So important a place does the imitating of God occupy in the moral and religious life of man, that it is presented in Scripture as the counterpart and complement of our filial relation to God: "Be ye imitators of God, as dear children."

SECT. IV.—COLLISION OF DUTIES.

Strictly speaking, there can be no collision of duties: in themselves, and viewed in the pure light of reason, all duties are in perfect harmony with each other. Nor can there be any real collision of duties practically; for when two duties appear opposed to each other, either the reasons in morality urging to the one exactly balance the reasons urging to the other, in which case the agent is placed in a moral lock, where one of the conditions of virtue, liberty of choice, is denied to him, so that neither of the two is a duty for him in the circumstances; or the reasons for the one overbalance the reasons for the other, in which case the latter ceases in the circumstances to be his duty. Cases, however, frequently

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1 Tugendlehre, Works, IX., 300. See also Rechtslehre, p. 46 of the same volume. 2 Kritik d. Reinem Vermuts, p. 650. 3 Seneca, Ep. xcv. Comp. Epictetus, Ench., ch. xxxi.: τὸς μείζον τοῦ πατρὸς ἰσχυρότατος ἴδιος ὑπὲρ τὸ κοινωνικὸν ἴδιον ἰσχύος ἔχον. 4 See Chalmers, Natural Theology, ch. ii., Works, vol. i., p. 56. 5 Eph. v. 1. Not far from the same thought is the sentiment of the heathen Seneca,—"Satis illos (Deos) coluit quisquis imitatus est." Happiness occur in actual life, where of two duties only one can be performed by us, and it is in reference to such cases that the phrase "collision of duties" is used.

In all such cases the question which each man has to determine is, on which side the overbalance of obligation lies; and this can be determined only by ascertaining which of the duties is urged upon us by the greater force of moral reasons. In pursuing this inquiry care must be taken to abstract from all considerations of expediency or advantage; for these do not enter into a moral calculation, and if allowed to sway the judgment may lead to an immoral conclusion.

To lay down rules for the guidance of conscience in such cases belongs to the science of Casuistry, or, as Kant calls it, "The Dialectic of Conscience." We can only here suggest one or two rules of a general kind:

(i) We must distinguish duties of universal obligation from duties of particular obligation, and assign to the former a superior moral authority to that of the latter. Thus, to speak the truth is a duty of universal obligation, whilst the duties arising out of social or domestic relations are of particular obligation; hence, if the latter cannot be performed without violating the former, they cease in such a case to be binding.

Obs. A question has been raised and discussed by all casuists, whether cases of necessity do not justify the telling of a lie—the case, e.g., where, by telling the truth, you may cause serious injury, perhaps death, to a friend or relative. On this point the following remarks of Fichte are worthy of attention as going far to settle the question:—"The justification of a lie of necessity, or in general a lie for the sake of some good end, is without doubt the most senseless and the most perverse that can be heard among men. It is the most senseless. Thou sayest to me, that thou hast convinced thyself that a lie of necessity is permitted. Now, if I am to believe this, I must no less disbelieve it; for I cannot know whether thou, even whilst thou art speaking, mayest not, for the sake of some praiseworthy end—who can know all thy ends?—be making use of thy maxim against me, and whether, consequently, things assurance that thou holdest a lie of necessity allowable, may not be itself a lie of necessity. Whoever really holds such a maxim can neither declare that he holds it, nor wish to make others hold it: he must carefully shut it up in himself, and wish it to be held only for himself; consequently, if it destroys itself, . . . Without doubt, then, it is pure nonsense to demand belief for a lie, if it is believed, and lie itself. The justification of such a lie is rather the most perverse that is possible for man: the justifier thereby discloses his thoroughly corrupt mode of thought. That the lie should have occurred to you as a possible means of escape from certain contingencies, and that you can seriously deliberate whether one may avail himself of such, is happiness, the true seat of your corruption. In nature there is no instinct toward lies; the ethical mode of thought knows not the lie; there needs for this thought something positively evil, a reflective searching after some crooked way, and desire not to follow the straight path which offers itself to us. To the virtuous man this expedient does not occur, and were it left to him, the concept of lying would not be brought into the system of human concepts, nor the question as to the morality of a lie of necessity into ethics."

(ii) We must distinguish duties of primary from duties of secondary obligation, and give the former the preference in cases of apparent collision. Thus, to do justice is a duty of primary, to be generous a duty of secondary obligation; and hence we can be generous only when we have fulfilled the requirements of justice.

(iii) As our duties arise out of our relations, their comparative urgency—i.e., the degree in which we are morally obliged to perform them—varies according to the number and closeness of these relations. Hence our duty to God, to whom we sustain the most numerous and intimate relations, far transcends any duty we may owe to creatures, and must be allowed, consequently, to take precedence of all such duties: we must obey God rather than men, and love and honour Him above all beings. On the same principle, our relations and friends and fellow-countrymen have a claim upon us which is strong in proportion to their proximity to us, and in that order must the calls of duty in relation to them be obeyed.

(iv) We must distinguish between what is simply right and what is meritorious. As a mere matter of rectitude, for instance, no man is required to prefer the interests of others to his own; but when a man chooses to sacrifice what he owes to himself for the good of others, he not only does no wrong, but he acquires merit and deserves reward. Hence, if my duty to myself requires me to follow one course, and the duties I owe to others require me to follow another, no one can justly blame me if I follow the former, but as little can any command me unless I follow the latter.

(v) Sometimes mere circumstances may determine us in our choice of duties. Thus, if I see several persons in danger of drowning, all equally indifferent to me, and of whom I can save only one, the question, Which one? may be best determined by circumstances, such as proximity of position, ease or certainty of success, &c.

PART IV.—OF HAPPINESS.

1. Happiness is the repose of an intelligent being in the full enjoyment of all that, according to its nature, it seeks. The term describes a purely subjective state, which must not be confounded with the objective possession of what is desirable; for a being may have everything that he can desire, and yet not be happy. Of happiness it has been justly said,—"Its home is within us rather than without us; to be happy depends less on what is possessed, than on how one regards and uses the possession."

Obs. Kant defines happiness thus: "Happiness is the condition of an intelligent being in the world, to whom, in the whole of his existence, everything happens according to will and wish; and it rests, consequently, on the accordance of nature with his whole aims, by implication with the essential determining motives of his will." (Kritik d. Prakt. Vern., b. II., chap. II., sect. 5; vol. viii., p. 264, of his collected works.)

"Actual or formal felicity," says Leighton, "is the full possession and enjoyment of that complete and chief good [that, namely, which most perfectly supplies all the wants and satisfies all the cravings of our rational appetites]. It consists in a perfect tranquillity of the mind: not a dull and stupified indolence, like the calm that reigns in the Dead Sea, but such a peace of mind as is lively, active, and constantly attended with the purest joy; not a mere absence of uneasiness and pain, but such a perfect ease as is constantly accompanied with the most perfect satisfaction and supreme delight; and if the term had not been degraded by the mean uses to which it has been prostituted, I should not scruple to call it pleasure." (Theological Lectures, p. 18, Eng. tr., Lond. 1783.)

2. To aim at the attainment of happiness is inseparable from the constitution of man, or, indeed, of any intelligent agent; for it would be absurd to suppose a being, capable of happiness and endowed with intelligence, who should be indifferent whether he was happy or not. Hence, as the schoolmen were wont to say, "in beatitudinem fertur voluntas, non ut voluntas sed ut natura,"—the will is borne towards happiness, not as will, but as nature. Happiness is, indeed, as Pope calls it, "our being's end and aim,"—

"That something still which prompts the eternal sigh, For which we bear to live, or dare to die." But though universally sought, happiness is not always or generally wisely sought by men. It is too often after a "confused manner," as Barrow expresses it, that they pursue their quest; "they rove through all the forest of creatures, and beat every bush of nature for it, hoping to catch it either in natural endowments and improvements of soul, or in the gifts of fortune, or in the acquisits of industry,—in temporal possessions, in sensual enjoyments, in ludicrous diversions and amusements of fancy, or in gratification of their appetites and passions. They all hunt for it, though following a different scent and running in various tracks; . . . but all search in vain, or without any considerable success; finding at most, instead of it, some faint shadows or transitory flashes of pleasure, the which, depending on causes very contingent and mutable, residing in a frail temper of fluid humours of body, consisting in slight touches on the organs of sense, in frisks of the corporeal spirits, or in fumes and vapours twitching the imagination, do soon flag and expire; their short enjoyment being also tempered with regret, being easily dashed by any cross accident, soon declining into a nauseous satiety, and in the end degenerating into gall and bitter remorse." Besides being true to the life, this passage suggests some of the causes, natural, and resulting from acquired habits, by which men are misled in their pursuit of happiness, or prevented from attaining it.

3. The simple psychological law of happiness is, that the conative energies of our nature should terminate on the object to which they are directed. Thus happiness, so far as dependent on the appetites, is secured by the gratification of these; and so in respect of all our desires and passions, happiness, in so far as dependent on them, is secured by the attainment of the object by which they are excited. It is evident, however, that this psychological law will not cover all the requirements of the case; for unless there be some power to control and regulate our conative energies, man may enlarge his desires so as to render the supply of them impossible, or lie may so fix his affections on unworthy objects as to do violence to his own higher nature. To this psychological law, therefore, must be added an ethical one that shall prescribe the order in which the various objects of human affection are to be sought, and the degree in which each is to be desired.

4. This ethical law may be presented under two forms: either we may determine among things desirable that which is most worthy of human pursuit, and enjoin upon man the attainment of this as his supreme end, and of other objects in the degree of their relative importance as compared with this; or we may analyze man's own nature, and making an estimate of the relative value of each of its parts, exhort him to cultivate and satisfy them, in the order and degree of their relative value.

The former of these methods was that chiefly affected by the ancient philosophers, whose ethical speculations terminated on the determination of the summum bonum or chief good of man. Their success, however, was not such as to prepossess us in favour of this method of prosecuting the inquiry; for their researches plunged them in endless diversity and controversy, and tended ultimately rather to give a handle to the mockeries of the sceptic than to guide the sincere inquirer. Besides, if happiness depend rather on the mental condition of the individual than on the actual attainment by him of any outward good, it would seem altogether the more rational and hopeful course, in attempting to lay down rules for the attainment of happiness, to survey the subject in relation to man's own tendencies and capacities.

5. To man there may be said to belong two natures,—a higher and a lower. Of these, the latter embraces his animal functions, and the appetites and desires pertaining to these; and to the former belong his intellectual and moral capacities, with the desires and affections connected with them. In virtue of the one, man is connected with the brutes that perish, however much he may surpass them in excellence and beauty; in virtue of the other, man is assimilated to God, however far below Him in majesty and perfection; and hence there can be no doubt that the one is properly denominated the higher, i.e., the more dignified, the more important, the more precious; the other the lower, that is, the less worthy and estimable. On this distinction, then, would we erect the ethical law of happiness. It may be enunciated thus:—So live as to secure primarily the full development and free activity of the higher powers, tendencies, and desires of your nature, and let the lower be attended to, ever as in subordination to these.

But in the higher nature of man there are also degrees. Embracing as it does the moral and intellectual being of man, it contemplates him as a creature made for religion, for virtue, and for intelligence. Now these do not stand on the same level either in dignity or worth. However precious be intelligence, it is not equal to virtue; and virtue, which falls short of religion, fails to provide for man's loftiest susceptibilities and most weighty interests. The order, then, in which these claim the attention of man is that in which we have named them. Religion occupies the highest place, and demands his supreme attention; virtue next; and knowledge, as subordinate to these.

6. When, then, religion and virtue predominate in man's nature, when his intellectual powers are exerted in the pursuit of knowledge as in subordination to piety and morality, and when all his animal propensities are kept under the control of reason and conscience, he obeys the great ethical law of happiness, and cannot fail to secure that measure of it which is attainable in the present life, and the fulness of it in that life which is to come.

7. If these remarks are just, it will not be difficult to answer a question which sometimes has perplexed inquirers, viz., In how far the pursuit of pleasure, as pleasure, is consistent with morality? On this question it is possible for the moralist to take much too high ground, and, by denouncing too vehemently and unqualifiedly all pleasure-seeking, to place his teachings in antagonism with the natural constitution of man and the obvious will of God. For man is made to seek pleasure as an end; and it is to be inferred that God wills it to be so, inasmuch as He has bestowed upon us so many susceptibilities of pleasurable enjoyment, has opened for us so many sources of pleasure, and has impressed upon us so strong a tendency to seek pleasure for its own sake. But there are limits to this pursuit within which alone it can be legitimately indulged. These limits are transgressed—1. When men make mere enjoyment the sole or the supreme end of life; when they make nothing a study, nothing a duty, nothing a work, but are solely or chiefly occupied in flying from amusement to amusement; when, whether they are intellectually amused or sensually amused, they find in the mere amusement their end, and never rise beyond this in either case. 2. When men pursue pleasure to the neglect of duty;

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1 Barrow, Sermon xliii., Works by Hughes, vol. iii., p. 138. 2 Mr Stewart has treated, with his usual sagacity and at length, the same aspect of the subject in his Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers, vol. ii., p. 376, ff. 3 All in animo, ali in corpore, ali in utroque fines bonorum posuerunt et malorum. Ex qua tripartita velat generalium distributione sectarum, M. Varro in libro de Philosophia tam multam dogmatum varietatem diligentiter et subtiliter scrutatus advertit ut ad diversas coligantia et octo sectas, non quae jam essent sed quae esse possent, adhibens quasdam differentias facilissime perveniret. (Augustine, De Civ. Dei, b. xix., c. i.) Happiness—whether the duty neglected be one owing to themselves, such as temperance and moderation, or one owing to others, such as equity and honesty, or one owing to God, such as worship and obedience. 3. When men pursue pleasure so as to enervate their intellectual faculties, to blunt their moral susceptibilities, and to create a sensitiveness of the nervous system or the aesthetic faculty which unfit for the actual business of life. In all such cases pleasure is pursued immorally and to the permanent injury of the party; so that what our bountiful Creator gave us for a blessing is perversely turned into a curse; and what was intended to add to our happiness becomes a source of misery.

8. It only remains that we should advert to the question touching the relation to each other of goodness and happiness as supreme ends of human effort. As man is bound to both, they cannot be antagonistic to each other. But how are they connected with each other? Is the one to be absorbed in the other, or are they distinct and independent of each other?

By the ancient philosophers, with whom this question was much discussed, the former of these positions was universally maintained; they differed only as to which of the two was the superior and absorbing power. On this point the Epicureans and the Stoics occupied the antipodal positions; the former of whom held that virtue was an accidental element of happiness, the latter that happiness was an accidental element in virtue. "To be consciously influenced by maxims that lead to happiness is virtue," exclaimed the Epicureans. "To be conscious of virtue is happiness," rejoined the Stoic. Kant, however, has shown that such a connection of the two is untenable; that they are so different in kind, that identity cannot be sought between them. He maintains, further, that the connection between them is not causal; for experience shows us that neither is the desire for happiness a motive to virtue, nor is virtue an immediate cause of happiness, otherwise all virtuous persons would be happy in proportion to their goodness. He would, therefore, keep the two distinct as independent ends for man. There thus emerges what, in the peculiar phraseology of his school, he calls "the antinomy of the practical reason;" i.e., not a case where two assumptions contradict each other, so that if one of them be true, the other must be false; but a case in which two propositions are both known to be true, yet cannot be construed in their harmony to the mind. Man is bound to pursue virtue; man cannot but pursue happiness; and yet neither are these identical, nor does the one lead directly to the other. This antinomy can be resolved only by taking into account the whole extent of man's being as destined for immortality, and spending now a probationary life for the future; and along with this his relation to God, in whom perfect holiness and perfect happiness are eternally conjoined; and who, having all things under his control, not only can reward the obedience of his servants here by a futurity of blessedness, but can make even present sufferings and sorrows conducive to future felicity. It is by living at peace with Him, through that reconciliation which He graciously offers to us, and by constantly serving Him, that virtue and happiness are to be united. Though we cannot directly command happiness, we shall thus follow a course which shall secure for us, along with the pleasure that springs from doing what is right, the prospect of perfect felicity above, and the consolation amid present ills which such a prospect, and the assurance that these ills will themselves be made conducive to a higher measure of felicity, cannot but communicate.

9. The conclusion at which we thus arrive is that in which alone the mind can rest. If we confine our view to the present state, it becomes impossible to show whether happiness or virtue should be the supreme object of pursuit. "When disputing with my friend," says Augustine, "concerning the ends of good and bad, I would have given the palm to Epicurus in my own mind, had it not been for my belief in the soul's life and the reach of deserts after death."2 The natural conclusion of the majority of men, when the moral government of God and a future state of rewards and punishments, consequent upon our conduct in the present, is denied or overlooked, is that expressed by the words, "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." On the other hand, to the cultivated few the beauty of virtue, and the advantages of it, may appear such as to induce them to prefer it to all sensual indulgence; and they may loudly and eloquently commend the same course to others. But if, after all, the decision is to turn merely on which course produces the largest amount of present enjoyment, the majority will still be on the side of pleasure; and rightly, for if there be no futurity and no final retribution, a life of careless ease and sensual enjoyment is on the whole to be preferred to one of self-denial, toil, and struggle. It is only when the mind realizes man's true condition, as the subject of a moral government which is administered on a scheme of rewards and punishments, consequent on the desert of conduct, that the supreme importance of virtue and holiness is perceived; and men are disposed to count nothing a loss by which these are secured, and nothing a gain by which they are forfeited or missed.

"Si ergo quaeratur a nobis quid civitas Dei de his singulis interrogata respondet, ac primum de finibus bonorum malorumque quid sentiar, respondebit aeternam vitam esse summum bonum, aeternam vero mortem summum malum: propter illam proinde adipiscendam, istamque vitandam recte nobis esse vivendum."3

(W. L. A.)

1 Kritik d. Prak. Vernunft, b. ii., c. ii., vol. viii., p. 246, ff., of his collected works. 2 Confess., b. vi., c. xvi. 3 Augustine, De Civ. Del., b. xix., c. iv.