ment. What we call our approbation of an action, inasmuch as the moral principle is concerned, is a sort of moral love, when the action is the action of another; or moral complacency, when the action is our own, and nothing more. It is no exercise of Reason, discovering congruities, and determining an action to be better fitted than another action for affording happiness and relieving misery." From these historical notices, it will be seen, that there are three forms, easily distinguishable, in which the Sentimental Theory has been held by modern philosophers. 1. That the Moral Faculty is an original and peculiar sense or feeling, improvable by exercise on its proper objects, and needing no aid from Reason or our other powers. 2. That it is not original nor separate, but composite and derivative, and capable of being resolved into some other principle or principles of our nature. 3. That, while in its primary exercise it operates like a sense or instinct, it is confirmed, extended, and improved, by aid from Reason and our other powers. Paley has put a case (Mor. and Polit. Phil., book i. ch. 5) which, he thought, would determine the question concerning a Moral Sense, in any or in all of its forms. But, in putting this case, not only is there no discrimination made of the different forms under which the doctrine of a Moral Sense has been held, but the Sentimental and Intellectual Theories are confounded, and modes of expression, which mean very different things, are classed together as meaning the same thing. And as to the case put, viz.: “Whether a savage, without experience, and without instruction, cut off in his infancy from all intercourse with his species, and consequently under no possible influence of example, authority, education, sympathy, or habit, would feel any degree of that sentiment of disapprobation which we feel, when the story of a son betraying his father was told to him;" it is an impossible case. It is asking an expression of sentiment from one who does not, and cannot, know what he is to think or feel about. No issue can be framed upon such a case, on which the advocates of either theory would agree to go to proof. Shut up a human beinfrom the day of his birth to the maturity of his manhood, in and unchanging darkness, and the probability is, that, when you brought him to the light, he could not see. But this would not prove either that the child was born blind or that he could never have come to discern colours. Shut up a human being, from infancy to manhood, in utter solitude and seclusion; and at the time when, in the natural enjoyment of society, all his faculties would have been in their prime and vigour, he will be little better than an idiot— unable to follow the plainest steps of reasoning, or to discern, in the simplest cases, between Right and Wrong. But you would not argue from this that man is not naturally a rational and moral being. All our powers of body and of mind-even such as are original and instinctive-require exercise and culture, or occasion and opportunity, for their full development. "Nature, crescent, grows not alone In thews and sinews; but, as this temple waxes, Grows wide withal." Love and resentment are universally admitted to be original, and by many to be instinctive passions; yet they do not manifest themselves till both mind and body have attained some degree of maturity. In like manner a Moral Faculty may be natural to man -it may be an original or even an instinctive element of his mental constitution and yet to its development time and opportunity may be necessary. We may learn to see by the Conscience, just as we learn to see by the eye. The impression which actions make on the faculty of moral perception is as direct and positive as the impression which objects make on the faculty of external perception. By exercising the bodily organ, we learn not only to see, that is, to discriminate colours; but we come at length, it has been said, to see things that are invisible, and to judge of distance by the eye. No one thinks the faculty of visible perception to be less an original and essential element of human nature, on account of the improvement of which it is susceptible. In like manner, we may have our moral sense so exercised, by reason of use, that we may not only be able to discern, in plain and palpable cases, between Right and Wrong, but to decide in difficult and intricate questions of Casuistry. 4 The inference from the non-exercise to the non-existence of a faculty is not valid. 5 "Strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, who by reason of use have had their senses (aiobairnpia) exercised to discern between good and evil."- Heb. v. 14. But this is no reason why the faculty of moral perception should not be regarded as primary and natural in its origin. The occasions and conditions under which a faculty manifests or improves itself, do not create or confer it; and the question concerning a Moral Sense cannot be settled in the summary way in which Paley has attempted to settle it, or rather to set it aside. (Reid, Act. Pow., Essay iii. pt. iii. ch. 8, observ. i.; Stewart, Act, and Mor. Pow., b. ii. ch. 2, p. 168.) SECTION II.-Intellectual Theory. According to the Sentimental Theory, the contemplation of moral actions excites some sense or feeling; and, in consequence of our being so affected, we proceed to classify actions as Right or Wrong, and to characterize agents as Virtuous or Vicious. According to the Intellectual Theory, the process is the converse of this; that is, we first judge of the nature of actions as Right or Wrong, and then we are affected in a manner suitable to the moral judgment formed of them. That it is not by Sense or Feeling, but by Intellect or Reason, that we discern the morality of actions, is maintained, with much learning and ingenuity, by Ralph Cudworth, D.D., in his Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. He has shown that even external bodies are not, properly speaking, perceived by the şenses, but by the understanding. Sense is not knowledge; it merely furnishes the occasions and conditions on which the mind exerts an active cognoscitive energy, and so begets knowledge within itself. And, if it be the Intellect which comprehends external objects, when presented to it through the medium of the senses, it must be still more plain that the mind must be exerting an internal and independent energy, when it proceeds to frame notions of the relations which subsist between external objects—such as the relation of a whole and its parts, unity and multitude, greater and less, and the like. These relations are not objects of sense, and our notions of them must spring from the inherent activity of the Intellect. Still less can the higher things of morality be comprehended by a sense, or by any faculty to which the term sense can properly be applied. What is just and what is unjust are simple, undefinable ideas. We are not indebted for them to sense nor feeling, but to the active energy of the Intellect. They are not φάντασματα, nor ἄισθηματα, but νοήματα. They are not sensations, nor feelings, which are passive impressions, but ideas evolved by the activity of the Intellect or Reason. In reference to Dr. Samuel Clarke, Dr. Hutcheson has remarked (Illust. of the Mor. Sense, sect. 2), that “this ingenious author says nothing against the supposition of a Moral sense." But as little has he said anything in favour of it. And, as he places virtue in acting conformably to the eternal reason and fitness of things, it is difficult to see how he could appeal to any other power than Reason as judge and guide in all matters of morality. Accordingly, we find Lowman, who was an admirer and follower of Dr. Clarke, defining morality to be the practice of Reason—that is, the doing of those things which Reason dictates as Right. Similar remarks might be made in reference to Mr. Woollaston, who, in the Religion of Nature Delineated, has placed virtue in a conformity with truth, as it is by Reason that we judge of what is true or false. The philosopher who, in modern times, has given the fullest analysis of the process of Moral Perception, is Dr. Richard Price, in his work entitled A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, with an Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas in general. Having shown (ch. 1, sect. 2) that the Understanding, or the Reason, is a source of simple ideas, which cannot be resolved into elements derived from experience, he proceeds to show (sect. 3) that our ideas of Right and Wrong are of this kind. On contemplating actions we do not suffer, as from a sense or feeling-we know or understand something concerning them. Actions have a nature—that is, some character certainly belongs to them, and somewhat there is that may be truly affirmed of them. This nature, or character, is their Rightness or Wrongness; and the power or faculty by which we are made aware of this is not a Sense, but the Understanding. He has shown further (sect. 3), that "Some emotion or other, and some alteration in the state of the mind, accompany, perhaps, all our perceptions, but more remarkably our perceptions of Right and Wrong. There is a natural aptitude in them to produce some degree of feeling. I cannot perceive an action to be Right without approving it, or approve it without being conscious of some degree of satisfaction and complacency. I cannot perceive an action to be wrong without disapproving it, or disapprove it without being displeased with it. Right actions, then, as such, must be grateful, and wrong ones ungrateful, to us. The one must appear amiable, and the other unamiable and base." So that, in addition to the approbation and disapprobation which arise from the contemplation of actions as Right and Wrong, Dr. Price has admitted that there may also be a perception of their beauty and deformity. He has reverted to the old distinction between the Tò dikatov and the Tò κaλòv, the honestum and the pulchrum (ch. 2). As Right, virtue is approved; as Fair, it is loved. Vice, as Wrong, is condemned; as Foul, or Base, it is hated. Approbation and Condemnation are intellectual judgments, accompanied with a degree of feeling. Love and hatred are in themselves mere states or degrees of feeling; although they imply something which is loved or hated. They will differ in their intensity, under different circumstances, and in different individuals. They may, according to Dr. Price, be referred to a sense or positive determination of our nature; and the final cause assigned for them is, that they come in aid of our intellectual judgments of Right and Wrong; and prompt us to follow the one and to avoid the other, more earnestly than we would have done without them. This sense of Beauty and Deformity in actions had been much insisted on by Lord Shaftesbury and Dr. Hutcheson; but a more subordinate place, in the process of moral perception, has been assigned to it by Dr. Price. He has thus expressed his genera conclusion (ch. 2), "Upon the whole, it appears, I think, that, in contemplating the actions and affections of moral agents, we have both a perception of the understanding, and a feeling of the heart; and the latter, or the effects in us, accompanying our moral perceptions, are deducible from two springs. They partly depend on the positive constitution of our natures. But the most steady and universal ground of them is, the essential congruity or incongruity between object and faculty." "Placet suapte natura-virtus."-SENECA. "Etiamsi a nullo laudetur, natura est laudabile.”—CICERO. Some of the language employed by Dr. Price had previously been employed by Bishop Butler. In the only passage of his writings which bears directly on the constitution of the Moral Faculty (Dissert. on Virtue), he has said, "It is manifest that great part of common language, and of common behaviour, over the world, is formed upon supposition of a Moral Faculty; whether called Con |