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A DISCOURSE ON ETHICS
C Whittingham 21 Tooks Court Chancery Lane London
A DISCOURSE ON ETHICS
O F T H E SC HO O L OF P A L E Y
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BY WILLIAM SMITH ESQ
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P R E FA C E.
- PAhºy in his chapter headed “ The mo-
* ral sense,” after balancing some of the
arguments for and against what is there called
a moral instinct, concludes with these words,
“This celebrated question becomes in our
system a question of pure curiosity; and as
such, we dismiss it to the determination of
those who are more inquisitive than we are
concerned to be about the natural history and
constitution of the human species.” This is a
somewhat hasty expression ; for although Pa-
ley proceeds, in consistency with his system of
Christian ethics, to define virtue, or the best
conduct, as “ the doing good to mankind, in
obedience to the will of God, and for the sake
of everlasting happiness,”—although he ob-
tains in the command of God, and in the
canon of Scripture, a motive, and a rule, pa-
ramount to all others, be they of what nature
they may—yet both in his silence, and as I
think, a prudent silence, on any moral neces-
vi PR EFACE.
sity operating on the mind of the Eternal to
the issuing of his command, and in the appeal
he makes, single and unhesitating, to the test
of general eaſpediency whenever the rule of
Scripture is to be earplained or supplied—it
is plain that he does in fact adopt one side of
that celebrated question, which he here leaves
to the hands of mere curiosity. Every reader
of Paley must feel that a moral distinction
not ultimately founded on the good and evil
consequences of conduct — a pure absolute
right and wrong—would be an embarrassing
intrusion into his system. To this theoretical
point, in the hope of adding something to its
elucidation, the present essay is directed and
confined; and as the view here taken of hu-
man conduct is strictly ethical, it follows that
a part of the subject, which to Paley and to all
Christian moralists, must be of very subor-
dinate importance, is here unavoidably made
to predominate.
CONTENTS.
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
CHAPTER I.-Statement of the Theory.—Right and Wrong 5
CHAPTER II.-Statement of the Theory continued,—self-
approbation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
CHAPTER III.-The Theory applied to admitted Facts rela-
tive to the Moral Nature of Man. . . . . . . 27
CHAPTER IV.-Of the Theory of an Intuitive Sentiment.—
Some Remarks on the Doctrine of Free-will. . . 42
CHAPTER V.—Objections to the foregoing Theory drawn
from supposed Practical Consequences. . . . . 52
CHAPTER VI.-Objections of a Theological Cast.—Some
Remarks on Natural Religion. . . . . . . . 68
A DISCOURSE ON ETHICS.
INTRODUCTION.
PROPOSE in the following discourse to place
before the reader a succinct, explanatory, and de-
fensive statement of that ethical theory, which,
while it asserts the universality and extreme import-
ance of the moral sentiment, denies to it that cha-
racter of a mental intuition by some writers so ear-
nestly contended for; and, submitting the sentiment to
analysis, traces its origin to social influences, to the
control which in every community man exerts over
man. Right and Wrong, according to this theory,
are the beneficial and injurious of human conduct,
with the added association of that approval and dis-
approval of mankind which necessarily flow from
benefit and injury. Whatever there is besides in the
conscience, is religion, not morality.
If this doctrine be true, a brief, perspicuous expo-
sition of it cannot be superfluous; for trite and
almost self-evident as to some minds it may appear,
it is far from being generally received, and it lies,
B
2 A DISCOURSE
moreover, under certain vague, unfounded, and griev-
ous imputations. To mention only a few names,
and without travelling into the literature of foreign
countries, it is observable that those who have filled
the chairs of moral philosophy in the Scotch Univer-
sities—men worthy on all accounts of the highest
respect—such men as Reid, Stewart, and Brown—
have discountenanced it, and have described our
moral approbation as a distinct elementary portion of
mental consciousness. Dr. Chalmers, who lately
filled one of those chairs, has broadly stated in his
Bridgewater Treatise, that “ virtue is not right be-
cause it is useful, but God hath made it useful
22 ºr
**
because it is right;" " and still more lately, Pro-
fessor Whewell, at Cambridge, has preached and
published a series of discourses, whose object is to
remove the work of Paley from its place in that
university, because Paley rejected what, to such a
mind as his, must have appeared the mystical tenet
of an absolute moral rightness in human actions,
above, and independent of, that character they ob-
tain from mankind by their being conducive to hap-
piness. If, therefore, the doctrine I here advocate
be the correct one, my efforts to explain it may be
feeble and imperfect, they cannot be uncalled for.
That doctrine is harmless at least. It neither dis-
putes, nor impairs, the authority of conscience. With
the religious obligation generally implied in the term
* Vol. ii. p. 72,
ON ETHICS. 3
conscience, it does not at all interfere; it merely
asserts that moral obligation is not a direct experience
of the individual mind, as pain and pleasure are
direct experiences of the sentient being, but describes
it as a sentiment which, by the inevitable operation
of the controlling influences of society, is planted by
all in the bosom of each, to the good both of himself
and the community.
The writers who have best expounded this theory,
have connected it with metaphysical speculations of
a subtle and disputable character. It has been
taught by those who have been solicitous to resolve
almost all mental phenomena into the association of
ideas. I am desirous of separating it from these
bolder speculations, on the correctness of which it by
no means depends. It is not necessary for the task
before me to determine how far, within what limits,
and under what conditions, the principle of associa-
tion is to be applied to the explanation of mental
phenomena; and if I have occasion to use the term
association of ideas, I shall in the employment of it
be merely referring to a fact in our mental consti-
tution familiar to all men, and a matter of universal
observation; I shall not be calling on the reader to
recognize this fact in the shape it assumes in certain
metaphysical lucubrations,—in the form it there takes
of a most wide generalization.
I have no wish to exaggerate the importance of
the topic I have here undertaken to discuss. As far
as the actual moral conduct of an individual is con-
4 A DISCOURSE
cerned, it may be a matter of little or no moment
which opinion he holds, or whether he holds any
opinion whatever, upon this question of the origin of
our moral sentiments;–I will content myself with
suggesting that in all inquiries and speculations
touching the condition and prospects of society, in all .
discourse on the characters of men, on the manners
of communities, on laws, and government, there is no
topic on which clear ideas are more available than this
of the theory of morals. May I be permitted to add,
that the investigation of it is all but indispensable to
the student of jurisprudence, whose subject brings
him perpetually on the borders of pure ethics?
Throughout the whole of this Essay I must entreat
the reader to bear in mind that a separation is here
made between religion and morality for the sake
only of accurate examination. Practically they are,
and must, and ought to be perpetually blended.
And if any one should be of opinion that the descrip-
tion here given of moral obligation has rendered still
more evident to his mind the importance and neces-
sity of this connection — with him I have no con-
troversy: he is at liberty, with my cordial acquies-
cence, to estimate at what height he will the still
unestimated value of the sentiment of piety.
ON ETHICS. 5
CHAPTER I.
Statement of the Theory.—Right and Wrong.
THE moral sentiment, long cultivated and highly
excited, like every other strong and habitual
feeling, presents itself at once as a simple impulse
or energy of the mind, controlling, directing, im-
pelling, without time given to refer to those circum-
stances which would justify or explain its presence.
For this reason, and because moreover, from the very
quarter, as will be shown, whence it comes, it is an
antagonist in their turns to every passion and desire,
it has been regarded, naturally enough, as an alto-
gether separate element in our mental constitution.
The feeling of responsibility appears to issue at once
full formed from the recesses of the individual mind.
Be happy! Be virtuous ! are described as two dis-
tinct commands of nature—two great dictates of our
being;-which in general are in perfect harmony,
but of which the second is to take precedence when-
ever that harmony is disturbed. Now as an account
of what is immediately felt by the moral man, this
is not inaccurate. There are these two commands,
Be happy! Be virtuous ! and the second, from its
nature, domineers over the first. But, nevertheless,

6 A DISCOURSE
the second, we say, is in fact a modification of the
first; and this moral sentiment, however authori-
tative, is but a result of the play of our desires and
the exercise of our reason, under a social condition
of existence.
That anger and resentment follow on inflicted
pain, and gratitude on bestowed pleasure, that we
love the agent of good, and hate the author of our
calamity,+that, carrying forward our feelings with
the generalizations of the reason, we approve and
esteem those affections and dispositions which pro-
duce happiness, and detest and disapprove such as
occasion misery;-these are indisputable facts, which
hardly admit, and certainly do not here require, any
further explanation than is conveyed in the bare
statement of them. That we also sympathize with
the enjoyment and suffering, love and resentment of
others, is a fact quite as undeniable. Our passions
come back to us reflected from the countenance, the
gestures, the language of our fellow-creature; and
the injury inflicted upon one calls down the anger and
resentment, not only of all who may be in any way
affected by it, but even of mere spectators. We are
abundantly prepared to enter into the contests, or
griefs, or triumphs of our fellow-men.
In all this, however, we observe no moral feeling.
We have pleasure and pain, love and hate, and we
have sympathy in these passions; but sympathy (as
several writers have had occasion to remark in their
strictures on the theory of Adam Smith) cannot of
ON ETHICS. - 7
itself add a new character to the feelings we are
made by it to partake. We have approbation, there-
fore, of this or that conduct, but not a moral appro-
bation ; actions are good and bad, affections are
esteemed or detested, but neither have yet received
the designation of right or wrong.
But the facts which have been enumerated imme-
diately give rise to the moral sentiment we are
looking for. The good action is universally re-
warded and required; the bad is as universally
resented and denounced ; the one by the general
voice is commanded, the other by the general voice,
forbidden. Thenceforward he who reflects upon his
actions must associate with them the approval or
condemnation of mankind; nor can he regard the
actions of other men but as subject to the same wide
and general authority as his own. A new feeling
with respect to human conduct, a sentiment of
obligation,--has arisen in each individual mind, thus
pressed upon by a surrounding society. The con-
nexion of this sentiment with the good or bad action,
is expressed in the terms right and wrong. This
new feeling, if we consider of what importance
men are to men, and that they have a palpable,
inalienable, perpetual interest in each other's con-
duct, we cannot fail to perceive must be one of very
strong and permanent nature. It is associated with
our actions, whether performed or contemplated;
and by this, its constant and repeated association,
it becomes oftentimes more distinctly connected in
~ 8 A DISCOURSE
the mind with the conduct to be enforced, than with
that social body whose controlling power is exercised
in many varied, uncertain, and indirect methods.
This feeling passes under many names, as it sub-
mits to many modifications; and we speak with an
excusable because unavoidable ambiguity, sometimes
in the singular number, of the moral sentiment, and
sometimes in the plural, of the moral sentiments. It
bears the name of moral obligation when we con-
template some act as yet to be performed; it is the
sense of merit or demerit when some past action is
reflected on; if we allude more particularly to the
agent, it is described as a feeling of obligation; if
the act to which that feeling is appropriate is the
immediate subject of consideration, it is involved in
such expressions as a judgment or perception of right
and wrong.
There are two parts in this brief account which
must be kept carefully distinct. 1. The spontaneous
approval or disapproval which arises in each indi-
vidual on contemplating actions and affections pro-
ductive of pleasure or pain to themselves or others;
and, 2. The feeling of obligation which is super-
added to this spontaneous sentiment, and which is
imposed on each by the general voice of society.
The moral approbation we actually feel is a combi-
nation of the two. This distinction between a spon-
taneous and a moral approbation, is quite overlooked
by those eager reasoners who first detail some act of
parricide, or other deed of mingled horror and
ON ETHICS. 9
agony, and then triumphantly ask, whether any
mortal would need a reference to the opinion of
others before he disapproved and resented the out-
rage. Certainly not. He would instantly recoil
from and denounce the deed; and it is precisely
because he and all others feel and express this in-
stantaneous abhorrence, that any one who hence-
forward contemplates such a transaction, views it clad
not only in its native horrors, but invested also with
the gathered execration of mankind. The opinion of
society (with the social influences which are included
under that expression) does not constitute actions to
be good or bad, amiable or detestable, which they
must previously have been in order that such an
opinion should exist, but it superinduces a new
feeling of obligation to perform or restrain from
those actions; it makes good and bad to be also
right and wrong.
It is only necessary to keep this distinction in
view, to obviate another objection heard sometimes
from a higher quarter, and from philosophical au-
thorities of greater weight. It is sometimes con-
tended that a moral sentiment exists intuitively in
each individual mind, and is not derived from public
opinion, on this ground—that as public opinion is
nothing more than the aggregate of many private
opinions, such a sentiment could never have consti-
tuted, as it evidently does, a part of public opinion,
unless it had first existed in men individually. But
the opinion spoken of, as originating the moral
10 A DISCOURSE
sentiment, is that spontaneous approval, or disap-
proval, resulting from the pleasurable and painful of
human life;—not that complex opinion which ac-
tually exists when each member of society, becom-
ing, so to speak, moralized by his social position,
brings back into the community opinions invested
with an authority derived from that very community.
Right and wrong are good and evil with the autho-
ritative stamp of general approval. The gold of the
country circulates as coin; but it was gold before it
was coin, and it was made coin, and received the im-
press of the public mint, because of its intrinsic
value.
There is another misunderstanding attendant upon
this theory of morals, which must here be taken
notice of. The general welfare is, according to it,
the acknowledged test whereby to determine the
propriety with which our moral feelings are attached
to instances of human conduct; but it does not fol-
low, as some evidently suppose, that reasonings on
the general welfare must therefore have necessarily
preceded the formation of a moral sentiment. The
natural passions, the gratitude, and resentment, and
sympathies of mankind, would be sufficient to pro-
duce a state of opinion from which each member of
the community would derive a feeling of moral
restraint. Reasonings upon public utility must in-
deed have their place in every conceivable condition
of society; but so far from founding mainly upon
them the existence of a moral sentiment, it would be
ON ETHICS. 11
nearer the truth to say, that the presence of this
moral sentiment prompted to such reasonings. For
when the question arose how this moral power of
society was to be directed, then would ensue some
systematic inquiry into the public good. Many and
various are the sources from which public opinion is
fed—as various as human life itself;-we must not
suppose that reason does all, as this objection would
imply, or that any public opinion was ever formed
by mere unreflecting passions without distinct efforts
of reason.
Our ethical writers, adopting the phraseology of
an eminent divine of the Church of England, have
of late insisted, in a very emphatic manner, on the
supremacy over all other affections of our nature, to
which the moral sentiment lays claim. This supre-
macy, it is thought, cannot be explained unless the
moral sentiment be considered to stand alone, as well
in its origin, as its authority; for if, it is contended,
our ordinary desires after happiness lay at the foun-
dation of this sentiment, why should it possess an
authority over all of them, and an authority so very
different in kind from any one of them 7 But what
is there in this claim put forth by the moral senti-
ment to supremacy and command, which does not
inevitably follow from that origin here assigned to
it? A sentiment imposed on us from without—by
the voice of parents, neighbours, Society—restraining
oftentimes our strongest propensities—how can it
fail to have an air of authority, and authority of a
12 A DISCOURSE
very different kind from the desires it controls?
What else is it but a command? What but domina-
tion ? We may reject its control—we may cavil at
its sentence—we may refuse to be governed—but we
cannot make it other than a command, a governing
power: it is this or nothing.
If any theorist—as the ancient Stoics appear to
have done—will venture to assert that the moral feel-
ing naturally exercises the same stern supremacy on
all occasions—however subordinate the rule of action,
and however strong and vehement the desire opposed
to it—if he will assert that the sentiment of moral
obligation calls unremittingly, and with the same
magisterial voice for obedience to all its dictates alike,
and under all circumstances—he is merely fabling.
The power of the moral conscience—allowing for the
diversities of individual character—is felt in propor-
tion to the importance of the rule to be enforced.
The moral control, as any one who reflects upon him-
self will become immediately aware, enters amongst
our thoughts and projects with various degrees of
power—sometimes being little more than a weight
cast in to determine our choice between conflicting
wishes and designs;–and our resistance to its autho-
rity may be easy or difficult, and may incur every
conceivable gradation of suffering from the slightest
regret to the most poignant remorse. The authority
of conscience, in its nature and variations, in its
strength and its weakness, is exactly such as its social
origin would lead us to expect.
ON ETHICS. 13
That this part of our mental constitution was in-
tended for our guidance, and that the control and
regulation of our desires was its allotted office, is just
as true, whatever theory as to its origin we may
adopt. The final cause of this sentiment is the same
whatever psychological account we give of it. And
the language which Dr. Butler has adopted from the
schools of ancient philosophy, which describes virtue
as living according to nature, though objectionable
from its extreme ambiguity, may be used with all the
meaning it is capable of bearing as well under either
system of ethics. -
Nor is it surprising, if we consider the manner of
our introduction to it, that we do not immediately
refer this feeling of restraint and command to the
power and resentments of our fellow men. The dif-
ficulty, and indeed the necessity, in any instance, of
a mental analysis, arises from this, that the order of
time in which certain feelings were originally de-
veloped is no longer apparent. Each man when he
comes to look abroad upon society, or to reflect upon
his own mind, finds himself in a scene of extreme
complexity, surrounded by a mechanism the most
intricate, and in unceasing operation. All is now
complex, both in the scene and the observer; and
feelings which are the result of long social commu-
nion, or curious associations of thought, stand out as
prominently to view as the most simple emotions.
With respect to the moral feelings, we were intro-
duced to these as they exist in their last and mature
14 A DISCOURSE
stage. He who taught us of right and of wrong,
taught us not as from himself, but as the representa-
tive of some other power, which, however, he never
disclosed;—he had forgotten, or had not traced, or
would not think of describing, the source of that feel-
ing of reverence he was communicating, and which
he was pressing on us by the mandate of parents,
and friends, and society, as something which parents,
and friends, and society enforced, saying nothing of
their being the sole sustainers and authors of it.
Such being the manner of our instruction, what
wonder if when we come to reflect upon our own
minds, we should discover there a vague sentiment
of duty, but not detect so readily the power to which
obedience is due ! It was just such a vague senti-
ment we in fact received. We received it as a sen-
timent already existing in the minds of others, and
which was to be enforced on us by the rewards of
Society.
Before I close this chapter I would take notice of
another ambiguity of speech which it is necessary to
be on our guard against. It is common to apply
such terms as virtue and merit to actions which flow
from kind affections and spontaneous benevolence,
as well as to those which are accompanied in the
mind of the agent by a moral feeling, a sense of
duty. Men desire of their fellow-men a certain
conduct, but they are little solicitous whether it
flows from the mere affection of the mind, or is due
to the sentiment of moral obligation. They even
ON ETHICS. 15
in some cases esteem it the more the more sponta-
neous it appears. They have no motive, at all
events, for making a very nice distinction between
those cases where the sense of duty has been predo-
minant, and those where it has been absent, or its
secondary influence has been scarcely felt ; and if
they had an interest in so doing, they could not pos-
sibly obtain such an insight into other men's minds
as to enable them to adjudicate on so delicate a
matter. They therefore, unavoidably, apply the
same expressions of praise and censure to both
classes of conduct, and this leads sometimes to a
little perplexity. For instance, it is asked, Is an
action springing from the simple feeling of bene-
volence to be described as virtuous? It is certainly
virtuous, inasmuch as it is the very description of
conduct which excites the approbation of mankind,
and which they are solicitous to promote; but it is
not virtue in another sense, because it is not an act
done in obedience to moral obligation. This am-
biguity of expression has led also to some partial
theories. It is owing, I suspect, to this application
of the term virtue as well to spontaneous affections
of the mind, as to conduct connected with a sense of
duty, that some theorists (our Shaftesbury for instance)
have been induced to look no further for the origin
of the sentiment of moral approbation than to the
contemplation of the good affection itself, which
seemed invested with a certain charm they called
the beauty of virtue.
| 6 A DISCOURSE
CHAPTER II.
Statement of the Theory continued.—Self-approbation.
HAVE reserved for a separate chapter a con-
sideration of the well-known fact in our moral
nature, that self-approbation will oftentimes impel us
quite independently of, and even in opposition to, the
approving voice of society. “How can you ascribe,”
the objector will say, “to the good opinion of society
that virtue which calls for the sacrifice, not of some
desire which is yielded to secure that good opinion,
but for the sacrifice of this very good opinion itself?
You must look without the pale of society for the
origin of such a sentiment as this.”
I have no wish to throw a cold and sceptical
regard on the virtues of mankind—I have a large
faith in what the human being is capable of, and can
easily divine in what bold proportions our moral
nature, both for good and for evil, may be cast. It
is no wish of mine to cavil with, or throw the least
suspicion upon those sublime and affecting descrip-
tions of virtue which are the delight of the poet as
well as the moralist. I simply maintain, as a psycho-
logical truth, that the most absolute self-government,
the proudest sense of merit which ever animated the
ON ETHICS. 17
moral hero, is but a modification of the feeling
already described, and may be traced, without any
very subtle or laborious analysis, to its origin in the
approbation of his fellow-men.
Society, as already has been said, affords not only
a theatre, a scope, an occasion for the moral feelings,
but it is the very originator of them. Man imposes
them on man. Exalt the moral sentiment to what
height, and place it in what position you please, it will
still point to society as its author. Virtue shall be
elevated, if you will, on its own pedestal, in solitary
grandeur, remote from the acclamations of mankind,
serene, abandoned, visited only by the airs of Hea-
ven—I will not dispute the fidelity of your descrip-
tion—such a form of moral heroism there may be—
but this I know, that he who stands before and
contemplates it, must irresistibly infer that society
was once there—that the crowd of men once circled
round the base of that majestic figure—and that the
hum of human applause was heard as the idol rose
to its now solitary eminence.
And first, let me observe that there can be no
greater difficulty in tracing the self-approbation that
arises when we reflect upon our moral qualities, to
the approval of mankind, than in tracing to the same
source the sense of self-satisfaction we experience on
reflecting upon any other quality we may possess,
as any talent, skill, or accomplishment, which has
earned for us the applause and consideration of men.
Self-approbation can only be the knowledge that
C
18 A DISCOURSE
others approve, or will approve. We cannot be at
all times listening to the voice of praise—it comes
only at intervals—but we can at all times, and in all
places, enjoy the reflection that we possess in our
character or history that which will secure to us a
sentence of approval. This feeling need not be
enjoyed in society, though society gives it birth ; it
accompanies the individual into whatever solitude he
may plunge, it clings by him in whatever adversity
he may fall. The sense of merit, desert, appro-
bation—(I sometimes multiply expressions lest the
omission of a moral phrase should be construed into
the forgetfulness of a moral truth)—these become
associated beyond all power of separation with his
past life, or present designs, with every act of self-
review, or resolution for future conduct.
But how happens it that this self-approbation, if
thus derived from the approbation of society, should
support the moral agent in independence of, and
even in opposition to, the applause and favour of
society 7 I proceed to mention some of the circum-
stances which give to this sentiment the independent
bearing it is observed occasionally to assume, so
that the man's own approval, or consciousness of
merit, compensates for the silence or even the re-
proaches of others. -
I. There is but one sure way of obtaining the
approbation of men, namely, by deserving it, by
really possessing, and not only pretending to, those
qualities on which it is bestowed. And praise, when
ON ETHICS. 19
gained in any other way, and divorced from the con-
sciousness of deserving it, is a momentary, precarious
gratification, alloyed even while it lasts with antici-
pations of a retributive contempt and indignation.
But though it is true that the only means for se-
curing, is really to deserve, the good opinion and
good will of mankind, it does not follow that every
individual act obtains immediately its proper esti-
mation and reward. Human life proceeds after no
such exact method; or rather it has another method
of its own. Our actions flowing from a hidden
source—from motives liable, even by candid ob-
servers, to misconstruction—and our conduct being
such as sometimes to require time and intervening
circumstances for the full disclosure of its real nature
—it happens that a separation occasionally takes
place between virtue and the rewards confessedly
due to virtue. Such a separation, however, is only
temporary. The virtuous man has to wait—he is
thrown back upon his mere title—but the truth is
sooner or later discovered—the unjust sentence is
reversed, and society redresses the brief wrong it had
inflicted. Meanwhile what upholds him in these
intervals of obscuration and disgrace? What, but
the conviction that he really deserves what as yet is
denied to him—what but the consciousness that with
discovered truth his merit also must be discovered.
He was the true prince after all; and was perhaps
never prouder of his rank than when walking in
humble or opprobrious disguise. Thus the partial
20 A DISCOURSE
error, the uncertainty, and conflict of human judg-
ments, which seem at first sight to threaten con-
fusion to the moral world, train and discipline the
mind to that high and noble character which owns
itself pledged to virtue, but not to fortune, or even
to man.
II. This consciousness of merit becomes of necessity
to the moral man a distinct object of complacence and
self-gratulation, and the preservation of it a perpetual
care and solicitude. It is his proud title to precedence
amongst the ranks of men, which he would on no ac-
count forfeit or endanger. Now the longer and more
consistently a high moral character has been sustained,
the more precious does it become, and the more liable
to damage; so that a departure from rectitude, in all
its other consequences quite trivial, might inflict the
deepest injury on this delicate possession. The blow
would be struck on no coarse marble scarce hewn
from the quarry, but on the polished sculpture fresh
from the hands of a Praxiteles. What is one more
falsehood to the common liar ! What has he to lose by
it, and something may be gained But to the man of
untarnished honour, who has earned by a long life a
reputation for sincerity and truth, a lie uttered, though
its falsehood at the time should be known only to
himself, may occasion the most poignant regret; it
not only may, at some future time, shake his credit
with mankind, and give their full triumph to the en-
vious and malignant, but it disturbs that inward
complacency he had learned to value for itself. Can
ON ETHICS. 2}
We wonder if a mind thus educated should refuse to
desert the really meritorious in human conduct, al-
though his adherence to it incurred nothing but
reproach from those immediately around him?—es-
pecially, as with this love of virtue, the passion for
posthumous fame may be united, and the appeal be
made to posterity, and to the wise in all ages, to re-
verse the decision of ignorant spectators.
III. I need not here explain at any length how,
from the operation of habit, and the exercise of rea-
son in classifying analogous cases, a rule of action is
in all minds invariably formed. This tendency to
frame and sustain general rules is further authorized
by the manifest utility of such guides amidst the
rapid and intricate affairs of life—and this, as well
to fix and concentrate the force of opinion by enabling
men to judge of others with uniformity, as to direct
the agent himself. What I am at present concerned
to point out to the reader is—that the habit of acting
by a rule or principle has the effect of liberating the
mind of the moral man from a felt subserviency to
the control of society. An habitual respect to the
canon of morality draws attention to the rule itself,
rather than to the power which would enforce it.
The agent soon ceases to calculate on each occasion
the good and evil consequences likely to result to
himself from obedience or infraction of the law;-he
escapes from the sense of intimidation, and having
adopted as self-regulation what at first was imposed
as a control from without, he yields a free and liberal
22 A DISCOURSE
submission, a loyalty, not a servitude, to the claims
and power of morality.
By such processes as these the mind is disciplined
to rise even above the precepts of society, and to be
a law unto itself. It voluntarily assumes the highest
standard of moral excellence, carrying forward its
sentiment of duty into the exercitations of its own
reason. The man becomes society to himself. He
performs its office of judging wisely, as well as his
own of acting with finished propriety.
The Lanistae, we are told, whose office it was to pre-
pare the gladiatorsfor those sanguinary games to which
they were so cruelly coerced, not only taught them
the use of their weapon, but instructed them also
how to fall gracefully when wounded, and to die in
a pictorial attitude. If we were further told that the
gladiator practised in dying the lesson he had learned,
and strove by the graceful posture in which he sunk
to death, to earn an applause which would ring upon
his ears when insensible to all sounds alike, we
should not discredit our information from any inherent
improbability in the fact. And surely it may be
easily understood how a virtuous man would persist
in acting upon his love of honourable distinction in
utter disregard even of coming dissolution. Nor need
he calculate that life without honour would to him
be worthless;–we live our old lives up to the last;
—he would continue to be the man of virtue while
he continued to exist. -
We must not suppose, however, that it is in the
ON ETHICS. 23
breast of heroes only that this refinement of the moral
sentiment is detected. It mingles with humbler
motives, and animates the performance of ordinary
duties. As there is probably no virtue so lofty and
heroic as not to be pleased with the audible voice of
applause, so there is perhaps no virtue so lowly, so
merely prudential in its nature, as not to share in
Some measure that inward satisfaction which sur-
vives apart from immediate approbation. The two
forms of moral feeling exist together, and the one
graduates into the other. And let me add, that no
man, because he views with just admiration the mag-
nanimity of that virtue which suffices to itself, and
is its own reward, ought to yield therefore a cold and
reluctant praise to that humbler sentiment which
clings with close dependence to the approbation of
neighbours and of fellow-men. This last is the more
frequent and perhaps the safer guide. He who
should take his conscience altogether from the keep-
ing of society would place it in a perilous position.
His proud independence might operate for evil, as
well as for good. There is a limit to the boldness of
virtue, and just on the other side of the boundary
lies the boldness of crime.
I must be permitted to dwell a little longer on the
topic of this chapter, because the misapprehension
which surrounds it, is one chief cause of that dis-
trust and aversion with which the theory of morals,
I am endeavouring to elucidate, is often regarded.
We hear it repeatedly said, that this reference to
24 A DISCOURSE
public opinion as the origin of the moral sentiment
accounts for, and therefore allows of no more elevated
motive than a shifting, subservient, calculating pru-
dence—that it utterly displaces the dignified senti-
ment of self-reliance, of self-esteem, and throws the
abandoned spirit on the fluctuating tide of opinion
“to rot itself with motion.” This is a great error.
The theory I am describing not only admits the
existence, but demonstrates the necessary develope-
ment, to some extent at least, of this higher senti-
ment; it shows that this self-approbation, this solicit-
ous preservation of a consciousness of merit, though
no element of the individual, isolated being, is the
sure result of a social condition.
Society is something more than the combination
of men for their common benefit; it is the building
up, the developing, the creating of the individual
man. Through society he learns to reflect, not only
morally, but in any manner whatever, upon himself.
Moving on in order and regularity to the order and
regularity of external nature, a solitary intelligence
—we must not call it man—would have taken scarce
any notice of itself. Surrounded by no fellow beings
in whom to see its own passions reflected, and having
no objects with which to compare itself, such a
creature would have enjoyed, or suffered, with hardly
a thought beyond the actual transitory sensation.
Pleasure and pain might have succeeded each other
—objects of desire anticipated in its span-long fu-
turity might have stimulated a fitful energy—but
ON ETHICS., 25
time would have lapsed without reflection, with
scarce a remembrance, and the past would have
fallen as it went by into sudden and total oblivion.
What indeed were the irrevocable past to a solitary
being ! Of an act completed, the memory of which
could call no blush, could excite no pride, why
should he take further notice? If ideas pleasurable
or painful were revived in his mind, it would be in
the form of imagination, rather than of memory, so
loose and faint would be the sense of personal re-
lationship—so little in fact would he think of a
self. …”
But if we transfer our solitary being into the well-
knit community of kindred spirits, how is the picture
altered He sees others—he sees himself. The
eye of society has looked upon his doings, its voice
applauded or condemned, and the acted thought no
longer sinks down into blank vacancy, but survives
and lives for ever as the object of agreeable or tor-
menting reflection. The past is not that utterly
separate and by-gone experience, as indifferent to
him as any the remotest imagination of the mind;
it is the burden he must bear, the glory he may
boast. That self, which once travelled on a scarce
noticeable point between the past and future, now
extends its aggravated sensibility over both regions
of time. He has a great charge imposed on him—
even himself—and the care of a long happiness to
provide for.
The life of some indolent and passionate savages
26 A DISCOURSE
—with whom society has scarce any coherence but
what it derives from war, that first cement of nations
—presents us with a remote resemblance to the
imaginary state I have depicted. Reflection on
themselves, as beings whose interests they are per-
manently to consult, rarely occurs to them. With
passions that reluctantly acknowledge any obstacle
but that of physical impossibility, with desires after
pleasure strong and untameable, there is little love
of life, there is an utter recklessness of that exist-
ence, which is the source or the condition of all
passion and all pleasure. On the thing desired all
their heart is set; on the mind within, the subject, or
the summary, of all desires, not a thought is wasted.
They themselves lie loose and self-abandoned. It
is society which individualizes—which makes us of
value to ourselves. And to refer more particularly
to the moral nature of man, it is by feeling that
chain which the community draws around him that
the individual fully recognizes himself, and learns
what greatness may reside in a single human being.
The same power which breaks and subdues to obe-
dience, also elevates to self-respect; and the world,
after having bound and tutored its pupil to its own
service and allegiance, throws him back in an atti-
tude of proud reliance upon himself.
ON ETHICS. 27
CHAPTER III.
The Theory applied to admitted Facts relative to the
Moral Nature of Man.
A MENTAL theory, or description, proves itself -
A by its accordance with what the consciousness,
when accurately questioned, reports; but it admits
also of further confirmation by the explanation it
affords of ulterior facts recognized in the general
experience of mankind. Having stated, to the best
of my power, in a short compass, the theory of the
moral sentiment here supported, I proceed to point.
out, in a few instances, how easy and complete is
the application of this theory to the undoubted
realities of life; and how difficult, embarrasing, if
not impossible, is any such application of the rival
doctrine of a simple primary sentiment of moral
approbation. -
The slightest acquaintance with history or with
foreign countries, reveals to us variations more or
less striking in the moral notions of mankind. While
certain great and fundamental principles remain un-
altered and unalterable, the moral code, in its specific
enactments, exhibits considerable diversity, as we
pass from age to age, or from country to country.

28 A DISCOURSE
Now both this constancy and this mutability are with
ease accounted for by the social origin here ascribed
to the moral sentiment. Society, in its essential
characteristics, is the same in all ages, and yet in
all ages will manifest shades of difference. It must
always be the same as long as it is a union of beings
who have the same senses, appetites, and passions,
who find their safety in mutual control, and put forth
their power by the co-operation of numbers; and it
must needs exhibit diversities corresponding to the
different circumstances of soil and climate, and the
various degrees of knowledge, under which men are
destined to live. How plainly it follows from this
nature of society, that while the obligation it im-
poses to do and to forbear will at all times embrace
the greatest interests of humanity, it will not at all
times be attached to exactly the same conduct, or
to the same conduct in exactly the same degree.
In a warlike age, in a country begirt with enemies,
valour and virtue are synonymous; and he who can
best kill and take captive is the moral hero of the
times. In a period of peace and established civili-
zation, another species of moral heroism appears
upon the scene, and divides the suffrages of man-
kind; and he who visits prisons, and relieves the
sick and afflicted, and unfetters the slave, and in-
structs the ignorant, is pre-eminently the virtuous
man. Each virtue is called forth at the season of
its greatest need, by the cordial approbation of those
who feel that need; and not only do virtues change
ON ETHICS. 29
their place in the scale of approbation, but owing
to an extreme rudeness of the scheme of life, and
the predominance of animal necessities, a species of
conduct has in early times been regarded as vir-
tuous, which later ages have stigmatised as vice.
Those who attempt to explain these variations in
the code of ethics, and yet retain their principle of
an intuitive sentiment of moral approbation, proceed
under great, if not insuperable, difficulties. Such a
sentiment as they describe lies, by its nature, at the
very basis of human knowledge—it should itself be
the great creator of public opinion, and not submit
so signally to modification from other sources of that
opinion. It is indeed fairly argued that this intuitive
sentiment must have its proper object placed before
it; and the absence of its exciting cause may be a
very good reason why in certain circumstances it
should not act at all;-but what reason is there why
it should give contradictory verdicts :
This diversity, which ages and nations exhibit in
their moral creed, is not to be regarded as an imper-
fection in the frame of society, as a topic of regret,
or as a matter to be disguised with a timid and
fruitless solicitude. We may not congratulate a
given people on the circumstances which lead to
their peculiar estimate of what is good or desirable,
but, such estimate existing, it is no topic of regret
that a social power is bestowed on them to secure
the best happiness they know of. Why not here, as
elsewhere, observe the wisdom of the Divine Archi-
30 A DISCOURSE
tect, in the provision he has made for the continu-
ance and welfare of society under every form it can
assume? Why not observe with admiration that
there is generated at all times in the communities of
men a controlling power, indestructible and yet
pliant to every variety of circumstance? Why not
applaud the perfect union of stability with expan-
siveness seen in this natural government, which,
while it establishes and makes tolerable each exist-
ing form of society, yet opens to receive under its
protection the new wants and new intelligence of
every generation ?
Again :—it is a matter of common observation
that the moral sentiment between nation and nation
is extremely lax and inefficient. Scarce any trace of
it is here to be found. Men who live habitually
under the restraints of morality are observed when
acting together as one community to be liberated
entirely from such restraints. The sentiments of a
few individuals of singular humanity or reflection
form an immaterial exception. Between community
and community all is lawful.
This fact is sufficiently intelligible if we recognise
the origin of our moral sentiments in society itself.
The member of society submits to the will of that
community which in so many ways can reward and
punish him. But if that community contain within
itself its sources of prosperity, what should unite it
in social compact with any other community ? Two
bodies of men thus situated can gain from each other
ON ETHICS. 3]
only by pillage or subjugation. People against people
is as one man against one man; nay, the relation is
of a still harsher character, for one man to another
might be benevolent as well as tyrannical, but a
community of men exhaust their benevolence amongst
themselves, and have nothing but cupidity and am-
bition for their neighbour community. It is not till
nations begin to discover a mutual interest in the
preservation of peace—till commerce by gratifying
reciprocal wants has produced its jealous union
between them—or a common danger has drawn them
into combination—that any shadow of morality is
observable in their intercourse. Then something
like a society of nations is created, and another law
than that of mere strength raises its faint and timid
voice amidst the contests of states and kingdoms.
But this peculiar laxity of international ethics
seems to admit of no explanation on the theory of
an intuitive sentiment of morals. It cannot be said
here that the occasion is not presented for the exer-
cise of the moral faculty; nor can the case be
explained by the supposed effect of long and perverse
habits. The palpable circumstances of life are
placed at once before the full-grown power—the
cultured susceptibility,+and it fails—it does not
act. This moral faculty cannot be influenced, it
seems, from the other side of a political boundary.
What shall we say? Are national affairs of too great
magnitude for its apprehension ? or since national
interests must call forth a greater number of judg-
32 A DISCOURSE
ments than are ordinarily directed to any one point,
shall we say that the moral sentiment, in contradic-
tion to the law which governs all other feelings,
becomes inappreciably minute by reason of its being
simultaneously shared by so large a multitude :
It is another indisputable fact recognised in the
moral nature of man, that the several virtues, as
temperance, justice, benevolence, although all alike
virtues, have attached to them a very different sense
of obligation—are viewed with very different feelings
of moral approbation. The degree or kind of obli-
gation severally affixed to them is such as would
result from a command of society founded on the
several parts they perform in human life; but is not
of that uniform description we might expect if a
single moral susceptibility imparted to them, or
made us acquainted with, their quality of right or
wrong. Temperance, or the moderation of our
desires, though of great indirect importance to other
men, more ostensibly and immediately concerns the
welfare of the individual himself. It is therefore
commended, but commended in a very different
spirit to that in which benevolence is greeted, which
bestows a direct boon upon others; while justice,
which satisfies a demand or expectation, receives a
different approbation, and is called for by a different
obligation from either. This diversity in the obli-
gation attached to the several virtues, accords en-
tirely with the supposition that they became virtues
by having drawn upon themselves, through their
ON ETHICS. 33
several offices, the good opinion of mankind—but it
ill accords with the hypothesis that the sentiment of
obligation is the simple product of a certain moral
susceptibility,
Justice, I must observe, is not to be distinguished
from benevolence (as by some writers it has been
stated) merely by being that branch of good conduct
which the laws of the country have taken upon
them to enforce. Jurisprudence, no doubt, has ren-
dered the line distinct (otherwise very obscure)
between what is described as an act of justice, and
what passes under the names of gratitude and bene-
ficence—between what, in scholastic terms, is called
a perfect and an imperfect obligation. But there is
an intrinsic difference in actions themselves, which,
prior to, or besides all positive law, leads to a dif-
ference of moral sentiment entertained towards them,
There are actions which, from their nature, are not
only commended, but the contrary of which kindle a
general resentment, and consequently incur retribu-
tion : these are of perfect obligation; the moral
motive being of a compulsory description as well as
persuasive. Other actions are greeted with admira-
tion and applause, but the non-performance of them
excites no general resentment these are of imperfect
obligation; the moral motive being constituted only,
or chiefly, of rewards, and being of a promotive and
persuasive description. When we speak of natural
rights and natural justice, we intend to mark out a
species of conduct which, prior to all attempts at
D
34 A DISCOURSE
jurisprudence, would have been enforced by a com-
mon reSentment.
Morality and law are most intimately blended,
but we must not confound them. Morality is that
law which is marked out by public opinion, and sus-
tained by the indefinite rewards and punishments of
a numerous society. It is a great comprehensive
duty of morality to obey the statute; it is a great
office of jurisprudence to direct, determine, and en-
large the public opinion. Morality erects, displays,
supports the book of the laws, but leans for support
herself upon the open volume, from which she learns
and teaches at the same time.
I proceed to mention another instance of the
applicability of our theory to the real experience of
men. It is a fact which will not be disputed, that
there is a vast difference between the remorse felt
when a crime has been actually committed, and
when its perpetration, though fully resolved on, has
been accidentally defeated. The real murderer ex-
periences a very different remorse from him whose
murderous intention has been balked by some un-
looked-for occurrence. In this last person, the sen-
timent of remorse may be almost entirely over-
powered by one of joy, at having escaped the com-
mission of so heinous and penal an offence. Yet
the guilt, all moralists tell us, lies in the intention,
which in both individuals might have been equally
determined, equally malignant. How is this dis-
crepancy to be explained 2
ON ETHICS. 35
On our system the solution is at hand. The
intention of an agent is, indeed, that which the
judgment of a rational society is chiefly levelled
against—the intention is the very cause of the in-
jury, and it betrays a mind within likely to be the
source of similar injuries; but while society directs
its displeasure to the intention of the criminal, with
the criminal himself it is not his intention, but the
judgment of society that is the source of that moral
awe by which he is impressed. While, therefore,
nothing but a murderous thought, hidden from all
observers, has passed through his mind, he is free;
—if he is not a religious man, he goes on his way
quite at liberty. But if no accidental hindrance has
occurred—if his hand by the irrevocable deed has
made manifest the villany within—he then lies ex-
posed to the terrors of a moral remorse. Even if the
crime has been perpetrated most secretly, and with
small chance of disclosure, still his heart will never
be at peace: his fear will exaggerate the proba-
bility of detection; there will be standing out
against him a fact, a truth, which the most trivial
incident may bring forward into the light of day,
and which, when revealed, will make him the object
of horror and execration to all mankind.
But of this state of things, so obvious and indis-
putable, it would not be easy to give any intelligible
account on the hypothesis of an intuitive sentiment
of morality. Either the knowledge of the intention
is or is not a necessary condition for the excitement
36 A DISCOURSE
of this moral sentiment. If it is not, whence this
peculiar criminality attached by all mankind to the
intention of the agent : If it is, whence this compa-
rative freedom from remorse in him whose crime has
been prevented, but whose evil intention was quite
mature? º
These are a few of those admitted facts which
might be appealed to as confirmatory of our theory;
many others will suggest themselves to the reader.
In short, the characters of men and of nations be-
come intelligible to us through this theory. We
see how inevitable are those different shades of mo-
rality that distinguish the different classes of society,
whether those classes are marked out by similarity
of age, sex, or profession. We can understand how
it is that times of public calamity, induced by war,
or plague, or famine,—when society is breaking up
—how it is that such times, though favourable to
religious impressions by reason of that insecurity of
life and all its pleasures which accompanies them,
are nevertheless distinguished by the utmost licen-
tiousness, cruelty, and injustice; the injury done by
interfering with the social restraint being greater
than all the added sanctions of religion can repair.
We have an explanation at hand of the moral pecu-
liarities of the most dissimilar of men, from him
who, thrown loose upon the surface of the world,
bids the world make of him what it will, to him
who walks as a pattern before all mankind, regu-
lating each step, each thought, with unremitting
ON ETHICS. 37
vigilance. The student of man, while he learns to
confide in society, and in that power which it con-
tinually generates for its own preservation, learns
also to observe, without alarm or dismay, in what
bold proportions the several elements of humanity
are occasionally combined—in what a free, broad,
and unfettered style the landscape of the moral
world has been sketched out by the hand of the
great Designer. Nor will he be apt to tremble for
morality, or to throw contempt and disparagement
on its power and influence, because society fails to
exhibit to him, in every part, that uniformity of
plan, or regularity of detail, which, nevertheless, he
may very laudably exert himself to promote.
I will make one more observation before quitting
this branch of my subject;-let the difficulty of
deciding what does or does not require particular
mention on such a subject be my excuse, if here, or
in any part of this essay, I trespass on the patience
of the reader with remarks of a too obvious character.
We have all of us far more to learn in the regulating
and determining our moral judgments than, according
to the hypothesis of an intuitive sentiment, we might
have expected. We are spared no labour by this
mysterious guide, and saved from no error. At all
events, the formation of our judgments—the varied
and fluctuating feelings we entertain at view of any
transaction or character other than the most simple—
are just such as respond to the account here given of
moral approbation. -
38 A DISCOURSE
Ethical writers, having their attention fixed on one
aspect of human nature, are apt to represent mankind
as passing some moral judgment on all occasions
when they applaud or condemn, whereas the moral
feeling is often absent and slow to be excited. I have
previously pointed out the difference between that
spontaneous approbation constituted of individual
passion, as love, and hatred, and admiration,-and
that moral approbation which is a union of this with
an added sentiment resulting from the judgment of
a society; which judgment is soon understood to be
directed according to the general good and evil of
human conduct. When we speak of the latter sen-
timent alone, we generally employ, I believe, the term
obligation; the phrase moral approbation almost
always imports the union I have described. Now in
contemplating the actions (especially as might be
expected of other men), on witnessing or hearing of
the transactions of the world, the first is often the
sole species of judgment we form; we are carried
away by some passion or sympathy they excite, and
it is not till we are reminded, or we take notice of
their ultimate and general consequences, that we
begin to regard them in a moral manner. We then
often find ourselves obliged to condemn what had
perhaps engaged our ardent admiration.
If the reader recalls to mind what he has felt when
perusing any historian or poet, he will perceive that
human character and conduct may interest most
vividly, and yet give rise to no moral judgment.
ON ETHICS. 39
This often lies dormant till some reference is made to
the opinion of society, or to those serious considera-
tions affecting its welfare which are known ultimately
to direct that opinion; or till, by that happiest of all
modes of thinking, we place ourselves in the position
of the weak and suffering party in the transaction,
and then, by feeling the injury, become engaged to
find a protection against it in the general defence and
advocacy of mankind. Till then nothing occupies
the mind but what I have called the spontaneous
approbation. I will not here insist that those who
contend for a moral intuition may not find some ex-
planation for what, on their hypothesis, appears to
be, in such cases, its capricious absence; I content
myself with observing, that what we feel on these
occasions is quite in keeping with the supposition that
no such intuition exists, and bears out completely the
account which has been here given of the subject.
If an instance were required of the manner in
which some quality, generally called moral, will, to
the utter oblivion of all moral judgment whatever,
attract and engross our admiration, perhaps one
more striking could not be given than the effect pro-
duced on every reader of Paradise Lost, by Milton's
portraiture of Satan, the proclaimed author of all
evil. The wonderful fortitude, pride, and self-
reliance of that terrific hero of our great poet, sub-
due us into a feeling of awe, -almost of passing
reverence. When we behold him, as the poem opens,
bringing to his new abode of darkness and of tor-
40 A DISCOURSE
ture, “a mind not to be changed by time or place,”
—refusing to succumb to anguish and defeat—stand-
ing erect amidst utter ruin and in prospect of inter-
minable woe — his unshaken fortitude entirely
arrests us; and the inexpressible gloom and even
melancholy, which hang over it, only deepen the
impression. For he is supported by no hope. The
archangel has contended with the Highest—he has
put forth all his strength—has fought—has failed;
he has learned that that inscrutable Power which
seemed upheld in Heaven mainly by “old repute,”
was indeed the Omnipotence tradition had reported.
Henceforward it must be his lot to endure eter-
nally whatever his all-powerful adversary chooses to
inflict. And he can endure
We should be led into a strange preposterous
sympathy, if the admiration exacted from us by
this appalling fortitude were not counterbalanced
by other representations of the same fearful per-
sonage. In justice to the poet, it must be added,
that this imposing strength of mind lasts only while
the arch-criminal surveys the region of his punish-
ment, and breathes defiance to his conqueror.
When he looks within, there is no peace, and no
possibility of peace; and when he discloses his
own bosom, we shrink in horror from the spec-
tacle. He has not lost his intellectual being: that
high faculty of thought which sat with him on a
throne in Heaven, is now a pursuing fury, and every
exercise of reason serves, and can only serve, to
ON ETHICS. - 41
awake remorse, and the conflict of those passions
which, like another chaos, must “for ever boil in
that tumultuous breast.” When, indeed, the arch-
fiend walks through his infernal dwelling, and his
dilated figure is seen to stride over its burning marle,
he is a being superior to pain,_the lurid fires touch
him not: they sink, and fade, and are forgotten in
his presence;—but in the stillness and beauty of
Paradise, beneath the light of Heaven, and within
sight of happiness, the poison works, and his crime
receives its dread, unmitigated, and inevitable pu-
nishment.
Yet to the last there attends on the character of
Satan an awe and a respect but little accordant
with the deeds in which he is engaged. And when
he returns in most guilty triumph after his malicious
overthrow of the happiness of man, and the poet
has thought fit to dash his pride by transforming
him in the midst of his monarchal state, both him
and his compeers, into hissing and crawling ser-
pents, we feel, I suspect, a strong repugnance to
this sentence of humiliation. We are prepared to
yield him to the thunders of Heaven, to see him
transfixed to his rock, or chained beneath the gulf;
but we are jealous of his greatness, and cannot en-
dure that any circumstance should be associated
with him of a mean and contemptible description.
42 A DISCOURSE
CHAPTER IV.
Of the Theory of an Intuitive Sentiment—Some
Remarks on the Doctrine of Free-will.
HE feeling of moral obligation attached to
human conduct—the feeling we intimate when
we say of this it is right, of that it is wrong—has
here been deduced from the control exercised over
us by our fellow-men ; others have regarded it as
the direct product of the individual mind. A dis-
tinct faculty, say they, or mental susceptibility,
invests human conduct with this character of right
and wrong, or, in other words, these moral qualities
are recognised at once by a faculty or susceptibility.
At what stage in the transactions of life this moral
susceptibility is roused to pronounce its verdict,-
whether it waits till all the facts are before it, and
the motive and consequences are fully disclosed,—
whether it first passes judgment on the acts of the
man himself in whom it resides, or is awakened to
exertion by contemplation of the acts of others—
what, in short, are the necessary and sufficient occa-
sions for its developement, I must leave those who
teach its existence to decide; for I find myself, when
ON ETHICS. 43
I would attempt a minute explanation of this part of
their theory, involved in hopeless confusion.
The teachers of this psychological tenet, for the
most part, uphold it as one of great, of vital import-
ance. The mind thus endowed secures us an immu-
table morality, and reveals to us the eternal distinc-
tions of right and wrong. The moral code is placed
on a far different foundation from any which the
interests and passions of life, and the ordinary reason
of man, could possibly supply.
Is the exercise of reason on the tendencies of
human actions superseded or not by the direct
operation of this moral faculty The terms in which
the theory is usually proclaimed, or alluded to, would
imply that this moral susceptibility rendered super-
fluous all such exercise of reason. It is spoken of as
a sort of instinct complete in itself; and actions are
right and wrong, just as objects are red and blue,
because they are felt to be such ; there is no other
reason to be given for the distinction. According
to this view we have only, in forming our opinions,
to observe the intimations of this ethical suscep-
tibility. There is no need, no place for reasoning;
it is hard to understand how even the notion of
reasoning upon moral subjects could have entered
into the minds of men; for they do not ordinarily
set themselves to prove that sweet is sweet, or bitter
bitter. It is open to mankind to observe, as a matter
of philosophical curiosity, that there is a corres-
pondence between the dictates of this ethical suscep-
44 A DISCOURSE
tibility, and the rule of conduct which secures the
happiness of men; but they are not authorised to
accommodate and correct their notions of right and
wrong by any improvement made in their scheme of
human felicity. The responsive movement is cut
off between the conscience and the intellect.
But this interpretation of the theory would pro-
bably be resented by its more intelligent advocates.
The existence of the sentiment they describe does
not render superfluous or nugatory the exercise of
reason; the exercise of reason may be one of the
conditions of its developement. The mind is at
liberty in the exertion of all its faculties, but at every
stage of its progress it is accompanied by the high
sanction of an authority which does not displace,
but attends on reason. But now if we relieve the
theory from this absurdity of implying that all
reasoning upon human conduct is superseded by the
mysterious decisions of a moral instinct—if we sup-
pose that this intuitive sentiment may be re-directed
and transferred as new views are entertained, or
more careful inquiries are made into the nature and
consequences of human conduct—if we remove from
the theory the utter repugnance which it otherwise
would exhibit with the language and reasonings of
every man, every day of his life—we have at the
same time divested it of all the charm it had for the
speculative mind—nor will it any longer answer the
purpose for which it was so much extolled. The
boast was, that it placed morality on another and
ON ETHICS. 45
surer basis than could be found in the ordinary
interests, and ordinary faculties of human nature;
but it seems, after all, that the reason is exalted
paramount the instinct, and the recognised interests
of life are still in fact the foundation of the moral
code. Nothing remains but an obscure, embarrass-
ing, unintelligible doctrine of psychology ; and one
which has already been shewn inapplicable to ex-
plain those well-known facts of our moral nature
which are established by the concurrence of all man-
kind. It may be said that, at all events, the bare
eaſistence of a moral feeling is secured to us by a
theory which recognises it as an essential part of
the human mind. But its mere existence has never
been an object of concern—its purity, its force, its
direction, these are the only topics of solicitude.
It is an intractable power, and one utterly beyond
all art of management, that the philosopher here
introduces amongst the primitive elements of our
nature. Supporting himself, indeed, in the region
of mere abstractions, the theorist may proclaim in
lofty phrase the supremacy of a conscience to which
all the affections of the heart are accountable, but
which itself is not responsible for the happiness of
man;–or he may refine and subtlelize on a primary
idea of right and wrong, got from some oracle of
pure intelligence far aloof, and of a quite different
order from that vulgar faculty of the understanding,
whose web of knowledge is confessedly woven of
the soiled and tangled threads of experience;—in all
46 A DISCOURSE
this and much more eloquent theorising of the same
description he may safely indulge, and his intellec-
tual enthusiasm will wear a graceful and captivating
air, for he dwells on a part of our nature which all
men are disposed to foster and encourage in all
other men, and to hear magnified and applauded in
themselves; but if ever our philosopher should de-
scend from this airy height of speculation, should
come down amongst men to regulate the incessant
contest of life, and prescribe rules for carrying it on,
he must then drop, perforce, his intellectual romance;
—his mysterious absolutism will be found of no
avail, and he must talk the language of that
humble doctrine of general expediency which he is
accustomed at other times to overwhelm with so
sovereign a contempt. He will then be glad to
recognise the existence of a moral sentiment ductile
to reason, and proclaimed by its very nature to be
subservient to human happiness.
There is mystery enough in and about our being
—the world rolls on encompassed by it—and I am
far from ranking myself with those who think there
is no place and no recognition for it in a philosophic
mind. But morality, which springs from and con-
cerns the palpable business of men, ought not to be
treated in a vein of mystery. Nothing is gained,
even to our admiration, by endeavouring to invest
our moral feelings at once in a sort of celestial
panoply. The natural and true proportions of the
human mind, as of the human form, contain, after all,
ſ
ON ETHICS. 47
the only beauty; it is of little use to deck the figure
of humanity with painted wings that cannot fly, to
the hindrance and disparagement of the natural
limbs which Heaven has assigned to it. -
There is another statement of this theory which
might possibly be insisted on. It might be said that
there is an obligation in reason itself—that man,
when he has discovered what is best, is bound by it.
Thus the moral obligation may be represented as
involved in the very exercise of the reasoning faculty.
There is, indeed, an obligation, from the nature of
the thing, involved in reason—the knowledge of
what is best must bind a rational being. But this
sort of obligation is by no means limited to morality.
It attends the use of reason under all circumstances,
and binds as well whether the act be or be not
within the scope of moral approbation. There is an
obligation in reason, there is an obligation also in
every desire that impels us.
It might seem to require some explanation if a
tract upon the philosophy of ethics should take no
notice of a topic supposed to be intimately involved
in all inquiries into the nature of moral obligation or
responsibility—namely, the freedom of the will.
On a little consideration it will be seen that the
problem of free-will is not peculiarly connected with
the question here discussed—the origin of the moral
sentiment. He who supports the doctrine of a moral
intuition might with perfect consistency dispute the
freedom of the will,—the old Stoics did, while he
48 A DISCOURSE
who should accord to the account here presented to
him, might denounce the doctrine of necessity. I
shall venture on two or three observations on this
topic, which will have for their object to justify the
absence of any laboured discussion of it, by shewing
that a belief in the freedom of the will is by no
means implied in the feeling of moral responsibility;
and that this feeling remains the same, as indeed do
all our feelings, whatever doctrine we hold on this
singularly abstruse subject.
I. We must not suppose that the peculiar crimi-
nality attached to intention implies a tacit belief in
the freedom of the will—it implies that man is a
reasonable being—an agent having the power by the
faculties within him of impressing a new direction
on events—but it implies no peculiar tenet on the
modus operandi of those faculties. It is to be
observed that only by experience, or the tuition of
those who have learned by experience, are we in-
structed to limit our resentment to actions which
have been intended. Our anger is, in the first
instance, quite indiscriminate, and, in the child, it
fastens even upon inanimate objects which have
been the occasion of its pain. Reflection limits our
resentment to what the man, as man, has been the
cause of to what he, as a human agent, has per-
formed; and our resentment is here retained and
justified by its manifest necessity for self-defence
against the continuance, or repetition, of the wrong.
Our moral censure, which is but the general resent-
ON ETHICS. 49
ment echoed from each man's lips, follows the same
law as a private resentment; it is ultimately directed
to the intention—it is fixed on the man—on the
human agent. And what especially justifies our
moral censure? Not the free-will of the agent—-
whether this be there or not—but the known laws of
a rational being, by the operation of which it is
believed that our reproof or punishment will prevent
a repetition of the offence. e
II. But it is said that we are conscious of this
free-will, and therefore it must enter as an element
into our moral calculations. And this is a favourite
style of argument with those who maintain the doc-
trine itself. We are conscious, say they, of the
freedom of the will—it is a matter of simple con-
sciousness—it admits, from its nature, of no other
proof than an appeal to consciousness, Now the
matter in question is one which, from its nature,
cannot be the subject of direct consciousness; it
therefore cannot be decided by such an appeal;
neither is it of necessity an element in our moral
feelings. We may be conscious of will, not of the
freedom of will. The question agitated is—whether -
the operations of the mind, like those of external
nature, are ordered according to invariable laws, or
whether this analogy is to be, at least in part, re-
jected, and a mode of operation predicated of the
mind of a quite different description; a power being
put forth altogether free, and beyond the scope, of
law. Such a question must be decided by examina-
|E
50 A DISCOURSE
tion of recorded consciousness, and by thus de-
tecting the law of their recurrence. Of the ope-
rations,—of the phenomena themselves of mind,-we
are immediately conscious;–of the laws of these
operations, of the fact that these phenomena have
certain repeated sequences, we cannot be said to be
conscious;–such a truth as this is the result of
reflection and of a careful classification. As we
cannot be conscious of a law, so neither can we be
of the absence of a ſaw. Whether a power be put
forth under a law or not, cannot alter the simple
consciousness we have in putting forth that power.
The freedom of the will cannot possibly be a simple
truth of the consciousness.
III. As an opinion, as a matter of reflection and
inference, this doctrine cannot be supposed to have
mingled with the current feelings of mankind. The
question whether the mind exhibits an order and
regularity corresponding to that of external nature,
or whether, in any region of it, there is what might
be termed a spontaneous generation, not subjected
to any law of cause and effect—is one which would
not occur but to reflective minds, nor till some steps
had been taken towards a scientific examination of
the material world. Any opinion, therefore, con-
cerning it, could not be mingled up with feelings
coeval with society. To the majority of men,
indeed, in any age, the question has never occurred;
nor does the language they employ, when speaking
of the freedom of action, at all refer to this scholastic
ON ETHICS. 51
dispute; it manifestly having no relation to freedom
from their own mental laws, but freedom from ex-
ternal restraint.
IV. There is no correspondence between the im-
position of moral responsibility and any limits that
could be marked out for the operation of free-will.
I need but suggest here that if we excused from
moral responsibility the man who was confessedly
under the influence of psychological laws, just as we
excuse him who is under compulsion of physical
restraint, the whole aspect of morality would be
entirely altered.
V. There is a sense of mental freedom, it is true,
and one which is especially the privilege of the moral
man. It is a sense of freedom, not recognised in a
single unconnected act, but elicited by the antago-
mism of reason and passion,-a sense of freedom, not
from all psychological law, but from the overbearing
control of some desire, or perverse habit. Whatever
may be decided of the liberty of the will—a question
which I do not presume to determine, and on which
there is room for some curious argument quite fo-
reign from the topic of this essay—this freedom of
the reason is the only liberty worth having. This
constitutes the true freedom of the man.
52 A DISCOURSE
CHAPTER V.
- Objections to the foregoing Theory drawn from
supposed Practical Consequences.
F the theory I have been endeavouring here to
expound were judged solely by its own merits—
by the faithful representation it gives of what each
man detects within himself, and observes in the
world without, of the moral nature of man—there
would be little doubt of its obtaining an immediate
assent. But certain consequences hurtful to morals
are imagined to follow the teaching of this theory,
and certain inferences hostile to natural theology are
thought deducible from its tenets, and these prepos-
sessions, far more than any direct argumentative
opposition, impede its reception. I am concerned to
remove these impressions, not only for the sake of
truth and an intelligible view of moral science, which
is obstructed by their existence, but also to relieve
myself and others, who seem to themselves to take a
simple common-sense view of this subject, from the
imputation of holding a doctrine which really justifies
them.
We hear it objected to the theory which deduces
our moral sentiments from social influences, that it
ON ETHICS. 53
shakes the basis of morality—that it works the two-
fold mischief of rendering precarious the authority of
conscience, and throwing uncertainty on the code of
ethics. That the sentiment of moral responsibility
should have originated in no other cause than the
incessant and controlling influence of man on man,
appears to some a most dangerous conclusion, and one
which puts that sentiment in fearful jeopardy. What
then a motive which is inevitably called into being
wherever society exists, has this but a weak founda-
tion in humanity ? Could it have a stronger ? Does
man live but in society : Is he any other than the
product of society 7 What would be the develope-
ment of the individual mind without the fellowship
of others, or where would be the scope or meaning of
a moral sentiment out of the circuit of social ex-
istence? Even if we carry our thoughts to a future
world, and consider our moral feelings with relation
to that futurity, does any one think that Heaven is
a solitude : Surely society attends us there. It is
granted that if a human being could escape to some
desert, and throw off every habit of thought which
fellowship, or communion with his kind had produced,
he would also escape from moral feeling, and if he
could exist in such a desolation, of what use were his
morality ?
The influence of society a weak, insufficient foun-
dation for the moral sentiment I entreat those who
make the objection to consider what and how great
a thing to man is the good opinion of his fellow-man.
*~~
54 A DISCOURSE
It visits him in every relation of humanity, from pa-
rents, from children, from neighbours, from citizens;–
it is equally present in life public and domestic;—it
mingles with almost every enjoyment;-itis blended,
either as object or as means, with every hope and
every project of existence. From his earliest infancy
to his latest breath the good opinion of mankind is
the representative of how large a share of his happi-
ness. He is born naked and defenceless into the lap
of society. In the happy dependence of childhood
all is gift, and every thing comes to him in the shape
of benefaction. In that age a favourable opinion is
attended, or rather expressed, by innumerable acts
ofkindness and endearment: “not words alone please
then,” nor do words alone bestow the maternal ap-
probation. As he advances to manhood a sense of
self-reliance is called forth with growing powers and
weightier cares;–he must exert himself—but where
is the field of his exertion ? The first effort of the
independent and liberated man is to secure his
footing in the good opinion of that society, the
least one of whom can add an injury if he cannot
bestow a positive benefit. Whether he labours for
subsistence, or toils for honours, or seeks employ-
ment only for restless talents, or the enjoyment only
of descended wealth, it is through society he must
effect his purpose. There are hisjudges before whom
he runs, and rides, and displays every accomplish-
ment, and every art, and from whom alone he expects
his prize, be it what it may. Nor can any station,
ON ETHICS. 55
however high, however low, remove him from the
influence of the good opinion of society; and if the
very highest and the very lowest of human conditions
do, from different causes, abstract those on whom
they fall from the control of their fellow-men, it is a
Common remark that this unfortunate freedom is
almost sure to be detrimental to their moral character.
Man lives, for pleasure or for pain, in deed or in
thought, in constant collision with his fellow-men;
they are beings without whom he can do nothing, yet
as they are beings of the same passions with himself
they have conflicting claims; he must yield, he must
compromise, must secure their friendship, must avert
their enmity. A new want arises, perpetual, and
that can never be shaken off—a want the sum-
mary of a thousand wants—the want of the good
opinion of these fellow-men. Is this a motive, a part
of our mental constitution, likely to fail us, to grow
weak and languid as society advances and becomes,
as it does, more and more complicated 7 Is it likely to
decay as the interests of life become more numerous,
more keen, wide-spreading, and interwoven : God
has set men to be rulers over men—all over each ;
—this is His moral government which he has, in the
first instance, established upon the earth, a govern-
ment which must continue and improve with every
improvement made in the means and knowledge of
happiness, a government which in its plan, and pro-
gress, and by its connection and harmony with other
parts of the system of nature, claims to have sprung
from the Author of creation.
56 A DISCOURSE
As to the second branch of this objection, that our
theory supplies us with no permanent code of mo-
rality, I answer that it supplies a code as permanent
as the laws which regulate the pleasure and pain,
the joys and sufferings of humanity. On these laws
our moral distinctions are raised—on what broader
or other basis would you rest them : Is there any
fear that benevolence should prove hateful to all
men, and malice instead be taken into universal
favour?—or that industry, with all her fruits, should
be decried, and a vacant barren sloth be honoured
and approved : Hſ by any possibility those actions
which produce pleasure and enjoyment should change
their nature, and give rise to pain and suffering,
would you have an “immutable morality” forbidding
enjoyment, and commanding all things miserable 7
The only immutable morality is this, that the happi-
ness of all be protected and cultivated. This is a
precept which knows no change, an eternal truth,
recognized, we may be sure, in every condition, in
every region wherein reasonable beings have their
abode; and the spirit of benevolence which animates
this precept is that unchangeable goodness which is
virtue everywhere—which is gold in all climes—
that goodness which has its rest in the mind of the
Eternal.
But the specific rules of morality are not pro-
nounced to be permanent and unalterable. How
could society advance if they were ! The commu-
nity undergoes a silent revolution in its moral ideas
ON ETHICS. 57
as new tastes are generated, new passions raised, and
new modes of existence and of thought are laid open;
but alterations such as these, slow and scarce per-
ceptible, cannot endanger the steady authority of
morals. The sea and the dry land may be changing
places, but nevertheless the sea and dry land are
very distinguishable; the change is not inconsistent
with the habitable nature of our globe, and each ge-
neration of mortals walks upon the shore neither
deterred nor perplexed with sense of insecurity.
Another serious evil is apprehended, by some, to
flow from our theory, inasmuch as it instructs men to
analyze their own feelings. Granting its truth, say
they, its prevalence would be the means of deterio-
rating that moral sentiment which it teaches men to
trace to its origin in the good opinion of society. It
would induce them to refer at once to that opinion as
the real motive of their conduct—to dismiss from
their minds the fastidious sentiment of self-approval,
—and, silencing the unrelenting monitor within, to
look out on each occasion to observe what would in-
deed be their palpable gain or loss by following
virtue. But now if our theory be true—if the more
refined and constant sentiment of the moral man,
really originate from a desire to obtain the good
opinion of others—then to fix his attention on that
good opinion, is the sure way to obtain this senti-
ment. And so accordingly we find it. The sense
of honour, which is the moral sentiment limited in
its range, is educated, we plainly see, by the con-
58 A DISCOURSE
stant appeal to the judgment of gentlemen and
equals. Who for a moment ever suspected that he
should enfeeble or endanger this sense of honour, by
directing the mind of the young soldier to the opinion
entertained of him by his fellow-soldiers? And thus
also with the sentiment of self-approbation, which is
but that of honour diffused over a larger class of
duties: the only means of eliciting it, is by exciting
a determination to secure (and to deserve, as the
only method of securing) the esteem of society.
This determination once formed and acted on, the
force of habit does the rest; and the preservation of
an unsullied character becomes, of necessity, a dis-
tinct and paramount object in life, and the source of
highest gratification.
But it may still be urged—I push the objection
to the utmost—that after the developement of this
sentiment, and on any occasion, a familiarity with
our analytic doctrine enables a man, by penetrating
its very nature, and threading his way back to its
source, to dissipate and eject it from his mind. In
the first place, it is by no means desirable that the
reason of man should be quelled and overmastered
even by a moral feeling; which ought to be the ally
of reason, not its substitute. Though, perhaps, there
is little need for the caution, there may be a super-
stition in morality as well as in religion; and it is fit
that even here the mind should have the power of
overlooking its own operations, that they may be
reconciled with reason and with happiness. But,
ON ETHICS. 59
in the next place, this power of analysing a given
sentiment cannot lead to its destruction, unless the
subject of that analysis has sprung from a merely
accidental, and therefore unauthorised, association
of ideas, and is such, moreover, as the mind gladly
relieves itself from. It is true, that an individual
whilst engaged in the distinct, intellectual effort of
analysing any feeling, cannot at that time be under
its actuating control; but this intellectual effort
concluded, his thoughts and passions resume their
established course, and when those facts themselves
are next contemplated from which the feeling re-
sulted, then, if it was a legitimate indweller of the
mind, does it immediately, and with its accustomed
force, re-occupy its place. And besides, if the
analyst were furnished by his scrutiny of the mental
process with this destructive power, he must also be
supplied with some motive for exerting it. Suppose,
for instance, one should convince an affectionate
father that the love he bears to his offspring is no
separate instinct, but a result of the ordinary affec-
tions of his nature, developed under peculiar circum-
stances, and singularly favoured by habit, is it ima-
ginable that this metaphysical pupil either could or
would straightway divest himself of the strong feel-
ings of his heart, and struggle to absolve himself
from the dearest ties of life? When he next beheld
his child, would not his paternal regard rush back
upon him as instantaneously as before ? Nay, would
he not even find that the sentiment was rendered
60 A DISCOURSE
more vivid from his having reflected on the many
causes which authorized and confirmed it? Neither
has the virtuous man, present him with what ana-
lysis we may, either the power, or the inclination, to
expel from his mind that inward satisfaction which
the propriety of his conduct and the blameless
tenour of his life secures to him; but, on the con-
trary, that satisfaction must be heightened by con-
templation of the numerous facts that produce and
justify it.
A man disturbed by violent and unsatisfied pas-
sions, the dishonest man and the criminal, may wish
to rid themselves of the restraint of shame, or the
punitive feeling of remorse; and may have resort,
amongst other expedients, to reasonings which shall,
to their apprehension, disparage altogether the dig-
nity of moral sentiments. This they may do, and
without much help of philosophy, but they will
gain little by the attempt. Plain palpable realities,
not to be gainsaid or displaced by argument, will
meet and dash their sophistry. Tones of contempt,
the averted eye, denial and disservice encounter them
whenever they mingle with their fellow-citizens.
Their punishment depends on no very subtle asso-
ciation of ideas, neither is their shame so easily
eluded. They find themselves in rude contact with
the vigorous resentments of mankind. Society trusts
not always, nor long, to self-inflicted penance; she
is soon seen to take the scourge in her own hands.
I have dwelt the more on this objection because it
ON ETHICS. - 61
is a common topic of reproach against metaphysical
studies, that the resolution of our nobler or more
refined sentiments into primitive elements of thought,
tends to their degradation or displacement. The
reproach is unjust, and the alarm needless. When
the feeling in question arises from constant and
correlative laws of nature and of man, the analyst
has no such power; he shews only that such a feel-
ing must inevitably arise;—when it springs from
some casual association of ideas, and is yet of a
pleasurable description, the analyst, if he possesses
such a power, has no motive for using it;-and when
it has no other than such a casual origin, and
answers no pleasurable or profitable end, it is a
matter of pure congratulation if by any means it is
expelled from the mind. There appears in some a
vague notion that the dignity of our sentiments is, at
all events, compromised by an analysis of them.
But surely our feelings are not the noblest because
most elementary; if so, simple sensation would be
the highest prerogative of our nature. Nor can they
be thought the less stable, the less permanently or
certainly our own, because traceable to the operation
of general and invariable laws.
The mind of man is replete with feelings of which
he has recognized the origin, but which are not the
less vigorous on that account. Without provoking
any discussion on the genesis of the sentiment itself
of the beautiful, it may be stated, as a fact admitted
on all hands, that in most objects, the feeling of
62 - A DISCOURSE
beauty they create arises but in a small degree from
their individual form and colour, and in a far greater
from multiplied associations of agreeable thought.
But the knowledge of this fact, and even the habit
of investigating these curious combinations, by no
means destroys the sentiment resulting from them.
On the contrary, those persons appear to be not only
the most accurate critics on all subjects of taste, but
the most vividly to appreciate beauty in all its forms,
who attend most to the hidden sources of that de-
lightful feeling.
The finer order of poetry furnishes us with a con-
tinuous example of passion united with a detection
of the secret sources of passion,-of feeling sus-
tained by the force of reflection, and spread with
solicitous art over all topics that it finds, or makes,
kindred to itself. The poet is busy linking together,
by his vagrant and wilful associations, all nature,
and all art, and every object of cogitation, into new
groups whereof the law of affinity is to be found in
some sentiment of the human being. A man's heart
is for a time the centre of the world. And curious
enough it is to observe how slight and evanescent
are those relations by which the master of language
brings together his multitude of objects which pro-
duce, however, so harmonious an impression as,
borne on his glowing words, they pass, many and
fleet, over the surface of the mind. But the know-
ledge of all this fine and delicate process, never dis-
turbed the pleasure of either poet or reader. They
ON ETHICS. 63
never feared that their elegant literature would be
destroyed by a subtle and metaphysical scrutiny.
They might as well have trembled lest the natural
philosopher by resolving the rainbow into its compo-
nent parts—into rays of light bent and reflected
through the drops of a thunder-shower—would have
banished from the sky that exquisite meteor. Poetry,
which is a sort of rainbow literature—beautiful, and
born for its beauty—the fair offspring of most con-
flicting and inconstant elements—still throws its ra-
diance over life—is still seen upon the cloud—
however we may scrutinize and detect the delightful
fallacy. So little harmful are the labours of the
metaphysician.
But the objection I have been considering, assumes
another form. Not only does the analysis of the
moral sentiment tend, it is said, to its disparagement,
but the opposite doctrine of a high, absolute, un-
questionable sentiment of morality, gives a positive
support and energy to human character. Now, if
there be any one who has built his morality on this
metaphysical basis of an imperative sense of duty,
whose authority disdains all argument, and admits of
no appeal, so that the withdrawal of this creed would
shake his peace and self-confidence, let him by all
means retain his philosophical faith. Let him throw
this theory and these pages aside. Indeed, it is quite
superfluous in me to give him this last license. If
he has condescended to cast an eye upon these pages,
I know well with what consummate contempt he has
64 . A DISCOURSE
turned them over, pronouncing them, without the
least hesitation, to be barren, jejune, and utterly des-
titute of all profundity whatever,
To expect one tone of moral feeling from all man-
kind, what is it but to expect one mode of happiness,
one temper of mind, one fortune, and one taste, to all
the race of man? He who after familiarizing himself
with the stern morality of the Stoic school, turns his
observation upon some domestic scene of civilized
life, and on the manners of amiable and enlightened
men, feels that the rigid fortitude, and ardour of
endurance, which he has been contemplating, have
here no place, no meaning, no purpose. A moral
force of far more temperate and bland description is
quite sufficient for scenes, and for men, like these.
Nay, if he looks at society in some aspects, he may
be surprised to find how great a part of the business of
life is transacted without the direct observable inter-
ference of a moral control—which seems rather to
have prescribed to men at once their career, than to
accompany them at each step of their progress. Men
labour at their several callings—all the worldis abroad
from the rising of the sun to the going down thereof—
in full activity, need and ambition constraining and
impelling them,-and only now and then, when a
shock is given to the usual tenour of existence, do
they raise serious question as to what the conscience
will or will not permit. Habit does all, and seems
everywhere to ordain and to disallow. But if the
same observer carries still further his examinations,
ON ETHICS. 65
he will not fail to discover some positions in life
where the sternest moral resolution, and a sort of
desperation in virtue, are not more than enough to
preserve the mind from dejection, from utter over-
throw, and total alienation from existence. Such
positions produce what they require. A moral sen-
timent strongly excited, and put to constant and
severe task-work, becomes separated in the mind of
its possessor from all that the world is accustomed to
call happiness. The end of virtue is lost sight of
in the efforts of virtue. It becomes its own end and
purpose:–a virtue militant, contending for a cause
apparently quite distinct from the hopeless and
abandoned one of human felicity.
I respect, I revere, the high tone of moral feeling
which conducts to this state of opinion. Next to the
cheerful calm of prosperous hours, what more valued
boon can Providence bestow than this stubborn in-
dependent philosophy, so fitted to adverse and dis-
tressful seasons? The afflicted spirit assumes a great-
ness which almost puts to shame the gay and the
fortunate. The form of the moral hero is seen to
dilate as the gloom falls around it. I respect, I say,
this noble consolation which the virtuous man, beset
by calamity, finds in the simple exaggerated claim of
virtue—I leave him in undisturbed and impertur-
bable possession of a philosophic faith which imparts
new energies to a mind else drooping and self-de-
serted—but I cannot consent to impose on all man-
kind a sentiment so exclusively appropriate to the
F
66 A DISCOURSE
position and temper of a few—I cannot repeat as
dogmatic truth for the reception of all the world,
what the mind gives forth as truth for itself under
peculiar circumstances, and in the hour of its need
and tribulation. If the heart of man, some gayer
moralist might say, is to be thus consulted as an
oracle of truth, why should we prefer its sadder
to its more cheerful responses? Why should we
consult the oracle when invested in clouds and
darkness, and not trust as well to what it utters when
light is breaking upon all things, and it gives its
answer in music to the morning beam : The mind at
ease says nothing of the vanity of all things—never
decries the pursuit of reasonable pleasure—never
divorces the claims of virtue from the cause of hap-
piness.
I might now, forsaking the defensive attitude I
have hitherto assumed, insist on the positive advan-
tages to be derived from teaching the doctrine of
ethics, of which an exposition is here offered. The
view here presented, for instance, of the origin of the
moral sentiment, will surely enforce on all reflective
persons the especial duty of forming and dispensing
correct judgments on the conduct of their fellow-
citizens—since thus alone can a strong and pure
morality, in which all have so vital an interest, be
ultimately produced. Next to acting well ourselves,
is the duty of judging honestly and wisely of the
actions of others. But I pass the topic by because
I am quite satisfied that, whatever doctrine may find
ON ETHICS. 67
favour in the schools, and in chairs of philosophy,
men do in reality act upon the full persuasion of
the intimate connection that exists between the ut-
terance of opinion and the moral force generated in
society. They never fail to visit upon each other as
a distinct substantive delinquency, the promulgation
of immoral sentiments.
I have no new mode to proclaim of teaching
morality; if I had I might be sure I had been theo-
rizing falsely. Neither let me add, is it any part of
the object of this essay to speculate on what a merely
moral, or social teaching might effect; or to place
in opposition, for a moment, a religious with a civic
education. Doubtless we stand in need of every
motive—of every source—of good conduct. I have
been desirous only—confining myself to the strict
business of theorizing, that is, of describing, to
state with accuracy the nature of the moral senti-
ment. •
68 A DISCOURSE
CHAPTER VI.
Objections of a Theological Cast.—Some Remarks
on Natural Religion.
HERE remains to be disposed of another class
of objections to our theory; objections, how-
ever, more formidable from the solemnity of the
subject they are connected with, than from their
intrinsic validity. Inferences are charged upon it
prejudicial to the doctrines of natural theology; or
rather certain inferences deducible, it is supposed,
from an opposite theory, and highly favourable to
natural religion, are said to be lost to us in this sys-
tem of ethics. A few words will suffice to show that
nothing is really gained to the cause of religion by
the doctrine of an intuitive sentiment of morals, and
therefore nothing can be lost by the abandonment of
that doctrine.
Some have taught, or by their language have im-
plied, that from the consciousness of such a sentiment
they could derive a direct argument for the eaſistence
of God; they inferred the being of a Judge from the
feeling within of a judgment passed, or to be passed.
But it is hardly necessary to remark, that we must
already have the notion of God before we can con-
nect with Him our sentiment of duty. If there be a
feeling as of a judgment of some superior, we cannot
ON ETHICS. 69
pronounce it to be that of God, while as yet His
existence is unknown. A sentiment manifestly in-
tended for our guidance in life, may, indeed, as an
instance of adaptation, aid in the great argument
from design, and thus assist in establishing the
existence of God; but it can do so in no other
manner; and it is plain that whatever psychological
account we adopt of this part of our mental constitu-
tion, such a mode of argument is equally cogent.
But the greater number of reasoners content them-
selves with deriving from this moral intuition a proof
of the moral government of God—an evidence of the
rule according to which we are to be judged by the
Supreme Power. We recognise, say they, as a dis-
tinct independent state of mind, a sentiment of obli-
gation, not referable to man—which when the being
of God is revealed to us through other sources of
knowledge, is directly referred to Him as to its
relative object. Thus we have an immediate transi-
tion from morality into religion; and the moral
government of God becomes almost an intuitive
truth. I have endeavoured to present this statement
with as much clearness as it is capable of, yet it
manifestly involves a strange confusion of ideas. A
sentiment of duty, or obedience, exists in the mind
of man—the being of God is revealed—and then the
sentiment at once refers itself to that being as the
Power to whom obedience was due. Here the na-
tural order of things is boldly reversed, and we have
a sentiment of obedience preceding a knowledge that
a power existed to command, and, of course, that
70 A DISCOURSE
that power had commanded. If it was the nature
of this sentiment of obligation to exist without any
known relative, why should the knowledge of God’s
existence so change that nature that it should require
and receive a relative object : Surely the wisdom
and universal, and therefore equal benevolence, of
God, afford safer ground, than metaphysics such as
these, for inferring His moral government.
Others, venturing on more hazardous speculations,
have contended that this favoured theory alone
enables them to assign a moral character to the
Deity; which they assert cannot be done in consist-
ency with our system of ethics. A sentiment, say
they, which is but the product of the restraints of
society, cannot be attributed to the sole and omnipo-
tent God who knows no superior; but if the senti-
ment result from, or, in more accurate language, be
synonymous with a perception of an eternal distinc-
tion in things themselves—of an immutable right
and wrong—then we can with perfect propriety
attribute a moral character to God himself. In
the first place, this representation assumes that our
moral perception, because direct and immediate in
us, must be equally so in all other intelligent be-
ings; that is, in other words, must be the perception
of an essential objective truth. But what on this
head I would more particularly draw attention to is
this: if the sentiment of right and wrong be of that
single abstract character that, like the feeling of
belief attendant upon a mathematical truth, it may
exist in a solitary intelligence—if it no longer imply
ON ETHICS. 71
in itself an acknowledgment of some superior power,
and therefore may be attributed to the sole and
supreme Deity—then the whole view of the moral
nature of man is altered. The sense of obligation—
the perception of this that it is right, of that that it
is wrong—no longer in him refers to a superior; the
sentiment of duty and obedience must mean (if this
be a meaning) a duty and obedience to himself, be-
ginning and ending with his own individual nature.
There is, in fact, no such thing as obligation in
morals. This mode of reasoning is quite incompat-
ible, be it also observed, with that argument just
now considered, by which the moral government of
God was deduced from the responsibility of man;
for it is plain that the sentiment expressed in the
terms right and wrong, cannot both prove the moral
government of God, because of its implied reference
to a superior, and yet be applicable, as an attribute,
to the character of God expressly, because it implies
no such superior. In short, these reasoners, in order
somewhat presumptuously to adapt our moral senti-
ments to the Deity, utterly destroy them for the pur-
poses of man, and even for the purposes of religion.
All those inferences in favour of religion which
are drawn from the existing state of moral feelings
amongst mankind, are, of course, equally valid,
whatever metaphysical theory we adopt as to the
origin of those feelings. The imperfect gratification
of our moral sentiments—the unsatisfied love of jus-
tice—the consequent expectation both for ourselves
and others of a future state of reward and punish-
72 A DISCOURSE
ment—such arguments as these, which have at all
times constituted the better part of the natural reli-
gion of mankind, have the same force and efficacy,
be that what it may, under either system of ethics.
But we cannot succeed by any subtle process of
thought, in assigning at once to our moral feelings a
religious character—so that in the very fact of a
moral feeling shall be implied a religious obligation.
No advantage, therefore, is gained to the cause of
natural theology, nor is the transition from morality
to religion in the least facilitated, by this doctrine of
an intuitive sentiment. Indeed the more this ethical
guide is approximated to the nature of an instinct,
the more are we induced by this analogy to infer
that it is peculiar to the human species, and adapted
solely to the purposes of life.
If the difficulties are urged which arise in the
attempt, according to any theory, and by a course of
merely human argument, to establish the moral go-
vernment of God, I have but this brief answer to
make, that he who holds the ethical doctrine here
advocated is not bound more than any other person
to prove that from the book of human reason which
is written down for us in the book of Revelation.
From the condition of our moral nature we may draw
certain presumptions in favour of this great tenet,
but on these we are not compelled to rely. Religion
with us has its distinct and proper source: we have
Heaven's own word for what we believe of Heaven.
The Christian is not a religious man because he is a
moral being, but he practises morality from motives
ON ETHICS. 73
which no system of ethics can supply. He assumes
the moral duties of life in quite a new character; he
adopts them, as the civilian might say, per universi-
tatem juris : the moral man is dead or superseded,
the religious man survives to support, with better
strength and understanding, his rights and duties.
If we care to examine what the strength, or weak-
ness, of the human mind has effected, or is able now
of itself to effect, in the discovery of religious truth,
we must, of necessity, descend, for a time, into a
region of obscurity—of fiction or conjecture; but
our hearts may be perfectly at ease in this valley of
shadows: we can ascend, at a word, from its toil-
some obscurity to the safe and illumined eminence
on which Christianity has placed us. We shall, at
all events, perceive, in our dark sojourn, enough of
truth to form a basis for belief in Revelation, and shall
assuredly encounter enough of doubt and hesitation
to demonstrate our extreme need of it. What more
does the Christian want? What more could the
Christian rationally expect' I cannot, for my own
part, understand that jealous anxiety to uphold and
exaggerate whatever human reason alone can estab-
lish of religious creed, which is sometimes manifested
by men who believe that the knowledge of God has
been retained on the earth by sacred tradition, by
prophet, and by miracle, and that the complete his-
tory of the relation that subsists between their Creator
and the human race, has been expressly promulgated
in the Christian Revelation.
However strong and prevalent the presumption of
74 A DISCOURSE
a moral government of God, this, I confess, is not
apparently the first idea which occurs to the human
mind on the subject of theology, nor is it perhaps the
last which, if thrown back upon its own resources, it
would retain. Natural religion seems to rise to this
idea, and then, if not stayed by a stronger hand, if
left to go alone, to sink and decline from it. It
rose to the doctrine through aid of premises supplied
by the boldness of desire and the ductility of imagi-
nation; and happily before those premises were
withdrawn, the belief became a truth authentically
revealed. Whenever we trace a sacred faith to its
source in the unaided faculties of man, we trace it,
not to the unsatisfied demands of moral feeling, but
to the uncertainty of human fortunes. The events of
life depending on circumstances beyond the control of
men—the success of the chase, of the war, even the
profits of husbandry being precarious—an idea
springs up in minds which have taken no very severe
distinction between fact and imagination, that a
power of benevolent or malicious intention sits watch-
ful to promote or to frustrate their endeavours. It is
not till this idea has run a wild and extravagant
career that the supernatural power, thus introduced,
becomes transformed into a moral judge, dispensing
favour in this world, or the next, solely according to
the merits of virtue. And even when this great
result has been effected, it will be found that the
reason of man continues to be indebted to those bold
conjectures of the imagination, which at once, and
ON ETHICS. 75
without forethought, established that personal rela-
tionship between the individual man and a divine
power, which it was found so much more easy to
modify and to characterize, than it would have been
in the first instance to make good by argument.
We look on a gross anthropomorphism as an error
of the rudest times; yet there seems to have been a
condition of the mind below even this, and where
the object of worship could not so much as boast
similitude to a human being. The barbarian has
looked upon a stone, an uncouth figure representing
nothing, a misshapen block, as the source from which
his good and ill fortune were to be derived. Reli-
gion, at this stage, appears little more than a strange
blunder in physics. But the analogy between a
human being and the Supernatural power, whose
interference was sought or deprecated, could not be
long absent. The idol assumed more decidedly and
uniformly the figure of man. Amidst propitiatory
gifts, and sacrifices, and absurd ceremonies, the idea
grew—promoted by the fears of the criminal, and
the expectations of virtue, and the general love of
justice, and the policy of states, and the reason, and
interest of all men—that moral conduct was the surest
means of obtaining the favour of these supernatural
rulers of human destiny, to whom was committed, in
an especial manner, the care of unrewarded good-
ness, and unpunished crime. Meanwhile poets libe-
rated the god from its stationary wood or stone, and
refashioning its limbs, peopled the air and the earth
76 A DISCOURSE
with divinities. Philosophers either added to the
confusion, as in Egypt, by putting forth dark enig-
mas of their own under the forms of popular ido-
latry; or else rising, as in Greece, entirely above the
superstition of their countrymen, smiled at the popu-
lace of gods, and taught whatever reason could
prove, or could admit, of the Divine nature. Their
disciples were few ; their faith was construed an
infidelity. - -
Such, in brief, was the progress of natural reli-
gion, in countries not favoured by divine instruction,
up to the appearance of Christianity. If now we
would recur to the subject, we must resume it where
the Greek and Roman philosopher left off; for that
is now the natural religion of the foremost nations
of the world, which was previously the teaching of
its best thinkers. Underneath the predominance of a
divine revelation there has taken place a revolution
in the state of human knowledge, and consequently
of popular theology. That rude state of science so
propitious to the imagination has been supplanted by
scientific knowledge and habits of thinking altogether
as hostile to it. A new nature—a new physical
world—has called for a new religion.
If the pagan theology had not retired before the
irresistible power of Christianity,+which it did,
however, slowly and with manifest reluctance, and
after having existed for a time, in its spirit at least,
under new forms assumed from the new religion,--
it must have surrendered, with all its gods and
ON ETHICS. 77
goddesses, at the approach of modern science. As-
tronomy alone would have sufficed for its overthrow.
The material universe it discloses requires other and
greater gods; and a race of divinities who sojourned
on this earth, who haunted its shady recesses, and
tenanted its lofty mountains, must have ceased to be
the objects of worship when surrounded by that
enlarged and magnificent scene of creation which is
now familiar to the minds, almost to the senses, of
all men. The gods of paganism could not have
occupied this new creation; there is no place for
them in the universe according to Newton.
It is worth while to observe that science, by trans-
forming the very habitation in which we dwell, has
rendered impossible that play of fancy, that anthro-
pomorphism, which in the old world was so predo-
minant. What we have of this kind is traditional,
not native to our times. To us in whom the first
deceptive impression of the senses has been cor-
rected almost as soon as we could think by know-
ledge it cost ages to acquire, and other ages to ex-
tend and circulate—to us it is a curious and distinct
effort of the imagination to conceive what manner of
world this was to its earlier inhabitants. They lived,
at least the multitude, and the multitude are in this
matter everything, in a very streightened, circum-
scribed creation,--a flat and stationary earth, arched
over by the sky as by its natural roof. In this
miniature of nature the human form was great. A
god was invested in it without thought of violation
78 A DISCOURSE
to his dignity, and men assigned him for habitation
a region just beyond the clouds, or else the waste
and inaccessible places of their own world, the air,
and the ocean, and tops of mountains, and caverns
in the rock. The humanized divinity had a fit loca-
tion, and could be supported in the imagination
without much incongruity. But what if such forms
had continued to exist till science had worked her
great transformation ? When astronomy had dis-
lodged the rounded world from its rest at the centre
of all things, and sent it to revolve on its wide cir-
cuit one only of a multitude of similar and far-scat-
tered globes—when that arch which so securely over-
built it had expanded into a limitless vacancy and
left the earth diminished, and alone, and far from
the gates of Heaven—what place, what function,
would have remained to the astonished gods of
Olympus? Had they survived till our day of science,
they must then have vanished like a dream. The
popular imagination is gone for ever that conducted
the chariot-wheel of god or goddess over the blue
firmament—there is no road for the horses of the
sun—earth and Heaven are no longer neighbour
territories, and the clouds in our atmosphere can
never again give support to etherial messenger jour-
neying to and from the celestial confines. ' The
world is disenchanted for the abode of these fairy
gods—the high mountain has sunk from its imposing,
because heaven-reaching, altitude—the throne of
Jupiter is reversed for ever !
ON ETHICS. 79
We are scandalized as we read of the apotheosis
of the deceased emperors of Rome, and of the still
more monstrous worship of the living Caesar. But
what were the dii majores themselves, Mars or
Apollo, that they should disdain to share their ado-
ration with the sovereigns of the Roman world?
What was an ordinary heathen god, often relegated
to a single island,--to whom the care of a city or
province was thought sufficient for occupation or
dignity, when compared with him whose invincible
legions might at the same time have been combating
in the wilds of Caledonia, and on the banks of the
Tigris I question whether there were materials in
the popular imagination out of which to construct
for itself a conception greatly surpassing the power
and glory of him who swayed the Roman Empire.
But the vast ideas which now prevail in all minds of
the material creation give birth in all minds to ideas
equally vast and magnificent of a divine Power. A
Power whose existence is manifested by its agency
throughout the whole frame of the universe, and
whose greatness ever expands with our expanding
knowledge of that universe, throws every human
title, and every pretension and attribute of humanity
into utter insignificance ; and we may feel satisfied
that while the elements of science remain to us, and
continue to be extensively diffused, mankind will
never relapse into the worship of any other than that
Being who unites all we can conceive of omnipo-
tence and wisdom.
80 A DISCOURSE §
So far the boast of science is complete; so far the
natural theology of our days is grand and elevating.
But let it be observed with that candour which no
one who meddles with philosophy ought to forsake,
that the same science which by its results presents so
magnificent a demonstration of the existence of God,
is, by the habits of thinking to which it is bound,
quite inadequate so to characterize that Being as to
present to us an object within the reach and scope of
human worship. It surrounds us on every side with
laws—laws of society and of man, as well as of the
material creation. Science fills all nature with the
spirit of God, but denies to us any other exponent of
Him than is found in the same nature. It presents
us a Deity operating to one great entire scheme, and
its own teaching would incline us to believe that His
government of men, like His government of all the
world beside, is carried on, not by such legislation
as a human judge administers, but by laws which
execute themselves, and admit not of infraction or
disobedience. It presents us—not with that moral
governor who, when the busy and perplexed scene
of life is closed, reverses, or supplies, or repeats the
decisions of each human tribunal—but with that
Power which has instituted all human tribunals,
whether of opinion or of judicature, and governs in
and through them. That moral government, the
idea of which it was the pride of reason to have
established, and which we now live under as by
express Charter from Heaven, becomes in our natural
ON ETHICS. 8]
theology obscure and dubious, and is in danger of
being resolved into the laws of our social existence,
as the natural government of God is already identi-
fied with those of the material world. Thus the
form of Deity which our scientific habits would
alone instruct us to contemplate, affects the mind
with no other than that sentiment of wonder which
reflection on the stupendous creation itself is calcu-
lated to produce. Nay, there is no form of Deity
given : creation becomes more and more distinctly
one great manifestation of thought, but the thinking
creative power is more and more removed from our
conception. As little can we shape it forth, of our
own authority, in the qualities of a human mind, as
in the lineaments of a human body. Scarce can we
say whether it be one or many; for the unity of de-
sign exhibited in the creation proves, in strictness, a
unity of counsel and of purpose, not a singleness of
person or being.—But to us, fortunately, it is ano-
ther than the God of science who sits upon that
throne which science is permitted only to erect
To decide what course the general mind would
take if it were no longer secured in its present posi-
tion by the help of distinct revelation, were no easy,
and no grateful task. Perhaps other and older
modes of reasoning might be found sufficiently strong
to counteract this habit of legalizing all things. If
without irreverence we might venture to suppose the
withdrawment from the world, for a season, of the
Christian doctrine, though we should lose indeed the
G
82 A DISCOURSE
incalculable benefit of a faith the sole medium of
salvation, and therefore, as regards our eternal inte-
rest, be utterly bankrupt and ruined; yet so far as
piety is a sentiment controlling the heart and ele-
vating the character of man, we might not, perhaps,
be left in so destitute and deplorable a condition as
those who love religion are apt to fear, and those
few who are its enemies are accustomed without any
pain to anticipate. There are certain presumptions
of a religious character, already hinted at, and indeed
familiar to all minds, which so readily occur to
human thought, and these there are so many pas-
sions, so many interests, so many reasons, for keep-
ing alive in ourselves, and upholding in the belief of
others, that they might be almost as generally re-
ceived, or at least professed, as Christianity at the
present day. The same feelings which perform no
ineffectual part in upholding the authority of that,
as of every religion—the same disquietude of heart
—the same aspirations after a happier existence—
the same desire to believe in another region, though
it be fruitful only of present hopes, or even of pre-
sent fears, and afford but an object of new solicitude
and endeavour—the same sense of public policy,
whether made effective by permanent institutions, or
that perpetual and all-pervading force of general
opinion that surrounds us like another atmosphere—
all these would be equally engaged in support of the
imperfect tenets and more scanty creed of natural
theology. The old heart of humanity might be too
ON ETHICS. S3
strong for all the fetters which science would im-
pose. Diversities of doctrine, doubt and unbelief
would certainly exist—it might be said they exist
now and always have existed—but not possibly in
such proportions as to overbear the general efficacy
of religious faith. Whilst that class of speculative
minds who now seem ranged on the side of cavil
and denial, because under a system established
without their aid, they have no recognized task as-
signed to them but that of checking the tendency to
superstitious observances, or the still more invidious
office of detecting the errors of an ardent and super-
abounding faith, might be, for the most part, occu-
pied in the more natural and agreeable effort of en-
deavouring to establish some direct and positive
truth. If the care were left to philosophy of making
provision for our religious sentiments, it would be
more her pride to construct than destroy. Nay,
who can tell but that even that poetic imagination
which delights especially in gathering up the frag-
ments of the broken idol, of placing it again in the
temple, and bending before it in mimic adoration—
who can tell that even this lighter spirit of thought
might not, under such circumstances, work to more
serious purpose than it designed, and, having re-
modified which it re-constructed, leave behind it, for
the worship of living men, an edifice reared in spor-
tive strength, and simply for its own free and wan-
dering devotion ?
There would remain at least one source of a pro-
84 A DISCOURSE
found, anti-terrestrial sentiment, which can never be
closed to the reflective mind, and which no scientific
knowledge can affect. There is a mystery within
and around us. Let science complete her task, and
accomplish all which the most enlarged and accurate
minds can assign for her province, there is still a
region of thought, if thought it can be called where
only question is heard, and no response, and the
question itself is scarce intelligible—into which she
can make no incursions. The philosophy of Newton
and La Place—the experimental knowledge of all
Europe—has not encroached one inch upon this ter-
ritory. It is the same now as to Chaldean shep-
herds. Where are we? Whence this whole of
things? Whither ? Wherefore? These are the same
unanswerable questions as when they first were
asked, and the unbroken silence which is their sole
return makes the same deep impression on the hu-
man heart. Render the whole world clear and
transparent to scientific vision—turn it before us, as
it were, in the sun–make us familiar with all its
movements, intricate and incessant, so that we trace
the precise succession of all events throughout the
complicated maze—it matters not—the whole scene,
—the whole circle of interwoven incident, floats
on over an abyss of unfathomable mystery.
I am not speaking here of what is generally un-
derstood by the thirst of knowledge, the desire to
comprehend all the phenomena of creation. This is
a desire having its manifest end and purpose in the
ON ETHICS. 85
practical career of existence. Neither do I claim for
the human mind a right, in some future state, to
have all things laid open before it. I cannot, in-
deed, conceive how thought could be born or nou-
rished in a created intellect, before which all things
should lie thus open and exposed. A mind is made
by learning. Such an intellect would put forth a still
stationary gaze, rather than any process of thought:
the knowing all things would resemble the knowing
nothing. It is not to understand all phenomena that
gives the unappeasable restlessness to human reason,
of which I am speaking—but to know that which
supports all phenomena—what truth there is, and
whether there be a truth behind them.
This mysterious questioning the man of science is
apt impatiently to despise. It is not that hopeful
curiosity which leads him on from day to day to
fresh accessions of knowledge; it is not busied with
the as yet unknown but with the unknowable. But
although this is not that useful sentiment which
ºnimates the scientific inquirer—although it is felt
by those who entertain it often, to be rather an op-
pression than an impulse to the mind—yet it cannot
possibly be banished: it has its fixed place in human
thought, and has retained its station in the meditative
character throughout all ages. -
To the reflective mind this dim outlying space of
the unknown and impenetrable has a strange and
powerful fascination. That which to all mankind is
the last boundless distance suffusing a scarcely





86 DISCOURSE ON ETHICS.
recognised charm over the near landscape of life, he
fixes on with strained effort of vision. There where
the line is drawn, as well to human passion, as to
human knowledge, his gaze is arrested; he would
pierce through the sphere of endless change into the
still eternity beyond ; he has no optics for such a
purpose,_he has no power to withdraw. From
such a mind you may take temple and altar, miracle
and prophet, you cannot take religion; you may
obscure the form of Deity—painfully dark it may
grow before him—you will not abstract all senti-
ment of piety: he bows before the veiled divinity—
he still adores an unknown God!
But happily for mankind, the conjecture as to
what form natural religion might of itself assume, is
for all practical purposes as useless and unnecessary
as it is to the speculative inquirer dark and intricate.
Having brought the limited subject of this essay
to a close, I here willingly terminate this brief per-
formance. If the reader in his study of practica
ethics in the works of Paley and others, should fin
himself somewhat less embarrassed than before by
subtle questions relative to the nature of the moral
sentiment, it has answered the utmost and sole end
at which it aspired.
THE EN D.
C Whittingham 21 Tooks Court Chancely .ane London





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