well as from the code of state law. What was felt to be obligatory by all was part of the original moral deposit. The conscience was the test or criterion of the natural code. What the conscience forbade was forbidden by God universally for all men.

Thus the nature of conscience or moral faculty became a supremely interesting point. It was clearly something very special-something different from the rest of human nature, since its deliverances were practically revelations of the will of God. It was not dependent on the accidents of education; but was clearly innate, given to every man by God as a light to conduct.

This innateness was denied by Locke; who, however, undoubtedly misunderstood the doctrine he attacked. Broadly speaking, the Schoolmen and the Platonists, e.g. More and Cudworth, taught not that there existed ready-made moral ideas in the minds of children and savages; but that there existed at birth a moral faculty which was capable of development. That they attached too little importance to the need of education and experience may be true, but they did not as a rule deny it.

§ 3. Moral Sense.

The term "sense of right and wrong" was used by Shaftesbury to indicate the "reflecting faculty" which in rational beings takes notice of their various impulses and approves or disapproves them according as they are good or bad. Shaftesbury was no psychologist;

وو

and he does not make clear whether this " sense was mainly of the nature of thought or of the nature of emotion; whether it was like Locke's internal sense, i.e., introspective consciousness, or whether it was simply a form of emotion, the cause of which lay not in external objects but in the affections (or impulses) themselves. Probably he thought of it as at once perceptive and emotional.

The moral sense doctrine was developed by Hutcheson and other writers. There was in the middle of the eighteenth century a growing tendency to lay stress on emotion. In England it is found in the writings of the novelists, Richardson, Sterne, and Mackenzie, as well as in the formal treatises of the moral-sense school. On the continent it is especially associated with the name of Rousseau. Connected with it was the general tendency of psychologists, lasting till the middle of the present century, to analyse all intellectual acts into subjective associations of feelings.

Judgment itself was looked on as a mere association of impressions, immediate or remembered. Hence the most prominent and tangible factor in the complex state we call moral approbation became the emotion which accompanies the perception; just as the perception of the beautiful was resolved into feeling.

Neither Hutcheson nor Hume denies that there is an element of judgment or perception in the apprehension of moral quality. But they both assert that the distinctive and peculiar feature of this apprehension was the presence of a special kind of emotion, akin to that

which accompanies the apprehension of the beautiful. By virtue Hume means "whatever mental action or quality gives to the spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation." "Crime or immorality is no particular fact or relation which can be the object of the understanding; but arises entirely from the sentiment of disapprobation which, by the structure of human nature, we unavoidably feel on the apprehension of barbarity or treachery."1

The specific character of moral quality was forgotten; indeed, it was resolved into utility; just as æsthetic quality was resolved into utility by other members of the same school. But the unguarded language used led to the belief which is expressed by Reid that "Mr. Hume will have the moral sense to be only a power of feeling without judging;" which he rightly objects to as an abuse of the word "sense."

Modern writers commonly refrain from the use of this ambiguous term. Whether moral apprehension be of the nature of external perception, as Reid maintained, or like the recognition of beauty as Shaftesbury maintained, the word "sense " is inapplicable.

§ 4. Moral Reason.

What then is the part played by the intellect in the apprehension of moral quality?

The perception of the external acts which constitute conduct is, of course, primarily intellectual; and so is Hume, "Essays," pp. 480-483 (Ward and Lock).

1

the self-conscious recognition of motives, volitions, feelings, which we call internal perception. The recognition of the relations between the outer facts, between the inner facts, and between the two groups, is intellectual: e.g. the recognition that a given act is a means to a given end. Any moral apprehension

which can be thrown into the form of a judgment is necessarily an intellectual act; nor, as we have just seen, was this really denied by Hume. To say that such moral quality is apprehended by reason1 is only to affirm that it is objective, that it does not exist for me alone, but for all minds.

We must distinguish between the discursive and the intuitive employment of reason in matters of morality. When we infer that a given ethical proposition is true because of its connection with some other ethical proposition; when we recognize a given act as good or right because it leads to some end, or an end as good because it leads to some more ultimate end, we are exercising reason discursively.

But we naturally assume that our chain of inferences is not self-supporting; that it is somewhere fastened to a point of support, some staple in the wall. There cannot, we feel, be endless retrogression. Inference must terminate in intuition, in the recognition of some ultimate major premise. If our knowledge as a whole is justifiable at the bar of reason this premise must be justifiable. In other words, Reason

By Reason we mean the completest and most thorough employment of our intelligence.

can guarantee the ultimate premise; there is such a faculty as intuitive reason. The existence of discursive reason implies it.

For examples of such ultimate ethical premises we may refer to chap. v., §§ 4 and 5. And even if we allege that the knowledge is self-supporting, that the system rests on nothing external but maintains itself by virtue of its own inner relations (like the solar system or the vortex-ring), the acceptance of this point of view itself is due to something more than ordinary reasoning; it is the selection of a starting-point as in itself less needing justification than the judgments dependent on it.

This rational starting point in Ethics may be (1) the immediate recognition of moral quality in acts or motives; or (2) the immediate recognition of moral truth in judgments. The former is merely moral perception; it is not simple and ultimate, but contains implicit judgment like all other kinds of perception. All we mean by the moral quality perceived, is the relation that the given act bears to our ideals of conduct. This relation (or rather set of relations) is analogous to those which subsist in the case of an object of external perception viewed in its æsthetic aspect. Whatever be the origin of our moral perceptions there is no doubt we have them now; any more than there is doubt that we immediately perceive objects as beautiful or ugly.

The second kind of intuitive apprehension is the recognition of the truth of ultimate general proposi