tions which are incapable of being supported by further inference: which must, at any rate for the given discussion, be taken as final. This has been sufficiently illustrated in the chapter on Intuition.

Reason (i.e. the intellectual powers in their completest form) has more to do with conduct than simply to give us ethical principles and ethical conclusions. It has a practical as well as theoretical function, for it serves as a guide or regulator of action. Before a course of action is determined on, we require to know that it is possible. A civilized man is capable of consistent action for an end, or in obedience to a rule. Although this purposive consistency of action which constitutes conduct does not constitute the whole of virtue (since, to give no other reason, it may be for a bad end), it forms a very large part of virtue. This systematization is due to Reason, which suppresses impulses that lead astray or are in direct conflict with the means necessary to secure the ends aimed at.

Besides all this, Reason may be called a spring of action. Reid, Stewart, and other philosophers have regarded the practical function of Reason as merely directive and regulative. It suppresses what is irrational and therefore wrong, but it cannot, they say, originate action. In the same way some modern thinkers allege that Reason cannot give an end, it can only give us the means to an end which is demanded by active impulse.1 But most people will agree that a man may act from principle as well Gizycki and Coit, pp. 85 seq.

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as feeling. A vivid perception that a certain course of conduct is in conflict with a recognized law leads a man to give it up; although his mere feelings may be wholly on the side of the prohibited line of action. Kant indeed actually asserted that no other kind of right-doing is really virtuous; it is only when we do right because it is right, and not because we want to do it or take pleasure in it, that, strictly speaking, we are doing right at all. It is certain that in a properly constituted mind the perception that an action is right is an irresistible motive for doing it; but whether the motive lies in the mere intellectual state itself or is rather to be ascribed to the specific emotion accompanying such a state, is not so easily decided. With all use of reason is bound up emotion. The distinction between intellect and emotion is indeed like all other analysis, a logical device. In nature continuity is always present. We must not forget that in moral, as well as in other matters, man judges and acts as man and not like a logic machine.

Intellect is thus a spring of action. We act in a certain way because we recognize that way as right. It matters not whether we say that the intellectual act itself is the motive, or that the intellectual act is accompanied by a specific desire, the desire to act rationally, and that this is the actual motive power. For ethical purposes the two statements are equivalent.

Moral reason, then, which simply means reason as concerned with morals, has. a fourfold office:

(i) It recognizes moral facts and moral principles. (ii) It draws conclusions.

(iii) It systematizes conduct.

(iv) It is an impulse to action.

§ 5. Moral Emotions.

Moral emotion is one of the highest and most complex forms of feeling, belonging to the special class of feelings known as sentiments, i.e., " non-personal emotions which gather about certain objects and ideas common to all." 1

Strictly speaking, there are several allied emotions, having objects which are more or less connected, and forming a tolerably well-marked group.

(1.) The moral sentiment proper the desire to do right as such, the feeling of necessity and obligation which arises when we recognize a certain course as right. This is the most specifically ethical emotion. "Moral approval or disapproval differs from æsthetic in that it always fastens on a human action, whether another's or our own, and on that particular aspect or relation of the action which we call its rightness or wrongness. It is thus pre-eminently a practical, i.e. action-controlling, feeling." It is peculiarly associated with the jural view of Ethics; and is clearly connected with the religious emotions. In fact, if morality had not been developed under theological conditions as a

1

Sully, "Outlines," p. 520 (1st edition). See p. 360 in new edition.

2 lbid., p. 368 (new edition).

divine system of natural law, this specific emotion could hardly have come into existence. Now that it has come into existence, it does not seem impossible to transfer it to a more æsthetic or perfectionist view of conduct.

When we recognize a course of conduct as right, we immediately feel it binding on us and on others. This feeling is so closely associated with the recognition of conduct as right, that the intellectual apprehension itself appears to be a motive to action. (See this chapter, § 4.)

(2.) The sentiments of approbation for particular kinds of moral conduct and disapprobation of the opposite. As Professor Sully says, "A difference in the nature of the action affects our feeling towards it. Thus, different kinds of bad or good conduct excite different shades of moral feeling.' These particularized kinds of moral feeling are called by Dr. Sidgwick the "quasi-moral sentiments," because, although normally associated with the moral sentiment proper, the desire to do right as such, they are sometimes in conflict with it. The love for veracity in the priest or the teacher may have to be mortified, in a case where some amount of untruthfulness seems incumbent on us. The modesty of a pure-minded woman has sometimes to be suppressed at what she knows to be call of duty.

The quasi-moral sentiments are clearly connected with the aesthetic sentiments-the emotional con

1

Sully, "Outlines," p. 557 (1st edit.); cf. also his "Human Mind," vol. ii., pp. 168 seq.

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comitants of our recognition of an act as pulchrum. We recognize many other things as beautiful besides virtue; and conduct is often æsthetically satisfying which is ethically wrong.

(3.) The voice of conscience, as it is often called; the remorse, which we feel when the conduct disapproved is our own: and with this may be grouped the feeling of moral self-approbation, which was dwelt on with such emphasis by the eighteenth-century moralists, and by such writers as Addison and Fielding.

We

We have come to see that the latter sentiment is dangerous to modesty, and liable to make us rest contented with low ideals, so that it no longer occupies the prominent place that it formerly took. But, perhaps, most people are still inclined to attribute too much importance to the feeling of remorse. It should be remembered that all self-blame is not moral. often regret with peculiar poignancy the perpetration of small slips in grammar and manners; while falls into our besetting sin are often taken somewhat as a matter of course. Again, there is such a thing as morbid exaggeration of conscientiousness, where the sentiment of self-remorse suffers from a sort of hyperæsthesia. Some earnest souls are always finding fault with themselves out of measure, about the smallest matters. Their most venial slips pain them so much that they become despondent, and even peevish and ill-tempered. Such distorted and excessive regret for our past conduct is a serious bar to further improvement.