should do for me, and to deny it, "either in word or in action," "is as if a man should contend that, though two and three are equal to five, yet five are not equal to two and three." God himself necessarily conforms his will to the laws of morals; his activity must be in accord with eternal right.1 (4) Henry Calderwood 2 belongs to the same school. We have, he says, an intuitive knowledge of the right and wrong. This knowledge is immediate, and its source is within the mind itself. "By direct insight a law is visible to us which cannot be inferred, but which regulates all inferences in morals within the area to which the law applies." The recognition of a general truth or principle of conduct is perception or intuition of the highest order. The power to recognize self-evident truth has been named Reason. Conscience, then, is that power by which moral law is immediately recognized, "it is reason discovering universal truth having the authority of sovereign moral law, and affording the basis for personal obligation." It is a cognitive or intellectual power, not a form of feeling, nor a combination of feelings; and it is vested with sovereign practical authority. This authority is found in the character of the truth which conscience reveals, not in the nature of the faculty itself. "This faculty is a power of sight, making a perception of self-evident truth possible to

1. See references under Cudworth; also Stephen, op. cit., Vol. II.

2 1831-1897. Handbook of Moral Philosophy.

man; but it contributes nothing to the truth perceived. To this truth itself belongs inherent authority, by which is meant, absolute right to command, not force to constrain."1

But if conscience discovers moral law to us, how is it that there exists such diversity of moral judgments among men? Calderwood maintains that there is a very general agreement as to the forms of rectitude, such as truthfulness, justice, benevolence. No nation places these virtues in the list of moral wrongs. But men differ as to the application of these principles.

Conscience cannot be educated. As well teach the eye to see, and the ear to hear, as to teach reason to perceive self-evident truth. But conscience can be trained in the application of the law, which can be known only through personal experience.

The foregoing thinkers practically agree in the answers which they give to our question, Why do men make moral judgments? Men judge as they do because they have an innate knowledge of morality, a knowledge not derived from experience, but inherent in the very nature of human reason. Reason immediately reveals to us moral truths, certain universal propositions which are as necessary and absolute as the truths of mathematics. Conscience

is an intuition of the reason (ratio). We may call

1 Handbook, Part I, chaps. iii and iv. To the same school belong Price, Reid, Stewart, Janet, Porter, and others.

the philosophers who adopt this view, rationalists or intellectualists, rationalistic intuitionists.

philosophers who agree with the above that conscience is innate, but do not conceive it as a faculty of reason, as a faculty that pronounces universal and necessary judgments, like, Stealing is wrong, Benevolence is right. According to them we either feel or perceive that a particular act or motive is right or wrong when it is presented to us. We contemplate motives and acts, and pronounce judgment upon them when they are brought before consciousness, and we do this because we immediately and intuitively feel or perceive them to be right or wrong, not because we first compare them with an universal innate truth or proposition, delivered by the reason. Let us consider the advocates of this view under two heads. Let us call those who regard conscience as a form of feeling, as an emotional faculty, emotional intuitionists; and those who base it upon perception, perceptional intuitionists.1

1 Neither Shaftesbury nor Hutcheson draws a sharp distinction between feeling and perception, both using the terms interchangeably; but they seem to me to incline toward the view that the moral sense is an emotional faculty. (See Martineau, Types, Vol. II, Bk. II, pp. 524 ff., where their meaning of the word sense is defined.) Hume is clearer in his statements on this point, and more outspoken in his opposition to the rationalists. Butler and Martineau, on the other hand, regard conscience as a cognitive faculty, but not in the sense of the rationalists. With them it is a perception rather than a power of reason proclaiming general moral truths.

(1) According to Lord Shaftesbury,1 man possesses "self-affections which lead only to the good of the private," "natural, kind, or social affections," which lead to the public good, and “unnatural affections" which lead neither to public nor private good. Virtue consists in eliminating the latter, and establishing a proper harmony or balance between the others. But how can we tell whether these affections are properly balanced or not? By means of the moral sense, the sense of right and wrong, a natural possession of all rational creatures, which

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no speculative opinion is capable immediately and directly to exclude or destroy." "In a creature capable of forming general notions of things," he says, "not only the outward beings which offer themselves to the sense are the objects of affection, but the very affections themselves; and the affections of pity, kindness, gratitude, and their contraries, being brought before the mind by reflection, become objects, so that by means of this reflected sense there arises another kind of affection toward those very affections themselves which have been already felt, and are now become the subject of a new liking or dislike." 2 "No sooner are actions viewed, no sooner the human affections and passions

11671-1713. "Inquiry concerning Virtue and Merit," contained in the second volume of the Characteristics. See especially Martineau; Stephen; Jodl; Gizycki, Die Philosophie Shaftesbury's; Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson. — Selections in Selby-Bigge, British Moralists, Vol. I. 2 Inquiry, Bk. I, Part II, Section III.

discerned (and they are most of them discerned as soon as felt), than straight an inward eye distinguishes and sees the fair and shapely, the amiable, the admirable, the foul, the odious, or the despicable. How is it possible, then, not to own that as these distinctions have their foundation in nature, the discernment itself is natural and from nature alone?"1

(2) Francis Hutcheson2 follows in the same path. He regards man as being moved by two kinds of affections self-love and benevolence. In case a conflict arises between these two motive principles, an internal principle, intuitive and universal in man, the moral sense, appears and decides in favor of the latter. The moral sense has always "approved of every kind affection," has pronounced "morally good" all actions which flow from benevolent affection, or intention of absolute good to others. What is the nature of this faculty? It does not, like the conscience of the rationalists, evolve general propositions out of itself, but perceives virtue and vice as the eye perceives light and darkness. It is a "regulating and controlling function," "the faculty of perAs Jodl says: "The

1 The Moralists, Part III, Section III. manner in which Shaftesbury speaks of this self-reflection upon which the moral judgment is said to depend, is somewhat indefinite and vacillating." Still, he apparently means to point out that an emotional element enters into the process by which such judgments are formed. We may, therefore, call Shaftesbury an "emotional intuitionist." 2 1694-1747. Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, etc.-Selections from Hutcheson's writings in SelbyBigge, op. cit., Vol. I.

8 Inquiry, Section I, § 8; System of Moral Philosophy, Bk I.