the sensibilities, as the result of a special sense, or of association, or to the intellect, as the result of the faculty of judgment, or as intuitions of reason?

1. Come they from education and imitation? So Locke, Paley, and others have supposed. Locke was led to take this view, by tracing, as he did, all simple ideas, except those of our own mental operations, to sensation, as their source. This allows, of course, no place for the ideas of right and wrong, which accordingly, he concluded, cannot be natural ideas, but must be the result of education.

Now it is to be conceded that education and fashion are powerful instruments in the culture of the mind. Their influence is not to be overlooked in estimating the causes that shape and direct the opinions of men, and the tendencies of an age. But they do not account for the origin of anything. This has been ably and clearly shown by Dugald Stewart, in answer to Locke; and it is a sufficient answer. Education and imitation both presuppose the existence of moral ideas and distinctions; the very things to be accounted for. How came they who first taught these distinctions, and they who first set the example of making such distinctions, to be themselves in possession of these ideas? Whence did they derive them? Who taught them, and set them the example? This is a question not answered by the theory now under consideration. It gives us, therefore, and can give us, no account of the origin of the ideas in question.

2. Do we then derive these ideas from legal restriction and enactment? So teach some able writers. Laws are made, human and divine, requiring us to do thus and thus, and forbidding such and such things, and hence we get our ideas originally of right and wrong.

If this be so, then previous to all law there could have been no such ideas of course. But does not law presuppose the idea of right and wrong? Is it not built on that idea as its basis? How then can it originate that on which itself depends, and which it presupposes? The first law ever promulgated must have been either a just or an unjust law, or else of no moral character. If the latter, how could a law

which was neither just nor unjust, have suggested to the subjects of it any such ideas? If the former, then these qualities, and the ideas of them, must have existed prior to the law itself; and whoever made the law and conferred on it its character, must have had already in his own mind the idea of the right and its opposite. It is evident that we cannot in this way account for the origin of the ideas in question. We are no nearer the solution of the problem than before.

In opposition to the views now considered, we must regard the ideas in question as directly or indirectly the work of nature and the result of our constitution. The question still remains however: in which of the several ways indicated does this result take place?

3. Shall we attribute these ideas to a special sense? This is the view taken by Hutcheson and his followers. Ascribing, with Locke, all our simple ideas to sensation, but not content with Locke's theory of moral distinctions as the result of education, he sought to account for them by enlarging the sphere of sensation, and introducing a new sense, whose specific office is to take cognizance of such distinctions. The tendency of this theory is evident. While it derives the idea of right and its opposite from our natural constitution, and is so far preferable to either of the preceding theories, still, in assigning them a place among the sensibilities, it seems to make morality a mere sentiment, a matter of feeling merely, an impression made on our sentient nature a mere subjective affair-as color and taste are impressions made on our organs of sense, and not properly qualities of bodies. As these affections of the sense do not exist independently, but only relatively, to us, so moral distinctions, according to this view, are merely subjective affections of our minds, and not independent realities.

Hume accedes to this general view, and carries it out to its legitimate results, making morality a mere relation between our nature and certain objects, and not an independent quality of actions. Virtue and vice, like color and taste, the bright and the dull, the sweet and the bitter, lie merely in our sensations.

These sceptical views had been advanced long previously by the sophists, who taught that man is the measure of all things, that things are only what they seem to us.

It is true, as Stewart has observed, that these views do not necessarily result from Hutcheson's theory, nor were they probably held by him; but such is the natural tendency of his doctrine. The term sense, as employed by him, is in itself ambiguous, and may be used to denote a mental perception; but when we speak of a sense, we are understood to refer to that part of our constitution which, when affected from without, gives us certain sensations. Thus the sense of hearing, the sense of vision, the sense of taste, of smell, etc. It is in this way that Hutcheson seems to have employed the term, and his illustrations all point in this direction. He was unfortunate, to say the least, in his use of terms, and in his illustrations; unfortunate, also, in having such a disciple as Ilume, to push his theory to its legitimate results.

If, by a special sense, he meant only a direct perceptive power of the mind, then, doubtless, Hutcheson is right in recognizing such a faculty, and attributing to it the ideas under consideration. But that is not the proper meaning of the word sense, nor is that the signification attached to it by his followers. But if he means, by sense, what the word itself would indicate, some adaptation of the sensibilities to receive impressions from things without, analogous to that by which we are affected through the organs of sense, then, 1. It is not true, that we have any such special faculty. There is no evidence of it; nay, facts contradict it. There is no such uniformity of moral impression, or sensation, as ought to manifest itself on this supposition. Men's eyes and ears are much alike, in their activity, the world over. That which is white, or red, to one, is not black to another, or green to a third; that which is sweet to one, is not sour, or bitter, to another. At least, if such variations occur, they are the result only of some unnatural and unusual condition of the organs. But it is otherwise with the operation of the so-called special

sense.

While all men have probably some idea of right and

wrong, there is the greatest possible variety in its application to particular instances of conduct. What one approves as a virtue, another condemns as a crime.

Nor, 2. have we any need to call in the aid of a special sense to give us ideas of this kind. It is not true, as Locke and Hutcheson believed, that all our ideas except those of our own mental operations, or consciousness, are derived ultimately from sensation. We have ideas of the true and the beautiful, ideas of cause and effect, of geometrical and arithmetical relations, and various other ideas, which it would be difficult to trace to the senses as their source; and which, equally with the ideas of right and wrong, would require, in that case, a special sense for their production.

4. Shall we, then, adopt the view of that class of ethical writers who account for the origin of these ideas by the principle of association? Such men as Hartley, Mill, Mackintosh, and others of that stamp, are not lightly to be set aside in the discussion of such a question. Their view is, that the moral perceptions are the result of certain combined antecedent emotions, such as gratitude, piety, resentment, etc., which relate to the dispositions and actions of voluntary agents, and which very easily, and naturally, come to be transferred, from the agent himself, to the action in itself considered, or to the disposition which prompted it; forming, when thus transferred and associated, what we call the moral feelings and perceptions. Just as avarice arises from the original desire, not of money, but of the things which money can procure; which desire comes, eventually, to be transferred, from the objects themselves, to the means and instrument of procur ing them; and, as sympathy arises from the transfer to others of the feelings which, in like circumstances, agitate our own bosoms; so, in like manner, by the principle of association, the feelings which naturally arise in view of the conduct of others, are transferred from the agent to the act, from the enemy or the benefactor, to the injury or the benefaction, which acts stand afterward, by themselves, as objects of approval or condemnation. Hence the disposition to approve all benevolent acts, and to condemn the opposite; which dis

position, thus formed and transferred, is a part of conscience. So of other elementary emotions.

It will be perceived that this theory, which is indebted chiefly to Mackintosh for its completeness, ands cientific form, makes conscience wholly a matter of sentiment and feeling; standing in this respect on the same ground with the theory of a special sense, and liable in part to the same objections. Hence the name sentimental school, often employed to designate collectively the adherents of each of these views. While the theory now proposed might then seem to offer a plausible account of the manner in which our moral sentiments aim, it does not account for the origin of our ideas and perceptions of moral rectitude. Now the moral faculty is not mere sentiment. There is an intellectual perception of one thing as right, and another as wrong; and the question now before us is: whence comes that perception, and the idea on which it is based? To resolve the whole matter into certain transferred and associated emotions, is to give up the inherent distinction of right and wrong as qualities of actions, and make virtue and vice creations of the sensibility, the play and product of the excited feelings. To admit the perception and idea of the right, and ascribe their origin to antecedent emotion, is moreover to reverse the natural order and law of psychological operation, which bases emotion on perception, and not perception on emotion. We do not first admire, love, hate, and then perceive, but the reverse.

The view now under consideration, while it seems to resolve the moral faculty into mere feeling, thus making morality wholly a relative affair, makes conscience itself an acquired, rather than a natural faculty, a secondary process, a transformation of emotions, rather than itself an original principle. It does it, moreover, the further injustice of deriving its origin from the purely selfish principles of our nature. I receive a favor, or an injury, hence I regard with certain feelings of complacency, or the opposite, the man who has thus treated me. These feelings I come gradually to transfer to, and associate with, the act in itself considered, and this with other acts of the same nature; and so at last I come to have