and unchanging darkness, and the probability is, that, when you brought him to the light, he could not see. But this would not prove either that the child was born blind or that he could never have come to discern colours. Shut up a human being, from infancy to manhood, in utter solitude and seclusion; and at the time when, in the natural enjoyment of society, all his faculties would have been in their prime and vigour, he will be little better than an idiotunable to follow the plainest steps of reasoning, or to discern, in the simplest cases, between Right and Wrong. But you would not argue from this that man is not naturally a rational and moral being.* All our powers of body and of mind-even such as are original and instinctive-require exercise and culture, or occasion and opportunity, for their full development. "Nature, crescent, grows not alone In thews and sinews; but, as this temple waxes, Grows wide withal." Love and resentment are universally admitted to be original, and by many to be instinctive passions; yet they do not manifest themselves till both mind and body have attained some degree of maturity. In like manner a Moral Faculty may be natural to man -it may be an original or even an instinctive element of his mental constitution—and yet to its development time and opportunity may be necessary. We may learn to see by the Conscience, just as we learn to see by the eye. The impression which actions make on the faculty of moral perception is as direct and positive as the impression which objects make on the faculty of external perception. By exercising the bodily organ, we learn not only to see, that is, to discriminate colours; but we come at length, it has been said, to see things that are invisible, and to judge of distance by the eye. No one thinks the faculty of visible perception to be less an original and essential element of human nature, on account of the improvement of which it is susceptible. In like manner, we may have our moral sense so exercised, by reason of use, that we may not only be able to discern, in plain and palpable cases, between Right and Wrong, but to decide in difficult and intricate questions of Casuistry. 4 The inference from the non-exercise to the non-existence of a faculty is not valid. are of full age, who by reason of use have had their senses (aiobairnpia) exercised to discern between good and evil."- Heb. 5 "Strong meat belongeth to them that ❘ v. 14. But this is no reason why the faculty of moral perception should not be regarded as primary and natural in its origin. The occasions and conditions under which a faculty manifests or improves itself, do not create or confer it; and the question concerning a Moral Sense cannot be settled in the summary way in which Paley has attempted to settle it, or rather to set it aside. (Reid, Act. Pow., Essay iii. pt. iii. ch. 8, observ. i.; Stewart, Act. and Mor. Pow., b. ii. ch. 2, p. 168.) SECTION II.-Intellectual Theory. According to the Sentimental Theory, the contemplation of moral actions excites some sense or feeling; and, in consequence of our being so affected, we proceed to classify actions as Right or Wrong, and to characterize agents as Virtuous or Vicious. According to the Intellectual Theory, the process is the converse of this; that is, we first judge of the nature of actions as Right or Wrong, and then we are affected in a manner suitable to the moral judgment formed of them. That it is not by Sense or Feeling, but by Intellect or Reason, that we discern the morality of actions, is maintained, with much learning and ingenuity, by Ralph Cudworth, D.D., in his Treatise concerning Eternal and Immutable Morality. He has shown that even external bodies are not, properly speaking, perceived by the senses, but by the understanding. Sense is not knowledge; it merely furnishes the occasions and conditions on which the mind exerts an active cognoscitive energy, and so begets knowledge within itself. And, if it be the Intellect which comprehends external objects, when presented to it through the medium of the senses, it must be still more plain that the mind must be exerting an internal and independent energy, when it proceeds to frame notions of the relations which subsist between external objects-such as the relation of a whole and its parts, unity and multitude, greater and less, and the like. These relations are not objects of sense, and our notions of them must spring from the inherent activity of the Intellect. Still less can the higher things of morality be comprehended by a sense, or by any faculty to which the term sense can properly be applied. What is just and what is unjust are simple, undefinable ideas. We are not indebted for them to sense nor feeling, but to the active energy of the Intellect. They are not φάντασματα, nor ἄισθηματα, but νοήματα. They are not sensations, nor feelings, which are passive impressions, but ideas evolved by the activity of the Intellect or Reason. In reference to Dr. Samuel Clarke, Dr. Hutcheson has remarked (Illust. of the Mor. Sense, sect. 2), that "this ingenious author says nothing against the supposition of a Moral sense." But as little has he said anything in favour of it. And, as he places virtue in acting conformably to the eternal reason and fitness of things, it is difficult to see how he could appeal to any other power than Reason as judge and guide in all matters of morality. Accordingly, we find Lowman, who was an admirer and follower of Dr. Clarke, defining morality to be the practice of Reason—that is, the doing of those things which Reason dictates as Right. Similar remarks might be made in reference to Mr. Woollaston, who, in the Religion of Nature Delineated, has placed virtue in a conformity with truth, as it is by Reason that we judge of what is true or false. The philosopher who, in modern times, has given the fullest analysis of the process of Moral Perception, is Dr. Richard Price, in his work entitled A Review of the Principal Questions and Difficulties in Morals, with an Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas in general. Having shown (ch. 1, sect. 2) that the Understanding, or the Reason, is a source of simple ideas, which cannot be resolved into elements derived from experience, he proceeds to show (sect. 3) that our ideas of Right and Wrong are of this kind. On contemplating actions we do not suffer, as from a sense or feeling-we know or understand something concerning them. Actions have a nature - that is, some character certainly belongs to them, and somewhat there is that may be truly affirmed of them. This nature, or character, is their Rightness or Wrongness; and the power or faculty by which we are made aware of this is not a Sense, but the Understanding. He has shown further (sect. 3), that "Some emotion or other, and some alteration in the state of the mind, accompany, perhaps, all our perceptions, but more remarkably our perceptions of Right and Wrong. There is a natural aptitude in them to produce some degree of feeling. I cannot perceive an action to be Right without approving it, or approve it without being conscious of some degree of satisfaction and complacency. I cannot perceive an action to be wrong without disapproving it, or disapprove it without being displeased with it. Right actions, then, as such, must be grateful, and wrong ones ungrateful, to us. The one must appear amiable, and the other unamiable and base." So that, in addition to the approbation and disapprobation which arise from the contemplation of actions as Right and Wrong, Dr. Price has admitted that there may also be a perception of their beauty and deformity. He has reverted to the old distinction between the Tò dikalov and the тò kaλòv, the honestum and the pulchrum (ch. 2). As Right, virtue is approved; as Fair, it is loved. Vice, as Wrong, is condemned; as Foul, or Base, it is hated. Approbation and Condemnation are intellectual judgments, accompanied with a degree of feeling. Love and hatred are in themselves mere states or degrees of feeling; although they imply something which is loved or hated. They will differ in their intensity, under different circumstances, and in different individuals. They may, according to Dr. Price, be referred to a sense or positive determination of our nature; and the final cause assigned for them is, that they come in aid of our intellectual judgments of Right and Wrong; and prompt us to follow the one and to avoid the other, more earnestly than we would have done without them. This sense of Beauty and Deformity in actions had been much insisted on by Lord Shaftesbury and Dr. Hutcheson; but a more subordinate place, in the process of moral perception, has been assigned to it by Dr. Price. He has thus expressed his general conclusion (ch. 2), "Upon the whole, it appears, I think, that, in contemplating the actions and affections of moral agents, we have both a perception of the understanding, and a feeling of the heart; and the latter, or the effects in us, accompanying our moral perceptions, are deducible from two springs. They partly depend on the positive constitution of our natures. But the most steady and universal ground of them is, the essential congruity or incongruity between object and faculty." "Placet suapte natura-virtus.”—SENECA. "Etiamsi a nullo laudetur, natura est laudabile."-CICERO. Some of the language employed by Dr. Price had previously been employed by Bishop Butler. In the only passage of his writings which bears directly on the constitution of the Moral Faculty (Dissert. on Virtue), he has said, "It is manifest that great part of common language, and of common behaviour, over the world, is formed upon supposition of a Moral Faculty; whether called Con science, Moral Reason, Moral Sense, or Divine Reason; whether considered as a perception of the understanding, or as a sentiment of the heart, or, which seems the truth, as including both.” In other passages (Serm. I. On Hum. Nat.), he has called Conscience, a principle of reflection: and in representing it as having a manifest claim to superiority over all other parts of our nature (Serm. II. On Hum. Nat.), he has said, "You cannot form a notion of this faculty, Conscience, without taking in judgment, direction, superintendency." Dr. Reid has maintained (Act. Pow., Essay iii. pt. iii. ch. 6), "That by an original power of the mind, when we come to years of understanding and reflection, we not only have the notions of Right and Wrong in conduct, but perceive certain things to be right and others to be wrong." He had no objection that this original power should be called the Moral Sense. "In its dignity, it is, without doubt, far superior to every other power of the mind; but there is this analogy between it and the external senses, that, as by them, we have not only the original conceptions of the various qualities of bodies, but the original judgment that this body hath such a quality, that such another; so, by our Moral Faculty, we have both the original conceptions of Right and Wrong in conduct, of merit and demerit, and the original judgments that this conduct is right, that is wrong; that this character has worth, that demerit." In the following chapter, he has added, “Our moral judgments are not, like those we form in speculative matters, dry and unaffecting, but, from their nature, are necessarily accompanied with affections and feelings." "We approve of good actions, and disapprove of bad; and this approbation and disapprobation, when we analyse it, appears to include, not only a moral judgment of the action, but some affection, favourable or unfavourable, towards the agent, and some feeling in ourselves." And, in concluding his analysis of the Moral Faculty, he has said, "Of this faculty, the operations appear to be, the judging ultimately of what is right, what is wrong, and what is indifferent, in the conduct of moral agents; the approbation of good conduct and disapprobation of bad, in consequence of that judgment; and the agreeable emotions which attend obedience, and disagreeable, which attend disobedience to its dictates." He regarded it, therefore, as both an active and an intellectual power of the mind (ch. 8). "It is an intellectual power, as, by it, we have the original conceptions, or ideas, of Right and Wrong in |