the words ought and ought not; it thus has the capacity for ascribing to the Fundamental Mind an ethical character, and, when in a sound and sober state, assumes that in the indications of that Mind are to be found the ultimate criteria for all such discriminations. It is hereby shown

to possess what may be called a Moral Sense.

3. Without repudiating the term, I freely concede that it is by no means as definite and significant as could be wished. There are, however, ethical writers who have

"I subjoin extracts from a work of distinguished ability, and one that may be read with equal pleasure and profit even by those whose ethical system rests on a totally different foundation from that upon which the writer has essayed to build.

"The phrase 'moral approbation,' strictly considered, is devoid of meaning. As well might we talk of 'legal approbation,' it being well known that laws never approve, but only condemn. . . . Merit attaches itself only to something that is not our duty, that something being a valuable service rendered to other human beings. Positive beneficence is a merit. So with good offices and gratuitous labour of every kind for beneficial purposes. These are objects of esteem, honour, reward, but not moral approbation. Positive good deeds and self-sacrifices are the preserving salt of human life. Too much cannot be said to encourage them, or done to reward them, when under the guidance of a wise judgment; but they transcend the region of morality proper, and occupy a sphere of their own. What society has seen fit to enforce with all the rigour of positive inflictions has nothing essentially in common with those voluntary efforts of human disinterestedness and generous feeling that we characterize as virtuous and noble conduct, and reward with eulogy and monumental remembrance" ("The Emotions and the Will," by Alexander Bain, p. 332).

"I have given it as my deliberate opinion that authority, or punishment, is the commencement of the state of mind recognized under the various names Conscience, the Moral Sense, the Sentiment of Obligation. . . . It is the familiarity with this régime of compulsion and of suffering constantly increasing until resistance is overborne that plants in the infant and youthful mind the first germ of the sense of Obligation. I know of no fact that would prove the existence of any such sentiment in the primitive cast of our mental constitution. An artificial system of controlling the actions is contrived, adapted to

H

proposed to dispense with it altogether, on the ground that it is due to a radically erroneous conception of the nature

our volitional nature, the system of using pain to deter from particular sorts of conduct. . . . A strong ideal avoidance, not unmixed perhaps with the perturbation of fear, is generated towards what is thus forbidden by penalties to which there is to be no limit if transgression is persisted in. The feeling drawn out towards those that administer the pain is also of the nature of dread. We term it usually the feeling of authority. From first to last, this is the essential form and defining quality of the conscience, although mixed up with other ingredients. This discipline indoctrinates the newly introduced member of society with the sentiment of the forbidden, which by-and-by takes root and expands into the sentiment of moral disapprobation" (Id., p. 257).

"Instead therefore of responsibility I shall substitute punishability, for a man can never be said to be responsible, if you are not prepared to punish him when he cannot satisfactorily answer the charges against him" (Id., p. 564).

If the doctrines propounded in the passages just quoted are radically sound, they will endure the test of application to any situation the phenomena of human life and conduct permit us to imagine. Let us, then, picture to ourselves the unfortunate man who, in the course of a journey from Jerusalem to Jericho, is supposed to have been attacked and disabled by robbers. As he lies bleeding and helpless by the roadside, he is seen, first by a priest, then by a Levite; but, although fully aware of his condition, they pass on without rendering him the slightest assistance. Will it be seriously affirmed that these men have simply missed a fine opportunity of acquiring merit and deserving eulogy? Is the head and front of their offending the fact that they have failed to entitle themselves to reward? Are we prohibited by a system of enlightened ethics from applying the epithet moral to the disapprobation to which they have unmistakably rendered themselves liable? On what ground? I ask. If they have left no duty unfulfilled, if they have violated no law, if attention to the wounded man would have been a work of supererogation, I have nothing more to say. But those who object to the phrase moral disapprobation would do well to make their meaning clear. They dissent not, it is to be hoped, from the maxim, "If thou forbear to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be slain; if thou sayest, Behold we knew it not; doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it? and He that keepeth thy soul, doth He not know it? and shall not He render to every man according

of the phenomena by which it was suggested. They hold that all actions which have seemed to indicate a moral

to His works?" (Prov. xxiv. 11, 12). Let them explain, then, why they would deny that their disapprobation in the case supposed could have any moral character or significance.

In defending, however, the use of the correlative phrase moral approbation, I grant that it is not the function of law to approve : law requires the act by which it is to be fulfilled. But to consent unto the law that it is good," and also, for this follows as a matter of course, when the law has been fulfilled, to approve the act is to exercise an unquestionably moral function. Moreover, if it should happen that the law's claim has by some deed been acknowledged under circumstances which rendered obedience arduous or perilous or otherwise trying, and if, with the knowledge that such was the case, the deed has been observed and rightly interpreted, it gives rise to an increased feeling of satisfaction. The sentiment, however, though mingled now with admiration for the doer, is still the same in kind; greater indeed in degree than it otherwise would have been, yet no less due to appreciative recognition of the authority of a moral law.

Further, it will, I presume, be allowed that the sentiment of selfrespect belongs to morality; but is it acquired through the fear of punishment? Are not these two kinds of emotion essentially distinct? Are they not often found, when coexistent, in inverse ratio to one another? How is it that the offer of a pardon so commonly proves a sufficient inducement to a criminal to turn king's evidence? Dread of the penalty that is hanging over him renders him insensible to the unspeakable degradation he will incur by suffering himself to be bribed to make common cause with justice, and by accepting personal safety, and, it may be, some pecuniary bonus, as a reward for treachery. No cure for meanness and baseness is to be found in mere deterrents and in that kind of discipline which bears its proper fruit in an avoidance, however strong and however ideal, towards what is forbidden by penalties. By the judicious use of deterrents the habits of some of the lower animals may be considerably improved, but it is simply impossible to generate in any of these creatures a sense of the intrinsic demerit of selfish motives. Those of comparatively noble nature will, under its impulse, unreflectingly sacrifice themselves for the sake of persons to whom they are sufficiently attached, and many will, at hazard to their own lives, act the part of champion towards creatures needing help, so far as instinct or association determines for them the objects of their sympathy, but not one can ever be brought to hunger and thirst after righteousness, or induced to make even the slightest effort to eradicate an ignoble propensity.

sense are attributable simply to a habit of mind induced by the fear of punishment. Out of this, as they argue, is generated the sense of obligation. The exigencies of man's social state have developed a system of control under which he has acquired the impression of being liable, in the event of his transgressing, to penalties that will be ever commensurate with persistency in transgression. This impression, it is alleged, constitutes his sense of responsibility; it is this which qualifies and constrains him to distinguish between the permitted and the forbidden, between right and wrong; it is this which originates his conscience; it is the germ of the sentiments, by whatever names they may be known, which are fostered and ripened by moral culture.

4. Now, the theory I have thus sketched out has the support of arguments that may easily seem plausible so long as we confine our attention to the class of facts of which alone it takes cognizance. But surely we have good reason for declining to accept it, unless it can be perceived to account for the sort of feeling with which unsophisticated minds are instinctively affected by the contemplation of such things as they believe to be base or in any degree morally unseemly. It is characteristic of human nature in its comparatively favourable aspects, it is characteristic of young hearts especially, at least when not under the preoccupying influence of exciting and absorbing pursuits, to be roused to indignation by acts which appear to evince injustice, unfairness, meanness, selfishness, treachery, and the like. What light does the theory in question throw upon the sentiments kindled by spectacles of this nature, or upon the burning blush that either resents the suspicion or betrays the sudden consciousness of a cause for shame ? Has indignation at wrong-doing been taught by the fear of punishment? Or will it be affirmed

that the sort of deeds by which it is excited are devoid of all ethical character and significance, and that for this reason the sentiment which awards them blame is not entitled to be called moral? Whence arises the sense of dissatisfaction so commonly left in the reader's breast by any tale which comes to a conclusion without dealing out even-handed justice to all the persons who figure in it? Why is he disappointed if even only in his imagination villany comes off triumphant, or uprightness of purpose remains unvindicated by the issue of the trials it has undergone? And further, we may ask, what is the origin of that unmistakably human sentiment wherein the sort of people who have their type in the Rich Man of the Parable find, not only praise denied them, but their course of life distinctly condemned as wrong and odious? Such a man, it may be, in all his transactions with his fellow-men, takes good care to be within his legal rights; his conduct is invariably conformed to that so-called “artificial system” of control which human communities have established for their protection, and under which the sense of obligation is supposed to be generated; and “a strong ideal avoidance” of whatsoever society has forbidden by penalties has become a habit which sits easily upon him: nevertheless, when the popular verdict respecting him is delivered, he is brought in guilty, and the popular imagination readily acquiesces in the belief that, when he lifts up his eyes in Hades, he will discover, in some new and excruciating experience, that he received in his lifetime his good things. It is not enough to say of acts of beneficence that they find their acknowledgment in admiration; there is in human nature a sense which demands them, refuses to allow that humanity is separable from duty, lays claim to considerate treatment as the discharge of an obligation, nay even, whenever attempts are made to substitute for it ostenta