pend. There would seem to be some extraordinary difficulty in naming the common characteristic of all moral phenomena, and separating the property or endowment of man to which they belong. It is represented by all the writers who acknowledge its reality, as a separate faculty, performing its function like our other faculties; some, after Butler, classing it with the active principles, making it monarch of the instincts; others, with Shaftesbury, giving it a perceptive character, treating it as a supreme taste; and not a few, like Price, comparing it with intellectual intuition, by which we have cognizance of good and evil, no less than of number or possibility.

A body of Morality must be the result of a Theory of Morality. One is a system of instructions for the guidance of the Will, the other a series of beliefs recommended to the understanding. Of the former you cannot affirm, as of the latter, that they are true or false; but only that they are fit or unfit for certain ends. The order of the things to be done for any end must be widely different from the order of the reasons for doing them. The classification of precepts in a code will follow the order of our external business and relations; a classification of the reasons for those precepts will follow the order of our internal moral constitution. The one will regulate its divisions by the occasions of action, the other by the principles of action. Precept is not deducible from precept as truth is from truth. - I can no more infer one commandment from another, than, from the rules of perspective, I can learn how to mix colors.

When once we have secured a complete and inflexible set of precepts, the Moralist has simply to determine whether this or that case does or does not come within the scope of a certain definition. If that definition was framed by some omniscient mind, whose intent must be an unerring guide, and whose formulas can be neither too large nor too narrow for the cases they are designed to embrace, then will this process of legal construction yield us verdicts of absolute right and wrong. But the value of the subordinate decisions is entirely measured by that of the general rule; and if, instead of being the true expression of a natural law it is only a rough generalization of our own, picked up from common life, hitting off the majority of instances, but having no pretension to unimpeachable precision, what do we gain by finding that here it fits and there it fails? The great office of the Moralist is antecedent to this, and bears analogy to the task not of the Magistrate but the Legislator. He has far other work than to weigh expressions and to analyze definitions; viz. to shape into language a code yet unformed, faithfully representing the moral sentiments that characterize and consecrate human nature, and embracing the problems of external action that can be foreseen in human life. We must get our Rules before we can interpret them. Moral axioms are statements of Psychological facts, belonging to the province of Knowledge; they are a chapter from the science of human nature and society.

Shortened from the Prospective Review.

The Moral Law requires us to feel the Sentiments which are right, no less than to do the Actions of a corresponding character.

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The philosophic ground of the objection to all attempts to assimilate morals to geometry is this: That it is impossible ever to give to morals a terminology to be compared for accuracy to that of mathematics. Sentiments cannot be defined by any accurate terms, for they vary with every fresh condition of humanity." In each person's mind each sentiment acquires a peculiar character, corresponding to that of the mind in which it dwells, and this character changes visibly every year, actually every hour of life. We should require a language for every individual, and for every hour of his life, were we to define love and hatred, gratitude and resentment, as they exist in the souls of the virtuous or vicious, magnanimous or base, sanguine or phlegmatic, happy or miserable; and even then the word which would express his own sentiment to a man's own apprehension would fail to convey a just apprehension of it to another whose mental experience was different. And were we to exclude the consideration of Sentiments, and limit our study of morals to moral Actions, we should still find that the circumstances under which they take place, modify them so entirely, that, short of a description of the circumstances, no term can be invented to define any one action.

The Emotions, and the no less spontaneous Thoughts, called forth without any act of choice on our parts, cannot have a Moral character, for with regard to them we are

not free agents. But beside these involuntary, spontaneous thoughts and emotions, there are also an immense number of thoughts and emotions quite voluntary. When the outer world offers no interruption, we may force ourselves to Think at will on one matter or another; when the first sudden Emotion has passed, we may compel ourselves to Feel to some extent (and that is the extent of the Moral character of the feeling) as our Will ordains. Now, these voluntary Thoughts and prolonged Emotions which may be called "Sentiments," have a Moral character of Right and Wrong no less real than that of Action. As an Act is eternally distinguished as Right or Wrong for a rational free agent to do, so a Sentiment is eternally distinguished as Right or Wrong for him to feel.

The Sentiments are, in fact, collaterally with the true holy Will, the springs of our outward actions. Taking their rise among the desires of our intellectual, affectional, and sensual natures; passing through the stage of spontaneous and involuntary Thoughts and Emotions, they reach their full growth, and become the Sentiments of love, gratitude, veneration, and the like, or of hatred, malice, and contempt. In the cold temperament, and under ordinary conditions, they continue as these Sentiments; in warmer natures, or under special excitement, they become Passions. Now the primary constitutional desires of our nature, and the spontaneous Thoughts and Emotions called forth in us by the objects presented to us by the external world, have no control over our actions, (or, at least when they do spasmodically affect the muscles

of our limbs, we do not consider such motions as real actions;) but just at the point in which they enter under the dominion of the Will, they simultaneously become practical. The sentiment, and, à fortiori, the sentiment risen to a passion, is a direct spring of action. It stands for the time being as the representative of the whole lower nature. If the true Will do not exert its

supremacy, the Sentiment inevitably works its way. If the true Will exert itself, it may enforce the outward Action without subduing the Sentiment, or it may both enforce the Action and subdue the Sentiment into harmony with the Law. It is to be remarked, however, that the point in which the Sentiment passes from a blind, irresistible impulse into the dominion of the Will, is one of difficult appreciation. We are of course bound to endeavor to co-act our thoughts and emotions from the first; but there is many a case in which we are called upon to perform the right Action before it is within our power to feel the right Sentiment. In this, as in all other cases, the bounds of our Freedom are those of our responsibility; and if we cannot do more than we actually accomplish, that which we perform constitutes Virtue.

An Essay on Intuitive Morals.

Our nature is a complex of two powers, or a double operation of one; and these poles of humanity are Feeling and Knowledge. To develop each of these to its utmost limits, till at last it shall fill the whole sphere of existence, and to keep the equipoise of the two, seems to