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APPENDIX TO CHAP. III.

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REMARKS ON SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH'S PRELIMINARY DISSERTATION ON THE HISTORY OF ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY -IN THE NEW EDITION OF THE ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA.

THE first rough draught of this treatise was composed, before the publication of Sir James Mackintosh's learned and interesting "Preliminary Dissertation" in the new edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, or at least before I had an opportunity of perusing it. My confidence in some of the opinions advanced by me has been infinitely strengthened, by observing their coincidence with those of so competent a judge. And I think it will be found that, in particular, the views expressed by Sir James as to the prejudice which the philosophy of morals has sustained from the confounding together of two different branches of the inquiry, and those which he has offered regarding the relation of utility to virtue, will, in the course of the present work, meet with some useful illustration and extension.

On one point, however, the system of Sir James is directly at variance with that which I have felt myself constrained to adopt. The doctrine which represents reason as the primary source of moral distinctions, he has treated less as being of questionable or doubtful truth, than as an exposed and almost abandoned error. Indeed the establishment-for as such he views it-of the contrary doctrine, that which I have been at so much pains in endeavouring to controvert, he generally marks as one of the most signal and obvious advances that the theory of morals has effected in modern times.

Considering the weight that is due to the opinions of Sir James Mackintosh on this subject, and also the nature of the composition in which these opinions have been put forth, (a composition which, as being professedly a general historical view of the science, appears to stand in the same relation to an ordinary controversial writing that the summing up of the judge does to the pleading of the advocate, and to be entitled to as much more trust,) I may be pardoned for briefly applying the general views offered in the preceding chapter to the specific points urged by Sir James, so far at least as these do not appear to have been already directly met.

No proof is furnished by Sir James, or any of the sentimentalists, that an emotive act attends every exercise of the moral faculty. In all their arguments on this point, the sentimentalists confound these two things-perceiving an action to be right, and, desiring or willing to perform a right action. Their constant argument is, * before an action can be performed, there must be a desire or act of will on the part of the agent. Granting this, is it not possible to perceive an action to be right and yet not perform it? or cannot an action be made an object of thought, without performance, without the possibility of performance? But if an action may be perceived to be right, without the agent's yet performing it, this perception of its being right may exist anterior to any emotive process: for it is only upon the supposition that the will is moved, that the sentimentalists can ground the necessity of a desire or emotion; and they cannot shew that the will is moved, when the action is not performed.

tion;" "when the conclusion of a process of reasoning presents to his mind an object of desire, a motive of action begins to operate, and reason may then, but not till then, have a powerful though indirect influence on conduct," (Prel. Diss.) - so the whole paragraph, "Let any argument to dissuade a man from immorality," &c. "It is then apparent that the influence of reason on the will is indirect" - "through whatever length of reasoning the mind may proceed in its advances towards action;" -" some emotion or sentiment which must be touched, before the springs of will and action can be set in motion." - To the same purpose Dr. Thomas Brown: " If we had not previously been capable of loving the good of others, as good, and of hating the production of evil as evil; to shew us that the happiness of every created being depended on our choice, would have excited in us as little eagerness to do," &c. Brown, Lecture 76.

How happy would it be, if, as these writers have seemed to understand, the perceiving of what is right, and the doing of it, did not mean different things!

But besides, if an action cannot be right, but as an agent wills or desires to do it, it follows, that it must be more or less right, according as he has more or less desire or will to perform it; and that if he has no will or desire to perform it, it is not right at all. To quiet the conscience, to remove obligation, would thus be one and the same thing: to say that a man did not desire or will to do an action, would be to say that he was not under a moral obligation to do it. In the following passage, Sir James Mackintosh so fairly lays open this weakness of his system, that I am astonished how he was not led by the absurdity of the consequence, to discover the error in his premises.

"Let any argument to dissuade a man from immorality be employed, and the issue of it will always appear to be an appeal to a feeling. You prove that drunkenness will probably ruin health. No position founded on experience is more certain. Most persons with whom you reason, must be as much convinced of it as you are. But your hope of success depends on the drunkard's fear of ill health: and he may always silence your argument, by telling you that he loves wine, more than he dreads sickness. You speak in vain of the infamy of an act to one who disregards the opinion of others; or of its imprudence, to a man of little feeling for his own future condition. You may truly, but vainly, tell of the pleasures of friendship, to one who has little affection. If you display the delights of liberality to a miser, he

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may always shut your mouth by answering, 'the spendthrift may prefer such pleasures : I love money more.' If you even appeal to a man's conscience, he may answer you, that you have clearly proved the immorality of the act, and that he himself knew it before, but that now, when you had renewed and freshened his conviction, he was obliged to own that his love of virtue, even aided by the fear of dishonour, remorse, and punishment, was not so powerful as the desire which hurried him into vice."

Here a case is put, where a man is supposed to acknowledge that the immorality of an act has been proved; while at the same time he declares himself desirous and willing to commit this immorality; or at least, that any desire he has to avoid it, is overcome by a stronger desire. - If the immorality of the act has been proved, while yet the will is not moved, then surely the immorality cannot depend upon the will's being moved, or upon the existence of any emotive process: nay it must depend upon something else.

If a man were to say, My conscience prompts me to pursue a particular mode of conduct, but stronger desires prompt me to the opposite mode of conduct; it would indeed be in vain to argue farther with him-meaning by the expression in vain, that we should have no means of bringing him to action. But even after a man has told us that his conscience is overpowered by stronger impulses or desires, or that he does not regard his