whole grounds on which each is estimated, whether absolutely or in degree; and in the course of these inquiries we shall be able to satisfy ourselves that there is nothing whatever apprehended to be fit or obligatory but what reason is capable of perceiving to be so; that in nothing else do virtue and merit consist, but in the spontaneous disposition, or the wilful choice, to do something which reason is capable of perceiving to be obligatory.

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CHAPTER VI.

OF THE DISTINCTIVE NATURE OF THE TRUTHS OF MORAL

SCIENCE.

SECT. I.

Separation of certain Inquiries occasionally confounded.

IF it is the case that certain truths, expressive of moral qualities belonging to actions or agents, are intuitively perceived by reason, the obvious course to be pursued in the farther prosecution of the present inquiry, is, to attempt an enumeration of such truths. Such an enumeration, accordingly, I would now proceed to furnish; but I think it advisable to premise some remarks as to the precise purpose which such an enumeration is calculated, or may be found, to fulfil.

In presenting such a collection of principles as now supposed, stating them, at the same time, to contain the elementary truths of moral science, one may expect to be pressed with such interrogatories as the following: Do these principles then serve to account for all the phenomena of

our moral nature? Do they explain, in every case, why we approve of one action and disapprove of another, why we perform this action and avoid performing that one? In fine, do they enable us to tell in what virtue consists; or to form a definition or description of it, comprehending every sort of virtue ?

In the view of obviating any embarrassment that might arise from such questions as these, all of which respectively have, on some occasions, been employed as the touchstones by which the soundness and sufficiency of a theory of morals is to be tried, I would first refer to the entirely separate and distinct nature of the two branches of inquiry, into which a theory of morals divides itself. In treating of one of these, the moral theorist is to be considered as exhibiting the doctrines of a particular science; in treating of the other, as exhibiting the philosophy of the human mind, considered in its relation to that science : to that science, namely, as furnishing some of the objects about which the faculties and operations of mind are employed. When he states such truths as these - "it is fit that all sentient beings should be happy, rather than miserable"-" the meritorious ought to be happy rather than the guilty" - "whatever is fit to be done, it is obligatory to do" and the like-he states the primary truths of the science of morals. But how these truths are perceived by our minds, is an inquiry

of quite a different description, - belonging, if I may say so, to another branch of science; and the answer to it is no more to be gathered from these truths themselves, than we can gather from the axioms of Euclid, the nature of those faculties of our mind, by which we judge of mathematical evidence. In like manner, the emotions of approbation and disapprobation are to be explained from the nature of our minds, not from the axioms of morals. If, under the name, then, of the phenomena of our moral nature, sought to be explained, are comprehended the mental acts or operations by which we judge of moral truth, most certainly the axioms which are to be presented do not explain such phenomena; nor is it any part of their business to do so.

And for these reasons, the question, - do these axioms explain, in every case, why we judge one action good, another bad-is ambiguous; and may be understood as falling under either the one or the other of the two branches of inquiry above distinguished. The answer to be given to it is this: these axioms explain why an action is good or bad; (so far as either term is used to denote a predicate, and not merely a name ;) but they do not explain why we judge it so. It is true indeed that we cannot state a proposition as being in itself true, without necessarily implying that we believe it true; and it is in this very way that I have, in the preceding chapters, reasoned from the

necessary truth of these axioms, to the peculiar faculty of the mind by which they are perceived. But although the mere enunciation of the axiom involves the affirmation of such belief, it does not explain its nature: that is, it does not assign the situation which this act of belief occupies in a classification of the powers or operation of the mind-which is what is meant by explaining why we believe it, considered as a distinct question from why it is true. Euclid and the mathematicians teach us that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles; that parallelograms on the same base, and between the same parallels, are equal, and the like; and they likewise teach us why this is true; i. e. they shew how these truths necessarily flow from certain acknowledged first principles of mathematical science. It is left to those who teach the philosophy of the human mind, to shew how or why we believe these truths: that is, to shew how this belief flows from the first principles or general truths of the science of pneumatology-from the general laws of our mental constitution. From peculiar circumstances, however, it has happened that our believing an action to be good has been frequently viewed, not merely as attendant on its being good, but as being really all in which its goodness consists: hence some moral theorists have endeavoured to explain, on one principle, certain phenomena that belong to quite different classes.