only fulfils a so much greater, and just because a greater, obligation, and vice versa. Nor does it make the smallest difference to the perception, in this case, whether the action is contemplated before, during, or after its performance. We determine the relative proportion between the obligation and the merit quite alike at any of these points of time. The only visible foundation Dr. Brown's doctrine on this head possesses, is this, that an action cannot be obligatory after performance, nor meritorious before it. But surely this does not explain all that is meant by those two

terms.

Dr. Brown complains that the theory of morals has been perplexed with unnecessary distinctions. But while I allow that some phenomena naturally the same, have been erroneously distributed into different classes, I do not despair of making it appear, that the chief difficulties that have embarrassed the subject in question, have arisen, not from this cause, but from one the very opposite of it: that is, partly because some important distinctions have, in a great measure, escaped the observation of inquirers; but still more, as I believe, because other distinctions that have been fully recognized and allowed, have not been held in view with the requisite steadiness, in the management of a variety of discussions, where the difficulties that occurred admitted of complete removal, by a simple reference to these distinctions.

Such a general idea as I have now attempted to furnish, of the different sorts of determinations that may be ascribed to the moral faculty, seems to me essential as a preparation for entering on the inquiry what that faculty is - so that we may be enabled to ascertain how far any of the different theories that have been advanced on this subject, are either altogether or exclusively true.

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CHAPTER III.

ON THE QUESTION WHETHER THE PERCEPTION OF MORAL DISTINCTIONS RESOLVES ULTIMATELY INTO A JUDGMENT OF REASON OR INTO AN EMOTION.

SECT. I.

Positive Argument that Reason perceives a Moral Distinction in Actions.

THE two great divisions of opinion in regard to the nature of the moral faculty, of that, namely, by which we perceive a moral distinction in characters and actions, may be thus described.

By some it has been maintained that, in the constitution of our nature, a certain feeling or emotion of an agreeable kind has been connected with the contemplation of some actions, an emotion of an opposite, or disagreeable kind, with the contemplation of others; that actions of the first kind we call good, of the second kind bad; that when we say of any action it is right, or obligatory,-what should be, or ought to be performed, — what there would be virtue or merit in performing, what an agent would deserve commendation or reward for performing, we mean just this, that the action in question, or at most that all actions distinguished by some particular quality belonging to that action, are such as we are formed to behold with an agreeable emotion, and we mean nothing else whatever. This opinion has been supported by Dr. Hutcheson, Mr. Hume, Dr. Adam Smith, and, more latterly, by Dr. Thomas Brown.

Of these, Dr. Smith alone has attempted to resolve the capacity of moral emotion into another principle of our nature, namely, that of sympathy. By all the rest of these philosophers, the moral faculty is represented as an original and elementary part of our constitution.*

By another class of theorists, forming the second great division, it has been maintained, that the mere agreeable or disagreeable emotion experienced by the spectator at the view of an action, cannot be all that characterises that action as good or bad; since these distinctions express something belonging to actions absolutely, and independently of what emotions the view of them may excite; that certain actions are right, whether they should please any being or not; and that if, from being so constituted as to experience a disagreeable emotion at the view of such actions,

* Hartley has also conceived that the moral faculty may be resolved into a more general principle, namely, that of association.

any being should determine them to be wrong, he would determine falsely. This has been the view of Clarke, Cudworth, Price, Butler, Reid, and Stewart.

So far the opinion of these philosophers is but negatively described. The three first named however, viz. Clarke, Cudworth, and Price, have represented the moral faculty as being the same with that by which, in other cases, we distinguish between truth and falsehood, namely, reason or the understanding. If Butler, Reid, and Stewart have not asserted this, or have even denied it, they have at least offered no arguments in support of such denial. A difficulty which I feel in more explicitly classing their views, will afterwards be adverted to.

It is somewhat singular that the term moral sense, which originated from among the first division of theorists above enumerated, (namely from Dr. Hutcheson,) has been objected to by some of those, while it has been defended by some of the partisans of the other system of opinions. Thus, on the one hand, Dr. Smith and Dr. Brown would discard the use of that phrase, while, on the other, Dr. Reid and Mr. Stewart seem disposed to retain it. To put the question then, as is not unfrequently done, whether we perceive moral distinctions by reason or by a sense, would not, without carefully restricting the import of the latter term, necessarily be to present a statement