more than to ask if we discerned right and wrong, by a faculty discerning right and wrong. The question is, is the faculty commonly called reason competent to discern moral distinctions, or any moral distinctions at all; or does the perception of these distinctions require also another and different faculty? And those who maintain the negative of the first question, and the affirmative of the second, seem bound to prove, first, that there could exist a being possessed of reason, who should yet be unable to distinguish right from wrong; and secondly, that a being could possess the power of distinguishing right from wrong, and yet be destitute of reason:

either of which propositions, I think, it would require a metaphysician of some enterprize to maintain. Until such propositions are established, it must be held as unphilosophical to assume the existence of any moral faculty separate from reason ; and if the moral faculty be recognised as the same with reason, it must tend to produce misapprehension and confusion to give it a distinct name.

This leads me to remark more generally upon the manner on which the two eminent writers last named (Dr. Reid and Mr. D. Stewart) have expressed themselves upon this subject. So far as I am able to comprehend their opinions, I should not be inclined to rank them among the number of those who have ascribed our perception of moral distinctions to reason; since they appear at most to own that the moral faculty (which, according to them, is an original principle of our nature) may be comprehended with other faculties under the general name of reason. I cannot help considering this mode of representing the nature of the moral faculty as extremely unphilosophical, if it implies, and I see nothing else it can imply, that a being might exist, able to reason on other subjects, and yet not upon moral subjects; one who, for instance, on forming the conceptions of whole and parts, could perceive the necessary truth of this proposition, "the whole must be equal to all the parts," and thus form the notion of equality, - and who yet, though able to form the conceptions of happiness and misery, could not perceive the truth of this proposition, "the happiness of any being ought to be promoted, his misery not promoted," nor thus form the ideas of right and wrong. This seems to me as much as to say that there must be as many different original faculties, as there are subjects of thought or conception; that one faculty, for instance, perceives that a body cannot be in two places at once, another that space is infinite, a third that time is without beginning or end, and so on. But besides, Dr. Reid, if not Mr. Stewart also, does not hesitate to place the first principle of morals among the number of necessary truths. Now it seems to me that if we once admit more than one supreme judge of necessary truth, we abandon the unity of truth itself; and shall be compelled to entertain the supposition, that each of two contradictory propositions might be necessarily true: since it would be beyond our power to assure ourselves that principles of the different kinds might not, in their remoter consequences, come into hostile collision. We should place ourselves much in the situation of a country having two supreme courts of law, whose jurisdiction it might not be possible to keep asunder, while each should be entitled to enforce its own decisions.

But whatever question may be made regarding the name that is to be given to the faculty by which we distinguish between right and wrong and how little the name determines the real controversy is evident from this, that reason admits of being called the moral sense, and the moral sense of being called a part of reason - there can, I think, be no question, if there is any thing immutable in right and wrong, that the moral faculty cannot be, in its nature, a mere susceptibility of emotion, varied according to the character of the different actions which we behold. I have, in this chapter, offered a specific proposition as one instance of the absolute and immutable nature of right and wrong; one instance, as I conceive, of our perception that there is something right, and something wrong, which can never be otherwise. Now if those distinctions entirely resolve into certain emotions experienced by us at the view of certain actions, these two propositions "it is right for a being to occasion misery to himself and others," and, "the view of a being occasioning misery to himself and others moves in us the emotion of approbation,"* - would be equivalent and identical. But if they are equivalent and identical, then to say that the first can never be true, would be to say that a certain emotion cannot possibly be connected with, or made to follow the view of a certain action; an affirmation which would be plainly absurd: if they are not identical, then the emotion felt by us, cannot be all that distinguishes right from wrong. And this leads me more particularly to consider, as in the following section, the absurd consequences that would flow from the supposition that the peculiar emotion with which an action is viewed, is that alone by which its moral nature is distinguished.

SECT. II.

Absurdity of the Consequences that flow from the Hypothesis that Approbation and Disapprobation are mere Emotions.

The supporters of the doctrine of a moral sense seldom deign to vindicate that doctrine from the absurd consequences that have been attached to it; nor, so far as I know, have even such vindications as have been offered, ever met with that degree of exposure to which their weakness lays them open.

* "To say that an action excites in us the feeling, and to say that it appears to us right, are to say precisely the same thing." - DR. THOMAS BROWN, Lecture 74.

The fundamental objection to the doctrine of a moral sense is this, that, if, when we pronounce an agent or action morally good, we mean, simply, that the view of such action or agent excites in the spectator an agreeable emotion, then the affirmation that such action or agent is good, does not express any thing that is true of such agent or action, but only something that is true of the spectator, namely, that he is affected after a peculiar manner by the view of a particular action, - a consequence which cannot fail of being considered as sufficiently absurd. Nor, as I have before shewn, is this consequence in the least to be obviated by telling us, (the accustomed fallacy to which the advocates of a moral sense resort,) that one action is absolutely of a certain quality the view of which affects us agreeably, that another action is absolutely of a certain quality the view of which affects us disagreeably. These two propositions - the action is of a certain quality - the view of this quality affects us agreeably - do not just mean one thing. The question then is, which of the two, upon the hypothesis of a moral sense, is identical in meaning with this one - the action is right. If the former, you give up your hypothesis itself; (in as much as you thereby own that the feeling is not what constitutes the action right, but is consequent on its being right;) if the latter, you allow "it is right' to be synonymous with "we feel the agreeable emotion" - which leaves the objection in force.