dicts his own. "We feel that it will be impossible" - by what faculty do we feel this? or rather,-as to feel a thing to be impossible is hardly correct language - by what faculty do we judge this to be impossible ? - That faculty, whatever it is, is the ultimate source of moral notions.

Nor, in the last place, can it possibly avail Dr. Brown to argue, as he has done, that reason, as a faculty of our mind, has no more claim to remain unaltered, than the supposed capability of receiving the emotions distinctive of right and wrong; and therefore that the distinctions of morality will be no less precarious when ascribed to reason, than when traced to any other part of our constitution. Surely it must have been in an unthinking moment that Dr. B. composed this passage; or if the employment of an utterly untenable plea must attach a suspicion of unsoundness to the cause for which it is employed, never was there more ground for such a suspicion than here. What should we think, if any one were to maintain that the truth of this proposition, - "the whole is equal to all the parts," -is not more necessary or universal than the truth of this other proposition, -" the touch of hot iron is painful." Yet such a point might be maintained by precisely the same argument that Dr. Brown has employed for the purpose of shewing that moral distinctions have no more stability when ascribed to reason, than to any other faculty. For suppose it were said, on the one side, that the constitution of our sensitive frame might easily be conceived to be so altered, that the touch of a hot iron might affect us in the most pleasurable manner, and that, consequently, the proposition affirming such touch to be painful, would then cease to be true, might it not be asserted, on the other side, that the faculty by which we perceived the truth of the mathematical axiom might likewise be perverted or overturned, since no principle of our nature had any "peculiar claim to remain unaltered in the supposed general alteration of our mental constitution?"* If this reasoning is good, so is Dr. Brown's reasoning good. They stand or fall together.

Into the question regarding the rectitude of our faculties, to which Dr. B. with more dexterity than soundness of argument, leads away the discussion, I am not in the least concerned to enter. There are certain truths which we are, at least, under the necessity of conceiving to be absolutely immutable. These truths we are said to discover by We do not however infer their immutability from the assumed rectitude of reason; on the contrary, the rectitude of reason is only another way of expressing the clear and irresistible conviction we are forced to entertain of the certainty and immutability of these truths. To suppose then, that truths perceived by reason to be immutable, are yet not immutable; to suppose, in * Dr. Brown's Lecture, 82.

other words, that reason may change, (for these two things are the same) is to suppose a contradiction. Is there the same contradiction in supposing that a disagreeable emotion might, at another time, be connected with the view of an action with which there is now connected an agreeable emotion?

And now let me only ask what that doctrine must be in itself, of which such a defender can furnish but such a defence?

SECT. III.

Inadequacy of the Supposition that Approbation and Disapprobation are mere EMOTIONS, to explain the Phenomena of our moral Sentiments.

In the preceding section, I have exhibited certain consequences of a most absurd kind, that seem inevitably to flow from that theory which makes moral distinctions to consist solely in the difference of the emotions with which we are formed to be affected, on the view of different actions. I have also examined the manner in which these consequences have been attempted to be obviated, which has appeared to me to be entirely unsatisfactory. I am now to endeavour to shew, independently of the absurd consequences which this doctrine involves, its entire inadequacy, of itself, to explain the nature of our moral sentiments, and the necessity which even its supporters have lain under, of adopting modes of speaking, utterly at variance with their own system, modes of speaking which must be understood as fairly proceeding upon the assumption, that certain ends or actions are, in their own nature, fit and obligatory, and that they are perceived to be so, by the faculty employed in other cases in distinguishing truth from falsehood, - that namely to which we give the name of reason, the judgment, the understanding.

So long as our notion of goodness is that of one simple quality belonging to persons or actions, and by which alone, or by its opposite, they are morally distinguished - so long as an action is conceived to be something that can only be good or bad, all other terms, such as obligatory, meritorious, right, virtuous, being merely taken as synonymous with good, or as, at most, expressing a difference in regard to the point of time at which the action is viewed - - so long, it may be extremely possible to explain, in a plausible manner, the moral goodness of an action, by representing it as consisting merely in a certain emotion excited in the spectator. But if it is found, as I have endeavoured elsewhere particularly to shew, that actions are morally distinguished in many more ways than merely as good and bad; that various moral terms, frequently taken as synonymous with good, are by no means of convertible signification; that an action may have much of one moral quality in respect of which it would be denominated good, very little of another in respect of which also it would have been denominated good; that each of two actions, in short, may be better than the other, in different senses - if the moral qualities that may be ascribed to an action, are thus varied and complex, a theory calculated only to meet the supposition of a single distinguishing quality, cannot be expected to furnish any adequate solution of the phenomena it professes to explain.

Thus I can perhaps understand how it may be possible to apply to an action the qualities of good, right, proper, becoming, in the same way as we apply those of good, beautiful, pleasant, agreeable, to objects that excite certain bodily sensations, or certain emotions of taste; and to speak of such qualities, in each of the two cases respectively, as existing after the same mode. But that I ought * to do this - that I deserve to suffer punishment if I do that - are propositions, my belief of which I am perfectly unable to identify with any species of sensation or emotion of which I can form an idea.

When we advert to the manner in which the na* "As to that confused word ought," says Dr. Hutcheson; "it is needless to apply to it again all that was said of obligation." Sect. I.

It is no wonder Dr. Hutcheson wished to expunge the word ought from the language of Moral Philosophy. It is the term most strictly and peculiarly expressive of a moral notion; the least admitting of being used in a loose sense; and therefore untranslateable into the language of any imperfect or erroneous system.